WWE: Ranking The Top 20 Matches of 2017

credit: wwe.com

15. Finn Balor vs AJ Styles – TLC

The 2017 Tables, Ladders, and Chairs pay per view may go down as one of the most surprisingly good shows of the past decade. Not to say it was an amazing night. It was pretty good but it originally looked like it was going to be dreadful. With the two marquee matches on a boring card being Finn Balor in yet another match with Bray Wyatt to continue their painfully bad 2017 feud and a 5 on 3 TLC Handicapped match with The Shield facing The Miz, The Bar,  Braun Strowman, and Kane, this show had virtually no spark. But when a bout of viral meningitis knocked both Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt out of the show, the WWE scrambled and in the main event replaced Reigns with Kurt Angle, marking his first WWE match in over 11 years.

However, the best thing to come out of this when Daniel Bryan loaned AJ Styles over RAW for the night to face Balor in place of Wyatt. Styles flew from South America to Minneapolis to take the match and once again remind fans why he was the unabridged 2017 WWE MVP. It was a dream match between the former Bullet Club members in New Japan Pro Wrestling and it almost seemed like the near 14,000 in attendance at Target Center knew they were seeing something unique and special.

With virtually no time to build and with no titles or stakes on the line, Balor and Styles still managed to pull of the match of the night, while one of the best of the year. It was a back and forth throw down which saw each guy come close a number of times before Balor got one of the biggest wins of his career via his “Coup de Grace”. The image of the two legends coming together with their old Bullet Club salute was one of the best moments of 2017. When two guys this good are paired together, one will always expect magic. And Styles and Balor did exactly that at TLC.