wrestling / Columns

The Magnificent Seven: The Top 7 Submission Matches

February 13, 2017 | Posted by Mike Chin
Steve Austin Bret Hart WWE WrestleManias Image Credit: WWE

The submission match hold a special place in the pro wrestling world. While the submission is a more accepted necessity in shoot combat sports, in pro wrestling, it’s interpreted more through the eyes of the common, casual fan—that someone is not only getting held to the mat or KOed, but rather forced to admit that his opponent is the better man. While the risk of injury or the inevitability of getting choked out are reason for surrender, in wrestling it’s tended to equate more to one wrestler conceding the pain is too much and chickening out rather than facing more punishment.

Some of this interpretation of submission has shifted in the last twenty years, with the rise of MMA and with pro wrestling promotions in general aiming for a product that leans more realistic, or more like the simulation of an actual sporting event than a clash of mythological figures. Nonetheless, submission victory in wrestling remains decisive and more often than not carries a connotation of humiliation. Thus, matches in which only a submission can pick up the win carry a certain brand of gravitas, and often finality.

For the purposes of this countdown, I considered any match in which submission or surrender is required to win, excluding War Games (which I wastempted to weave in because the traditional take on the match does require submission or surrender, but the other rules are different enough, and there are enough worthy War Games matches that I feared it would derail the countdown). This list does include I Quit Matches, Submission Matches, and even a No Mas Match.

#7. John Cena vs. Randy Orton, Breaking Point 2009

People tend to dismiss the Cena-Orton feud that ran on and off from 2007 to 2009, and particularly this leg of it in 2009 for running too long and feeling too redundant, while scarcely delivering truly great matches along the way. I won’t entirely disagree—I was bored with Cena-Orton at the time, too, and while I do feel both men are better all-around performers than the IWC tends to give them credit for, I also would have gladly seen some newer blood with fresher movesets in the main event picture during that time.

It’s not fair to dismiss all of the matches Cena and Orton put together, though, and for me this one serves as a prime example of one of their matches in that it wasn’t exactly great, but was quite good. The story going into the match was that these two had already traded multiple wins. Cena was already all about never giving up, but Orton, at his serpentine best, was all about asking how can you know you wouldn’t give? under all sorts of evil circumstances.

The match followed that story nicely, with Orton dominating most of the action and introducing handcuffs into the mix to further incapacitate and brutalize Cena. It was, therefore, quite poetic when Cena turned the tables to apply a sadistic handcuff-assisted STF to ultimately lock up Orton and force him to submit.

This match embodies the core elements of the submission match stipulation—two performers in a well-established rivalry pulling out all the stops in a brutal (by the standards of the day) match. I rate it just above Cena-JBL at Judgment Day 2005 for Cena having advanced significantly as a worker by this point, and for the superior finish (the cop out of JBL playing chickenshit heel and submitting rather than getting battered was technically true-to-character, but a huge anti-climax).

#6. Ric Flair vs. Mick Foley, SummerSlam 2006

Like most fans at the time, I didn’t have high expectations for this match. Flair and Foley were each well past their primes, and the two hadn’t exactly lit the world on fire in their preceding bout at Vengeance. However, on this summer night in 2006, if only for thirteen minutes, Ric Flair was Ric Flair, and good God was Mick Foley Mick Foley, breaking out the barbed-wire bat, thumb tacks, trash cans, and, of course, Mr. Socko.

This one was not the kind of wrestling classic Flair might have busted out fifteen-to-twenty years earlier, but the guys did all but gleefully go for the gusto with all of the toys to create a memorably violent, bloody affair that blew off their heated rivalry, built on the premise of comparing legacies. Foley was fighting for his legitimacy, and it was only appropriate that he tugged Flair into the hardcore wrestling world to duke it out on his own terms.

The match does lose a little bit of credit for the relatively short length and for the finish—in which neither man truly gave in to the other, but rather Foley was manipulated into giving up when Flair threatened to hurt Melina. Just the same, each of these mitigating factors has a reasonable explanation, because did we really want to see Flair and Foley bleed all over for more than fifteen minutes? And did anyone really want to see Foley give up legitimately? (Flair would make more sense, but at that point, he was the one with a couple years of full-time performance still ahead of him.)

#5. Sexy Star vs. Mariposa, Luch Underground May 2016

And so we arrive at the No Mas Match—Lucha Underground’s spin on an I Quit Match, contested between the promotion’s preeminent female star, Sexy Star, and menacing relative newcomer Mariposa. The storyline going into this match was that Star had more than once gotten the best of Marty The Moth Martinez, prompting him to abduct her and work with his sister Mariposa to subject her to all manner of psychological and physical torture. Star had gotten free and returned to the LU ranks, but was a shell of the performer she had once been. Finally, with support from her friend The Mack, she had another confrontation with the brother-sister duo and broke loose, no longer afraid, but rather fighting with a fury to lead into this match.

And the match to follow was excellent—in my book, one of the top five LU matches to date. Mariposa had worked for years under different gimmicks, including thriving on the indies as Cheerleader Melissa, and was completely prepared to both pummel Star with brute force, and tear her apart using holds based wrestling, perfectly tailored to the submission match gimmick. Star was beaten and bloodied, but at the match’s climax, still refused to say no mas, instead cursing out Mariposa on the mic—a demonstration of her fury, her resistance, and that she would fight back to ultimately lock in a cross arm breaker to force the submission.

Stories of redemption are few and far between in the pantheon of submission matches, but this was clear cut case of it, with Star taking back her life and her pride. While she would continue to feud with Mariposa and Martinez tangentially for the rest of the season, Star was on to bigger and better things, and this feud—particularly this match—was a launching pad for her to move up the card.

#4. The Rock vs. Mankind, Royal Rumble 1999

When I think of submission matches, I tend to think of bouts that are largely technical with extended use of holds to progress the story, provide false finishes, and ultimately end the bout. While Foley does apply the Mandible Claw at one point in this match, otherwise, the closest thing I recognized to a hold was Foley choking out Rock with a ladder.

This match is far more concerned with brawling than holds, and it’s one of the very best matches in that style, completely shifting the match gimmick to match the performers and their feud. The two roam the arena and wail on each other culminating in the infamous spot of Rock hammering Mankind with chair shots to the head—roughly ten of them—to incapacitate his relentless foe.

Critics will land on either side about the finish of this match—piping in a previously record of Foley saying, “I Quit!” in sync, with Rock holding the mic up to him, to simulate surrender. On one hand, it was a bit of a cop out because neither man really needed to say he gave up, which was supposed to be one of the central draws of the match. On the flip side, these lengths of storyline machinations and manipulations were perfectly in line with Rock and the Corporation and so made complete sense, while allowing Foley to save some face in defeat by not actually having to submit.

#3. Ric Flair vs. Terry Funk, Clash of the Champions 1989

And so, we enter that point in the countdown when I would accept any of the remaining entries in the number one spot—from where I’m sitting, they’re all legit five-star, historic matches.

We could debate all day long whether Ric Flair is truly the greatest wrestler of all time. But if we were to shift the conversation to the single best year any wrestler ever had as an in-ring performer, I’d be very hard pressed to argue against Flair in 1989. For, yes, 1989 featured the Ric Flair-Ricky Steamboat world title trilogy—little question, the greatest three-match series of all time (with each individual match making a case as the single best bout of all time). But then Flair moved on to Terry Funk.

The Flair-Funk rivalry was fundamentally different from Flair-Steamboat. While Flair-Steamboat did cast Flair as the heel and Steamboat as the babyface, it was nonetheless largely a battle for respect with little shenanigans and a focus on relatively pure wrestling. Funk, on the flip side, was ahead of his time in terms of mainstream hardcore wrestling, and kicked off the rivalry by piledriving Ric Flair on a table.

The feud to follow was intense for sure, but reached its peak in this blow off I Quit Match for the world title, which featured a particularly impressive blend of wild, stiff brawling, with holds and scientific wrestling. Funk would threaten Flair with a piledriver to his already injured neck, but Flair refused to give. So Funk went ahead and hit him with devastating move that would ordinarily be a finisher but, in this case, was just a plot point in a longer journey. After a half hour, Flair locked in the Figure Four Leglock in the middle of the ring to finally humble Funk by securing the submission.


Magnum TA vs. Tully Blanchard – Steel Cage I… by WordLife19

#2. Magnum TA vs. Tully Blanchard, Starrcade 1985

For all of us who groan when a supposedly heated grudge match opens with a tepid collar-and-elbow tie up, or when a blow-off between great rivals ends on a fluke-y roll-up pin, this match is our answer. Magnum TA spent a goodly portion of 1985 chasing Tully Blanchard, the US Champ, only for Blanchard to escape with his title time and again. So, they arrived at their climactic showdown—not only an I Quit Match, but one contested inside a steel cage.

These guys brawled intensely from the onset, and the match went on to represent the broader feud in a nutshell. Blanchard, the veteran champ, connived his way into brutally dominating the young challenger. Magnum refused to surrender, however, and ultimately upped his game, showing his willingness to embrace violent means in order to ascend the card. Though it was Blanchard who broke a wooden chair and went after Magnum with the resulting stake first, it would be Magnum who horrifically made Blanchard bleed and threatened to blind him to ultimately capture the submission.

I don’t think this bout is objectively as good of a wrestling match as the ones ranks number one and three, but in terms of barbarity and selling the severity of the I Quit gimmick, you’ll be hard pressed to find a more extreme or decisive piece of business than the pitch perfect finish to this excellent match.

#1. Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin, WrestleMania 13

I’ll preface this write-up by conceding that this was the definitive I Quit Match for my generation. While I was alive for Flair-Funk and Magnum-Blanchard, I was both too young and not yet following anything but WWF programming with enough regularity to really appreciate what was happening in those showdowns. For Hart-Austin, I could and did appreciate the match in its immediate context, and have come to appreciate even more given the historic implications of the double-turn the guys artfully built to and executed in the finish to this match. And so, I place it in the number one spot, though I’d accept arguments that it could fall as low as number three on the list.

It’s common knowledge that this match was not supposed to happen. WrestleMania 13 was supposed to see Hart get his rematch with Shawn Michaels in the main event, while Austin did whatever the powers that be concocted for him in the upper mid-card. Michaels went on sabbatical, though, and when the WWF reshuffled the deck, Hart and Austin wound up together again. Hart has said that he didn’t like the prospect of the match—that it felt redundant to the (excellent) match they’d put on at the preceding Survivor Series. Austin has gone on record to express his own reluctance, given that, particularly at that stage, he wasn’t really a submission wrestler and didn’t know that the match would play well to his talents.

The result? Arguably the greatest match in WrestleMania history.

Hart and Austin cut a wicked pace in this match, brawling early then working a series of holds on one another. Hart was already accepted as one of the greatest workers of all time, and this match saw Austin realize his potential, proving he could hang at that very level.

The iconic closing image of this match featured Austin bleeding profusely from his head, screaming in pain while Hart wore him away with a Sharpshooter. This turned out to be the dramatic predicament that each man’s WWF career would hinge on. Hart, who had ascended to international glory as one of the promotion’s top faces, refused to release the hold even after Austin had passed out, then kicked him, then powdered out of a confrontation with guest ref Ken Shamrock—all of this capitalizing on waning fan allegiance to Hart and pulling the trigger on a brilliant heel run that would ultimately see Hart assemble the Hart Foundation stable and get one last run with the WWF Championship. And Austin? The lone wolf heel would capitalize on his mounting popularity and in the most unlikely of journeys emerge as arguably the most popular WWF star of all time.

There’s a fair bit of irony that this, possibly the greatest submission match of all time, did not end with a submission, but in its own way, it charted a course for Austin’s character who would defy the rules and wind up fundamentally unlike any face of the company that preceded him—a foul-mouthed, beer-swilling anti-hero who refused to give up.

Which matches would you add to the list? Some of my top runners up included John Cena vs. JBL at Judgment Day 2005, Jeff Hardy vs. Matt Hardy at Backlash 2009, Rey Mysterio vs. Chavo Guerrero Jr. on Smackdown in 2007, and The Rock vs. Triple H on a 1999 edition of Raw. Let us know what you think in the comments.