EricR

I've been thinking Dylan's avatar was a Matt Besser UCB character this whole time.

So if you have a big moveset it can all look like crap? Also, how big a moveset did guys have in 1990-92 WWF, really? I don't think comparing Tenta vs. Henry limited movesets makes sense in regards to Henry. One of Henry's coolest assets is that he has a bunch of different offense that he breaks out depending on what kind of match he's working. His heel offense is very different from his face offense, and he's had numerous "target body part" matches where depending on the body part his offense changes as well. He has work the back offense, work the leg offense, and he has offense he only uses when the match is "Henry's own leg getting worked over". So yes, one of Henry's strongest suits is that he uses his offense well, but even more impressive that he has a bunch of different stuff specifically catered to match type.

I watched a match from '95 last year where Sting gives 80% of a match to The Gambler while peppering in comebacks.

I love this as fantasy booking until I remember how wretched Dan Severn was. I thought Severn was awesome.

Didn't the whole year go by before Goldberg's injury?

Wrap it up gang. Troy ain't biting.

Yea i agree. To say a show was better than a promotion that revolutionized wrestling and helped turn WWE into the most profitable wrestling promotion in the US is a little far fetched. ECW had a lot of faults but it was also very ground breaking. To reach national exposure from where they started says a whole lot as to how popular ECW became. WWECW had good wrestling on it from time to time but also had very shitty wrestling. A better comparison would be WCW Worldwide to WWECW or something of that nature. I remember a lot of people shitting on WWECW at the time and now everyone loves it, gotta love the internet. People were shitting on it when it first started and was finding its footing, but if there were people still shitting on it in 2009 when you had long matches every week from Finlay, Evan Bourne, Mark Henry, Christian, Jack Swagger, etc. then those people are just going to be the types who shit on most kinds of good wrestling.

What I wouldn't give to have been born 20 years earlier. Of course I'd be dead by now... Last time my friends and I went to Mexico to see wrestling there were ashtrays at the ends of the aisles, and that was in 2004. Also love the beer girls walking around with buckets of Corona.

Virus is a great answer. I wrote up some November CMLL stuff at Segunda Caida and a lot of what I said about Virus holds true as far as being the best answer for this thread: Virus/Misterioso Jr./Sangre Azteca vs. Stuka Jr./Triton/Sagrado Misterioso is completely tassel free, which quite frankly is bullshit. I watched this match with my buddy Charlie who has an occasional drunk interest in wrestling, but basically zero lucha knowledge. After 4 seconds he was already on the Virus bandwagon. This guy has really put together quite a spectacular career and it feels like he still doesn't get talked about enough. The first time I remember seeing him was a singles match vs. Oriental, and that was when I was in high school (Jesus, I graduated in 1998. Was it really that long ago!?) and I was hooked from that match. I can't think of too many workers who have been as consistently excellent from my late teens into my early 30s as Virus has. This match itself wasn't spectacular in any way, but just had enough little Virus moments that made me realize how lucky we are to have so much of his career exist on tape. Too many luchadors go unrealized by the masses until it's too late in their careers. How many amazing 80s Toro Bill matches must have happened? How many bloody Puebla brawls was that guy a part of? And all we have to prove his existence are maybe 10 trios matches while he was in his late 40s. But Virus has spent almost his whole career working on television, and that's a special thing.

Sid is actually a really great comparison to Brody.

Didn't HHH potato the shit out of JR in that match? Wow that is about as sad, suck up carny as you can get right there. I'm pretty sure that Meltzer said that JR's eye was so bad after HHH punched him right in it that JR still, years later, can't drive at night. Driving at night seems like a pretty important thing for a wrestler. So HHH permanently maims him, and all JR can do years later is talk about how well good ol' H took care of good ol' JR. So pathetic.

Back in 2007 they sure did. NOBODY was touting Khali in 2007. What matches do you remember them touting? The handicap squashes against the Highlanders? If anything, 2007 Khali was used as a measuring stick for other wrestlers. When Cena had two good matches with him, that was what finally convinced me that Cena was a really good worker. When Khali had a good match with Michaels on Raw, and was clearly the reason why the match was good, that was what opened my eyes to how horrible Michaels had gotten. Add in some pointless Mysterio matches and I'm not seeing where anybody was ever saying that Khali was good, or getting good. He was involved with good matches (my favorite being the Cena/Umaga/Khali match) but nobody was touting him.

I am dying to know the other 19.

Looking at my old VHS collection, I wonder: "why the hell do I have so many Best Of This Guy tapes and so few full shows?". It's easy to say that in retrospect, but I think a bunch of us have the same thing. Now that you can get DVDs for $1-2 of full shows it makes sense, but when traders were selling tapes for $10-$20 "Best ofs" seemed like more bang for the buck. And now I have a closet with Sabu comps and Ultimo Dragon comps and a Best of Blitzkrieg and so on.

Abby's running elbow drop always looked awesome and he knew how to build to it, his throat thrusts always looked brutal (both direct to esophagus and side of neck variation), his big bumps always looked spectacular and was able to get up and fall in really nasty ways when it was required (got thrown around by suplexes in amazing ways, but not often enough that it ceased looking impressive), even his retard faces were better.

Good Lord I just could not stop reading this. Who the fuck is this guy? My favorite was him calling a bad Davey Richards match "spot-filled nonsense", and two sentences later praising a Davey Richards match for having "a ton of spots". "Marx was in the midst of a great title reign that was putting PCW on the wrestling map." Shane Marx is like the fakest indy goober name ever. It's like a name Chikara was going to give to a wink-wink kick pad-wearing "your name here" indy wrestler, but they felt the name Shane Marx would have been too "on the nose".

I've been watching this every weekend, and I also really dug this match. McGillicutty is pretty worthless and has a horrible look, but the SMS style seems to suit him better. He even busted out his dad's old rope flip bump and that set up to the above 619 was awesome.

Memphis for me as well. I have taken part in every one of the sets so far (currently 40+ matches into AWA). I just loved the vibe of Memphis and got into all the angles. All the extras really made me feel like I was a part of this weird, cool little community (also got that vibe during the Texas set, but preferred the wrestling on the Memphis set).

I am usually really bored by Ricky Steamboat. I don't like his offense, sometimes he sells as if he's taken tons of damage just a couple minutes into a match, and a couple of his signature spots/finishes are amongst my all time least favorite (mainly thinking of the "roll through opponents' crossbody for the pin" which rarely looks like he rolls through but most often looks like he takes the full crossbody, then just flips over onto his opponent).

I'm surprised people aren't giving Lawler credit for his Elimination Chamber 2011 match with Miz. I was there live and it was a great performance that the crowd was insanely into. People clearly wanted a title change and it was compelling enough that I legit thought we were seeing a title change. Even Meltzer thought they should have called an audible. Awesome match, my favorite live match of the last few years.

Vic is right about Christian's run being really good. I remember liking a TV cage match vs. Rhino a lot, and going into it I assumed it would be garbage.

I've heard this before as well, that Jerry Lynn is somehow underrated. While it's true that nobody talks about Lynn as any sort of super worker, that's because he isn't. At all. In any way. Underrated doesn't necessarily mean "good", although in Meltz's case he clearly means something excellent that doesn't get talked up enough. Something that's still "bad" can still be underrated, so maybe Lynn IS underrated, in that he's merely bad, not horrendous. But what do I know? Michael Young was voted "Most Underrated" in a recent Sports Illustrated players poll. Anybody who knows the tiniest fraction about saber metrics would likely name Young as one of the most OVER rated players of the last decade.