NintendoLogic

Also, I was really into both of them in 1994.

Let's not overstate Flair's versatility. Flair/Steamboat, Flair/Windham, Flair/Jumbo, and Flair/Kerry may have all taken place in different promotions, but they were worked in basically the same style. Shouldn't that count in Bret's favor, though? Having a great match in 90s WWF was a far more daunting task than having one in 80s JCP or All Japan. The touring heel champ style was shitty. Flair made it less so. Anyway, you asked me what I thought each guy's best matches were in the other thread, so I'll answer it here. For Bret, his best matches were vs. Austin at Survivor Series (which, again, is the greatest US match of all time) and WM13, vs Mr. Perfect at KOTR, vs. Owen at WM10, and vs. Davey Boy at IYH. For Flair, his best matches were vs. Funk at the 89 Bash and vs. Steamboat at the Chi-Town Rumble. Note that both of those matches are quite a bit shorter than a typical Flair title match and are tighter and more structured as a result. I have to say that the last time I tried to watch Flair/Luger from Wrestlewar, I turned it off halfway through because it was boring me to tears. Same with Flair/Windham from the Crockett Cup.

See, I have it the exact opposite. I think that Flair's baseline was higher than Bret's but Bret's peaks were higher than Flair's.

I'm aware of that. It still sucks.

On the Battlarts front, you have to include Ikeda vs. Otsuka from 4/26. I can't think of another match quite like it. It's like a cross between shoot-style and a lucha brawl. The two guys spend 20 minutes kicking the crap out of each other, choking each other out, and doing insane dives. Seriously, Ikeda does a space flying tiger drop. That alone should be enough to get it on the set.

I'll watch the rest of the show later, but I skipped to the last two matches because those are the ones with the most buzz. Nakamura/Sakuraba took a bit too long to get out of first gear, but it was good once it got going. However, I didn't like Sakuraba no-selling the Boma Ye and Landslide to apply his submissions. Also, I really hate slaps as strikes. Charlie Murphy said it best: you don't slap a man. The main event felt like a fall-out-of-bed Tanahashi/Okada match, solid but nowhere near as good as the best New Japan matches from last year. Somewhat amusingly for a Tanahashi match, he didn't work the leg nearly enough for how much Okada was selling it. And there was really no need for the match to continue after the first High Fly Flow. Still, it wasn't bad at all, and it worked as a Dome main event. Based on those two matches, I'd say the show was pretty good. But unless the undercard was off-the-charts great (and by all accounts, it wasn't), there's no way this is a serious contender for greatest show of all time.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?

Based on what I'd heard about this match and my feelings about the style in general, I figured that once I saw it, I'd either be blown away or greatly disappointed. Someone finally put it up on Youtube last week, and I'm pleased to say that it totally lives up to the hype. The first fall is the best extended stretch of matwork I've ever seen. Not only does everything flow smoothly, all the holds and counters are simple and logical. They did lose me a bit in the third fall with the repeating of spots and a bit of your-turn-my-turn. Overall, though, this was tremendous. I still wouldn't put it over the Jumbo/Misawa matches, but this is a total must-see for anyone who likes mat wrestling even a little bit.

That's not what I'm saying. I do think Tenryu is better than DiBiase, but it has nothing to do with matwork. Hell, I probably care less about matwork than anybody on this board. I'm just saying that if you're making a case for DiBiase as a master technician, a match where he gets outworked in that regard by a guy who isn't exactly known for his mat prowess is rather problematic.

Eddy's actually an interesting comparison. He had a lot of great matches, but his career also had a lot of dead spots, so I don't think he'd fare that well from a percentage standpoint. Even in the last year of his life, when he was as good as he ever was, he underperformed in quite a few big-match situations (vs. Rey at Wrestlemania, vs. Benoit at ONS). As for the other guys, I don't think their best matches were nearly as good as Bret's best. So it comes down to what you prioritize. Is it better to have more all-time great matches if it means fewer matches that are merely very good?

Did Bret really sell too much? After all, he was a smaller guy in a big man's promotion. Even so, he had plenty of matches where he worked on top. Look at the Rumble match where he basically steamrolled Diesel. In fact, I'm pretty sure he inflicted knee injuries more often then he sold them.

This is my biggest problem with the New Japan heavies. A lot of the time, it feels like the initial feeling-out/matwork takes forever while the actual meat of the match is compressed and rushed. It wouldn't be as much of an issue if the matwork were sufficiently compelling, but most of the time, they're just playing grabass. As far as the All Japan heavies go, Hash is behind Misawa, Kawada, and Kobashi for sure. I'm not sure where he stands compared to Taue. Of the three guys who can all be grouped together stylistically (Hash, Tenryu, Choshu), Tenryu is the best by a pretty good margin. My initial inclination is to put Choshu in front of Hash, but I could be convinced otherwise.

That's true in the abstract, but someone like Bret has enough great performances that they can't all be written off as flukes or anomalies. I'm not saying that anyone could have looked good doing shoot style, just that it's much easier to stay fresh and motivated when you're working a light schedule.

If you want to argue that Han's best was better than Bret's best, that's one thing. But you can't just sweep the fact that Han didn't work anything close to Bret's schedule under the rug. I think that just about any solid worker would look amazing working a handful of high-profile matches a year for less than a decade. Beyond that, I don't put much stock in percentages. Bret consistently brought it for big matches, so we can conclude that his lackluster performances are due to lack of effort rather than lack of ability. In my book, if you're great when you want to be, you're great.

Something Michelle is not loving: WWE road agents.

Re: the submission match, Kevin Cook once compared Santo/Casas to a passion play. Specifically, he wrote the following: If you replace Casas with Bret and Santo with Austin, I think it fits just as well, if not more so. Make of that what you will. Also, the Davey Boy match from IYH reminds me of a Misawa title defense with the champ taking a horrific beating and making a gradual and drawn-out comeback. Anyway, I think Loss nailed it with his last post. He gives Bret his due without coming across as a fanboy. I'm curious as to which wrestlers' work from 1994 to 1997 goodhelmet thinks "smokes" Bret's from the same period.

In the Fave Five thread, I talked about how Bret Hart is one of my favorite wrestlers of all time, and I will always maintain that his very best matches rank among the very best in wrestling history. Others aren't nearly as enamored of him. I'm not going to name names because I don't want to seem like I'm calling anybody out, but I've seen plenty of posts denigrating him both here and at places like DVDVR and WKO. There have been a ton of wrestler-specific threads sprouting up as of late, so I figured the time was right to discuss this. What's everyone's take on Bret? Is he the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be? Or will putting the letter S in front of Hitman produce your exact opinion of Bret Hart? Or are you somewhere in the middle?

Maybe it's the Asperger's in me, but I literally have no idea what about my earlier post is funny. Can you explain?

I guess I'll contribute to this. Every once in a while, I'll go on a kick where I'll watch a bunch of a wrestler or a promotion I think I might have given short shrift to, but my tastes overall are pretty static. So here are the four members of my personal wrestling Mount Rushmore. Mitsuharu Misawa-What can I say? No one in history can touch him in terms of all-time great matches he's been a part of. I also find his measured stoicism much more appealing than the cartoonish histronics that most wrestlers seem to prefer. To me, he's everything that an ace of a promotion should be. Bret Hart-My tastes have narrowed in recent years (Kurt Angle used to be one of my all-time favorites), but Bret is one of the few guys who I like more now than I did previously. He's one of the few guys who almost never makes me feel like I've completely wasted my time after watching one of his matches. There's hardly anyone better at constructing logical matches where things happen for a reason. Stan Hansen-Death From Above pretty well nailed it. Hansen made clubbering an art form. Almost certainly the greatest of all time at getting the most out of basic strikes and holds. Steve Austin-Maybe it's a consequence of being in high school during the Attitude Era, but Austin will always resonate with me. Even so, it's the matches that keep me coming back. 1997 and 2001 are arguably the two greatest years in WWF history from an in-ring standpoint, and he was a big part of both of them. Even his matches from the much-maligned Russo era hold up better than expected. Every time I go back to one of his showcase matches from that period expecting to totally hate it, I end up pleasantly surprised. I don't know who I'd have as my fifth guy. It could be anyone from Jumbo to Kawada to Eddy to Vader to Lawler.

OK, thanks for your help.

I wasn't actively watching wrestling during WWECW's 2008-09 heyday, so can you guys tell me the matches from that period most worth checking out? And if you could, please don't give me some massive OJ-style list of like a hundred matches. Ten at the most will do.

I'm not nearly as much of a WWECW booster as some here, but ECW represents everything I loathe about wrestling.

Also, look at Japan. I don't think anyone there gives two fucks about what Meltzer thinks, and he was voted the biggest foreign star of all time in some poll a while back. Speaking of Meltzer, he has said that Brody was the Johnny Valentine of his generation (that is, someone who couldn't make people believe that wrestling was real but could make them believe that he was real). Here's what he wrote in May: So there's that.

Didn't HHH potato the shit out of JR in that match? Anyway, the amusing thing about the wink-wink commentary is that they go out of their way to avoid stating that kind of thing directly. In the Austin/Dude Love match at Over the Edge, when special guest ring announcer Pat Patterson plugs the Brisco Brothers Body Shop, JR says "And we know who does the rear ends." But when the match starts and the crowd starts chanting "Vince is gay," JR tries to pass it off as "Vince is dead."

I would argue the opposite: Misawa working more cruiser-ish in the June match gave it a David-vs.-Goliath aspect that made it more compelling.