If there’s one thing wrestling fans love to do, it’s fantasizing about what could have been, or what could still be. This often applies to angles that went awry like WWE’s oft-lamented Invasion storylines. But on a much smaller level, wrestling fans like to talk about dream matches that they wish happened.
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One odd quirk about many dream matches is that many of them actually already happened, except that they went down before fans really knew or cared about the competitors involved. Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of these secretly fulfilled dream matches.
10 Minoru Suzuki vs. American Dragon (NJPW Summer Struggle - Day 11, 7/20/2004)
In light of Bryan Danielson’s much-hyped matchup with New Japan Pro Wrestling star and MMA pioneer Minoru Suzuki on the special 10/15/2021 “Buy In” for AEW Rampage, it just may shock some fans to realize that not only did this already happen, but it happened during Danielson’s forgotten two-year run with NJPW. From 2002 to 2004, Danielson went by the ring name American Dragon, taking part in the Best of the Super Juniors tournament, wrestling a young Hiroshi Tanahashi. Dragon also enjoyed a Junior Heavyweight Tag title run with Curry Man (a.k.a. Christopher Daniels).
9 Jeff Cobb vs. Keith Lee (PWG Game Over, Man 4/21/2017)
Keith Lee and Jeff Cobb are pretty similar wrestlers as far as being shockingly athletic big boys, but a dream match between the two is unlikely until Lee gets randomly released from WWE. But, luckily for fans, these two already had an awesome match in SoCal indie Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, where many modern dream matches have already gone down. The entire Game Over, Man card is full of great matchups, but this Lee/Cobb match is a highlight, full of hard-hitting action and athletic spots.
8 CM Punk vs. AJ Styles (ROH At Our Best, 3/13/2004)
CM Punk and AJ Styles don’t have similar styles by any stretch, but they’ve got similar careers as indie-friendly guys who became megastars and are beloved by the die-hards. The two also clashed a number of times between 2002 and 2004 across a number of promotions, but their biggest encounters were for Ring of Honor’s Pure Championship, a title with a strict set of rules to ensure more technically sound bouts.
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Styles beat Punk in the tournament to crown an inaugural champion, but a rematch occurred about a month later, with Ricky Steamboat as a guest referee. Running 24 minutes, this rematch showed off how great both Punk and Styles were before they were widely considered among the best in the world.
7 Hikaru Shida vs. Kana (Ice Ribbon Golden Ribbon 2012, 5/5/2012)
Speaking of the best wrestlers in the world, WWE’s Asuka makes a great case for being THE best, with AEW’s Hikaru Shida being not too far off. While the two clashing sounds like the ultimate AEW vs. WWE dream match, they actually met in three matches between 2012 and 2015. The first of these was for the Japanese promotion Ice Ribbon, with both stars several years into their careers at this point. While the match isn’t quite what they might be able to deliver today, they still put on a very good, stiff bout.
6 The Young Bucks vs. reDRagon (ROH Raising The Bar - Day 2, 3/8/2014)
A big part of booking AEW’s tag team division seems to be about what amazing tag team needs to take on The Young Bucks next. They’ve already taken on FTR, Santana and Ortiz, and The Lucha Brothers, but certainly, a big one on many fans’ lists is former two-time NXT Tag Team champs Kyle O’Reilly and Bobby Fish of the now-defunct Undisputed Era. Fish and O’Reilly used to be known as a duo called reDRagon, and they actually defended the Ring of Honor tag belts against the Bucks back in 2014. The Young Bucks actually won, making their title win one of the biggest in their career at the time.
5 Steven Regal vs. Samoa Joe (UPW Pride and Punishment, 10/10/2000)
For a while, William Regal seemed like the final boss of NXT, having taken on JTG, Kassius Ohno, and Cesaro when they all got too big for their britches. Samoa Joe definitely ranked among one of NXT’s top jerks during his heel run in 2016, but Regal was pretty much retired at that point. But the two actually had an encounter 16 years earlier in the Los Angeles-based developmental promotion Ultimate Pro Wrestling, which also trained a young John Cena. Regal got the best of Joe in this match, which was available on the “Hidden Gems” section of the WWE Network.
4 Shingo Takagi vs. WALTER (PWG Battle of Los Angeles - Night 3, 9/16/2018)
Pro Wrestling Guerrilla’s Battle of Los Angeles tournament features not only the best of the North American indies, but the international scene as well, bringing in wrestlers from Mexico, Europe, and Japan and leading to some hotly anticipated bouts. The semi-finals of the 2018 BOLA had future NXT UK champion WALTER take on future IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Shingo Takagi.
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Both are big dudes with a stiff style, and WALTER proved the one guy who could believably turn Shingo into an underdog in what to date has been their only-ever singles match.
3 Adam Cole vs. El Generico (IWC Super Indy X, 6/18/2011)
Trained by CZW’s wrestling school, Adam Cole started his in-ring career in 2008 and eventually took on a number of future WWE stars who were on the indie scene in the early 2010s. This includes Sami Zayn, who wrestled as the masked El Generico, as both took part in the Super Indy tournament for Pennsylvania-based promotion International Wrestling Cartel. Generico would get the win over Cole to make it to the three-way final round, but the two would never fight in WWE as their NXT runs did not overlap.
2 Britani Knight vs. Nikki Storm (EVE Championship Tournament - Day 2, 4/9/2011)
Paige and Nikki Cross (now Nikki A.S.H.) only debuted a couple of years apart in the mid-to-late 2000s, but their NXT runs also did not overlap, nor did their time on the main roster of WWE. However, they did have a match in UK’s all-female promotion Pro-Wrestling: EVE. EVE put on a tournament to crown an inaugural champion featuring both women as well as Alpha Female (aka Jazzy Gabert), Kay Lee Ray, and Paige’s own mom Saraya Knight. The future Paige would get the win over Nikki in the finals, holding the title for 56 days.
1 Sting vs. Mean Mark (WCW House Show, 9/1/1990)
One of the biggest missed opportunities of the past decade happened with Sting’s long-awaited arrival in WWE, where he rehashed some old WCW vs. WWE drama with Triple H and got sidelined by Seth Rollins. Of course, most wrestling fans only wanted one thing out of this run, namely a dream match with The Undertaker that never happened and will never happen. However, it actually did happen way back in 1990 at a WCW house show as ‘Taker (as “Mean Mark”) challenged Sting for the NWA World Title, ending with the future Undertaker tapping out to a Scorpion Deathlock (Sharpshooter).
