NintendoLogic

I don't want to go too far afield with a debate over how big-time the AWA was, so for the sake of discussion, I'd like to hear the case for Garvin/Martel/Hennig. Did they work well with as wide a variety of opponents as Shawn did? Did they ever elevate an opponent of significantly lesser ability like Shawn did with Diesel and Sid? As for post-comeback Shawn, it wasn't like he was dragging down Eddy Guerrero every week. A lot of his work was against guys like HHH and Kurt Angle. In fact, if you watch the HBK/Angle WM21 match, it's rather striking how Shawn tries to reel the match in while Kurt is his usual self-indulgent self. When he had a game opponent, he generally delivered. He had good matches with Cena in 2007 and a broken down Undertaker in 2009 and 2010.

Loves Davey Richards, has deeply retrograde views on human sexuality...has it ever occurred to any of you that maybe Babinsack is Resident Evil?

The sentence immediately preceding that is even better. Note that the "he" in question is Davey Richards. It's probably for the best that he's planning on retiring next year, because he's likely to pull an Akira Maeda if he sticks around too long.

I think working with Benoit was a big part of it. Their feud was largely based on one-upmanship, and their matches were fast-paced with tons of nearfalls and submission reversals. The matches were highly praised, and Angle apparently decided that was how he should work with everybody.

I think 6/3/94 and 1/20/97 are roughly equal with the slight edge going to the former, but I've had it the other way around in the past and may again in the future. I don't have a problem with 1/97's finish since Kobashi barely kicks out but is so spent that basically just breathing on him will finish him. Far worse is something like 10/31/98 where Kobashi kicks out of the TD91 and the match keeps going for like five more minutes.

From what I've seen on Japanese sites, it seems that Japanese fans don't regard 6/3/94 as the definitive Misawa match the way American wrestling nerds do. To them, the 6/8/90 Jumbo match is a much bigger deal.

In fairness, I recall this being a fairly common transition during that time in the WWE. It sucks, but it's not something I'd assign him the lion's share of the blame for.

When I bring up subjectivity, I'm not saying we should throw up our hands and declare the critical enterprise pointless. I'm just trying to unpack everyone's assumptions about what constitutes quality. Like, I can watch something like Dandy/Llanes and recognize that it's clearly great on a certain level, but it doesn't impact me emotionally the way a high-end American match does. A big part of it is that I'm mainly interested in the narrative/storytelling aspect of wrestling, and the WWE main event style is generally good about providing a clear progression to point A to B to C. In lucha, on the other hand, transitions are much more abrupt.

WWE propaganda hasn't really affected my opinion. In fact, I was pretty strongly anti-Michaels for a long time. It's only within the past year or so that I've really delved into and gained an appreciation for his 90s work. I should note that it was Dylan who turned me on to the greatness of the Rockers. I don't know what needs to be pointed out. He worked effectively all year against a wide variety of opponents, from Owen to Diesel to Mankind. He even managed to drag a decent match out of Sid. And most of them were straight wrestling matches rather than the gimmick matches he's known for. And to further the Shawn/Rude comparison, he never had a match as bad as Rude/Chono from Halloween Havoc. Those guys are all respected, but Shawn was working at a different level. Which goes back to my point about Arn. I think that being a main event anchor is significantly more difficult than being a good hand or a midcard stooge heel or one half of a blowjob tag team. Others may see it differently.

I don't know that there is a lot of arguing for or against and that's fine. I do think it's interesting that so many people are high enough on Shawn where they see him as top fifty and above. That is semi-surprising to me only because with everything I have seen over the last several years it would be hard for me to even fathom a case for him that high. But a lot of people like his post-comeback stuff for reasons I'll never really understand. Like I said in the other thread, I think where you rate Shawn historically depends on how highly you rate stuff outside of WWE and WCW. I think peak All Japan is as good as wrestling gets, but the New Japan heavies are more fun than great, junior stuff doesn't really hold up that well a lot of the time, joshi is hit or miss, and I actively dislike shoot style and deathmatch/garbage wrestling. And a lot of the US workers being placed above Shawn are midcarders or territorial guys. Arn Anderson, to take one example, was great at what he did, but he also reached a level he was comfortable with and didn't really go beyond it. It seems unfair to penalize Shawn for not trying to work on those levels. More than anything, though, I think your rating of Shawn depends on highly you regard his 1994-1997 period. I regard it very highly and consider his 1996 in particular an annus mirabilis. But if you think that Shawn's 1996 wasn't even as good as Rick Rude's 1992 (not a knock on Rude, that was a great run too), you'll rate him significantly lower.

I have to say, I feel very weird being put in the position of Michaels defender. I'm much more comfortable arguing against "Shawn is the GOAT" than I am arguing against "Shawn isn't top 100."

I don't know of too many matches he didn't spend the bulk of working from underneath. And even if his selling wasn't picture-perfect, they'd put enough of a beating on him to garner him plenty of sympathy. As for HBK/Angle at Wrestlemania, I actually think Shawn was the one who held the match together. Seriously, go back and watch it. Pretty much everything good in the match is from Shawn.

I agree about formulas overall, but the very best matches take the formulas and expand upon them or provide new twists. Going back to my initial post in this thread, Shawn is a big picture guy while Regal and Finlay are little things guys. Shawn would provide the structure while Regal/Finlay would fill in the details. Also, Shawn's matches are built around selling while Regal/Finlay's matches are built around stiff, credible offense. Granted, Shawn doesn't like working stiff, which kind of throws a monkey wrench in things.

I guess Patterson is a poor shorthand for what I was trying to get at. My point is that it doesn't take more than a good grasp of the basics to have a solid TV match. Like, a lot of people are really high on Dolph Ziggler, but you can't tell me that he isn't formulaic. It's when you go beyond that that the all-time greats make their mark. Anyway, if I can throw out a somewhat random aside, I think it's a shame that to my knowledge, HBK never had a proper match against Regal or Finlay. I think their respective styles are ideally suited for each other in terms of complementing their strengths and hiding their weaknesses.

Peak performance isn't the end-all be-all, but it is my starting point. The way I see it, if Wrestler B doesn't have a single match that would crack Wrestler A's top ten, Wrestler A wins. So I see if that's that's the case and then go from there. I don't value day-to-day stuff as much because I don't think it's nearly as difficult. You could sit down with Pat Patterson or DDP and work out a formula for a solid 5 to 10 minute match without much trouble. I also don't care much about consistency. If you phone it in on smaller shows but bring it on the big ones, you may be lazy, but you're still great.

Since everyone else seems to be doing it, I'll post my list. The only wrestlers I'd place above Shawn for certain are Jumbo, Misawa, Kawada, Funk, Kobashi, Flair, Bret, Eddy, and Hansen. After that, there's a big logjam consisting of Shawn, Lawler, Austin, Vader, Steamboat, Aja, Liger, and Santo which could go in any order depending on my mood. So I guess I'd have Shawn 10th at best and 17th at worst.

I think Shawn is the ultimate litmus test of whether you place greater value on little things or the big picture. A Shawn match isn't going to have a bunch of nifty moments (or if it does, they come from the other guy), but it works if you look at it as a cohesive whole. I'm a big picture guy, so I rank Shawn very highly. Top 20 for sure, and a dark horse pick for top 10.

You'd obviously think so because you're a lucha superfan. For me, it boils down to "who would you rather watch." I'd rather listen to a decent metal band than the greatest reggae band of all time. That's why I limited it to guys whose careers were primarily US-based. With guys like Funk, Eddy, Hansen, and Vader, their reps are based largely on their overseas work. For US-based guys, even if you put Flair, Lawler, Steamboat, and Savage above Shawn, that's still top 5. I don't know if this metric necessarily favors Shawn, since he was pretty notorious for mailing it in when the cameras weren't rolling. And as I said in the ranking WWE champions thread, I place much more emphasis on being great in big match situations. I agree that those two had pockets of greatness, but I don't think either one of them had a year that was nearly as strong as Shawn's 1996. Overall, Shawn kind of reminds me of that joke about how Canada could have had British culture, French cuisine, and American technology but ended up with American culture, British cuisine, and French technology. Shawn's kind of like a cross between Steamboat and Kobashi, but rather than Steamboat's matwork and Kobashi's offense, he had Kobashi's matwork and Steamboat's offense. I suppose that undermines my argument somewhat, but I think that Shawn had a way of making his work better than the sum of its parts.

Of good matches, yes. But I think Bret comes out ahead on the number of transcendently great ones. I don't know how many Rey has that don't involve Eddy.

I wouldn't rank Angle above Savage, but he did a good job of selling at Summerslam 2001 against Austin.

I wasn't talking just WWE. Of those who were world champions in the WWE, the only ones I think have a strong case for having a stronger body of work than Bret are Flair and Eddy. As for Eddy/Rey, I can see the TV match argument, but I feel like something like that doesn't reflect ability as much as effort. I'm basically of the opinion that if you're great when you want to be, you're great. It's for that reason that I value peak performance above all else, and I think Eddy has more high-end matches to his credit than Rey does.

I think any ranking of WWE champions based solely on in-ring work that doesn't have Bret in the top three is suspect. Also, I'd like to hear the case for placing Rey above Eddy. Not only was Eddy great at all the things Rey is great at, he could effectively work both face and heel and was great at a wider variety of styles.

As far as matches go, HBK/Mankind from Mind Games would be just outside my personal top 10. But the WWE has pimped Shawn as the GOAT because he's the greatest wrestler under long-term contract to them who isn't going to burn his bridges. He certainly ranks very high if you limit your view to wrestlers who worked primarily in the US. Where he stands overall depends on how much you think of the wrestling traditions of other countries. Like, I don't care all that much for lucha, so I have no problem putting Shawn above someone like El Dandy. Others might see it differently.

I already reviewed the Superbrawl match. The thing is, I feel like there's a tendency to pile on whenever Jerry goes against the grain. I've certainly been guilty of that, so I think it's only fair that I should back him up when I agree with him. And I wanted to provide something more substantive than "Yeah, I didn't think those Regal matches were all that hot either."

The Arn Superbrawl match certainly had its moments, but the wonky psychology kind of hurt it. Arn spends most of the match working on Regal's arm despite his taped-up leg being the obvious target. Then he starts going after the leg toward the end, rendering the arm work pointless. And the Zbyszko Saturday Night match never struck me as anything more than just another match.