ThomasFromIowa

1. Terry Funk 2. Ric Flair 3. Stan Hansen 4. Jerry Lawler 5. Rey Mysterio Jr 6. Jushin Thunder Liger 7. Kenta Kobashi 8. Daniel Bryan 9. Genichiro Tenryu 10. Eddie Guerrero

Don't know where else to put this but Istanbul was a great menu song.

I love this Jumbo/Tenryu feud. The out of control vibe is just great to watch play out. I literally squealed when I realized Tenyru was laying out young boys with chairs again.

The Cornette smile at the end of this might go down as the funniest moment of 1990 for me. I'm not necessarily sure if this segment was "good" or not or even served to a strong purpose, but it was entertaining and I watched the closing minute about nine different times just for the Cornette moment at the end.

A big talking point on Angle across this board is that his matches don't make since because he was a gold medalist in wrestling who wouldn't wrestle his opponents. My argument against this being a huge detraction comes from a different perspective as when Angle debuted I was a six year old child who participated in amatuer wrestling and was genuinely excited to see an amateur wrestler in the WWE. During Angle's first year he would generally only tease mat wrestling. The thing is, that was good enough for me. In an era where nobody was doing anything that resembled actual wrestling on the ground, generally when they did it was a rest hold, Angle taking that 15 seconds to do a take down and lean on his opponent was good enough for me and made me pretty excited as a young fan. Angle got over really quick and was ushered into the upper card within a year of his debut and the idea of a young wrestler trying to mat wrestle and have entertaining matches with HHH, Austin, Taker etc just seems insane to me. If that was the case the common audience they had in 2001 (the Austin, Rock crowds) would have refused to embrace him. So I think watching Angle matches and not being able to get past him not using his wrestling skills just seems really odd.

Cena vs Nakumara is the one potential WWE match that gets me. They both show lots of heart in the ring and I think that would keep me emotionally involved when they hit the high spots in the end. Also, seeing how they get to that point would be pretty interesting as right now I don't have a full handle on how Nakumara is going to work his matches for WWE.

I tried to come up with a sharply written summary of why I will be voting Angle really high, but it really just comes down to him being the most over wrestler with me as a teenager and that sticks with me. Angle was also one of the few wrestlers to figure out how to please both the internet crowd and the casual viewer as a main eventer in the 2000s and I think that should give him some merit. Also, if you value drawing power, Angle's leap to TNA coincided right with TNA's viewer increase and really started the company's peak period.

I figure I should introduce myself as I'm new around here. I'm Thomas, I'm 22 and I'm from Iowa. I've been lurking for about a month. Ive been here because I've been watching a lot of older wrestling (watching late 70s Memphis right now) and this seems like a decent place to discuss that. I also frequent Midwest wrestling shows and might talk about them from time to time as well.