.png)
The Grappl App has closed down after 5 years of use by 12 thousand users who made a total of 1.3 million ratings. The most rated matches have over 1200 ratings with the highest match receiving over 1600 ratings. All in all an incredible resource and something that a lot of people will be thankful that Gareth of Grappl was able to put together for that half-decade.
In September 2020, I actually asked Gareth to do a written interview about the Grappl App whilst it was making waves across the internet wrestling space, you can find it here:
Personally, I'm disappointed that it wasn't possible to keep the Grappl App going in it's pre-"Gareth taking on more work' pomp! (Whilst completely understanding how priorities change and these things sometimes need to fall by the wayside!) I do believe the scoring system was significantly better than the Cagematch ten-point scale and at it's height Grappl gathered more ratings than Cagematch too.
To mark the end of the app, we can provide the in-ring statistics for the top 10 Greatest Wrestling matches as rated by Grappl App users.
10. Kota Ibushi vs Hiroshi Tanahashi - 4.86 (471) - NJPW G1 Climax 2018, Final
9. Kenny Omega vs Kazuchika Okada - 4.86 (427) - NJPW G1 Climax 2017, Day 18
8. Will Ospreay vs Shingo Takagi - 4.86 (916) - NJPW Best of the Super Juniors 26, Final
7. Kenny Omega vs Tetsuya Naito - 4.87 (347) - NJPW G1 Climax 2016, Day 18
6. Kenny Omega vs Tetsuya Naito - 4.88 (491) - NJPW G1 Climax 2017, Final
5. Kenny Omega vs Kazuchika Okada - 4.88 (737) - NJPW Dominion 2017
4. Kazuchika Okada vs Katsuyori Shibata - 4.89 (1050) - NJPW Sakura Genesis 2017
3. Kenny Omega vs Kazuchika Okada - 4.89 (1667) - NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 11
2. Kenny Omega vs Kazuchika Okada - 4.89 (1662) - NJPW Dominion 2018
1. Will Ospreay vs Kenny Omega - 4.9 (438) - NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 17
You'll notice the heavy presence of Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada with seven and five appearances respectively. The only other wrestlers to appear in the top 10 more than once are Naito and Ospreay. The other headline detail is that all ten matches are from New Japan, all but one in a two year period; 2016-2018.
Grappl's 10 Greatest Ever Matches - Total Appearances
The first non-NJPW match to appear in Grappl's ranking of the greatest ever matches is Mitsuharu Misawa/Kenta Kobashi vs Akira Taue/Toshiaki Kawada match from AJPW Super Power Series 1995, Day 15 at number 11. Unfortunately, I don't have match stats for that as my AJPW Top 25 matches stats project is only up to 1994.
The first WWE match in Grappl's rankings is at 15th and is Bret Hart vs Steve Austin at Wrestlemania 13. Other interesting first appearances are NXT's first appearance at 18th with Andrade Almas vs Johnny Gargano and ROH's first appearance at 19th with Samoa Joe vs Kenta Kobashi.
AEW's highest rated match is Adam Page/Kenny Omega vs Young Bucks and Stardom's highest rated is Utami Hayashishita vs Syuri.
