Shining Wiz

Maybe someone should nominate Miz?

I enjoy Cesaro right now more than Brian pre-injury, but I think I enjoy Brian pre-main event run and on the indies more than I enjoy Cesaro right now, if that makes sense. Mostly, I chalk that up to not enjoying main event WWE matches as much as other styles. Cesaro has the extra angle of being able to be a monster based solely on his strength, which can add a fun flavour to matches.

Thankfully, no.

I don't care how much money a show/match makes. I don't care how many people a show/match/wrestler draws. I don't really care what other's opinions of a show/match/wrestler/promotion are. I do care if I enjoy watching what I just watched, irregardless of it was smart for business or whatnot. Worrying about whether what a promoter is doing is smart for business seems odd to me, other than in the sense of "I'd like it more if they did it this way".

I had actually really enjoyed that Garvin match, possibly because it was so back and forth and non-formulaic. I agree though, I'd love to see a full fledged arena match between them. Starr and Burke were gold together. They did a great, basic, best friends - to heel turn - to blood enemies storyline that summer that took Starr from the #2 good guy to by far the most hated man in the Maritimes. As for the bumping - us Maritimers LOVE our over the top bumping from heels. LOVE. I have no idea why, but the crowds around here eat that up like crazy, no matter how ridiculous. Actually, probably BECAUSE it's ridiculous. And it was as family friendly a territory as you can imagine, so ANY blood at all was a shocking incident. I can't really remember any gushers, at least not that were on TV, even when AGPW got bumped to midnight on Saturdays. Maybe chalk that up to knowing how to play to the crowd you're in front of more than anything.

Slam dunks: Ricky Steamboat ric Flair, flop and all Vader John Cena Bobby Eaton Daniel Bryan Danielson Mitsahru Misawa Stan Hansen Terry Funk Mick Foley Kenta Kobashi Cesaro KENTA Clear blind spot on lucha. Those are my only real definite off the top of my head right now.

In addition, and this could probably go somewhere else, but in not sure where, I think the unavoidable gaps we will all have in our watching forms part of our collective criteria....if something doesn't float your boat enough to seek some out for this project, you're probably not going to find it good to begin with. Idiosyncrasies will be a big strength of this project.

Off topic for where this thread seems to have gone, but here's my criteria: If I could only watch matches from one wrestler ever again, who would be? The answer to that question is my #1. If I could only watch matches from one wrestler other than #1 ever again, who would it be? That would be my #2. And so on, to my #100.

I'm 99.8% sure I'll have you beat there. If I have Cena as low as Top 30 something will have gone horribly wrong. I'd say there are fifteen to twenty guys I would absolutely have to rate over him. After that? I don't know. To make this slightly more controversial, I'm not at all positive I would rate Bryan over him I can see the argument, even if I'm not immediately persuaded. Cena's style is completely different than Bryan's, but if the goal is to put on enjoyable pro wrestling matches (and I'm pretty sure that's the goal), he's definitely in the conversation. I haven't thought out beyond my knee jerk top five or so, but I wouldn't be surprised if I give you some competition for high ranking.

Woah folks......let's not say anything we can't take back and will regret later. Goldberg is Warrior, if Warrior had figured out the basics of wrestling and was athletic.

No.

I was trying to not be overly critical His brawling is his best attribute I think.

Having a guy around who is a big enough fan if wrestling that, in spite of not enjoying the product put out for 20 (?) years or so, still goes out of his way to find old wrestling to watch and discuss is a big, big bonus for a project like this. Just as having lucha fans and puro fans and Indy fans is a big bonus. Even if I can be pretty assured of what style/era of wrestler is my preference, having others passionate about wrestling I am mostly blind to is a huge plus to this thing, and the part that is going to make it the most fun. Based on all the Lawler love, and whoever it is that ends every discussion with "....but not as much as I love Memphis guys" or variations thereof, I got my hands on 8 gigs of 82-83 Memphis that will be my background viewing for the day.

Invader's selling is good, but Starr more than carries his weight. Good match.

We'll never know.

Check out his tv title run to see how he does on his own. By no means a dynamic personality, but the crowd really gets behind him for a while. He and Arn were some of the best stuff going in WCW at that time.

Call me crazy, but I think Steen is well past his peak. I don't think he's going to going to be well loved by WWE fans at all. Good brawler, but he'll be small by WWE standards for that style, I've never liked his promos and he's not funny. I say when this gets done again in 2026, not even a blip on the radar.

I just watched the Kobashi/Misawa 4/5/91 handheld. Really fun 13 minute match. I like the "epic" matches they have just fine, but watching them in such a lean, crisp, quick match was a treat.

Joe circa 2004-2006 had IT. Good to great matches consistently, able to carry on multiple rivalries at once, fantastic yet subtle personality that gift perfectly and being just plain different. He'll, he even made me watch TNA. No one else has been able to do that. All that being said, his TNA run is more miss than hit, and that's the biggest part of his career. You can still see flashes of what he was and maybe could be, but that sort of inconsistency, for whatever reason, is something that should penalize someone we're talking the top 100 guys of all time. So the question is how much does that penalize the best guy in the best promotion for two years in the biggest wrestling market in the world? Joe's very interesting and unique case to consider.

Aries maybe. Ricochet has some fun stuff recently, but not enough. Ki had potential, but could never stay out of his own way. Lee/Harper is really good, especially for being so big, but not enough work yet. Ambrose - see above. Nigel got good at working the ROH big match style, and had some really good ones, and there are some good matches in TNA, but too short a run. Everyone else is a no.

I can honestly say it's a word I have never said or typed. I understand it to generally mean the speed with which wrestlers wrestle in their matches. I've never read someone saying "x has a high workrate" (first time for everything) to ever be a bad thing. Not a guarantee of a good match at all, but I can't think of a way where that would be insulting. Flipside of that would be that guys could have a low one and still be pretty enjoyable. I also think it's a word that shows people overthink things.

If Flair's last WWE run was 1/4 as successful as Favre's Viking stint, we wouldn't be having this conversation, NFC title game and 4th in MVP voting and all.

I don't quite get the comparison to Favre. He was still good when he retired.

Same boat as Thatcher? His career is twice as long, probably 5 times the matches and was on a higher level 7 years ago than Thatcher is now. I wasn't that high on Cesaro during his indie run. He's only really become an elite wrestler the past two years, and in that regard he's had about the same output as Thatcher, only not as high quality. I suspect our opinions on most things wrestling will not be attuned.

Any chance of splitting the theory threads off into the main sub folder?