Dylan Waco

Did these two face each other more than once in 89? I hope so, because the match I saw between them for the SC WCW poll was abysmal. One of the worst Murdoch matches I've ever seen and definitely the worst match of Luger's from 89 that I've seen.

Thanks. To be honest I think the Starrcade tag suffers from being something I've watched many times and having a very inflated reputation. Both of my brothers voted in the poll and had it considerably higher than I did.

Incidentially the spinoff of that produced a couple of very good Nitro tag matches with Eddy and Jarrett v. Mongo and Benoit. Neither is longer than seven minutes or so, but they are probably two of the ten best matches I ever saw run on Nitro.

Highest rated tag on my list - excluding WarGames matches - is the 5/92 2/3 falls Dangerous Alliance tag. Highest rated two-on-two tag is Midnights v. Southern Boys, which you hate for whatever reason. Highest rated tag from 92 is Gordy/Williams v. Steiners Clash XIX. The Gordy/Williams v. Dustin/Barry title switch is also in my top twenty-five. There is also another Midnights tag in my top twenty.

Jarrett isn't a natural main eventer for a major company. I totally agree with that. Having said that in the last few months I've rewatched some Jarrett and some of his performances hold up very well. His Southern Chickenshit heel act is a really good one. And he can work out of control brawls better than a lot of guys that are known for that style.

There has always been a certain contingent of smart fans that prefer Psicosis to Rey. I've never really seen it, but I've only seen a small amount of their work outside of the States.

Well yeah it smokes that Arn/Eaton v. Steiners match. I had the Starrcade 92 tag even lower. I thought that was a remarkably underwhelming match when I rewatched it.

Rey really doesn't get any flashes early and that is one of my biggest complaints with the match.

You are going to hate my list, because I have that tag even lower than Floyd does. I like it a great deal, but to me it suffers a bit as a match that doesn't do anything to "stand out" of the pack. I probably should have had it higher than I did but I knew others would have it a lot higher than me, and again it wasn't a match that distinguished itself the way some of the other top stuff did.

Candido was also a great top in squash matches. Jarrett has been one of only a handful of guys to consistently have good matches in his TNA run (Styles, Storm).

Oddly I disagree with all of those picks Jeff Hardy is a guy that looked like he was finally getting it when he returned to the WWE in 07 and for a while might have been one of the top two or three guys in the company. His matches with Umaga were really a turning point for me in thinking that he was becoming a strong worker. He still has his moments now, but he comes across as really broken down as often as not in the last few months. More to the point his low points have been terrible. Luger on the other hand was a guy that got boring, but I don't think he ever got abysmal. Even in 96-98 he would occasionally surprise you with a good match and in 88-90 he was a legitimately great worker. His run of matches in 89 v. Rich, Kendall Windham, Barry Windham, Michael Hayes, Rick Steamboat and Brian Pillman is a great stretch of solid bouts against a wide variety of opponents with different skill sets. I can't see Hardy ever doing anything like that. ' Luger had a much higher peak, that lasted longer, produced better matches and saw him hold his own against a variety of workers. His lows - while pretty low - also were not as bad as spot blowing meth head Jeff. I'd say Luger is easily better. Kurt v. Jarrett is closer, but career v. career I'll take Jarrett. Angle is a guy that had a strong peak that has become insanely overrated. 00-02 Angle has a lot of solid stuff, but I think the drop off is pretty incredible. You go from ultimate cartoonish sprints like Kurt v. Rey and really strong hate filled fights like Austin v. Angle to Angle being one of the only guys in the company to have actively bad matches with Brock over night. I can really count on one hand the number of really impressive Angle performances I recall from late 02 - 06 when they repackaged him as a pseudo-shooter. Even then the stuff isn't all that great it just seems more spirited. Jarrett is a guy that I think gets slept on as a worker because people hate TNA and his HHH like grip at the top of the card. Still as a Southern style worker Jarrett has few rivals in modern times. He had the best non-gimmicked Shawn Michaels match I've ever seen and it was largely because they worked a TN match in Nashville with Jarrett walking Shawn through the spots. He got more out of guys like Ahmed Johnson than could be imagined using similar techniques. Memphis work is good as both a babyface and a heel and it's not surprising that Angle's best TNA match was with Jarrett, because Jarrett has been in a disproportinate number of the strong TNA matches (v. Angle, v. Lethal, v. Raven, v. Styles, et.). Candido didn't get the chances Malenko got and still I feel like I've seen more good peformances from Candido than Malenko who almost never got the most out of the talent he was in there with. His best match is v. Ultimo at Starrcade 96 and then the drop is pretty big. Candido and Smothers probably had a dozen matches better than the best Dean matches, but few people have seen them. Candido could work comedy schtick and badass schtick and was good at both despite being as small as Dean.

Yeah I don't like the 92 matches. I thought you were talking more about the workers, in which case I would say Austin is a miss more often than he is a hit and Steamboat is always a hit with alarming consistency.

What do you mean by "these two were hit and miss?" regarding Steamboat and Austin?

So the discussion on Jeff Hardy and Lex Luger in the other thread seemed like a good opportunity to run something like this. Let's start with three: Who is Better, Jeff Hardy or Lex Luger? Who is Better, Jeff Jarrett or Kurt Angle? Who is Better, Dean Malenko or Chris Candido?

Not saying I disagree, but which of these do you think he severely underrates?

I remember loving that Nitro match at the time, but I haven't seen it in years. There are very few wrestlers I have a lower opinion of coming out of this poll than I had coming in. Malenko is one of those few. I just don't think he's a very smart wrestler and he seems to get less out of his talent and his opponents talents than any other "good" wrestler I can think of. Having said that a lot of the stuff on my ballot will probably strike people as far more bizarre than this so....

Wow you rated the entire DDP v. Savage feud. That makes me feel better in a way about only voting for Havoc as their were elements of each I liked. My big beef with that Vader v. Sting match is that it just goes on too long. The finish to it is really great, but it comes across like a "Greatest Hits Collection" of their previous matches after a while. I love that Greed tag and it made my ballot, albeit a bit lower than where you had it. It wasn't my highest rated tag match from that show though

What did you like about it? Here are my reviews of the two highly touted Rey v. Dean matches: Dean Malenko vs. Rey Misterio Jr. - Great American Bash 6/16/96 What a stupid way to work a match. Here you have a guy making his WCW debut, known as the a high flyer of all high flyers and not only do they have him grounded for all but three minutes of the match but they have him grounded with arm work of all things. I could buy attacking the knees and it probably would have made sense building to a sympathy comeback before Dean went over,but man alive working the arm and keeping Rey grounded in his debut is embarrassingly idiotic and a pretty good indication of how overrated Malenko is. Even worse they didn't give Rey much of anything as far as an opening flurry that established him as spectacular, so the crowd was dead for big parts of the Malenko control segment. Three minute explosion by Rey at the end came out of nowhere and was not enough to save this. I really can't imagine anyone watching this next to the other well known Cruiser matches and thinking it was anything special. It's not even as good as deeply flawed stuff like Kidman v. Juvy at WWIII 98. Hell it's not even good at all. Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Dean Malenko - Halloween Havoc 10/27/96 This match is worked smarter and is more exciting than the GAB match, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. I think the tactical decision to let Rey rattle off some big offense early was really a saving grace of sorts as it kept the crowd involved in this when Malenko went to the inevitable "ground Rey" segment. This version was much less focused than the GAB match, but that's not really a complaint since the GAB match was mostly senseless, dead end, armwork. I also thought they were smart to give the Rey comeback and nearfall segment more time than they did in the GAB match. The reversals in some of this were a bit too cute for me, but Rey's twisting Asai moonsault is still a great spot and they only got really ridiculous once when they botched the spot off the safety rail. This isn't as mechanically sound as the GAB match and it might not even be better, but it's smarter for what that's worth. Finishing powerbomb spot is pretty fun too, but honestly this isn't even close to something I would consider for my ballot.

I would have rated Goldberg v. Sting without the horrible, horrible finish. Page v. Savage is a great feud with no match that was complete. If you take the components of each and put them together you'd have a contender for best match in WCW history, but individually the flaws of each are pretty severe. Still I voted for the Havoc match myself, though it has an unforgiveably awful finish. King of Cable final is in my top ten and I think it is the best of the Sting v. Vader matches. I can't stand the Malenko v. Rey series and think that GAB match is pretty awful though I do expect it to do reasonably well. Didn't watch Raven v. Jericho,but I probably should have. I thought for sure I was the only person who would rate that Windham v. Regal match.

That Rich/Morton vs. Midnights match is in my top twenty - and I know for a fact at least one person rated it even higher than I did. You have a much more cruiser heavy match than I had by the looks of things, though I must say that the Starrcade Triple Threat and Juvy/Kidman from WWIII were some of my favorite spotathon matches WCW ever ran even if I didn't vote for either of them.

Not sure Jeff loves the business as much as he loves meth. Not going to argue Jeff isn't over as hell - especially after seeing him live - but Luger in 88-90 was in the same neightborhood. Not going to argue that Jeff does bigger spots, but Hardy has never had as good a year as Luger had in the ring in 89.

really? I don't think it would really make that much of a difference at all... in fact, I am starting to get a bit tired of him. He's a decent wrestler, with a knack for highspots...he sucks on the mic...he CANNOT work heel. Doesn't really impress me. For God's sake, they had Jeff Hardy and it didn't make a difference....there is plenty of high end talent in TNA. Any wrestler entering or leaving is not going to make a difference...the booking needs to change. If new back office means "goodbye AJ"...I am all for it. Actually I'm for it to, because if they get rid of Styles, Jarrett leaves and West is tossed out as some rumors have indicated there will be nothing worth watching on the show which means I can abandon it all together.

Supposedly Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson at minimum really disliked each other. Also Ole and T-Bolt have a bizarre off again/on again love hate thing, which may have to do with Ole being one of the most virulent racist I've ever met.

It arguably helps it if you buy the argument that Jericho is one of the top workers in the company (which I think is a fairly sound argument even if I think he is a clear third behind Rey and Christian). I'm not a guy who believes that work goes a long way in HoF discussions, but he's probably in his working prime and smarks love his heel schtick.

One of a very small number of guys I can think of where I struggle to recall a single "bad" match that I've seen. I"m not saying everything he ever did was good per se, but bad and Bockwinkle don't really seem to go together.