Tim Cooke

I'm not including anything from the 70's or 80 pre-Hogan era because I have a lot of rewatching to do before I'm comfortable putting those on any type of list. * 6/26/84 Sgt. Slaughter vs. Iron Sheik (MSG) Boot Camp blow off match with a ton of heat, lots of big bumping from both guys, and the best WWF brawling until Austin/Rock. * Rick Rude vs. Ultimate Warrior (SummerSlam '89) This is probably a candidate for a rewatch but when DVDVR started the 80's project with the WWF, this stuck out as something special, especially in the Hogan era. At one time, I think this was thought of as arguably Rude's best WWF match. * Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart (Survivor Series '96) * Steve Austin vs. Bret Hart (Wrestle Mania 13) Both of these are very good, with the WrestleMania match holding up a lot better than I remembered when I last saw it as part of the 1997 Yearbook. Survivor Series is much more of a technical match but also doesn't have the heat or storyline that the WrestleMania match has. Almost a toss up of which one would make my final list. * Steve Austin vs. Dude Love (Over the Edge '98) This was not something I thought much for many years but seeing it play out in the context of the 1998 yearbook, this is well booked, has some good work from both guys, with Austin almost being as crazy of a bumper as Foley, and good heat considering that Foley really didn't get over once and for all until early 1999. * Steve Austin vs. Rock (WrestleMania 15) * Steve Austin vs. Rock (Backlash '99) These two matches, along with their 11/16/98 RAW match encapsulate the good of the Attitude Era. These matches are Memphis on steroids: the punches aren't as good but you have terrific heat, both guys working extremely hard with some bumps that neither should be doing, especially Austin, and the gimmicked nearfalls to go along with the regular move nearfalls. * Steve Austin vs. Rock (WrestleMania 17) I'm in the minority in liking this less than the 1999 matches but it is still excellent in its own right. Hindsight is always 20/20 but I wonder if this would be even better today without the Austin heel turn. The build to the match was Austin needed this win more than anything and they could have achieved that equally as well by just upping the stakes with a few more nearfalls and kick out's. * Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Kurt Angle (Summerslam '02) This is one of Rey's best matches in the WWE and my favorite Kurt Angle match ever, by a wide margin. This match could have been worked in a lot of different time periods: 1993 AAA, 1999 CMLL Lightning Match, 1997 WCW, etc. * Rey Misterio Jr. vs. Jamie Noble (5/1/04 - Velocity) Best 10 minute WWE match ever? Noble's best singles match. He never got the chance to work a memorable singles match in WCW (ala the Helms/Chavo PPV matches) and his ROH stuff was all disappointing. * Eddy Guerrero vs. John Bradhsaw Layfield (Judgement Day '04) I've written a lot about this in the past and when the WWE Network launched last year, I revisited this and it had lost nothing. Top 5 WWE match of all time candidate. * CM Punk vs. John Cena (Money in the Bank 2011) Maybe the best WWE match of the 2010-present. This reinvigorated my wrestling watching a little and completely helped bring back my brother. * Brock Lesnar vs. John Cena (Backlash 2012) Is this the best mixed match in US history? It certainly has the same vibe of the great Maeda vs. Neilsen 1986 mixed match in New Japan. Not the same dynamic since Cena has never been positioned as a shooter like Maeda, but similiar in style, especially for their time periods and promotions. * CM Punk vs. Brock Lesnar (Summerslam 2013) * Daniel Bryan vs. John Cena (Summerslam 2013) Two excellent matches that are able to do different things in an era of wrestling where everything is the same (WWE style or Indy style - move after move after move after move until we finally get over). * Daniel Bryan vs. HHH (WrestleMania 30) The best HHH match ever and blows his heralded 2000-2002 work out of the water. Unselfish performance would automatically make this better than the early 2000's matches, but add in some legitimately good work with bumps, moves, and heat and you have a classic modern day moment for the WWE, regardless of their failure to capitalize on it to the fullest.

Well it's not lucha since it is taking place in New Japan but it's worth watching. Hamada's UWF wasn't really real lucha but it was well worth seeing from 90-93.

This is neat. Always interesting to get the view of the native fan, especially in Japan.

As I was watching the Wrestle Kingdom 9 show on New Japan World Sunday morning, there were times where I thought that maybe modern wrestling has passed me by. After watching the PPV, I came away thinking it was a very enjoyable 4 hour show but nothing kicked me in the gut and made me go, “This is something I can’t get anywhere else – especially from a historical perspective.” And I want to be clear that I’m not singling out New Japan here because I thought the Ishii/Homna G-1 match was a great match and would rate it in my top 5 of 2014. I thought Suzuki vs. Styles was great and felt Nakamura was as consistent of a performer around in 2014, especially after Daniel Bryan went down post-WM. It’s not even a Japanese thing because I very much enjoyed the CIMA vs. Super Shisa “maestro” matches (for lack of a better term) from Dragon Gate in Dec ’13 and Feb ’14. But reading the majority of thoughts on the show, I’m lost when it comes to ***** for both Nakamura/Ibushi and Tanahashi/Okada. Even knocking them both down a ¼* or so, they come out as front runners for best 1-2 combination for semi-main and main event on a show – all time. That boggles my mind. This is truly not Kobashi/Hansen followed by Misawa/Kawada at Budokan in July 1993 nor even something at a lower level like the Fantastics vs. Malenko/Kikuchi followed by Jumbo vs. Misawa at Budokan in September 1990. That’s when I really thought about what I value when watching and rating wrestling matches. I put a premium on match heat. It’s funny looking back because in 2002 when I was watching the current product at the time as well as sifting through the best stuff from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s that I hadn’t seen yet, the 2002 matches came off as flat and lacking heat, especially compared to the 80’s and 90’s matches. An example would be the Nishimura vs. Takayama match from the August 2002 G-1 Climax show. In 2002, I thought the match was technically very good, maybe even great, but thought it was clearly below the best 200 matches I had seen from the 80’s and 90’s because of the heat. Re-watching it a month ago, the match had more heat than 99% of what I have watched in 2014. And here comes the major contradiction: if something is taped up close at ringside (ala Black Terry Jr.) and is taking place in front of only 25-30 people but has that intimate feel and the work is good, I can and do rate those matches as well or better than the contemporary matches that have more heat. But ask me to watch a heatless IWRG match that is shot with three professional camera’s with a producer and even if the work is good, I’m probably going to like it less. Ditto something from a rinky dink IWA-MS show in front of 30 people. The same can be said for something like the Hechicero vs. Navarro Christmas Day match from this year. It was a pretty small crowd (though to be fair they were vocal). If that aired as a professional three camera shoot, I almost certainly would have liked it less. The work would have been the same in both instances but the end result to me would have differed. [bTW, the match is good and worth watching but isn’t the blow away encounter that Navarro and Hechicero are capable of having against each other.] There are certainly exceptions and production probably deserves another thread of its own. It was an interesting experiment watching the 1999 yearbook at the same time as I was going back through 2014 matches to make my top 5 list. 1999 isn’t particularly well thought of. WCW was mostly a mess, WWF was entrenched in the Attitude era, which has a negative stigma for a lot of people. In Japan, All Japan was beyond stale and dying while Inoki was in the midst of inserting his fingerprints of legitimacy in the working style. Michinoku Pro had lost KDX….blah blah blah. But going back and watching 1999, there are so many instances where the heat for matches far exceeds 99% of the wrestling of today. A wide spectrum of promotions and situations had different matches producing great heat: - 3/15 Rey Jr. vs. Kidman (Nitro) o WCW had their best month of the year between from after Uncensored to the end of April from an in-ring standpoint. But it’s evident that the crowds were getting restless and all the damage done over the past year and a half was going to catch up with them. Cruiserweights were pushed to the back burner. Chavo vs. Kidman was the Superbrawl 1999 cruiserweight match. That is sad, especially with the diverse roster WCW employed. Rey lost his match, beat Nash on a fluke, and then lost to him, and Kidman was starting to get stale at the champion. Yet, on a Nitro in Cincinnati (I don’t remember if Cincy was a good WCW town or not for crowd reactions), they get the crowd right with them and have their best singles match against each other. - 3/28 and 4/25 Rock vs. Austin (WrestleMania and Backlash) o These two matches had more heat than anything non-Daniel Bryan in 2014. Granted, it is the Rock and Austin, but it also speaks to the overness of today’s wrestlers, specifically guys being heavily praised like Tanahashi, Okada, and even Nakamura. - 1/29 Hardy Boys vs. Serial Thrillaz (OMEGA) o So the Rock and Austin don’t count because they are once in a lifetime talent. So how do you explain a match inside a gymnasium with what looked to be no more than 300 people (maybe less) having more sustained heat than anything on the New Japan show. This isn’t to say that the New Japan didn’t have a few moments of good heat, but nothing sustained and certainly not at a ratio fans in North Carolina compared to 35,000+ in the Tokyo Dome. - 1/22 Misawa vs. Kawada (All Japan) o A flawed, flawed match that in the context of 1999 had very good heat and would have blown away almost everything on the Tokyo Dome card. And this is *maybe* their seventh best match, at best in terms of heat and work. - 10/11 Hashimoto vs. Ogawa (New Japan) o Another horribly flawed, horribly booked match that has people literally jumping out of their seats at the Tokyo Dome for the big spots. This isn’t even looking at Mexico because the audio mixes for CMLL and AAA, even in 1999 was still absolutely shitty. Three of those matches wouldn’t make my top 10 matches of the year for 1999 while the other three would. But all six created a different atmosphere, which in turn produced a different emotional response from the crowd that was levels above what I have seen over the last couple of years. New Japan’s show was seemingly mic’ed well and as I said before, there were certainly moments (the pop Homna got for the win in the six man tag, parts of the Nakamura/Ibushi match, and even the crowbar match between Ishii and Goto had its moments of reactions) but nothing that was sustainable that made this show an all-time classic. Beyond heat, I obviously look at what stylistically appeals to me. UWF/RINGS mat work, southern style tags, well worked hierarchal Japanese matches (ala early to mid 90’s All Japan classics), old school US mat work (working in and out of variations of side headlocks and legscissors), and lucha that combines mat work, stunning arm drags, and great dives. So after all of that rambling, what does everyone else look for?

That's not outrageous. Agreed. Striker saying that if MMA had a HOF, Sakuraba and Suzuki should be the first two in was absurd. I thought Ross did a really good job with the commentary getting Sakuraba over to the US audience. Meltzer prepared excellent notes for him. Kept talking about Sakuraba taking on guys 30-60 pounds heavier than him and beating a lot of them.

Suzuki was the problem with that match. Wasn't terrible by any means but Sakuraba was clearly the better guy. More mat work and more selling from Suzuki early on would have helped.

Meltzer has never been a traditional reporter. The Observer has always been 'wrestling news filtered through his eyes.' Would a journalist use the term 'Anabolic Warrior' in every other report he/she wrote in the late 80's/early 90's that talked about Ultimate Warrior? I agree with Childs about the journalistic ethics but Dave was also never offered the gig, so this is a theoretical discussion. This isn't Nestor Aparcio, a 'reporter' from an almost now defunct radio station in Baltimore claiming to be a journalist while wearing his Ravens jersey in the press box at Ravens games.

Third match is just as good as the first two. Easily the best three matches I had never seen that I've watched in 2014. Going to do a more thought out review of all three over the Christmas break.

This was another instance of something being much better than it had any right to be. Rodney doesn't know how to take the bump with his arm hammerlocked behind his back but if you can get by that, it is a fun, angle advancing TV match

It's either this or the Test vs. Joey Abs match from RAW that is the surprise of the year for being way more fun than it had any right to be.

Got a ton of WOS in recently. Have watched the first two Young David vs. Jim Breaks matches from their trilogy the last two days and Breaks will have a shot at top 10 in my GOAT list just based on those two matches (and I haven't even got to the 12 round match yet). Not to mention the 5/81 STeve Grey and 4/84 Danny Boy Collins classics. I had seen a decent amount of Breaks prior but this stuff is catapulting him. Steve Grey will also surely make my list, at least in the top 30, probably in the top 13-23.

Is the MX vs Fantastics 1988 NWA feud a mid card feud or does it classify as main event or upper mid card?

We had to do a decent amount of skipping and liberal fast forwarding. Don't skip the 11/16 Austin vs Rock RAW match or the December 21 and 28 Flair interviews though

Hall was injured legit and Russo asked Flair to substitute since he was still working house shows. Flair said no, they went with Jarrett since those two were heading towards a feud and it ended up working out okay.

Chromecast or any 'AirPlay' system where you are streaming from one source to another (computer to Apple TV, computer to Chromecast) does require a standard Internet connection but your results are usually going to vary depending on the age and specs of the device you are streaming from. I have a 3rd gen Apple TV, Chromecast, Roku stick, Amazon Fire TV, and a Fire stick coming later this week. In the case of the WWE network, the dedicated app works terrifically on Apple and Amazon (haven't tested much with Roku streaming stick). Yet, when I try. To AirPlay video from a 2014 MacBook air to the Apple TV, there are often issues because of the outdated tech specs in the Apple TV. Casting a tab in Chrome from the MacBook air gives pretty flawless results 98% of the time. It also works fine with a 2012 MacBook Air and 2012 iMac. I recently moved and Comcast gave me a new wireless router/modem hybrid. Comcast has most of their wireless router settings poorly optimized to give you incentive to upgrade to faster speeds. Once I hooked up the Apple Airport Express via Ethernet cable, I was able to essentially triple the speed Comcast was providing on their device without upgrading. Paul and I were able to stream the 12/7 NJ finals in perfect HD directly to Chromecast. I would recommend taking a look at your wireless router settings. Of course, the other alternative is connecting a laptop directly to the TV with an hdmi cable and you take our the middle man in the wireless router.

There's a "cast screen" option on all Android phones these days. Ah, good to know. Don't have any android devices but that makes a good case for having one eventually

Dan - you can't cast tabs in chrome to the chromecast from mobile devices. Only from laptops/desktops. Download Chrome on your regular computer, get the cast extension, and you will be all set

I think JVK's post above should be split off because it is an interesting topic that should have its own discussion - your pro wrestling journey. I could care less about 2002-2010 WWE yet ROH from Dec '02-July '06 will always be special since I was able to witness a lot of it live and in real time even if a lot of it contains aspects of wrestling that annoy me today. Japan in the early 2000's was a dark spot for a long time because I was still catching up on all the 80's and 90's classics at the time. Revisiting 2002-2004 in 2014 has given me a greater understanding and appreciation for things I may have written off in real time. It'so also why I can't and will not buy Meltzer's argument about not being able to analyze or criticise a match that happened 5, 10, or 50 years ago.

Excellent match that is easily the career performance from Bryan Adams and possibly Horace Hogan as well. They had a lot of things working against them before the match even takes place. Standard tag matches in a cage are not easy to pull off. Both of these teams were fighting out of the losers bracket in quite possibly the only double elimination tournament in wrestling history (or at least in a major promotion) and while Benoit and Malenko were Horsemen and over a little bit at this point, the NWO B-Squad wasn't over at all. Make this the Thunder main event of a show that had already featured Goldberg, Flair, and Hogan and you can imagine the crowd not being into this. Those obstacles ended up not mattering. Benoit is a sensitive subject these days (and rightfully so) but this is a perfect example of why he was so great from 1994-1999. He single handily makes Bryan Adams look world class, works most of the match as the face in peril, and gets the crowd invested in his comebacks (along with Dean Malenko doing a nice rallying job on the apron). WCW even makes a good booking decision, sending Vincent out to interfere (yes, the cage *should* keep that from happening, but you can't win them all). Vincent pulls Benoit out leaving Malenko being double teamed until Benoit scales the cage to the top, Malenko gets the brief advantage, and Benoit dives off the top of the cage for the first time in WCW. It was very special at the time since Thunder was becoming a C show very quickly and it was a pretty big moment to get to the finals of the tournament after working their way through the losers bracket. Big pop for the finish. So Benoit and Malenko take the momentum and defeat Windham and Hennig to win the WCW Tag Team Titles at Superbrawl. But this is 1999 WCW so they lose 3 days later. (Russo would go on to have Benoit dive off a cage twice and once off a ladder in a three month period later in the year.)

For early RINGS, Kopylov was the best non-Han foreigner at putting together matches. Zouev, Zaza, and Orlov may have had flashier high spots but they couldn't work a full match - well Zouev eventually became okay but it took three or four years of regular work.

If I remember correctly, Akino was a rookie here, having only wrestled a hand full of matches. You really wouldn’t know that from watching this, with Yoshida doing a masterful job guiding Akino through the hybrid shoot style mixed with a few pro style high spots. One of the more enjoyable Joshi matches I have watched recently and I’m looking forward to more Arison as the year continues.

Something to say about January 1999. There may not have been a ***** classic but I can’t recall a month with this much diversity. New Japan Tokyo Dome spectacle All Japan bomb throwing tag and singles match All Japan undercard match at Budokan that is legitimately good Michinoku Pro works a southern style tag and a lucharesu trios match Toryumon debuts with a too long, but still pretty amusing trios elimination match WWF brings the goods with the Austin/McMahon feud WCW dives head first into the shallow end of the pool Arison brings a unique take on women’s wrestling RINGS continues to move toward all shoots but still puts out the best worked shoot stuff (Tamura vs. Kohsaka from 1/23 which is a definite addendum candidate) OMEGA produces a true MOTYC (rare in the US in 1999, even rarer on the US Indies) BattlArts has an excellent tag (which will be topped in November if I remember correctly) The diversity is phenomenal.

The write up Loss gave this made me have some unreal expectations in my head and that's totally on me. I thought this was very good, maybe even great and certainly the best undercard AJPW match since at least 1995, if not earlier. Ogawa is such a smart worker. Unless he trained Marifuji, I would want him to instruct at my money mark wrestling school every day. Kakihara teasing a dive with a big grin was fantastic, the transition spot was well done, and Ogawa was getting a lot of mileage out of the roll up near falls 3 years before we would make it a staple of his NOAH GHC run.

For Misawa/Kawada, this is just another match. For almost anyone else, this would be the peak of their career. I think that speaks volumes about what these guys were able to do years after this feud was dead in the water.