Frankensteiner

Curt Hennig Ted DiBiase Rick Rude Rude might have had the best peak but it was the shortest of the three. DiBiase was amazing in Mid-South and mostly good-sometimes great in the WWF. I thought Hennig was equally great everywhere, including the WWF. Jerry Lawler Ric Flair Terry Funk I actually think all of these guys are overrated to an extent. None of them would be in my top 20. Funk seems to me like a great character actor popping up in a bunch of different movies but never really able to carry one himself. Might feel different if we had some Amarillo footage. I’ve talked about Flair before. Lawler is great but I’m not as crazy about the Memphis style as others. Randy Savage Ricky Steamboat Tully Blanchard I think this was the toughest one to rank. Savage and Steamboat are both in my top 5. The thing is though I always consider Savage disproportionately high given his output (I mean if I did my top 10 or top 15, I think he might have the least amount of great matches on that list). Steamboat is awesome and I could easily see ranking him ahead of Savage tomorrow if I thought about it again. Blanchard was great too, and like Rude, may have the best peak out of the three but it was by far the shortest. Bret Hart Shawn Michaels Steve Austin Attitude-era style isn’t one of my favorites. Of course Austin was really good before switching over to that style but he doesn’t have the same number of great matches as the other two.

I wasn't paying too much attention at the time, but didn't the Miz and Cole feuds kind of kill off Lawler to some extent? Miz is sort of a joke in hindsight and I remember the Cole feud dragging on too long. Could be part of the reason why the crowd wasn't really behind Lawler.

I'd be interested in opinions on the white meat babyface triple threat match: Tito Santana v Rick Martel v Ricky Steamboat ...now that more people have had a chance to watch some of Martel's best matches on the AWA set (though I think there's still some decent leftovers probably worth seeing not on the set). I could go back and forth on ranking these guys daily. The main thing that's happened is that I no longer consider Flair/Steamboat to be some sort of untouchable classic series and would probably take both Santana/Valentine and Martel/Bockwinkel over it.

Great freaking match. Han really is the man. I know most people seem to be obsessed with matwork these days, and Han obviously brings that to the table, but I’m probably more impressed with his storytelling than anything else. He’s so good at knowing how much to give to his opponents, when to give it to them, when and how long to control the match himself, and how to put himself in control. On top of all that, the matches usually have terrific finishes. I mean, I was going crazy at the end here which is something I hardly ever do for any other matches. When shoot-style is done right, such as can be seen in this match, it really is the ultimate form of Japanese pro wrestling.

Volk Han vs. Andrei Kopylov - RINGS, 10/22/94 This was really good. It's a little weird seeing someone not tap immediately to a cross arm breaker but if you can get past that, this match was terrific. I actually liked this more than their match from 7/92 which I believe made the 1992 yearbook. This was a little shorter and faster paced, had better submissions and counters, and a sweet surprise finish. Very satisfying shoot-style match.

I just think a lot of his stuff looks awkward or light or both. I just watched the tag match from Raw and I don't think anyone would consider his execution outstanding. Cena going for Punk's running knee and bulldog looked terrible. Granted they're not his moves but a bulldog is pretty basic. I'm gonna try to watch some more Cena matches in the near future to see if this is something I'm wrong about.

I think Christian's 2009-2011 face run is one of the best babyface runs in company history. He was the best worker in the company. Cena's best doesn't really come close.

Not even Rey or Eddie? I thought those two would've been stone cold locks for most peoples' top 100 (but maybe you're not most people!). Those two would almost certainly be in my top 20, with Eddie likely top 10. They might make my top 100 or even top 50. Then again they might be top 150. I just haven't thought it about it too much. I have a pretty well established top 20 or so but after that it's messy. I probably have them bunched around guys like Pillman, Owen, and Jannetty.

I guess I just want things to look realistic and competitive. I don't mean realistic in a shoot-style sort of way and I don't need the guys working stiff or anything like that. But when Cena has so much daylight in putting on the hold it takes me out of the match. Like another spot I hate is Flair's Frankenstein walk sell of a sunset flip. It looks terrible and phony. Sorry. I realize my description of "looking good" sounds vague. I should think about it more.

Right. Any move can be put over regardless of execution. I agree. That's not really pertinent to the discussion. When the move is executed as poorly as Cena's STF it helps to kills my sense of disbelief in watching the match. We can go through Shawn Michaels' entire post-comeback moveset. I'd imagine a lot of the moves look terrible but I'd bet they're all over with the crowd. But I doubt anyone would make that a defense for Michaels.

Would you say the same about Rock and his terrible sharpshooter? Ultimately, I don't think it matters. If the move looks shitty, don't do it.

So if we just look at the WWE years, how many guys would rank ahead of Cena? I came up with the following: Christian Matt Hardy Rey Mysterio Eddie Guerrero CM Punk Daniel Bryan It's a pretty weak field and I'm not sure any of those guys would make my top 100. There's also a number of guys where I haven't really seen enough of their work (Finlay, Regal, etc.) to comment.

He would not be anywhere close to my top 100. If I were to break it down, I’m sure he does certain things well. But he’s never connected with me at all. I guess maybe part of that is his weak character, but it also feels like his in-ring style doesn’t fit the persona. Moreover, his style also seems undefined. Like he’ll do flying leg drops but then bust out power moves. I’m not really sure what he’s trying to portray. Mechanically, he moves sort of awkwardly and his execution can be really loose and sloppy at times. Also, his expressiveness and facial reactions seem really forced to me. Like he’s always playing a character instead of being himself.

Holy shit. That is awesome.

Decided to re-watch this yesterday and ended up liking it quite a bit. Thought it held up better than I expected. The arm work not going anywhere didn’t bother me at all because it felt like Shawn had tried everything in his arsenal to get a submission out of it. He wasn’t really in a position to go after the arm again until gaining control for the last 5 minutes of the match. At that point you could say Bret had recovered with his arm (the arm work occurred roughly 30 min earlier) and it made more sense for Shawn to go with his familiar/signature offense with the clock winding down. I liked that they wrestled this to correspond to the build-up, with Bret pounding down and punishing Shawn and Michaels using his speed and quickness to gain the advantage (Vince and King also set this out on commentary to start the match). The surprise was that Michaels was good enough technically to hang with, and even get the better of, a “skilled technician” like Hart on the mat. Thought it was a decent story and a nice way to put over Shawn as more than just a high flyer for his run as champ. As far as the work, for the most part they always had something interesting going on, and they would intersperse enough highspots to keep things exciting. I loved the piledriver spot, for example. Overall, this was a really good, and possibly even great match. Don’t really feel like I’ll want to watch it again for the foreseeable future but I would say that about any match going an hour.

Been watching the 1994 season of Saturday Night and noticed the promo videos for the Bash had shots of Hogan walking down the ramp and posing in the ring with the WWF Title from the May '93 Tokyo Dome show. I'd imagine it had to be the only time the WWF Title was on WCW TV.

So I watched this for the first time the other day and well… I don’t really know what to say. I’m at a point now where I really want someone to give me a different perspective on Flair because what I see most of the time is a guy running around like a headless chicken. He works hard, has good execution, and if you’re into his shit, I can see where people would consider his matches exciting. Once you get passed those elements there’s really not much there. It’s a shame too because I genuinely liked a lot of his matches, but at this point, outside of a couple here and there, I think they’re mostly trash. Even these Steamboat matches. I still like them to a certain extent, but they’re really just well executed back and forth matches without much of a story. In the end they feel sort of empty to me. Also, I guess I'm in agreement with some others in thinking Center Stage is a terrible place to hold a match like this.

So I've always thought 90s WWF workrate style was an extension of the AWA style. Would people agree with that now that they've watched more of this stuff? I think it's pretty easy to see influences in matches like Martel/Bockwinkel. Then you had the likes of Hennig, Michaels, and Jannetty who worked the AWA early in their careers and would carry things over to the WWF. And I recall Hart mentioning in his book something to the effect of the AWA having the best and most credible wrestlers out of all the territories.

On the Atlantis/Villano III title match, I always thought the whole point was that it was a different Villano (I guess Villano V?) under the mask upon returning to the ring from the back. That's obviously just a guess though.

The wrong guy went heel. I thought it was pretty dumb for them to turn their most over/most cheered guy on the roster. Plus I think Punk works better as a babyface.

I think part of the problem is how they book title feuds. The title become secondary to banal things such as whether or not Punk really is straight edge or AJ choosing her love interest. I understand wanting to add some sort of angle to title matches once in a while but I don't think they build enough feuds with the title as the primary goal.

How many guys in current WWE have finishers setup from a fireman's carry position? Cena, Punk, Lesnar, Barrett, Sheamus (sort of), Darren Young? Anyone else? Seems excessive.

That is pretty accurate and something I was thinking myself. It's closer to Warrior/Hogan, as even after Warrior had won the belt, Hogan was still positioned as the bigger star and his angles were promoted as more important. I don't think Punk's had any Amanda Ultimate Warrior moments though. The problem with the entire scenario is that Cena is not anywhere close to Hogan.

Either that or start knocking other guys doing the same thing. Watch Flair's babyface run in '89 where he just shrugs off all the damage done to him when it's time to go to the finish.