Shawn Michaels

[Tetsujin]

3 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Shawn first, Flair the afterthought. Just the way Shawn wanted it. I know, you could just have easily put it the other way around, but you didn't, because Shawn is the one we think about when recalling the match.

 

 

But how's that a bad thing? I repeat: Michaels was the one staying. Flair put him over.

Also, in retrospective, I'm glad we have the "I'm sorry I love you" line, because that way we still have some drama surrounding Flair's retirement, even after Flair himself devaluated it later at TNA, or working that Hogan tour, or whatever. Maybe the reason some people don't think about that match as THE Flair retirement match is because Flair himself wasted it. But we still have Shawn's inner conflict to add emotion to it to make up for it.

[strobogo]

5 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Shawn first, Flair the afterthought. Just the way Shawn wanted it. I know, you could just have easily put it the other way around, but you didn't, because Shawn is the one we think about when recalling the match.

 

Relevance to Shawn making Flair's retirement all about Shawn, Your Honour? Were Jericho and Batista pissed that Shawn stole the spotlight from Flair?

 

 

Yes.

[Dav'oh]

9 hours ago, strobogo said:

Yes.

So they agree with me. Case closed 

[Chess Knight]

Shawn Michaels might have the biggest disparity between wrestling I love and wrestling I hate and it's all represented in this thread. The Mankind match is about as much fun a match to me can possibly be. I would rather swallow cyanide than see wrestlers clutch their face in distress like he did after the superkick, refereeing the Undertaker/HHH HIAC. His pinball bumping, especially as a heel, feels like it really should have been emulated by heels in a way that it hasn't much been since. His offense through the 21st Century is the kind of thing anti-wrestling kids at school make fun of you for watching.

I've never handed in a top 100 wrestler list (nor even made one) but he'd be among the most frustrating to rank. He has enough positive and negative volume to be put in 40 different spots, or be kept off altogether. Ric Flair's post-peak would drag him down on the list for me but only because other post-peaks are consistently much better, like Tenryu's or Lawler's. Michaels has a pretty long, awesome peak, but too much of the rest is so insufferable that it drags him down so much more than it does Flair. The Rockers were a really good team for like 6 years, which is a fairly long ass time, but rewatching WWF Rockers last year I'm not really convinced he was particularly better than Jannetty. Shawn Michaels vs. _blank_ from 1995 would get me pretty excited even against guys I don't have much thought on like Tatanka, Shawn Michaels vs. _blank_ from 2008 would get me apathetic even against my favourite guys from that time like Finlay. It's almost worth making a whole list just to see where I'd rank him.

 

 

edit - I never thought about "I'm sorry, I love you" being Shawn putting himself first but whether that the intention or not, it certainly has done that job. 

 

[highflyflow]

Shawn is on the bubble for me. At his best, that 96-early 98 peak, he really is great both as a feisty babyface champion brawling with Mankind and as the most obnoxious heel in the world pinballing around for Undertaker and Bret Hart. His pre-peak singles work is solid to good, if inconsistent, and he could deliver on occasion after his return in 2002. But fuck me, if he didn’t think a match was worth his time he would dog it like nobody’s business during that return run. So many dreadful tv matches…shitty strikes, weak control work, inefficient at drawing sympathy for any reason other than “being Shawn Michaels”, overly hammy selling, etc. Getting outworked by his peers like Benoit, Cena, Matt Hardy, and even Hulk Hogan in tag matches. That’s not even getting into the awful Triple H series…like I said, he did have good work too (Benoit singles and WM three way, Hogan match, the first Taker WM match, the Cena matches, the 2008 Jericho series for the most part), but none of these are truly transcendent in the context of the promotion he was working in like an Eddie/JBL or Cena/Umaga, let alone compared to the entire world at the time. For me, it’s gonna be his tag work in the Rockers that decides his fate, because I love all the Rose/Somers matches I’ve seen, and if their run in AWA, Memphis and WWF holds up, I could see a bottom 20 placement for him despite all his flaws.