How to you determine a great wrestler?

[Grimmas]

I've heard this a lot. Wrestler A is having a great year, look at all these great matches. If wrestler B has another great match in this upcoming bout, then he is a shoe in for wrestler of the year.

 

I understand a lot of people determine that a wrestler's greatness is determined by the quantity of quality matches. However, I never thought about it that way. I look at the performances. A wrestler can be an amazing seller and be great in the ring, but does not have the opportunity to have the great matches. For example, Chris Masters' run on Superstars is considered great by many, however how many great matches did it produce?

 

Just curious on what people's thoughts are on this.

[BillThompson]

It's a combination of the both for me. I'll be honest, I don't take drawing into account whatsoever, or promo work for that matter. I'm mainly interested in what a wrestler is doing in a ring and how it's connecting with me and the larger live/viewing audience. To that end I look at a wrestlers body of work as well as how many great matches I think he/she has had. I value a guy like Dustin Rhodes a lot this year, and I would argue he's a contender for WOTY despite only having one match I would consider great. Every time I see him he is working his tail off, selling great, bumping great, using his offense smartly and showing tremendous psychology and ring presence. I think a wrestler does need to have great matches to be in a discussion for MOTY, but they can't rely on that alone. They need to be great even in matches that aren't.

[Loss]

I'm afraid this is going to open a big can of worms but I'll say it anyway. I'm trying to move away from thinking about great wrestlers, or at the very least, focus on it far less since there are so many variables that are mere guesswork. I realize when discussing this stuff you can never get away from it 100%, but I hope with time it's something I think less and less about. I may see a wrestler in lots of great matches, but I don't know enough to say who is contributing what in those matches since I've never been trained as a worker. I can guess, but I could be way off, and great wrestling is sometimes about making you think someone is great who isn't. I am a wrestling fan that knows the difference between a good match and a bad match though. I want to focus on the message (the match) not the messenger (the wrestlers). I've touched on this before, but I'm more comfortable discussing the meal that I get to eat than the chefs who prepared it.

[jpchicago23]

Loss that is such a great way to look at it and I couldnt have said it better myself. Especially when you consider the fact that in a lot of cases both guys have to do a decent amount of work to make one guy look good, much less both guys. Take Bryan vs Triple H for example from Mania. Most people left that thinking damn Bryan brought out the best in triple h but who's to say it didn't go both ways? Who's to say trips didn't push Bryan to a great match as well?

[fxnj]

I'm afraid this is going to open a big can of worms but I'll say it anyway. I'm trying to move away from thinking about great wrestlers, or at the very least, focus on it far less since there are so many variables that are mere guesswork. I realize when discussing this stuff you can never get away from it 100%, but I hope with time it's something I think less and less about. I may see a wrestler in lots of great matches, but I don't know enough to say who is contributing what in those matches since I've never been trained as a worker. I can guess, but I could be way off, and great wrestling is sometimes about making you think someone is great who isn't. I am a wrestling fan that knows the difference between a good match and a bad match though. I want to focus on the message (the match) not the messenger (the wrestlers). I've touched on this before, but I'm more comfortable discussing the meal that I get to eat than the chefs who prepared it.

I actually agree with this entirely. I've run into a similar problem with music where the soloing by Pete Cosey and Sonny Fortune in Agharta really makes it an amazing album to me, but I'm not sure if I should credit them for playing or Miles Davis for being the one who assembled the group and directed their playing. I don't know the answer, but wrestling is even more difficult to judge since you don't even know who is putting the whole thing together or to what extent. One big example of that would be Giant Baba, where most people here seem to agree that he played some role in putting together basically the best matches ever wrestled, but the true extent of his contribution has been a point of argument here with no definitive answer. As you say, it is pretty difficult to watch without getting some favorites, but I've found that just leaving those guys as my acknowledged favorites and stop worrying about what's a carry job or who the GOAT has let me enjoy matches a lot more.

[Dylan Waco]

I am the exact opposite of Loss. I find it infinitely more difficult to compare/rate matches than wrestlers, and much less fun. I have tried to explain why before and I'm not sure I've ever successfully done it, but basically it comes down to the fact that matches to me are not big picture enough. On top of that I always find myself wanting to watch matches multiple times before even thinking about rating/ranking them in any serious order because even the best matches are really just glimpses of talent. I am far more comfortable talking about matches in the context of talking about the wrestlers themselves rather than the other way around.

 

None of that means I am not interested in discussing great matches because I am and probably do it more than most. But there is a reason that I'm not really comfortable contributing to match specific threads in most cases. It just seems to insulated to me and counter to my general habits as a geek.

 

To answer Grimmas' question - or perhaps not answer it - I don't think there is any formula I employ, but I do try and look at a ton of different things. Number of good/great matches is never going to hurt you, but I think there are times where it can artificially inflate you. For example Bray Wyatt had probably been in four of my top twenty-five matches of the year. I'm not sure Sheamus has been in half that many. But Sheamus has been a much more consistent performer. I feel like I can point to Sheamus using his tools in creating, interesting and impressive ways that go beyond what Bray does. If someone said Bray was having a great year in the ring I wouldn't challenge it,but I couldn't in good conscience rate him above Sheamus either.

 

To me volume of good matches, consistency, quality of individual performance, soundness of structure/psychology, ability to incorporate "little things," number of great/MOTYC level matches and probably other intangibles I'm forgetting all come into play.

[Matt D]

I imagine this is terribly unsurprising to anyone here, but I fall on the Dylan side of this. He and I have fairly similar views on wrestling, though I tend to lean towards overall narrative coherence and he focuses a bit more on building to big moments, but it's still on the same sector of the chart.

 

To me, it's like this. Any number of factors can influence a great match: road agents, the crowd, the placement on the card, opportunity in general. The only way to really know how good a wrestler is, in the end, is to watch a number of their matches, the great ones and the not so great ones, tag matches and singles, matches where they're the heel and where they're the face, matches early in their career and late in their career. When you watch a lot of matches you start to learn things; you see patterns, you see them react to multiple situations, generally multiple times and you see how they choose to act and react in these situations. You see how they work towards the crowd. You see how they use their talents and those of the person in the ring with them and how they allow themselves to be used. You see how they wrestle in a big match setting and how they wrestle in a TV squash and how they wrestle in a long-ish house show match. You come at it from dozens of angles and you get a complete picture of their capabilities and how well they understand professional wrestling. You need a big enough sample size, and generally, that is pretty big. You can learn something from one match. You can learn a few things from a few matches, but you really need a 360 degree view to understand a wrestler.

 

And I frankly think that you can. We watch a lot of wrestling. Charles is confident that he can recognize a good match. I give him more credit than that. I think if I gave him a list of five wrestlers, right now, that I know he's seen a lot of matches of, he could tell me various traits they had, various things they could do well and various things that one might do better than another. I've heard him on podcasts and read his stuff right here and I promise you he could that and do it well.

 

Now, if he's more comfortable or more interested coming at things on a match by match basis and focusing his analysis that way, then that's fine. One of the best things about this place is that so many of us come at understanding and enjoying and appreciating pro wrestling so many different ways. It means that we generate a more robust and interesting picture, even if sometimes, we can't argue directly with one another since we're tackling things from too different an angle.

[JerryvonKramer]

I feel like the way I look at wrestling has changed quite a bit over the past 6 or 9 months, difficult sort of thing to explain. I feel much less concerned in general with defining or even looking for "greatness". It might be watching all of those MSG and Spectrum cards, or it might be a greater amount of watching old footage purely for enjoyment, or it might be just generally being into the history of things a lot more -- most likely a combination of all of those things -- but I find myself caring less and less about trying to rank and codify things.

 

To put it in more tangible terms, I'd be much more excited in general about stumbling across a random Mongolian Stomper promo from 1981 than in tracking down that ***** classic that I just "have to watch". Doesn't mean that I'm any less analytical when watching matches, of course, it's more of a mindset thing. I'd call the chapter of the book "Learning to love Dominic".

 

----

 

Nonetheless, if we are going to try to define "greatness", there's one key thing I don't think anyone has mentioned yet so far that really can't be overlooked:

 

Connection with the crowd

 

I think Bruno Sammartino is one of the true greats. I really do. I don't think Bob Backlund is. And it comes down to that. Backlund likely has more "great matches", but Bruno has something else: in his character, in his connection with the audience ... and, fuck I'll say it, in his connection with me, as a viewer now in 2014.

 

I don't like Dusty Rhodes much as a worker, never have, but I think of him as a "great" for this same reason.

 

I have always been someone who rails against taking "work" as the only criterion for deciding on these things and we've argued about it many times. For me, "work" is just one thing among lots of things that go into making a great wrestler (and I think it's a MISTAKE to separate them out, they bleed into each other inextricably). My list of "greats" would probably look very different from most people's here. I'd probably rank Ole Anderson above Owen Hart, for example. Shit, I'd probably rank him above Bret Hart.

[fxnj]

The problem I have with focusing on individual wrestlers is that wrestling is cooperative by its nature. It's not like a sport like boxing where you can see a guy just pick someone apart and point to that as a great performance. As Loss seemed to imply, the greatest carry job would be one that doesn't even seem like a carry job at all, or where it looks like the guy doing the carrying is the one getting carried. There is just so much that goes on backstage there's no way we can identify how much a match is something a guy came up with and how much is from some agents. Even in boxing people will admit that a guy's trainer plays a massive part in his performance.

 

The other thing is that I never see serious boxing fans try to look for some non-existent baseline instead of just talking about individual performances. Human behavior is not static and what you see when a guy steps into the ring is the result of an endless number of causal forces rather than something that can be traced to a single person. That element is acknowledged when fans preface their predictions with phrases like "If he looked as good as he did when..." or "Unless he pulls out a miracle..." Even if you saw every match from a wrestler that's available, you wouldn't have a profile of how "great" they are as much as you would have a narrative of what they did across various nights. I just don't see how it could be more productive to go over an artificial narrative of a guy's career in vague generalities over discussing the specifics of a match.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't think anyone is arguing against discussing the specifics of matches, in fact I'd argue that people like myself and Matt probably talk as much or more about the particulars of what occurs in matches than anyone.

 

I understand the argument about wrestling being cooperative, but that's also precisely why I am more interested in wrestlers than matches when it comes to things like ranking/ratings/big picture analysis/et. If you look at the whole of wrestlers careers I think you pick up the patterns as Matt says and you are able to see much more than you can from individual matches or even a "best of" list from a particular guy.

[Loss]

Yeah, it's not something I'm absolutist about and it's something that could evolve over time. I'm not even sure I'm "right" (if there is a right and wrong). It's where I am with watching wrestling right now. I agree with Matt that the variety of approaches makes the discussion interesting. HHH vs Bryan is the perfect example. I've seen it argued reasonably in both directions that both HHH was the one that made the match great, and also that Bryan was the one who made the match great. I'm certainly interested in such discussions. Where I struggle is in comparing two wrestlers who are roughly on par in terms of longevity, career output and peak performance. I think in the past I tackled these things like I was on a mission to find the truth, whatever that may be. That at the end of the discussion, we're going to find the right answer. I'm trying to let go of that.

 

I will say as a credit to both Dylan and Matt that neither strike me as the type that is trying to work toward a correct answer when we talk about this philosophical stuff. They're just throwing a point of view out there. At least in the past, they've probably had a better understanding than me that trying to work toward a consensus is often pointlessly frustrating and impossible. And while a lot of people have dropped off the message boards, you could argue that wrestling talk is way more interesting now that there's less consensus building than ever.

[dawho5]

Great stuff so far in this post. I for one don't care for the idea that I have to rank and number and organize all the matches and wrestlers into lists of which is the best. I watch the matches to enjoy them at the time. If I do, there's really no point to me in asking myself if this match was more or less enjoyable than some other match or matches I've seen. That being said, there is something to the idea that watching a wrestler over time in different matches and situations gives you a much better idea of their strengths and weaknesses. I'm going to go with the wrestler that popped into my head the instant I read the original question:

 

Kenta Kobashi

 

If you watch his matches from 1993 on, you'll find a lot of different things. For instance, Kobashi is an excellent submission wrestler. He wrenches his holds at intervals, doesn't hang on to one hold in favor of switching to a similar hold and wrenching on that for a bit, then going to another. And Kenta Kobashi working over the ribs and/or back is an absolute joy to watch. His ropes -> knee, ropes -> knee -> Russian legsweep combo is an incredible sequence that I'm shocked nobody I've seen has ripped off. But over time you start to realize that he's not all that great at the when and what of wrestling. If you start looking at his later work, when the Kobashi we all know has emerged, a very clear distinction arises. When he's wrestling Kawada or Taue, his head drops are used when and as often as a head drop ought to be. His no-selling is contained. Then you watch a match with Misawa, who either had no interest in reeling Kobashi in or trusted him enough to not go overboard pretty often. And Kobashi is throwing big stuff out for midmatch nearfalls that don't make a whole lot of sense. You can go even farther to a match with Akiyama. I can remember at least one of those where Kobashi felt the need to hit Akiyama with 3 half nelsons, one of which was used as a near-fall. There is just no need for Akiyama to go through that kind of punishment in order for Kobashi to put him away. It just seems like because Kobashi was the "youngest" of the Four Pillars, he very rarely got to have much say in what went on early in his career. Not only that, but he didn't seem to pick up on the why as the junior member of the match. And later, when it came to be his turn to direct the match that hurt him quite a bit.

 

Without watching years worth of matches from AJPW I wouldn't have seen everything necessary to come to the conclusions that I did. I wouldn't have the perspective of looking back at his days as just a spunky youngster who had to fight his way through everybody's abuse (which was a very entertaining portion of his career). So while I'm not overly interested in codifying exactly where I would put Kobashi or his matches in the grand order of things, I feel very comfortable being able to look at him as a wrestler, see his strengths and weaknesses and know why I found a match of his to be really entertaining or not. It seems like the answer to this question is pretty similar to the answer to the "drawing power as an important aspect of a wrestler" question.

 

You determine it by watching their work (not just in-ring in the case of American workers) over time and seeing how they change, what their strengths and weaknesses are, how they work with varying opponents, how they work from underneath, how they work from above, and any number of other factors that matter to you. The answer is going to be different for all of us, but I think it's important to at least do a good cross-section of their career (thorough research is important) before coming to any major conclusions.

[fxnj]

I don't think anyone is arguing against discussing the specifics of matches, in fact I'd argue that people like myself and Matt probably talk as much or more about the particulars of what occurs in matches than anyone.

 

I understand the argument about wrestling being cooperative, but that's also precisely why I am more interested in wrestlers than matches when it comes to things like ranking/ratings/big picture analysis/et. If you look at the whole of wrestlers careers I think you pick up the patterns as Matt says and you are able to see much more than you can from individual matches or even a "best of" list from a particular guy.

I agree that it can be pretty interesting to look at a bunch of matches of guys and look for patterns or see they adapt to different environments. That's not something I'm arguing against. What I'm not a big fan of is when you take it a bit farther than that and you're assembling huge ordered lists of guys or talking about matches in terms of being carry jobs. That's something that I think is impossible to come up with any satisfactory answers and that kind of takes the fun out of watching the illusion wrestlers try to create.

 

An example I like would be the Kobashi/Honda GHC title match. I watched it around the time of Ditch's best of 2003 when there were a bunch of people talking up Honda's performance and even calling it a "Honda carry job," and I pretty much went along with that consensus. I liked the match but I also didn't get into it much just because I didn't really notice Kobashi doing much and I prefer matches that are more 2-way affairs. When I rewatched it after seeing Kobashi's AJPW run, not only did I mark out for the match but my interpretation also completely changed. Honda was still awesome but I also realized that Kobashi was also pretty brilliant because he was a guy who, up to that point, basically made a career out of taking the spotlight and it was a match where he showed he knew how to step aside. Honda certainly did "outperform" Kobashi in common terminology but saying Kobashi was "carried" misses the point because the match was there to show off Honda. I don't know how you could account for something like that if you're doing a ranking but it also raises a problem I have with rankings in that, even when we're taking an analytical mindset, so much of what we interpret as "great" is simply from what we're getting worked into thinking.

[El-P]

Drawing power.

[Dylan Waco]

I want to stress that in no way do I think that list making/categorization/et is the only or right way to appreciate wrestling. Nor do I think it's the only way to analyze great wrestlers. I love doing it, and honestly would have probably quit watching wrestling over a decade ago without projects that were focused in that fashion, but I can absolutely see why others would find it to be a waste, boring, uninteresting, or contrary to their fandom. Perhaps not surprisingly I feel the same way about star ratings for matches that a lot of people probably feel about lists.

[JerryvonKramer]

Dylan, the thing I've been thinking about is how each of the aspects of what a wrestler does are inextricably linked so that separating out "work" is a very artificial categorisation that doesn't ring true to what creates successful wrestling.

 

I said this in a PM convo with someone here:

 

 

 

Like I said though, all the aspects of what a wrestler does bleed into each other. The angle and the promo help to create the emotional connection. The character work helps maintain it. Working the crowd helps generate the heat within the match. The match itself, if worked well, should control the ebb and flow of that heat.

There's no part of that that can be taken out and isolated. Dean Malenko wrestled to dead crowds because he could only do one part of it, and often that one part proves to be less important than the other parts (see Dusty Rhodes as proof).

 

What do you think about that?

[Dylan Waco]

I understand what you are saying, but I don't agree with it. Actually that's not the right way to put it. I guess a better way for me to put it would be "I get your point, but it doesn't apply to the way I view wrestling."

 

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that a persons ability to communicate doesn't set the table for things like crowd reactions which can help a match. I also absolutely agree that connecting with the live crowds is a huge part of wrestling, and it's not uncommon for me to make note of this in my reviews. I also tend to like a lot of guys in the ring who do not have positive reps as workers, in large part because I appreciate how their act "works," even if sometime it works in an overtly ridiculous and atypical way (for example I really like Rufus Jones).

 

On the other hand when I am thinking about who the great workers are, I'm thinking about who the great workers are. I'm judging them by what happens from bell-to-bell. If things they have done to set the table make it easier for them to have good matches, or manifest themselves in the course of a worked match then of course I'm going to consider those things. But I'm not going to watch a bunch of Ted Dibiase matches and think "well these matches haven't been the best, but he did cut some great promos on Superstars, so he's definitely a better worker than these matches suggest." I just can't think of any good reason why that would matter in a discussion about in ring performance, though I freely admit it should matter in a discussion of the wrestler over all.

[JerryvonKramer]

Aren't those two things inextricably connected though? Let's say the DiBiase match has a moment when he looks up and jaws at the crowd and that gets a massive heel reaction, that's something that happened bell-to-bell that was more or less created by the promo / angle/ skit / whatever. The booing isn't a result of how well Ted is jawing in that moment, but the end result of work he's done elsewhere.

 

I don't see how you can cut those parts off. The Bruno vs. Larry feud we loved so match, without the promos and the character work and the electric crowds, isn't that remarkable "bell-to-bell". If you watched those matches with the sound down, they probably aren't much at all. But to me that's sucking the life out of what wrestling is and how it works.

 

I'm very unwilling to accept arguments that might end up with a guy like Dean Malenko (sorry Dean, I know it's lazy that he's my go-to example) being thought of as a "better worker" than Bruno. That's patently false. Who was better at his job? It was undeniably Bruno.

 

I guess I don't understand WHY you'd want to limit things to "bell-to-bell" rather than consider the "over all", because in reality "over all" is all there is -- that's the thing selling tickets, that's the thing producing crowd reactions and emotional connections, that's the thing that has made all of us posting on this board keep watching wrestling for 20+ years, don't care what anyone says, it's THAT. Great matches are the cherry on the cake, but judge the thing by the cake itself not the cherry!

 

Ha ha ha, that last sentence is amazing!

[Dylan Waco]

I don't know how to quote individual things on the new board, so I'll respond as best I can and hopefully it's not confusing.

 

Taking the first issue, I'm not at all sure that the "past work" of Dibiase in that example is the reason he's getting heat. Is it a factor? Maybe, perhaps even probably. But if he goes out there and does a shitty job interacting or doesn't interact at all is he going to get the same response? Probably not. You can argue that setting the table makes it easier to do the actual "working the crowd" portion of the match, but all that means is that you have something to play off of. Getting pushed, promoted, et. is not a guarantee that any of that is going to come across well. You still have to be GOOD at that sort of thing in real time for the most part.

 

Of course the flipside of that is that there are guys who get over and/or are over as hell with live crowds even though they aren't particularly promos and/or in some cases don't have particularly well defined characters. For example I went to a WWE house show recently where Big E got a huge reaction and Tyson Kidd got a very good one. I've made this point before, but I once saw Ice Train get a thunderous pop, and tremendous live reaction throughout the course of a bout. I don't think that reaction was because Fire and Ice had shot such a hot angle on Nitro the week before.

 

To the second point I'm not arguing because I absolutely agree that outside angles can help a match, but again, the wrestlers still have to perform in the ring. That strikes me as a completely uncontroversial argument.

 

As for the bit about Malenko and Bruno, I don't much care for Malenko, and I tend to like Bruno more than most so I have no problem with that. Having said that if we take the argument to it's logical conclusion it comes back to drawing power whether you want it to or not. I say that because once you start talking about "who did their job the best" and looking for an objective standard the best you've got is drawing power. So looking at that yes Bruno is better than Malenko (hell I might have Bruno over Malenko via any metric), just as Hogan is in arguably above Flair using the same standard.

 

The final point about why the limitation to bell-to-bell I think has a lot to do with the "smart" fan culture in general. For the longest time that was almost exclusively where the focus was among smart fans - on the good matches, the good workers, et. I think there are a lot of reasons for this, but a big part of this was just a general resistance to the idea that Hulk Hogan and/or the top force fed stars were the standard just because they were the most popular with the masses. By no means is that all of it and I think it's actually a really complex question to tackle. Some of that has changed now and then you have things like the HoF debates which I really enjoy, but other people hate. One thing I will say is that I have no problem discussing one or the other (great workers v. HoF type debates), but I don't see why those things can't be separate discussions.

[W2BTD]

Drawing power.

 

Unless you're a promoter, I have no idea why this would matter to you as a fan.

 

I'm someone who is very interested in the business end of wrestling (right down to obsessively counting the number of fans at any show I go to), but to me that is entirely separate from the entertainment aspect.

 

Having drawing power makes you a great draw, not a great wrestler. Just as there are actors who are great draws who are not great actors. Just as there are great actors or musicians who do not draw.

 

If you truly believe what I quoted, then if you made a list of the greatest wrestlers of all time, it would be exactly the same as the list of the greatest draws. Which to me is absurd, and probably a little lazy, too.

[W2BTD]

For me a great wrestler is somebody who consistently has great matches. And when I say great matches, I don't necessarily mean 5-star MOTY contenders, because that is an unfair standard as there are very few wrestlers put into a position to deliver those types of matches.

 

I would probably consider Barry Howowitz a great wrestler. Same for Tomoaki Honma or Brad Armstrong or Akebono (at least this year he was) or Gail Kim or Too Cold Scorpio or Tyson Kidd. I consider most if not the entire Dragon Gate roster great wrestlers. All of these people are great at what they are asked to do and often exceed expectations.

 

I do think in order to be an all time great, it helps tremendously to have the opportunity to deliver in long main event style matches on the biggest stages. This doesn't preclude somebody from being "great", but it certainly helps build the case. Life isn't always fair.

[ohtani's jacket]

To me a great wrestler is a wrestler who has consistently good performances. As simple as that. Determining whether the performance was any good is where it gets more difficult.

[Fantastic]

This might be controversial...

 

As much as I love the character and class him as one of my favorite wrestlers, The Undertaker has usually only been a "great" wrestler when he's matched up against other great wrestlers. Take the streak for example, the following matches are usually considered the best of the streak:

 

Undertaker vs. Triple H: Wrestlemania X-7

Undertaker vs. Randy Orton: Wrestlemania 21

Undertaker vs. Batista: Wrestlemania XXIII

Undertaker vs. Edge: Wrestlemania XXIV

Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels: Wrestlemania XXV

Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels: Wrestlemania XXVI

Undertaker vs. Triple H: Wrestlemania XXVII

Undertaker vs. Triple H: Wrestlemania XXVIII

Undertaker vs. CM Punk: Wrestlemania XXIX

 

Each name on that list opposite The Undertaker is acclaimed as a worker in their own right. Shawn Michaels in particular, is said by many to be the best US wrestler ever to have set foot in a ring. Edge was a great worker, he could adapt to virtually any style that he was met with, and effectively. His feuds with Big Show, Mysterio, the Hardy's, Cena, Batista and of course, Taker, all speak volumes of his ability.

 

Outside of the streak and his matches with the names on that list, Taker's had a pretty mixed history. He was pretty run of the mill during the early 1990's. He stepped up his game in 1996-1999 with his feuds with Mick Foley, Shawn Michaels, Steve Austin and Bret Hart. He tapered off in 1999, really hit or miss, although that could be down to his accumulating injuries at that point. He was abysmal on many occasions in 2000 and 2001, started to get back on track in 2002 and 2003 with his matches against Lesnar, The Rock, and Kurt Angle. His run from 2004-2008 had large periods of lackluster matches in feuds with people like Heidenreich, Mark Henry, Kane, etc. And from 2008-Present, it's really only been about the streak

 

The point I'm getting at is that some wrestlers develop a reputation as a great wrestler, seemingly from having choice matches against other "great wrestlers".

[pantherwagner]

To me a great wrestler is a wrestler who has consistently good performances. As simple as that. Determining whether the performance was any good is where it gets more difficult.

 

This is exactly my description - focusing and performances and not matches. Sometimes great wrestlers don't always have great matches due to poor opposition / booking constraints and sometimes average wrestlers have tons of great matches because they are surrounded by good or great wrestlers.

[fakeplastictrees]

It really comes down to this: entertainment. That's why I watch wrestling. If a wrestler keeps my interest....they are good. Some have the overall package and others have just elements I like (i.e. Jake with the promos, Cena with the matches, etc.).