MoS

Watching Okada-Ospereay really drives home the point of how much I absolutely despise modern NJPW strong-style strike exchanges. They are masturbatory, self-indulgent bullshit. Like they watched Misawa-Kawada but absolutely did not understand any kind of context in their matches.

At this point, TNA has been in existence longer than Lebell's SoCal promotion, Shire's NorCal promotion, and, I *think* Mid-South as well

I would be interested in your thoughts on the narrative of heel Aja being a cheap knockoff of Dump

This has been said before, but my issue with Aldis is that he comes across as a cosplaying guy too much, not so much in the ring, but in his promos. His promos are basically "Watch Ric Flair 80s promos and emulate them" except of course it doesn't work cuz the contexts are so different

I added a poll, something I had meant to do a day back or so. I am not a big fan of polls because I find people just vote and do not actually discuss and flesh out their opinions/arguments, but I would be curious to see what the general PWO consensus is, whether I am an outlier here.

I'll give Bret this though: from 1984 to 1997, he improved every single year, which is a really long time to be constantly getting better. I don't think Bryan can claim the same over a similar time period

Come on. Development then was hardly what it is now, and the 2nd cut was purely due to PR reasons. As soon as there was enough space and distance, he was brought back... literally as a conquering hero.

I really don't, which is what I tried to clarify in my subsequent comments here. I do however think that the Hart Foundation is really overrated. I think Bret hadn't really found himself or his character during the 80s and therefore HF matches were bland and whatever personality was exhibited was by Neidhart, who is pretty one-note. Once Bret found his voice in the early '90s, his game went up several notches.

I have talked about Rey before. Angle isn't really a trailblazer, both because his olympic gold medal status created an exception that proved a rule, and because he was a main eventer in his own right for a very short time, and was disposed of with basically no change in overall mentality. As far as the others, Eddy and Benoit received "thank you" reigns that basically amounted to nothing. I don't think Jericho received even that. I do think the struggle over Bryan's main event push and presence remains an epoch-marking, transcendental change in WWE and wrestling philosophy, both for good and for bad. It is something that becomes evident imo when you look at week-to-week booking and the larger implications, which led to a substantive change in WWE main event philosophy, and the evolution of WWE main event wrestling style, which I have tried to explain in my previous posts in the thread. That said, I think you are right and raise a very valid point about the WWF house style beginning to change when the WCW talent influx happened in 2000.

On that note, it would be remiss of me if I didn't share this meme - Both Bret and Bryan >>> Shawn. I doubt that statement would lead to nearly as much discussion and debate as this thread's question has produced

I think both of us have made our points but yeah I just wanted to touch on this, cuz I feel it might require a clarification. Yes, this is based on my dislike of Diesel. Also, I am sure my posts in this thread have made me sound as if I don't rate Bret. I actually think very highly of him. I just feel he is a clear step below the all-time tier, and I feel Bryan is on that level. But that doesn't mean I think Bret was not great; he absolutely was, and he was the best WWF worker of the 90s. If anything, it's Shawn whom I dislike and who I think is terribly overrated, at least as far as his singles work is concerned.

Is there footage of this? I am assuming it was a house show match, unless my memory is completely betraying me

I think after due consideration that I am willing to concede that Bret had more memorable feuds than Bryan. I don't think that's an indictment of Bryan as much as that of modern WWE booking, which is schizophrenic, inconsistent, constantly second guessing, stop-start with no long-term planning. That means that any story involving two wrestlers is basically impossible to be memorable in modern WWE. Regardless, if you think Bret was better because he had more memorable feuds, then fair enough - your wrestling, your criteria. However, I think it would be wrong to say that Bryan hasn't had memorable storylines or angles or moments or matches. With Bryan, it's weird because even though he might not have had a lot of career opponents, his individual arc is extremely memorable because it basically became a proxy contest between fans and management, as well as an exercise in discovering that he was far more than an indie workrate guy, and thus, allowing other indie guys to ascend to the main event. The Authority stuff, the yes movement, the no movement, Team Hell-No, Eco-friendly Vegan World Champion, his WWE run is littered with memorable angles and stories. There's a real depth of resume, ever since he first won the world title and started shouting Yes, almost 10 years ago. He made Kane interesting!!

Find it really weird that Bret v. Owen 'made' Owen while Kofi's elevation led to nowhere. Owen remained a tag team wrestler with occasional forays to the main event after the feud was over. That is exactly the same status as Kofi. At least Kofi got to be world champ. Owen never did. Owen spent the last couple of years of his life putting over Triple H at every single opportunity despite having so much sympathy from Montreal. He ended it as a joke heel character. I think it's completely wrong to say Punk has more aura than Bryan. Maybe he did in 2016, but not even close to true now. We have discussed here how the UFC run and his subsequent actions hurt his aura bad. Oh man, I absolutely positively cannot be on board with thinking Eco-friendly World Champ Bryan promos were anything but gold. Fickle wrestling fans smh

I apologise for my tone and for calling your post ignorant. I cannot in good faith call someone's post ignorant while forgetting the Bret-Own feud, that was really stupid of me lol. I take that back

I thought their first match was excellent. The cage match is one of the worst cage matches I have seen tbh. But yeah, fair point. I am completely blanking out on the cage match. When did this happen?

These are some of the most adorable vids ever

lol please. You are far from the only person who has picked Bret here. You will notice I did not call anyone else's post ignorant. I thought your post was ignorant, and I said as much. I didn't "snipe" at you, I made an argument and backed it with examples and reasoning. I started the thread with a question, but my OP made it very clear what my opinion is. I am going to argue for my opinion, sorry. This is not a question where I need to know the correct answer. Sniping at someone is rolling your eyes at them btw. But in any case, I will say that I should not have said the part about "You picked Bret cuz you watched him as a kid" so I take that back and apologise for that. That was questioning your motive and that is poor form. I stand behind everything else I said though.

They absolutely didn't feud for the better part of 10 years. That's completely inaccurate. You cannot say on one hand that you don't count one-off appearances and matches for Bryan, yet use one-off matches between Shawn and Bret as proof that they feuded. That's logically inconsistent. They started properly feuding in 1996. After that, they had a sum total of 2 matches. Sure, they sniped at each other on promos. But there was no concentrated, focused feuding. And Bryan and Roman have been feuding since the days of Team Hell No v. Shield. Further, how is Bret and Shawn a classic, all-time feud? They had SS 1992 and WM 12, two boring matches, and one infamous match which is more about Bret v. Vince than anything. This is not something I cooked up right now either - we have discussed this before - As far as hating Wyatt; it's not as if I am a big fan either. But their match at Royal Rumble 2014 was excellent; far better than any Bret-Diesel match. Wyatt family v. Bryan had some really strong matches. I have absolutely no use for the Fiend, but Bryan had the only decent match of the Fiend's run. Your point about Bret making fans care about workrate is also incorrect imo. Bret and Shawn were pushed to the top when the steroid scandal hit and Vince needed a small non-roiding guy as champ. There was no surging momentum in favour of Bret which led to Vince changing his entire wrestling philosophy. There's the famous story of Bret being told he was going to become world champ; he actually thought he was getting fired when Vince started talking to him. It's not as if the Bret run was so successful that it permanently changed the WWE mentality. Business remained bad until the rise of Steve Austin, and the Attitude Era was the exact opposite of fans "caring about match quality." That mentality remained the same throughout the 2000s, when Vince had the famous edict that anyone hired by developmental had to be 6'4" and 250 pounds. You know who changed that mentality though? Bryan, and to an extent CM Punk. Fans dragged Vince kicking and screaming into giving Bryan the main event at WM. In fact, since the rise of Bryan as a main eventer, we have basically, withvery few exceptions, have had workrate guys as champs. WWE became a workrate territory in the late 00s and 2010s, and once again, it was Punk and Bryan at the helm. I would also give Rey credit, but Rey always seemed like the exception to the rule to me. Since then, we have seen champs like Finn Balor, AJ Styles, Kevin Owens, etc, and I would argue that none of them would have sustained main event pushes had it not been for Bryan. As far as tag teams better than the Hart Foundation, I would rank the Bulldogs, Strikeforce, the Rockers, the Brainbusters and Demolition above them. If we stretch it a bit further, the LOD were also better. Hart Foundation are really overrated - they were perfectly good, but at no point were they great.

How many times did Bret do this though? His volume is shockingly thin. His best matches are really really excellent, but there are not a whole lot of them.

This is a pretty ignorant post. Dismissing Bryan's run because "bingo halls in front of 200 people" is insulting in and of itself, but it can easily be flipped over and held against Bret because for most of the early and mid-90s, Bret was headlining in high school gyms in front of barely a thousand people because business was in the toilet. As far as classic feuds for Bryan Danuelson goes, you really should check out his stuff with Morishima. He also wrestled in Tokyo Dome. WHich, you know, is not a bingo hall. Further, he was the tag team champ in the 80s and had plenty of great teams to work with. Yet the Hart Foundation wouldn't be in the top 5 WWF teams of the 80s. You know why? Because other teams had better matches. Further, yes, there were constant reports of Bret dogging it at house shows. It was a big theme actually. One of the earliest things Shawn fans used to say was that Shawn was better cuz he does not dog it at house shows, while Bret did. The mentality of "great match" is something I can turn around and use for Bryan and against Bret. Bret worked in a system where great matches were not the expectation. However, Bret clearly cared about having great matches, because that was his only calling card. It was the only way he could get noticed. So he had plenty of motivation to put up great matches. It was the reason he didn't do much on house show but turned things up on TV and PPVs. Because he was the only one attempting to have great matches, it was easier for him to stand out. I don't believe he would have had the reputation of being the best if he was in early 90s WCW where the calibre and level of wrestling was much higher. On the other hand, when Bryan came along, everyone was trying to have a great match and steal the show. Being noticed therefore was much harder. The fact that he managed to stand out in that mentality and gain a reputation of being the best for YEARS AND YEARS is a point in his favour, not against him. He also managed to get over organically and force the promotion to push him to the top in WWE, when WWE had been a workrate promotion for years and probably wanted him to be the midcard workrate guy having great matches. Even in WWE, Bryan has the Authority feud, a feud that was not only classic and career-defining, it literally reshaped the contours of WWE booking and fan interaction and participation, the ramifications of which are still being felt to this day. Bret has the Austin feud as a classic feud and..that's it. Bret and Shawn never really had a feud, because they hated each other too much to work together. Bryan as a heel also had a great feud with Kofi. Further,Bryan-Roman is shaping up to become a pretty epic feud, since now they have wrestled each other and feuded as fellow faces, heel Bryan and face ROman, and face Bryan and heel Roman. That is exactly how you get an epic feud. As far as feuds against useless big men go, Bryan-Wyatt matches trump Bret-Diesel matches. Dismissing Bryan's run as only having incredible matches is also stupid given that at this point, he has been a WWE headliner longer than Bret ever was. He has had more WWE classic main events than Bret did. Really, your reasoning amounts to "What I saw as a kid is more important, therefore Bret is better."

This came to me cuz I recently saw a tweet which said "How has Bryan been one of the best wrestlers in the world for 20 years? Even Bret couldn't do that." For me, this makes no sense. For me, this answer is obvious. I love Bret, he is great, but Daniel Bryan is one of the GOAT contenders, clearly several steps above Bret, in the league of Flair, Jumbo, Hansen, Casas, etc. Bret is great, but he is not in that league. Bryan is. Bryan debuted in 1998. He had a bunch of great matches in 2001, and he was consistently great in 2002, and he remains a consistently best-in-the-world wrestler in 2020, and has been so during the entire time period, apart from his retirement. On the other hand, Bret was a good tag wrestler in the 80s. I know the Hart Foundation is pushed as a lot, but I think they are an overrated tag team; they are very good, but they were rarely great. He had a very good 1990s, but the only two years I can see being comparable to Daniel is 1994 and 1997. Everything else is several steps below Bryan's work. And gain, Bryan has been at this elite GOAT-level work for 20 years. So, let's all start 2021 with this debate. Whom do you all think is better? I would love to hear your thoughts on this comparison.

I have had really severe depression issues for a long time, issues that have made me self-harm and attempt suicide, and I have shared these issues right here with the good PWO brothers. Depression is not an excuse to be an asshole to other people, especially those who are going through a tragedy. Depression does not preclude accountability. I hope Bruce gets all the help he needs, but, I also hope he recognizes the harm he has caused to others, and understands and acknowledges it. No one is above apology or making mistakes and fucking up. I hope he realizes that.

Happy new year everyone! The world still sucks, but at least we have wrestling..and each other

Speaking as someone who is usually very active in the weekly threads, I was just too overwhelmed with emotions and trying to find excuses for my tears lol. I genuinely, at this moment, don't remember the last wrestling show that made me this emotional.