2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Braun vs. Lashley

Braun Strowman vs. Bobby Lashley WWE Raw 2/22

ER: We've been watching a lot of shootstyle lately, and this match had the energy of a lot of these short shootstyle matches, only worked as straight pro wrestling. Braun and Lashley would both be great doing a UWFI rules fight as a PPV attraction, both seem like they'd be as good at it as any of the guys doing cool version of that on American indies. Amateur wrestler vs. Strong man is a cool showdown, and this was 5 minutes of them just colliding. They take turns knocking each other to the mat, and Braun hits a cool amateur lift gutwrench and starts hammer fisting Lashley's head, then whips him hard ribs first into the turnbuckles, and just one minute in it already felt like this cool desperate fight, as Lashley was hanging onto the ropes for dear life to block Braun's offense. I loved how Braun didn't fight it with Lashley on the ropes, just dumped him over, and that lead to a great moment of Lashley dodging a charge on the floor and Braun running and flipping over the ring steps. Their fighting back in the ring was cool, the kind of heavyweight power slugfest WWE could have all the time instead of heavyweight agility contests. Braun hits hard elbows out of a full nelson and blasts Lashley with a kidney punch, and it felt like a really big moment when Lashley kicked out of Braun's powerslam. This kind of match would have been so great to see in front of a live crowd, but I'll take these kind of hotly paced heavyweight matches in front of nobody at all. 

PAS: This was a bunch of fun, two absolute gigantic men, using that size as their primary weapon. Enough big guys doing little guy moves, I want to see Braun throw Lashley to the mat and use his Sunday ham sized fist try to smush his skull. I want Lashley to hit a spear which looks like it cut Braun in half. I liked how the only agility high spot in the match was Lashley's vertical leap onto the ring apron, it was a holy shit moment, but not one that looking like a less impressive version of a cruiserweight move. This reminded me of the Big Show vs. Mark Henry series, and that is a super compliment from me. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST