The professional wrestling was strong this week, with a couple really good matches (Ziggler/Zayn vs. Owens/Miz from SmackDown and Balor vs. Swann from NXT), as well as quite a few short but fun women’s matches – Charlotte vs. Sasha from SmackDown, Charlotte vs. Natalya from RAW, and Asuka vs. Emma from NXT.
But the clear standout, this week and really any other, was AJ Styles vs. Kevin Owens from RAW.
These two are my favorite guys to watch in WWE right now, with both reliably putting on good match after good match and being good examples of guys known for work outside of WWE getting big successful pushes.
This match went 15-20 minutes on TV and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of it, with engaging storytelling and action throughout. Just two great wrestlers at the top of their game.
Owens started it working a headlock and keeping it on for a couple minutes, a rarity in today’s WWE. And of course he was a dick about it. And that was a fun way to bridge into the action, and boy was there a lot. The highlights here are numerous: Styles’ backflip to the outside, Styles getting brutally tossed into the barricade, the wild strike exchange, Styles’ hurricanrana into nothing, Owens’ springboard kick cut-off, Styles busting out a torture rack, Owens pulling out a frog splash, the corner powerbomb that the crowd went BATSHIT for… good lord.
But it wasn’t just that. These two had a match on SmackDown that went about 10 minutes and had a lot of their big moves. And it was fun. But this was on another level. Why? Two reasons.
First, from Owens’ early headlock, to Owens’ constant shit talk and Styles’ well-timed babyface cut-offs, every move and hold felt like it meant something in their struggle to gain control. When wrestling starts to feel like this – for me, it’s peak wrestling. No wasted movements. Feels like a battle. Feels like you are watching absolute professionals. This is wrestling as art, wrestling as an athletic competition.
Second, these two successfully blended the modern day action-packed strike-and-big-move heavy modern day pro wrestling style with the character work and pacing of a match designed to bring the crowd up and down at their whim. In shorter terms, they worked a big spot style slowly enough to work the crowd. That’s next level shit, man.
And the best part? The VERY BEST part? There were no god damn “This is Awesome” chants. That’s right. This crowd was so into this match that they didn’t have to tell these two how much they appreciated it – they emoted it, with cheers for the babyface (and yeah both boos AND cheers for Owens – fuck it, it’s 2016) and massive reactions to all the big spots and near falls.
Jericho interrupting this match is the biggest heel move he’s made in his entire career.
This WAS awesome. And for me it’s not just my Match of the Week, but my Match of the Year so far for 2016. Dudes like Styles and Owens are what make pro wrestling fun.
