Sean Waltman

[Grimmas]

3 minutes ago, strobogo said:

X-Pac vs The Rock at Capital Carnage 1998 is excellent work from both guys, standing out all the more because it's on an atrocious UK PPV. It's under 15 minutes and is probably the best Attitude Era title match that didn't involve Austin or Foley, imo.

I fucking LOVE that match. Amazing performance by both.

[elliott]

Awesome recommendation!  I wanna check that match out later. Big fan of both guys and that wasnt on my radar at all. 

[The Man in Blak]

Okay, now that I've watched that match, I am very interested to hear what makes those performances stand out because, to me, it's a decent but ultimately forgettable match.

If anything, I would actually credit the agenting more than the Rock and Waltman (though they did their jobs well too) -- the run-ins and interference spots with DX were expertly setup and the near-fall from the retaliation low blow (due to HHH distracting the ref) did a great job of hooking the crowd. But, to me, that's less about anything that Waltman added to the match and more about the value of good booking and good layout. Before the shenanigans, it's standard shine-heel-comeback stuff that's done well, but not necessarily elevated. What elements of Waltman's performance upped the stakes for you?

1 hour ago, strobogo said:

X-Pac vs The Rock at Capital Carnage 1998 is excellent work from both guys, standing out all the more because it's on an atrocious UK PPV. It's under 15 minutes and is probably the best Attitude Era title match that didn't involve Austin or Foley, imo.

If your definition of the Attitude Era includes 2000, then I feel like there is a whole raft of matches between Hunter, Rock and Angle that year that would absolutely be in that discussion - how does this match compare with those? 

[strobogo]

Generally in my head Attitude Era is 1998/1999 but sure I'd push it to 2000 as well.  It's just a really great match with greatly defined and portrayed roles in a period where such matches and match quality in general was such dogshit outside of just a couple of people. A great title match that doesn't involve Austin or Foley dying to get someone over is very rare in 1998/1999 so this has always stood out to me. And also putting the "X-Pac was never over" shit to rest. X-Pac was crazy over in 1998 and most of 1999. Dude was ending shows doing the beer bash with Austin on the reg.

[Manatee]

Waltman has a strong enough case to potentially make my list. He was good from the very beginning. He was a high flyer who would take seemingly insane risks like that move where he just cannonballs onto a guy from the top rope but the guy was always there to catch him and it didn't look contrived like almost every dive that is done today. The only weaknesses with his actual work that I found were that his punches were never very good and when he was selling on his back after a big move, he would too often have a completely blank look on his face and be watching his opponent rather than grimacing in pain or acting like he was knocked out.

I think people in this thread have been correct about him being great in his early career run on the indies and his first WWF run and that he was underutilized in WCW. I'm not very high on the X-Pac face run. I think he gave too much, often being on defense for like 95% of the match against guys like D'Lo Brown and only winning because his opponent slipped on a banana peel. I also got the feeling that they didn't want to present him as an underdog because of his size like they did during his first WWF run. It may just come down to the fact that the announcers didn't emphasize his size in the stuff I watched. His heel run as X-Pac was much better than I thought it would be, putting on consistently good matches. If X-Pac heat was a thing, it had nothing to do with his work. Just being in TNA obviously hurts his case a bit.

In addition to some of the great matches people already listed, I would add his No Mercy 2000 cage match vs Jericho and his Summerslam 2001 match vs Tajiri as standout singles performances. I'm not sure how much it adds to his case specifically but the best match I saw that he was involved in was the 2/7/00 Raw 10 man tag which has maybe the hottest crowd I have ever seen. Also, it is not a great match but I think the 3/4/09 AAA tag Waltman & Kozlov vs Teddy Hart & Jack Evans demonstrates the difference between knowing how to work and getting the maximum effect from big moves (Waltman) vs guys doing ten moves where one would suffice (Hart & Evans).

[Justtxyank]

I think his WCW work gets shrugged off too easily.

He was a heat magnet. Stuff with Eddy was good. His role in the six man against Flair, Piper and Greene was great. His character work was outstanding.

It was short due to his neck injury but I'd say that as the reason it doesn't add enough, not that it wasn't good.