Recent Major WWE Matches

[elliott]

Hey guys. Lonnnnng time lurker and formerly semi-frequent poster back in the day. I love this board. Its like the very best of A1, Smarkschoice, tOA, and dvdvr in one place without the bullshit. So many familiar names.

 

Anyway, I haven't watched a ton of wrestling lately (about to get back in the game I hope), but I've seen a lot of the major WWE matches from the last couple years. I was wondering how yall would rank them.

 

Brock vs Cena Extreme Rules

Brock vs Punk Summer Slam

Cena vs Bryan Summer Slam

Cena vs Punk Money in the Bank

Bryan vs Sheamus 2/3 falls extreme rules

Taker vs HBK first WrestelMania

Punk vs Bryan Over the Edge

Matt Hardy vs Edge the Cage match from I think 2005.

Ryback, Bryan, Kane vs Shield TLC debut match

Eddy vs JBL Judgment Day? The blood match obviously.

Eddy vs Brock Lesnar No Way Out title change

Rey vs Eddy Smackdown match

Cena vs Umaga Rumble

Hardys vs MnM rumble.

Big show vs Floyd Mayweather

 

Rank these matches (i'll do the same later). I saw the Cena vs Rey match but wasn't paying full attention so I wouldn't feel comfortable ranking it.

 

I haven't had cable for several years and my computer is in the shop. So I know there are lot of matches Dylan, Exposer, Matt, etc can tell me and as soon as I get my computer back I will watch those too. But i'd really like to know if I'm missing any epic PPV matches on the level of these particular ones. But I'm totally down to watch random Drew Mac/Chris Masters match.

 

Anyway, how do you guys rank these high end WWE matches from the last decade?

[RWOOD]

A few others off the top of my head, more recently...

 

Ryback/Bryan/Kane vs. Shield (TLC '12)

Punk vs. Rock (Rumble '13)

Rhodes vs. Rollins/Reigns (Hell in a Cell '13)

Punk/Bryan/Orton/Sheamus/Christian/RVD (Money in the Bank '13)

Ziggler vs. Del Rio (Over The Limit '13)

Cena vs. Punk (Raw 2/25/13)

 

To my credit, I guess, I haven't missed a WWE TV show since Wrestlemania XVIII so I might be a bit of an authority on this subject. I'll see if I can dig up a difinitve list over the holidays.

 

Cheers.

[elliott]

A few others off the top of my head, more recently...

 

Ryback/Bryan/Kane vs. Shield (TLC '12)

Punk vs. Rock (Rumble '13)

Rhodes vs. Rollins/Reigns (Hell in a Cell '13)

Punk/Bryan/Orton/Sheamus/Christian/RVD (Money in the Bank '13)

Ziggler vs. Del Rio (Over The Limit '13)

Cena vs. Punk (Raw 2/25/13)

 

To my credit, I guess, I haven't missed a WWE TV show since Wrestlemania XVIII so I might be a bit of an authority on this subject. I'll see if I can dig up a difinitve list over the holidays.

 

Cheers.

 

The Shield debut was really great. I'm not sure how to rank it against all those big time main event singles matches. It reminded me of a Choshu with anyone vs Tenryu or Hash with anyone multi man tag; high energy, with a chaotic feel to it that added to the match. I know it was highly praised by a lot of people on this board at the time and I know there have been a ton of really good Shield matches since then (I've only ever seen the vs Cena, ryback and Sheamus match which was really good too, and I would love to get a Shield comp) so I'm curious if that first one sticks out in people's minds still as a MOTYC or if it's been diluted somewhat due to all the good-great Shield matches. As a stand alone match having seen no other Shield matches, having seen none of them wrestle before, and only seeing the pre match promo's I was blown away.

 

Anyway, I look forward to the rest of your list!

[Jimmy Redman]

Man, I am all over this shit. If there's two things I love, it's modern WWE and making endless lists.

 

Of the matches in the OP here is the order in which I would rank them:

 

Cena vs Umaga, Royal Rumble 2007

Taker vs Shawn, Wrestlemania 25

Cena vs Brock, Extreme Rules 2012

Cena vs Punk, Money in the Bank 2011

 

Cena vs Bryan, Summerslam 2013

Eddie vs Brock, No Way Out 2004

Rey vs Eddie, Smackdown 23/6/05

Brock vs Punk, Summerslam 2013

 

Bryan vs Sheamus, Extreme Rules 2012

Eddie vs JBL, Judgment Day 2004

The Shield vs Bryan/Kane/Ryback, TLC 2012

Show vs Mayweather, Wrestlemania 24

Matt vs Edge, Unforgiven 2005

 

Punk vs Bryan, Over the Limit 2012

Hardyz vs MNM, Royal Rumble 2007

 

I put them in groups rather than a hard order, because I could probably rank them entirely differently tomorrow. But take the first three tiers to mean that they're probably in my Top 20, Top 50 and Top 100 respectively. Punk/Bryan and Hardyz/MNM I don't have on the same level, but they're still great and both still seem like Top 20 matches for their years.

 

For what it's worth, I'd have Rey/Cena somewhere in the second tier.

 

And on The Shield, one I idea I have which I want to find some time to do over the holidays is to go through every Shield match ever and rank them in order of their quality. All the Shield matches seem to run together, there's so many of them, so I kind of want to come up with a list that highlights the actual standout ones.

 

And there is a Shield comp out there that goes up until the first loss, and I totally recommend it.

[elliott]

Are there any other major matches I'm missing? I liked Sheamus vs Henry from Hell in a Cell but didn't think it's quite on this level. Same with the Henry/Cena match from earlier this year. Would the Battleground tag with the Rhodes family be out of place on a list like this?

[Exposer]

I got you. How far back are we talking here? Since the brand split? I'll give you some Drew Mac and Masters matches in this list too.

 

John Cena vs. Edge (TLC Match) - Unforgiven 2006

John Cena vs. Umaga - New Year's Revolution 2005 (This is a great match and gets forgotten due to the better Rumble match but it's still well worth checking out).

John Cena vs. HBK - Mania 23

John Cena vs. HBK - Raw in London (4/23?)

John Cena vs. Great Khali - Judgment Day 2007 (Incredible Cena carry job)

John Cena vs. Randy Orton - Summerslam 2007

HHH vs. Randy Orton (LMS) - No Mercy 2007

Christian vs. Jack Swagger - ECW (2/24/09)

Christian vs. Jack Swagger - Backlash 2009

Legacy vs. HHH, Batista, Shane McMahon - Backlash 2009

Chris Jericho vs. Rey Mysterio - Judgment Day 2009

Chris Jericho vs. Rey Mysterio - Extreme Rules 2009

Chris Jericho vs. Rey Mysterio - The Bash 2009

CM Punk vs. Rey Mysterio (SES vs. Hair) - Over the Limit 2010

SD Elimination Chamber - No Way Out 2009

CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy - The Bash 2009

CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy (TLC) - Summerslam 2009

CM Punk vs. Jeff Hardy (Cage) - SD after Summerslam 09

Christian vs. William Regal - Breaking Point 2009

Christian vs. William Regal - 8/25/09 (Not sure which show)

Christian vs. Drew McIntyre - 8/17/10

Chris Masters vs. Drew McIntyre - 8/26/10

William Regal vs. Daniel Bryan - (Raw 12/20/10)

Jerry Lawler vs. The Miz (TLC or Ladder?) - Raw 11/29/10

Jerry Lawler vs. The Miz - Elimination Chamber 2011

Rey Mysterio vs. CM Punk - SD 2/12/10

William Regal vs. Goldust - (Superstars? 8/26/10)

Chris Masters vs. Drew McIntyre - Superstars 5/12/11

Mark Henry vs. Randy Orton - Night of Champions 2011

William Regal vs. Dean Ambrose - FCW 10/13/11

Daniel Bryan vs. Mark Henry (Cage) - SD 11/29/11

William Regal vs. Kassius Ohno - NXT 3/21/13

 

There's great Chris Masters C-Show matches against Tyler Reks, maybe another Drew Mac match, Chavo Guerrero, Jack Swagger, among others. Drew Mac has great C-Show matches with Ted Dibiase Jr., John Morrison, Zack Ryder, a tag with Michael McGillicutty against maybe Air Boom (Evan Bourne/Kofi Kingston), and a few more great matches with Christian. Christian has great ECW matches with Tommy Dreamer, David Hart Smith, Paul Burchill, and Ezekiel Jackson. William Regal also has a great match with David Hart Smith from late 2010 on Superstars I believe. Daniel Bryan has a great series with Dolph Ziggler on PPV and TV from the Fall of 2010. I think they had a match at Bragging Rights 2010. The Goldust-Sheamus series from ECW in late summer of 09 is fantastic. There's been a tremendous amount of great matches this year on television including some awesome Goldust tags, and a large number of Antonio Cesaro matches including ones against Sami Zayn in a 2/3 falls on NXT, a great carry job against Kofi Kingston on Main Event in the spring, a great series against Sheamus in the summer, a great match against Daniel Bryan in the summer and so on and so forth. There's so much out there. Just type in Daniel Bryan, Chris Masters, Drew McIntyre, John Cena, Rey Mysterio, Christian, William Regal, Mark Henry, or Goldust from the last five years and you're likely to find something good to watch.

[Mando]

You've got to add John Cena vs. JBL - "I Quit" Match from Judgment Day 2005. A great, video game style brawl with blood, some great shots and bumps, and story. One of my favorites.

[elliott]

Keep 'em coming guys! Is there a consensus "these are the 5 best matches?" I'm thinking the earliest I wanna see would be post Eddys win vs Brock. I'm less open to Child Killer matches these days.

 

I don't mean to necessarily side track my own thread, but I'm also curious where some of these matches would rate with some of the New Generation/Attitude matches.

 

How do some of these compare to stuff like Mind Games, Bret vs Davey, HBK vs Nash, Austin vs Foley over the edge, the Austin/Bret matches, the Foley/HHH rumble, Austin vs Rock WM 17 etc.

 

I kind of want to see Matt do a side by side comparison of Mind Games vs Punk vs Cena or Hart/Austin vs Brock/Cena something like that.

 

Or see Dylan talk about Rey vs Eddy in comparison to something like, I dunno, Bret vs Owen from Mania.

 

I feel like a lot of these matches I've mentioned compare really favorably to some of our old favorites.

 

In a place where the posters are more reasonable than your average Internet wrestling fan I want to see how some of the current "classics" compare to our old WWE favorites.

[NintendoLogic]

These days, it seems that pimping New Generation/Attitude Era WWF is more contrarian than praising matches from the past decade of WWE.

[Jimmy Redman]

For what I'd say is the absolute best stuff, I'd say Cena/Umaga is easily #1.

 

Its not the most popular stuff here but I'd throw all of what I called the 'End of an Era' Mania matches - Shawn/Flair through the two Shawn/Takers and the two Hunter/Takers - at the top. I think of them as a whole because I love the story that runs through all of the matches from one year to the next, and I think they are overblown, overdramatic, 'WWE storytelling epic' at its finest.

 

When you say Sheamus vs Henry do you mean Sheamus vs Show? Because man do I ever love that match and I'd have it on a list for sure. Not tippity top level but certainly the one below that. In comparison to the original list it would be somewhere in my lower second tier/high third tier, at bare minimum.

[elliott]

When you say Sheamus vs Henry do you mean Sheamus vs Show? Because man do I ever love that match and I'd have it on a list for sure. Not tippity top level but certainly the one below that. In comparison to the original list it would be somewhere in my lower second tier/high third tier, at bare minimum.

Sheamus vs Show is exactly what I meant. I think it was Hell in a Cell Last year. Sheamus went for the brough kick and Show knocked his head off. Great match.

 

As for NL's point about praising attitude/new generation matches being more contraian, I definitely see your point. But there are still a lot of matches from that era very highly thought of. You'll see plenty of praise on these boards for Owen/Bret, Mind Games, Jarrett/Hbk, Austin vs hart, Austin vs Foley and Foley vs thumbtacks etc etc etc. So there are definitely points of comparison. I'm more interested how the big matches now compare to the big matches 10-15 years ago. I think given the changes in WWE programming over the last several years will help swamp the Attitude/New Gen era for TV matches.

[tim]

Couple months ago for another forum I did a list of best WWE matches from Wrestlemanias 14 to 29. My top 3 in order were Cena/Umaga, Eddie/Rey from Smackdown and Punk/Bryan from Over the Limit. I have been half wanting lately to watch a bunch of high end WWE to get some idea of what my top 20 etc of all time from the promotion would look like.

[elliott]

Rank these matches (i'll do the same later). I saw the Cena vs Rey match but wasn't paying full attention so I wouldn't feel comfortable ranking it.

 

Anyway, how do you guys rank these high end WWE matches from the last decade?

As promised i'll give my rankings. These are more off the cuff because some of these are MUCH fresher in my head than others. I intend to revist of all them and try my hand in reviewing them to try and figure out a more solid ranking.

 

1. Brock vs Cena -different from anything we've ever seen in the WWE. Great re-introduction of Brock. Great selling from Cena.

 

2. Cena vs. Umaga - I like monsters in wrestling and Umaga was a pretty Damn good one. I want to watch their Raw match. I think I did years ago. They give me a Sting vs Vader vibe only if Sting were better than Vader.

 

3. Cena vs Daniel Bryan SummerSlam - I might be overeating this because it's so recent and the ending left a sour taste, but in a vacuum this was tremendous. I saw maybe 3 BD indy matches in the early 2000s so I don't have the emotional connection some others might. I thought this was a great traditional Ace world champ vs underdog match. I thought it had a great crowd, and I thought Cena playing the subtle heel was great. There was a weird spot where Bryan may have been a little too dominant but they changed course pretty quickly.

 

4. Brock vs CM Punk Summer Slam. Again I'm probably overeating this but I thought it was a great big guy vs little guy match. Punk trying to chop down the tree and finding creative ways to outmaneuver the beast were great. Heyman stuff held it back from really comparing to Cena/Bryan I think but this was another great match.

 

5. Cena vs Punk Money in the Bank. One I really want to go back and watched. Felt really epic and special at the time. Fantastic crowd and a great ppv overall (Show vs Henry is borderline great).

 

6. Matt Hardy vs Edge. I may be overeating this but I thought it was one of the best WWE cage matches ever. I can't think of a better one honestly. Really stiff with both guys throwing bombs from the start and Matt Hardy selling like a champ. Satisfying ending.

 

7. Eddy vs JBL Judgment Day. I haven't watched this in a long time but I've loved it every time I did. Fantastic guerrero performance and JBL more than holds up his end of the match. They were having a good match before the gusher and really exploded from there. Might end up higher on a rewatch.

 

8. Eddy vs. Rey Smackdown the first time I watched it I didn't get the hype then I watched it again and was like "oh I'm an idiot." I thought it was a fine match, but when I really watched it I saw a fantastic match. These two have great chemistry but stood out as a great "advancing the storyline match" but also holds up as a great standalone match.

 

9. Shield Debut match. I didn't know what to do with this. I loved it. Everyone looked great. I hated Kane back in the day and had never seen any of them before. Everyone keeps saying chaotic and violent etc and it's exactly right. Ambrose comes across as a star in the debut. Great Kenta Kobashi like facial expressions. Rollins had great timing on his high flying moves. I understand Reigns has become the star of the group and I look forward to catching up and seeing that happen. He again seemed to have really good timing. Love this match but it's hard for me to rank with these others that's why I'm wanting you guys to do it!

 

10. Taker vs. HBK WM 1 I'm probably underrating it. Big time feel. Kind of the perfect modern WWE self-conscious epic. I liked it the first time I watched it and have liked it every other time. But. It just doesn't feel as good as the matches I've already ranked.

 

11. Big Show vs, Mayweather - another match I just love. Everything is perfect. Show's offense and selling. The interactions with mayweather's posse. Just a ton of fun. Again it feels like a great match but hard to rank against some of these other matches.

 

12. Eddy vs. Brock - Sentimental obviously. Great moment, but it sucks to have a crowd chanting for someone not in the match. I haven't watched this in a long time and another viewing might bump it up. I love big guy vs little guy dynamic.

 

13. Bryan vs Punk over the edge. This was a great NJ Jr style match. Cool submissions, hard strikes, big moves, etc. But really well done in that style.

 

14. Sbeamus vs Bryan 2/3 Falls - this should probably be ahead of punk/bryan but I haven't watched it in a while. I remember the armwork being great. And really good selling from Sheamus. Fuck I know I'm underrating this. This is why I'm gonna rewatch all these.

 

15. MnM vs Hardys Rumble 07 - I had this in this group because it always got really high praise here. Its a great southern style tag match. But I feel like I should replace it for something else?

 

This is just off the top of my head what I recall about the matches. I've watched most of them within the last 6 months but it's been a couple years for others. I plan on doing more full reviews.

 

In the meantime, I'm still interested to see what you guys thing.