Best Of 2010s: Feud Of The Decade
IMG Credit: WWE
This is one of the bigger ones as a good, hot feud can bring in a lot of people in a hurry. If a feud is done right, it can spawn all kinds of other stories and mini feuds without needing the main wrestlers to even keep fighting in the first place. There were a lot of great ones in this decade and they are worth looking back at here.
Honorable Mention
Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega – I’m putting this one here as I really don’t follow New Japan closely enough to go into depth about it. I’ve seen all of their matches and while I don’t quite agree with Meltzer’s ratings, they are indeed great and worth seeing, with nothing resembling anything less than awesome throughout.
Shield vs. Wyatt Family – The moment when they had their first staredown, you knew you were in for something. This was one of the most natural matchups WWE could have at the time and then everything wound up going even better than expected. They didn’t fight often and it was over in a hurry, but dang it worked while it lasted.
Rock vs. John Cena
There are very few matches that can live up to the hype of a dream match. That was the case here, because of how different of a path that they took to get here. The night after Wrestlemania XXVII, the match was set up for Wrestlemania XXVIII. That is unheard of in wrestling and it worked at a level no one could have ever anticipated. Cena hung with Rock every step of the way (or defeated him) on the mic and then we got to Miami for the showdown.
During the build, there was a point where I had to see the match. I didn’t know if it was going to be good and I didn’t know if it was going to be bad. All I knew was that I had to see this match. Then it wound up being a great match, though I’m not sure if the right person won. The promos made this though and there have been very few builds on this level. Go back and watch Cena’s promos and see if they’re better than you remember.
The Miz vs. Daniel Bryan
I was tempted to put this on the top for a bit but the problem was how long it took to finally have the match. Bryan and Miz have one of the best natural dichotomies you’ll ever see with the celebrity turned wrestler vs. the pure wrestler and that is always going to work. The Talking Smack promo was good enough to set up a Wrestlemania main event level match but we had to wait years to actually see it.
The anticipation helped a lot here, as Bryan never gave up on trying to return to the ring. Then one day he was finally cleared and the countdown was on. I wasn’t sure when it was going to happen, but we were going to see this match at some point. If nothing else it would have been incredible to keep Bryan’s return a secret and have him come out to face Miz on the Raw after Wrestlemania, but instead it was at Summerslam. They had a good match, but it was a bit too late for how big the blowoff could have been. It was good, but it could have been incredible.
Daniel Bryan vs. The Authority
This is the kind of feud where it’s hard to not get behind Bryan, and that’s where you have something special. It’s a story anyone can get behind, with the every man Bryan being held back by the Authority, who cared about money and power instead of doing the right thing. It’s a great example of something that was built up perfectly, with fans not being sure if Bryan would ever get to the finish line.
Then we got the Wrestlemania build and while you could see where it was going, the journey might have been the best part. There was something so special about watching Bryan never quit and get there in the end, even after wrestling twice at Wrestlemania. One detail that gets overlooked though is Michael Cole, who HATED Bryan when he started but was cheering for him by the end of the triple threat. It showed just how easy it was to get behind Bryan, who was fighting for the right thing and refused to give up. That’s a special story and belongs in the pantheon of Wrestlemania moments.
Yeah I’m going to have to cheat again as I just can’t pick between the two.
John Cena vs. CM Punk
One of the best things that you can do in wrestling is take two ultra talented people from completely different backgrounds and put them together against each other. Hulk Hogan was the All American superhero and Roddy Piper was the loudmouth who kept antagonizing Hogan over and over with Hogan never really being able to put him away. Steve Austin was the Texas brawler who didn’t care about authority. Rock was the pure athlete who was born to be a star. When you can set that up, there really isn’t anything else like it.
That’s what WWE had with Cena, the All American boy and face of the company, vs. CM Punk, the guy who shouldn’t be here, didn’t look like a wrestling star and messed with everyone’s head. The key to the whole thing though was that, at least at first, Cena couldn’t beat him. Throw in the Summer of Punk story with the stakes at their highest and you had a modern Hogan vs. Piper. Just this time around the matches were awesome to go with the talking.
Johnny Gargano vs. Tommaso Ciampa
This was a little bit of a different feud as it was based on two guys who hated each other. The backstory was there, the wrestling was there, the violence was there…but the blowoff wasn’t there. Ciampa got hurt (for the second time in the feud) and they couldn’t do the big final match in New York with Gargano taking the title from Ciampa once and for all. If they can do that, it’s an all timer but for now, it’s just one of the best in years.
What made this work was the emotion and everything that spun off of it. Ciampa and Gargano both played mind games with each other, all the way to the point of reuniting in the Dusty Classic before Gargano got one up on Ciampa for a change. It was an epic story, though I can see taking some points off for all of the violent brawls instead of having a regular match somewhere. Anyway, it’s incredible and worth your time to go back and watch again, just like all of these.
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