tim

I actually just posted on another forum that in even a moderately less imperfect world there's no reason Dustin shouldn't be in the top 10 US workers of all time discussion. He's so naturally god damn good at wrestling it's unreal. The timing, the selling and bumping, maximizing his offense, milking his segments for all they're worth, he's just brilliant. And he's a guy who outside of early WCW never got "workrate" booking. Well except maybe now. In ECW he was having awesome matches with Ezekiele Jackson and rookie Sheamus and doing great stuff in every one of them. If, say, 5 of his "down" years were spent toward the top of the card having long, prominent matches I don't much doubt he'd be in the GOAT talk.

I can't really recall any Reigns singles match but the Bryan match, and indeed one match with Daniel Bryan is an exceptionally poor sample set, but if Reigns is the guy in the Shield with the biggest flaws (which I'm not willing to accept on its face), he's also the guy with the most striking positives. His offense is great and he's quickly becoming a master at theatrical delivery and owning his character. Just little things like how leaped through the air theatrically to cut off Goldust's tag to Cody last night is the sign of an exceptional performer, not to mention his trash talk, buckets of charisma, roaring through monster shoulder blocks, etc. I like them all but Reigns is my clear number one right now. Reigns > Rollins > Ambrose for me.

Haha, great post and am looking forward to this thread taking off. I live about a 5 minute bus ride from Philly, the state of independent wrestling today compared to years ago is like a personal taunt to me.

Rewatched the Shield/Rhodes match from last night and dear lord is it a great match. I may be overrating these Rhodes/Shield tags but I think they're both in my top 10 matches of the year right now honestly. What WWE tag matches have been better?

These guys can do no wrong, another fantastic match. Awesome ending too. Reigns is definitely my #1 ranking Shield member.

"como capitan" (as captain) it seems to be on the 80s set (im sure i've spelled that wrong). and yeah they announce it last. i dont know any spanish but with the french i know i can make out some very rudimentary commentary on the set.

That Ishikawa/Murakami match will likely stay in my top 20. I'd be proud to be the high voter on it.

About 40 minutes in, obviously intriguing topic and great show so far. Funny enough a couple days ago I was on the bus and started thinking about what my top 30 would look like. I put pen and paper on it for the first time since my Smarkschoice vote back in 2006 when I was a 16 year old lurker (I don't remember what my list was but I know I wouldn't stand by it) and here's what I came up with: 1. Negro Casas 2. Yoshiaki Fujiwara 3. Jerry Lawler 4. El Hijo del Santo 5. Toshiaki Kawada 6. Mitsuharu Misawa 7. El Satanico 8. El Dandy 9. Genichiro Tenryu 10. Stan Hansen 11. Rey Mysterio 12. Shinya Hashimoto 13. Yuki Ishikawa 14. Ric Flair 15. Blue Panther 16. Eddie Guerrero 17. Terry Funk 18. Bill Dundee 19. William Regal 20. Finlay 21. Sangre Chicana 22. Kenta Kobashi 23. Bryan Danielson 24. Jun Akiyama 25. Pirata Morgan 26. Negro Navarro 27. Black Terry 28. Daisuke Ikeda 29. Dick Murdoch 30. Akira Taue

Loved that ending and the six man was fun while it lasted. I felt like this storyline had been languishing for the last few weeks but now I'm back into it.

He openly 'defied orders' and then KO'd Orton. Then stood on the turnbuckle and shouted "no more." Seems like a huge marker that says turning point in the angle to me. Yeah he hit Bryan first but I took it as him just coming to his senses and saying 'enough is enough' in the moment during the count. I won't disagree that the match shouldn't have happened. But I think for the match it was, the place it was in in the angle, how it was booked going in and the prospects there were coming out of it, this might've been the best finish they could do.

I mean, I can get hating the fact that a PPV main event had a non-finish on principle, or hating non finishes as a rule, but would a by the numbers screwy ending have been more interesting? Would Orton getting the pin fall post punch have been a more satisfying ending than what happened? That was a huge turning point in the Show angle which has been one of the most prominent angles on TV and a moment they have been building to for months and the crowd went nuts for it. To me that was a bigger moment than any likely match ending would have been. I feel like I got more of "my money's worth" for that than the standard Orton screwy victory I was expecting.

Really, I thought that was just fine. It was a big payoff to the Show angle which has been a big deal and the crowd went nuts for it. Russo-ish booking like that PPV after PPV is a problem but in an era with largely clean, conventional finishes something like this once every long while I think is fine. It was obvious SOMETHING screwy was gonna end this match and this at least makes me interested to see RAW tomorrow. I actually liked it though I anticipate myself being in the distinct minority.

Man, I sort of liked that ending actually. It was kind of old school in a way, the dreaded and highly illegal low blow being enough to keep a man down.

Man I love Ryback. "I don't care" followed by that hurl into the ringpost. I wasn't really paying a lot of attention to this match. It was kind of a decent match to halfway pay attention to, but was surely way over bloated and not much to watch as a match.

Well that was a lot better than I thought it would be. Some big bombs in the first half, the weird backward crawl and real fun homestretch.

I haven't enjoyed watching a match live that much in, uh ... I'm drawing a blank on that one. When was the last WWE tag match that good. BONUS: Arn and Finlay sighting.

Holy SHIT. Perfect.

oh man that promo segment got me so hyped for this. mini-hard times and new golddust paint.

Divas match was perfectly fine. Even a couple cool things happened. Oh man, Rhodes/Shield coming up.

I actually expected that match to be better, still the ending ruled. CESARO FACE PUSH IMMINENT.

Fun opener, del Rio ladder bump was really cool and the ending was just great. Is del Rio having a top 10 year yet?

im ready for a titus vs. roman whc feud next year

that vote was a travesty

I started watching around June 99. One of these days I half want to rewatch all of WWE programming of 98 and 99, or as long as I can stand it just to see how it is from a modern dispassionate perspective. I did rewatch all the RAWs from the beginning of 1998 to WM14 a couple years ago and did think it was very well booked and really had a feeling of legitimate excitement.

yeah, that actually boosts my interest in this show like 500%