Kadaveri

He's one of the most maligned wrestlers in modern times, widely regarded as the worst wrestler ever to win a world title. But I've also heard so many wrestlers be praised for "getting a good match out of The Great Khali", so could he really have been that useless? I do rememeber him having a really good match with John Cena in 2007. So to get to the bottom of this, I'm going to go through his televised singles matches and watch stuff that looks too long to be a squash, or is with wrestlers I recall being praised for doing good work with him. The Great Khali vs. Rey Mysterio - Smackdown 05/12/06 We start the match with a staredown. That is, Rey Mysterio staring at Khali's nipples. JBL is on commentary celebrating Rey's inevitable defeat boasting that America is the greatest country on Earth because "we invade countries just because we can" unlike useless Mexico. Khali no-sells everything Rey does, include a dropkick off the top rope, then throws him around showing very little mobility. Ok this is just a squash. The best thing he did was a kick to the head that did look quite mean. Alright for a squash I guess. * The Great Khali vs. The Undertaker - Judgement Day 05/21/06 Khali's PPV debut. Is there anyone who's had more of these "get something watchable out of a freakshow wrestler" feuds than The Undertaker? He's really got the shortend of the stick for much of his career. Taker's bumping huge in this match as Khali tosses him around. Full on underdog babyface and it's a really good performance from him. Taker's selling is excellent. Khali sells Taker's strikes with more annoyance than pain. Taker does a Foley-style knees bump into the steps when Khali throws him, really committing himself. Khali eventually wins with a chop and kick to the head. This was an alright match actually, better than I was expecting, but the finish wasn't good at all. Actually felt like this match could have done with a few more minutes as Taker seemed to be putting up a worthy fight, then just loses to a not very convincing move. ** The Great Khali vs. The Undertaker (Last Man Standing) - Smackdown 08/15/06 Blowoff time. The match starts with Taker going for Khali's leg with kicks trying to chop him down. Khali is actually selling a bit unlike the previous matches. This is better than their previous outing. Daivari tries to interfere hitting Taker with a chair, but Taker just goes straight after him and attacks him near the titantron, only for Khali to save his manager and throw Taker off the stage! Taker takes a big fall onto some tables. That was one hell of a bump, but he beats the 10 count. Khali drags him around the outside tossing him from barrier to barrier, Taker is still selling being thrown off the stage for quite a while. The crowd is really hot for this. They get in the ring and after several failed attempts Taker manages to get together a good comeback with a series of good strikes that wear Khali down, and then clotheslines him over the rope to the outside. Taker goes out after him but Khali grabs him and throws him straight into the steps. Ouch. Khali throws the steps in the ring above a hurt Undertaker. He has something in mind... but he takes too long to get in the ring and Taker manages to recuperate and whacks Khali in the head with the stairs. Khali is busted open! Taker unloads with the chair Daivari originally brought into the ring and knocks Khali down, but he beats the 10 count. Taker then finishes off Khali with more chairshots and a big chokeslam to the 400 pounder. This was a great match, can't be many like it. First time I think Khali actually added something to the match other than being really big, but Taker was brilliant. **** The Great Khali vs. John Cena - Raw 01/08/07 John Cena is just back from defeating Umaga the night before. The match starts with Cena ducking and diving around the ring trying to land a punch on Khali, manages to get him a couple of times but doesn't have much effect. Cena goes for a running punch but Khali shoulder blocks into him. Khali drags Cena up, throws him into the turnbuckle, and as Cena bounces back he hits him with a really impactful looking lariat! Cena later starts a bit of a comeback going when Estrada jumps on the apron with a chair, but Cena yanks it off him and hits Khali with it for a DQ. Khali's lariat looked really good, but otherwise this was nothing. 1/2* The Great Khali vs. Jeff Hardy - Raw 01/29/07 We get a staredown. Khali yanks Jeff's Intercontinental Title off him and hoists it above his head like he's declaring himself the new champion. I thought that was pretty funny. Khali throws Jeff to the outside, drags him back up the aprons backwards, ties his arms up in the ropes and hammers on his chest like Sheamus does. Hits him with a decent lariat (not as good as in the previous match) but his chop looked pretty good. Jeff manages to pull off a Whisper In The Wind which Khali sells by looking dazed and wobbling around a bit. I think that's the right idea for his selling, but the execution of it wasn't very good. Jeff shows good fire attempting the comeback after this, but Khali eventually gets himself together and clobbers Jeff over the head and knocks him to the outside. Jeff is counted out. Khali mostly looks bad here, with the odd decent moment. *1/4 The Great Khali vs. Kane - Wrestlemania 04/01/07 They get a 6 minute match at Mania, and this just crap. I'm not sure if we're supposed to be rooting for Kane or not. He's getting beaten badly with some very boring offense from Khali, who spends a good minute or so giving Kane a seated neck massage, which Kane barely bothers to sell. Kane then leaves the ring and pulls out a giant J Hook and chain, presumably to hit Khali with (again, are we supposed to be rooting for him here?) but is too incompetent to do it and gets knocked down. Kane gets up and bodyslams Khali to a big pop, JR screams shades of WM3! That might have been a good moment if it'd been built to in the slightest way. Khali eventually just chops Kane's head off and gets the win by standing on his chest. DUD The Great Khali vs. Shawn Michaels - Raw 05/07/07 We start this match with Shawn immediately jumping Khali as he's stepping over the ropes into the ring, just unloading on him with punches while Khali can't move (not that he ever moves much anyway). Khali sells being taken aback. For some reason Shawn stops walloping him to walk off and pander the crowd, only to turn around to Khali booting him in the head. Could have thought of smarter way to get Khali out of that situation, just made Shawn look stupid. Shawn is working really hard to make this match work, which is all about how desperate Shawn is to get another title shot against Cena. But it's not very good. Khali is being really slow and Shawn's way of working the match just exposes that more because everything he does is so fast and over the top. They fight to the outside and Khali hits Shawn with a big powerbomb through the announce table. Match is stopped by the referee. Eh. This looked like it might be good at first, the crowd being loud helps, but it wasn't smartly worked. *1/4 I'll be doing the series with Cena next time.

I can't see which 5 wrestlers arguably had a better year in 2015 than Sasha Banks. Totally knocked it out of the park literally every time she was put in a position to have a great match and had surely the most historically important run of the decade? There's no Ronda Rousey in WWE without Bayley vs. Sasha at Brooklyn.

Meiko's a little bit more than just a work candidate. Even if it's a way smaller pond than it was in previous eras, she's still possibly the biggest draw in Joshi from the last 20 years. Stardom would always do a big number whenever they brought Meiko in for a big show, I just looked at Cagematch and she's wrestled in Europe 31 times the last two years, historically remarkable for a Joshi worker to build up a foreign fanbase like she has. Plus she's trained quite a lot of wrestlers now.

This is the best match I've seen from either two this year. Takumi focuses all her offence on Nanae's neck in the first 10 minutes where she surprisingly dominates the match. Much stronger psychology than I'm used to in Joshi matches. Nanae gets a good fightback just before the halfway point. There is an unfortunate moment in the match where Nanae gets Takumi in the corner, stops selling anything and does her usual posing and chops like she's beating up some rookie. Didn't fit the context at all. But it's over within 30 seconds so only a minor complaint. Still I much prefered Takumi's performance here, she gets the level of selling just right pretty much the whole match. The best moment in the match has to be where Nanae's putting up this stubborn fightback with a strike exchange that isn't really working but she's so proud to just stay down, so Takumi absolutely clobbers her with a Misawa-style elbow. Oh my God. Takumi then hits Nanae with a running three (the finishing move Chigusa Nagayo passed onto her) where Nanae brutally lands on her already hurt neck, and she wins the title. ****1/4 MOTYC for Joshi.

Dave Meltzer is gonna get hassled for ages for reporting Vince never wants Luke Harper on TV again literally the day before he returned in a main-event angle. Becky vs. Sasha turned into a great brawl after an awkward first few minutes. Loved Becky chasing Sasha through the concession stands shooting mustard at her, and the crowd was so into it! Really looking forward to their next match (assume it's Hell In A Cell).

Interesting you said this as Meltzer reported in the Observer today that Bayley's promo was "the old bullet points style and going for it" rather than scripted word-for-word like usual.

I watched the Sasha promo. It's a good microcosm for why I cannot get into WWE nowadays. They had months to write a compelling angle for her coming back, and we get the same stale promo in the same cadence as every other WWE heel with the weird slow-talking, worked-shoot stylings and nonsensical character motivations. Didn't advance any storyline and everyone knows she didn't believe anything she said she's just reciting from a script anyway, so even the 'character' stuff doesn't achieve anything. Urgh.

Kofi is over as a babyface and has never been a good heel though. How about, it was Big E who did it acting alone. This creates tension in the New Day as we learn Big E has been secretly using 'off the books' methods to protect Kofi's spot, but his intentions were good, maybe?

Don't think this was a big deal. Triple H's biggest leap forward was when he got paired with Stephanie. She was a total heat magnet, and eventually it rubbed off onto him.

Nah Big Show beat Brock once at Survivor Series 2002, Brock won all the other matches. Kurt also beat Brock at Summerslam 2003 but lost at Wrestlemania and the iron match match on Smackdown afterwards. But if you want to be really technical, Kurt has two pinfall wins over Brock actually because he once beat him in Inoki's promotion. So there you go

I'm pretty sure it's just Seth and Goldberg who've pinned Brock more than once.

Man. Imagine if Trish was given the chance to have matches like this in 2003-06 rather than have her second match to go longer than 10 minutes be in 2019 (and the other one was against Lita).

It's alarming to me how totally dead this crowd is to anything that isn't someone hitting their finisher.

I need to know how that video has hacked YouTube's algorithm. I even had a friend who doesn't even watch wrestling say they saw that video.

You people are so silly. This match is great and one of my favourites from this era of the WWF. I can see it doesn't get as over with the live crowd as it did with me at home in 2019, but whatever I was loving it. I guess the style was not what they were expecting. It's slow to start and Austin fought from underneath way more than usual, but that's fine, he's up against The Undertaker who "outweights him about 70 pounds" according to JR and is way taller. I popped for Austin doing that drop toehold on Taker. He's trying to avoid getting into a strikefest with Taker if he can help it and take away that leverage advantage. See how for example when they get into an arm-tanking battle Austin seems to hurt Taker a little bit with it, whereas Taker is able to knock Austin to the ground almost with each yank. The size/strength disparity is constantly apparent. Taker really controls the vast majority of the match after that opening segment. Austin only really gets significant offence in after Taker makes an error. For example he goes for Old School too early and Austin hurls him back into the ring like a slam. That moment near the beginning of the match ends up being significant as the finish is Taker going for that move again, like it's a pride thing that he can't let Austin get away with not taking it, but in his hubris he just repeats the mistake and this time Austin manages to hit him on the way down and then takes him out with a Stunner. Boom. Austin's comebacks in this are so good in that they barely ever work. This isn't the usual WWF match where they just go back and forth exchanging who's on offence. Austin's been taking such a beating that even when he manages to hit Taker back he's not capable of capitalising and turning the tide, he's just weathering the storm. See for example when he's in the corner and boots Taker in the head to counter his charging attack, but then just falls back into the corner unable to get up in the meanwhile Taker gathers himself and goes back on offence again. Lots of little moments like this. Austin truly had to fight for and really EARNED that comeback by the end. I was cheering "COME ON AUSTIN!" by the final minutes as I watched him finally managing to get together a string of moves. And yeah that leg drop off the top turnrope to the announce table was awesome. Surprised that spot isn't more famous, how many times have we seen a guy Taker's size pull off something like that? ****1/4

What a lovely match this is. The pace and intensity at which the run the ropes is astounding to me, it just looks so forceful even if this isn't meant to be a particularly violent match it still makes more modern stuff look soft in comparison. Also what a spectacular bump out of the ring this is. ****1/4

Of course Bryan's WWE run is part of his GWE case. He's had some of his greatest ever matches there and became the most universally over babyface since Steve Austin with not even half the booking advantages. It's only fair to rank Bryan higher for succeeding/adapting where Hero stagnated.

WWE doesn't cover the expenses either, wrestlers just pay for their travel costs out of their salaries. It's pretty standard in TV for the company to cover the travel of their stars. Bayley was interviewed on Fox recently and the host was astonished to find out that she has to cover her own travel between shows

Other than "they came after" what evidence is there that Richards/Rollins are offshoots of Bryan like the Pillars were of Jumbo? Rollins always talks about Shawn Michaels being his influence, never heard him ever mention Bryan like that. Plus at least the Pillars are a logical sequel to Jumbo, whereas Bryan's "successors" really don't have the same style as his at all. Richards and Rollins are all about athleticism and workrate above everything else, something that was already becoming a trend independently of anything Bryan was doing. Bryan's not even a particularly great athlete, his greatness comes from his psychology and phenomenal ability to structure matches, something Richards/Rollins are both useless at. When have you ever seen them do a 4 minute waistlock segment like Bryan did at Mania this year and get super heat out of it?

Anyway I voted Flair > Hart. I love Bret but come on. Flair was great in Jim Crockett, Mid-South, WCW, WWF, Japan etc... over at least a decade (probably closer to 15 years of being one of the best wrestlers in the world). Bret was great for about 5 years in WWF and didn't really succeed anywhere else. Kawada > Okada. Both have a lot of great matches but Kawada's are better, but he also has so much more personality and I feel adds more to making them memorable on a personal level. Kobashi > Misawa. This is extremely close, maybe should have voted 'draw'. I went for Kobashi because he just has that extra bit of adaptability and is more charismatic/likeable to me personally. Danielson > Tsuruta. They've both had amazing, lengthy careers and succeeded in a variety of roles. Bryan wins this though for being a lot more consistent, and he was also legitimately great imo already by 2001. Jumbo has a lot of years early in his career where although he's being very strongly pushed, he's clearly not at the level of his top opponents. Taue > Tanahashi. Tanahashi has a big flaw to me in that his offence just isn't good at all, and that's especially a problem when you're the Ace of a "strong style" promotion where everyone else looks like they're murdering each other. I have to fault him for it even I think he's at least very good at everything else.Taue doesn't have a big flaw like that (his offence is awesome) so he wins this.

To give you a rounded view of Bryan: 1. Bryan Danielson vs. Low Ki - RoH Round Robin Challenge 03/30/02. The Bryan vs. Low Ki series was very influential on the burgeoning US indie scene. Everyone wanted to wrestle like this. 2. Bryan Danielson vs. KENTA - RoH Glory By Honor 06/09/06. For some of Bryan's best technical limbwork. 3. Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness - RoH Unified 08/12/06. Another very influential feud, but here in a bloody fight for supremacy with his top rival. 4. Bryan Danielson vs. Homicide - RoH Final Battle 12/23/06. Bryan in the NWA heel champ role. 5. Bryan Danielson vs. Takeshi Morishima - RoH Manhattan Mayhem 08/25/07. Babyface Underdog Bryan vs. Monster Heel. 6. Daniel Bryan vs. Sheamus - WWE Extreme Rules 04/29/12. 2/3 Falls match, Bryan's first classic in WWE I think. 7. Daniel Bryan vs. John Cena - WWE Summerslam 08/18/13. One of the best babyface challenges The Ace matches ever, I'd say the best WWE has ever pulled off this format. Worth watching their promo segment on Miz TV on the Raw before to really get it. 8. Daniel Bryan vs. Triple H - WWE Wrestlemania 04/06/14. Daniel Bryan managed to have an epic match with Triple H in 2014 that was actually a legit epic classic and felt shorter than what it was. 9. Daniel Bryan vs. Roman Reigns - WWE Fastlane 02/22/15. Excellent technical wrestler vs. powerhouse match. 10. Daniel Bryan vs. Kofi Kingston - WWE Wrestlemania 04/07/19. This year Bryan has finally got to work as a main event heel in WWE, and what do you know he's amazing at that too.

My favourite thing is he thought this clip was real.

Yeah was just gonna say that about the lack of blood. It spoils immersion a bit that these huge strong guys are brawling all over the place and not a drop of blood is spilt. Still, this was a great match. My favourite moments were Braun getting speared into the announce table, which doesn't break, so Bobby just tips the table on top of him. Then soon after Bobby runs at the barricade and attempts to jump and leap off it, but loses his footing so Braun catches him and throws him across the floor. I'm not sure if these were planned or fantastic improvisations from botches, but either way they felt an authentic part of the chaos. Braun breaking through that wall to emerge victorious was badass. ****

So I got round to seeing that guy and making some subtitles for 1993-94 Joshi. I've uploaded the result here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5K9W_SQvmc 00:00 - Pre-Match interviews for Aja Kong & Bull Nakano vs. Eagle Sawai & Harley Saito - Dreamslam 1 04/02/93 01:55 - Pre-Match interviews for Akira Hokuto vs. Shinobu Kandori - Dreamslam 1 03:19 - Akira Hokuto's in-match promo - Dreamslam 1 03:36 - Akira Hokuto's post-match promo & interview -Dreamslam 1 05:37 - Pre-Match interviews for Aja Kong vs. Yumiko Hotta - 01/24/94 07:26 - Post-Match promos between Aja Kong & Akira Hokuto - 01/24/94 09:43 - Post-Match promo & interview from Bull Nakano from Bull Nakano vs. Shinobu Kandori - LLPW 07/14/94 11:55 - Pre-Match Interviews for Akira Hokuto & Shinobu Kandori vs. Aja Kong & Bull Nakano - Queendom 03/27/94 13:37 - Post-Match promos from Akira Hokuto & Shinobu Kandori vs. Aja Kong & Bull Nakano - Queendom 03/27/94

Taker also spiked Aiden English at least year's Saudi show in the same way. Seems a big coincidence for the same fuck-up to happen twice with the same wrestler but be the other guy's fault.