Best Of 2018: Feud Of The Year
I’m not going to waste your time here. You know it’s Tommaso Ciampa vs. Johnny Gargano and there’s no point in suggesting that it’s anything else. That feud has produced one of the best collections of matches of all time along with some next level promos while also setting up other feuds and matches at the same time. I have no idea what else can come close to this, so I’m going to give you the rest of the options in short order rather than going into detail and suggesting that they’re anywhere close.
Becky Lynch vs Charlotte
Great matches, got Becky the push she deserved, but Charlotte is starting to get annoying in these spots when Rousey vs. Lynch is more interesting. Charlotte was great at stealing the title win from Becky at Summerslam to set everything up, though that weird heel turn against Rousey still doesn’t make a lot of sense in the big picture.
AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe and Shinsuke Nakamura
They’re two different feuds but have the same story: great hype, very good matches, both suffer from AJ winning every significant match (or only losing it by countout/DQ). The Joe promos were something else though and some of the best stuff he’s ever done. If nothing else, Styles deserves an honorable mention for the damage from all the low blows.
Shayna Baszler vs. Kairi Sane
Near perfect natural rivalry with the high lifer against the submission expert and their matches have been awesome. I’m not a fan of trading the title in a hurry, but it was the right call here given how evenly matched they were. I could go for more of this, which I don’t say very often.
Johnny Gargano vs. Aleister Black
When a feud is so great that it spins off into another awesome feud, you know you’ve got something special. These two turned a legitimate injury to Black into a great angle and a sweet pair of matches that advanced the bigger feud at the same time. Hard to do and well done at the same time.
Undisputed Era vs. Pete Dunne N Pals
For a story that seemed destined to be Undisputed Era vs. Moustache Mountain, they’ve gotten a great amount of mileage out of this without doing that match more than once I believe. Dunne is an absolute star and likely to be WWE Champion someday. It’s made him look even better when the Era needs all four members to really beat him, which they never exactly did. Great feud, though WarGames II was still longer than it needed to be.
All good, but none of them are Gargano vs. Ciampa.
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