Jimmy Redman

I don't want to go all crazy on everything pro-Angle here (as I am prone to do), but I will take issue with this. Last time I watched Rumble '03 I was struck by how poorly that match was structured. By the end of it was I relieved when they went into killing finishers because the first half of the match is a meandering mess that went nowhere and made no attempt to...be anything. Other than "Hey look, Angle and Benoit in the ring together!" Bored the shit out of me. That match in particular frustrates the hell out of me because I really like the Smackdown Six period and the Angle/Benoit tag team angle, so I am desperate to like the match that it led to as well. But I can't. And their other matches were made of much of the same.

A real sport if I ever heard one.

Then not to the level of Hunter, no. Like I said, Taker has been on top of WWE even longer and people don't resent him for it. It depends on the person, and outside of some cataclysmic level of bad booking/overexposure, I don't see many people clamouring to get Steve Austin off their TVs.

For me #5 is probably Austin and #1-4 is easily Rey Mysterio. Every match Angle had with Rey was good and Rey did more than I think anyone else to reign in Angle's bullshit and make him somewhat resemble a pro wrestler. In general I think Angle works best when he is facing someone small/young/new/an underdog in some way, because he plays a kind of veteran and/or bully type guy and shelves the no selling, spot-fu and finisher killing to a large extent. Stuff like the Rey matches, that PPV match with Lethal, the Jannetty match, and so on. Anything that forces him to reign it in and stop being...Kurt Angle. I like WMXX a lot too but generally he and Eddie were hit and miss. The Shawn matches are disappointing. Joe matches are disappointing, although I do like the Lockdown match. The Benoit matches are frustrating as shit for me. Haven't seen the Brock matches in forever.

There's a difference between a certain amount of people getting tired of one guy being on top forever, and a guy being specifically hated for politicking and keeping himself on top forever. Almost anyone who's been on top for a long time had that audience fatigue to some extent. That wasn't what you were asking though.

As Matt D sort of said, Austin was just better than Hunter. A fair part of the backlash against Hunter's politicking stemmed from him being shoved down people's throats for so long and people resenting the fact that he was on top and so, by extension, the way he got there and stayed there. It was also partly a knee-jerk reaction to Hunter marrying the boss' daughter and people being very aware of the powerful position he was in. (In comparison if you look at, say, complaints about Cena being on top, they are usually directed far more at Vince pushing him than Cena pushing himself, if that makes sense. Because we don't get the impression that he is pushing himself, the way that we do with Hunter, again, because of the position he's in.) The question also assumes that Austin will continue to provide examples of him "holding down" other guys, which I wouldn't necessarily bet on. Austin was always definitely out for himself, but the times where he's thrown his weight around that we know of, the ones in the OP, all come off far more as Austin doing the smart thing (or at the very least able to be spun that way), rather than things Hunter has done that come off as him being selfish and burying other guys. Hunter is hated not because of longevity but because he has given people reasons to be hated (or if we don't want to give him that much agency, Vince has). Undertaker has been a main eventer in WWE for twice as long and he isn't hated as a politician by fans.

Well both Holly and Test had great TV matches with RVD in 2006, Holly's being the back slicing match on 26th September and Test on 3rd October. Honestly don't remember another standout match or performance from Test's run. I can believe that people were pimping him, I just don't remember. I also think RVD had a hell of a year in 2006 and had good to great TV matches with a lot of people around that time. I would definitely recommend watching 2006 WWECW, but primarily for Big Show's title reign and RVD being generally good.

Mark Henry vs Bobby Lashley, Smackdown 28th April 2006 This was a freaking MIRACLE match. I wish the VQ on the Youtube rip wasn't so sh*tty since I'd have loved to have seen Henry's facials and taunts more clearly. He makes this work by keeping score of every time he out-strengths Lashley and mocking him, working the infallible "try to knock down Henry" angle, and generally being awesome. The moment where Lashley hits the first big cutoff clothesline and Henry doesn't go down is great. This also speaks to the point I made about Lashley in the other thread too. Think of the calibre of worker that was required to get something remotely interesting out of this lug. Cena. Finlay. Henry. Not to mention Umaga, Vince, Steve Austin and a boatload of shenanigans in a big group effort. Dude was just astoundingly mediocre.

Not really. The triple threat they all had sucked. Lashley/Test sucked twice. Don't remember anything particularly good from any of those combos. I just went over a lot of this period, and honestly, it's not just bad memories. Lashley was really bad. After watching so much 2006-07 lately I am twice as impressed that Cena got the match out of him that he did, because I have not found a single other Lashley performance that is even in the same universe as GAB. He was woeful.

With this same idea coming up in the DVDVR thread, I've been giving this some thought. I still want to revisit...well, pretty much everything before I'd commit to a definite list or something like a Top 10, but we need to start somewhere. So as a starting point here is a list of Henry matches that I'd argue are great, or if not that they definitely constitute a great Henry performance. Challenges and additions are very welcome. ______________________________ vs Goldberg, 6th October 2003 vs Booker T, Raw 17th November 2003 vs Booker T (Street Fight), 24th November 2003 vs Booker T, Armageddon 2003 vs Rey Mysterio, Smackdown 20th January 2006 vs Rey Mysterio, Smackdown 27th January 2006 vs Undertaker, Smackdown 10th February 2006 vs Rey Mysterio, Smackdown 5th May 2006 vs Chris Benoit, Smackdown 26th May 2006 vs Rey Mysterio, Smackdown 23rd June 2006 vs CM Punk, ECW 6th December 2007 w/ Big Daddy V vs Punk/Kane, Armageddon 2007 vs Matt Hardy, ECW 19th August 2008 (2008-10 is a complete blur to me, I really want to revisit his ECW and babyface runs) vs Big Show, Money in the Bank 2011 vs Sheamus, Summerslam 2011 vs Sheamus, Smackdown 26th August 2011 vs Randy Orton, Night of Champions 2011 vs Randy Orton (HIAC), Hell in a Cell 2011 vs Big Show, Vengeance 2011 vs Daniel Bryan, Smackdown 4th November 2011 vs Big Show, Survivor Series 2011 vs Daniel Bryan (Cage), Smackdown 29th November 2011 vs Daniel Bryan (Lumberjack), Smackdown 20th January 2012 vs CM Punk, Raw 2nd April 2012 vs CM Punk (No DQ), Raw 16th April 2012 Chamber Match, Elimination Chamber 2013 (Henry single-handedly made it great) vs John Cena, Money in the Bank 2013

I am hoping that this ends up with Kane as one of Wyatt's henchmen. I mean, just have him be another follower doing his bidding like Brodie and ranga dude. With these kind of "cult leader" angles, it always tends to be new people or scrubs who are the ones stupid enough to believe in the leader. Wyatt has unknown people from development. SES Punk had an unknown in Serena, and repackaged guys who didn't mean much in Gallows and Mercury. Any time the leader tries to convert a real Superstar they get shut down. I think it would be a powerful statement if a guy on the level of Kane was actually converted to Wyatt's cause and followed him around as a genuine believer. It would speak to the strength of his cult leader-ness, and help put him over by having a star like Kane take direction from him.

She's not one of my favourites, but I just watched her stuff from around the "Look how much Candice Michelle has improved!" period, and I was amazed all over again how much she brought to her matches.

Amen to all of that, great write up. Cherry was so, so perfect in her role. She was saving pro wrestling for me for like...three weeks. Going to have to watch her run again now. Speaking of which, I'm sure I could fill this thread with a lot of women since I love the Divas far more than any sane person should. But I always really loved Michelle McCool. Most people seemed to hate her and think she was terrible, which I never understood.

This occurred to me too, but it seems to me silly to have Brock work the supposed #2 PPV of the year in a tag match that could only be for building up a bigger match in him vs Punk, to then take place at a future B PPV. I can completely believe that they would run that on say the go-home Raw or something though, which is even stupider, but there you go. If not Cena/Bryan at Summerslam though, what to do with Cena? Seems difficult to go back to Henry after that. RVD? They have no real challengers for him anymore. Just babyfaces that people like more than him.

Plus they've been using "Bryan has been on an incredible roll as of late" as a talking point, so he can easily continue with it by becoming No. 1 Contender tomorrow one way or another. The frightening thing is if they pair him with Axel instead.

Not to be a "Husky Harris" chanter, but...Ryback?

Wrong thread

I think there is definitely a comedic angle in Ryback now being the World's Largest Chickensh*t Heel.

In 2004 I really liked Mark Jindrak. I'm not sure why. I also tolerate Khali and have an inexplicable love of the Khali Chop of Doom. I could watch him hit that on dudes all day long.

I think it was just to get Vickie managing Ryback, or else making them the nucleus of the heel/Vince faction when the Vince/Hunter feud for control really kicks off. Just typing that last bit made me feel a little ill.

The bit about Race/Martel reminds me of something I said about Demolition/Brainbusters a while back, the gist of it being that if they had been doing such entertaining and intricate work in the form of high-spots and movez instead of in the form of simple tag team spots, it was something Meltzer would rain snowflakes onto. But it wasn't, because someone like Meltzer sees snowflake value in action over role-playing. I don't think I'm explaining myself very well, but it was the same kind of idea: Why is one style of match better than another? The answer to which is, I guess, it just is. People will inevitably like what they like and see value in some things over others. There may be nothing technically, fundamentally, objectively different between a heated slugfest and a heated spotfest of comparable "quality". But if you put them both in front of someone who likes violence and blood and punches, he will probably prefer the brawl. Similarly, if you put them both in front of someone who likes movez and action and bombs being thrown, he will probably prefer the spotfest. Why wouldn't they? If both matches had structural problems, the violence-loving guy might excuse that if he at least gets some violence out of it, where he would find it harder to overlook it in a match who's style is less appealing. Same thing with the spot-loving guy watching the brawl. And there's nothing wrong with any of this either. People aren't robots, they can't watch the matches in a vacuum. There's nothing that says just because two matches are kind of the same structurally that they should therefore be judged the same, when they are completely different styles and telling two different stories.

On the second part, I kind of agree on the prevalence of "good" rather than "great" matches, to put it that way, but at the same time I wouldn't call it disappointing myself. I feel like the volume of really good TV matches in WWE this year has been wonderful and is a fair trade-off to maybe not having so many clear MOTYCs. My only problem is that I find it hard to rank the 20-30 or so matches that are all roughly of the same quality in any order. And I like order. Like, the Shield had pretty much the same great TV match for eight straight weeks of TV. How on earth do you rank one over the next?

Including Santino of all people in that group is strange. Before he went heel he was a fan from the crowd, and then a huge underdog who was Italian and dated Maria. Nothing about him was dangerous or cerebral.

Cherry had a couple of my favorite TV matches that year. Her debut vs Victoria is honest to God one of my favourite matches ever.

The problem with this is that you (personally) can't watch it in a vacuum. If you know the context it is pretty hard to try to un-know it. I don't think you can help bringing that into the match as a viewer, and I don't think that is a bad thing, or that it affects the quality of a match at all. To me if a match is great, it doesn't really matter why it is great. Well not that it doesn't matter, but that no reason is better or worse than another. A match that is great because of the context surrounding it isn't any less great in and of itself than a match that is great because of bell-to-bell action, which isn't any less great in and of itself than a match that is great because of the colour of the ropes. All that matters is which one I thought was better. If you're interested though, I watched Jumbo vs Tenryu in a vacuum, context-wise, and this was my legit reaction: