Cap

Without scratching the surface of Lucha, which I plan to dive deep into before the due date, these are guys that COULD make my top 10 Flair Danielson Hansen Funk Misawa Kawada Kobashi Vader Guerrero Jumbo Tenryu Lawler Regal Bockwinkle Robinson Steamboat Savage Hart Gordy (though he is falling for me)

Morton really only doing it with one partner is why he is on the second list and not the first. I think he is probably the best selling baby face that makes his opponents and his partner look better than they generally are. I imagine he could have done that with multiple partners if he had been given the chance. I was pondering this and I think a few things come to mind to me right now. The ability to keep track of a variety of moving parts. Sometimes you see tag matches (especially like 6-8-10 person matches) where people sort of wander around and don’t know what to do or how to respond to what is in front of them and behind or beside them. The ability to shine two opponents and a tag partner at once. That means different things depending on what your role on the team is. The way Arn and Eaton do that is very different than the way Morton does it. The best wrestler are good at making both their opponents look good and make their partner look good. The ability to run the psychology of a tag team match. Working down two opponents and knowing when to come in and when to sit out. Knowing when the structure needs to break down and when it should be reestablished. I think some people are better at thinking through the structure and psychology of a tag match and some are much better at doing that for a singles match. I would say those are the things that stand out to me. Interested to see what other people mean.

I also really like the desert island criteria. If I was stranded on a desert island (and for some reason had a DVD player and a TV and power) and could only watch matches from the career of one wrestler, who would I pick and why. Thats another tie breaker that is sutured to but not completely dependent on context.

Reading some of the back and forth from earlier in this thread has been helpful in parsing out my own commitments. I tend to try to circumvent those discussions with other rubrics when it comes down to touch choices, nuance, and comparing really desperate wrestlers. Even though I think things like context are vital, any way you come down on it you are doing an injustice to a large group of people. So, even though I think a lot about context, I don’t have a huge commitment on the matter. Things I Value Highly Top match quality – Self explanatory. How good are your 3-5 best matches. Number of good to great matches – I try not to necessarily think of how many five star matches, but how many 4 or 4.25+ do I see. Wrestling intelligence and creativity – How fresh and clever and informed does a wrestler feel within the context of wrestling and its varied genres. Example: Foley would score really high on this, as would Steen. Goldberg, though very different, wouldn’t. Believability – I don’t just mean how legit someone is or looks. Maybe the thing I value more than anything else is getting lost in a match. This is something that I think can transcend the context a bit because it is sutured to context. For example, Arn and Regal would score really high on this. Despite being mid card wrestlers without a lot of true classics to point to, I get lost in their matches because they aver very believable and their attention to detail lets me get lost in the match, especially when I am watching critically and any little thing can lose me. The fusion of work and story/character/placement/limitations (context, I guess) – This is one I was thinking about and started realizing was important to me when I was rewatching some Eddie Guerrero. I really value someone who’s can work off of a variety things to enhance the story and the match. I think Eddie was great at that for example and it is why I think his Blood Bath with Bradshaw is an all time great match, where most people think it was very very good. Another, less popular, example, would be Sid. Sid isn’t going to crack my top100, but I tend to enjoy Sid matches more than anyone I know because I think Sid had a pretty acute understanding of his own limitations and worked really hard to play off how over he always was (face or heel) with the live audience, to play off his aesthetics and presence to enhance a match beyond his very limited skill set. Who do I trust – This one is strange and sort of a tiebreaker for me. I often think about who I would want if I was starting a promotion right now or who I would trust to have a 4.5 star match if my life depended on it. I feel like I am going to have to do this a good bit with Regal. I might also be thinking about this a lot near the very top, especially with guys like Danielson and Guerrero vs some of the more widely accomplished guys who will be popular top 10s. This one is very me centric, but whatever, these ballots will all be about personal preference. Diversity – Another self-explanatory one. Things I implicitly value Draw – I think draw power gives wrestlers opportunities and can bring a lot of energy to a match that really helps put it over the top. No matter how critical I am, a white hot audience is going to help me get lost in match and get excited about it. Success/Longevity – If you have more matches you have more time to shine. I try to watch the lesser stuff and the worse stuff here and there, but life is too short to watch bad wrestling if you can help it (said the guy who just admitted to liking Sid more than most) and I honestly just don’t have time. The higher up on the card a wrestler is, the more 30+ minute matches they are allowed to have in front of cameras, the more likely I am to see their matches and enjoy it.

Arn, Eaton, and Taua jump to mind as guys who had skills that stood out tag team matches and proved it by having success with multiple partners. Hansen, Morton, Dustin, Gordy, T. Funk, Kawada, and Misawa are sort of in that next tier for me, at least on face value. I definately need to watch more Buddy Rose and more Jumbo tags. I also always thought that Jimmy Jacobs was a pretty good tag team wrestler. He made me care about about partners and oponents that I didn't before.

My visceral reaction to the original question would be Liger, but the more I think about it the closer it becomes. I think my instinct is that Liger is probably top 10-15 and Rey is probably top 30, but I can see them getting much closer as I watch more and think carefully about it. O do think Liger's high spots are pretty clearly higher, but Rey was consistently entertaining. Both have such longevity and have dealt with the test of time differently. Both were incredibly innovative and entertaining. Both brought the super hero aesthetic of wrestling to life and brought different versions of that to a mainstream American audience. I will just talk myself in circles if I keep this up. I may take up the challenge to sell Rey by talking through a match or two. I will see if I can find some time tomorrow. Really quick, I have a lot of time for Red too. He is not really in the same conversation as either Liger or Rey to me, but I think he was an underrated part of the movement in the early 2000s indy scene to put out a different wrestling product. I really do see that as a movement in American wrestling that was challenging the monopoly of the WWE in terms of both style and the distribution of wrestling and that has fundamentally changed what wrestling is in America today. Style wise, I think Rey was a pretty big part of that. To look at that style and critique it compared to more refined TV wrestling is pretty unfair. Those guys were going out and experimenting and trying to please a very different kind of fan. I think some of the experimenting Red did in the ring was really fun, not just spottiness for spottiness. The most obvious example is his match with Low-ki in ROH. I also think his tag matches with Styles against the Briscoes were fun and often pretty good.

Agree 100%. She is one of the few things that is really exciting on the WWE roster. Her biggest hurdle will be WWE's booking of women.

Yeah, I love Sasha. She probably one of my top 5-10 active wrestlers to watch. She really stands out. But, her body of work is just too limited right now.

I actually decided the other day that I probably will. This is a little misleading though. Danielson has been more or less my favorite wrestler since I got back into wrestling in about 2004 so I have watched a disperprotionate amount of American Dragon matches. All the same, thanks.

In no order these are some guys that are in serious contention for the top 10 - Hansen, Funk, Flair, Bockwinkle, Danielson, Guerrero, Misawa, Kobashi, Kawada, Taua, Nakamura, Regal, Jumbo, Tenryu, Vader, Hart, Savage Some guys that are very interested in, but haven't seen enough of - Hashimoto, Negro Casas, El Hijo (basically all the highly rated luchas), Lawler, Akyama, Volk Han, Fujiwara, Robinson. I LOVE Brock Lesnar, but rating him will be very hard.

Thanks for this. I wasn't going to submit a ballot because I have some fairly substantial gaps in my wrestling viewing. If nothing else this is going to give me some motivation and purpose behind my watching over the next hand full of months so that I can put together a list. I am not 100% sure I will submit it, but that will have nothing to do with feeling welcome as much as it will have to do with my own satisfaction, but that is a "me" thing, not a "board" thing.

I think comparing Danielson to some of the greats from other eras shows why he is a stand out performer in today’s wrestling and why he deserves to be in that conversation, mostly because I think his body of work holds up and his best qualities as a wrestler are qualities he shares with other greats. I have actually been going through Danielson matches/feuds at the same time I sort of work through Ric Flair matches/feuds and I see a lot of similarities in what makes them stand-out performers, so it’s a comparison that has been rattling around in my brain a bit. The first thing I notice is how they create diversity in their matches in much the same way. Take the Danielson/Morishima feud from 2007, tailing off in 2008, for example. Danielson tells a developing story by working 3-4 different styles of matches in that feud, starting with a strategist trying to outsmart the big man to a revenge seeking underdog to a psychopath snapping to a badass small man proving his point. As much as I love Mori during his ROH run, he was more or less the same guy every time out. Danielson really made each of those matches feel different as you move through them and I would say brought out the most character out of Mori at the same time. It reminds me a lot of what Flair and steamboat did in their televised trilogy in 89. I actually rewatched them all yesterday on the heels of listening to part three of Parv’s Flair series. I kept wanting to rate one of them ****3/4 stars as a way of making the other two stand out (for myself), but every time I tried to justify it I was drawn to how unique each match was, but unique in the details. I particularly think about how Flair’s orientations to the match changed each time out and how that was made legible to the fans through how he played off Steamboat. Many of the spots where the same (as was the case with Danielson/Mori), but the psychology, the placement, the details were all different in such a way that they created very different matches that were enjoyable in their own right. I think the other thing that makes Danielson stand out is how nuanced his work is. This stands out so much in the modern WWE (and even a lot of NJPW) when most people are moving from move to move and developing their character through their spots, their outfit, and their promos. Danielson has always relied – moreso than anyone I can think of off the top of my head – on his facial expressions, his interactions with the audience, his pace, and his body language to build his persona and tell the story he wants to tell. So much of today’s US wrestling is producing great matches that have a lot of rewatch value, but they don’t hold together with the characters and the broader narratives they should be a part of and they often lack much subtly. I think subtlety is something you see guys like Flair, Funk, and Hansen do particularly well. I think about how well those three, particularly Hansen in my mind, reacted to every little thing their opponent did and every little thing the audience did. Hansen was an ass kicker, but he actually showed lots of vulnerability when you watch him very close. I take his feud with Colon for example where he looked increasingly vulnerable the more time he spends one on one with Colon and the more Colon survives his offense. That is how I see Danielson wrestling and that sort of attention to the nuances between moves his ability to attend to layered stories provides him with a consistency and makes him a more compelling story than most of his peers. Take for example how Danielson is always trying to fire himself up for come backs when he is getting beat on by Mori or even Kenta. Even when they don’t work they make his runs of offense matter more. Or in the Unified match with Nigel he really makes Nigel the center of attention by always responding to Nigel. You see a confident champion who is a little scared he met his match, but who ultimately wins because he is too scared to lose. Those are things that tell the story of Danielson and do 10 other things simultaneously. I feel like so much of my disinterest in the modern WWE product is the result of a lack of layered coherent storytelling (not news), but Danielson (and some others) were and are able to put that back in the match despite the structures they are given. Finally, the last thing that I think really makes him stand out is how many drastically different contexts he has been successful in. Not just different promotions, Danielson has wrestled and been very successful in at least three fairly different genres or approaches to wrestling (U.S. Indy, Japan, WWE). And you could maybe even divide that up or tack on more depending on how you see his work in japan and what you think of as “success”. His diversity of success is pretty tops as far as his contemporaries go and almost harkens back to territory days. A lot of the Americans that I see people talking about as real contenders for their number one spot or their top 5, they mostly had diverse successes and produce top quality stuff in a varying context. That diversity is something that is always praised but has been to some extent systemically removed from much of the wrestling world. The real difference I see between Danielson and Flair, Lawler, Bockwinkle, Hart, Jumbo, Misawa and even Funk to a degree is that he didn’t spend as much time carrying a brand and when he did it was in a way that makes it very difficult to compare to others. Personally, I love his ROH title run and don’t know if there was a time the belt felt stronger or more important, but it is the ROH title in a highly stratified era of American Pro Wrestling that is mediated and distributed very differently. Like, how do you compare Danielson’s run on top of the ROH and his absolutely electric run to the title in the WWE vs Flair in the NWA, Bockwinkle in AWA, Misawa in All Japan (a whole other can of worms really), or Laweler in Memphis? I think that sort of top guy argument gets fuzzy around a guy like Danielson and ultimately leads into too many “what ifs” that I don’t know are productive. Ultimately, it turns into a bit of a shadow for me, but I am not sure that is actually justified. If I were to make a list, I am pretty confident that Danielson would be in my top 3 right now and would remain in my top 5-10 as I fixed many of my blind spots. He would be a real contender for #1, for sure and it is because I think the qualities that make him stand out are qualities he shares with other greats.

Sort of jumping in late after a bunch of conversations have moved through this thread, but I just listened to the first one and am about half way through the second. I just have a few thoughts, mostly about the podcast itself but a few things about other thoughts that I will sort of indirectly get to. I actually quite enjoy the one sidedness of the series as a bit of change of pace. Within the context of the greatest wrestler project, the larger existence of the PTBN wrestling podcasts, and this board (not to mention the larger internet wrestling discourse), it is kind of nice to hear a sustained and detailed argument for why a particular wrestler was effective and where he may be placed in the grand scheme of things. It is kind of like picking up a book on a subject instead of getting a journal or news article, or worse yet reading headlines, tweets, and facebook posts. In all reality, a short series like this should probably be done for the sort of top tier of wrestlers who are likely to wind up in they top 10 or so of the greatest wrestler project. I am pretty comfortable with my Flair knowledge, but this could really help me understand other guys (not to vote, but just in general). I get why some people might consider the format a waste of time, but only if you place in the context of back and forth discussion, which is what most podcasts do. By breaking the format a bit it is jarring – and admittedly took me a minute to get into – but is somewhat refreshing. I really liked some of the finer details of his psychology (the chops, the perpetual motion stuff) from the first podcast. While I will have to rewatch some matches to see how well the perpetual motion theory holds up, I really buy the chops stuff pretty much on face value. Flair’s 60 minute man shtick, the pace, and the wearing guys down stuff was always a sort of implicit part of my reading of Flair’s matches, but that sort of detail and theory is what makes the format and the project itself useful. It provides space to forward something somewhat new (at least to some of us), which we can then take, digest, and do with what we please. Being only half way through, we will see how much I like the format of the second by the end, but I am generally ok with it as an interesting experiment. I like getting the promos in full and in order. The literary criticism stuff speaks to me. I think Parv and I are in the same general profession, but not field (I believe I heard him say he was a college prof.). Regardless, I am enjoying the analysis of the promos as they progress and build upon one another. The on thing that I am (so far) missing and wanting is a discussion of some of his slick Ric promos where he was branding himself and his catch phrases. This in depth analysis of that could be compelling. I don’t mean to get back to a discussion about Flair rather than the podcasts, but I do think the argument about Flair’s style not evolving as much as one might hope through the 90s, especially in his WWE run holds some water. I always find myself disappointed with the matches. Even the Savage matches, which I really like, always leave me feeling like I want to like them more, like somehow 5+5 only came to 9 somehow. It just didn’t add up like it should have… if that makes sense. I think Flair returned to a well (or a series of wells) that he had a lot of success with while the people around him were trying to do something else. The ethos of Flair felt old and I don’t use that term as a way of abstracting things too quickly. Flair was trying to do things that could have worked, while guys like Savage and Hart were trying to do something different. Hart obviously frames it has him trying to do something more innovative and I am not trying to necessarily say that, but it kind of felt like styles coming up against one another sometimes and causing friction. Flair’s matches didn’t feel like they had the room to breath that they did earlier. I am not sure it is Flair’s fault, but I do wonder if he could have done more to adapt his style to the surroundings to do something completely different with the WWF guys, Hart and Savage particularly. The thing is, he had proven he could do a variety of matches and had a fair amount of diversity, but we didn’t see yet a new Flair that really jived like I feel it should have in the WWF. There are probably a billion reasons (face territory vs heel territory, maybe Flair’s admitted insecurities, younger guys trying to push in a new direction, etc etc etc). Edit: Also, what is that song you use at the beginning?

I always felt like the WWE and even WCW to an extent tried really hard to recapture the magic of Monsoon/Heenan, which remains my favorite team. I thought Monsoon sounded like a skilled sports announcer. He brought legitimacy when he was talking and then that gets cut by Hennan’s humor. They always had a great chemistry, helped the wrestlers cover any mistakes, told larger story for each wrestler, and didn’t feel TOO cartoonish. I think they tried to find that color/heel to play-by-play/face dynamic well through the attitude era. I can never figure out if I like Venture on the commentary team. I think his unique voice and understanding of character work was great, but I almost think he over explained things to the point where it wasn’t aligning with what Vince or Toney were trying to do. He also pointed out entirely too many flaws in the match and the psychology. He would call guys out for making mistakes when he didn’t need to. It just felt like he took away from matches too much.

The Rumble has become the anual dissapointment event for Dragon fans. Even this year when I know better (I knew better last year too) I get excited when I see people speculate that Bryan could or SHOULD win if he is ready. I ust want to see Dragon vs Brock, is that so much to ask for? The mark in me is so sad that this wont happen.

But there is a huge difference in pre-mania Reigns and post-mania reigns. I know some people are saying he is being shoved down people's throats now, but I don't really see that at all. Pre-mania reigns presents the problems of shoving a pet project down the audiences throat. That reigns never lost and was certainly more protected than just about anyone on the roster at the time. I think a lot of people have leftover resentment of that Reigns. Post-Mania reigns hasn't been protected all that much. Even when he looks strong he sort of blends into the fray of half written stories. The need to "rebuild" him or at least change something comes from the fact that they risk losing him shuffle. Just when he was becoming interesting (putting on good matches at Fastlane and Mania and not reading scripted promos all the time) they seemed to stop paying attention to him and that hurt. I honestly couldn't tell you the results of his last hand full of matches. I haven't been watching that closely - admittedly - but the whole thing kind of blends into the background. If that is the case neither wins nor losses will be the thing that gets him out of this, because no one will care either way. Protection is about making him strong, but it is also making him matter no matter what They just seem to have no sense of moderation with this guy.

I used to really dislike Reigns. He bored me to no end, but I was really getting behind him going into Mania and through the big show. The biggest thing was that he was in matches that people believed he might lose with performers that could get the best out of him. Reigns vs Dragon and Reigns vs Brock were fantastic matches and Reigns pulled his weight in both, especially the Brock encounter. The biggest thing to turning him around is to put him in meaningful stories against guys that can help him show off. I honestly think Sheamus would be a good start. Sheamus calling Reigns out for not being a warrior (man) and then having a good stuff match with him could be fun. Then I would put him against Owens. An extended feud against Owens could do wonders for him. It could (and should) have a little of that Dragon vs Cena flavor - the "your not a real wrestler" vs the "I perform on the biggest stages" kind of trash talk. That made a lot of people come around to Cena and could help a lot come around to Reigns, especially since Owens is a god damned genius. Maybe after all that it is time and he is ready for another go at Brock. I also think he really needs to let go of the sheild thing. He is like a crazy ex that wont take off the shirt that reminds him of the good times.

Isn't the problem long term, coherent storytelling, ultimately? We see guys from time to time move from the mid card or a mid card title to the main event (not as often as we should), but like loss said, nothing matters. I think part of the problem is that the WWE only really cares about having one super draw and they don't really want anyone else stand out THAT much. It gives them leverage and Vince's biggest fear is someone taking his toys and playing with them. I am not sure if it is concious or not, but a lack of long term cohernce keeps the fans from getting too invested in anyone, keeps momentum in check. The last two really compelling, long term stories I remember are Punk and Dragon's and it seems like those were sort of in spite of the WWE. They tried with Reigns for obvious reasons, but the timing was just bad. I have always liked the idea of the career that chips away at the top tier before truely establishing one's self as a star and hopefully a draw. Didn't punk have sort of a rollercoaster? They had more titles to create more tiers (well, in theory), so he wasn't exactly getting the main title, but he won the ECW Title, the world title a few times, and then made his real push into the true main event. Of course punk is always a little bit of a different beast because of the pipe bomb and all that, but between them first putting a "top of the brand" title on him and him becoming a draw, he was sort of all over the place. Another big problem - in addition to getting people to drawing level - I just thought of is a lack of main eventers (outside Cena) that can truely elivate other wrestlers with a good feud. Who can really do that outside Cena. They have tried with Kane, Show, and Orton countless times... nope! Trips maybe?

Of these two cards I would probably pick ROH, but only because I have never seen Nakamura or the Young Bucks live and really want to. The last ROH show I was at live was 2007 or so. If I remember right, I think it was Driven. I always enjoyed going to ROH shows, but it has been so long I am not sure how much that same energy resonates there today. I really just want to see Nakamura knee someone in person. As for what ROH can do, I am not really sure. Since 2009 I have been and out of the product, mostly out for the last 4 years or so. Consequently, I can't really speak in specifics. I think one of the things that made ROH so exciting and fun for so long was that they were a super show. With increased use of contracts in wrestling and their work with NJPW, they might honestly be doing all they can. Still, giving their cards super fight feels will help. It is what set them apart from everyone else. Booking the big guns they bring in against their champion (especially for an extended program) would help take what they are doing and turning it into something even more buzz worthy.

I just finished the Hansen vs Colon series the other day and absolutely loved it. I gave the bullrope match and the cage match 4 and 3/4 stars. The matches were covered very well earlier; I just want to sing the praises of my favorite match of the series for just a second. The bullrope match edges out the cage match to me. It highlighted how versatile Hansen is. When he got pulled back right before hitting the fourth corner about 3/4ths through the match and he wails like he is crying openly I thought it was just a brilliant little moment. To see a big ass kicker like Hansen doing that added so much to the dynamic between the two. I generally don’t bullrope matches (or any match that requires the corner touching gimmick, but this one was fantastic.

I just rewatched this match this morning (call it the wrestling fan's version of church) and found I still love it, but I had more critiques of it. As I have been watching matches more critically lately, I found this was a 5 star brawl, but a 4.5 star match. Necro Butcher vs Super Dragon - No DQ - PWG Battle of Los Angeles 2006 - 2/9/2006 - Reseda, CA ****1/2 About 15 minutes into this match you can hear the audience murmuring things like "this is fucked up" and "that is pretty intense” under the requisite indy chants. That is what sets this match apart. These two are all in from the very beginning, making this exactly what you would expect from a match between these two. It has its ups and downs. The match suffers from two different things. First, some botches early on hurt, but not as much as they normally would. The botches are so obvious and both wrestlers respond well so they don't crush the match. Mostly, they kill the pace of the match. Both men have to sell their exhaustion a bit longer and it stands out because they clearly aren't doing the damage that the stiff shots earlier and later are doing. If Necro hit that sit out tiger driver on the table and they had continued on like they did, I would maybe consider this for a five star match. The other thing it suffers from is a lack of hot spots near the end. If one man had really fired up on the other near the conclusion it might have added some needed energy and another layer to the match. Neither have comebacks like Generico or anything, but some pace and energy into a big spot would do wonders to transform what they were doing. Unfortunately, Dragon would be the one to do it, and he was concussed. On the plus side, the stiffness is out of control and the way each man unloads on the other make this match special, memorable. They all out punch each other in the face and go at each other in a way that brings legitimacy and cringe worthy moments. Dragon does what he does best, elevates the story with his body language. His frustration - especially after the botches - really pushes the match to the next level. The strongest quality, by my estimation, is that it doesn't include 100 kick outs from finishers. The pins feel more like they are out of desperation or convenience until the end, so the finish isn't blown and the psychology holds up when dragon finally does it a few brutal spots in row. In short, I want to give this 4 and 3/4, but it ultimately it just lacks the momentum and pace that would take this from being a great brawl (and it is a 5 star brawl) to a great overall match. That all said, I wouldn't be surprised if i bumped it a 1/4 star next time I watched it.

I have waives of free time and then waives of NO time at all to watch. I also get bothered by my own tendency to jump around and watch stuff I know I like vs new stuff. I am the type of personality that needs direction, something to do. I love complete relax time, but my brain kind of wont let it happen much. In short, I need some direction and something structural for me to really maximize my time My solution has been to start to keep track of my match rankings. About two weeks or so ago I started an exel spreadsheet where I keep track of match, my star rating, and about a paragraph on each. I bring this up because for me it keeps me from sitting and deciding sometimes and it encourages me to watch hyped matches. In short, I get a little more wrestling in every week and I am watching quality stuff pretty constantly. When I approach the ocean of wrestling that I have in my office or on the internet I find I don't know what to do. As it turns out, getting turned onto the PWO podcasts, and in turn the board, has really helped with this process, giving me tons of material and motivation to think carefully about what I like about wrestling. I tend to want to articulate crap like that all the time. As for more general stuff, I am really fortunate to be able to set my own schedule (grad student - dissertating), but wrestling has to come after writing and time with my wife. She is pretty tolerant of a match or two here and there (especially if its flippy) but mostly I just find time here and there for a match or two, hence why I have really tried to take steps to maximize my time. I’ll probably never watch all the wrestling I have access to and I will still continue to buy more. That is wrestling though.

And I think that speaks to my preference of Austin based on style. I think HBK’s theatrical style produces real time investment and can really make for memorable matches, but doesn’t hold up to me on critical rewatch. Whereas, Austin’s matches often fly under the radar, but hold up a little better as tight, compelling matches. I also second that sherri's version was better.

In the last post, no I wasn't really, I suppose. And ultimately, that is what I am saying. In this past post I was just saying the conversation has made me think more about why I pick Austin. I think Loss is right in that Austin doesn't default get scrutinized like HBK does. On first response I was far too visceral. I have been thinking more about it recently and the distinction between the two is much more about style than about anything that resembles an argument for objective production. HBK probably had longer stretches of quality matches and no doubt he helped lift overall weaker rosters. Austin was pretty fortunate to work really talented rosters, especially during his best runs. For example, I like Austin’s early 90s work in WCW, but that roster was stacked. When he was in his absolute prime in 96/97 he was mostly working with awesome talent and most of his memorable feuds/matches were with really good workers. And everyone knows that the attitude era featured a lot of talent, even if they underperformed on the whole in terms of actual matches. I am not sure it is fair to say that Austin dumbed down the wrestling though. Wrestling was dumbing down in America overall and Austin’s popularity/injury probably didn’t help anything, but I am not sure that is a cause/effect relationship. If anything Austin changed his own game to stay a bit ahead of the curve in some ways. He wasn’t a fluid and crisp wrestler post injury, but he was a good brawler who used space and pace really well. He still told good stories, kept things pretty tight, and tried to present believable wrestling. Injured, Austin got a lot out of guys like young Angle, Taker, HHH, and The Rock, and even Kane (as mentioned before). Austin was pulling disproportionately good matches out of them for the time period. Austin probably has The Rock and HHH’s best matches and I actually don’t love either of them in the ring. I would maybe contend they are remembered more positively because of their work with Austin (though admittedly they are not Nash or Sid). Changing his own style, Austin – I think – helped hold up in ring wrestling in a time when matches really weren’t that good on the whole. He was able to do this because his original style (though much more fluid athletic before the injury) was still focused on believability over theater, where as HBK – and this isn’t a knock – has a more theatrical style. And this is where the rubber hits the road for me. Austin’s focus on in ring legitimacy and intensity is something I find more compelling and more entertaining. I think it something you see very early in Austin’s career and something he was sort of in a league of his own with by the time he was having his Hart Feud and then ultimately his main event run. That all said, I think HBK should get more credit for getting more out of his opponents and for having long runs of quality wrestling matches. His consistency is fairly impressive and even though I am not a huge fan of post-return HBK, there are still matches in that run that I am a sucker for. And MJH summed up the point I was going to make here. Stylistically, HBK was made for making everyone around him look better. His showmanship bump and feed style makes for memorable (especially WWE style) matches that build drama. For that, I give him a lot of credit. This is ultimately a style issue for me. If I had to bet on one of them to have a match that I will love and call a five star match against a game opponent, I would probably pick Austin. If I had to pick one to put on a series of matches with just about anyone and produce quality, it would be HBK. I would probably rather watch 3 hours of random Austin matches, but there are probably more memorable HBK matches I could name off the top of my head as matches to watch. So, even within the criteria of in ring performer I sort of can’t help but parse out a few different ways of thinking about this. However, ultimately – even if it is just “I like him more” – Austin’s in ring body of work is more entertaining and compelling. Anyway, the conversation here did make me think about both guys quite differently, which is cool. I need to find some time to watch some stretches of each now.

This is something that does kinda make me chuckle, the bizarre gap of perception between the consensus and some hardcore smarks. It's not just the WWE's imagination. You know what people generally think that Shawn was great? Wrestlers. People as different as Ric Flair, Mick Foley, Ultimate Warrior, Jim Cornette, Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, Sid Vicious, Chris Jericho and Jim Ross all manage to put aside their completely differing philosophies on wrestling and agree that Shawn is possibly the best in-ring worker they've ever seen in their lives. (Same thing with Undertaker, but that's a different thread.) And they'll probably all immediately follow that up with "and he was a total asshole backstage", but if anything that makes their compliments towards his work even more impressive, because how much are you willing to compliment a guy you really don't like? I remember a Hurricane Helms shoot interview where he was bitching for like five minutes straight about how terrible a person Michaels was... while still occasionally peppering in comments like "and that really hurt, cuz I idolized his ring work". You don't say that kind of stuff just to be a WWE corporate shill, not when so many of these people don't work there anymore and have tons of big disagreements with other parts of Vince's general business philosophy. These are the guys who've been there and done that, and it's pretty damn rare to hear anyone who's been in the ring with him saying anything not-glowingly-positive about HBK's abilities as an in-ring artist. Even fuckin' Bret doesn't knock the work itself. That is what is so very confusing to me. Most of the wrestlers I REALLY REALLY like hype him as the best ever and it really confuses me. I am obviously not saying my opinion holds more water than theirs, but it just doesn’t compute. And don’t get me wrong, I think HBK is very very good. Like everyone in a topic like this, I am being SUPER critical above, really picking every little thing apart. Even still, it never surprises or offends me when I hear someone LOVES HBK. When it comes down to it, I just don’t see what makes him the best ever, even in his absolute prime, and that might be at least partially me actively rejecting the WWE’s narrative. I guess now that I think about it, I would pick Austin, but it probably wouldn’t be as slam dunk as I thought at first.