Jimmy Redman

On this note, I'd suggest watching all of Bryan's January matches as a series, as it's really a great unfolding story of him chickenshitting his way out of matches with the biggest giants in the land. Bryan vs Big Show - Smackdown 3rd January Bryan vs Big Show (No DQ) - Smackdown 10th January Bryan vs Mark Henry (Lumberjack Match) - Smackdown 17th January Bryan vs Show vs Henry (Cage Match) - Royal Rumble 2010

At some point I would love it if someone did the same thing for lucha. There's a lot of talk on the board about it, but I'm sure there are other lucha novices out there besides me who would appreciate a 'let's start from the beginning' run through.

To add to that, I thought he was easily the best guy in WWE in 2012, as well as this year, and was one of the best in 2011 and 2013. He has a laundry list of good to great matches from the last couple years, and will probably steadily add to it in the next 18 months. Also, the match vs Big Show at HIAC 2012 is one of the best heavyweight title matches in recent company history.

Yeah, I'd be able to do the WWE part at least without trouble, but it depends if you're looking for just the best performances or an entire overview of his career.

I think it's interesting to note that at the time people who were fans/defenders of Mike McG would cite "Rock must have picked him to train with for a reason!" as a point in his favour, as if Rock (along with the office and his other supporters) saw some great potential in him and wanted to work with him and impart his wisdom...whereas from that Hawkins snippet it seems as though it was actually WWE who simply picked two warm bodies who happened to be standing around.

With his knee brace Rey hurt Cody's face leading to his mask-wearing phase, and broke Taker's orbital bone in 2010 leading to Vegetative State Taker and Rey's World Title run, off the top of my head.

Yeah, arguing improved athletics as an improvement of match quality sounds an awful lot like arguing that improved CGI and special affects as an improvement of film quality or improved production values as an improvement of song quality. I was going to make that analogy before. You shouldn't be afraid to do things like this. It's better that someone makes their case for Michaels rather than comments like he wouldn't be in my top 500. You will probably get some support as there are bound to be other Shawn Michaels fans around here. Shawn Michaels as #1 is an interesting viewpoint and challenges the current take on him, and I love people challenging that sort of thing. The poll is a good opportunity to reassess whether we've gone overboard on certain wrestlers in the past ten years, and you may swing some people back in favour of putting him on their ballot. I want to hear the argument. Oh absolutely. I'll get around to making a serious case eventually. I actually have a bit of watching to do because, and this may sound weird, his 90s work is a bit of a gap I'm trying to fill (yes, #1 largely without touching his 90s run). I need to get all my ducks in a row.

I just saw this in the Davey Boy thread, the idea of "did he ever carry any lesser workers?" It's a trait that if often bandied about when talking about great wrestlers, carry jobs and wrestling a broomstick and etc. So how important to you is evidence of being able to carry a lesser worker? Is it a mark against someone if they haven't, even if they're otherwise great? Is it a big plus if they have, or have done with multiple guys? Is it just a minor, tie-breaker thing? Do you hold it against someone if he was always or usually the "lesser" guy in great matches? Or is the output more important, and if a guy has great matches, they must be great? Now that I've typed that all out, it sort of sounds like another way of saying "Great matches or great performances?"

I think he only had the one World Title match in WWE - a four-way at No Mercy 2006 with Booker, Lashley and Batista. He was mixing it up near the main event around that time so he probably had a few TV main events and stuff in late 2006. He also had a run with the US Title. A Cena TV match. The JBL Mania match. A couple MITB matches. That's about it as far as anything in a featured position.

As far as language As far as personal attacks and general civility goes, this board is way ahead of the curve. Don't get me wrong. Like I said it's more just an air of superiority and dismissiveness of certain opinions that can be off-putting to someone wanting to voice those opinions. And I mean again it's not like I even agree with Joe about athleticism or like the idea of Angle in the HOF, but fair suck of the sauce bottle and all that.

I'm not saying that the medals weren't a factor. I definitely think they were. You can even see the same trend now with Brock where people are using any and all excuses to use his MMA success to vote him into the WON HOF. I don't think it was the only factor or the main factor or even the factor that got him over the line. I think it was simply one factor. I think a much larger factor is that a majority of the voting base thought in 2004 that Angle was a GOAT level talent. And as seen by the examples of Jericho, Eddie, Benoit and probably in the future Bryan and Punk, a lot of the voters will see "main eventer in WWE" as an acceptable level of "drawing power" that justifies putting a largely workrate candidate in. Angle was a main eventer for most of his time in WWE up to that point, and he was seen as an amazing, all-time level worker. That's the main thrust of his case, and it's the same case that got others such as Jericho in as well, so it's not really such an outlandish one. But I do agree that the medals add another layer on top of that and made their decision even easier. I agree that it looks really quick with the timeframe, but remember that it was more a flaw in the eligibility criteria that had Angle voted on so soon into his pro career. A guy with the rep Angle had at the time was probably going to be first ballot in. It just happened that his first ballot was so soon. I wish I could pull up the exact conversation I'm thinking of, but the way people were talking about the subject in that specific conversation it came off as though the medals were the primary factor. Not work + medals but more like "it can't be work because he sucks, so it must have been the medals". Now, that may not have been what those people were trying to say or what they believed. But that's the impression that was given off, at least to me. And I'm talking about impressions, because my point was how the board is perceived by outsiders or new people. When it involves someone who works a style ill-suited to this board (Angle, Devitt, Davey Richards, Shawn Michaels), there is often a sense of incredulity that anyone could think they're good wrestlers, and any evidence that they do must be somehow explained away rationally.

I don't think he means real as in a shoot, but real as in suspension of disbelief. It's easier to get lost in the moment when you can't predict exactly how a match is going to go. You don't know what's going to happen next. People generally pop for finisher kickouts because they expected the match to end with the finisher and all of a sudden it didn't, which is exciting. Of course, the argument doesn't hold much water when he's talking about New Japan and the finishers that get kicked out of every match. Kicking no longer feels unexpected in that way.

I agree that it's not fair to paint PWO as being of one mind when it comes to wrestling opinions, but I think it is pretty fair to suggest that the board as a whole can be pretty unwelcoming and intimidating to new people, especially when they have opinions that don't jive with what is seen to be the majority or consensus view here. Speaking from experience, it took me a long time to stop lurking and actually post when I came here, and even now when it comes to opinions I hold that I know would be controversial here, I usually choose to keep them to myself rather than go through the hassle of trying to defend an unpopular viewpoint. Eventually I will state my case for Shawn Michaels as my #1 in GWE, and I'm dreading it because I know it will be challenged (and rightfully so) and defending Shawn as the GOAT on THIS board is an exhausting prospect. Arguing with you guys is exhausting. In a good way most of the time (until we get into dead horse beating territory, like now). But still exhausting. rovert mentioned the Devitt being respected thing as an example of the closemindedness of some people on the board. That was a weird conversation to witness. The 'Angle got in the HOF because of his medals' talking point is another. The way people go on about that it's like they have no idea that a huge majority of wrestlers and fans actually think Kurt Angle is a fantastic worker. They have to find some secret conspiracy reason why people would vote for him. They've been duped because he has gold medals. They can't possibly just have a different opinion about his ability to you. It's times like these when the people making noise on this board come off as out of touch with what is actually going on outside of this very small community. I don't really agree with Joe's views on this particular subject. I don't usually put much stock in athleticism and Kurt Angle shits me up a wall. But I do think he's pretty brave to come to this board and argue for workrate and athleticism, because I sure as shit wouldn't be able to even if I believed it. He's come in all guns blazing in this thread and I agree has come off poorly and combative, but when he's received nothing but disdain for his opinion on the subject (as covered extensively in the Today's Wrestling... and Standards Change threads) I can see why he'd approach this one with his back up. Not that it's going to endear him to anyone or help him make his point. But if he'd said what he did in a nice voice I don't think it would have made his view any easier to swallow for those that disagree, since there's been no evidence of that so far in the million posts already made on this subject. I say this all with love, I love the site and the level of debate is the main reason why. But you guys really can be intimidating and unreceptive to certain opinions.

The Shield vs The Wyatts? Daniel Bryan's face turn in the cage and Mania triumph?

Funny you should say that, but I watched their hour match on Raw the other day, and it was worked pretty much the opposite. Cena outwrestled Shawn comprehensively throughout the early wrestling part and for most of the match. And then loses. I assume it's just the way they decided to work to protect the loser/make it interesting.

It's not only him though, a lot of people cite the Angle/Edge matches as some great series or hidden classics and give out similar ratings. And I don't see it. They're just...good matches.

I had the exact same thought last night, I was going to nominate him but didn't think there were reviews around.

The Henry Rumble match is not good. It's not as bad as the 'WORST PPV MAIN EVENT EVER!!" hysteria from Meltzer when it happened. But it's also not a hidden gem Henry match or anything. It starts off OK and then quickly dies, and it never had the crowd at all. Their Judgment Day match is better, although I don't really like Angle as a Henry opponent at all. Whoever said the Edge series is disappointing is spot on. There's nothing wrong with them, per se, but they're just good midcard matches. There's nothing great about them so the talk about it being this amazing feud and the ****1/2 ratings that Meltzer was throwing out look completely ridiculous. The Benoit Rumble match drives me up the wall. I last watched it when we had that big Smackdown Six discussion many months ago. Actually I looked at all the Angle/Benoit matches from that time period:

The Lesnar matches were terrible. One of the biggest cons I have for Hunter is how frustrated I get when I think about that piece of shit program and how much of Brock Fucking Lesnar's second career was wasted trading wins with that asshole. Like I said in the Edge thread I think Hunter and Edge are quite similar cases in that they have a healthy List of Great Matches, but are often not the guy making the matches great and are more typically the Other Guy due to being in certain positions. Especially in Hunter's case. But at first glance I'd actually have Hunter over Edge, slightly, just because I think Hunter does have more moments of greatness and more genuine ability to his name. Overall output and the lows are about even (both are all-time shitty babyfaces), but Hunter's highs are higher. Hunter frustrates me in the same way that Angle does, in that if he'd just wrestle to his potential a lot more often, I'd think he was amazing. But instead they stick to their flawed, bloated ideas of what makes great wrestling (spots and not selling in Angle's case, forced epics and not showing ass in Hunter's) and they just end up making me hate them a little. If Angle wrestled like he did against Jannetty and Hunter wrestled like he did against Shelton all the time, I'd love them a little. But alas.

Edge for me is the ultimate test of the List of Great Matches vs Skills and Qualities quandry. I think he's the guy with the highest number of my favourite matches who I personally don't really like at all and find overrated (by people who rate him obviously, less so here). There are a lot of matches of his that I love, and not just the usual TLC/stuntshow examples, but also a fair few singles matches and straight matches, to give him his due. But all the same if I look closer, how many of them are matches that Edge happened to be in? In how many of them was Edge the best guy in the match or a standout performer? How many of them were made great by things that Edge did? If I broke them down I think all too often I'd find that Edge was more just The Other Guy in a match. He played his part and hit the right notes, but usually the other guy(s) made it extraordinary. A lot like Triple H in that regard. Actually Edge vs Hunter is an interesting comparison now that I think about it. But anyway, the flipside to that is that I'm someone who really likes Lists of Great Matches, I like making them and reading them and using them. And I'm not wild about the idea of leaving a guy off who has THAT many great matches to his name, Honestly I'm hoping that after I've filled my plethora of gaps I'll have found enough options to take it out of my hands.

His work in the first Survivor Series main event is worth looking at as far as memorable Bam Bam performances go.

We'll see how much I can stretch the friendship when you see how high I end up putting Shawn Michaels on my ballot...

AJ Styles

I'd say it would be AJ Styles, although I don't know how much support he'd get from anyone else. Might nominate him actually.

Also worth a look is the Booker T series from the same time.