I'm doing things a little differently this year. Instead of writing a list of matches, I'm going to look the last 12 months of pro wrestling in three different parts of the world, then give you some matches to watch at the end of each section. Ready? Ring the bell.
The U.S.
WWE continued to cozy up to authoritarians both domestically and abroad. They botched John Cena's retirement tour. They broke barriers in how much advertisement-laden downtime can fill a major show. They stuck their hands into puppet promotions like TNA in the States and AAA in Mexico. And they continued to be something like the Marvel Cinematic Universe of wrestling: a corporate colossus where beautiful stars subordinate their talents to a bland, lifeless synergy where every artistic choice is made by looking at a balance sheet.
Say what you will about nepo baby Tony Khan, but at least he's got an ethos. Khan runs the No. 2 promotion All Elite Wrestling, and he is a freakishly obsessive nerd whose challenger brand really does reflect his particular creative sensibilities—even if they've started to wear thin on me. AEW's 2025 felt like a holding pattern. Their TV seemed less essential than ever, and their attendance numbers were rarely remarkable, but they proved they can still deliver on the big events. They're not anywhere near the threat they looked to WWE in, say, 2021, but even in a worst-case scenario, they should still have a few more years at this level. To stay a worthy rival beyond that, however, they need some inspiration.
This was the year I got sick of what I would call the "banger" match, which is AEW's bread and butter. The banger match, more or less, is when the story of a contest is "two evenly matched athletic competitors do increasingly insane moves to each other until eventually one of them doesn't kick out." The goal of the match is not to get the spectators invested in one particular result, but to overwhelm them with fireworks until they're chanting "This is awesome!"
Why is that bad? Let me digress a little by talking about how I watch the NFL. In any given season, I'll see some games that are total duds, some suspenseful games between teams that I'm otherwise uninvested in, and a game every week where I am actively rooting for the Detroit Lions to win. AEW, as a fictional sports league, feels like it has the first two while lacking the necessary third component. With a rotating ensemble cast of interchangeably talented wrestlers, playing characters who often feel too malleable to the requirements of a pre-decided story, there's just not enough effort put into creating fan favorites that the crowd can really get behind. (My single biggest storyline frustration is that it feels like the only character who's allowed to express interest in the world title is the one who's challenging for it next.) There's a time and a place for a low-stakes, high-tempo back-and-forth match, but to really draw eyeballs week after week, I think the fans need to know what outcome it is that they're hoping to see.
I still enjoy a banger match when it's done especially well, but the average versions are a total yawn to me, and the proliferation of AEW's particular style—in a world where every regional wrestling audience can be plugged into what every other regional wrestling audience is seeing—is homogenizing the scene. As a result, I've been thinking about what AEW can learn from one of the rare promotions that feels immune to the trend of uniformity: Uganda's Soft Ground Wrestling. A cult hit on Youtube, SGW serves as one alternative for disenchanted wrestling fans because they don't equate epic length with epic quality, and they aren't obsessed with portraying every wrestler as essentially at an equal skill level for the first 95 percent of every match. Instead, they tell stories about badasses and bad guys that are intended to make the audience love their heroes.
I'll admit to having a bias toward traditional sports-broadcast aesthetics, and SGW's production can sometimes feel like watching a high-school prospect's sizzle reel, but I keep reminiscing over this spear by Kapeeka in his incredible match against Eddy Monster from late 2024. I love seeing all the kids react with unrestrained joy, and while some might argue that U.S. fans have more sophisticated tastes, I really don't believe that's true.
Where AEW did shine was when they put on violent car crashes that went beyond what WWE was willing to stomach. My match of the year was Toni Storm's crazy brawl against Mariah May at their Revolution PPV, which was a breathless experience that mixed blonde hair with bright red and paid off a long feud in the final match before May had to return to her home planet. The best rivalry, meanwhile, was Darby Allin and Jon Moxley, whose melodramatic violence seemed intended for larger and larger portions of the audience to say "Man, that's messed up" while they watched from behind their fingers.
Finally, we have to talk about the American independent scene, which feels like it's in the middle of an identity crisis. Once upon a time, it was a wrestling world sitting in opposition to WWE—a distinct subculture for those who hated the trashy carelessness of Raw and Smackdown. But in recent years, WWE has ever so slightly broadened their idea of what a wrestler can look like, and AEW has completely changed the business dynamic by doubling the number of TV jobs available and selling shows with firm roots in the U.S. indie style of the 2000s and 2010s. Consequently, the indies feel more and more like that thing good wrestlers only briefly do before moving up to WWE or AEW—not a subculture, but simply the minor leagues.
While these independent companies by and large seek friendly relationships with the corporate television promotions in the hopes that they can use some of their second-tier talent on their own shows, I've been hoping to stumble upon a creatively fertile place that gives the fat cats a big middle finger. To me, that's the path forward out of this era of stagnation, because neither WWE nor AEW has proven capable of developing their young talent. WWE has an elaborate training system at their "Performance Center" but rarely asks their prospects to work live in front of random audiences, producing cookie-cutter wrestlers who are only really good at doing what they're told. (It's no wonder their upper mid-carders and main eventers are, by and large, products of older systems or beneficiaries of familial connections in the business.) AEW, on the other hand, has essentially no system and a bench of contracted talent that's way too deep for the number of shows they have, meaning up-and-comers don't get the reps necessary to improve.
Even if you don't think wrestling is anything close to broken right now—and that's a reasonable point of view—I hope you recognize the need, in the long-term, for new performers with new ideas to challenge the establishment and push the art form forward. Instead, those guys are getting grabbed up by a duopoly more quickly than ever. I'm waiting on someone or something to reverse what feels like a downward spiral.
Some Matches I Liked From The Anglosphere
Mariah May vs. Toni Storm, AEW Revolution, March 9
Timothy Thatcher vs. Zack Sabre Jr., DEFY Streets Of Rage, April 13
Dominic Garrini & Kevin Ku vs. James Drake & Zack Gibson, DPW Title Fight In Vegas, April 18
IYO SKY vs. Rhea Ripley, WWE Evolution, July 13
Michael Oku vs. Ricky Knight Jr., RevPro Summer Sizzler, July 25
Bandido vs. Hechicero, ROH Death Before Dishonor, August 29
Darby Allin vs. Jon Moxley, AEW All Out, September 20
Lee Moriarty vs. Nigel McGuinness, ROH Final Battle, December 5
Mexico
There was no hotter place in the world for wrestling this year than Mexico City, and that's mostly thanks to CMLL. The beating heart of traditional lucha libre, whose Friday night shows at Arena Mexico are a must-see for any tourist, built on a couple of strong post-COVID years to become a real phenomenon in 2025, to the point that the rest of the world had no choice but to take notice. Led by franchise player Mistico, CMLL's shows stayed fresh with a mix of charismatic older vets with nostalgia power, in-their-prime luchadors, younger guys who are learning quickly thanks to a demanding schedule of live events, and foreign superstars making guest appearances to red-hot crowds. When AEW, which has a business arrangement with CMLL, took their TV down to Arena Mexico back in June, it made for the most memorable episode of their whole year.
No other promotion, not even WWE, would consistently be able to draw arena-sized crowds in the same city week after week after week. But of course, that sports entertainment behemoth took notice of CMLL's success, and they responded this year by purchasing what I would call the Mexican promotion's little-brother rival, AAA. When AAA started in 1992, it was a necessary counter to a company that had one very limited vision for what lucha libre could be. But in my period of following it—I kept track for a few years because their ace, Vikingo, was at the time the most jaw-dropping luchador in the world—it was probably the most aesthetically unpleasant company anywhere. I saw no care or artistry, or any motivation beyond "We'll do whatever will make or save us a buck." So improbably, WWE's presence has actually improved the AAA experience, particularly for the way in which Dominik Mysterio, there on loan, has shined in front of crowds that treat him like royalty. I happened to watch a lot of late-career Eddie Guerrero on Youtube this year, and more than his own dad Rey, Dominik looks like Eddie's true heir.
So 2026 in Mexico is going to be a hot promotional war with international consequences, as WWE tries to further its aims at monopoly. But instead of looking too far forward, I'd like to dwell just a little longer at how much I loved those Friday shows. At a time when major American wrestling is financially motivated to think only about television and PPV, and so panders directly to the home viewer, CMLL feels like it's for the ticket-buyers first and foremost, and those watching from far away are being allowed to hang out as guests at an awesome party. The shows are refreshingly tight, the atmosphere is one of a kind, and the wrestling itself works for newcomers and longtime fans alike, because the storytelling is much more "sports season" than "soap opera." If you follow CMLL regularly, you get to catch your favorite players competing every week, and if you're dropping in for the first time, you're guaranteed to see something your brain will instantly register as really frickin' cool. There's an outdated mindset in wrestling that casual fans will be turned off by moments that feel "fake," but in my experience there is nothing more entertaining to a newcomer than a colorful character like Mistico making a thrilling comeback, or a gifted young flyer like Neon pulling off his daredevil double rope jump. CMLL is tapped into what makes wrestling fun.
Some Matches I Liked From Mexico
Blue Panther vs. Ultimo Guerrero, CMLL Viernes Espectacular, August 8
Gran Guerrero, Stuka Jr. & Ultimo Guerrero vs. Mistico, Neon & Titan, CMLL Viernes Espectacular, August 22
Dragon Lee vs. El Grande Americano vs. El Hijo del Vikingo, AAA Alianzas, September 27
Atlantis Jr. & Difunto vs. Komander & The Beast Mortos, CMLL Sabados De Coliseo, November 22
Komander vs. Mascara Dorada, CMLL Domingo Familiar, November 23
Japan
It's the end of an era. On Jan. 4, Hiroshi Tanahashi will draw what's shaping up to be an enormous crowd to the Tokyo Dome for the promise of his final match. To use a sports metaphor, this is something like Derek Jeter's last game in New York. Over the last two decades, Tanahashi has been not just an extraordinary wrestler, but also the face of New Japan Pro Wrestling—earnest and hard-working and dangerously willing to gut it out through injury. The 49-year-old's body has been in rough shape for a while now, but that spark that connects him with the fans has never dimmed. His retirement at the Dome might well be the biggest event yet in 21st-century Japanese wrestling.
But don't be fooled into optimism by this one night, because once the send-off is over, NJPW and all the other companies in the country will continue what's been a very lengthy post-COVID slump. Those years without full-scale live crowds, an inability to compete in contract negotiations with the offers of American promotions, and a certain amount of creative doldrums have all made Japanese wrestling feel pretty niche after the boom it experienced with widespread internet streaming in the 2010s. What's interesting about the Tanahashi retirement show, however, is that it will also mark the debut of Aaron Wolf, an Olympic gold medalist in judo whose foray into wrestling is accompanied by the kind of fanfare and curiosity that this company desperately needs. At the Tokyo Dome, Wolf will be sort of like the No. 1 pick who watches while his last-place team retires the number of a past legend. Could he prove to be a franchise savior? NJPW sure hopes so.
But if this was a year to worry, it was also filled with a number of bright spots across the country's cornucopia of promotions. Sareee, who produced her own shows and wrestled in high-profile slots elsewhere, is the wrestler you need to be watching if you're still mourning Bryan Danielson's retirement. OZAWA, who brought a breath of fresh air to the promotion NOAH in a rivalry with the company golden boy Kaito Kiyomiya, is so good at being a swaggering, unrepentant villain that I can't help but come back around to loving him. Meiko Satomura, before her own retirement, embarked on a sterling final run that showcased all the wisdom she'd picked up from a career that began in 1995. Hirooki Goto, a second-tier vet in NJPW, kind of inherited the world title by default and ended up putting together perhaps the most compelling reign of the year. The 22-year-old monster Bozilla used her size and power to add a new dimension to the top women's promotion, Stardom. The bloody rematch between Jun Kasai and El Desperado was as "Oh hell yeah" as it gets. And across the country, even if they've aged past their prime, it's still a treat when legends like Minoru Suzuki, Naomichi Marufuji, or Aja Kong step between the ropes.
And also, I went to Japan! I wrote about my Korakuen Hall adventures back in May, but I also traveled to the southern tip of Koto City to see a show from the deathmatch promotion Freedoms in a little shed known as Shinkiba 1stRING, where falling rain makes an almost Lynchian static emanate from the roof. I had never seen a deathmatch in person before, so you can imagine how exhilarating it was to hear the pop of the glass breaking with my own ears and see the bright crimson of the wrestlers' blood right in front of my face. In the Masashi Takeda match, there was a spot where a guy was running to hit his opponent outside the ring in the corner closest to me, and the light tube he smashed into had a chunk come flying in my direction, almost like a corny 3-D movie. It was a highlight of my trip.
Some Matches I Liked From Japan
Kaito Kiyomiya vs. OZAWA, NOAH The New Year, January 1
Meiko Satomura vs. Sareee, Sareee-ISM Chapter VI, January 23
Baliyan Akki & Mei Suruga vs. Chon Shiryu & Leon, ChocoPro #426 Gatoh Rhapsody, February 2
Konosuke Takeshita vs. Oleg Boltin, NJPW The New Beginning In Osaka, February 11
Jun Saito & Rei Saito vs. Kento Miyahara & Yuma Aoyagi, AJPW Dream Power Series, March 9
Ryo Mizunami vs. Saori Anou, OZ Academy Battle Big Bonus, April 13
El Desperado vs. Jun Kasai, NJPW Death Pain Invitational, June 24
Hiroshi Tanahashi & Naomichi Marufuji vs. Kaito Kiyomiya & Ryohei Oiwa, NJPW Tanahashi Jam, June 29
AZM vs. Bozilla, Stardom Nighter In Korakuen, July 24
Katsuyori Shibata & KENTA vs. Minoru Suzuki & Naomichi Marufuji, Takayamania Empire IV, September 3
Jacky Kamei vs. Ryoya Tanaka, DG Storm Gate, September 4
Mai Sakurai vs. Nao Ishikawa, Marigold Battle Heart, November 17
