Gregor

This was a pretty big letdown. I was expecting blown spots galore and the crowd completely turning on Diesel, but it was really just a boring match with some awkward parts. The crowd definitely favored Diesel and even chanted his name at one point; the vocal Bulldog fans were clearly in the minority, and they were more pro-Bulldog than anti-Diesel from how it sounded. That's not to say that this wasn't a bad match, because it was. It just wasn't the trainwreck that I was expecting. Both guys tried hard. The post-match brawl between Bret and Diesel was really lame, and the crowd wasn't into it. Still, now that I've seen this, Vince's famous tantrum after the show went off the air seems more like a typical Vince overreaction than a justified outburst on Diesel.

Rick Steiner was swerved by Buff Bagwell three times in 1998. I can see getting fooled once and maybe even twice, but three times? He also had Scott turn on him at the end of a match and then later convince him that he wanted to reunite the team, but this, too, was a swerve. That's five times in one year, three of which were by guys who had already proven themselves not trustworthy. I don't know if this is enough to put him up there with the all-time greats, but that's one heck of a year.

You know, I never really thought of that. It's a testament to both guys that they could have two great matches that scarcely resemble each other.

Goldberg was totally destroying guys like Morrus and Flynn. I don't think Sin Cara's going to be booked to win matches in under two minutes, so he's going to be spending long portions of the match being beaten up. It looks bad to be beaten up by someone who hasn't really proven anything, although this might not be as big a factor as it would have been, say, fifteen years ago. Averno wouldn't be the same kind of enhancement talent. How over is Sin Cara? Is he over enough for fans to want to see him come back and win, regardless of his heel opponent?

My ugliest confession as a wrestling fan is that to this day I can watch the 1999 Royal Rumble match in its entirety and enjoy it. I understand that it's terrible, but I can't hate it for whatever reason. WrestleMania XV, on the other hand - I was a kid who was obsessed with the WWF at that time, and I cared about the results of maybe two of those matches.

I wouldn't have guessed that Mabel and Undertaker were friends. Did Undertaker play a role in his depush/release after Mabel injured him, or is that just something I assumed?

With regard to Shawn Michaels vs. Bret Hart, year-by-year: 1993: Bret's way ahead. Michaels still looks a little uncomfortable to me and has a massive flop at SummerSlam (they also have two house show matches, one of which isn't much and the other of which is okay). 1994: The ladder match holds up fine for me, not in the sense that I'd call it a perfect match, but calling it great is fine. Hart's match with Bob Backlund on Superstars(?) strikes me as something that Michaels could never have done in 1994 and probably not in 1995-97, either. 1995: Like the other one, the ladder match holds up fine for me. I'd like it more than the first if not for the ending, which is 100% on Michaels. Razor Ramon might be the better worker in the match. Both Hart and Michaels made Diesel look bad; their performances against him at the Rumble and WrestleMania are disappointing. Michaels has maybe one strong TV performance, normally one of his strong suits. 1996: Michaels' matches against Diesel and Mankind are great. He's usually good in his TV matches. I like the match with Sid A LOT, as Sid looks unbeatable for parts of it (knocking him out with the superkick, on the other hand...). He also has some disappointments; he loses his composure, noticeably, against the Bulldog and against Vader. The King of the Ring match strikes me as awfully boring. Hart's gone, anyway, so it's a moot point. He has some strong stuff and also some weak stuff (I don't like Hart vs. Sid, the South Africa match is boring, and the Owen Hart RAW match is totally forgettable). 1997: I'm kind of a moderate on HIAC. I think that it's great but not close to perfect. I don't mind Michaels' escaping the cell; I mind that it hurt a gimmick match that has endured, but it wasn't a sure thing that HIAC would happen again after Badd Blood then. I really like the KOTR match against Austin, but that's mostly an Austin match. Michaels has some strong TV performances, too, but I don't think that he can match up to Bret's matches at WrestleMania, Canadian Stampede, and One Night Only. I'd give three of those years to Hart and one to Michaels (he'd probably have won it even had Hart stuck around), and I'd call 1995 a push (I'd lean toward Hart for it). As for non-gimmicked Michaels performances, I think that Mind Games didn't really need the table spot and superkick spot to be great, and, without those, the match isn't really that gimmicked. I also like the KOTR match vs. Austin and the Survivor Series match vs. Sid a whole lot, but I think that that's kind of a minority opinion, as I like Michaels more than most people here (I think).

I think this was right after the Billionaire Ted skit in which the Huckster said, "I never lose - it's in my contract, brother!" Then Flair got a pinfall win over Hogan (it wasn't clean), and Arn got one two weeks later.

One thing that Michaels was better at doing (and you kind of touched on this by referring to his quantity of good matches) was shortish matches, matches in the five-to-fifteen-minute range. It's hard to say how much of that is from Hart's phoning it in and how much of it is that Michaels' style was more geared toward sprints. I don't know if I can think of a really good 1990s Bret Hart match that didn't reach fifteen minutes; Michaels has quite a few. I don't think that Michaels has very many advantages over Hart (and I'm a Michaels fan), but I feel like this is one.

(Emphasis mine) I don't know about this. This isn't meant as a knock on Sting but as a compliment toward Hart. I think that he's very good on the mic - very believable, spoke with a lot of conviction. He was maybe the best interview in the WWF in the first half of 1997, either him or Austin. His heel stuff from WCW is good, too; he was supposedly injured, and he came out and whined about his tragic groin pull and how he'd love to fight people but just couldn't. He also has a really good promo from the Nitro in Canada. As for charisma, I don't know how to pin that down. Hart was almost always over. The crowd didn't zone out during his matches. There was never a disconnect between the character he portrayed in interviews and the work he did in the ring. I'm not looking to say anything bad about Sting's charisma/mic work. I just think that Bret's really good in both areas, too.

The latter two. I'd rather read (and occasionally talk) about the actual wrestling.

Eddie Guerrero around 1997 struck me as almost a perfect heel. He could be vicious (his match with Mysterio) or hilariously pathetic (he'd try to sneak up behind the face for a cheap shot and then act like he was going for a handshake as soon as his opponent turned around), and none of it seemed out of place. Obviously the matches were good. If he had a weak spot, it was his promos. By his 2005 heel run, he was very, very good on the microphone, but I don't remember him doing the comedy spots that he was doing in WCW. Not that I have a problem with that - it's just that I brought up 1997 as a time when he was doing pretty much everything and doing it well.

I always felt like Michaels was a natural face as a worker and a natural heel as a character.

From the clips on YouTube, it looks like this was really good. So I'm wondering: 1. Has the match ever been released in full? 2. Has anyone here seen it? 3. How was it? 4. Is it something that would make the 1995 yearbook?

I got what Jingus was going for with his sandwich comparison, because that's kind of how I've felt when I've watched some of WWE's bigger matches from the past couple of years. I'll watch the match and think, "That was a good match - not something I'm gonna want to watch again, but they did a good job," and I can't really explain why it doesn't resonate with me. I'd watched Punk-Cena from Money in the Bank once before, and I just watched it again to see if I could explain why I had that reaction with that match in particular. I don't like that many finisher teases or that many instances of a guy actually hitting his finisher in one match. I also don't like a lot of nifty counters to finishers, although there wasn't a whole lot of that in this match. After a while, every two count was followed by at least ten seconds of inaction. I like selling, but you don't have to sit around for that long just because it's late in the match. To me, it felt like the two count was being sold more than whatever move had just been hit, if that makes any sense. More than anything else, this made it feel like they were trying to force a classic. The first Michaels-Undertaker Wrestlemania match featured this, too, and it was far worse in that one. It didn't seem like they were hurting each other all that much. I don't know if I can explain this well - it just seemed like the fatigue was being sold more than any kind of pain. Punk's knees to the jaw did look really good and painful, though. How much of that is "WWE style," how much of it is "self-conscious epic," how much of it is the result of their having to work a very long match, how much of it is the fact that I don't regularly watch recent WWE matches, and how much of it is simply personal taste I don't know. I do think that it was a very good match. It also felt a lot more forced than (to name an example listed earlier in the thread) Michaels-Mankind. Again, I can't say for sure if that one aspect what turns me off it. I dunno - that's about the best I can articulate what I don't like about big WWE matches.

I haven't followed WWE in a while, so I hope you don't mind that I'm out of the loop when it comes to a lot of this. All I know is from stuff I've read online. What I'm wondering, from reading this, is why it was decided that Del Rio should get involved. I understand that it builds a new star and doesn't take away any of Punk's credibility. But Punk is the most exciting wrestler the company has, and he's in the company's hottest feud in a long time. Now the feud goes from Punk vs. Cena, with authority figures involved and the title at stake, to Punk vs. Cena, with authority figures and Kevin Nash involved and the title around the waist of someone who had nothing to do with either man until last night. Now, it's less than twenty-four hours after that happened. Maybe they'll reveal that it was a big corporate plot, like with The Rock at Survivor Series, to get the belt away from two guys who can't be trusted. That'd be logical. Either way, though, the fact that all of these people keep getting shoved into the feud takes some focus away from Punk vs. Cena, which only a month ago was by pretty much all accounts a great, captivating angle. Even if it's still good, it's been diluted. I don't really understand the difference between trying to build a new fanbase and pandering to fans who abandoned them a decade ago. It's not like Loss is arguing that WWE should go back to doing raunchy angles and showing vehicles getting destroyed. He's saying that the angle could be executed better. "Better angles" doesn't seem like something that would appeal only to former wrestling fans. Unless WWE just markets itself better (which, to be fair, has pretty much been their focus for that last however long it's been), that's pretty much the best way to bring in new fans and retain the interest of current ones.

What about the promotion's matches doesn't hold up well for you?

Savage/Warrior later in the year at SummerSlam.

Michaels' vacated titles: IC 1993: I don't think this hurt the IC Title at all. It immediately went to a super-over Razor Ramon. You could argue that the IC Title's stature actually increased a little bit after this, as 1994 featured the IC Title in big matches like the ladder match and the SummerSlam match with Walter Payton. Tag 1994: Not sure about this one. Dropping the belts without jobbing certainly doesn't help anyone, but I don't know that the belts became any less important than they'd been when the Headshrinkers had them. Tag 1995: At the time, I don't think this was counted as a title reign for Michaels and Diesel, but WWE.com lists it, so maybe it was. Either way, this made this Owen and Yokozuna look weak. I don't know if it had any effect on the championship, though. IC 1995: This one was pretty bad. At the very least, it would have helped Douglas to beat one of the top wrestlers in the WWF and get a run with the belt. Instead, Douglas was named champion for doing nothing and lost the title on a back suplex. Razor then proceeded to not do much of anything with the title until he lost it to Goldust. World 1997: This probably hurt a little, but the WWF was hot enough in the upper card at this point that it didn't make that much of a difference. Strangely, the WWF Title match often was not that last match on the show in 1997 (taking a back seat to Austin/Bret matches and Michaels/Undertaker matches), butthat's not necessarily an indication of how valued it was. It might have been worse when Michaels called the belt a "stupid piece of tin" and claimed that champion Bret Hart was in the main event of Survivor Series only because he was against HBK. Tag 1997: The RAW title match between Michaels/Austin and Owen/Bulldog was super-hot. By September, when the Headbangers won the belts, the crowd was silent until Austin came out to interfere. The belts stayed at that level for the rest of the year, even though LOD was more over than the Headbangers or the Godwinns. It would have been nice for a team to have gotten the rub from Michaels and Austin. What happened instead was that Owen and the Bulldog got pinned for the titles three times in a row. European 1997: Michaels had already been treating this one as a joke, like when he feigned relief over the belt not being on the line at Badd Blood. This solidified it. Did I miss any? There are a lot of them, so I can't be too sure.

My feelings on Shamrock's IC Title run are similar to Loss' on Owen's. I think that Shamrock was the right guy for the belt. He'd spent around half a year feuding with the IC champion, he won the King of the Ring, and he was one of the three guys (along with Rock and Mankind) who were grouped together as guys the WWF tried to push into the upper card. Then they gave him the belt and had him lose a bunch of non-title singles matches and win the Tag Titles. He rarely defended the IC belt. I don't think that it was enough to devalue the belt - although the subsequent Venis-Road Dogg-Godfather succession of switches did do that - but his reign strikes me as very empty for one that lasted five months. On an Owen Hart-related note, I wonder if the European Title would have taken longer to become a joke had Bulldog defended it more often. Off the top of my head, I remember that it was on the line in the match in which Bret ran in and reunited the family, and it was on the line at SummerSlam. Did he have any other successful defenses?

I just watched a Savage-Santana match from 1986. Savage hits a clothesline on Santana early in the match and goes for the pin, hooking the leg. Santana kicks out, and Gorilla says, "He was so intent on hooking that leg that he's letting go of the upper body." You can't win with the guy!

Marty Jannetty vs. Bam Bam Bigelow (RAW, 5/31/93) This one's notable for being Marty's only televised defense of the IC Title. It's not a great match or anything, but it's pretty good and, in a way, a highlight for Jannetty in his only big year as a singles competitor. It's interesting to see Jannetty as a champion and how they treat him; the announcers openly describe Jannetty as the underdog in this match. I think it would've been cool if he could have had a longer run of holding the belt against all odds.

Where would your top-ranked U.S. matches from 1996 (Michaels/Mankind, Austin/Hart, Mysterio/Dragon) slot in on this list?

This felt different from most of the stuff that Michaels was doing in 1993. You mentioned in a post from early in the yearbook that Michaels, at this stage in his career, was focused mainly on feeding comeback for the faces, and maybe that's it; he does that well enough here, but he seemed more flashy here than he did at any other point in the year. The Jannetty match from May was about as long as this and also was wrestled at a fast pace, but Michaels' offense in that wasn't much more complex than choking and punching. This one seemed almost like a transition to the kind of wrestler he'd become in 1994. Anyway, this is is my favorite Michaels match from a year in which he didn't really have any great matches. I think this one is very good, though.

Oh, oh, OH. I see now - sorry, Cox. I thought you meant that it took Schiavone almost a decade to finally work the Guatemala line in (I read "made that call" as the choice he made as that guy's lifeline), which would have been hilariously petty (well, even more ridiculously petty) and kind of pathetic.