What are the greatest matches and rivalries of the WrestleMania Era? It has never sat particularly well with long-time pro wrestling columnist and podcaster, The Doc Chad Matthews, the blanket statement that pro wrestling greatness is completely up to each individual, period, end of sentence. In fact, he strongly disagrees, having long posited that professional wrestling is reasonably objectifiable, like modern college football rankings in the Playoff Era. In America’s gridiron pastime, the college game relies on a select few, organized into a committee, to choose the best four teams worthy of competing for the championship each season. Though the decisions are also considered subjective, the Playoff committee rankings are reasonably objective too. It is not as if Alabama is picked because their crimson jerseys are pretty or USC is chosen because the President of the United States has an affinity for Los Angeles. There are basic criterion used to evaluate the resumes of each viable candidate. Breaking down wrestling’s greatest is no different. Utilizing something he calls objective subjectivism - a euphemism that acknowledges pro wrestling as obviously somewhat subjective but petitions for acknowledgment of pro wrestling also being inescapably capable of objectification (like Hollywood and College Football) - Matthews has mined the annals of WWE and NWA/WCW lore to discover the specific traits that define the greatest matches and rivalries and, having pinpointed these elements, has found a logical way to separate the truly great from the very good, to compare the totality of stories like Daniel Bryan vs. The Authority or Stone Cold vs. Vince McMahon to overall rivalries like Triple H vs. The Rock or Edge vs. Undertaker to iconic matches like Steamboat vs. Savage or Angle vs. Michaels in order to construct the ultimate historical countdown.
