Matt D

The damage would be of Wrestlemania as a brand for future years. But they're threatening to damage that with this year's card anyway, so best to get the most out of it.

I actually think Shawn developed a very strong understanding of wrestling over the years. It's just that when he was eminently selfish about it. The Wrestlemania XI match, for instance, is something that only someone who really understood wrestling could manage, but it was the absolute worst match for him to work for the sake of his opponent and the company and its goals, self-serving, resentful, and ultimately a devastating piece of sabotage against a guy who was his friend, and one that probably, ultimately, served him well for his own babyface turn later in the year. Pre-comeback Shawn was the Lex Luthor of wrestling: brilliant, arrogant, capable, daring, but unable to see goodness in the heart of his fellow man, because he lacked it himself. And I appreciate that enough, combined with his timing and selling and general physical skills, for him to show up somewhere in the back half of my list.

That people can write thousands of words from a dozen directions and someone still can't begin to understand how anyone could possibly feel different than himself about a subject?

My reasoning for the discrepancy: The shift of a subsection's preferences from old definitions of work to character and storytelling has been a gradual thing over a number of years and those years included the voting period for the DVDVR sets?

It's the lack of understanding that always kills me.

Alright, alright. I had an annoyingly crappy hair match from 2012 to write up for Friday and then tournament lucha next week, so I'll just scrap that and travel back over the ground you tread six years ago to hotshot Black Terry onto my list instead.

Despite the injuries, this somehow feels like it was the year to have a Wrestlemania VII sort of card with 15 matches with programs and insert interviews and an events center hosted by Renee and one of the matches being BAMF vs Matadors/Torito. The sheer novelty of everything being made into a big deal and everyone having a program would have made the sum feel far greater than the parts, and they need the sum to come together this year, because they just don't have the parts.

When there's a question of how devoted any of us are in this project, "spending money on Black Terry matches" is just about where I draw the line. I think he's probably not going to make my list due to lack of expertise, even though I think he should probably be there. That said, if anyone was going to make the list almost solely on reviews of people I trust, it'd be him.

The Black History Month stuff is pretty disappointing compared to last year.

I like Snuka vs Michaels at MSG in 92.

They should just have Teddy Long come out and make a smackdown tag match. The crowd would go nuts for him.

They seriously need to go ahead and tag Taker and Brock if they're going that route. That makes the matches so much better.

I'm about halfway through this one. It's been fun so far, but I think Breen might have gone a little far in his Old People Rant. Zbyszko as the only person making saves against the NWO was obviously a mistake but he connected to the crowd. I'd argue that he connected more easily and more naturally than the lucha six-eight mans that got so much praise on the show. Some of that was WCW's follow through, but on the idea that their follow through was going to be equally bad for everything, the Larry Legend stuff had an easier hurdle to leap over. Even the Dusty turn could have been hugely enjoyable since it was twenty years since he'd been heel and the promos alone could have been amazing but it was all lost in the mess that was WCW. I think blatant, across the board, ageism isn't the way to look back at this stuff.

I haven't heard that one yet, but he at least talks about it in his book. It's interesting. I personally punish Dynamite Kid for his last WWF run, The footage explosion of the last fifteen years first showed us how prevalent the Heel-in-Peril narrative was in the 80s WWF tag scene, and then, as we saw more and more matches, how that narrative might have been a little over-exaggerated. It's least of all so with the late-run Bulldogs though. Dynamite was tough enough, skilled enough, and stubborn enough to eat up far more of a match than was productive. I really think that if he was four inches taller, he might have been one of the best heels of the decade. That's not how he was cast however. The irony is this: Rockers Michaels gets rewarded because he wasn't tough enough or established enough to eat matches alive like Dynamite did when I think we have every indication that he would have if he could have. It's a lot like how 90s Hansen is rewarded, in part, for no longer being physically capable of repressing his opponents. Of course, all of that played into what made both Dynamite and Michaels great, too, They cared so severely. We've talked about this before. Michaels ego drove his ambition, and that's what led to his frustration when things went poorly in matches in 96 and the sort of layered, cinematic storytelling that he attempted in the 00s, which often missed the mark because of his lack of range as an dramatic actor, even if he was hugely skilled as a seller and bumper, but that no one else was really even attempting. He's on my list, rewarded for the ambition, and for the physical skills that do back it up, and far lower than other wrestlers, for how that ambition was quite often detrimental to matches. The art of wrestling is a hugely complex, fascinating thing. That's the fun of all of this and the joy of it.

Phew, that's a close one then. I was THIS close to using BIGLAV myself. Bullet dodged.

Eadie, who will be thirty spots higher than Michaels on my list.

The hype of him going in was that he was probably a moron for it and that Joe had made the better call because he was almost immediately featured in a better light in TNA. Obviously he overcame that hype. I think there was an entirely different level of anticipation after the pipe-bomb, and even more so immediately after Summerslam.

Mike Jackson: 3 Reviews here: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/27673-jvks-territorial-explorations/?view=findpost&p=5612513 He was the MVP and maybe the "best jobber ever."

He doesn't get credit for the 88 Demolition match. That was good despite him. He just wasn't as nearly as tough as Dynamite when it came to asserting himself in 88.

I don't think it's crazy to think that Vince cares about things more than money after all that we've seen him do over the years? To me, it's more dangerous to attribute rational decision-making to him than it is to almost any other public figure I can think of.

http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/14115-cm-punk-greatest-promo-ever/ Revisit that. I think you can get a sense of why people feel how they do. I'm not even saying I feel that way, but in that moment, it seemed not just possible, but probable. And the night after? From our good friend John:

What damns him is that for one moment in time, everyone thought that another boom was possible, that the glass ceiling would finally shatter, that he was too hot, too savvy, too big to fail, that he could be the one to actually beat the machine, that the moment had finally come, and then it was over and he was just another guy again and the stars were out of alignment for another three years. For a moment there, he looked like the savior, and the machine ground him up and spit him out just like anyone else. Is that a fair notion to have? Of course not. Should he be seen as a guy who hugely overachieved instead? Who did change things and open doors? Probably. But I think people can't help themselves.

I'm not sure I buy this, but I do think even if it's the genesis of it, they're buying into their own BS at this point.

I'm not sure I'm going to have time to write up the Puma/Virus/Tiger trios match from last Friday, but if I were to do so, it'd be almost solely to highlight Puma. Between the new gear and his mannerisms when he's on the apron through almost the entirety of the match, he feels a step above and beyond suddenly. You get the sense that he's trying to be more, whether or not CMLL is on board with the plan.

I should make another poll.