Top 10 Wrestling Pay Per View of 2010s

If wrestling in the 2000s was much less about hardcore appeal from 1990s wrestling, but more focused on the “purity” of pro wrestling (meaning more workrates, less gimmicks, absence of character, absence of in-ring psychology, and more random storylines that have no rewarding pay-offs) then wrestling from 2010 – 2019 all about that. This is where wrestling fans that still hang on to WWE finally lost interest by the end of the decade. It’s all because Vince McMahon despises it when things don’t go his way and ruin it for everyone on board. You had the ‘Summer of Punk’ giving you the mass media and viewership that you’ve haven’t had since the Monday Night Wars and you still managed to screw it up for CM Punk (who drew so much heat and money), NEXUS, and Daniel Brian to lose all credibility. It is no wonder why the audience in attendence have been hijacking in many of WWE’s shows. To think that someone like Roman Reigns was a good fit to replace the aging John Cena is one of the most counter productive decisions that any wrestling product has ever made. It was not enough to keep Brock Lesnar back and give out less than 5 minute matches within every appearance by 2017. All of WWE’s alternatives in North America from the 2000s decade also screwed up big time. TNA’s appeal got all destroyed from letting Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff into WCW 2.0, The Aces & 8s storyline turned everyone off, Jeff Jarrett portraying Kurt Angle’s broken family in a disgusting manner, and rebranding Total Non-stop Action into Impact Wrestling, then Global Force Wrestling (thanks Jeff Jarret), then back to Impact made us all stop being fans of the company. Ring of Honor refused to grew as a company, lost all of their best stars to WWE, and underpaying and mistreating women’s wrestlers made ROH unwatchable by 2018. With TNA and ROH nearly dead at this point, there was so much wrestling out there. New Japan finally got Antonio Inoki out of the booking decision and made one of the most wonderful wrestling shows the world has ever seen. Because it was still hard to access to Japanese wrestling in North America Tony Khan took the perfect opportunity to start All Elite Wrestling and officially became the fastest growing wrestling promotion of all time! This is ultimately what WWE’s viewership have been the lowest since the New Generation era and never before have former wrestling fans jumped to UFC and MMA promotions. Sadly, I’m one of those former wrestling fans that switch over to MMA because wrestling is for decades is nowhere as good as it was in the Monday Night Wars. As the final Top 10 Pay Per View list, I wanted to show you what were the last wrestling shows that satisfied me and what was worth revisiting this decade of bad booking? 

Top 10 Greatest Wrestlers of All Time

There has to come a time where a site that talks about wrestling has to make a good argument to who’s the greatest wrestler of all time. There just wouldn’t be wrestling without the wrestlers, but who really deserves all the praise? Every wrestling fan has their own personal favorite wrestling that they mark out to, so thetoplister has to make a credible pick in deciding who really is the best grappler/performer in professional wrestling. Here on thetoplister, we do really care about giving so many people recommendations, but it has to be the best recommendation, not the most popular one. Otherwise, having Hulk Hogan, The Rock, John Cena, Brock Lesnar, and Shawn Michaels would have been too predictable to the point where we’re being dishonest. When you’ve been wrestling as long as we have (watching so many different promotions and all) you should know that there are better out there. So what really is the criteria to be an all-time great wrestler? Here are your criteria.

If a wrestler has three or more of these qualities, then they deserve to be on the list. Notice that we didn’t include number of victories here? Otherwise, Goldberg & Dr. Death Steve Williams would have made it on the list, but in wrestling, it’s not how many wins you make, it’s how many times can you get yourself back up in every defeat without losing relevance. It takes years to hone your skills, have the right booking to keep you relevant in your career, and the challenge of getting the fans’ approval in order to reach that level of credibility. This is a tough business to stay in but these ten wrestlers (and a few honorable mentions) managed to prove to us that they are deserving of such praise.

Top 10 Wrestling Matches of the 2010s

With Kayfabe officially dead the only thing that can make wrestling relevant and worth watching is the focus on match quality. Now being in touch with current events, wrestling promotions everywhere pressured their performers to reach (the overrated) Dave Meltzer’s top score. While focusing on just one individual should NEVER be wrestling priority, diversity was.  Never before have we seen women’s wrestling destroy the term ‘Diva’ and made high-quality matches that are more entertaining than the men’s division. Indie wrestlers from last decade (like CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Tayler Black, and Keven Steen to name a few) have became major promotions’ top stars.  Japanese wrestling have never bee so recognized in the west as it was here. And gimmicks and characters have been at an all-time low measure (for better or for worse). Audience’s expectation when going to see a wrestling show is to have great technicality, taking bumps that no ordinary human can take, and highjacking shows by booing the hell out of wrestlers that don’t deserve the spotlight (Roman Reigns).  I would say wrestling, for the most part, had a good decade (with the exception of TNA/Impact Wrestling becoming an unwatchable program). Now with WWE, AEW, and NJPW carrying on the industry, let’s see what were the best matches that this decade had to offer!