stomperspc

I want for Arn to be on my list because he is a personal favorite, but I am not sure he has the matches. He has plenty of good matches and a few great ones, but nothing truly elite. I am having a hard time even deciding what his best match is since most are jumbled up in that "very good" tier. If I could put him on my list by virtue of having some of my all-time favorite one-liners and stooging spots, I would. The "look how smart I am!" point to the head right before eating a fist to the face; always winding up with his head stuck in-between the two rings in a War Games match; "He's just a man!"; his goose bump inducing introduction of Flair during his 1998 return, ect. I love all of that.

That's where I am. If there is a wrestler I end up thinking is a better around performer than Flair, then great! But even after years of reading all of the arguments against him and being so visible that his flaws/less-than-proud moments are impossible to avoid, I still think he's the greatest of all time. Flair is the measuring stick for me starting out.

Foley is borderline for me but trending up recently watching the 1997 and 1998 year books. So much of success in wrestling is timing. For a variety of reasons largely out of his control, I don't think Foley ever found that perfect storm situation where he was in a promotion with visibility, being pushed hard, and still physically able to go. You see flashes in WCW of what he could have been with a more concentrated push while he was (arguably) at his physical peak, but he never got that extended push. His ECW run was what it was. The booking of him in WWF was stop and start that he never got into that position to really go on a huge run. By the time he fell into that role in late 1998, he was broken down to the point where he couldn't produce to the level in the ring needed to be considered a true top guy. I do need to go back and watch the 2000 Triple H matches at some point. Also, I always thought he was way overrated as a promo but I am really enjoying his late summer stuff as Mankind. Once they stopped switching him back and forth and let him roll in the crazy, child-like Mankind role, he start delivering great understated promos.

His current indy run has disappointed me some. I thought he had a strong start to the year. His match versus Ricochet in EVOLVE and his matches versus Cole and Styles in ROH I liked but have had trouble getting into a lot of his stuff since then. I enjoyed both heel Hero and "2001 era IWA-MS mat wrestling" Hero far more than "heavy striker" Hero. Unfortunately, we've gotten more of the latter in this the latest indie run of his. All of his matches start off reasonably well bust some descend into a never-ending barrage of odd striking that just kill the stretch runs for me (see the Reed Bentley IWA-MS matches, wXw matches, ect.). I am not sure if he is really in the conversation for me in terms of top 100, but in general I am a moderate fan of his.

If we did this a couple of years ago, Bret would either not be on my list or be much farther down then where I see him ending up at this moment. I used to like the Austin matches and the Owen WM match but didn't think much of the rest of his body of work. In recent years, I've grown to appreciate his overall style a bit more including his promos and character. In terms of top 100, he still middle of the pack for me for many of the reasons that Loss mentioned. He's got a few high-end matches (the Austin ones in particular), a fair amount very good matches, and a ton of matches that are fine and harmless, but that's probably not good enough to be a true upper tier wrestler when talking about the best of all-time. Maybe this is a weird comparison, but in terms of their match resumes, I think he is more or less Arn Anderson with two/three really great PPV matches as the difference maker. That's very good, but not high-end good.

I’ll probably have more to say on Bryan when Tim and I get to writing up all the 2000’s indies stuff we re-watched, but if I had made my list today Bryan would be in my top 10. Speaking generally, he has the long resume of quality matches (almost 14 years as an excellent worker); the stylistic variety I tend to enjoy (though don’t necessarily penalize for not having); success in different environments/contexts; and the high end matches to make him a strong top 10 candidate. As Tim mentioned, his early work holds up very well. I am not sure there are many wrestlers who have a 14 year match resume that has quite the variety and quality that Bryan’s does.

The show was fine in that in kept my attention for the most part. They had some strong ideas in the four way and the execution was pretty good. I saw some PWG comparisons made on twitter about that match, but to me it had an early 2000's indies/ROH vibe to it. It was four solid wrestlers with some good ideas and fine execution that lead to a fun but not great match. It didn't over the over-the-topness of a PWG match (which is not necessarily a bad thing). I enjoyed Kenta's debut. He was placed in a difficult spot having to cut an English promo in front of a crowd on live television, being instructed to deliver a message in Japanese mid promo, and then having to explain a name change to an audience who is not used to having name changes explained that way. He handled it as well as can be expected. I can't believe people are still getting worked up over name changes. Hideo Itami is not a bad name. It rolls off the tongue well. I am far from a huge Kenta fan but they presented him in such a way that I am psyched to see where he goes from here. He looked good taking out the Ascension and although a small sample size, it demonstrated on at least some level that he can translate his offense to the WWE environment.

That was a function of the booking and layout of the TV show at the time. He wasn't given many opportunities to have truely great matches on TV (although he had plenty of fine TV matches). Based on how he wrestled on PPV during the time and in shorter TV matches, I have no problem believing that 1998 and 1999 Austin would have had a bunch of great TV matches with 2001 or 2014 WWE booking and RAW format. 1998 & 1999 Austin was a good worker in a promotion that didn't place much emphasize on having quality matches. Nonetheless, he has still did enough in 1998 to be considered one of the better wrestlers of the at year.

I am about three-quarters of the way through the 1998 yearbook. Austin has been awesome the entire year. He was one of the most over wrestlers ever (on a national scale) during that time period. While Vince is incredible as a heel during that same period, re-watching the 1998 stuff it is clear that a major reason Vince got over so strongly in the first place was because Austin was so over as a baby face. His promos were great the entire year, his presence & character were virtually unmatched, and he is really, really over. All of his matches shown on the year book have been just fine as well. Saying that the Attitude Era "doesn't hurt" Austin's standing that much is difficult for me to wrap my head around. He was made during that era. It not only didn't hurt his standing, it raises it to the point that he is even in discussion as one of the greatest of all-time. There are plenty of reasons to dislike the Attitude Era (more and more come to light the deeper you get into 1998), but Austin is one of the brightest of the bright spots.

Velocity is owned by Discovery Channel and was originally founded as Discovery's HD network before changing to a car/racing oriented format a few years ago. I would not be surprised if the station's reach is actually lower than ROH TV due to the fact that Velocity is an HD only station. If might technically be available in more homes, but considering that a fair amount of homes still do not have HD service, the number might be lower. In any event, it is clearly a last ditch effort if they end up there. I imagine TNA would have to scale back even more than they already have to make it work even for a little while.

With the proper promotional push and assuming he can stay healthy for a long enough period, I am convinced Cassandro could be a big deal in the US even though he is now in his mid-40's. His back story is engrossing, as Phil noted he gets a ton of publicity on his own, and he is an excellent worker on top of everything else.

Yea, I think the best outcome is something along those lines. Do a short match (8 to 10 minutes) where Cena comes out firing because he feels getting the jump on Brock is the only way he stands a chance. Maybe they mirror the SS match with Cena hitting an AA a minute or two in, but Brock kicks out. He can laugh if off or whatever, but they can tell the story that Cena's early onslaught as at the very least neutralized Brock. They go back and forth at a quick pace with impact stuff and Lesnar lands the F-5 about five minutes in. They sell the idea that both have taken a match's worth of punishment in five minutes and it is just a matter of who has enough left. Brock goes on sustained offense for a couple of minutes, maybe Cena gets another big near fall kick out, then Lesnar puts him away cleanly. Doing something along those lines puts over Cena as taking the fight to block and showing a lot of heart, while Brock looks even more dominant since he took some offense and withstood it just fine.

The NWO was a victim of its own successes. The original NWO concept/angle was a huge success both creatively and financially. The first six months where they continually build heat on the NWO are really well done and one of the better executed/successful long-term angles a national promotion has ever carried out. Even 1997 had plenty of positives and while the NWO had already outlived its usefulness by the end of the year, Starrcade’s buy rate would suggest that there was nothing wrong with drawing it out until then. The problem was that those in charge viewed the NWO has the sole reason for their successes and brashly felt like they could keep it going forever. Every angle has its expiration date. The NWO angle in particular was always going to be difficult to maintain even if they had booked it differently from 1997 – 1999. The NWO worked so well initially because the group was booked ultra-strong and Sullivan (as booker) built a lot of heat on them. You can only put heat on the heels for so long before you start seeing diminishing returns and/or negative returns. The fans want a conclusion at some point and want the faces to get their revenge. Every one saw that the NWO got over by being put over so strongly initially and foolishly decided they could maintain that momentum by continuing to have them one-up WCW. Wrestling doesn’t work that way. At some point, there needs to be a payoff to the build. I think there is an argument that the NWO going on forever – to the point it ceased being an angle and became woven into the fabric of WCW – contributed to WCW’s demise. However, the original angle and concept was filled with a ton of good ideas and valuable booking lessons on to establish a wrestler/group as threats. It is sort of a mixed bag. Long-term, I am not sure the way the NWO was booked has really had a lasting effect on pro wrestling. There was a time where there were too many cool heels (which definitely is a result of the NWO), but I think we are far past that point now. Putting heat on the heels by having them constantly (not just sometimes which is okay) break up main event matches never became all that widespread outside of the NWO period in WCW and Russo. It gave us years of invasion angles that still happen in different places which I’d buy as a negative product of the NWO’s success. Although Bischoff would argue differently, I don’t think his tenure as a heel authority figure led to Mr. McMahon or anything so I don’t think the continued presence of a heel owner/commissioner can be blamed on the NWO. Again, it is kind of a mixed bag. The one area where WWE could learn from WCW’s mistakes with the NWO is that no matter how successful something is, it has an end date. It is always better go cut it off early then cut it off too late and be left with no backup plans. I say that in reference to John Cena currently. Vince had that quote about how “Cena puts food on all our tables” and will be a main eventer forever because of that. Eventually Cena is going to stop producing at that rate, however, and they need to be able to move on from that.

Out of curiosity, what pro wrestling matches would you recommend to an MMA fan to bridge that gap? I would assume the recommendations would largely be from promotions with a more realistic/shoot style approach, but they don't necessarily need to be.

I think that if WWE has decided that Reigns is going to be the face of the promotion going forward, they need to make a their best possible effort to get him ready for Brock at WrestleMania. If Brock's title run plays out as expected, it will be a huge opportunity to get someone over by beating him at WM. You don't know when you will get another chance to potentially "make" a guy like that and if they believe Reigns is the future, they need to try to position him to be ready for Lesnar in seven months. That's not to say they should go with Reigns no matter what. If he gets the mega-push fan backlash and come Rumble time he just isn't where he needs to be, changing directions makes sense. I think Bryan would be the best backup plan. The fans will buy into him. The story of him returning from a career threatening injury to stop the monster heel champion that nobody else could stop is the best story out of all of the other options.

I don't necessarily disagree with any of that (especially with where things stand now). At the same time, if WWE is dead set on Reigns being the guy going forward, I think they have to at least give it a shot at moving towards Reigns/Brock at WM. They have seven months to better position Reigns for that match. There is also an opportunity to get Brock more over as a heel (not that it will matter to the WM crowd) by having him rarely defend the title between now and WM. I just think if WWE is going to go with Reigns, they should use this opportunity to put him overly strongly. They might not have another chance to put him over in such a meaningful way.

So Brock needs to hold the title, run through a couple more guys like he did Cena, and drop it to Reigns at WM, right?

I thought the ending (last 4 or 5 minutes) was laid out well in a way that benefited Reigns. Agreed that the beginning and body wasn't the sort of thing Reigns should be doing at this stage, but that was inevitable when they paired him with Orton.

I left out El Terrible because pretty much every belt in CMLL is a world title and they change their minds regularly about which is the premier division. As for Texano, AAA seems to regard Rey de Reyes as the big prize over their heavyweight title. However, I will amend the OP to include them. I was mainly joking and using it as a chance to point out how CMLL and AAA misuse Terrible and Texano, Jr., respectively. Agreed that neither title is pushed by their respective promotion as major championships and they are fine to leave out.

IWGP Heavyweight has been the best booked championship recently so for that reason alone, it puts Styles near the top of the mix. WWE World Heavyweight sort-of, kind-of "means something" in the sense that WWE still has the biggest profile so people care to some extent who the champion is. None of the other world championships listed really mean all that much to a wider fan base so it is hard to consider any one of those champions as "the best". There is at least some level of mutual relationship between a good champion and a championship. I am inclined to go with Styles over Cena because the IWGP Heavyweight title has been better booked than the WWE World Championship, plus Styles is having the better reign from a match quality perspective. Cena is without a doubt the biggest star but I am not sure that alone makes him the best champion per say. I'd point out that Texano, Jr. & Terrible were left off the opening post, but since their home promotions often seem to forget those guys are their World Heavyweight Champions, then I guess their omittance here is fitting.

I am not a big fan of women's wrestling to begin with, so that probably influences my opinion on the inter-gender matches somewhat but I have zero interest in watching them. Even in a worked environment, a guy (usually a relatively large guy) hitting & slamming a woman makes my skin crawl. I saw those pictures of Candace LaRae after her no DQ tag match against the Young Bucks in PWG with her face entirely bloodied and that's pretty disgusting/offensive to me. Don't mean to come off as haughty about this stuff but the women vs. men matches just creep me out. The idea that the women are portrayed as capable against the male opponents doesn't make it comes on any better to me. There are a ton of those matches these days with some promotions (AIW, AAW and CZW to name a few) doing entire shows around the concept. I don't get the appeal.

Yea, Hero didn't look good nor was he moving all that well on those EVOLVE shows. I am not sure how much of the "he was in a wheelchair two weeks ago" story they pushed on commentary was true and how much was added for dramatic effect, but I can certainly buy it based on the visual evidence. I hope Hero's training stuff works out for him. After a decent start back on the indies, he has just been wandering aimlessly for the past five or six months. If he is having major health issues on top of that, it might be time to reevaluate his career.

There can be high spots in a mat-based match and in fact, I think there should be. When Flair & Steamboat worked long headlock sequences in their matches, they would bring it up from to time to run the ropes or do a shoulder tackle segment, before going right back to the headlock on the mat. If two wrestlers are jockeying for position for the mat and one guy locks on or almost locks on a legitimate submission finisher, that is a high spot. I have no idea what the people you are referring to are really saying when they say "boring" but I think its perfectly reasonable to criticize a mat-based match for not doing enough (while staying within that style) to maintain interest. I am not nearly as high on the Thatcher/Gulak/Busick matches as others for that exact reason. I am big fan of quality mat work. I count the UWF-I, BattlArts, and RINGS styles among my favorite styles historically. With that said, there are good, average and bad matches in any style. There is more to producing a quality match than wrestling on the mat and focusing on certain little things, both of which all three guys generally do well (although I don't think they are as good at stuff as others might think). Where they really struggle is tying it altogether. Some of that is booking related. Since they are just indie workers and always expected to work standalone, longer matches, there isn't much of an opportunity for them to establish certain moves as potential finishes and then work in teases of those moves into their matches as "high spots". Some of it is they can more directly control. The mat work doesn't progress throughout the matches as well it could, I find all three (though particularly Thatcher) to be poor whenever they are standing up, and more often than not their matches feel like pockets of good, standalone mat work with little threading it together. The matches/wrestlers are by no means bad. I'd much rather watch these guys attempt what they are doing rather than many of the alternatives, but at the same time I think they are far from nailing it particularly when you compare their mat work to good historical mat-based matches rather than just contemporary stuff. FWIW, I thought Thatcher/Busick from Saturday night's EVOLVE show was the best match those guys have had with each other (or others) this year. Busick did a nice job working a thread throughout the match that got the crowd engaged and they minimized the time standing up. Anyway, to tie back into this thread I'd say that standards don't really change. There are many ways to have good mat based matches and many ways to have bad ones. That's the same now as it was years ago. There are many ways to have good matches with cutting edge flying offense (or whatever), just as there are plenty of ways to have bad matches in that style. The basic elements of what make matches could or bad haven't really shifted. The standards argument does goes both ways, though. I think the Gulak/Thatcher/Busick stuff might be overrated a bit because they are okay at working a style that isn't worked much these days. Sort of like grading on a curve.

Yeah, I don't get the hype for this one. Last 8 minutes or so was a lot of fun but nothing of relevance seemed to happen in the first 13. Much preferred other stuff I watched last night like Nagata-Ishii and Honma-Shibata. NJPW matches seem to click better with me when they're under 15 minutes. I am going to watch the match again at some point, but I didn't find the action in the first one-half or two-thirds to be any more superficial or cursory than normal. That goes for matches in all styles/promotions, not just New Japan. There was about 2-3 minutes of opening mat work/feeling out stuff, they then went "Okada offense - Nakamura offense - Okada offense" for the body of the match, and started the extended stretch run after Nakamura cut off Okada's second stretch off offense with a backstabber. To me, that seemed like a fairly normal way to lay out a match that isn't focused around limb work. Even then there were a few at least cursory attempts to set up stuff later in the match, such as Okada's offense (more often than not) targeting the neck to wear it down for the Rainmaker. I agree that nothing from the early going had a direct impact on the ending stuff, but I also don't think that is particularly abnormal for any style or promotion. I thought they did a fine job keeping the work during the body interesting, but like I said I probably need to re-watch. I do completely agree with the sentence in bold and not just for NJPW. In general, I enjoy a compact 15-minute match over the alternative. I understand why they felt the need to go 20+ here however and relatively speaking, I thought they filled the time well.

Okada/Nakamura was very good I thought. They went about 20 minutes and did an extended, big WWE main event-like finish with finisher teases, blocks, counters, and near falls. There were a few really cool spots during this section. The crowd was way into the latter portion of the match. The selling by both guys was strong at the end and I didn't think they did too much (in terms of moves and kick outs) to get the reaction they got. The rest of the show was okay. For a Dome show, the crowd reactions were decent. Honma/Naito was fine if not a bit flat. Goto/Shibata worked well for storyline purposes. I figured going in this match would either break up their team or strengthen it. Looks like the latter. Won't be surprised if they win the tag titles soon. Junior tag title match was about what I expected. KUSHIDA was great as usual. Cole worked well with Liger again and Bennett held is own in the other match with ROH guys. Ishii vs. Anderson was hard to watch as Ishii clearly was in no condition to wrestle. It didn't help matters that Anderson busted him upon almost immediately with an elbow. The visual of a one-armed Ishii bleeding from the mouth while trying to fight back was something, but the match itself struggled along because he was in too much pain to put on his normal type of match. Tanahashi/Styles was fine but not up to the level they likely have in them. The entire match came off a bit tentative and even a tad awkward at times. The finish and post-match certainly point to a re-match at some point. Jarrett joining the Bullet Club was so obvious that I didn't think they were actually going to do it. The image of pudgy Scott D'Amore wearing a too-tight Bullet Club t-shirt was hilarious. Always leave it to Jeff to attach himself to the latest hot property.