Jimmy Redman

I don't think it's a bad comparison. For me personally the difference is that Toyota was a little more...ambitious I guess? In her style, and her best matches are way better. I appreciate what Sabu does but just don't enjoy the matches as much, to be honest.

The Shane story, as far as I can recall, and assuming this is what Dave is talking about and not some secret, unreported thing, is about the time just before he left the company. Was it ECW? When they relaunched ECW and initially had it as its own touring brand in separate venues...Shane wanted to take ECW for himself, have complete autonomy over the brand to sort of show that he could run a wrestling company on his own. And at the last minute, Vince pulled the rug out from under him and that didn't happen. That was the frustration that lead to Shane leaving the fold entirely. I am sooo iffy on the details, maybe he was going to get Smackdown or something, someone who has access to the Observers will have to dig it up. But it was something, vaguely, like that. Shane tried to take a brand for himself (like a real life version of the WCW takeover) and failed. It wasn't a back stabbing thing, more just a brass ring thing.

Ted is still bubbling away on the bubble for me.

For me it will probably involve a lot of not watching wrestling at all. I know I made the vegetable analogy last night, but really my vegetables for this project wasn't so much watching matches or wrestlers or styles that I don't know or like as much. My vegetables were sitting down to watch matches at all. A year or so ago I crossed a certain line with wrestling where I was no longer obsessed with it, and no longer had the attention span to sit down and watch an entire match. I didn't even watch any WWE for months and months. I've come back to wrestling almost entirely to participate in this project. That involves a lot of watching, and even then it took me months and months to get to a place where I could sit down and watch matches like I needed to be able to do. And even now, I've been on a roll lately but I still really have to be in the mood to do some watching. When this project ends my reward will be to not have to seek out wrestling matches at all. I will follow NXT because it's actually enjoyable and I can sit through it, and I'll watch PPVs with my mother, but I probably won't even look at WWE TV, and won't Youtube or seek out any other wrestling, at least for a while. I just don't have the attention for it anymore.

Nobody? That's not the point I was making. You don't have to like it or rate it. I just think there's more than one way to "put a lot of thought into" matches.

I think there's a great point made by OJ that there are more ways to put thought into your matches than just by character work. It's one thing to think a fast-paced or spotty style is bad or not for you or not as good as other styles, but so many people seem to categorize it as mindless or shallow, almost like the faster you work the dumber you work, or if you're not thinking about character work you're not thinking, which I find fault with as a blanket thing. There are very intelligent spotfests out there. I agree with OJ about Toyota. She clearly put more thought into her stuff than most, thinking about how to stretch the physical limits of a wrestling match like few people were willing or able to before or after her. You don't happen across that kind of ambitious reach by accident. She was thinking just as much as Ozaki, it just manifests itself in different ways in a match. It's the same point I was making about Kofi Kingston, of all people. He clearly puts a lot of thought into his matches, which you can see from his match-to-match stories, the kind of counters he comes up with, and the creativity of his finishes. He's thinking a lot, just about the physical side, and about his spots.

Man, if we tried to tell people about the wrestling business...they'd never believe us.

At this point I've almost decided on the 100 I'm going to rank (putting them in order is another story). But I still have like 8-10 guys competing for those final two spots. Might have to do a dedicated bubble watching session and just bite the bullet. Ordering is what's going to kill me.

Watching a John Cena match after all this will feel like a whole bag of cookies after being a good girl and eating my vegetables for months. Not that I don't like vegetables. I've really learned to love them lately. But still...chocolate is chocolate. That's almost not even a metaphor, there really is a scary parallel in my life between learning to enjoy vegetables and learning to enjoy different styles of wrestling. EDIT: OK OJ posted and now this makes no sense.

Post-1996 without a pause. I'd shed a tear for Stan Hansen, and maybe a dozen other non-Stan matches, but other than that I'd be perfectly happy. My childhood wrestling, all of my favourite stuff and the entire future. Easy choice.

I find it weird trying to answer this question because I didn't live through it and don't know nearly enough about the time period to give a truly informed opinion. But since you asked, I'd say that it was probably due to, again, the forced, cheesy, 'too much' nature of the push (I seem to recall Vince masturbating furiously to him on commentary all the time, him going hard out on the stripping, having Jose Lothario as a manager, things like that) coupled with Shawn's character in the 90s being inherently unlikable and easier to hate. He was the classic wrestling conundrum of a guy with a character that screams heel, but working style that screams babyface. Was there also not a cool factor to Sid at the time of the match? Especially compared to someone so effete as Shawn was. Excuse my language in making this point, but I can imagine a lot of wrestling fans choosing the big badass tough guy over someone who they'd perceive as acting like a fruity faggot. The way they marketed Shawn may have helped draw in women, I don't know, but I can see it alienating a lot of men. Also it was one match. Was there any kind of sustained backlash against Shawn other than that? I genuinely don't know if there was. He seems over just fine with crowds during the rest of 1996, albeit not drawing very well, but I think that's a slightly different conversation. Shawn was well over as a babyface as a Rocker, and again in the 00s as Legend HBK, so I don't think it speaks to an inability to get over as a face in general, if that was in any way what you were alluding to. Just that the way they pushed him in 1996 naturally lead to a segment of the audience turning on him when he faced someone much cooler.

So. I have a feeling this is going to be a long post, so bear with me. I have a lot of thoughts about this, some of them in agreement, some disagreeing, and some just playing devil's advocate or throwing shit at the wall to chew on (...eww). I agree with you so far as Shawn taking the entire match and making it about himself, which gained him support in the crowd and undercut Diesel as the big face. What I find most interesting about the match is just how much of it Shawn spent on offense. I mean he really took a lot of this match, Diesel was selling forever, which is not typical of how Shawn usually worked as a heel vs bigger guys. Shawn usually has his match structure down pat, at the very least, and his M.O. was pinballing all over the place, and taking his chance to show off while he was bumping and selling. In contrast, his control sections as a heel were usually based on restholds and boring as hell. But in this match, he takes control for a long time, and spends the time showing off with a lot of exciting offense. There are a few reasons why I think this happens: 1. It was a Wrestlemania main event, and Shawn's first main event match on this level, and he wanted to have the best match possible. (Shawn mentions doing the moonsault to the floor for the first time because hey, it was his first Mania main event, he wanted to do something special.) 2. Due to it being a Mania main event the match necessarily had to go a certain length, and a key goal would have been to make it a. believable, and b. entertaining, for Shawn to go toe-to-toe with Diesel for 20+ minutes. 3. In order to make it believable for the smaller, pinballing Shawn to compete with the giant monster pushed Diesel for so long, Shawn would have to get in a lot of offense, really hurt Diesel and show that he could be in trouble. 4. Diesel was getting the super mega face push, booked dominant, having Pamela Anderson take his side before the bell, doing the strong 2.1 kickouts, etc. They needed to do something to make him look vulnerable, to make his eventual victory seem like a struggle and not a foregone conclusion. 5. Nash is, frankly, a mediocre wrestler and needed to be carried quite a long way to get to something resembling a compelling, great Mania main event. I can see the thought process that went into laying the match out like that, and in Shawn making the moves he made during the match. He had a lot of points to hit here, some of them working against each other. And Nash's limited nature and Shawn's...Shawn nature meant that he attacked the problem by completely taking over, doing all the work and working super hard to kind of...will it into a great match. It didn't work to get Diesel any more over as a babyface, but my devil's advocate to that is that Diesel was a pretty shitty babyface, and only found his feet later in the year when he turned tweener and then heel. It also looks to me (correct me if I'm wrong) like a really over the top, forced, Vince specialty megapush. I'm not sure a more giving performance from Shawn in this match would really have saved Diesel as a face in the long run. Nor would it have stopped Shawn from getting cheers and having to turn face in the long run. The other thing I want to note about the match is that I enjoyed it. A lot more than I was expecting to actually, even if the stretch wasn't that heated due to Shawn staying on top too long. Nash just isn't any good and I've struggled to sit through any singles match of his I've watched (even pimped stuff like the Bret matches) but this at least didn't struggle to hold my interest. It was actually the best match of his I can think of other than...his 1996 match with Shawn, which is clearly head and shoulders above this and any other Nash match. I can imagine Shawn theoretically working the match differently to better position Diesel as a babyface, but I can't really imagine Shawn being able to make the match much better than it was. It entertained me and kept my interest for 20+ minutes, which is more than I'd ever expect from a Nash match. I've said this before but this is where you and I just have completely different outlooks. For you, Shawn working against the roles they were supposed to be playing hurts the match beyond repair. For me, I can acknowledge it as a storytelling flaw but at the same time still enjoy the match because the work is entertaining enough. Like, in your original point you said Shawn got himself over at the expense of his opponent or the match or the bigger picture. I think in this instance what he did worked against his opponent and the bigger picture maybe, but not the match. As far as One Man Shawn Shows go, it was fun enough.

If Shane isn't sticking around as a performer after Mania I assume they'll have Shane win and then hand off power to someone else to run the show for the time being.. Before, of course, the McMahons eventually return to the joy of all. It will be hard to have Shane lose and nothing change with The Authority after promising it so vehemently with Shane's big return. But I'm with you, I don't want to see Shane beat Taker at Mania, in any form, to get there.

To be fair, it is kind of our fault for leaving it this late. And regardless of whether you change any minds or not, it's still a great read, and I'm still eager to read any cases people want to put forward for their guys.

I don't think it's a generalisation about the board as much as it is directed at one person in particular.

The great thing is that while I can take a guess, I can't say for sure which one that was about.

I tend to agree in that Funk feels like a Top 10 guy without being a real #1 contender. Everyone is really super high on him, and throws out "Top 10" or "Top 5", but nobody has really gone to bat for him as #1. It was Dylan who argued for Funk in that triangle GOAT podcast right? I'd be interested to hear his thoughts on how strongly he sees Funk as a #1 candidate today.

I think Parv's lukewarm reaction to Regal's mid 00s stuff mirrors my own back in the day. It's easy to see why he didn't jump off the page when that's your first introduction to him, he largely jobbed in short matches and didn't seem to do anything interesting. Having said that, you're still missing what would be his best work from 2006. Benoit at No Mercy for starters. The Velocity match has been covered. There's also a tag title match with Taylor vs London & Kendrick that I really liked, I think it was 12.1.07 on SD. Dates for later stuff: vs Punk - Raw 19.1.09 (No DQ) vs Christian - ECW 10.11.09 (Regal's title shot in UK) & ECW 19.1.10 vs Goldust - Superstars 26.8.10 & 23.9.10 (first one is better IIRC) vs Ambrose - FCW 15.7.12 vs Ohno - NXT 10.4.13 vs Cesaro - NXT 25.12.13 There are also fun matches vs Bryan and Davey Boy Jr. on Superstars in 2010 as well.

When I get to the Diesel matches I'll let you know. One of my last minute cramming goals is to watch a lot of 90s Shawn so I feel happy with having a decent picture of his entire career. Completionism isn't something I generally feel deeply about, but I should probably make the effort for someone I'm considering for #1. WM11 happens to be one of my gaps still. I mean I'm pretty sure I've seen one of the Diesel matches, but it was so long ago and I have zero recollection of it so I can't even tell you which one it was. I'll have them first at bat to watch.

I give Shawn a ton of credit for understanding pro wrestling, or at least, for having a honed and learned understanding of pro wrestling. It's just that sometimes he uses that understanding for evil. And other times, he can't execute it to the fullest. We're so deep into this process that I'm not sure what's been said in what thread or in PMs or facebook discussions or what. Honest question: I think Shawn is hurt by people not liking him as a human being. That's probably not fair to him in this process, however, one aspect of that which shows up in his work is that he would, at times (even key times), do the right thing to get himself over at the expense of his opponent or the match or the bigger picture. Does that hurt him for you? It doesn't really hurt him for me for a couple reasons: 1. I wasn't around in the 90s so I didn't live through what would be most of these examples. Which means that I probably haven't seen as many of them as a lot of other people have, and I also don't hate or even dislike the man enough to be offended by them. Not the way I get offended by, say, Hunter or Angle's bullshit. It's a generational thing, I think. 2. Like I said above, at the very least Shawn's goal in acting selfishly is to "steal the show" or put himself over as a great wrestler, which at least tends to serve the match more than a guy like Hunter, or a Road Warrior or whatever whose goal in acting selfishly is to put themselves over as a badass or impenetrable. It can often be a good idea done for the wrong reasons, if that makes sense. Like, his tantrum over Hogan, and his determination to show him up by running circles around him ended up making for the best possible match, because Shawn was bumping all over the place for Hogan and it was like a throwback to 1985, whereas I don't think an attempt to work it more like a dream match or like a more serious match would have been as effective. It was a selfish decision to act the way he did, but it inadvertently lead to a better match. In that sense he can sort of "get away with" acting like a dickhead. He's so good that even his tantrums are good wrestling. I'm curious to know what you'd say some of these examples are. I feel like you're talking about something more subtle than throwing a tantrum and kicking Vader in the head.

This is fair, I always meant to do a big write up and just never got around to it. It's a lot easier to pimp Kofi Kingston and John Morrison than to try to make a definitive argument for Shawn. I get strangely inarticulate when I try to do so. Since you mentioned The Rockers, I think his tag work is a really good lens through which to view him. Not just his work with The Rockers (who I agree are an amazing, all-time team) but also his work in every short-term tag team and random TV tag match since. Particularly in his comeback run, which is what I'll get into now since post-comeback is the lens through which I view Shawn. In 00s WWE I think there is a marked difference between an average tag team match, and one with Shawn in it. And that difference is directly due to Shawn's influence on the structure and the spots. The best ones basically look like Rockers matches with different bodies, and of course I mean that in the best possible way. He knows the importance of shine, always going on a long run to open up (extended shine, or really any shine in itself already puts his matches heads above a lot of modern WWE matches) with the classic babyface tag team spots he was doing in the 80s. Then as they reach their peak BAM, some heinous move is the transition into the heat. The heat is long and rough and full of cheating, although of course dependent on how well the heel team can work it. And then the hot tag that marks the transition into the modern WWE drawn out finishing stretch. What I'm describing sounds pretty perfunctory and basic tag structure, but I think again, the fact that his tag matches stand out so distinctly compared to everyone else's means that it's not as easy or typical as it sounds. He has an innate understanding of wrestling, knowing exactly what to do and when, that a lot of others seem to not share. And in addition it's not just the structure but also the execution, and Shawn is brilliant at all aspects of being a tag worker - great at the opening babyface shine, great at getting killed during the heat, great at the high energy hot tag with lots of crowd pleasing signature moves. A few moments stand out to me in terms of his tag work. Going into specific moments and saying "That, right there!" is easier to do than to come up with some overarching argument, so bear with me. One is a handicap match on Raw vs Edge & Orton. Hunter had torn his quad at the PPV and Shawn was left alone. Handicap matches in WWE tend to belittle the team in the equation by having the one face beat up on two guys. Not here. This was like, the handicap match of your dreams, worked exactly how you'd think it should be worked on paper. Shawn was one star going up against two stars, and everyone involved sold it like he was walking to his execution. And he got his typical shine while it lasted, but then the heels took over and beat the shit out of him, and you have Shawn selling death and JR talking about it being a career-ending match, and by the time Shawn eeks out a victory it seems like he HAD TO get out of the match somehow or he'd have been killed dead. That sounds melodramatic, but they sold it so well, and that's exactly how you'd want it sold. Trying to fight two top guys at once SHOULD be life threatening. I remember this match coming up recently with someone dismissively saying "oh remember when Shawn beat both of Rated-RKO", and I think it's a good example of how the faults of booking and personal bias can drown out the work itself, because this was a perfectly worked handicap match that put over the heels tremendously. It was sort of like a normal Shawn tag match, but for the fact that he had no one to hot tag to, so he had to just squeak out something himself. It also reminds me of the DX vs Legacy HIAC match. How do you create an epic face-in-peril segment in a cage? Lock the other face outside! I love the idea of it, and I loved the execution of it (and not just for getting Hunter out of the match for so long). Shawn again sells this like death and really puts over both the Cell and the idea that facing two of these guys by himself is a death knell and he'll be lucky to escape alive. It's funny, when he works alongside Hunter I start to subconsciously add up all of these things that Shawn does for the match, or for his opponents, that Hunter would never think to do, or that he'd do the opposite of. Hunter is the guy who made jobbing tag teams in handicap matches into an artform, after all. (Shawn is an extremely selfish worker as well, don't get me wrong, but his selfishness usually comes from wanting to have a great match and put on a show, not from wanting to look strong and badass all the time. Shawn's selfishness at least works to make better matches most of the time.) The Legacy feud, by the way, was what came out of those skits where Shawn was working as a chef. The build to Summerslam was stupid DX "comedy", and they're facing two midcard lackeys. There's no reason why we should take this seriously. So the match starts, and Shawn has one of Legacy, I think Cody, come over to the apron and slap him. Shawn had a chance to laugh this off, and it's the kind of spot that I can imagine Hunter laughing off, to continue that train of thought. But he doesn't, he gets very serious, very quickly, and starts wailing on Cody with punches. In that one moment Shawn shows that he's taking this seriously after all, which is the cue to the audience to take it seriously as well. He has the ability to change tone like that, which is important in WWE when so much of what they do is comedy or character based or ridiculous. The ability to be entertaining in those ways, and then turn around and act like a serious wrestler and have the audience buy it, that is a key attribute. It's also about reading the crowd and being able to react accordingly, even within the confines of modern WWE. 2004 was a different time in terms of micromanagement, to be sure, but even so, when Shawn and Benoit had a long main event on Raw, the one in February, they were building to the three-way. Benoit was the one they were building up since he was new to Raw and not established yet, so for this match Shawn was working as, not even a subtle heel, but just the slightly lesser babyface in a face vs face match. But as they went down this road, the crowd was WAY into Benoit and actually booing Shawn a fair bit, which wouldn't do since they both needed to be faces for the final angle. So they change up the match and have Benoit take over, he gets heat on Shawn and Shawn sells and sells until finally, the crowd comes around and starts cheering for Shawn too, without turning on Benoit. Job done, and they continue with the rest of the match. That level of crowd control, of reading an audience, and of being able to turn them around to your liking, that is something. I'm just rambling at this point, but like I said I find it easier to point to specific things I've noticed over time than to write generally. There are a million more of these I could go into. I just find his understanding of wrestling to be immense, in a myriad of ways: reading the crowd and knowing what to give them and when, knowing the story of the match and doing everything to get it over, and physically being able to follow through on those ideas and execute to best effect. It's not about "he has bad offense", the same way that Cena's bad punches or sloppy moves don't detract from what he does. The story, the symbolism and the emotional hook are way more important. In fact I've always found it super weird when people criticise Shawn for certain things but are super high on Cena, when they both work in similar ways and both could be subject to the same criticisms. I'll probably have more to say, but I'm all rambled out for now.

As I was watching the tag title match, seeing AJ and the heels nail their shit and Jericho always being half a step off, I thought to myself "Instead of giving them a tag title reign, they should make it where Jericho is the weak link for being too old to keep up, and his heel turn is borne out of his inadequacy." And then that's kind of what they did. So that's...something.

Also a TNA PPV match vs AJ Styles in 2005.

Hunter should get 2000-01 for L in all fairness, however much that shakes out to be, but honestly I find him so annoying right now that I don't really care if he does get 0.

I bet you guys handed your assignments in on time too. Nerds. Like a true procrastinator I am waiting as long as I can to submit, and spending this time to furiously cram in all of the stuff I planned to do months ago.