benjaminkicks

For me, it's gotta be either Michaels, Undertaker, or Cena. No one else has the kind of longevity at the event that those guys do, nor the number of great matches. Bret, Austin, Rock, and Savage all have very solid cases as well, but they don't crack the top 3. I'm not a Hogan fan at all, so he wouldn't be my pick, but I can see the case for him, considering he was the focal point of so many Manias.

I'm attempting to get back into writing regularly about wrestling, so here's my shitty blog. Pretty simple for now, I just plan on reviewing random matches that I watch. I'll hopefully do a few of these a week, but who knows? And I'll probably branch off from match reviews if I got other things I want to rant about. I'm trying to get better at writing about wrestling, and writing in general, so even if you haven't seen the match in question, if you have any feedback for me, I'm all ears. And if you got any suggestions of matches I should review, let me know. Anyway, here's my first review: KENTA vs. Davey Richards – ROH Fight of the Century 2006 (8/4/06) http://benolson13.blogspot.com/2015/03/match-review-kenta-vs-davey-richards.html I'd love to hear your own thoughts on the match.

I'm pretty pumped about this. Not only could this very possibly salvage the main event of WrestleMania, it makes the future of the WWE a lot more interesting with Brock staying in the picture. I hope they utilize his limited dates well and give him interesting matchups. Four big matches I want to see are: Brock vs. Bryan - Pretty obvious as to why. Wouldn't everyone like to see this? Brock vs. Orton - Regardless of your feelings towards Orton, this is one of the biggest fresh matchups the WWE has in their pockets right now, and I think it would be a pretty great match Brock vs. Rusev - Hoss fight of the century. It would be amazing. Brock vs. Batista - I'm probably alone in this, and I'm not sure how good the actual match would end up being, but as a huge mark for both Batista and Brock, a match between them would be a dream for me. Too bad it looks pretty unlikely that Batista will ever come back to wrestle again

Angle is weird for me, because I've never really been a fan of how he works in the ring, or his character work, but he's been apart of a bunch of matches that I've really enjoyed. I guess that speaks to the "great matches vs. overall package and/or how the guy actually works" thing I've seen debated around here. He's had matches that I would consider 4 stars or higher with guys like Benoit, Austin, The Rock, Undertaker, Lesner, Michaels, Mysterio, Styles, Joe, Jarrett, McGuinness, and probably some others that I can't think of right now, but because I like pretty much all those guys a lot more than Angle, it's easy for me to go "oh, he was carried in those matches". Which is something I generally don't like to think, because, as the saying goes, "it takes two to tango". And while I truly think that those matches were made great by his opponents, I think I just have a pretty strong bias against Angle that makes it hard for me to objectively look at the positives that he brings to the table. I might try to set aside that bias and rewatch some of his matches for the purpose of this project, but I highly doubt he's going to make my list at this point, and there's plenty of other guys that I think my time would be better spent checking out.

Woah, I didn't know people were so down on KENTA. He's been a personal favorite of mine for years now, and I think he's a lock for my top 25. I pretty much always enjoy his matches, and I love what he brings to the table as a worker. His so-far pretty enjoyable work in NXT is just icing on top of like 12 years of great work in NOAH and ROH.

I've only really seen DiBiase's late 80's/early 90's WWF stuff. I've always liked him and his work, but I think I need to watch him in some other environments before I can properly rank him. He's definitely on the "must watch more stuff" list.

Thanks, I'll definitely keep those in mind. I've heard great things about all of them, but I've never really sought out their matches before now. Lucha has always been my biggest blind spot. Something about the style has never really resonated with me, but I hope to change that with this project.

I'd love some suggestions on where to start by the way. Any names that stick out as not being on my list that make you think "Holy shit, where's *INSERT WRESTLER HERE*? You gotta check him out, here's some of his good stuff." Or something like that

I discovered this forum pretty recently, but I really like this project and am going to attempt to contribute a list. That only gives me a year to do lots of research, but hell, I watch a ton of wrestling already, so might as well have some purpose to it. I've looked over the list of wrestlers nominated, and here are the ones who, at this point, I can definitely see making my top 100: AJ Styles Akira Taue Andre the Giant Arn Anderson Austin Aries Bam Bam Bigelow Barry Windham Bob Backlund Bret Hart Brian Pillman Brock Lesnar Bruno Sammartino Cesaro Chris Benoit Chris Jericho Christian Christopher Daniels CM Punk Curt Henning Daisuke Sekimoto Daniel Bryan Dustin Rhodes Dusty Rhodes Eddie Guerrero Edge Greg Valentine Genichiro Tenryu Giant Baba Hiroshi Hase Hiroshi Tanahashi John Cena Jumbo Tsuruta Jun Akiyama Jushin Thunder Liger Katsuyori Shibata Kazuchika Okada Keiji Mutoh KENTA Kenta Kobashi Kevin Steen Kota Ibushi Larry Zbyszko Masa Chono Masato Tanaka Mick Foley Mitsuharu Misawa Owen Hart Paul Orndorff Prince Devitt Randy Orton Randy Savage Rey Mysterio Jr. Ric Flair Rick Rude Ricky Steamboat The Rock Sami Zayn Samoa Joe Shawn Michaels Shinjiro Ohtani Shinsuke Nakamura Shinya Hashimoto Stan Hansen Steve Austin Steve Williams Steven Regal Sting Takashi Sugiura Tatsumi Fujinami Terry Funk Tomohiro Ishii Toshiaki Kawada Triple H Tully Blanchard The Undertaker Vader Yoshinari Ogawa Yuji Nagata As of right now, I don't think I've watched nearly as much stuff as most people on this board (I'd argue I've watched more than the average 20 year old smark, but I don't think that's really saying much), but I hope to remedy that while I watch more footage for this project. So far there's a bunch of really noticeable gaps in my knowledge if you take a glance at that list. No lucha, no joshi, and a definite skew towards more modern wrestlers. Hopefully I'll be able to discover some new wrestlers to fill out the rest of the list. And I still have no idea how I'm going to even begin to definitively rank all these guys. If you asked me right now "who's the greatest wrestler ever?", I'd probably give you like 20 different names.

I feel like I need to see more of Flair before I can properly rank him for a list like this. I've seen pretty much all the Flair footage available on the WWE Network, and my opinion of him is very high from all of that, but I haven't seen much of what I think a lot of people consider "peak Flair". Like late 70's and early 80's? Earliest match of his I think I've seen is the Starrcade '83 match with Harley Race. If someone wants to be helpful, I'd love some suggestions of good matches to check out from that time period.

Like pretty much every part of modern WWE production, I hate the fact "Mania moment" has became pretty much a trademark, so everything at Mania has to become a "Mania Moment"™. Nothing feels organic anymore, and everything is totally self-conscious, to the point of having a self-conscious trademarked name attached to it. The vaunted "Mania Moments"™ became annoying as soon as they became "Mania Moments"™ and not just stuff that you'd remember because it was actually special. I completely agree, and that's why when they inorganically try to create those kinds of moments all the time, it comes across as super shallow. Like when they ran Cena/Rock two years in a row, it was lame. Or how they're trying to push Triple H/Sting this year, when nobody cares at all. But we can hate on the WWE all we want (and I very often do), but when they get those moments right, like with Daniel Bryan last year, it's some of my favorite stuff in wrestling.

Finn Balor vs. Adrian Neville I loved the mix of styles here. This was a Jr. Heavyweight match, like the ones these guys were used to in Japan, but it had the pacing of a WWE Heavyweight style match. Everything was deliberate. It was never just MOVEZ. These guys could put on one hell of a spotfest with each other, but it never devolved into that. There was proper and compelling buildup to the end. Which isn't to say they weren't going all out, but they knew when to take it slow in order to make the crazy fast stuff really matter. Balor's ability to take his style and easily transfer it into a WWE match like this is his biggest virtue right now. And damn, I'm not sure when exactly it happened (probably sometime around early Fall of last year) but Neville is a straight up workhorse now. He's on a whole different level then he was at this time last year. Excellent stuff all around. ****1/4 (4.25) stars

Sami Zayn vs. Kevin Owens How fucking good are these two guys? Seriously, I think Sami and Keving are, respectively, the best babyface in the company right now, and the best heel. And in their hands they turn this match, this good, great match into a Shakespearean tragedy. If Sami's win at R-Evolution was him blowing up the Death Star at the end of a New Hope, this was The Empire Stikes Back. It was sheer brutality at every turn. Owens has surpassed the status of heel, and now he's a straight up villain. I love how keeps insisting that this is all business, and it's just for the title, and then he unleashes the systematic destruction of Sami Zayn right before our eyes. I've seen some comparisons to Cena/Lesnar at SummerSlam, and while I think that's fair, the key difference here is the difference between Sami Zayn and John Cena. How much did we love seeing Cena getting killed by Lesnar? And how uncomfortable was seeing Zayn take a similar ass beating? I wanted Zayn to win here as much as I did at R-Evolution, but it didn't matter. Owens is here to kill our darlings, and, despite his assurance that it wasn't personal, he fucking enjoyed doing it. ****1/2 (4.5) stars

Same for me, a lot of times, but I think there's something to be said for creating what the WWE calls a "Mania moment". They tell us that Mania is a blockbuster, and all about the big moments, and even though that's partially propaganda from the WWE, I think there's some truth to it, and am willing to rank the Manias who successfully pull off those big moments higher. The Triple H vs. Batista Hell in a Cell match from Vengeance 2005 is almost certainly a better match than their Mania 21 match (it's probably my favorite Cell match), but the Mania 21 match gets points in my book for culminating in an iconic moment. Batista at the end show, celebrating with the Big Gold Belt and getting showered by cheers and confetti is a moment that I will never forget. Moments like that are what WrestleMania was made for. What I mean is, if it makes sense, that I look at WrestleMania kinda differently than pretty much every other wrestling show, because I think sometimes it can get away with lower in ring quality matches if it can naturally create those "big match feel WrestleMania moments" that the WWE loves to go on about. It's the same reason why I view Mania 30 as one of my favorites even though it had several match that weren't really up to snuff, because it made up for it by being totally iconic. Sorry if that doesn't make sense, I feel like this was kinda rambling.

I'm pretty pumped for Styles/Ibushi. A fresh matchup headlining a New Japan show? How novel! Other than that though, the card seems kinda weak. Would've liked to see more big singles matches. Just because the winner of the Cup didn't challenge for them, doesn't mean that Nakamura and Ishii shouldn't defend their belts at this big show, right? I guess Gedo feels differently. Nakamura, Ishii, Shibata, Naito, Goto, and Tanahashi all being in nothing tag matches seems like a waste to me.

My rankings: #10 - Mania 8 (1992) I think on paper this card is not that great, but something about this show makes it very watchable for me. I don't really like a lot from late 80's/early 90's WWF, but this is my favorite of the first 9 Manias for reasons I can't fully pin down. It is a shame that Flair/Savage didn't get to headline though. #9 - Mania 30 (2014) Not the deepest card, but still a very satisfying show #8 - Mania 20 (2004) I remember this show being really long, but looking at the card now there's nothing really bad on it. John Cena's first Mania moment is cool, Christian/Jericho is great, the cruiserweight open and Rock & Foley vs. Evolution are both a lot of fun, Lesnar/Goldberg is shit but the crowd makes it interesting, the return of the Deadman is great spectacle, and the main event is great. #7 - Mania 24 (2008) Really solid stuff throughout. Flair/HBK is a great "Mania moment", Mayweather/Big Show is way better than it had any right to be, and both world title matches are great (especially Taker/Edge). #6 - Mania 26 (2010) I liked the build to this show, and I think it's very solid throughout, besides Bret/Vince (which is terrible). I think I prefer this HBK/Taker match over their Mania 25 match, and Cena/Batista is awesome and really underrated in my eyes. #5 - Mania 10 (1994) I've seen people call this a two match show, and while I think there's valid reasoning behind that, I think the whole card is pretty watchable. Those two matches of course, are Bret/Owen and HBK/Razor, and they're both great, but there's nothing that's really bad here, and the moment of Bret going over Yokozuna is really feelgood stuff. #4 - Mania 23 (2007) Everything here besides Kane/Khali is at least solid. The Money in the Bank is good, the battle of the billionaires is goofy fun, and both world title matches are great. #3 - Mania 21 (2005) I probably rate this one higher than most, but I think it's a great show. Rey/Eddie is a good opener, the first Money in the Bank is probably my favorite Mania spotfest, Taker/Orton is great and an underrated Streak match, I like HBK/Angle, and despite my more smarky qualities as a wrestling fan, I'm a big Batista mark, so seeing him go over Triple H and ending the show celebrating with the belt is great. #2 - Mania 17 (2001) No need to explain this one. #1 - Mania 19 (2003) Aside from the Undertaker handicap match and the women's pillow fight, it's a great show top to bottom. I admit to being a little bias because I attended this live.

Two of my favorites of the year that I haven't seen listed yet are Dangan Yankees vs. TMKD from NOAH 1/10 and Dangan Yankees vs. Kohei Sato & Daisuke Sekimoto from ZERO1 3/1. Maybe I'm just blind from my love of the Dangan Yankees as a team, but I have both of those matches at like 4.25 or 4.5 stars.

I'm doing a watchthrough of 90's All Japan as well right now. I've seen a bunch of the big matches throughout the years, but never in a certain chronological order. I'm near the end of 1990 right now, and what really strikes me as how important the booking of the Four Corners made them seem in a relatively short period of time. They may not be on top yet, but they really seem like a big deal, and very much "THE FUTURE OF THE COMPANY". Maybe it's just because I know now how big they would become, but I think Baba did a really great job of picking four guys he knew would be able to carry the company, and slowly building them up to a point where them taking over as the main event just seemed so natural.

To be honest I don't remember much about 14 besides Taker/Kane and HBK/Austin, neither of which I thought were great. Some good moments for sure, and definitely a very historic one, but I don't remember it too fondly as a whole. I'm not really a fan of 1998 and 1999 WWF in general, but maybe that show warrants a rewatch?

I've been watching a lot of Styles matches lately, and my opinion of him has really gone up. It might be hyperbolic to say, but I think that, besides Daniel Bryan, Styles might be the best U.S. based worker to emerge since 2000. I really think he's that good. Not totally sure where that gets him ranked on a project like this, but for me at least, I don't think top 50 is out of the question.

My picks would be: #30 - Mania 9 (1993) #29 - Mania 2 (1986) #28 - Mania 4 (1988) #27 - Mania 1 (1985) #26 - Mania 5 (1989) #25 - Mania 6 (1990) #24 - Mania 7 (1991) #23 - Mania 11 (1995) #22 - Mania 15 (1999) #21 - Mania 12 (1996) #20 - Mania 14 (1998) I kinda hate a lot of WWF stuff from the late 80's and early 90's, so most of those early Manias are pretty unwatchable for me. I think they're all pretty much one match cards, and for a lot of them, that one match isn't even very good.

Probably Hogan. I know he was great from a business standpoint and whatever, but I really think he's just the worst.