A thread in which Dylan compares various wrestlers to HHH

[flyonthewall2983]

They had their funny moments. It wasn't consistent, but some of it was comedy gold in my opinion. The one with Shawn giving random people backstage his finish had me belly-laughing.

[goodhelmet]

I thought 1997 DX was just what that company needed at the time. Shawn was soooo much better as unlikable asshole and HHH was already in prick mode that it just fit. It wasn't because they were actually funny but because that is exactly how you would expect those two to act and treat people.

 

In 2006 or whatever, just embarassing.

[EricR]

When I was 16 I thought DX was funny. When I was 26 I did not.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I liked "old man DX" if just for the fact that they goofed on each other the whole time. To me it was like when me and my old running buddies get together for a Furthur show. I'm a sucker for "the old bad guy gang gets back together to get even with a powerful bad guy and then fuck up the young punks."

[Jingus]

The 2006 version was inconsistent. Sometimes it could get painfully bad, when Triple H would make homophobic jokes at Vince's expense for twenty minutes straight. But sometimes it was actually cute, like when Shawn has a meltdown about his ungrateful children on Christmas who ignore the expensive new toys he just bought and prefer to play with the box they came in.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

Kevin Nash

 

This is a pick em. Nash is funnier, though his humor is overrated. Neither guy is a particularly good worker, though Nash was a better foil for Shawn and Bret than some may remember. I honestly have no dog in this fight.

All the other stuff is at least arguable, but come on. HHH may have no grasp of his limitations, but he's a fundamentally competent worker. About the nicest thing you can say about Nash from an in-ring standpoint is that he was carryable.

 

Yeah, Dylan's pattern seems to be that he would rather abstain from making an obvious claim like "HHH is better than Nash" than admitting the obvious. Because of that, this gives me every reason to believe he is vastly overstating how much better all the other workers are compared to HHH. I agree with the general view that HHH is the WWF's answer to Jeff Jarrett in TNA (though HHH is easily better than Jarrett), but he's a fundamentally competent worker if nothing else.

 

I recently watched Nash's match against the British Bulldog (Oct. 1995), and I walked away from the match thinking Nash was a far worse worker in his peak than the Ultimate Warrior. Nash botched a sharpshooter of all moves, and it's hilarious to hear the announcers cover up for Nash by saying that Bulldog doesn't have the technical prowess of Bret Hart (despite Bulldog's training in Riley's gym, which is neither here nor there for storyline purposes).

 

EDIT: I lost my edits, so I'll summarize with some remarks.

 

HHH is certainly an insecure prick, and I find it to be hilarious that Damien Sandow, one of the few guys who is actually over, has his push explained in terms of having been embarrassed by a D-Generation X ass-kicking. Maybe the WWE knows that Sandow's association with D-X will make him seem more important, but I'm cynical on that. . .it was just another case of x getting over and HHH wanting to be associated with x such that HHH > x.

 

Nord was good. I was once castigated for suggesting he was underrated.

 

I wouldn't put Stro in the top 10 of NC's indy scene, much less compared to HHH. Stro could have been a fun lower card comedy character of that clusterfuck known as WCW 2000.

 

I disagree on the Bulldog being better than HHH. Bulldog certainly have had more potential, but there is a reason he's not in the WON HOF.

 

I disagree with a lot of Waco's aesthetical arguments (some of his arguments are formalistic, but most of his arguments are aesthetical in the most subjective sense possible, i.e. "I just don't like him"), but his reasoning gives me a vision for how much more fun pro-wrestling could be if individuality was encouraged and if guys weren't buried for getting over.

 

On HHH being the cause of the WWE's decline in 2002, I don't buy into that as the primary reason. Steve Austin's heel turn certainly did a number, as Austin was that generation's Bruno Sammartino. WCW v. WWE feud was the WWE's credit card to keep up their standard of living until the inevitable collapse happened. HHH's burying of talent certainly has been the cause of fan apathy and the lack of consumer confidence that, in so many ways, has killed WWE B-show PPV buys since everyone but the Undertaker and HBK seem less important than HHH.

[Dylan Waco]

I took a playful approach to this thread because it was more fun. Frankly I wouldn't want to talk about HHH for this long without that sort of approach. If that approach makes you doubt my sincerity or the way I evaluate wrestlers I don't know what to tell you.

 

Having said that - and I'm not a Nash fan - Nash "is worse than the Ultimate Warrior" strikes me as a back handed way of saying "Nash is one of the worst wrestlers ever" and well...I don't see it. I mean he's not good. But there are a lot of guys I would rate before him and if failure to apply sharpshooter the right way is the turning point that tosses him to the bottom of the barrell, The Rock, Benoit and Vader say hello from the depths of wrestling suck.

 

One of the reasons I think HHH is so poor is that he has a skillset that he all too often tries to exceed because of delusions of grandeur. There is no question HHH has a bigger skill set than Nash. But his total aversion to grasping his limitations is hard for me to ignore. Nash is not a good worker, but I've never got the feeling watching a Nash match that he was trying to work well above his pay grade. The average HHH match is probably better than the average Nash match, but I'd probably rather watch a best of Nash comp and HHH has a higher volume of matches that left me thinking he was embarassing himself than Nash does

[NintendoLogic]

The interesting thing about HHH is that he clearly has some grasp of his limitations, as evidenced by his preference for gimmick matches. On the other hand, his matches tend to be incredibly bloated. I'd be hard-pressed to think of a single major HHH match that wouldn't benefit from being trimmed by at least ten minutes. Maybe he thinks that long matches come with the territory of cosplaying as touring NWA champ. Regardless, it's an interesting blind spot.

[cm funk]

Nash had very long legs and bad knees.....I don't remember Bret's sharpshooter looking particularly great on him either

[Victator]

(though HHH is easily better than Jarrett),

Not really, Jarrett does HHH's act better than HHH.

[EricR]

I was scrolling through this page to type almost the exact same thing as Vic.

[anarchistxx]

Dylan in the Comments thread:

 

Which twenty hours of wrestling matches and promos would one put on an HHH comp if they were trying to build a rep for him as an all time great?

I haven't seen it all in years. Bear in mind that a compilation of everything he ever did could probably take up 5,000 hours, so it isn't a stretch to say you could get twenty hours of good stuff from that, especially if you like WWE style matches/angles around the turn of the last century.

 

Match wise, you could go:

 

vs Rock (Summerslam 98)

vs Cactus Jack (Rumble, No Way Out)

vs Benoit (Raw, No Mercy)

vs Benoit/HBJK (Wrestlemania 20)

vs Austin (No Way Out 01)

vs Taka Michinoku

vs HBK (Raw)

vs Jericho (Fully Loaded)

vs Rock (Iron Man Match)

w/Austin vs Benoit/Jericho

 

Many WWE nuts reckon these matches are all time classics, not that I'd agree personally. I'm sure there are a few TV gems over the years as well, I seem to remember a few fun Evolution tags among other things. He must have had a decent match or two with Flair, maybe with Orton or Cena or Jeff Hardy although I've not seen anything really from 2005-2011 except for his Wrestlemania matches. The Cena match at Wrestlemania 2006 had a fantastic crowd and atmosphere which makes it at least of interest, even for those who detested the way the match was worked. Did the DX comeback result in anything decent?

 

Add in a few promos and angles and you could easily get twenty hours of stuff that was decent enough, Trips has worked with a lot of talented people over the years, enough to drag something enjoyable out of his fairly serviceable talents.

[Dylan Waco]

I actually think one of HHH's biggest weaknesses is the fact that he really doesn't have a ton of memorable/quality tv matches for a guy that was wrestling week-to-week for as long as he was. It's not that he has none. It's that he has remarkably few, far fewer than any contemporary I can think of offhand.

[Jimmy Redman]

That is quite a good point.

 

One TV match of his I absolutely love is the first Shelton one, Raw 29/3/04. It was a great performance by everyone involved - Hunter, Shelton, JR, King - and was pretty much the main reason why everyone waited around for years for Shelton Benjamin to become somebody. Apart from his vertical leap I guess. But it was a great TV match and a good example of Hunter working on a "smaller" scale, for want of a better word, than his usual main event epic ambitions.

 

To also add to the above list:

 

vs Cena (Wrestlemania 22)

vs Batista Hell in a Cell (Vengeance 2005)

vs Orton (No Mercy 2007)

vs Shawn Michaels (Summerslam 2002) (Dont know how that is received here but I love it)

 

The best match from the DX comebacks was probably vs Rated RKO at NYR. Despite the finish falling apart due to Hunter's Quad it was a really good tag.

[goodhelmet]

I actually think one of HHH's biggest weaknesses is the fact that he really doesn't have a ton of memorable/quality tv matches for a guy that was wrestling week-to-week for as long as he was. It's not that he has none. It's that he has remarkably few, far fewer than any contemporary I can think of offhand.

The only person who came to mind for too many TV matches with little or no quality was Kane. Not saying Kane doesn't have decent TV matches. Saying the ratio isn't good. All the weird creepy Kane fans can let this go or put it in the Kane thread.

[Jimmy Redman]

Well throw in the caveat that he has the least amount for someone touted as a great worker after working on TV as long as he has.

[Loss]

I actually think one of HHH's biggest weaknesses is the fact that he really doesn't have a ton of memorable/quality tv matches for a guy that was wrestling week-to-week for as long as he was. It's not that he has none. It's that he has remarkably few, far fewer than any contemporary I can think of offhand.

The only person who came to mind for too many TV matches with little or no quality was Kane. Not saying Kane doesn't have decent TV matches. Saying the ratio isn't good. All the weird creepy Kane fans can let this go or put it in the Kane thread.

 

It is totally unfair that you can get away with saying things like "weird creepy Kane fans" when everyone thinks I'm breathing fire when I am anything less than a perfect gentleman.

 

"Oh, that Will, so funny."

 

"Jeez, why is Loss getting so bent out of shape?"

[Dylan Waco]

To be fair, he's from Texas

[soup23]

I like most of the matches listed so far except the Taka match from Raw. That match is just not very good and was greatly benefitted from timeline in which it aired where you usually didn't see 1. very long matches on TV to begin with and 2. a lower level opponent against a top guy. I think most weeks of WCW tv in 1990 would have 2 matches better than that one.

[Matt D]

I actually think one of HHH's biggest weaknesses is the fact that he really doesn't have a ton of memorable/quality tv matches for a guy that was wrestling week-to-week for as long as he was. It's not that he has none. It's that he has remarkably few, far fewer than any contemporary I can think of offhand.

The only person who came to mind for too many TV matches with little or no quality was Kane. Not saying Kane doesn't have decent TV matches. Saying the ratio isn't good. All the weird creepy Kane fans can let this go or put it in the Kane thread.

 

It is totally unfair that you can get away with saying things like "weird creepy Kane fans" when everyone thinks I'm breathing fire when I am anything less than a perfect gentleman.

 

"Oh, that Will, so funny."

 

"Jeez, why is Loss getting so bent out of shape?"

 

The difference is that he said "Not saying Kane doesn't have decent TV matches. Saying the ratio isn't good."

 

That's a much more measured, reasonable statement. And it's true too.

[Loss]

When have I ever said Kane had zero good matches? You seem to enjoy assigning me positions that I never take - and specifically arguing points that I make when others make them too, I'm guessing simply because I am the one making them - which is honestly the primary reason I hate this board right now.

[Matt D]

Sorry, I wasn't implying that you said that.

 

Just that the way he put it there was reasonable enough that in that instance that I wouldn't throw him under the bus for it but I might if he had put it differently.

[Loss]

Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps the difference is that I usually am a little bent out of shape when I give off that appearance.

[Matt D]

I actually like 1992 Ottman a lot. From an execution standpoint is there anything HHH has ever done better than his big splash.

[JerryvonKramer]

I like the Foley matches. And the matches with Rock (98) and Austin (01).