Tag: 2019

Game of the Year 2019

2019 has been a bit of an odd year for games. There have been several high-profile releases scattered throughout the year like there always are, but I think that when we look back at gaming in 2019, it will be remembered as the year that set up all the super-hyped releases in 2020.

Despite that – as I mentioned in my favourite old games article – I played more games in 2019 than I ever had in a single year and that is just as true for new releases. While there might not have been much on a massive scale like Cyberpunk or Animal Crossing promises to be next year, there are undoubtedly some all-time favourites for me that came out this year.

Just to clarify, Early Access games will not be included on this list as I don’t think it’s fair to judge an unfinished game, I will instead consider them for “Game of the Year” in whatever year they leave early access. Also, I’d like to make a quick disclaimer that there are some games that I think look brilliant, but never found the time to play. Games like Baba is You and Superliminal are ones that I want to play as soon as possible, so will likely be showing up on my “old games” list at the end of next year.

So join me as I talk about the best of what the world of gaming had to offer in 2019.

SPOILER WARNING

As you probably expected, there will be major spoilers for most, if not all, of the games in this list. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

11 – Cricket 19

Release Date: 8th May
Developer: Big Ant Studios
Publisher: Big Ant Studios
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows
Metacritic Average: 73%

It’s ok Americans, you’re excused from this one.

So this one’s probably not one anyone expected to make this list (myself included), but I really wanted to feature it on this list because cricket is a sport that has almost never had a competently made game for it. I had a brief discussion about this with my dad (an avid cricket fan) and we came to the conclusion that the best cricket game up until this point was Stick Game’s Stick Cricket which was a free browser & mobile game made over a decade ago.

While I certainly wouldn’t consider myself a fan of cricket, there are many sports I can’t stand watching that I enjoy playing virtual versions of, so when I saw that the reviews for this game didn’t call it a total crock of shit I was eager to try it out. The first thing that struck me was the sheer level of detail that went into how you approach every match in the game. If you’re in batting then you have to not only consider the basic stuff like the type of shoot you’ll do and where it’ll go but also the little details like where you’re going to position your feet and how you’re going to step towards the ball and it’s a very similar situation on the bowling side.

This year’s world cup final aside, I’ve never enjoyed watching cricket, I don’t find most sports very entertaining, but cricket especially bores me to tears whenever I try and watch it, so imagine my surprise when I found myself reacting with all the vim and vigour you’d expect from a match-day pub crowd while playing a match in this game. Every ball became a nail-biting affair, whether I was batting or bowling and all of that is thanks to the fact that the detailing has allowed for both a realistic and more exciting adaptation of the national sport of these fair isles.

Unlike many of the previous attempts at cricket games, it’s obvious that Cricket 19 had a lot of love poured into it from people who knew a lot about cricket and while there are rough patches that need to be ironed out, this is the first time that I can say there’s a cricket game out there that does the sport justice.

Now we just need a competently made Rugby game and we’ll be set.

10 – Hot Lava

Release Date: 19th September
Developer: Klei Entertainment
Platforms: Windows, Mac, Linux

Hot Lava is a game that knew exactly what it’s audience wanted from it and leaned into it entirely.

The Floor Is Lava was always the ultimate game to play when you were a kid, it combined the rush of doing something you’re not supposed to with the endless desire to concuss yourself that plagues all children of primary school age, but it had a problem, you were never really allowed to have much fun with it. There was only so much jumping between the sofas you could do before your mum came downstairs with a look of horror as to what you were doing to her lovely living room, and playing it during the 5 second moments when the teachers weren’t looking your way on the playground just wasn’t the same. I always dreamt of being able to play the game across the whole size of the playground, I imagined the amazing courses I could set up for me and my friends before I would inevitably slip on the first jump, gently graze my elbow and cry my way home.

Hot Lava is essentially that fantasy…only without that wimpy prick ruining it for everyone.

Mechanically, it’s a fairly simple game. It’s got all the features you’d expect a parkour game to have, where it really shines is in its level designs. The school setting makes for a great feel for the game as you’re bouncing around all over the place, but each level is finely crafted to make the most of its mechanics at every turn. Even levels that focus in on a specific gimmick are able to keep things varied throughout, slowly turning up the difficulty so the game scales perfectly with the player’s skill level. Then, once you’re done with the official levels, there is an ever-increasing number of community-made maps out there which range from the impressively creative to the frustratingly difficult.

I had so much fun leaping from table to chair in Hot Lava, it was able to properly capture that feeling that you always wanted to get from playing The Floor is Lava as a kid.

9 – Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince

Release Date: 8th October
Developer: Frozenbyte
Publisher: Modus Games
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows
Metacritic Average: 81%

As I mentioned when I spoke about my most anticipated games for Q4 2019, I talked a bit how I love the Trine series and while Trine 3 was somewhat disappointing, I was still hopeful for the new entry into the series. So now I’ve played it, I can safely say that the series is still going strong.

Ditching the 3D side of the game was definitely the right way to go, as it just didn’t quite work, especially when the potential for level design in 2D was far from exhausted, as this game proved. The level design here was just as good as it always has been, every level feels like a logical progression of mechanics, following the same design philosophies that the 2D Mario games do, only this game plays around with some more complex mechanics that make each level last for about 30 minutes instead of 5, but all 30 of those minutes are engrossing stuff.

The pacing in each level has been notably improved, the team seem to have really nailed the balance that needs to be struck between puzzle-platforming and combat. The game’s combat system is extremely basic, which is why it’s used so sparingly through the levels, which is the perfect way to break up the flow of gameplay, so the whole thing feels more like an adventure and less of an endless series of puzzle rooms.

Speaking of the puzzles, they were as spot-on as always, the game didn’t go overboard with new mechanics this time which allowed for a big variety of puzzles that combine features I was already familiar with, with the new ones that got introduced in a very well-paced manner, so I never felt overwhelmed. The puzzles themselves were fantastically designed, I would never breeze through a puzzle, but I also wouldn’t be stuck on it for ages, most puzzles are designed in such a way to make you think about the mechanics you’ve been given in an abstract way. All of the elements in play react to each other differently, so after playing around with any given puzzle for a bit, that “eureka” moment will finally strike and you’ll be able to progress.

As always, the game looks absolutely gorgeous. Trine understands it’s visual style flawlessly and is able to make just about any environment look absolutely beautiful. Not only do the environments look good, but there’s such a wonderful variety of places that you explore as well, which is a big improvement on the older games of the series, where a lot of the environments could feel a tad samey.

Trine 4 is able to look at its predecessors and remove the flaws while keeping what made it great to begin with, which is such a difficult task, but one that the people behind this game were clearly up to.

8 – Slay The Spire

Release Date: January 23rd
Developer: MegaCrit
Publisher: Humble Bundle
Platforms: Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, Windows, Mac, Linux
Metacritic Average: 89%

The Roguelike/Roguelite genre is one that I have become truly and thoroughly burnt-out on over the past couple of years. There are so many around the place now that it’s a formula I’m tired of seeing, so it takes something pretty damn special from the genre to make me take notice, enter Slay The Spire.

Slay The Spire looked at the standard Roguelike formula and distilled it down to it’s most basic elements, the rooms you encounter are all very simple, they’re either a fight, a treasure, a quick event, or a shop then it decided that the best course of action would be to slap a deckbuilding, turn-based strategy on the top of it and see what comes out. The result? The most engaging Roguelike game I’ve played in years.

Every battle in Slay the Spire feels tense and to the wire, not because the game is necessarily harsh, but because you’re always reliant on the cards that come your way. It strikes the perfect balance between getting you to think a few steps ahead, while still forcing you to take chances, chances that don’t always pay off. I remember countless times where I’d come up with a plan, but it would rely on drawing the right card at the right time and when it didn’t work it was heartbreaking, but succeeding made me feel like a tactical genius.

The three different decks in the game are also brilliant for allowing you to adjust your play style, without massively overturning the formula of the game. Each character has it’s own unique mechanic that is open to massive amounts of experimentation,  which is something I had great fun with. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t consider myself to be very good at most games, but Slay the Spire had such a smooth learning curve that I felt like I was improving with every single victory.

Slay the Spire is a game that took a genre that I love, combine it with a genre I’m tired of and make something that feels new, exciting and tonnes of fun to play, this is the kind of innovation that I’ve been looking for in the roguelike genre for ages and I desperately hope we see more of it in the years to come.

7 – Katana ZERO

Release Date: April 18th
Developer: Askiisoft
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Windows, Mac
Metacritic Average: 83%

One of my favourite things a game can accomplish is to be one specific thing while disguising itself as something else. To explain what I mean by that, let’s take a look at Katana ZERO.

When you star Katana ZERO, the impression I got from it is that it was going to be a fast-paced hack and slash, where you slice your way through waves of enemies feeling like a katana-wielding action hero and while the second part of that statement is true, Katana ZERO is in fact not a hack and slash, but a very clever and high-octane puzzle game.

The goal of each room is to introduce every enemy in the general vicinity to your Katana, usually by separating them from most of their limbs in the process, but if you go charging madly into every room, you’ll most certainly fail almost instantly. Instead, every room in the game is cleverly designed to be “solvable”, with a distinct order and pattern in which you need to show everyone their own spleen before removing their head in what can only be described as a “flourish” of blood. Every time I entered a room, I would instantly scour the whole place looking for the one weak spot where I could start my slicing rampage, running through a mental checklist every time I failed and restarted a room, which gave incredibly satisfying feeling when my master plan was executed to perfection.

What makes Katana ZERO stands out though, is the fact that it has that element of chaos to it. I could make the most ingenious plans ever, but that doesn’t mean I was good enough to pull them off perfectly all the time and that was where the game was at its most fun; when plans went wrong. Once a plan went wrong, it would be easy to just take the death and try again, but I think doing that takes out a huge element of the sheer joy that this game brings you when you improvise. Admittedly, my improvised plans very rarely bore fruit, but that didn’t stop it being an absolute blast when I missed my second strike, which sent me sailing into a room of armoured guards, causing me to panic, throw a firebomb which killed the armoured guards but alerted everyone within a 5-mile radius to my presence, at which point I went on a killing spree, slicing every neck I could lay my eyes on before finally being gunned down.

In addition to that…well…clusterfuck, the game has simplistic but masterfully styled visuals with great uses of colours and effect to create a depressingly beautiful cyberpunk dystopia, a feeling only helped by the brilliant choices that were made with the music, which helped elevate the already fantastically designed boss-fights to epic clashes and nail-biting encounters.

Katana ZERO is a game that strikes that perfect balance between careful & tactical planning and total chaos that makes for an incredibly focused and fun game, all tied together with a clever story that keeps you interested and invested in the world all the way to the credits.

6 – Unheard

Release Date: 29th March
Developer: NEXT Studios
Publisher: NEXT Studios, Bilibili
Platforms: Playstation 4, Windows, Mac
Metacritic Average: 72%

Out of all the games on this list, this is the one that I’d imagine the fewest people have heard of, because this almost passed me by too, so let me explain.

At its most basic level, it’s a mystery-solving game, however, the method by which you solve these mysteries is what makes this an absolutely exceptional game in my view. Instead of searching the scene and interviewing witnesses after the fact, you get to see the 5-15 minutes in which the crime happened, except you don’t get to actually see the details. What you get is a floor-plan view of the building in which the crime took place which you can wander around as you play through the events of the scene and the only tool you have to work out what happened is sound.

You can see the outline of where everyone is at any moment, but you can’t actually see their form, you can only hear their voices. Using this information you must work out who everyone is, and answer specific questions about the crime. I can’t really be more specific without giving away partial solutions to some of the puzzles, but the way in which the game gets you to hear every conversation in a level to slowly fill in all the blanks is so very innovative and clever.

The game typically starts you off in each scenario listening to one conversation that will give a rough outline of what’s going on, but naturally, there are other conversations going on all over the scene at the exact same time and each conversation slowly fills in all of the blanks. In every conversation, you listen to you’ll learn something new about the scenario that slowly allows you to draw everything together and hit that euphoria of the “eureka” moment when you nail your target.

The game makes sure to give you just the right amount of information so that everything you need to know is there, but without explicitly giving you all of the solutions. I found myself taking notes on every level, creating a list of suspects and slowly ruling them out as I went along until the true culprit reveals themselves.

The mysteries themselves are very well thought out, for example, you’ll have to locate a stolen painting and work out who stole it, but there are also a number of fakes that other people have stolen, thinking they’re the real deal and it’s your job to use the conversations around the scene to piece together a chronology of who committed the first theft in order to determine who holds the real painting.

At £5 the game is absolutely worth it for the 5 puzzles (plus 1 as free DLC) that total to about 4 hours of game time. This is one of the most enthralling and unique puzzle games I’ve played ever and it perfectly captures the feeling on solving a mystery, so if you’re into that sort of thing, this game is a must-have.

5 – Beat Saber

Release Date: 21st May
Developer: Jaroslav Beck
Publisher: Jaroslav Beck
Platforms: Playstation 4, Oculus Quest, HTC Vive
Metacritic Average: 93%

I’ve loved VR for a long time and Beat Saber is probably my favourite VR game I’ve ever played. The concept is so simple as it’s just like any other rhythm game, except you’ve got to move your arms to hit the blocks instead of just pressing buttons in time with some music.

This game as a mastery of its sound design, making sure that every slice of a block has an extremely satisfying sound to it, helping to create this cool factor as you slice left, right and centre, even when you know that to anyone watching outside of the headset, you just look to be flailing around wildly. Even the sounds and music on the menus create an intense sense of atmosphere as you stand in what seems to be the most neon warehouse to ever exist.

A lot of VR games that I enjoy are games that I think would still work fairly well without the VR component. While games like Job Simulator and Budget Cuts would need some tweaking, I don’t think the VR element is specifically what makes them as good as they are. Beat Saber is very much the opposite, I’ve never particularly cared for rhythm games, nor am I all that good at them, but when you take that concept and put it into VR suddenly it becomes one of the most all-out fun experiences I’ve ever had.

I don’t know what part of how my brain works causes this, but I am so much better at Beat Saber than I am any other rhythm game I’ve ever played. I’m miles away from being among the best of course, but I can play on the higher speeds and difficulties and not struggle massively as I play and I think the sense of pure fun the game as injected into it is a big part of that.

On top of all of that, it works as an exercise game, but it doesn’t frame it as one. I’ve never got along with games like Ring Fit Adventure or Wii Fit because they make sure to let you know you’re doing exercise the whole way through, but in Beat Saber you just start flailing your arms and suddenly you’re drenched in sweat and have lost about 20 pounds without even realising it.

Beat Saber is a game that realised the massive potential that an existing genre of games could have in VR and made sure to tailor the experience perfectly so that it couldn’t possibly work without it and that is fundamentally what I believe makes a good VR game.

4 – Descenders

Release Date:  7th May
Developer: RageSquid
Publisher: No More Robots
Platforms: Xbox One, Windows, Mac, Linux
Metacritic Average: 78%

I’ve talked about Descenders a couple of times already this year and it’s safe to say that my love for it has not diminished in the slightest.

It was first available on Steam Early Access in February 2018 and I picked it up a couple of months later and since then it’s become my 2nd most played game on Steam at 539 hours, beaten out by only Skyrim and the weird thing is, I’m not even entirely sure why I play it so much. I certainly wouldn’t describe it as an addictive game, but what I think is it’s a very easy game to play.

By “easy to play” I don’t mean the difficulty of the game itself, I mean it’s a game that I’m never “not in the mood” to play. In the way that I play it (very casually), I don’t really have to put much thought into it, so it’s become what I play when I don’t want to play anything. I’m someone who finds it very hard to just sit and watch something for example, so what I will often do is put on something I want to watch on my 2nd screen and then play Descenders, almost in the background, while I watch it.

That’s not all Descenders is good for, because it hits that sweet spot that PopCap games were always brilliant for, where you can play it casually and do fairly well, but also you can spend time honing your skills and mastering the game in order to pull off some incredible feats of skill that I could never even dream of. The procedurally generated nature of the levels means I’m never just “going through the motions” when I play, I can’t just rely on muscle memory to get me through each level I have to learn to adapt to the terrain that’s currently in front of me so I don’t wrap my body around several trees at several hundred kilometres per hour.

It’s a game that has complete mastery over its movement, the bikes feel light and nippy while manoeuvring it in the air and on the ground feels forceful and satisfying. The way you glide down the hillsides, doing jumps and flips and spins the whole gives this incredible feeling of flow that gives you such a rush as your performance in the environments becomes more fluid and streamlined.

Descenders is a game that came together in a way I honestly never would’ve expected in order to make it a game that I’m going to be playing on-and-off for a very long time.

3 – Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Release Date: 18th June
Developer: ArtPlay
Publisher: 505 Games
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Windows
Metacritic Average: 84%

I’d never got around to playing a Castlevania game before, but they always seemed right up my street, so when I heard there was a game coming out made by the original creator of Castlevania in the style of Castlevania (but not officially called Castlevania because Konami doesn’t like using the historic franchises they own) I knew I had to check it out and I was absolutely blown away by what I found.

Bloodstained constantly keeps you on a journey of discovery. The items, enemies and powers it’s possible to acquire/encounter mean you’re always going to be finding something new and the map itself is packed with an almost overwhelming amount of variety. Every area feels extremely different to the ones that surround it and they’re all just the right size so that once you get comfortable in an area, you’re thrown right into a new one.

The combat system is wonderfully designed, it took a little getting used to, but once I got the pacing of when I should be striking and dodging I had so much fun with it. Every room presented a great challenge and I had a lot of fun trying to work out how best to tackle each combination of enemies that got thrown my way. It nails that balance of enemy design, where every enemy is easy on its own, but when a bunch of different ones are thrown together, it creates a great challenge.

That was also a game that reminded me how amazing boss fights can be, because not since NieR Automata have I had so much fun fighting bosses in a game. They follow that ethos that so many, typically old games do in that every boss has clear and recognisable patterns that are easy to dodge/counter and the skill comes from being able to react to them in time in order to deal out the damage. It’s a game that makes sure that every single failure and death I experienced was because I wasn’t skilful enough in order to pull it off, not because I got unlucky.

Bloodstained makes sure that every room and every enemy teaches you something, not necessarily something about the mechanics, but about what is the most optimal way to fight. This sense of pushing forward and constantly getting to experience new stuff is what pushed me towards achieving 100% completion without even realising I was doing it until suddenly I was 95% there and had to get that last little bit.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a game that is constantly pushing you deeper into it using its world & enemy design along with its combat system to enthral you in its world and give you the best Metroidvania experience I’ve had in many years.

2 – Pokemon Sword & Shield

Release Date: 15th November
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Metacritic Average: 80%

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time then you were probably expecting to see this on the list somewhere and here you go, number two, it’s becoming a bit of a tradition for Pokemon games actually.

I was very excited for these games more or less all year, I can’t deny that the lack of the national dex was a tad disappointing, but once I had the game in my hands and was playing it, that fact becomes little more than a tiny annoyance that I barely ever thought about.

Firstly, when it comes to the towns and routes in the game, I thought they were absolutely beautiful and captured a lot of different feelings from phases in British culture. There’s Motostoke, the industrial, victorian town; Wyndon the modern-day metropolis that we all know and (kind of) love today and then there were towns like Ballonlea that felt like something out of an old fairy tale. The visuals in this game were bright, colourful and an absolute joy to behold.

As for the Pokemon, while I certainly wouldn’t rank it among the best new roster we’ve received for a generation, It’s most certainly nowhere near the worst. I’ve already talked about the Pokemon I loved the most, but there were a whole host of other new Pokemon added in this game that I really love the look and feel of.

While the story itself was nothing special by Pokemon standards, it was paced quite nicely and I thought the climax was quite a cool sequence, not Ultra Necrozma levels of cool, but cool nonetheless; and I enjoyed my interactions with any character not named Hop or Leon. I also thought the difficulty was rather nicely done, I didn’t exactly struggle at any point, but there were several points in the big battles that I felt were a bit touch-and-go and I was forced to think about what I was doing a bit harder than I usually have to in Pokemon games.

I’m undoubtedly biased towards Pokemon as a franchise, but that doesn’t change the fact that I had loads of fun with this addition to the series. It was a Pokemon game that ticked all the boxes in terms what I need to have fun from a Pokemon game and in terms of visual spectacle, I think it’s the best we’ve seen so far. If the lack of a national dex was the only thing keeping you away then implore you to reconsider because this is still just as brilliant of an experience as Pokemon always has been.

1 – Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Release Date: 26th July
Developer: Intelligent System, Koei Tecmo
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Nintendo Switch
Metacritic Average: 89%

I’d never played a Fire Emblem game before Three Houses and I didn’t even have any intensions to buy it until I did so on a whim in early September and I am so glad I didn’t miss out on this absolutely joyous gaming experience.

The Turn-Based Strategy combat in this game is extremely refined and taps into that part of my brain that games like XCOM and Civilization created that loves deep strategic thinking in games. The usage of middle-aged weaponry (and magic) gives the battles a very different type of strategy to what I’m used to, I usually tend to play quite defensively in turn-based strategies but the need to get up close and personal with your opponents means you’re not afforded that luxury and it leads to some very tense situations that require a deep level of strategic thought to resolve.

Weaponry and classes each unit has access to gives a nice level of variety too, with each melee weapon allowing for slightly different possibilities in combat, alongside the ranged and magic weapons/abilities meaning each unit has to be treated very differently in battle in order to get the optimum performance out of them.

That’s not what made this game so special to me though. That’s not the reason that, as of the time of writing, I’m currently about to reach the conclusion of my 4th playthrough of this 45-hour game. What makes Fire Emblem: Three Houses such a wonderful game to play are its characters.

You play as a professor at an academy where the various future lords, nobles & knights of the land learn their craft, this naturally means you have students and you get to know these students so incredibly well throughout the course of the game. Every single part of every character is dripping in personality and while it’s true that many of the characters are a bit one-note, when there’s so many of them and they’re all constantly interacting and bouncing off of each other, then you don’t even notice.

Over the course of the game, I grew to understand all of the characters and how they operate in the same way that any teacher does when they have the same class for an extended period of time, you get to see them grow and develop as people and I genuinely care about all of them and their progress. This feeds back into the gameplay and combat because it’s not just faceless armies that you’re sending into danger, it’s your students that you’ve bonded with and have a whole future ahead of them and when one of them dies, that failure – YOUR failure – weighs on you.

The game’s branching narrative is brilliantly set up, forcing you to choose your house less than an hour into the game, with only a base-level understanding of the students you’ll be taking under your wing. It was what pushed me to dive right into my 2nd, 3rd & 4th playthroughs because I had to know what happened to all of these characters that I’ve grown to love.

The feature characters for each line in the narrative are very well-developed as well and there are some genuinely brilliantly written scenes in every path. This was a game that understood that the emotional weight of its story came not from the events happening, but how those events affect the characters. Every scene is written in such a way to draw you into the lives of its characters and that level of investment bleeds over into every other part of the game, whether you’re teaching them on their skills or sending them into battle.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that perfect mix that captures exactly what made me fall in love with Octopath Traveler last year. Its characters are flowing with personality that never fails to make me smile and the gameplay has a deep level of strategy that I just can’t keep away from and it’s absolutely the best gaming experience I’ve had in 2019.

So that’s it! Those were my favourite games in 2019! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please, let me know what games you loved this year either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to join me back here on Saturday, where I’ll be talking about my favourite comedy shows!

WWE Match of the Year 2019

As we close out another year, it’s always fun to look back at what some of the best stuff we got to see from the previous year was. The world of wrestling had no shortage of great stuff this year, both inside and outside the ring, so I can’t wait to run down these matches that I loved the most.

A quick disclaimer, while I do talk a bit about matches outside of WWE I liked, I didn’t watch enough non-WWE wrestling this year to make a full list, although I intend to broaden my horizons as much as possible next year, so hopefully, that will change in time for next years list.

11 – Tag Team Gauntlet Match – Smackdown 3/26

Perhaps the biggest storyline to come out of this year is Kofi Kingston’s ascension to the WWE Championship for the first time in his career and, trust me, this isn’t going to be the last time we talk about it on this list.

This was a match that came towards the end of his storyline, but is one of the most important and one of the best, which is weird when you consider that Kofi wasn’t even in it. Vince had declared that just two weeks out from Wrestlemania, Kofi had been given more than enough chances to earn himself a title opportunity, so the onus was now on his partners in The New Day, Big E & Xavier Woods to do it for him. They had to face off against Gallows & Anderson, Nakamura & Rusev, The Bar, The Usos and Bryan & Rowan in a gauntlet match and if they won, Kofi would go to Wrestlemania.

The action in the ring was great stuff, but it’s the story and the way it was told that makes this great. Big E & Woods gave the impression that they were fighting with all their hearts and souls in order to give their best friend the opportunity he deserves, amplified by Kofi watching from the back, with a slowly growing number of Smackdown wrestlers joining him to cheer E & Woods on to victory.

The pacing was perfectly done, with New Day getting solid victories early on in the match until disaster struck when The Bar put Big E through a table following their elimination. This led to what may very well be my favourite storyline moment from the whole year as The Usos came out, as Big E laid there and Xavier Woods stood ready to fight alone, before The Usos told them that Kofi had already earned their respect and refused to fight, forfeiting their spot in the match.

The whole final sequence of that match was nailbiting, after being disappointed so many times over the past couple of months it still felt like Kofi getting his shot was impossible, but when it finally happened it was wonderful. The celebration after the fact with The New Day and most of the locker room was one of the most feel-good moments of the year, but it wouldn’t be the biggest for Kofi, that was still to come.

10 – Women’s Royal Rumble Match – Royal Rumble

As a whole, this wasn’t one of the best Rumble matches and it certainly won’t go down as one of the greats, but I still get choked up at Lynch’s insertion into the match and eventual victory, so it’s earned a spot on this list.

The space between Survivor Series and Wrestlemania 35 this year was a very tense time for any Becky Lynch fans. Everyone knew that Lynch was such a huge star by this point that her spotlight at Wrestlemania should’ve been undeniable, but this is WWE and they’ve disappointed us plenty of times before, however, this was the night where it became clear that we were going to be getting what we wanted and it felt amazing.

After putting on a fantastic match against Asuka earlier in the night, Lynch wasn’t originally given a spot in the Rumble match, however, an injury sustained by Lana on the pre-show gave her an opening. I remember being on the absolute edge of my seat as she stood there, desperately pleading her case to Finlay and the moment where she gets the green light and her music hits is the kind of moment in wrestling that’s going to stay with me for a very long time.

The final 10 minutes of that match told a fantastic story that kept the emotional moments coming. There were plenty of tense “almost” eliminations as the match entered its final moments, including a potential injury from Becky that threatened to hand Charlotte the victory, which led to the fantastic line as Becky pushed the doctors away and got back in the ring and screamed at Charlotte, “You’ve taken enough from me, you’re not taking this”.

Everything Becky did in this match was the perfect encapsulation of why we all fell in love with her as a performer mid-way through 2018 and why she’s still THE biggest star in all of the wrestling industry to this day.

9 – Velveteen Dream(c) vs Roderick Strong vs Pete Dunne – NXT Takeover: Toronto
(North American Championship)

Unsurprisingly, this won’t be the last NXT match on this list.

NXT Takeover events are shows that usually only feature one on one (or two on two, in the case of tag teams) matches and it’s understandable why. The kinds of stories NXT tells only tend to work with two people and these singles matches tend to be the overall highest in quality. So a triple threat in this era of NXT in quite a rarity. However, after seeing this match I’d love to see a lot more in future.

The three men in the match are easily among the best pure wrestlers in WWE today and both Dream & Strong have very clear and powerful characters to them as well, so a clash like this was always going to be amazing. This match had everything you’d expect from it, a lot of quick action early on with all three men jockeying for position before things began to focus on technical prowess and great look dives.

The match as a whole was paced to perfection, there was very seldom a moment where nothing was happening as all three men seemed to appear in just the right place at just the right time. There wasn’t a great deal of the classic triple threat trope where one man peters out while the other two fight, instead, all three men were more or less constantly involved in the action that made for a fast-paced match that built and built all the way to the finish.

Speaking of the finish, it was rather shocking and great fun. The camera work was spot on to make me believe that Strong was about to win before Dream quite literally dropped out of the sky to break it up and steal the victory. While this match didn’t tell any kind of revolutionary story, it’s been an absolute blast to watch every time I’ve gone back to it.

8 – Kofi Kingston vs Daniel Bryan vs  Jeff Hardy vs
Samoa Joe vs AJ Styles vs Randy Orton – Smackdown 12th February
(Gauntlet Match)

We’ve already spoken a bit about Kofi’s story and now it’s time to go back to when it started.

This was a gauntlet match that took place just 5 days before the Elimination Chamber match between all 6 participants and it’s incredible to think that Kofi wasn’t even supposed to be a part of it. Mustafa Ali was originally set to take the final spot in the match but suffered an unfortunate injury the week prior to this match taking place, so Kofi was brought in as a reliable performer who could get the job done. Little did WWE know what would happen next.

What happened next was Kofi went out to the ring and put on the performance of a lifetime. The match opened with a 25-minute back-and-forth between Kingston and Daniel Bryan, during which Bryan pulled out every little bit of skill and knowledge he had in his body to make Kofi look like an absolute superhero, climaxing when Kofi pinned Daniel Bryan – The WWE Champion – clean. Kofi wasn’t done.

Kofi continued his roll, putting on three more great matches against Jeff Hardy, Samoa Joe and AJ Styles, falling at the final hurdle to Styles after a star-making showing. People had always thought Kofi was deserving of recognition for his 11 years of hard work for WWE, but it was this match that made the fanbase put it’s foot down and DEMAND it. Without this match, Kofi never would’ve had the amazing year that he did and it was an absolutely fantastic bout bell-to-bell to boot.

7 – Shayna Baszler(c) vs Rhea Ripley – NXT 18th December
(NXT Women’s Championship)

A late addition to this list, but a worthy one nonetheless, it’s time to talk about Rhea Ripley.

When Rhea Ripley showed up on US NXT in the summer, it was quite exciting, I wasn’t massively familiar with her stuff in NXT UK but I’d liked what little I’d seen, then not a lot happened with her for a few months. It seemed like she was going to be Shayna’s next big challenger but plans changed and Mia Yim got that spot instead. However, eventually, November came around and more or less overnight turned Rhea into an absolute star.

For one thing, she kicked ass in the build to WarGames & Survivor Series, being put over as the strongest women’s wrestler in NXT time and time again, even beating both Charlotte & Sasha on Smackdown one Friday. Then WarGames came about and she more or less carried the match for her team and came out victorious, the roll continued into Sunday where she put on an excellent showing and won the elimination tag match for her team, the crowd were so into everything she did it was wonderful.

Then this match came about and after spending most of the year feeling like Shayna could never lose that title, I could not think of a better successor to that throne. The Full Sail crowd were white-hot for this match and both competitors made sure to play up to it as much as possible. Shayna is one of the best heels in all of wrestling at the best of times, but when she’s got a crowd like this to play to her performance is transcendent.

The action was a lot of fun too, with both women going back and forth at such a nice pace and the overall flow of the match came together so nicely to form one of smoothest matches I’ve seen in quite a while. Like I’ve said though, what really made this match something worthy of this list was the atmosphere around it, this feeling that a champion who has seemed invincible for so long could finally have met her match created such a tense and exciting feeling to every moment of this match.

It all paid off too, with Ripley getting the win and taking her place at the top of NXT’s women’s division. The celebration after the match with all of the fans in the ring was a nice touch too and it elevated Ripley from a star to a mega-star as far as I’m concerned and I can’t wait to see where she goes from here.

6 – Adam Cole(c) vs Johnny Gargano – NXT Takeover: Toronto
(3 Stages of Hell)

Look, I know it wasn’t branded as 3 stages of hell, but that’s literally what the match was, so I’m sticking with it.

Gargano and Cole had arguably one of the best feuds of the year when it comes to match quality, so I don’t think it’ll surprise anyone when I say that there’s one more match between these two later on the list. This match was designed to be the climax of the feud, so it had a lot to live up to, especially when a large portion of the audience was getting a little bit tired of the feud by this point.

The key to what made this match so great was it’s pacing. In a heavily weapons-based match like this, it would’ve been so easy to go too big too soon and the whole thing would’ve fallen apart, but each stage of the match was filled with callbacks to earlier points in their feud and some great character work. You could feel the energy in the ring as both wrestlers knew they were more or less evenly matched and watching these two brilliant wrestlers trying to outthink each other was such a joy to watch.

The first two stages kept me on the jook just long enough so that by the time the ridiculous cage filled with weapons lowered, I was all in and hyped to see how things ended. From there onwards, things went crazy in just the right way, as each new weapon upped the intensity just enough to that it didn’t kill the pace, meaning I didn’t even notice the slightly slower action and spot set-ups, which are normally the main things that totally kill any weapons match for me.

It was a match that managed to capture all the elements of the Gargano/Cole feud that came before it while still adding to the story in its own right, making for an extremely satisfying conclusion to one of the best feuds of the year.

5 – Daniel Bryan(c) vs Kofi Kingston – Wrestlemania 35
(WWE Championship)

I’ve talked about the beginning, I’ve talked about the middle, now let’s talk about the end.

Personally, this was the match I was the most excited for going into Wrestlemania 35, with the fantastic build and quality of the wrestlers involved – not to mention the fact that I genuinely had no idea who was going to win – I just knew this one was going to be a killer match.

I’ve mentioned it once or twice already, but Daniel Bryan worked his ass off in this match to make Kofi look like the most worthy champion WWE’s ever seen. The two men gelled so well in the ring and it made for an extremely tense match, where Bryan was pulling out everything he could to keep Kofi grounded but Kofi kept pushing back and breaking free.

I was hooked on absolutely every near-fall, desperate to see Kofi win the title, despite the fact that I’m a die-hard Daniel Bryan fan. This was one of those matches where everything came together exactly how I’d hoped it would as all of the story elements came to a head in a technical masterpiece of a match that gave the saga of Kofi’s rise to the top the conclusion it absolutely needed.

I was on the edge of my seat all the way up until the final moment and the celebration after the match was over was perhaps the greatest feel-good moment of the entire year. No matter what happens to Kofi in the remaining years of his career, we’ll always have this moment to remind us that he’s absolutely one of the best of this era and he got his due in the end.

4 – Seth Rollins(c) vs AJ Styles – Money in the Bank
(Universal Championship)

With all of the problems Rollins has had this year, it’s easy to forget that he’s an incredible wrestler, so this match served as a wonderful reminder of that match.

As I talked about during my predictions for Money in the Bank, Seth Rollins vs AJ Styles was the one match that I’d desperately wanted ever since AJ first showed up in WWE and the two men had always managed to just miss each other whenever they came close to facing off. It’s safe to say I was very excited for this match and I was very happy with what I got.

There’s no special story or atmosphere to this match, the story going into it was basically non-existent, this match was just two of the best wrestlers doing some of the best wrestling. Both men were face at the time which meant they held nothing back in terms of speed & offence and that made for a match that was so much fun to watch from start to finish. Neither man stayed on offence for too long and the whole match just kept on rolling through at the kind of pace that I adore from my wrestling.

This was Rollins’ first title defence after winning it at Wrestlemania and it set the idea that this is exactly what his title reign was going to be full of. Unfortunately, he then faced Baron Corbin for 3 months straight, but let’s not focus on that. Let’s instead focus on the fact that one of my personal dream matches happened this year and it was everything I’d hoped it would be and more.

3 – Johnny Gargano(c) vs Adam Cole – NXT Takeover: XXV
(NXT Championship)

That’s right, my favourite match from this trilogy is the only normal singles match of the bunch, I’m sure that’s a real surprise.

While I do think the first encounter between these two at Takeover New York was brilliant, it had some pretty big pacing issues that ultimately meant it dropped off of the end of this list; this match, however, had no such issue.

Much like the previous match, the main reason I like it is very simple it’s just fast-paced pure wrestling from bell-to-bell. What elevated this above Rollins vs Styles though is that there was a substantial amount of story going into this match and with it being the mid-point of the feud, it was able to start taking their story in a new direction.

Cole knew that he and Gargano were equally matched, however, he also knew that getting the Undisputed Era involved only ruined things for him last time around. So instead he had to find a different way to out-think Gargano. This came in the form of Adam Cole seemingly doing what Gargano was expecting him to do and very obviously calling out the Undisputed Era to come and help him, only for it to turn out to be a bait and he stole the title from Gargano.

This was such a clever wrinkle to add to the story and one that saved Gargano for looking like a chump in losing to a guy he’d already beaten once before. Not only was it an excellent match but it allowed Adam Cole to win the NXT title in the most Adam Cole way possible and built the story and spectacle to its peak for their final encounter.

2 – WALTER(c) vs Tyler Bate – NXT UK Takeover: Cardiff
(United Kingdom Championship)

Forty-Two goddamned minutes of top-level wrestling. Amazing.

WWE has told the “David vs Goliath” story many, MANY times before, but I honestly don’t think it’s ever been done quite as well as it was in this match. After Tyler Bate lost the UK titles in 2017, I feel like the fanbase at large generally forgot about just how amazing of a wrestler he was. Thanks to the UK division’s relative lack of exposure for the better part of a year and a half, Tyler Bate seemed to be one of those performers who faded into the background slightly in favour of guys like Pete Dunne and Trent Seven.

Then he came out and had this match and reminded us all that he’s no-one to sleep on. Bate & WALTER have two very different styles but they were able to mesh them so perfectly here to create an epic-length match that never felt dull or like it dragged on at any point. The focal point being in Tyler Bate’s surprising level of strength in the face of a guy as huge as WALTER was such a great tone to set as it meant that myself and the crowd in attendance were on their feet for just about every spot where Bate looked to have hope of toppling WALTER.

WALTER got a chance to show his more brutal side here too, it’s no secret that his chops can cave a man’s ribcage in, but WOW those were some chops. The whole match flowed so perfectly for the whole length, which is something that absolutely blows my mind because it’s something we very rarely see in the modern era of wrestling.

As we’re about to discuss at even greater length, UK wrestling is better than it’s ever been this year and I would’ve loved to see this match in person, however, I was somewhere else that night…

Non-WWE Match of the Year:
Kazuchika Okada(c) vs Minoru Suzuki – NJPW Royal Quest
(IWGP Heavyweight Championship)

I’ve only been to a handful of wrestling shows in my life, but this is easily the best match I’ve ever seen live.

These two men had all the great chemistry you’d expect them to have and those feelings were amplified by the fact that I was watching from about 10 feet away from the ring in the 4th row. I’ve believed for a long time that Okada is the best in-ring storyteller in the business and I think that was absolutely on full display during this match because the two men in this match clearly identified who the crowd was siding with and played into it perfectly.

I’ve never felt more on the edge of my seat than when Suzuki kept almost getting the Piledriver off, I was able to entirely suspend my disbelief for 20 minutes and think that maybe I really was going to see Suzuki win the title right before my eyes. I’m well aware that from a pure wrestling standpoint there were plenty of better matches out there this year (Kenny Omega vs Hiroshi Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom 13 and Cody vs Dustin at All Out, come to mind) but nothing from this year is going to beat that amazing feeling of seeing that match happen right before my eyes.

1 – Pete Dunne(c) vs WALTER – NXT Takeover: New York
(United Kingdom Championship)

I’m telling you guys, UK wrestling was REALLY good this year.

From a technical standpoint, I’d put this match on par with WALTER vs Tyler Bate, however, the reason I’m ranking this match higher is because it opened my eyes to a style of wrestling that I previously didn’t care very much for. I’ve never been a fan of the “mat-based” style of wrestling, I’ve always thought it was quite slow, with not much happening of great interest to me. This match proved that I was an idiot for thinking that because slower, mat-based offence can be just as good as anything else that I love from wrestling

I’ve gotten so used to be being enthralled by the flashy, fast-paced style of wrestling that I didn’t realise how a slow, hard-hitting affair could be as good but the way this match played out not only gave me an enjoyable ride but gave me an understanding of what makes it so great. It built slowly, the whole way through, the whole match felt like it was this gruelling back-and-forth fight where neither man was going to let up for a second as they kept hitting each other as hard as humanly possible.

Dunne and WALTER took all of the classic, traditional tropes of these kinds of matches: Constant lock-ups, the test of strength, a big guy beatdown before the small guy comeback; and they executed all of them to perfection. They had me at home and the audience in attendance hanging on every single move, to the point where I heard several gasps from the live crowd when Dunne would suddenly have a burst of offence against the bigger WALTER.

All of this made it so that when the big spot finally came at the end, it felt like a huge deal and it just highlights the fact that throughout the whole match, ever move mattered and every move had an impact.

Not only was this match a technical masterpiece from bell to bell, but it opened my eyes to a style of wrestling that I’d never been able to appreciate before, which is why I think it’s the best of what WWE had to offer in 2019.

So there you have it! Those were my favourite WWE matches (and one from outside WWE) that took place in 2019. Thank you very much for taking the time to read this article, please let me know what some of your favourite matches from this past year were in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure you come back on Tuesday where I’ll be ending the year with my Game of the Year list for 2019!

The Best of WWE in the 2010s

After getting sad about everything bad in WWE over the last decade, let’s pick oursleves up and talk about the best.

As we’ve covered, there’s been plenty to be upset about when it comes to WWE this past decade and given the IWC’s tendency to focus in on the negatives, it can be easy to trick yourself into thinking the 2010s were all bad for WWE, however, given that you’ve read the title of this article, I doubt it will surprise you when I say that this was not the case.

No matter how bad you think WWE has been over the past ten years (and for the record, I don’t think it’s been that bad) a broken clock is still right twice a day and some truly great things have come from Mr McMahon’s playhouse in the 2010s and here are what I think are some of the best.

9 – The New Day: Afterthoughts to World Champions

Imagine telling someone in 2014 that Big E Langston, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods would turn a Gospel Church gimmick into one of the greatest factions in company history.

By all accounts, The New Day should never have worked, like so many other factions that were thrown together in WWE for seemingly no reason, they debuted on TV with all the momentum of a wet fart and precisely no-one cared. It seemed like a way for WWE to give three men they had nothing for, something to do (because let’s be honest that’s what it was).  Little did anyone know, they’d secretly struck gold.

The New Day would come out at smiling babyfaces, spouting the virtues of “The Power of Positivity”, which naturally is something all wrestling fans have an aversion to, so it was quickly booed out of every arena. Instead of annoyingly pushing on as babyfaces despite the fact no-one cared, the decision was made to shift the characters. All of a sudden, The New Day would find every way possible to steal any and every win they could, culminating in them winning the Tag Tag Championships from Cesaro & Tyson Kidd in late spring 2014.

From there on, things completely took off for the New Day, their positivity was now an ironic sentiment that they used to hide the fact that they cheated all the time, then claiming they won because they believed in themselves and other nonsense. As the months went on it turned out that these three men had some of the best on-screen and creative chemistry of any wrestlers in decades and every night they’d come out and cut promos that were genuinely funny on a level that we hadn’t seen in WWE since The Rock.

They then experienced the best kind of face turn any wrestler or faction can receive, a face turn simply because the fans just couldn’t stop cheering them. Their accomplishments speak for themselves: Longest reigning Tag Team champions in WWE history, 5 Tag Title reigns over the past 4 years and plenty of great matches and memorable moments.

This brings us to Kofi Kingston, who had one of the most unexpected and brilliant rises in years. The way the fans got behind Kofi and forced WWE’s hand to no only put the WWE Championship on him, but give him a decent sized run with it is something that we very rarely see in wrestling today and it was what happened with The New Day this decade that made it possible and I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if at least one of the other memebers of the group reached the same point some time in the coming years.

What’s most impressive about The New Day though, is it took 3 guys who were probably never going to get very far in WWE as singles competitors and turned them into megastars that will be remembered forever in WWE. Xavier Woods and Big E were not in good positions in the WWE heircachy before The New Day came along, but now they’re synonymous with the current product and I can confidently claim that if there was no New Day, Kofi Kingston would never have got the WWE Championship run he’d always deserved.

An act that never got stale, and plucked three men from footnotes in WWE history to staples of the company, The New Day will certainly go down as one of the greatest factions in wrestling history.

8 – The Summer of Punk

And the year or so that followed it, but that’s not as catchy of a header.

You can think whatever you like of CM Punk’s 2014 exit from WWE, that’s not what we’re here to discuss, we’re here to talk about his greatest moments. Before CM Punk came along, it seemed like the smaller, more indie-rific stars would never truly get a chance to shine in WWE, no matter how much we cheered for them and booed the alternatives, WWE would always be a place for the John Cenas and Triple Hs of the world. Enter CM Punk.

Punk captured fans hearts with his in your face, to the point style of promos, weather as a heel or a babyface, Punk could work any crowd to feel any emotion whenever he wanted, combine this with exceptional in-ring talent and you’ve got one hell of a powder keg waiting to blow.

If Punk had received any old push from WWE management, there’s a chance his star would’ve faded far too quickly and whatever heel character he had at the time wouldn’t have maintained at the top of the card for as long as it did. Then he announced his intentions for Money in the Bank 2011. One fateful night on WWE Raw, CM Punk announced that on July 17th 2011, the night of that year’s Money in the Bank Pay-Per-View, his WWE contract expired, and he intended to leave with the WWE Championship.

This story was already blending kayfabe and reality in a way we hadn’t seen in a long time, as Punk’s contract was legitimately coming to an end on that date and he legitimately hadn’t decided yet whether or not he was going to re-sign. This was all well and good, but then something historic happened, to end an episode of Raw the next week, Punk sat at the top of the ramp and aired all of his frustrations with WWE in a part-work, part-shoot promo. This move turned many heads in the fandom and many fans who had stopped watching WWE due to its staleness were pulled back into watching thanks to this promo.

Low and behold, come Money in the bank 2011, Punk defeated Cena after a fantastic match, blew a kiss to Vinnie Mac and left WWE with the Championship…for 8 days. It’s an unfortunate truth that the aftermath of this moment was booked anywhere near as well as it should’ve, but the fact remains that it made an enternal star out of CM Punk, so much so that after being removed from our screens for over 5 years, people are still clamoring for his return.

CM Punk provided us with some of the most entertaining WWE TV we’d seen in years at that point and his success opened the door for so many others (who we’re going to talk about in a bit) to reach even greater success than Punk did. No matter what your opinion of him today is, you can’t deny that what he did in 2011 was absolutely fantastic.

7 – Depth of Talent

WWE has more wrestlers under there employ currently than ever before, a number that has skyrocketed specifically in this decade and as much as it creates problems like wasted talent that I highlighted in my “worst” article, it can also be of great benefit to the company.

While things like character work and promo ability can be debated, when it comes to atheltic ability, the WWE roster has never been as talented as it is right now. If WWE got their shit together, using the talent they’ve built upon their roster over the past ten years, they could put on the single best wrestling show in history; and I genuinely believe that. I could sit here and list countless names like I did in the previous list and I’ll be talking about specific examples further on in the list, but I genuinely believe that this is the most talented roster WWE has ever had.

There’s such a huge variety of wrestlers that they have under their belt that there really is something for everyone. You want muscle-bound superheroes who fight for what’s right? Have Roman Reigns. You want guys who can do so many flips you can’t help but be impressed? Ricochet’s got you covered. You want monsters who will destroy anyone in their path? Braun Strowman will hit the spot. You want the best technical wrestlers the world has ever seen? AJ Styles, Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan, take your pick.

Almost every WWE PPV is a plethora of variety in wrestling, no matter what you like, there’s something for you. If you want to poke holes in the current WWE product, there are plenty of ways to do so, but one thing that you absolutely cannot fault is the wrestlers themselves.

6 – AJ Styles: Mr WWE

Speaking of that talent, let’s look over one of this decade’s biggest, and most unexpected success stories.

For so many years AJ Styles was the exact opposite of a WWE guy. He spent the largest chunk of his career making waves for TNA as the most talented person there, before eventually leaving the company and making his way over to New Japan Pro Wrestling, where he would instantly become a star. Styles led the Bullet Club and had 2 reigns with the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. So when it was announced in Janurary of 2016 that AJ Styles had signed a contract with WWE, meer hours after he had wrestled at NJPW’s Wrestle Kingdom 10 it absolutely blew everyone away.

I didn’t have much of an idea who Styles was at the time, but I quickly learnt how big of a deal this was and it’s safe to say that I was losing my shit just as hard as anyone else when he showed up in the 2016 Royal Rumble match. No-one was quite sure what kind of career Styles would have in WWE and if the man himself is to be believed, Vince only intended for him to be a mid-carder from the outset.

Ever one to push boundaries though, Styles forced those in charge to take notice of how unstoppably talented he was. A heel turn ended up being the best thing for him as it gave him all the momentum in the world going into one hell of a match with John Cena at Summerslam 2016, where he beat Cena clean as a whistle. Then it happened, against all of the odds, AJ Styles, Mr TNA, won the WWE Championship at Backlash 2016, in a move I don’t think many people expected, at least not so soon after his arrival.

Styles continued this run of success over the next few years winning the United States Championship before winning the WWE Championship a second time, holding it for over a year and being plasted on the front of posters, production trucks and video games in the process. AJ Styles is the story of exactly what can happen when WWE want to stick it to their compeitition in the best way possible. Sure, you could take Mr TNA and make him a joke on your product, or you could take Mr TNA and turn him into Mr WWE and that’s exactly what Styles is now, in the best way possible.

5 – John Cena: Jobber to the Future Stars

Another thing that I don’t think anyone could’ve seen coming at the start of this decade, is the fact that John Cena is now virtually non-existent in WWE. Having gone full Hollywood (and doing pretty well for himself in the process), over the past few years Cena has barely had a presence in WWE, not even having an official match at Wrestlemania 35.

The benefit of this transition, however, is that when Cena does show up to have a match, it’s a big deal and whoever he wrestles is bound to get a great rub, win or lose. Even more so than that, Cena’s in-ring style has changed so subtly over this decade, that it took us all a moment in 2015/2016 to realise that he’s putting on incredible matches all of a sudden. Kevin Owens, AJ Styles, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan . All of these matche he’s had with those guys over the past number of years have been absolute classics, especially his matches with Styles.

What’s even more amazing (and unbelievable to our 2010 viewer) is that he put all of those guys over. Admittedly he got his wins back from Owens in a major way, but that first match when Owens shockingly pinned Cena was all that was needed to launch him to the prominent status he holds today. This happened with all of the younger talent he’s wrestled since about 2015, Cena would put them over in a high profile match and it would raise that guy’s stock more than any world title win ever could and even when he did get his wins back, it didn’t matter in the long run because a star was already made.

If Cena’s going to be sticking to this one or two matches a year thing, I hope that when he does show up, this is the Cena we continue to see. Everytime he shows up it feels like a big moment and there are so many guys in WWE that could really use his magic touch.

4 – Daniel Bryan: The Best Wrestler in the World

I’ve made this claim many many times on this blog and it’s something I genuinely believe. You don’t even need to go as far back as the American Dragon, or his Ring of Honor days to see it (although they certainly help) you just need to go back to the summer of 2010 and watch from there.

Many people (myself included) claim that the WWE way of doing things can hamper performers in many ways, from a characte perspective and even in the ring there are so many times watching WWE’s product that I feel like things could be better for such-and-such person if they weren’t so constricted, just look at Jon Moxley for living proof of that. Daniel Bryan didn’t suffer from this though, well he did a bit at first, but Daniel Bryan did something which no-one else has really been able to do, at least not to his level, which is take the limitations of the WWE system and use them to his advantage.

“Limitation breeds creativity” is a phrase I’ve heard a number of times when it comes to creating art and that’s exactly what Daniel Bryan did with the limitations he was given. He moved and changed his character to fit the WWE way of doing things without compromising who he was as a wrestler, he was able to feel like a perfect fit for the WWE product, while still connected with the fans on an astronomical level, so much so that when he hit a brick wall that he couldn’t change enough to get through, the WWE fanbase shouted as loud as they could and changed WWE to make way for him.

I gave CM Punk a lot the credit earlier for the shift to the indie style of wrestling because he was the first to do it, but Daniel Bryan’s contributions to this cause cannot be understated either. Daniel Bryan smashed his way through the titanium wall WWE seemed to put in front of him and in doing so, cleared the way for the whole style of wrestling in WWE to fundamentally shift to what was seen in 2010 as a very “indie” style.

Two of my favourite moments involving the WWE Championship this past decade were thanks to Daniel Bryan, when he won the title at Wrestlemania 30 is was the most incredible feeling in the world, this amazing and lovable man has finally reached the highest point it’s possible for him to reach in his career. Then there was the sad affair of his forced retirement thanks to injuries, which was truly heartbreaking, but luckily it has a happy ending.

Daniel Bryan’s return speech is something that still makes me tear up and the line “If you fight hard enough for your dreams, eventually your dreams will fight for you” is the most motivational sentence I think I’ve ever heard. So imagine thinking that less than a year later he would be one of the most detestable heels in the entire industry. Daniel Bryan’s 2018 heel turn was an unexpected stroke of absolute genius, not did it let him work a more mat-based technical style that he’s absolutely exceptional at, but it provided us with what, to my mind at least, is the best world title reign we’ve seen since CM Punk’s 434-day reign in 2011/2012/2013.

Bryan has never remained static as a wrestler, his ability to constantly reinvent himself as a character while sticking true to his in-ring style and performing it all to absolute perfection is something that very few in the industry even come close to, let alone WWE. I could probably do a whole article about why I believe Daniel Bryan is the best wrestler in the world right now, but we don’t have that much time and this is only entry number 3. So to cut it short, he’s really freaking good and this decade has been all the example you need as to why.

3 – Brock Lesnar’s Return

When I was putting these two lists together, I couldn’t decide where to put Lesnar’s return because it had so many highs and lows to it, so in the end, I decided: why not both? In my “Worst of WWE” post, I talked about all of the crap that came from Lesnar’s return, but it’d be remiss of me to go without mentioning the many positives that came from it to.

Firstly and perhaps most importantly, is the fact that we got a lot of great matches from him. While it’s true that Lesnar’s put on no small amount of stinkers since his 2012 return there are an equal amount of fantastic bouts to go alongside them. His matches across the decade against guys like Cena, Punk, Bryan, Styles and so many others have all been barnburners that show just how valuable of an asset Lesnar is to WWE.

On top of that, there is the simple fact of “moments”. Lesnar is perhaps the best wrestlers for creating these moments because he has a feel to him that no other wrestler on the planet has. Wrestlemania 30, Summerslam 2014, Wrestlemania 31, Survivor Series 2016 and Wrestlemania 35, all of these are moments that have left a lasting impression on me and are some of the best/most shocking moments in wrestling from the past decade. You could argue that these moments are all down to the person that Lesnar was facing at the time, but that’s just not true, in fact, I’d argue the exact opposite: that these moments were only possible because it was Lesnar doing them.

Lesnar has been so consistently booked as an unstoppable monster that there came a point where, for a good 5-6 years, he felt truly undefeatable, which is a feeling that no other wrestler has had in decades. The fact of the matter is, when Lesnar loses, it’s a HUGE deal and whoever does it is instantly a star and there isn’t anyone else like that in WWE, not anymore.

Fans have spent this whole decade begging for WWE to be consistent in their booking, but the truth is there was a prime example of that staring them in the fact the whole time and his name is Brock Lesnar.

2 – NXT

I mean come on, there’s no way you can have a “best of WWE” list and not have NXT somewhere in the top 3.

At the start of the decade, NXT was nothing more than a bad reality TV show where some of the best independent wrestlers of the time (and David Otunga) were humiliated on a weekly basis and I think if you’d have told anyone that over the decade, NXT would become the most consistently brilliant wrestling promotion on the planet, they would’ve reported you to some sort of mental institution. At yet, here we are at the end of 2019, looking back at the best WWE matches of the decade and almost all of them come from the brand of yellow and black.

Despite switching from reality show to wrestling promotion in late 2012, most people didn’t take much notice until 2014, when the brand’s first special event “NXT Arrival” took place, featuring fantastic matches between the likes of Ardian Neville, Bo Dallas, Paige, Emma, Sami Zayn and Cesaro. That roll continued with what would become quarterly events known as NXT Takeover, where the best wrestlers NXT had to offer (which were more often than not, the best indie stars of the time that WWE had bothered to sign) had the best matches they possibly could and it was always pure gold.

Not only were the matches always top quality but the storylines usually matched that quality, with feuds like #DIY vs The Revival, Bayley vs Sasha Banks and Tommaso Ciampa vs Johnn Gargano that truely defined this decade in WWE. It’s clear that NXT is a creative environment, where both wrestlers and writers are allowed to work at their full potential to craft nuanced, long-term storylines that we haven’t had on Raw or Smackdown in ages.

While several NXT stars have failed to live up to their potential when called up to the main roster for one reason or another, NXT has provided us with main-stays of the current product, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Kevin Owens, Drew Mcintyre, Big E; just to name a few.

NXT has given us some of the best wrestling from this past decade, proving that the “WWE Style” doesn’t have to be seen as a bad thing, because as much as we all like to deny it, NXT is the WWE Style and the show has proven the all-time classic stories and matches that style can produce and will continue to produce for years to come.

1 – Women’s Wrestling

It could never be anything else, could it?

While it’s absolutely true that all of the major wrestling companies in the world could still be doing more to legitimise their women’s divisions, comparing how female wrestlers were treated in WWE at the start of the decade to now is the kind of improvement I’m not anyone ever thought we’d see from a Vince McMahon led company.

At the very first WWE Pay-Per-View of this decade, Royal Rumble 2010, there was only one women’s match broadcast on the show and it lasted 20 seconds of a three-hour show and this was by no means an outlier, it is an accurate presentation of how WWE treated the female wrestlers under its employ for well over a decade. WWE would hire models and teach them basic wrestling moves, while the legitimate athletes were barely allowed to show their skill and were treated pretty much as eye-candy.

By the time 2014 came around, the WWE audience were starting to get sick of it all, people were starting to demand that female athletes in WWE be taken seriously and it was (unsurprisingly) NXT that heeded that call and built a women’s division full of the greatest women’s wrestlers on the planet. Paige, Emma and the four horsewomen were among the first female wrestlers in over decade that were allowed by the company to prove to the world that they’re just as good, if not better than any male star in WWE. But it still wasn’t enough.

Despite getting glimmers of great matches on the main roster throughout 2014, it was clear the company still had no intentions to make any meaningful changes, so as WWE fans always do, they got louder. At the Fastlane 2015 Pay-Per-View between Nikki Bella and Paige, a match that had all the potential to be a show-stealer, got a mere 5 minutes worth of screen-time; this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Within 24 hours, the #givedivasachance movement had begun and the whole wrestling world puts its foot down and let the company know that this shit wasn’t going to fly anymore.

The change was perhaps a bit slower than we would’ve liked, but sure enough, it happened. While the initial clusterfuck of Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch and Sasha Banks all getting called up at once causing a 3 on 3 on 3 feuds was, well…awful. Soon after that, the company started to focus on these competitors as singles stars and from that point onwards, there was no stopping them.

Every woman who came through WWE from then on made sure they made as much noise as possible, putting on fantastic matches and making sure they could not be ignored. Soon female wrestlers were main-eventing Pay-Per-Views, getting their own Royal Rumble and Money in the Bank matches and just generally having their feuds and storylines treated exactly the same as any other in the company.

In 2018 we had the first-ever all-women Pay-Per-View in Evolution, which was an absolute hit and a fantastic show, Becky Lynch became the single most popular star in the whole industry and the most prestigious spot in the WWE calendar, the main event of Wrestlemania featured a women’s match for the first time ever.

Like I said at the start, the war is not won yet, but this decade proved that major change can happen in wrestling if we just stop the big companies from getting away with their bullshit for long enough. Genuine, massive and long-lasting change has been established in the way WWE treats its female athletes, which is something that cannot be understated and it is undeniable that it’s the best thing to have happened in WWE this past decade.

And there you have it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know what you thought of WWE this past decade either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo. Finally, make sure to come back on Saturday for my predictions for WWE TLC!

Games I’m Looking Forward to In Q4 of 2019

As we move into the 4th quarter of the year, the season comes around where we get all of the big releases in the space of about a week, which is either very exciting or very inconvenient depending on your perspective. Unfortunately, this year’s line up seems a little more underwhelming, with many of the big AAA releases like Watchdogs Legion and Cyberpunk 2077 opting to go with a spring 2020 release date instead.

That said, there a still a bunch of potentially great games still to come as we look to end of 2019 and I thought it’d be a nice idea to highlight the host of games that are set to release before the year is out, to help remind people to not look ahead to next spring too soon.

8th October – Trine 4: The Nightmare Prince

Developer: Frozenbyte
Publisher: Modus Games
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows, Linux

I haven’t had much of a chance to talk about the Trine series in this blog yet, but it’s one of the few series I think could be fairly described as ‘underrated’ in the eyes of the general gaming populous.

If I had to describe the Trine games in a single word, that word would be “vibrant”. The fairytale-style seeps into every pour of the game, making it ooze this charm that I just can’t look away from. The colour pallet is absolutely beautiful, with vibrant blues, greens and purples creating this incredibly serene atmosphere, although it’s not afraid to effectively use reds, oranges and even browns effectively when it wants to change that atmosphere.

The puzzle-platforming mechanics are a little basic, but that’s overshadowed by the surprisingly fun nature of the combat. It’s not a million miles a minute like much 2D sidescrolling combat, but instead, everything in the world interacts with each other in unexpected ways to create some hilarious outcomes when you spawn a box in a space where it looks like you shouldn’t be able to.

Trine 3 took the series into the realm of 3D and while it wasn’t as fun as the first two games in the franchise, it still captured that sense of charm that drew me into the series in the first place. Form what we’ve seen so far Trine 4 seems to have mostly gone back to the 2D style of game and it’s looked to have expanded its puzzle-platforming mechanics to open up a load of new opportunities for fun to be had, so if you’re a fan of the genre, or even just uniquely pretty games, this will be one for you.

11th October – Tracks: The Train Set Game

Developer: Whoop Group
Publisher: Excalibur Publishing
Platforms: Windows

So here’s a game specifically made for me and people like me.

The concept of the game is very simple: You remember the wooden Brio train sets that you’d have loads of as a kid if you liked trains? And you remember how you always wanted to build massive crazy tracks but never could? Well, this game lets you do exactly that to your heart’s content.

I played this in Early Access early last year and it’s amazing. This game will let you build any track you could possibly imagine with all the different types of pieces that used to be available (and a couple that weren’t). You can build these track on a blank canvas, or you can use a living room or bedroom to weave your tracks through.

I haven’t played it in a while as I want to be surprised by the new stuff that’s been added at launch, but when I last played there was a whole host of scenery that you could add all around the tracks, so you could build a little town for your train to go around. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! The pièce de résistance is the fact that you can actually get in the train and drive your train around the tracks you’ve made…I KNOW RIGHT?!

I’m well aware many of you are reading this thinking I’m weird, but the three people who had the same childhood I did are over the moon right now.

22nd October – WWE 2K20

Developer: Visual Concepts
Publisher: 2K Games
Platforms: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows

For many years I was the kind of person that never understood why people bought a new sports game every year when they all seemed exactly the same from the perspective of an outside observer. However, having been a WWE fan for a good number of years now and buying the new game every single year, I totally understand the appeal.

Of course, I didn’t see the point in buying a new FIFA every year, I don’t like football. I do however like wrestling and as someone who plays the WWE games for at least 150 hours every year (usually more), the value is absolutely there for me to put down $60 every time a new one comes out.

That said, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little concerned about this year’s game.

For those who are unaware, for the 6 WWE games released under the 2K umbrella so far, Yukes has been a part of the development team and this year they weren’t, leaving Visual Concepts to develop the game on their own and that fact combined with how marketing has been behaving in the build-up to launch has me concerned. By this time last year, we had a full roster reveal and multiple press events where tonnes of gameplay was shown, but right now we’ve got absolutely none of that.

Don’t get me wrong as long as the game isn’t totally broken I’ll still buy it because I’m a sucker for the series and I don’t care who knows it, but I’m definitely going to wait for reviews to be sure until I put my money down on it.

25th October – The Outer Worlds

Developer: Obsidian Entertainment
Publisher: Private Division
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Windows

So far the games I’ve talked about are ones that I’m confident that I’m going to enjoy, either because they’re part of a franchise I love, or I’ve already played some of it prior to launch. The Outer Worlds, however, is slightly different because I really want to play it, but I’m not yet sure if I’ll enjoy it.

While I’m sure I’ll get lectures from people about this statement, but the game looks to be fairly similar to Fallout in terms of its main mechanics. This is to be expected as Obsidian’s biggest release before now was Fallout: New Vegas, so stick with what you know, so it’s a game I really want to try, but it’s not guaranteed to be a hit with me. I feel this way because of my relationship with Fallout 4 (the only one in the franchise I’ve played (I KNOW, shut up)) because when I played it at launch I didn’t enjoy it at all and over a number of years I would try over and over again to get into this and it wasn’t until early this summer that I finally cracked it and started enjoying it.

My hopes with this one is that it’s like Fallout, but not TOO much like Fallout, the gameplay that’s been shown up until now looks solid, but I always find it hard to gauge whether the feel of a game fits me by watching someone else playing it, so I’ll be very interested to see what I think of this one when it releases.

5th November – Planet Zoo

Developer: Frontier Developments
Publisher: Frontier Developments
Platforms: Windows

A few years ago Frontier Developments did something magical, they went to the farthest corners the Earth, searched through miles and miles of terrain until they found the withered and dying body of the theme park building genre and somehow breathed more life into it than it had ever had before. Planet Coaster is quite simply the best theme park building game ever made (no, that isn’t up for debate) and Planet Zoo looks to do exactly the same thing to the Zoo Tycoon genre that Planet Coaster was to theme park builders.

Of course, the focus is in a slightly different place with Planet Zoo as it’s all well and good making a zoo look pretty (which I absolutely will), but none of it matters if all of your animals are underfed. This game promises to put the focus in the caring and welfare of the animals you hold in your zoo, with some in depth-looking systems that mean you’ll have to adhere to all of the top-level standards that real zoos have to. Not that it’s going to stop me from throwing two of every animal into one pen and seeing who survives but that’s on me, not the game.

If the recent beta release that people have been able to get their hands on is any indication, Planet Zoo will live up to the hype that stands before it and I believe it will be a game that is just as beloved as Planet Coaster.

8th November – Death Stranding

Developer: Kojima Productions
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Platforms: Playstation 4

I just want to know what it actually is.

I think I got the rough gist of what the “basic” premise is from the explanation we received at Gamescom earlier this year, but I’m still not entirely clear. It’s also really not obvious what the gameplay is like since so far we’ve seen our protagonist have several conversations, fall off a cliff and…mark his territory.

As such, I honestly can’t speculate on whether or not I think I’ll enjoy this. If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say I’ll think it’s fairly mediocre, but what do I know? This could be the greatest game ever made, it could be utter trash, I don’t think anyone anywhere in the world has any idea, including Hideo Kojima.

I’m anticipating this release more to see what the reaction is from the general gaming populous when it finally comes out, not so much to play it myself. It’s definitely a game I’m keeping an eye on, but I’m going to be waiting for the reviews to come out before I consider buying it for myself.

15th November: Pokemon Sword/Shield

Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo & The Pokemon Company
Platforms: Nintendo Switch

If I need to explain this one to you then you’re obviously not paying enough attention.

In short: I like Pokemon…a lot.

I tend to judge Pokemon games on their own scale where I compare them to each other because for me they exist above other franchises. A Pokemon game can be full of obvious flaws an annoyances, but I’ll still enjoy it because it’s Pokemon and honestly, I like it that way, I like being happy.

Unfortunately, it’s very hard to tell where each game will fit on that scale before playing it. Case in point: Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, I honestly didn’t think I’d enjoy those games all that much, it didn’t look to me like they added much to the Alola region and they’d be quickly forgotten, but boy was I wrong about that and they are easily among my favourites in the franchise.

So far out of everything I’ve seen, I like most of it. I know the fact that the national dex won’t be in the game is a sticking point for many people, but I personally don’t mind too much as long as the game we get is good fun. The whole camping set up looks like it’ll have a lot more depth than Amie and Refresh did before it and I’m gonna dedicate my life to finding all the curry recipes if it kills me.

Out of the new Pokemon that have been revealed so far, I like the look of all but one and I’m overjoyed that we’re not only getting more regional variant but brand new evolutions for old Pokemon too; any game that gives Farfetch’d an evolution is good by me.

And that’s it! Thank you very much for taking the time to read this, please let me know what games you’re looking forward to the most either in the comments below or on Twitter @10ryawoo! Finally, make sure to come back on Saturday as my coverage for WWE’s Hell in a Cell begins!

WWE Match of the Year 2018

Surely I don’t need to explain this one do I? It’s the end of the year and you know what happens on blogs like this one at the end of the year. We compulsively rank everything that happened in the year in the hopes that someone somewhere will scroll through it all and agree with us.

So here’s me throwing my hat into the ring, and we’re starting off with the best matches that took place in WWE/NXT in 2018. I’m just doing WWE because, although I did watch a bunch of other promotions this year, it wasn’t nearly enough to be able to fairly judge what was the best. I did watch a lot of WWE however, so let’s go.

10 – Brock Lesnar vs Daniel Bryan – Survivor Series

I know, it’s a Brock Lesnar match on a best of the year list, miracles do happen people.

Over twenty minutes, these two men were able to craft such a unique story that could only happen in a Brock Lesnar match. Though it has been chipped away at year by year, Lesnar still has this aura of being completely unstoppable, regardless of context you always feel like he’s going to win unless he’s fighting Roman Reigns.

Bryan was able to use this aura to his advantage, with the first 8-10 minutes of the match being your standard affair when it comes to a Brock Lesnar match. He throws his opponent around and stands there smiling like the prick that he is, but all it takes it one second to make us believe.

I remember watching that moment, when Bryan had Brock in the Yes Lock, and of course, in the rational part of my brain I know there’s not a chance in hell Brock is tapping out to Daniel Bryan, but in that moment we were all absolutely certain that Brock was about to tap. It’s the kind of match that shows exactly why pro-wrestling is so fascinating, because for even just a split second, it can make us believe that the impossible is about to happen.

9 – Shayna Baszler vs Kairi Sane – Evolution

This year is arguably the best year for women’s wrestling ever.

There wasn’t a great deal in terms of the women’s wrestling scene being revolutionised this year, and there was no major ground broken all things considered, but the quality of women’s wrestling matches has never been consistently higher than they have been this year if you ask me.

One such example is this match, there’s no massive game changing style or story being told here, there’s just a lot of really freaking great wrestling. Kairi Sane is perhaps the most adorable human to ever exist and kicks ass like no-one else, and Shayna Baszler may be the best heel in WWE right now, so these two colliding was always going to be amazing.

There was worry that being on a main roster show would mean they couldn’t do the amazing things they did at Takeover: Brooklyn 4, but they quickly put those fears to rest when the match started. The chemistry these two have in the ring is brilliant and that’s clear with every single spot that happens during the match.

It was also one of those rare matches that manages to use the outside interference to its advantage instead of its detriment. Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir getting involved just seemed to add to Baszler’s aura of this mega heel that can put anyone away, no matter how anime you are. Kairi fought back against the interference in a way the didn’t make it feel like she lost directly because of it, and when Shayna had her in the choke hold, Sane held on just long enough to make us all think she was going to turn it around before finally passing out.

Both these women feel destined for great things in their careers, and this match here and a major WWE show was them proving that fact to the whole world.

8 – Aleister Black vs Adam Cole – Extreme Rules –
NXT Takeover: Philladelplia

This was a 20 minute long weapons based match, and I liked it; that should tell you everything you need to know.

This match didn’t really try to subvert any of the tropes in weapons matches, instead the two men in this match used the tropes in a way that added to the match instead of subtracting from it. There’s a bit of slowness to it in the first half when the weapons are first coming out, but apart from that, this match is all action.

Black spending the first 5 minutes or so refusing to use weapons because he can take Cole on without them was some great character work, and Adam Cole jumping on that complacency was such a fun character interaction to watch.

The second half of the match, there’s pretty much no stopping at all, we got the most brutal chair spot I think I’ve ever seen as Cole when back first onto the top of one, which is going to hurt no matter how you take it. Then the Undisputed Era and Sanity got involved to create chaos around ringside as both men recovered in the ring.

Ultimately, this is the kind of match that proves to me that weapons matches can be awesome if they’re performed correctly, then add on two of my favourite wrestlers right now and you’ve got a winning formula.

7 – Becky Lynch vs Charlotte Flair vs Asuka –        TLC Match – WWE TLC: Tables, Ladders & Chairs

I’ve talked about this match very recently, but I really did think it was just that good.

This match was able to house the pure chaos and destruction that a TLC match needs to have, in with solid pure wrestling and great character work and interactions, and it takes a lot to achieve that. It was able to play off the drama that had been built up around Becky and Charlotte over the past few months and throw Asuka into the mix so seamlessly that it felt like she’d been a part of the story the whole time.

The action was fast paced and fun to watch, with every spot feeling high impact as the match slowly built to a climax. If you ever wanted to see just how far women’s wrestling in WWE has come since 2015, then this is the match to watch, because I’m pretty confident that this match wouldn’t look any different if it was men performing it, and that’s something we haven’t been able to say very often for many years.

It’s a great lasting image for the final big WWE show of 2018 and set up so much to look forward to going into the new year.

6 – Ronda Rousey vs Charlotte Flair –
Survivor Series

Now to talk about one of this year’s biggest success stories: Ronda Rousey.

I don’t think it’s unfair to say that when she came into the WWE at the 2018 Royal Rumble, most of us weren’t expecting much, she was just another big name that WWE were going shove down our throats whether we liked it or not. Then she had her first match at Wrestlemania and boy, did we all look stupid.

Ronda ended up being the biggest part in the best match of a Wrestlemania that included AJ Styles vs Shinsuke Nakamura and if that isn’t a statement to how good Ronda is at wrestling, then I don’t know what is. Over the rest of the year, she would continue to put on great matches almost ever month, with even her worst matches being ok.

So naturally, when you take someone who’s taken to wrestling as quickly as Ronda has, and put her against the best female wrestler (in terms of ability) in WWE right now, it was always going to be great. This was a vicious match, which managed to tell a great story using such simple maneuvers, that it really was a show in just how effective even the basics in wrestling can be.

Charlotte spent most of the first half of the match on top, trying every trick in the book to out wrestle Ronda, but every single manuever Charlotte would attempt, it seemed Ronda had an answer for, this slowly built into the second half of the match which slowly got more and more brutal until it felt more like a fight than a wrestling match

When it came to the finish, we got to see a rarity in WWE using a sudden and disappointing DQ finish to its advantage. The story felt like it had been building the whole time to one of the women snapping and going mental on the other, so that’s exactly what happened. Charlotte’s beat down of Ronda set in motion the events are currently unfolding week to week on WWE TV, and it’s made it feel like the women’s division has had a long-term story crafted, lasting from November all the way through to April 2019 and this match is what we have to thank for that.

5 – Andrade “Cien” Almas vs Johnny Gargano –
NXT Takeover: Philadelphia

Brace yourselves, there’s a lot more NXT to come.

I think Almas might go down as one of the most underrated NXT Champions ever, his run was fairly short and nothing major happened during it, but he had some killer matches with top NXT stars, case in point, this match right here.

There wasn’t any amazing story to be told here, or anything ground-breaking, it was just 32 minutes of amazing wrestling. It moved from mat-based to technical to high-flying styles of wrestling so seamlessly that everything flowed so beautifully into one contest. Andrade and Vega were able to heelish in just the right way, to get us to root for Gargano without it ruining the match.

The crowd also added to the match in quite a big way for this one, their reactions to every single kickout and comeback from Gargano really helped draw me into the emotion behind this one.

The two of them were able to build the drama to the point where even the simplest of moves seemed high impact and dripping with drama, to the point where, by the end of it at least, it was the match I was most emotionally invested in all year.

I could sit here and list all of the cool moments that happened during it, but really, only watching it will do it justice, so go watch it……after reading the rest of this article of course.

4 – Dolph Ziggler & Drew Mcintyre vs Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose – Hell in a Cell

I’ve talked a lot about the type of wrestling I hate, but I don’t often mention the types of wrestling that I love, and Tag Team wrestling is a type of wrestling I love very much indeed, and this match is the perfect example of why.

Much like the last match, there wasn’t really much story or character work here, it was just balls-to-the-walls action from the word go. I could talk about all the awesome spots and moments in the match, but quite frankly there just isn’t enough time to go through them all, so here are some of the highlights.

Dean Ambrose continues to adapt his wrestling style since his return, he’s mostly been working a pretty stiff and slow pace so far that’s been fun to watch, but here he incorporated that with some of his old, face paced flailing about the place style and it worked brilliantly.

Dolph Ziggler, reminding us all why we should still care about him, this man works a fever pitch the whole time, this is why he’s generally just better as a face, he brings the kind of energy to his better performances, that not a lot of other wrestlers can.

Seth Rollins is still the best wrestler in the world, like seriously, he’s been in someway involved in the best match of very nearly every PPV this year and I really hope he continues that next year as Univeral Champion (pleasepleasepleaseplease).

Drew Mcintyre…just Drew Mcintyre man, the dude’s an absolute monster who shouldn’t really have to sell for anyone, but boy does he do an amazing job of it. He’s able to pick his spots and make his presence felt in the match, even though he didn’t do as much as the other three.

Then there’s the finish, which was absolutely perfect, Seth uses the last ounce of energy he has left to hit Dolph with the Falcon Arrow, but while he’s mid move, Drew runs in and boots his face off, causing an unconscious Dolph Ziggler to fall onto Seth and win the match for their team. Combine that with four lunatics flying all around the ring for twenty minutes and just so damn many false finishes and kickouts, and you’ve got one of the best pure tag team matches I’ve ever seen.

3 – Men’s Royal Rumble – Royal Rumble

I know it’s not really conventional to put a Royal Rumble match in a “Match of the Year” list, but then again, it’s been a long time since we’ve had a Rumble even nearly as good as this one.

It’s a near impossible task to have a match that lasts over an hour, even a Rumble, and have every minute be entertaining, but I really feel they accomplished that here. There really wasn’t a dull moment from bell to bell in this one, there was just so many great moments the whole way through to keep you going.

Finn Balor was really the MVP here, lasting very nearly an hour and I’ll be honest, as irrational as it was when I heard his music hit at number 2, I thought he was going to win the thing. Then you had Elias coming out while everyone’s been taken out to sing a song, the usual New Day shenanigans, Heath Slater trying to get in the damn ring and so much more.

There were also some really great surprise entrants, with Almas, Cole, The Hurricane and a returning Rey Mysterio bringing some great memorable moments and making their mark in the match.

Most importantly, the drama was really there this time, in every rumble since 2010, there’s been something to ruin the moment towards the end. Be it, Roman Reigns entering at Number 30 in 2017; Cena’s win feeling inevitable in 2013; or the fact Sheamus existed in 2012. This didn’t have any of that, it put Shinsuke Nakamura against two people no-one wanted to see win (but quite easily could’ve) in John Cena and Roman Reigns.

That feeling of elation when Nakamura dispatched Reigns to win the match is still a vivid memory in my mind and perhaps the biggest positive reactions I’ve had to any moment in WWE this year.

You can debate whether or not this is the “best” Royal Rumble ever till the cows come home, but this will certainly stand for a long time as my favourite.

2 – Johnny Gargano vs Tommaso Ciampa –              NXT Takeover: New Orleans

I can FEEL that image, that’s how powerful this story was.

It was always going to be a challenge to pick a favourite of the Gargano vs Ciampa saga. All of the Gargano vs Ciampa matches were special in their own way and I could’ve believably put all three of them on this list without any complaints, but in the end I had to go with their first encounter as my favourite of the trilogy.

This match really felt like the bridging point between the two major phases of this feud. It was the end of the #DIY saga, where two best friends rose to the highest heights, only for one to betray the other. We had a whole year to let that story brew while Ciampa recovered from a knee injury to the anticipation was high to finally see it end.

However, as that story ended a new one began, the story being the one we’re still seeing today which is the descent into madness of Johnny Gargano, we’ll talk more on that in a little bit, but it’s important to note that this is where it started, not with a loss to Ciampa, but with a victory over him.

That’s really what elevated this match from a fantastic match to one of the all time great NXT main events. These two men had the most seemless of chemistry in the ring – as can be expected from two men who teamed for over a year – and there wasn’t a single beat missed in this one. While weapons were legal they were used quite sparingly, which only added to the impact when they eventually were used.

The moment when Gargano is about to use Ciampa’s own steel crutch to put him away for good, only to fall to his knees and realise what Ciampa’s driven him to is something you’d expect to see in a Hollywood drama, but it was played to perfection here. All that gets topped off with a triumphant win for the hero Gargano, although little did we know the story that was about to begin….

1 – Aleister Black vs Johnny Gargano –                    NXT Takeover: Wargames II

“Johnny Gargano, I absolve you of your sins”, haunting.

You could make a case for a few other wrestlers, but 2018 really has been Johnny Gargano’s year. Not only has he been putting on amazing matches one after another, he’s also been a part of the longest and most compelling story to take place all year.

It’s often cited by people who analyse this story that it was Gargano constantly failing to defeat Ciampa that turned him into the broken man we see on NXT today, but people often neglect to mention his initial victory over Ciampa. It’s the fact that Gargano feels like his one big win was a total fluke, since he’s never been able to replicate it since, and maybe if he’d have just used that crutch instead of throwing it to one side, he’d be NXT Champion right now instead of Ciampa.

It all felt like that came to a head in this match here, despite not being the conclusion to the story, not by a long shot, it was a firm bullet point and the key moment to take place at the end of the penultimate act.

This is the perhaps the closest thing I’ve seen in WWE to my “ideal” style of wrestling, because this thing didn’t let up for a second. They did some of the character work and taunts that we’ve come to expect from any Aleister Black match (and are still cool as fuck), but once that was out of the way these guys were running at full speed right until the finish.

Things were going back and forth so fast it became impossible to analyse, all you could do was just sit back and be blown away by the best wrestlers doing the best wrestling. The speed didn’t take away from the impact of the moves either, with one of the most brutal dives I’ve ever seen when Gargano leapt face first into Black’s knee at full speed.

It’s this style of wrestling that makes me totally enthralled in a match. Seriously, while I was watching this in my living room, people were having conversations right across me and I didn’t hear a word any of them said because I was so into the amazing action that was on the screen.

I have no idea how either of these men’s stories in NXT is going to end, but if it’s even half as good as this match right here was, then I’m all in the whole way, because wrestling WWE this year did not get better than this.

Thank you very much for reading this, if you are feeling so kind then please share this around. If you want to tell me why my opinions are wrong, then you can let me know on Twitter @10ryawoo.

Finally, make sure to come back this weekend where I’ll be talking about my favourite video games of 2018!