Top 10 Greatest Wrestling Pay Per Views

The one thing that every wrestling fan is always looking forward to is a wrestling show that ends storylines, establishes a star, change championships, and a card filled with great matches. Wrestling is a unique form of entertainment because their storylines are done in real-time. From the attendance at the event, the audience watching at home, and the booking to where each wrestler’s spot is at is always occurring. There’s just no way that a show should feel the same as the last because as real-time storytelling occurs, variety is in demand. It’s not like movies where you can simply pump out sequels and remakes or sitcoms that never change the formula without ever worrying about filming in one take. Different opponents and storylines are expected to fresh things up and continuously give different opponents to square off, stipulations to give a different level of tension, and a purpose. It’s not enough to have a good guy to be the bad guy all the time. And you also have to worry if the wrestler is fit to compete/perform. As a real-time storytelling structure, an injured wrestler will affect scheduling and upcoming shows or backstage politics gets in the way of fulfilling any potential. That’s why we don’t always get the wrestlers that we want on a certain show. Now that we discussed what’s expected in a wrestling show, these are the factors that need to be warry of when making a show. As thetoplister ranks ten of the best wrestling Pay Per Views of all time, these cards have to have the right wrestlers, the right booking, the right decision making, the right mindset, the right production, and the right timing to have the show to deliver. Take a look at what are the ten wrestling events that did just that.

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 Underrated Wrestling Pay Per Views

Like I said in my worst PPVs list, that it’s tiring for bookers to make a pay per view on a monthly basis. You have to somehow keep fan interest from weighing out and you don’t want to give everything unless it’s your biggest show of the year. So how about the wrestling shows that aren’t the promotion’s big ones but somehow ended up being better than anyone expected? With so many wrestling shows released, where do we begin? When you ask your average joe, they’ll usually pick a random show that they grew nostalgic for but does not hold up. Other cases, they’re shows that didn’t deliver the goods because their storylines had to be on-going after this show. Rarely does a promoter want to end an on-going storyline in the middle of the schedule unless something better is planned ahead. And even if it was a promotion’s big show, there are some who just do not talk about the flagship show. Too often do was see other shows overshadowing some of the good ones that it goes over wrestling fans’ heads. And that’s why you’re all here today. You want to see wrestling shows that nobody talks about and you want to exercise your variety. I’m here to let you know that thetoplister got you covered with welled booked cards that deserve your attention.

Top 10 Underrated Wrestlers of All Time

Every wrestling fan’s biggest struggle is to see their favorite wrestlers not get pushed. It sucks that there’s only one spot in the being the promoter’s number one babyface and biggest heel. Putting undeserved wrestlers over has always been a curse. How does a talented individual that spent many years in the business not get recognized or someone who’s such a talent not get a spot that they deserve? Bookers are sometimes the biggest idiots in the business and refuses to never give what the people what they want (the old tale of capitalism agaisnt consumers). Whether it’s fantastic mic skills, impecable in-ring ability/workrates, creatively viable, or offering so much potential, there are just so many in the business that has it all and did it all and yet can never get what is rightfully earned. Not everyone can have a happy story like Eddie Guererro, Chris Benoit, or Daniel Brian, but dammit, it shouldn’t happen so rarely, especially when there are wrestlers in your roster that are better than most of your main eventers. When you read this list, you owe it to yourself as a wrestling fan to watch their matches and see what I mean by saying these are truly the wrestlers that fall into the endless topic of “what-ifs.”

Top 10 Worst Wrestling Pay Per Views

What is terrible for a promotion is to not prepare yourself from an upcoming show. I understand that it’s a lot of pressure to work on a schedule that has a major show on the monthly basis, but they should know better than to not simply pass over a show because you need the audience to care enough to stay tune with the produce. Good lord do they suck so much ass when promoters treat this as an ordinary show. Major shows deserve to be treated as a special thing, like a holiday worth celebrating. What I’m not saying that the babyfaces should always be the victor, big time heels should have their comeuppance, or push forward a certian wrestler… but what’s on the line here is if the audience got what they paid for or is this worth making us to keep tuning in. There are just more bad PPVs in wrestling than there are good ones out there and that… really makes me sad. It must be hard to maintain fan interest, keep the backstage politics from interfering with progress, and continue being creative before it runs out. For these promotions that thought that such shows was a passable product to sell to when the pieces aren’t in line for customer satisfaction, how dare you!  This is the list to tell off these wrestling promoters how NOT to make a show and embarrass the customers that paid such as poor event.

Top 10 Overrated Wrestling Pay Per Views

Pay Per Views is always the big changer at times. Those changes include having a title change, ending a feud, elevating a storyline, give out the best matches, and deliver on its promises. However, such Pay Per Viewer either never fulfil their promises or give us something that we’ve never wanted, yet idiots who have a hard time deciding what’s good or bad end up getting the two mixed up.  Yes, it’s tough to break the monogamy of making the product stale and you have to figure out how to keep your audience into staying tuned to your product. Since wrestling is a story-based medium, you wouldn’t want anti-climatic moments in your movies, comic books, and video games, so why would you want it in your wrestling? Stuff like 180 heel/face turns in a split second, a screwjob, or weak-ass victory is not wanted in any circumstance, yet it happens again and again. Worst yet, fans say that such a thing is a good thing to have. How did we get here? I don’t mind heels beating the babyfaces once in a while, but whenever you look at a card and you see that decisions were made that were just dumb and have nowhere to go with it, it just makes you wonder where our standards at. We want the overblown proportions, the anticipation for a victory, and fight to go all out in buying a pay per view. I refuse to make any major show an exception to such rule. And because these wrestling shows fall under such category and still be praised as being good, I challenge that notion in this post!

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!

Worst Gimmick Matches That Happened More Than Once

You’ve seen your worst gimmick matches on the internet everywhere and they always come up with your Kennel From Hells, King of the Road, Chamber of Horrors, San Francisco 49ers Match, Buckhouse Brawl, and many more.  That’s all predictable because you’ve all read it in various articles. But what you have to understand is that you’re all lucky that it only had a one-time appearance and never been touched again. What I’m after in this blog is for the bad gimmick matches that never took a hint that once was too much. Yes it’s true that we cannot afford having cards where every match is the same rules but restraints is important from turning wrestling into a freak show. Russo and McMahon are both mentally insane for spending for much time, effort, and money to make something innovative only to be a series of bad ideas that just never stops. Whenever this garbage gets booked, it makes me question… who’s the audience? Who’s interested in this pile of crap because you’re never going to get a believable story out of it nor are you at all excited to see the outcome except for how much more awful it’s going to be. These match types provide no athleticism in these matches only humiliation and bordom throughout. 

Top 10 Wrestling Match-Types

Professional wrestling is the only sport that does not offer the same rules in every one of the matches that’s scheduled.  That’s what’s so very special about this form of entertainment.  This industry has always been violent soap opera and for a predetermined sport that everyone knows it’s not real.  However if it is not real then you cannot sell me the same kind of rules, stipulations, and results with every single match.  As a scripted entertainment they have to constantly change things up.  That’s why its brings so much excitement for fans when there’s an announced different rules or gimmick towards a particular booked match. You cannot sell me the same exact match-rules for every rivalry like you could with Andre-Hogan.  You have to make all future matches in rivalries have a different level of challenge with each other if you want to maintain interest. Wrestling certainly has created a long list of different matches types over the years and only the ones that still garner an audience and/or keeps rivalries going still are used over and over again.  Sure the spots may be similar to the last and many are trying to reach towards to the ultimate messuring stick to what the match type is even about, but one thing you cannot deny is if they worked on one rivalry, they can work on many more that deserve to be booked in one.