supremebve

Yeah, the best way to sell a DDT is that your head hits and you just kind of go limp. All the flip overs, implants, and anything else takes away from the impact of the move. I'd prefer if the guy had to struggle to roll the victim's lifeless body over to pin them.

When's the last time Scott Hall had a genuinely good match? And I mean something which featured a really strong performance from him, not just "well, that three-way with Jarrett and Sid wasn't too bad". Also, they were screwed from the start by the booking. I don't think the WWF crowd really gave a shit about the Outsiders in 2002, they were mostly just excited for Hogan's return while Nash and Hall rode on his coattails. Putting Austin into this feud was seen as a step down for Stone Cold, who should never be wrestling a sub-ten-minutes match deep in the undercard of Wrestlemania against a worker whose finish Austin can't even physically take. It doesn't help that Hall was trying to wrestle a Rock-type sprint, and simply didn't have the ability to do that and pull it off. Scott Hall is like Tony Romo. Scott Hall is a guy who is simultaneously better and worse than what you think he is. When he is good, you don't understand how anyone could think he's not one of the best in the world, but when he's bad he's really fucking bad. I honestly think that Scott Hall is up there with Barry Windham on pure talent. He's just not someone who ever really maximized that talent.

This is probably a ridiculous request, but can you describe those? I've watched plenty of Midnight Express, but other than the Rocket Launcher and Flapjack I don't think I can name any of their finishers.

Rewatch it on the network, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. I essentially forgot they wrestled on that card, until about 8 months ago. When I gave it a fresh look I liked it a lot.

Damn it, Loss, you posted what I came in here to post. Seriously though, yeah, I remember being super disappointed by this match. Does Savage vs. Warrior at SummerSlam count? Like we're seeing with AJ Styles and Gallows/Anderson now, they built up a big storyline (which one is buddy-buddy with Flair?) that ended up leading to nothing, and on top of that, the match ended in a DQ or something unsatisfying like that. I realize Warrior was no workrate king and Savage was past his prime by then, but they'd had a great match previously. (BTW, I realize the AJ and Gallows/Anderson stuff is ongoing, but I'll be shocked if it actually leads to much. At least, I don't think we'll end up getting either of the scenarios everyone wants - AJ reforming some version of Bullet Club with them or Finn Balor coming in and aligning with them as Balor Club. But we'll see.) I actually think the Savage vs. Warrior match is really good for a overbooked mess of a match. I think Warrior looks more like a competent wrestler in this match than he did in the Wrestlemania VII match. The mania match is Savage and Sherri doing everything possible to make Warrior look good, but the Summerslam match is more back and forth and Warrior actually carries his weight. It isn't the best match, but I thought they got the absolute most out of what they had to work with under the circumstances.

Next to J-B-I love puro and Otto Wanz-L and Michael Cole? I don't really see it.Have you listened to him? He comes off as a dweeb, a dork, a wimp. So, with all the problematic racist things in wrestling how did making fun of Byron even come up? You are allowed to make fun of black people, you just can't make fun of him for being black. They've never done that, they just make dumb jokes about a coworker.

I'm a huge mark for a brainbuster. If you have a dope looking brainbuster, I'm probably a fan of yours. Someone brought up the slingshot suplex, I want the next hot, young blue chipper to come in and use a slingshot jackhammer as a finisher. Too bad he'll use a spear or another version of the complete shot.

If I ever become a professional wrestler my finisher will be the Military Industrial Suplex.

I think that narratives can make us buy into some workers more, but if they don't live up to the narrative it can diminish them greatly. I think guys like Flair and Bockwinkel being great wrestler's who are pushed as being the best makes us believe their greatness more than we would without it. Let's say Cesaro got signed by the WWE and pushed as the best wrestler in the world from day one. A lot of us believe Cesaro has been one of the best wrestlers in the world for his entire WWE career, but he was never pushed that way. Would Cesaro have finished higher in the GWE voting? I think he would have, despite not much changing with his actual skills as a wrestler. Then you have someone like Antonio Inoki, who was always pushed as a great wrestler doesn't consistently live up to that hype, and it goes the other way. I can't stand Inoki, and I think he's actively a bad wrestler. What I can't possibly know is whether or not that is because he's actually bad, or if his boring ass matches were a huge disappointment when I finally got around to watching them. My disdain for him could be based on the fact that I'd heard so much about him as a legendary wrestler, but then watched someone who didn't live up to the hype.

Everyone here has watched a Rock match, and most people here haven't seen many Maeda matches. That is probably the real reason. One guy was on TV and having big matches at the peak of wrestling's popularity. The other guy is a shoot style worker that you'd have to scour the internet to watch. It makes perfect sense to me. Although the counterpoint here is that because The Rock is so prominent, most people have seen all of his worst work from watching him week in week out, which can count against him. Whereas people who have seen Maeda are more likely to have focused mainly on the pimped stuff and not seen him at his worst. That is absolutely a factor for a lot of people. I ranked Maeda, because I enjoyed the shit out of the little bit I watched of him, but it was a small selection of his best stuff. If we only watched the absolute best of HHH and we didn't see him drone on and on in his interviews, if we didn't know that he held people back with backstage politics, and we were in a foreign country with limited access to his work he'd probably rank higher. I think the biggest factor with guys like The Rock, HHH, Ric Flair, etc. are whether or not we like their characters. How many of our favorite Rock and Flair moments are just them being fun characters? They clearly had a lot of good matches, but that isn't why we love them. HHH doesn't really have any of those moments, but I don't think it is unreasonable to think he's a better wrestler than The Rock(I ranked The Rock higher). Basically my point is that we won't hold The Rock's flaws against him, because we like him too much.

Everyone here has watched a Rock match, and most people here haven't seen many Maeda matches. That is probably the real reason. One guy was on TV and having big matches at the peak of wrestling's popularity. The other guy is a shoot style worker that you'd have to scour the internet to watch. It makes perfect sense to me.

I hate you so much for this. I voted for HHH, and never felt good about it. My thing with HHH is that he is probably the one guy who we can't look at fairly. I stopped watching wrestling for a few years, mostly because I thought HHH beating Booker T after a program that was based on thinly veiled racism was just too much for me to look past. I can't think of another wrestler who I think is good in the ring that I would rather watch less. Everything about him as a character, a promo, and a backstage politician makes my skin crawl. I don't think any of that should matter when it comes to his ability as an in-ring wrestler. He isn't the best guy ever, but I honestly think he is one of the best 100 in-ring wrestlers of all time. Fuck him, definitely FUCK TRUMP, and damn you for comparing me to those asshats.

I would rather watch Okada and Triple H's entire careers than one Inoki match. Inoki is probably the wrestler I'm most apathetic about, I'm pretty sure the only thing he ever did that impressed me was that time Vader almost crippled him.

I think Austin's early work was more, "Wow, that guy is going to be good," than "Wow, that guy is good." He was a guy who felt like the next big thing until he actually became the next big thing. When I watch any of those old WCW matches I always wonder how the hell WCW let a talent like him leave. Sting looks at Luger and wishes he got to be that kind of victim. Sting will forever be blamed for not being a draw, when WCW put him in a title feud with the Black Scorpion is probably the worst booking.

To expand on this, some guys are carpenters(Bret Hart) and some guys are architects(Kobashi). A master carpenter does everything with a purpose, and can build thousands of nice, but unspectacular houses. Occasionally he builds an exceptionally beautiful house, but he still bases everything on those basic carpentry skills. Kobashi designs beautiful skyscrapers. Kobashi doesn't swing a hammer as well as Bret, but when you look at their body of work Kobashi's resume is much more impressive. This is an argument for or against the value of carpentry. I value carpentry, but much less than Grimmas, he thinks that swinging a hammer well means more than I do. I don't care whether you are the best hammer swinger ever, I can't look at your sturdy homes and say that he is better than Kobashi's skyscrapers. Luger is a very good worker on a construction site, he's someone who does what he does very well. Austin is the foreman, when he is in charge he's going to get every ounce of work out of his crew. Luger is always going to have a job, but you never mistake him for a guy you can make the foreman. This is awesome!!! However, Kobashi swings a Burning Hammer!!!! If you are going to impress me swinging a hammer, that is how you do it.

To expand on this, some guys are carpenters(Bret Hart) and some guys are architects(Kobashi). A master carpenter does everything with a purpose, and can build thousands of nice, but unspectacular houses. Occasionally he builds an exceptionally beautiful house, but he still bases everything on those basic carpentry skills. Kobashi designs beautiful skyscrapers. Kobashi doesn't swing a hammer as well as Bret, but when you look at their body of work Kobashi's resume is much more impressive. This is an argument for or against the value of carpentry. I value carpentry, but much less than Grimmas, he thinks that swinging a hammer well means more than I do. I don't care whether you are the best hammer swinger ever, I can't look at your sturdy homes and say that he is better than Kobashi's skyscrapers. Luger is a very good worker on a construction site, he's someone who does what he does very well. Austin is the foreman, when he is in charge he's going to get every ounce of work out of his crew. Luger is always going to have a job, but you never mistake him for a guy you can make the foreman.

This is the best argument against so called, "Great Match Theory." Steve Austin is a guy who was able to have memorable matches based purely off the fact that he was the guy in them. Lex Luger was in a bunch of good to great matches, because he was the perfect guy for a lot of better wrestlers to bump around looking like pinballs for. Lex Luger was a good wrestler, but was rarely the reason his great matches were great. Steve Austin's great matches were mostly based on the fact that Steve Austin busted his ass to make them great. I still think great matches are more often than not a valid measure of a wrestler's greatness, but there are some outliers.

El Samurai is my 3rd guy down. He was always kind of, "The Other Guy," in the NJPW Jr. division, but he had some great stuff over the years.

I'm listening to it right now.

Luger compared to HHH will be interesting. Luger at his best was heads and shoulders above HHH for me, he just had a short peak. HHH has longevity on his side, and despite having a hell of a lot of memorable matches, he also has so many long ass promos, matches that leave a bad taste in your mouth, and stories of him being a dick backstage that I have no idea how people will rank him.

Patera was my third soldier to fall. I'm a little surprised he finished below some of the other guys I have on my list. Kojima was my first guy down, and DDP is my only other vote who has dropped. I was very close to putting Koko B. Ware on my ballot, but ultimately did not.

I used the analogy because it's the same as what that poster is doing - imposing current standards onto something that had a different meaning, or at least multiple meanings, in the '70s and '80s. Exactly. People need to take historical context into account if they're going to argue about something. You can't just take 2016 standards and retroactively apply them to 1985. Characters in Twain's books owned slaves, which obviously isn't good, but you can't suddenly say Twain wrote them as villains when he didn't necessarily do that. It was a different time, with different standards and different perceptions. You can look back and say how backward those characters were by today's standards, but you can't say the author intended them to be bad people just because that's the way they'd be seen now. I understand not wanting to give Michael Hayes the benefit of the doubt because of Mark Henry and other incidents, but the fact is, the Rebel Flag outfits the Freebirds wore did not give them racist heat at the time. That was clearly not the intention back then. This is completely and totally untrue. The confedrate flag was always a symbol of hate, especially when you take into consideration that it essentially disappeared from American society until the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. After the Civil War the only people who flew the confederate flag were hate groups like the ku klux klan, until racist politicians decided to fly it over southern state houses to support segregation. I'd bet every dollar I've ever made that if you were to ask any black person who was alive in the 60s/70s/80s in the American south what that flag meant to them they would say it was racist no matter what decade it was flown.

If your life was on the line you'd take Joe Montana, who had less skills but higher output. If you gave me the same exact players around each qb I'd take Marino every time and live long and prosper I suppose, but we don't know that. Back to what Jerry von Kramer was saying, we know for a fact that Joe Montana could get the job done. We assume that Dan Marino can get the job done. We have to judge these guys on what they did, not on what we assumed they could do. Being great has as much to do with taking full advantage of your opportunities as it does with what skills you do or don't have. Kobashi was in a position to have great matches with great wrestlers, and he went out there and had a whole barrel full of great matches. That shouldn't be held against him because Bret Hart was wrestling a dentist. Who is the best actor of all time? I bet you he's in a shitload of great movies.

If your life was on the line you'd take Joe Montana, who had less skills but higher output.

So essentially this is an argument of input vs. output. I'd argue that input is completely irrelevant if it doesn't lead to quality output, just because you have great typing skills it doesn't mean you are a great writer. Output is much more important, because most art is more than the sum of it's parts.