Hey! It’s the list that is going to have a bunch of women’s matches on it! Because WWE finally decided to push women as main event stars naturally and organically in 2018! What a concept.
That’s right, all it took for WWE to really push women as main event talents was the arrival of Ronda Rousey.
Jabs aside, 2018 was an interesting year for WWE on pay-per-view. The company was still in a tug of war with their fans about who should and shouldn’t be the top babyfaces. WWE said Roman Reigns, fans said no. Fans said Becky Lynch, WWE said no. You can’t win.
Despite the struggle, there were still many great matches on pay-per-view. Let’s take a look at some of them.
These are the 11 best WWE pay-per-view matches of 2018.
11. Buddy Murphy vs. Cedric Alexander – Super Showdown
The Cruiserweight division will probably never get the recognition it deserved for the quality of work it contained in 2018.
After Enzo Amore was fired the division was taken off Raw and kept on 205Live if anyone knew it was there. If you did know it was there you were treated to incredible performances fairly regularly.
Otherwise, the only time you saw the cruiserweights was in matches like this. Not a lot of people worked terribly hard on WWE’s big foreign shows but in this case, there was extra incentive.
Super Showdown 2018 took place in Australia, home of Buddy Murphy. In his home country, Murphy and Cedric Alexander put on one of the best pay-per-view matches of the year with Murphy capturing the title.
10. AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe – SummerSlam
A few of the matches on this list would place much higher if they had better finishes. This is definitely one of them.
AJ Styles and Samoa Joe’s WWE rivalry was plagued by horrendous booking. Each of their matches was very well worked but WWE just refused to get out of its own way.
At SummerSlam, their match ended in a DQ when Styles snapped, attacking Joe after Joe taunted Styles’ family. Thankfully, the match itself was still good enough to warrant a place on this list.
However, if this had been given free reign to be as great as it should have been, it might have taken the top spot.
9. Charlotte Flair vs. Ronda Rousey – Survivor Series
Speaking of great matches with terrible finishes, it’s Charlotte Flair vs. Ronda Rousey!
Rousey took to wrestling very quickly and performed well beyond her experience level. Some of her best performances are on this list, including this match with Charlotte.
In the annual Raw vs. SmackDown nonsense of Survivor Series, the two battled as the representatives of their brands. They had a very good match that was only tainted by another lame DQ finish.
Charlotte had decided she had enough of wrestling this match and attacked Rousey with a kendo stick. It did play into the story later as their rivalry continued but in the moment it was just a lame finish.
8. Men’s Money in the Bank Ladder Match
The lineup for the 2018 men’s Money in the Bank match was pretty spectacular. With names like Rusev, Samoa Joe, Bobby Roode and Finn Balor, there were so many fun possibilities with the various potential winners.
That made the match intriguing but the actual work made the match great. One of the better Money in the Bank matches of the past few years, most people involved got the chance to shine at one point or another.
Braun Strowman winning was an odd choice made even odder by WWE’s decision to have him lose his cash-in match but I digress.
As for the match itself, it was chaotic but still enjoyable and one of the highlights of a pretty solid year.
7. Ronda Rousey & Kurt Angle vs. Triple H & Stephanie McMahon – WrestleMania 34
The questions were there when Ronda Rousey was announced for her first WWE match at WrestleMania 34. How would she do transitioning from MMA to pro wrestling? Thankfully, the answer was “quite well actually”.
At WrestleMania she and Kurt Angle teamed up to take on Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. Three years after confronting them at WrestleMania 31, Rousey disposed of Triple H and Stephanie in excellent fashion.
Rousey looked like she belonged, mixing her MMA style with pro wrestling showmanship. Triple H and Kurt Angle looked great too and Stephanie took her beating like a champ.
Not many would have picked this match to steal the show at WrestleMania, but steal the show they did.
6. Seth Rollins vs. The Miz – Backlash
The Miz does not often come up in lists like this. His strengths have always been his promos rather than his in-ring work but at Backlash 2018, he and Seth Rollins put on the match of the night.
As the show opened with this absolute banger of a match, there was hope for the pay-per-view. However, Backlash ended up being an atrocity but that was through no fault of this match.
Rollins’ run as Intercontinental Champion in 2018 was perhaps his most consistently great work in WWE and he managed to get one of The Miz’s best performances ever on this night.
5. The Royal Rumble Match
Few Royal Rumble matches can come close to touching this one in terms of quality. From start to finish, this is in the top tier of Rumble matches ever.
The roster was stacked with stars like John Cena, Randy Orton and Rey Mysterio representing the old guard while stars like Roman Reigns, Finn Balor, Rusev, Seth Rollins and Shinsuke Nakamura represented a new generation.
The match was booked to perfection too. Going in, the most likely winners were Cena, Reigns, Balor and Nakamura. Sure enough, they were the final four, ensuring the crowd was as engaged as possible until the end.
All of the work was phenomenal and Nakamura eliminating Reigns got one of the biggest reactions of the entire year. Take it from me, I was there.
4. Dolph Ziggler & Drew McIntyre vs. Seth Rollins & Dean Ambrose – Hell in a Cell
While Dean Ambrose was not happy about reuniting The Shield in 2017-2019, his tag matches with Seth Rollins were often the highlights of whatever pay-per-view they were on.
In this case, it was at Hell in a Cell 2018 as they challenged for the Raw Tag Team Championship against Dolph Ziggler and Drew McIntyre.
This was a fantastic tag team match as both teams worked very hard. Anytime members of The Shield got involved with the tag titles during this period they were treated a bit more seriously which is nice.
I only wish that same treatment would have continued when they weren’t involved.
3. Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka – TLC
By the time we got to TLC 2018, WWE was able to put women’s matches in the main event of pay-per-view without the overproduced feel of Hell in a Cell 2016.
Here the match wasn’t the main event BECAUSE they were women, this was just the best match for the spot which is how all main events should be.
Additionally, Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair and Asuka had one of the best TLC matches of all time so mission accomplished on all fronts.
The finish was a bit odd as fan-favorite Ronda Rousey cost fan-favorite Becky Lynch the match so fan-favorite Asuka could win but this was Asuka’s first main roster title win and it felt special.
Taking the title off Becky was tough but putting it on Asuka made it much more bearable.
2. Brock Lesnar vs. Daniel Bryan – Survivor Series
It’s Adam Blampied’s favorite match. That’s gotta count for something.
At Survivor Series 2018, Daniel Bryan took on Brock Lesnar in a match that would have seemed impossible only a year earlier. Bryan had won the WWE Championship just days earlier, turning heel in the process.
That did make this match a bit strange as he was forced to play a babyface role against the heel Lesnar but my goodness did they ever mesh their styles perfectly.
Lesnar has always performed best against smaller agile wrestlers. This was maybe the best case of this as he threw Bryan around with ease before bumping his ass off for Bryan when the time came.
This match is a work of art and one of the biggest highlights of not only Bryan’s WWE career but Lesnar’s as well.
1. Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair – Evolution
The Evolution pay-per-view would have been well-received by many regardless of its quality because of the significance of the show.
An all-women’s pay-per-view was so far beyond anything that WWE would have considered for the women’s division for so many years, just having the show would have been an achievement in itself.
That being said, in order to have a truly legendary show, there had to be a legendary match. Thankfully, Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair took care of that.
Competing in a brilliant Last Woman Standing match, the two battled in WWE’s best match of 2018.
There were weapons, crazy bumps, and a good amount of creative storytelling as fans were finally gifted a massive win for Lynch as a babyface.
2018 was the year WWE got behind its women and the women showed why it should have been done much sooner.
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