Loss

Have you seen the Cena matches with CM Punk at MITB 2011 and with Daniel Bryan at Summerslam 2013? I think those would be up your alley, especially the latter. The closest we're going to get now to an old school NWA title match.

Bret has his usual suspect great matches and performances and some outside of that, but not too many. TV obviously isn't a fair comparison, but I do think comparing Cena's TV to Bret's Coliseum Video and handhelds is a fair comparison, and Cena has the edge there. Cena doesn't have a masterpiece performance like the double turn with Austin at Wrestlemania XIII, but he has become a tremendous wrestler by attrition, and there's something really cool about that.

I would easily say Cena. He became a great worker through sheer will, while I think Bret had more natural talent. Cena has been placed in far more unique situations on top than Bret was and has usually found a way to make the best of it.

I'm reminded why I hate message boards these days. I explained above, and you responded by questioning my motives and then telling me my explanation was unsatisfactory. Charming. Say what you want about the match, I don't care.

I have no investment in Kevin Owens, really. I like John Cena far better. I just thought that was a great match for the reasons I outlined above. I'm not being blinded by fanboyism or anything like that.

Let's talk about this in common match criticisms so we don't derail this thread. I just posted there. I'm looking for specific examples in specific matches of good and of bad, because I don't understand - if each move is being sold - what the problem is, unless one believes that every move should change the complexion of the match.

Can we talk about my-turn, your-turn? I don't want to take the Elimination Chamber thread too far off the beaten path, but I don't understand why this is bad.

Define that. What's the difference between bad and good in that context?

I really loved Cena-Owens. I don't really know what turn taking is other than a descriptor, and I'm not sure why it's necessarily bad. Finishing stretches usually tend to have both guys hitting desperation moves in succession, catching whatever they can. What's bad about that? I hear that thrown around as a criticism sometimes and I still don't know why. Are finishing stretches supposed to only have one guy hitting moves? It's funny that Childs mentioned the "connective tissue" because I actually think that's the best part of the Kevin Owens act. He trash talks, he plays to the crowd, he throws great punches, he's an asshole ... he actually wrestles like a heel. He's doing stuff no one else in WWE is doing, so it really comes across fresh. I think those details are what made the heat what it was, and it was sustained from beginning to end. I knew the finish since I watched this morning, but by the time they settled into the bomb trading, I felt like the match was already pretty great. So yeah, I loved it.

They at least learned from Bryan-Orton in 2013 not to wait to reverse the decision until the following night on television.

Dave the prophet. From the 3/23/98 issue:

I remember paying 10 cents a page to have copies made of the pages of the wrestling section of the VIDEOLOG (music fans will also remember the PHONOLOG) and trying to figure out how much it would cost me to buy them all. I rented tapes here and there, but Bash '87 was by far the one I rented the most. I was excited when I got a used copy of that and Starrcade '86 from a video store that was going out of business many years later, but in the long run, mom and pop video shops with obscure titles like that closing shop really sucked. And I bought Starrcade '93 direct because for some reason, that was the only one that was $9.98. The rest were $30+ a piece.

How is Savage's stuff after the Steamboat feud ends?

Maeda is an interesting case because he only has a handful of matches, but they are all great and the Big Two eventually had to play catch-up with his UWF. Bobby Eaton was the glue in all of the great Fantastics matches (not to say he was carrying them, but he was the backbone) and should probably get some play for that alone, although that terrible match with Nikita at Bunkhouse Stampede may knock him out of contention. Luger strikes me more as a "Most Improved" type than the wrestler of the year. I think Lawler is a really good pick here.

I was going to say Randy Savage had a case myself, for pretty much the same reasons you said. Probably his best year. Flair is in the conversation, but I'm not entirely sure it's his year. He does have a lot of great stuff opposite Dusty, Garvin and Morton, though, along with the classic match with Barry Windham in February. Terry Gordy may be a decent dark horse pick. I absolutely loved his matches with Doc and Duggan that year, and his matches with Taylor and OMG I recall also being very good.

Newspapers and 20-20 aren't very popular with kids and teenagers.

It was also a decade after Vince publicly said wrestling was worked. Which was only really newsworthy to newsletter-reading types, as your average wrestling fan probably had no idea he did such a thing.

Of course WWE could get women over as headliners as they wanted. Just like they could get junior heavyweights, minis, tag teams or anything else over at the main event level if they wanted. Fan conditioning is the most artful thing about pro wrestling. If they give a few women a fair opportunity to draw on top and they don't, it doesn't mean that women can't draw on top. It means they picked the wrong women, or they picked the right ones at the wrong time.

Very few people ever thought wrestling was real, but at one time, more fans were able to play along in much more convincing fashion than they are now. JvK is correct. I don't think most fans ever thought wrestling was absolutely real, but I do think when wrestling is good, people often say things like "I know this stuff is fake, but there's no way wasn't real." I've heard it too many times myself. And the idea that people have to know what something is to believe in it or be it isn't something that holds up to scrutiny. I would also point out that the NWO angle was almost two decades ago.

Kane is still mechanically very good, especially for a guy his age. I freaked out over that low dropkick he threw in the match with Daniel Bryan on Main Event last year. He does a great job conveying his gimmick within a match, and I'd have no problem putting him as a worker ahead of pre-1996 Undertaker. The problem with Kane is that he's never really been able to translate all the solid fundamentals that he has into even one classic match, and it's not like he has not had the booking focus, push and opportunity to do so. You could argue that was never his role, but it wasn't designed to be Undertaker's role either, yet he made it happen anyway (eventually). I give Kane credit for being a very good utility player despite overstaying his welcome, but I don't think he's at all a HOF-level guy. He has been a good company man and should absolutely be in the WWE HOF one day, though. I remember Dave once calling him the most famous masked wrestler of his generation, and if that was true, it would be sort of a case. But Dave said that in 2003 when he lost the mask vs title match to HHH, only shortly after Rey put the hood back on and before he became a bonafide top draw.

With the exception of Randy Orton, I can't remember the last time WWE pushed someone on top who was in his early 20s. I don't think that's the sole answer, but I do think that's something missing. As Dave has said many times, if the Von Erichs were 28 years old, they wouldn't have clicked at all. Teen girls are far more likely to have the hots for a guy who's a little bit younger. If the aim is to draw women in their 20s, that's a different story.

It's probably wrong of me to want TNA to die solely to get Dixie Carter out of wrestling for good. But I want TNA to die solely to get Dixie Carter out of wrestling for good.

I thought having a thread here to be pinned would be a great reference. I'll post the ones I follow later.

I have enjoyed the comparison threads, but I think comparing wrestlers who are not usually compared to each other might be fun too. I'll put all of them in one thread. So here are the ones I'm curious about. Rey Mysterio or Yoshiaki Fujiwara? Randy Savage or Shinya Hashimoto? Jerry Lawler or El Hijo del Santo? Terry Funk or Negro Casas? Bobby Eaton or Virus? Bill Dundee or Eddy Guerrero? William Regal or Tully Blanchard? Atsushi Onita or Vader? Buddy Rose or Johnny Saint? Bret Hart or Ted DiBiase? Steve Austin or Riki Choshu? Jushin Liger or Volk Han?

Clotheslines.