Match Reviews incorporate a five element system with no overall rating. Ratings are between 1.0 and 5.0 taken from the GamePro Rating System
| 0.0 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 3.0 | 3.5 | 4.0 | 4.5 | 5.0 |
| The Worst | Bad | Basic | Not Bad | Average | Good | Grood | Great | Outstanding | Perfection |
0.0: The Worst. This is reserved for the worst of pro wrestling. It also is for people who should have known better, trained pro wrestlers failing at their craft. There is no 0.5 because if you’re worse than bad then you’re the worst. I’m not going to give anyone the benefit of the doubt there.
1.0 Bad has almost nothing redeeming. It’s not the worst match I’ve ever seen in my life but I never want to see an element of a match be that low again.
1.5 Basic is reserved for any element where it’s clear the people involved are new to wrestling. Instead of scoring them as bad, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were basic.
2.0 Not Bad is when you can’t call it average and you can’t call it good. But you also can’t call it Bad or Basic. 2.0 or under is a failing grade.
2.5 Average is what most matches would be. Most weekly television matches will end up considered average. 2.5 or higher is a passing grade.
3.0 Good is better than average. A good television match you might not remember later but you enjoyed it while it was happening. Not much special to it but it’s still good.
3.5 Grood comes from Teen Girl Squad #4 from Homestar Runner. It’s when you mix great and good together. It’s grood. If you can’t wrap your head around a new word then think “very good”. If someone is a main event or uppercard wrestler they should be wrestling Grood matches to deserve that spot.
4.0 Great is when the match element is absolutely memorable. Getting a 4.0 should be a moment of pride. You’re in the upper echelon of match elements.
4.5 Outstanding is where we’re getting to the cream of the crop. As close to perfection as one can get.
5.0 Perfection is what it is. Very few matches ever get to this point in the history of pro wrestling.
The Elements
The five elements to a match are as follows:
Execution (how moves and strikes were executed, was selling believable, was bumping exciting)
Story (was there references to previous matches, references to story being told going into match made sense, did they tell a story other than who wants to win, did the emotional level make sense)
Pace (was the match rushed, did it drag, did they have enough time, did it feel complete, if it was to lead to another match did it feel like enough was left on the table)
Finish (was the finish satisfying, did it complete the story, was it a surprise, was it overprotecting through cheating and interference)
Fun Factor (was the crowd into the match, was it rewatchable or only good in the moment, was there entertaining spots, were the gimmicks properly executed)
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did a match element get a 4.5 instead of a 5.0?
As someone who reads Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter I know that the most common criticism or questions he gets is why he didn’t go a full five (or higher) on a match. People like to say something was the greatest ever or one of the greats and they like to see that full five. I know I won’t calm everyone down on this but I can do my best.
A 5.0 is perfection. Perfection in terms of perfect score and not, “there was not a single incorrect element” because that gets you into the weeds of, “They didn’t do this spot perfectly or someone bumped funny or there was a 15 second span of them doing nothing not even selling” and I don’t care to do that. The main thing you have to think about when it comes to a perfect score is undeniable, that for me in watching this match those elements are undeniable. The execution of Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada is a 5.0 element. The pace of Bryan Danielson vs. Adam Page II is a 5.0 element. The Fun Factor of the first Stadium Stampede is a 5.0 element.
A 4.5 is outstanding. Outstanding means you’re really impressed but that doesn’t mean you haven’t seen better, and the people involved might have been able to accomplish better. The Texas Death between Adam Page and Swerve Strickland didn’t have a perfect pace. It is better paced than most Texas Death matches but that doesn’t mean it was paced perfectly. That’s a 4.5 in pacing.
Why are so many TV matches scored between 2.5 and 3.5? Do you even like this company?
The easiest way to start this is to explain what average means to me. For many people growing up, especially in the United States, a 5/10 is a failing grade. You need a 7/10 to be average, 8/10 to be good, 9/10 to be great, and 10/10 to be perfect.
That’s not how my mind works. A 5/10 is average. That’s how my scale works as well. 5.0 is a 10/10 and a 2.5 is a 5/10. 2.5 for me is acceptable. Anything under a 2.5 is when I wonder why this is on television, and if it’s under a 2.5 on pay per view I’m going to wonder if I should get my money back.
I know that a lot of people today are going to score things higher. I know my ratings are going to feel aggressively low now. But I think once I’ve scored 100 matches or more, you’re going to have a better idea of what excellence is in my system. If everything is scoring a 4 or higher then nothing is really special.
I don’t agree with…
Cool. It’s okay to disagree with anything I post. Your view is not my view. Just remember that I am entitled to my view as you are entitled to yours. I’m not ruining some wrestler’s life by saying how I feel about their match and I’m not ruining the company for thinking something wasn’t as great as you did. It’s just a review.
I thought AEW didn’t tell stories?
Every single wrestling match that has ever existed has told a story. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or doesn’t understand what a story is. When people on the internet are complaining about All Elite Wrestling and say “story” they actually mean, “storylines” which is different from a match. A match can be an element or a storyline and is often the climax of a storyline. But every match itself tells a story. This can be said about real sports as well. Most wrestling stories are just, “The wrestler wants to win the match” so it’s easy to score a 2.5 by just telling that. Going up or down from there depends on how much more they tell, how they execute it, and if it made sense.
Why did this pandemic match get a high Fun Factor rating when there was barely no crowd?
Back when I was a teenager in the early 2000s I used to download classic matches off mIRC and watch them on RealPlayer or Windows Media Player. The sound quality back then was atrocious when they were trying to crunch these videos to a sendable format in the early days of DSL internet. Because of this I got used to watching matches with no sound. I would play music instead of the match audio. I still had a lot of enjoyment watching some of the greatest matches of all time. Saying you need a crowd cheering to enjoy a match is basically saying deaf people can’t enjoy pro wrestling. A crowd loving a match absolutely factors into the fun, but there’s more to fun than just a hot crowd.
To be honest, when a crowd is super hot but you can tell they don’t care about the match? That kills the fun for me. It isn’t AEW, but if you remember that post-WrestleMania match where people were throwing a beach ball around and Claudio had to smash it? That’s an example of where a hot crowd not caring about the match kills the fun for me.
Were you ever going to go with a different ratings system?
Execution actually contains what I was going to do originally. I was going to rate the striking, the moves, the selling, and the bumping separately. I quickly realized that most match ratings were going to be all over the place. These are elements of a great wrestling match, absolutely, but it’s also going to lead to some matches having weird ratings because the people involved weren’t trying to have a striking match even though they had a great wrestling match. So I put them all in Execution. It’s very similar to when people break down graphics in a videogame. There’s multiple elements you could pull from that, so it’s easier to just put it all in graphics.
If you are simply wondering why I didn’t go with a star system like Dave and others? Because the star system sucks. Nobody can agree on four stars, five stars, or Dave’s earthquake Richter scale (The Wrestling Observer star system is actually a Richter scale as Dave has explained in the past. Meaning one day we might have an 11 star match because you never know if there’s an earthquake that breaks the Ritcher scale.) Some do negative stars, some don’t, and some used to but barely do anymore which tries to create the impression that pro wrestling is better now when we all know they just don’t want the headache or bad feelings. It’s a complete mess. It just causes people to complain or debate in comparison to other matches instead of just reviewing the match itself.
My system is similar to Cagematch but they do an 11 point system (0,1,2,etc.) while mine is only 10 points (0,1.0,1.5,etc.) but it’s still easy to do the conversion. My 5 is their 10. My 4.5 is their 9. My 4 is their 8. My 3.5 is their 7. My 3 is their 6. My 2.5 is their 5. My 2 is their 4. My 1.5 is their 3. My 1.0 is their 2. My 0 is their 0. Just skip the 1 as I don’t do a 0.5. However, I don’t do overall ratings so just think of that based on the elements.
Why no overall rating?
I. Hate. Overall Ratings.
I am a writer. It’s what I do best. I like to write. I like to express myself through the typed word. I know the moment you put an overall rating into something it becomes an element of an algorithm these days. All people care about is how high the score was. I also fast forward on Fantano Reviews to the final 10 seconds at times so I get it.
So many people don’t actually read a Roger Ebert review of a movie. They just care if he gave it four stars, or even he just gave it a thumbs up. So much of videogame reviews are now ignored with people zooming past the words just to see if they gave it a 9 out of 10 so it can go with the other reviewers 9/10 scores and increase the Metacritic score. Or the Rotten Tomatoes score. Or the Cagematch score.
If I want you to read what I have to say? I can’t give an overall score. I can only give you the elements and how I rank them. You can decide yourself if I think a match with 5.0’s across the board is the best match ever.
I know there will eventually be people who will skip what I have to say to just post the elements and compare it to the elements of something else, and I’m going to make every element searchable on its own to help with that, but I still feel this way you have more incentive to see what I have to say than if I just told you yeah this was a 4.5 match out of 5.0.