Mr Wrestling X

Here is how I would place those who have held the World Heavyweight Championship: 1. Shawn Michaels 2. Chris Benoit 3. Daniel Bryan 4. Kurt Angle 5. Rey Mysterio 6. CM Punk 7. Chris Jericho 8. Christian 9. The Undertaker 10. Edge 11. Randy Orton 12. Booker T 13. Triple H 14. Dolph Ziggler 15. Jeff Hardy 16. Big Show 17. Goldberg 18. Kane 19. Batista 20. John Cena 21. Jack Swagger 22. Sheamus 23. Mark Henry 24. The Great Khali

Right, I've had some time to think about this, watch some classic matches and I've decided things need a bit of tweaking - just as Rolling Stone updated their 100 greatest guitarists list following enormous flaws. I still think RVD deserves to be in the list because he is an exceptionally gifted performer capable of working many different styles and a guy who uses his entire body as a selling canvas, which we're seeing a re-emergencein recent time with the likes of Dolph Ziggler who have mastered the ability to bump correctly whilst still making it look like they've been folded in half. So... 1. Shawn Michaels 2. Ric Flair 3. Bruno Sammartino 4. Steve Austin 5. Bret Hart 6. Hulk Hogan 7. Kurt Angle 8. Rey Mysterio 9. Bob Backlund 10. Eddie Guerrero 11. CM Punk 12. Chris Jericho 13. Brock Lesnar 14. The Undertaker 15. Edge 16. Randy Savage 17. Randy Orton 18. Triple H 19. Rob Van Dam 20. The Rock I do have some controversial views when it comes to wrestling, for instance I think that Owen Hart was the most naturally talented of the Hart family and had he been in a similar position that Bret had found himself in, in the early 1990's - it's possible that Owen would have gone on to have similar success.

What they do in the ring has nothing to do with wrestling ability. Savage has more natural talent in his little finger than Angle and RVD do combined. Shit I like RVD more than most people, but saying he has more natural talent than Randy Savage is fucking ridiculous. There are only 2 or 3 matches of Randy Savage's that I can say I enjoyed from start to finish, highly rate and that I think defined wrestling in the sense that I can say "this is what professional wrestling should be like". But, there are several matches from both RVD and Kurt Angle where I can say those things apply and more. I've seen numerous Randy Savage matches and I just haven't seen the big deal that people place upon him as a performer (dives under the table to avoid the outrage cannon). For anybody curious, the 3 matches (I can think of 3) that I rate are (in no particular order): 1. Randy Savage vs. Ultimate Warrior - Wrestlemania VII 2. Randy Savage vs. Dynamite Kid - Wrestling Classic 3. Randy Savage vs. Ric Flair - Wrestlemania VIII

Shall I individually cite the reasons for each of the twenty wrestlers I picked in the thread, back in the thread?

I've not taken things like charisma and showmanship into account, I did specify that it was purely based on in ring talent and ability.

Now you're either trolling which I'm not going to play to, or you are easily satisfied by the pro wrestling product - in which case I envy you. Says the guy who thinks Kurt Angle and RVD are better than Randy Savage. They are in my opinion, besides I CLEARLY stated that I was looking at it from wrestling ability and natural talent. Do you really think that Randy Savage could have done some of the stuff that Kurt Angle and Rob Van Dam do in the ring? Do you really think that Randy Savage had the conditioning of a former Olympian or a kick boxer and gymnast? Do you really think that Randy Savage could put on a 30 minute match that involved the technical precision, athletic intensity and endurance whilst having the energy to sell, communicate with the audience and work efficiently with his opponent(s) that RVD and Kurt Angle have demonstrated on numerous occasions? I'm not taking his charisma and showmanship into account because that wasn't what it was about, but if it was then he would certainly be a lot higher on the list than both Kurt Angle and Rob Van Dam.

^ I have considered the possibility that it was an "arrangement" made backstage as some kind of jab at Lesnar, given that he was pissed off for not knowing that Cena was going to do this. Has nobody considered that Vince and the production crew were watching backstage, wondered what he was doing, gave it a minute (for the possibility that it could provide a lot of chatter) and wound up actually liking what he was saying to the point that they let it run?

Now you're either trolling which I'm not going to play to, or you are easily satisfied by the pro wrestling product - in which case I envy you. It was clear that his talk of "going somewhere" was in reference to the possibility that McMahon and company would be pissed at him for going into business for himself and might get him to a holiday for a while as a consequence. Then again, they obviously liked his impromptu promo because he remained firmly where he was and the "arm injury" was barely mentioned.

No, I'm mad that Cena ruined the gravitas of the match by his actions at the end of ER.

In that case, if this is all about things like in ring ability, natural talent and general "who is the best" stuff... 1. Shawn Michaels 2. Ric Flair 3. Bruno Sammartino 4. Bob Backlund 5. Kurt Angle 6. Brock Lesnar 7. CM Punk 8. Eddie Guerrero 9. Chris Jericho 10. Rey Mysterio 11. Edge 12. Randy Orton 13. Rob Van Dam 14. Randy Savage 15. Steve Austin 16. The Undertaker 17. The Rock 18. Triple H 19. Bret Hart 20. Mick Foley

WWE Championship: Steve Austin vs. The Rock - Wrestlemania 17 WWE World Heavyweight: Edge vs. Undertaker - Wrestlemania 24 WWE World Tag Team: Edge and Christian vs. The Hardy Boys vs. The Dudleys - Summerslam 2000 WWE Tag Team: Eddie Guerrero and Chavo Guerrero vs. Kurt Angle and Chris Benoit vs. Edge and Rey Mysterio WWE Intercontinental: Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon - Wrestlemania X WWE European: Owen Hart vs. British Bulldog - Raw live event in Berlin 1997 WWE Hardcore: Rob Van Dam vs. Jeff Hardy - The Invasion WWE Light Heavyweight: Scotty 2 Hotty vs. Dean Malenko - Backlash 2000 WWE Women's: Trish Stratus vs. Lita - Unforgiven 2006 NWA World Heavyweight: Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat - Chi-Town Rumble WCW World Heavyweight: Ric Flair vs. Vader - Starrcade 1993 WCW Cruiserweight: Dean Malenko vs. Rey Mysterio Jr. - Halloween Havoc 1996 ECW World Heavyweight: Terry Funk vs. Sabu vs. Shane Douglas - The Night The Line Was Crossed ECW Tag Team: Raven and Tommy Dreamer vs. Lance Storm and Justin Credible - Guilty As Charged 2000 ECW TV: Rob Van Dam vs. Jerry Lynn - Hardcore Heaven 1999 TNA World Heavyweight: Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle - Lockdown 2008 NWA/TNA World Tag Team: Chris Harris and James Storm vs. Elix Skipper and Christopher Daniels - TNA PPV #50 NWA/TNA X-Division: Christopher Daniels vs. AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe - Unbreakable 2005 IWGP Heavyweight: Shinya Hashimoto vs. Riki Choshu - G1 Climax 1996 Day 1 IWGP Junior Heavyweight: The Great Sasuke vs. Jushin Liger - Battle Formation 1996 AJPW Triple Crown: Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Toshiaki Kawada - Jun 3rd Budokan Show 1994 AJPW Unified Tag Team: Akira Taue and Toshiaki Kawada vs. Mitsuharu Misawa and Kenta Kobashi -June 9th Budokan Show 1995 GHC Heavyweight: Kenta Kobashi vs. Mitsuharu Misawa - Navigate For Evolution 2003 Day 9 GHC Junior Heavyweight: KENTA vs. Naomichi Marufuji - First Navigation 2006 Day 10

No, he sounded like a guy who had just spent half an hour performing intensive physical activity. His arm wasn't dead, if it was then he wouldn't have been able to lift Lesnar up for the AA, not to mention the co-operation involved in making sure that Lesnar lands safely. I'm still convinced that the "bleeding" was nothing more than a convincing blade job, because if Lesnar (a mixed martial artist) utilised enough force to bust Cena hardway, the match would have to be abandoned on the grounds that Cena was knocked loopy. If that had been a cut caused by Lesnar opening Cena up with elbows, they'd probably have to end the match and get Cena stapled up backstage. Obviously, the match was a lot stiffer than the normal matches you get in WWE, but in terms of intensity I'd put it behind the HIAC at Wrestlemania purely on the basis that at WM, Triple H and Taker were smacking each other hard across the body with steel chairs. The point is, Cena sold poorly and if it was anyone other than Brock Lesnar, their credibility would be damaged after a stunt like the one Cena pulled at ER (and has done on other occasions too, just look at the miraculous recovery in the I-Quit with Miz last year). He completely destroyed the whole point of the match, which was to make Lesnar look like a killer who was only beaten because of his overconfidence.

Which is why he stood right up following the conclusion of the match, got on the mic and completely wrecked the story of the match... The guy completely fucked the whole point of the match up by his actions at it's conclusion, it was supposed to end with Cena JUST getting the victory and then requiring assistance to get backstage (a'la Undertaker @ WM27) to sell the idea that Lesnar had completely beaten the crap out of him and would have easily won the match had he not been too overconfident and thus allowed Cena the opportunity to cheapshot him with a chain, hit an AA on the ring steps and pull off a fluke three-count. All this would also have served WWE with good storyline reasons in the event they decided to go with a rematch somewhere along the line. The fact that Cena has apparently not been reprimanded for his actions in the "traditional" sense must piss off a lot of the other wrestlers who would find themselves staring at the ceiling for Santino Marella if they pulled this kind of shit.

There has been talk of unifying the two secondary belts recently. I'd imagine that the Intercontinental title will be retained if this unification were to occur. I think that this would be a foolish move unless WWE plans to debut a new belt that would be booked as an attention capturing title for the lower midcard. akin to the way the European Championship was booked in WWE from 1999-2002. If WWE does unify the two world titles (which they should), then they should consider tweaking the name of the WWE Championship to something like the "WWE World Championship" to reflect the fact that the WWE Championship is actually a world title. It's always slightly annoyed me that they named the secondary titles after continents but named the top belt after the company. Not only this, but the World Heavyweight Championship (the lesser of the two world titles) sounds like it should be the "top belt" when it clearly isn't.

This was another PPV where the outcome of each match was predictable, not to mention one that had a terrible main event. The steel cage match itself was fair largely due to Big Show who carried the match and performed the high spots, such as lifting Cena for a chokeslam off the turnbuckle and missing an elbow drop from the top rope. The finish was just ridiculous, no sooner had Cena escaped the cage and won the match, he was back on his feet as if nothing had happened. He sold absolutely nothing despite being dominated the entire match, whereas Big Show sold the effects of the match and limped quietly to the back. This is becoming a rather annoying pattern which must piss off a lot of the guys in the back, given that Cena is apparently excused from having to put other guys over by selling the effects of their offense post-match. His superhuman comebacks are nothing new, but his complete ignorance when it comes to selling the effects of a match are ruining the suspension of disbelief element that is crucial to professional wrestling. Interestingly enough, Cena's opponents have done 80% of the work in his last three PPV matches. The Laurinaitis match at OTL wasn't really a match, but Laurinaitis did all the selling whilst Cena walked around the ring smiling like a jackass and pouring water down Laurinatis' crotch. I'm thinking there is a possibility that Cena is really banged up and needs and extended leave of absence to recover (perhaps even have surgery) but both he and WWE are choosing to delay because it's bad for business - which isn't exactly the truth given that WWE will still sell Cena merchandise regardless of whether he is performing or not. Then again, there is the possibility that WWE has finally realised that John Cena is incapable of working an entertaining match unless he is in the ring with someone like CM Punk, Brock Lesnar or Triple H and therefore they compensate by shortening the wrestling element of the match and filling in the gaps with interference and other distraction tactics.

One good PPV doesn't make up for a whole load of questionable booking decisions and general mind-fuckery that occured during Kevin Nash's reign as booker. It's easily forgotten because the lethal injection of Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara immediately followed and presented so many destructive bookings and character killing angles that they made Nash look like Dusty Rhodes. As for Sullivan, he's the guy that thought it was a cool idea to book Bill Dannenhauer as his dyslexic brother "Evad Sullivan", he's also the guy that rubbed so many people the wrong way that four of WCW's most talented stars quit following his promotion to head booker in 2000. Think about Sullivan's creations as a booker - the Dungeon of Doom was a colossal failure, given that none of it's members were particularly over and that the main angle revolved around a terrible feud that Sullivan had begun with Hulk Hogan.

Vince Russo Ed Ferrara Kevin Nash Kevin Sullivan In that order

You're right, I made a typo by inputting "Heavyweight"! I wasn't going to bother putting in every individual weight class title and it was just going to be CMLL World Championship, although this might mean having to list only the titles that have existed for a total of a decade. I'll go back and sort that out right now I don't count the Universal Championship because it's treated more as a tournament (a'la KOTR) than a championship, it may be seen as the top accomplishment in CMLL, but that doesn't come into my rules. I also only recognise the WWE Championship currently because the WHC is not quite a decade old (it will be in September, at which point I'll recognise it as a "true" world championship). The 18-second Mania match is just a minor blip in the belt's history, comparable to any "regular" MITB cash in, in terms of detriment. The WHC would be much better booked if it recognised the WCW reigns and was treated as being a continuation of that title - hence the design similarities. Not enough, but they still do promote events outside of their origin countries, usually bi-annually or annually which still counts as regular, given that they aren't staying away from international promotion for years at a time. It's a very loose set of rules where I even count a promotion's talent defending a title in another promotion outside of their origin country as being an internationally promoted event, given that the champion's promotion is involved in presenting that talent to another promotion and agreeing with them the outcome of that match, etc - thus they are having a hand in booking an international event.

I personally only recognise a few of the "world" titles as being true world titles, although the reasoning behind this is subject to change depending on how something pans out (I don't recognise Rey Mysterio's or John Cena's WWE Championship reigns during the CM Punk storyline last year, because at no point was CM Punk actually stripped off the WWE Championship). Anyway, my three principle rules are... 1) The title must be recognised and promoted as a "world" championship 2) The title must be active as a world championship for a minimum of 10 years (accumulative) 3) The title must be active in an international promotion (by international, meaning a promotion that promotes regular events outside of it's origin country, does regular business worldwide, including international broadcasts and a promotion that uses international talent), which can be during any of the title's incarnations (for example, the ECW championship which was re-activated in WWE from 2006-2010) With these rules in mind, the currently active "world" titles I recognise as true world titles at this moment in time are: NWA World Heavyweight Championship WWE Championship IWGP Heavyweight Championship AJPW Triple Crown GHC Heavyweight Championship CMLL World Heavyweight Championship CMLL World Light Heavyweight Championship CMLL World Middleweight Championship CMLL World Welterweight Championship I think it's important for each promotion to have it's own world championship because even though it's a worked business with McGuffin trophies (the belts), there is the reasoning that each promotion presents their top championship to the performer that they deem "the guy" at that particular point in time. Besides, by having just one world champion for every promotion is invoking a concept that would only work in the NWA territorial days, when promotions actually abided by unwritten rules to do fair business with each other.

^ It's not just confined to wrestlers - Big Dick Johnson, one of the dancing fat guys was a member of the creative team!!

So I have... Michael Shannon as Vince McMahon Mark Ruffalo (and CGI) as Andre The Giant Sean Astin as Bobby Heenan Maz Jobrani as The Iron Sheik Viggo Mortensen as Ted Turner Vanessa Redgrave as The Fabulous Moolah

I'd cast Michael Shannon as Vince in his late 30's during the part of the movie that covers the WWF's expansion period, in fact Shannon is good enough to do the entire movie, but for the sake of differences (a'la De Niro and Brando playing Vito Corleone) I'd probably cast Tim Robbins as present day Vince. In fact, let's go the whole way, who would play other important characters in the life of Vince McMahon?

No, Vince Sr's second wife - Juanita, died in 1998 Source

Yeah, in hindsight I've made a few "lost the plot" type posts recently. I'll put it down to being pretty distracted, despite trying to find a distraction through the medium of professional wrestling! Nonetheless, I feel back on form now. The "IWC" term is quite silly, but some people feel comfortable to label themselves with that term. I think it's important for everyone to have an open mind and not like the things other people like just because of their reputation or because other people have latched onto the hook. I think we all understand what it's like to have a deep interest in something that many of your peers in everyday life don't.

I don't think the WWF would have "died", but McMahon's dreams of international expansion would be over or greatly set back at the very least. The big money differences between Wrestlemania I and the MSG shows were things like all the celebrity involvement, the insane amount of advertising and the sheer amount of talent used at the event. If Wrestlemania had failed, it's very possible that other promotions like the AWA and /JCP/WCW would have had enough breathing space to catch up, and perhaps even overtake the WWF.