2. CM Punk vs. Brock Lesnar, Summerslam 2013
The best angles are always those that are based around deeply personal issues between characters. Angles like these make it easy for audiences to get invested in them which greatly benefits the overall quality of the feud and of the matches taking place in the angle because of the wide range of tools it provides from a storytelling standpoint. When you take such an angle and put two of the best workers in the company in a match together as a part of it, then you have yourself a guaranteed formula for success. "The Best vs. The Beast" was perhaps the most anticipated match on the Summerslam card for most wrestling fans. It not only lived up to the anticipation, but in my opinion far surpassed all expectations and gave us an extremely solid candidate for Match of the Year. What worked about this match was the fact that it combined brilliant psychology and storytelling with hard hitting, intense physicality and borrowed ideas from a wide variety of styles ranging from grappling and submission wrestling to simple brawling and Brazilian jujitsu to MMA. It incorporated all these elements without ever seeming overbooked or too choreographed and in fact looked more like a shoot fight than a pro-wrestling match. Brock and Punk both gave their career best performances in this match and played their roles to perfection. It is to their credit that they took the oldest cliche in the book, (that of David vs. Goliath) and turned it into an incredibly entertaining roller-coaster ride of an experience. Rating: 4.75 stars.