WINC Watchlist: Ricochet's Greatest Matches

Ricochet is the current AEW National Champion and is still pulling off incredible feats of athleticism after more than 20 years in the wrestling business. Debuting back in 2005, Ricochet would evolve from being a long-haired kid with a lot of spring in his step, to being one of the influential high flyers the wrestling business has ever seen. He might get under people's skin on social media, but there's a reason why Ricochet talks so highly of himself and it's because he can back up everything he says.

To put it simply, the way some people wrestle today simply wouldn't be possible without Ricochet. He took the athleticism reserved for Olympic level gymnasts, the aerial assault of the "flippiest" Luchadors from Mexico, the raw physicality of the Japanese style, and combined it all to create a character unlike anything the business had ever seen. Until Ricochet came along, moves that are now commonplace because of him only existed within the confines of a video game or someone's imagination, but not only did he bring those moves to life, he made them look effortless as well. Over the years, he has toned down his aerial offense in favor of just annoying everyone in AEW to the point where people will constantly ridicule him for being bald. However, he can still take to the skies when needed, reminding fans that while gravity may have forgotten someone like PAC, gravity never even met Ricochet to begin with.

Throughout Black History Month, we've highlighted some of the finest black wrestlers and gave you some recommendations on what matches of theirs to watch, and now it's time for "The One and Only" to get the spotlight. Ricochet has wrestled all over the world over the past 20 years which gave us a unique opportunity when putting this list together, let's have some variety. This watchlist will showcase five matches from five different promotions with one common goal, to prove that Ricochet is as good and influential as he claims to be. 

Honorable mentions go to his wars with Zack Sabre Jr. in WSW, EVOLVE, and wXw, one of his earliest encounters with Claudio Castagnoli in CHIKARA, and the three-way match from AEW WrestleDream 2024 that saw Ricochet, Will Ospreay, and Konosuke Takeshita go to war over the AEW International Championship. With all of that out of the way, here are five of the greatest matches from the entertaining career of Ricochet!

It's not often that a company like Dragon Gate gets coverage on a site like this, which is a shame at times since it is still one of the most consistently entertaining companies on the planet. Born out of the ashes of Ultimo Dragon's Toryumon promotion in 2004, Dragon Gate has quietly been one of the most influential companies in the entire world thanks to the emphasis on quick, junior heavyweight wrestling that gives high flyers and smaller performers a chance to take the spotlight. So what better promotion to platform someone like Ricochet than Dragon Gate?

By the summer of 2013, Ricochet had been a gaijin fixture of the Dragon Gate roster as both a face and heel, but he was known globally as the single best high flyer in all of wrestling at the time and this was on full display in this match from the Kobe Pro-Wrestling Festival. As part of World-1 International, Ricochet and Naruki Doi looked to take the Open The Twin Gate Championships (Dragon Gate's version of tag team titles) away from BxB Hulk and Akira Tozawa of MAD BLANKEY, two men who had held both tag and trios gold together in the past. Ricochet and Doi weren't regular partners which gave Hulk and Tozawa the advantage heading into it, but the champions knew what they were up against in their first defense of the straps.

The heels have one gameplan, keep the challengers grounded, especially Ricochet. They take every cheap shortcut that they can think of in order to stay on top of the challengers, even bringing steel chairs into action while the referee is distracted. Hulk and Tozawa know that Doi is a dynamo in the ring that can and will run off the ropes as fast and hard as he possibly can, a feat only topped by Masato Yoshino, and the fact that Ricochet will fly all over the place when given the chance, and when they can't keep the foreigner down for long enough, he makes the hot tag and all hell breaks loose.

The second half of this match is absurdly good, kicking off with Ricochet doing a Springboard Shooting Star Press to the outside to take out all of MAD BLANKEY and it just doesn't stop. There is a growing sense of escalation as every move just gets bigger and more spectacular, you sit there and wonder what will actually put these guys down for the count? In the end, it's Ricochet hitting a Double Moonsault with absolute precision to get the win and become new champions with Doi in the process. If you've never watched Dragon Gate, this is a great entry point because when these guys get going, they really get going. Ricochet was the best high flyer in the world, and honestly there might not be anyone who has come close to this version of him since. Incredible stuff.

No matter what some people might have you believe, Ricochet was in fact Prince Puma (I know, I didn't believe it at first either). Thanks to his work in Japan as well as the various independent promotions around the United States, Ricochet not only signed on to be part of the inaugural Lucha Underground cast, but was also made the top babyface and arguably the face of the promotion during its formative stage. 

Puma was put through his paces throughout the first season of Lucha Underground. He won the first-ever Aztec Warfare match, which had a chance of making this list, to become the inaugural Lucha Underground Champion. He had to deal with behemoths like Big Ryck, Cage, and Hernandez, and had virtually all of the Lucha Underground roster coming after him as Dario Cueto naturally let his money do the talking by promising a lot of cash to whoever ruled The Temple. Johnny Mundo was one of Puma's main rivals as they main evented the pilot episode with Mundo getting the victory, so when he went to Cueto with the idea of a title match against Puma, Cueto proposed the first-ever "All Night Long" match.

In short, this was 45 minute Iron Man match with no disqualifications and no count outs. Whoever ended the episode with the most falls would leave The Temple as the Lucha Underground Champion, virtually assuring themselves a spot in the main event of one of the Ultima Lucha shows at the end of the season. Thanks to the structure of Lucha Underground's episodes, matches like this and things like two-out-of-three falls matches really work perfectly. Puma gets the quick rollup to get an early lead and then there's a commercial. The action spills to the outside where Mundo uses a crowbar to not only even things up, take a break for commercials. Mundo hit Puma so hard with the crowbar that he can follow up with the Moonlight Landing, a Springboard Dropkick, and the End of the World to get three more falls for a commanding lead, and then another break.

It's a classic Iron Man set up where the babyface needs to do something truly spectacular to get back into the match, and he does this by plummeting himself and Mundo through four tables from the band stage to cut the lead in half. Puma follows up with another fall which causes Mundo to panic and try keep his distance, but this prompts Alberto El Patron to force Mundo back into the match which we could have done without to be honest, but it makes sense in storyline. Things are even as three minutes are left on the clock, and after a frantic final sequence, Puma hits the 630 in the dying seconds to retain his title. One of the best modern Iron Man matches to take place in the United States, and another classic Lucha Underground spectacular.

The P in PWG really should just stand for party because that is what this promotion was. Pro Wrestling Guerrilla started life as just another independent promotion for guys on the west coast to not only have another place to work, but to also save money on cross country flights to all of the main indie companies that ran on the other side of the country. It would eventually turn into a melting pot of some of the most hilarious comedy matches you've ever seen, a glimpse into wrestling's future with the amount of stars who passed through the doors of the American Legion Post #308, and above all, the most insane displays of athleticism you could find in the United States.

By the mid-2010s, PWG had established itself as the indie company everyone wanted to work for. Despite independent wrestling experiencing a boom period at this time, PWG simply couldn't be topped and matches like this are a prime example as to why. Ricochet was already established as the man with springs for legs thanks to his work in Japan and Lucha Underground. Matt Sydal was arguably the most well known thanks to his time as Evan Bourne in WWE and had been forming quite a partnership with Ricochet in NJPW. Will Ospreay was still in his formative years as a wrestler, but "The Aerial Assassin" was already carving out a big name for himself across the world and was riding high off the back of winning the NJPW Best of the Super Juniors tournament in the spring.

They were taking on Adam Cole and The Young Bucks, better known as the Superkliq, who were household names in PWG at this point, and were riding the Bullet Club wave of momentum and were proving that you didn't need WWE to make a living in wrestling if you put enough effort into your craft. With these six guys, you already know what you're getting yourself into, but even then it really does exceed expectations.

Outside of a small botch at the start, this is one of the quintessential PWG matches and one of the most picture-perfect spot-fests you will ever see. It's a party match. There isn't any real story other than you boo the Superkliq for being heels and you cheer their opponents because they're babyfaces. That's it, that's all you need to know. All you do once you've got that down is sit back and marvel at what these guys do over the next 20 minutes. The closing stretch really is something to behold as it has the place jumping up and down to the point where the camera starts shaking. Ospreay cuts off a Meltzer Driver (who is in the front row by the way) with a Springboard Cutter, Ricochet and Sydal hit their own Shooting Star variant of it, before all three faces hit simultaneous Shooting Stars for the win. The ultimate party match.

New Japan Pro Wrestling during the 2010s was arguably the hottest wrestling promotion in the entire world and it wasn't just because of what was going on in the main event scene. NJPW has always prided itself on having a top notch junior heavyweight division, so much so that the Best of the Super Juniors tournament has become a major highlight of the New Japan calendar each and every year. However, there was one match in 2016 that broke out of the normal viewing circles and divided the entire business.

Ricochet and Will Ospreay had a match that some people viewed as being one of the best matches in recent memory, and then there were those who absolutely despised it to the point where they thought the wrestling business itself would die overnight. The people who liked it appreciated the raw athletic ability of both men and being able to create such a highwire act inside of a wrestling ring, and the people who hated it thought it was just a choreographed gymnastics routine that exposed the fact that wrestling, contrary to popular belief, is actually pre-determined. 

One year on from that infamous match in the 2016 Best of the Super Juniors tournament, Ricochet and Ospreay were once again drawn in the same block for the 2017 tournament, meaning that the match that had the wrestling world talking would indeed be getting a sequel. It's not often that wrestling companies can capture lightning in a bottle twice, and in fairness to NJPW, the company wasn't trying to do that with this one. Instead, this match is more of a "main event" version of the match that happened 12 months ago.

Thanks to the fact that the original bout went viral, Ospreay and Ricochet ended up wrestling each other a lot between then and this match, resulting in a level of chemistry that was second-to-none. They start off slow with some chain wrestling and trying to keep each other down, both knowing what they're capable of when they get a little bit of momentum behind them. After a few stand-offs, Ricochet and Ospreay think then is the best time to kick things up a notch, and after redoing the sequence that made them famous a year earlier, things only get more intense from there.

I fully understand the people that don't like this match, and yes it is incredibly obvious that all of their stuff is planned ahead of time. However, I fall into the camp of people who can sit back, relax, and allow my jaw to fall off my face by watching these two guys do some of the most amazing things that have ever taken place inside a wrestling ring. It's the closest thing you'll get to a real-life battle that you'd see on an episode of "Dragonball Z" or in a video game and it's wonderful. Of all the matches these two had together, this is the closest they got to perfection.

After flying through the Japanese skies, dominating temples, and flipping his way through every major indie promotion in the world, there was only ever one place that Ricochet would end up by 2018, WWE. For years he was considered to be one of the best wrestlers in the world to never wrestle for WWE, but that all changed when he put pen-to-paper on a contract that would give him the chance to show the biggest audience imaginable what all the fuss was about. 

While not technically his "WWE NXT" debut as he wrestled against the likes of Buddy Murphy, Fabian Aichner, and Riddick Moss in dark matches and at live events between January and March, the six-man Ladder Match to determine the inaugural NXT North American Champion at NXT TakeOver: New Orleans would be the first time that the WWE Universe would get to see "The One and Only." There was one problem for Ricochet, or should I say five problems as the rest of the field was full of "NXT" names who were firing on all cylinders at the time. 

Adam Cole was the man who knew best in the match and was on the cusp of dominating "NXT" as the leader of The Undisputed Era. Lars Sullivan was being built up as an unstoppable beast with no known weaknesses. The Velveteen Dream was one of the most charismatic performers in the business at the time and had the ability in the ring to back it up. Killian Dain was the muscle of SAnitY and was becoming the surprise breakout star of the unhinged stable, and EC3 might have also been making his WWE return in this match, but he was riding the wave of momentum he created for himself by being one of the biggest modern stars for Impact Wrestling, now once again known as TNA.

Before I rewatched this match, I remembered it as being a showcase for Ricochet first and a multi-man Ladder Match second, and while Ricochet does show off more than most in this one, everyone does an exceptional job. Dain and Sullivan are the brutes who can give as much as they can take, Cole and EC3 are the egotistical jerks who also get their moments in the sun, Dream is the wildcard who swans his way through this match, and all five men produce genuinely awe-inspiring moments throughout.

With that said, Ricochet really is the star of the show. After all, the first move he performs is a Springboard Shooting Star Press to the outside, he's not in WWE to be another name on the roster, he's there to be a show-stealer. The Moonsault to the outside whilst being tipped off the ladder is incredible, every time he goes to the top rope you are on the edge of your seat, and even the bumps he takes are nasty enough to think there's no way he can get up. It's Cole who walks away with the win, but Ricochet was the man everyone was talking about after this modern classic.