Curt Hennig

[El Dragon]

I went through the AWA set in the last 8 months with the expectation Bockwinkel, Martel, and Hennig would all emerge as true favorites of mine. Bockwinkel met my expectations for him: he’s clearly incredible and a No.1 contender. Rick Martel exceeded my expectations, and I feel is about as picture perfect of a babyface I’ve ever seen. 
 

And then there is Hennig.

 

I’ll put it this way on Curt: he was certainly a good wrestler who put up some absolute classics. He had 4 matches in my top 15 on the set (The 60 Minute Draw at No.2, The Hansen match at 15, the Six Man with the Rockers against Rose, Somers, and Smirnoff at 7, and the title change at 15), and he was very good in all of them. But the problems to me centered on a few things: 1st problem is for a guy who appears in the 2nd most matches of any wrestler on the set, he only broke into my top 50 6 times total. Which means only 2 matches featuring him found there way in between my 16-50 spot and, spoiler, they were all matches with Bockwinkel. That kind of alarmed me how feast of famine he was on the set. Point B: is a complete and utter lack of great matches on the set not against Bockwinkel and Hansen. Some will say he didn’t get that many opportunities against other top level opponents, or point to the Lawler match. But I watched other workers elevate guys I wouldn’t expect to greatness multiple times on the set, and Hennig didn’t do it once. As for the Lawler match, I honestly felt like Curt dragged that match into the dumps, as his version of getting heat tended to be largely uninteresting offense in combination with super poor mans Zybysko act on the outside. And as silly as this sounds, that match had my best moment of description for Curt being a Low IQ worker. Lawler takes a big bump to the floor, landing hard on his head. Curt then viciously posts Lawler on the outside, and Jerry is realing. And Curt brings him back in the ring and.... starts working over the midsection? The fuck are you doing Curt!

Which leads to the other problem: while he did have some absolute gems with Bockwinkel, not every match of that series was a hit either. A Bockwinkel/Hennig match is also in my bottom 5, and he has a few performances against Nick that left me pretty cold, and it’s generally always been on something Curt did that frustrated me. Comparing that to other guys who that set elevated for me (Blackwell, Zybysko, The Rockers, Rose and Somers, and especially Martel and Bock), even if they are in matches I wasn’t in love with I very very rarely thought those guys gave rough performances. I can’t say that with Curt.

 

I’m still watching through Portland, but I already think there is very little chance Curt breaks my ballot. He didn’t even end up cracking my top 5 workers in the AWA, and he’d have to be incredible in Portland to even have a shot at this point.

 

 

[KB8]

I had Hennig at number 82 in 2016 and, to quote myself from about a week ago in this very threat, just to reaffirm that time truly is a flat circle: "I'm not sure he'll make the cut next time, and I've rewatched a lot of the Bockwinkel feud since then (which is still great, in fairness)." I've sort of gone back and forth with Hennig over the years. Was super low on him about fifteen years ago and would've said he was a better version of Dolph Ziggler. That is obviously wild disrespectful and I'll take my hundred lashes for it. When the AWA set dropped he shot way up in my estimation, and even revisiting some of the WWF stuff for a best WWF/E matches poll around that time gave him another boost. I watched one of the Bockwinkel matches waaaaay back but never properly registered how strong a mat worker he was, which the AWA set/Bockwinkel feud highlighted. I think Hennig was really good, basically, even if I don't really care for him as a heel in the WWF. He has the high-level output. He has the long technical bouts and the short brawls. I don't really feel compelled to vote for him, though. Maybe the Portland stuff will change my mind. 

 

CURT HENNIG YOU SHOULD WATCH:

v Stan Hansen (AWA, 5/31/86)

v Nick Bockwinkel (AWA, 11/15/86)

v Nick Bockwinkel (AWA, 5/2/87)

v Jerry Lawler (Memphis, 5/9/88)

v Bret Hart (WWF King of the Ring, 6/13/93)