These days, especially while live pro wrestling with real fans present is barely a thing anymore, cinematic matches are more popular than ever. It’s a unique opportunity to experiment with the medium and what you can do that still constitutes a wrestling match. And, while the concept is hardly new, there have been many more as of late now that everyone is far less protective of kayfabe.
However, not all cinematic matches are created equal. Sometimes, like Frankenstein, the experiment goes horribly wrong and what ensues is actually less fun than a regular wrestling match would have been. So here are five cinematic matches that are a blast as well as five that totally failed.
10 Fun: Firefly Fun House Match (WWE WrestleMania 36)
There’s probably no bigger surprise in 2020 than the John Cena vs. Bray Wyatt Firefly Fun House Match being legitimately great. While not a competitive, athletic wrestling match, it’s a bizarre “Adult Swim meets David Lynch” style deconstruction of John Cena the wrestling character by one of the most compelling performers in modern WWE.
What’s even more shocking is that Bray Wyatt won and John Cena hasn’t shown up on WWE television since.
9 Really Bad: House of Horrors (WWE Payback 2017)
There have been several so far, but not every Bray Wyatt cinematic match is a hit. Take, for example, the House of Horrors Match, where Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt had an Extreme Rules match in somebody’s house.
It’s not that well produced, looking like a low-budget horror flick, and not in a good way. What’s worse is that it turns into a regular live wrestling match in the end, complete with a Jinder Mahal run-in.
8 Fun: Corporate Ladder Match (WWE Money in the Bank 2020)
For the quarantine era MITB, WWE came up with an insane idea: stage both the men’s and women’s ladder matches at the same time in a cinematic match. Both groups would fight their way through WWE corporate headquarters like The Raid until they reached the briefcases, which were suspended over the roof.
The result was very silly, didn’t make a lot of sense, and had Baron Corbin murdering two of his coworkers, but it was cartoonish fun.
7 Really Bad: One Final Beat (NXT, 4/8/2020)
The biggest ongoing storyline of NXT, the blood feud between Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa, had escalated into an ultra-destructive brawl throughout the WWE Performance Center, resulting in the need for a final match.
This much-hyped climax was going to be an empty arena match with a referee present only to determine the winner. Too bad the result was an over-indulgent 35-minute slugfest that proved divisive even with hardcore NXT fans -- and that was before the swerve ending.
6 Fun: The Boneyard Match (WWE WrestleMania 36)
The big main event of WrestleMania 36 Night 1 was a cinematic brawl between AJ Styles and The Undertaker. The build to the match was nothing to write home about, but The Boneyard Match itself was a ridiculously fun B-movie action movie brawl.
It involved Undertaker possibly killing Luke Gallows and Karl Anderson as well as burying AJ alive. AJ got better, but The Good Brothers were never seen again.
5 Really Bad: Backlot Brawl (NXT TakeOver: In Your House)
Hilariously, the one thing NXT can’t get right compared to WWE is cinematic matches. The NXT Title feud between Adam Cole and Velveteen Dream was settled with a “Backlot Brawl,” a Street Fight style match that was pre-taped in a backlot area of Full Sail University.
Overall it felt like an overblown production for the sake of having a cinematic match instead of anything that actually required one. There’s a pretty great part where Dexter Lumis kidnaps Roderick Strong and Bobby Fish, though.
4 Fun: The Final Deletion (TNA Impact, 7/5/2016)
Matt Hardy’s absurd Broken Universe is one of the great things to come out of wrestling in the 2010s, much less TNA itself. The pièce de résistance of this endeavor is, of course, The Final Deletion, which established Matt Hardy as pro wrestling’s gonzo auteur weirdo, combining backyard wrestling with amateur home video and magical realism.
And, unlike WWE cinematic matches, it’s not even remotely slick or overproduced. It is a perfect work.
3 Really Bad: The Wyatt Family Compound Match (WWE Raw, 7/11/2016)
The earliest attempt to produce cinematic pro wrestling via Bray Wyatt might be the worst one. The New Day decided to take on The Wyatt Family at the Family Compound, and the result is a choppily edited, incoherent mess made even harder to watch with grindhouse-style film flickers.
It’s all so much better on paper than it is in execution. What’s even worse is that there’s no real ending -- the two groups just brawl for a few minutes and go their separate ways.
2 Fun: GRAMMYs Street Fight (Beyond Wrestling, 2/10/2019)
Where were you when Orange Cassidy and Stokely Hathaway had a Street Fight outside the GRAMMYs? In February of 2019, Independent Wrestling TV streamed a cinematic style match where the future Malcolm Bivens took on the best friend of Best Friends for the IWTV Independent Wrestling Championship in a parking garage.
The result is a very silly, very fun match featuring two of the best, funniest performers in modern pro wrestling -- before anyone ever saw them on television.
1 Really Bad: Melissa Santos vs. Catrina (Lucha Underground 5/9/2018)
Season 4 wasn’t Lucha Underground’s strongest run for a variety of reasons, and this cinematic style confrontation between ring announcer Melissa Santos and Mil Muertes’ immortal manager Catrina offers quite possibly the worst “match” in the series.
The two engage in an extended hand-to-hand martial arts fight throughout the new Temple and outside in a manner that’s poorly shot and not very exciting. Despite the show’s overall grindhouse/B-movie aesthetic, this felt cheesy and low-rent in a way Lucha Underground never felt before, and -- worst of all -- it totally lacked charm.