2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

2. Antonio Cesaro vs. John Cena WWE Raw 2/17

ER: Okay, so show of hands, how many people expected there to be this many awesome WWE matches 6 or 7 weeks into the year? Yeah, I expected to have about 3 at this point. As it stands, there have been some that would have easily made it in a slower year, but with Raw and Smackdown featuring a lot of high end work every single episode we had to start getting more selective. Shoot, I really liked/loved upwards of 11 TV matches in just the last week! It's getting out of control.

And here we go with another awesome one. This match was just so damn cool and unique. It already felt like a fresh match-up from the bell, and things were going cool...and then Cesaro caught Cena during a leapfrog and turned it into an overhead tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. That's when things started getting great and never looked back. That was like the ultimate "Rick Steiner catches a leaping opponent" spot. Cena is enormous, and Cesaro caught him and muscled him around his shoulders like nothing. I thought that spot was incredible, and then Cena had to go and reverse the giant swing by floating his body up to deliver a DDT. I rewound it too many times, still can't figure out how it was possible. Here's a giant man, who rises from the Giant Swing like fucking Nosferatu from the casket, and just plants Cesaro. Everything about it looked like it completely defied gravity. Completely like nothing else I've ever seen. Cena is always really great in matches where the opponent has good offense, as Cena has always bumped and taken offense incredibly. I loved him bumping to the floor from the top rope off a Cesaro uppercut, and getting unreal height off Cesaro's flapjack into uppercut. Cesaro may have the most freakish wrestling strength I've seen since Backlund. Suplexing Cena from apron to inside the ring when he was at a complete leverage disadvantage was jaw-dropping. Him doing a Giant Swing in DENVER of all places to a man larger than him, and then not even seeming gassed afterwards was incredible. I am a rube and the longer the match went on the more I thought Cesaro had a chance to win, and the crowd felt it too (you can tell the crowds are going insane for all these new match-up main events, and I'm right there with them). The finishing run was beautiful, with Cesaro flipping out of the AA to hit a yakuza kick, then wanting more and getting leveled with a lariat. Cena Oklahoma rolling him into the AA was so damn cool. There was so much in this match that I've never seen before, such a unique clash of abilities and neat strength spots. I loved it (though man I really wanted it to end on that lariat).

PAS: I loved how the announcers kept putting over the similarities of both guys. One of my favorite things about Cena is all of the cool ways he demonstrates his nutty strength and Cesaro is like an even crazier version of that. Eric mentioned a bunch of the specific spots, and they all ruled, I really can't remember ever seeing a match like this before, where you have a match filled with feats of strength highspots. Your strongman wrestlers when we were all growing up, never did a ton of things to demonstrate that strength, outside of a knuckle lock or a press slam. When Dino Bravo faced Hercules they weren't rolling through while carrying full bodyweight, or doing outside in deadlift superplexes. These guys would make an amazing new age Steiners tag team, and they are an incredible pair of dance partners. This really felt like the first example of a classic rivalry, hopefully they just pair off and we get a handful of PPV matches, some great Euro tour handhelds, some more three segment RAW matches, a match which not only did I love on my own, but a match which got me amped for the future.


2014 MASTER LIST