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I don't know why anyone would want to listen to old, jaded, bored, hateful JR talk about anything at this stage in his career. Guy can't even hide is disdain for 80% of what he calls on live TV every week.

I would argue phase 5 isn't real, he was just getting old and his body couldn't keep up. Flair doing Flair things always worked, be it the Nitro era, late stage Russo era, the post Russo era, pre Evolution period, Evolution, post Evolution, even TNA.

JR was real bad about doing this on air for a while with AEW. Like any criticism of him online he'd do the "some people will say X" about that subject for the next 2 months on every show. But really he was doing that at least as far back as the Attitude Era when it came to Foley bumps or ladder match bumps.

Probably in 2016 on a different board I listed 100 guys I thought were better than Flair, but now I'm finding it pretty hard to argue against him being a lock in the top 10. It's in large part due to seeing a lot more pre-Horsemen period footage, as by that time he had pretty much solidified himself in his routine and at times a cartoonish version of himself.

I will forever maintain that if Boss Man in the Attitude Era could have worked like he did in 1988-1993, he'd have been the greatest heel of all time

I think Shawn was a good actor by pro wrestler standards, which is lol in pretty much every other acting context you can imagine. But yes, the NXT crew are even worse at that's what much of their main storyline matches have depended on the past couple of years. Basically the HHH vs HBK formula mixed with mid period ROH. Sometimes you just wanna see guys try to kill each other, not announce they're going to kill someone and then have big close ups when their move did in fact not kill a guy. Adam Cole shocked face is such a cliche even the WWE/NXT twitter joked about it come War Games time.

Muscle gut Sano doing nothing but double stomps and spin kicks :blessed

I think that style of epic, creating history match was pretty firmly established in WWF land by WM 3 when there were 2 matches like that on the card that are still lionized to this day. It was usually kept to IC or World title matches and only on PPVs for years, but it was definitely a thing before Shawn's solo run even started. Examples to my mind: Savage/Steamboat WM3 Hogan/Andre WM3 Mega Powers vs Andre/DiBiase Summerslam 88 Hogan vs Savage WM 5 Warrior vs Rude Summerslam 89 Hogan vs Warrior WM 6 Savage vs Warrior WM 7 Warrior vs Rude Summerslam 90 Bret vs Perfect Summerslam 91 Bret vs Piper WM 8 Bret vs Bulldog Summerslam 92 Savage vs Warrior Summerslam 92 tried it again and failed miserably Rockers vs Orient Express Rumble 91 New Foundation vs Orient Express Rumble 92 I think you could probably make the argument for some Hart Foundation tags in their face run as well.

No, I'm talking about guys like Cody/Jericho/MJF saying their opponents are shitty mid carders no one likes and then going on to beat them or otherwise pointing out all of their flaws and doing nothing to build them up before they beat them or lose to them. You don't want MJF pointing out that Jericho is old, fat, and fucking sucks in the ring now before a match. You don't want Cody completely burying MJF/QT/Archer/Spears/Solow and then decisively beating them. I know he put MJF over in that feud but he buried the fuck out of him on promos and then MJF didn't do shit for a year, much like Jericho spending the entire feud with OC burying the shit out of him on promos and even if he put him over multiple times, OC did nothing for the next 5 months and gained nothing from it.

I'm definitely not saying Benoit wasn't a huge influence on the generation after him, I just think that style would have become the dominant style without Benoit ever getting into wrestling as it was already the dominant junior style for years and was already in the US indies and WCW before Benoit ever had exposure in the US. Benoit was following an already established trend.

I think most AEW promos have guys essentially burying their opponents because it's the kind of pseudo insider type promos that they know will always pop their audience. Cody has been really bad with that as well but you've seen it from Jericho/MJF in all of their feuds.

I guess my point was that by the time Benoit got into wrestling (because of Dynamite), the Dynamite/Tiger Mask matches were the template for junior style for years in Japan and even Stampede by that point. You can really even take it back to before Tiger Mask was even involved and blame it on Dynamite/Fujinami. I'm sure that style becomes dominant on the indies as time goes by even if Benoit never became a wrestler. Would you say it was Benoit that inspired Kid and Lynn to have those matches in Global in 1991, or Tiger Mask/Dynamite/Liger?

This is a weird statement to me considering Benoit was about as much of a carbon copy of Dynamite as possible, and the Dynamite/Tiger Mask series really directly influenced the entire junior style in the West and East for generations. Of course, Benoit was a huge influence on the generation after him, but Benoit was directly being a Dynamite clone his entire career. It's not like he took the style and innovated, brought something new, or otherwise elevated work or style in any notable way.

Good, they shouldn't call them that.

What HBK's second run lacked in athleticism (which wasn't much, tbh) it more than made up for it with a large injection of old school storytelling. Now, of course he went way, way, way over the top with the "storytelling" aspect at times, a bad trait he's most definitely still working through with NXT talent today. Personally I think his second run was better than the first run, as I really dislike almost everything about face HBK into DX era HBK outside of a couple of matches. However, Rockers and early heel HBK eras are routinely the best matches on the card and I'd say he probably has the WWF MOTY in 1992 (the UK match with Randy Savage doing fucking Tiger Mask spots), Bret/HBK at Survivor Series is top 5 that year as well. He's just so unlikable and annoying as a face in 1995-1997. It's all very inauthentic and Vince's commentary is so over the top even for him at how he puts Shawn over that for me it borders on unwatchable. He's a top 100 for sure, I don't know that I'd put him top 30. There's a real overhype (to me) within the industry when it comes to him that annoys me more than makes me want to agree with them.

Was Baba kind of forced to push Hiroshi Wajima as a big deal due to his sumo career, or did he actually have high hopes for him as a Tenryu tier guy? Because he's...pretty not good. At all. But there's a huge presentation around him and even his excursion matches.

I'll have to check out the RNR and Pillman/Z matches. Were they on Clash/PPV or regular TV? Shout out to Ron Simmons actually inventing the Stunner in the series with the Steiners.

Really liked what I've seen of his Mid South work, but man his WWF run and pre and post Doom singles runs in WCW leave a very, very poor impression. Even as part of Doom, I can't think of anything worthwhile besides the two matches with Horsemen units and the Steiner matches which aren't really anything great but are fun hosses throwing bombs matches like Steiners vs Fire and Ice a few years later.

Road Warriors vs Funks, 1986, AJPW. Hawk no sells Terry's piledriver. He then hits one on Terry. Terry then no sells it while also selling like Terry Funk while also selling like Terry Funk trying to no sell and it is the most delightful thing I've ever seen.

Has there ever been a more purely boring PPV than Battlebowl 1993? The only thing I can think of that could be duller is Survivor Series 1991.There are certainly worse PPVs in terms of awful wrestling or angles, but there can usually be some kind of entertainment value squeezed out of something like Uncensored 1995 or even Russo era WCW PPVs. The only thing remotely decent is Flair/Austin vs Scorp/Payne which is essentially a 15 minute handicap match of Flair/Austin as a bickering but pretty decent team in a handicap match with Scorp. I love the Lethal Lottery concept but man has it just never produced anything worth a shit.

The crash pad was unfortunate in how it came off, but that was the least of the issues involving Jericho in that match, which were pointed out in the moment as him being absolutely fucking terrible like he had completely forgotten how to wrestle in front of an audience or on TV despite being a 30 year vet. I can't imagine how much post production work he's forced upon the team in taped matches to make him not look like dogshit.

Moxley vs MJF and Moxley vs Kingston were PPV main events last year Surely Omega vs PAC/OC are on the level of those

KO isn't physically imposing and since when is he considered some tough guy shooter type?

I'm in the "Ultimo looked cool and did cool shit when I was a kid so I thought he was awesome" camp. Dude was so sloppy, matches never went anywhere. But he did do some cool movez and looked baller as hell with the J Crown.

Jericho came in as the final guy, the captain of his team, the guy with the true bloodfeud hatred, and he entered the ring with zero fire whatsoever as if it were a Dynamite match against Marko Stunt or something. The more I think about it the more I think that might have been the worst performance of Jericho's career. Just embarrassing.