Dean Ambrose

[Tetsujin]

9 hours ago, KawadaSmile said:

Don't really get him being part of this shooty-like stable when he's not that kind of guy, tho.

I strongly disagree. He shines a lot in that setting, his matches with guys like Killer Kross, Barnett or Biff Busick are a delight. He's obviously not a classic shoot style wrestler, as he doesn't have the background, but his "rabid dog in a street fight" attitude brings something fresh to the usual sport-like approach of shoot matches and is so cool.

[KawadaSmile]

Oh, I don't think what we got out of it is *bad*

 His match against Danny Garcia might as well be one of the best things we'll get this year and it worked precisely because of that rabid dog energy you mentioned. I just think it's a bit of a weird fit.

[strobogo]

Mox as the tough guy shooter dude started with his first NJ run and it was weird then, and has stayed weird. It got further played into with Bloodsport stuff, but there might not be another guy at his level with more open space and garbage looking strikes other than The Miz. Crazy tough guy deathmatch dude who will fight to the death, sure, but it has been portrayed like he's a top tier shooter type. 

 

Being part of something called a combat club that started on mutual respect of pro wrestling violence makes sense to me, as Moxley's presentation in AEW is less shooter guy and more crazy bar brawler guy. Also yes, bored Moxley/Ambrose is terrible and it's hard to think of a guy so clearly phoning it in so often as there's been multiple year stretches in WWE and a year or so in AEW as well.

[The Man in Blak]

I don't know that Moxley will make my ballot unless I recalibrate my rankings to include promos -- which are actually Moxley's strongest suit as a performer by about a hundred miles -- but the "bored <wrestler x> clearly mails it in" criticism of any wrestler really leaves me cold. I don't think he's been doing GCW shots for the money and he's turned a number of chicken shit situations in AEW into chicken salad, including -- just as a recent example -- a "plan C" main event with freaking Tanahashi at Forbidden Door that Moxley did everything short of setting himself on fire to try and get over.

The guy just got out of rehab, so you can call it Hanlon's Razor's Edge: never attribute something in wrestling to laziness that can be adequately explained by addiction, depression, or WWE creative. I wouldn't consider Moxley one of the 100 greatest wrestlers ever, but I don't know if AEW thrives as long as it has without him, so he's got my respect.

[Reel]

I don't think it matters if he was lazy, battling addiction, or sad because his dog ran away, he has a litany of boring to bad matches and comparatively few bright spots. 

[Troyvang]

I'm going to have to watch a lot more of his bad WWE matches, because right now it's mostly been his stuff from the last few years and he would be pretty high on my list.

[Tetsujin]

I don't think he was bad at WWE at all. Like, at any point. The FCW stuff is awesome. His Shield run we all know is one of those career-making runs for all three of those guys. Then Rollins turned heel and Ambrose was the hottest guy in the company during that rivalry, with very good matches (their whole saga is great, love all their matches but I'd specially recommend the 30 mins Ironman match, the Montreal RAW match and the Ladder match). Then he was relegated to Roman's second and couldn't shine much, but his 2016 is awesome. The Owens LMS match and Rumble performance. The freaking Reigns/Lesnar TT. The Triple H match. Yeah WM with Brock was dissapointing (100% blame Lesnar), but then his SmackDown Live run in the second half of 2016-early 2017 is very, very solid: you have the AJ saga (and I will die on this hill: at least, as good as the Reigns matches), an incredible carryjob to Ziggler (didn't like the match, but sure as hell loved his performance), cool comedy stuff with Ellsworth, the Miz rivalry is really underrated (great matches in a January 2017 SmackDown and the Extreme Rules PPV)... In 2018 he has the Rollins tag run with stelar fights with The Bar and Drew/Ziggler. Yeah his heel run was bad, he obviously was done with the company at that point so is understandable, and he still have some months or whatever where, if not given anything, he won't be as good, but overall I think he has been far better and solid in WWE that most people think, even if he was clearly an output guy instead of input. I still can find some pretty hidden gems in random tv matches with him like a US title match with Rusev, the first Braun Strowman singles match where he managed to look believable against him, a kinda stiff Bray Wyatt brawl (qualifyer for the MITB at may/june 2015 iirc) that is strangely much better than everything they did later together, an Owens/Ziggler triple threat for the IC title... I get he wasn't presented by the company as one of the most interesting guys to follow, but believe me, he's almost always been one of those under-the-radar good workers.

[Reel]

I'm probably not going to go back and watch any of it, but having watched it contemporaneously, I can honestly say outside of the stuff with Seth against Drew/Dolph and The Bar, and the triple threat with Brock and Roman, literally none of the stuff you mentioned stands out to me in the least. Obviously, it's all subjective and your mileage may vary, but I think him leaving WWE has made a lot of people look back on his time there more fondly than they would otherwise. 

[Dav'oh]

I dunno. I'm here to rank people on their best day, not their worst. Lionel Messi missed penalties, Michael Jordan missed free-throws, Tom Brady got sacked, big deal.

[Reel]

looking forward to your ultimate warrior vote

[Dav'oh]

Because you're a fan of his?

Either way, if, on his best day, he was better than everyone else on their best days, I'll consider him. Although he wasn't on my mind until you pimped him.

[Reel]

Obviously, you can rank guys however you want, but I think if you're only considering wrestlers at their very best you're gonna come up with something other than a list of the 100 greatest wrestlers ever.

Rusher Kimura is a big part of one of my favorite matches of all time, I nominated him almost entirely because of it, but he mostly kinda stinks. So is he better than say, Tajiri, who has a ton of really good matches but nothing as good as the '89 old man tag? I say, no. You can think whatever you want, but I just don't see it the same way. 

[Dav'oh]

I don't agree that "was in a better match" equals "was a greater wrestler". But if Kimura was greater in that match than Tajiri ever was, then I don't see an issue. 

But I'm not the one nominating people who mostly stink for a Greatest Wrestler Ever poll, so what do I know? 

7 hours ago, Reel said:

Rusher Kimura is a big part of one of my favorite matches of all time...So is he better than say, Tajiri, who has a ton of really good matches but nothing as good as the '89 old man tag? I say, no.

I say the Wright Brothers are greater pilots than John Travolta or Bruce Dickinson, even though they've got like 12 seconds of flight time, compared to the thousands of hours modern pilots have.

I think there's a thread somewhere for this sort of thing. I don't mean to derail the Ambrose chatter, an excellent contemporary wrestler who won't sniff my top 100.

[MoS]

I dunno if Mox will make my ballot, I dunno if he is one of the 100 GWE, but as someone who was in the crowd at DoN 2020 when he made his entrance, he absolutely felt like a top 100 GWE on that night. That entrance was the greatest moment I have experienced at live events of any sort, and that match was a banger too. Easily the main event for the live crowd, and it going 2nd hurt a lot of the matches that followed.

[southofheavy]

I was at Blood and Guts. He got the biggest pop of the night, hands down. 

As far as his Top 100 candidacy, I think the next few years could very well push him into the lower quarter to half. He's really put it all together since coming back from rehab. It seems to me that Jon Moxley and the idea of Jon Moxley have finally met. I remember watching his non-deathmatch indy stuff and there was a bit of a disconnect between his gimmick and his ring work. Some of his offense, including a finisher that he used, just didn't really fit him. 

His WWE run contains a lot of good stuff, and those Shield six mans vs the Wyatt family are great, but he was really handicapped there and at times he was really checked out. 

Since coming back from rehab, he's just been on fire and there are a lot of matchups still on the table that have the potential to be something special. 

[Mattsdmf]

I'm planning to vote for Moxley.  Probably in the bottom half of my ballot.  He's in the middle of his peak IMO and it's really cool to see it progressing.  I revisited a bunch of his WWE matches and think quite a few of them hold up (except for the infuriating camera work but that's a whole other issue).  Depending on how the next few years go, he might even rise up my ballot.  I really like his whole "mad dog" persona as my SO puts it and that he can work the mat as well.  Been a big fan of his since he debuted with the Shield.  I heard of him on the indies but didn't see anything of his from that era.  I will be checking that stuff out as well.

[EnviousStupid]

Best wrestler of the 2020s so far? He's arguably the consensus WOTY for both 2020 and 2022 with plenty of great matches in AEW, as well as some across the occasional NJPW and indie show he's on. 

[Ma Stump Puller]

Idk I can think of at least 50 guys who I'd rather see in a ring consistently more than Mox. His stuff is great at the high-end but everything else is just him juicing for diminishing gains in so-so matches, at least for me anyway

 

 

[EnviousStupid]

5 hours ago, Ma Stump Puller said:

Idk I can think of at least 50 guys who I'd rather see in a ring consistently more than Mox. His stuff is great at the high-end but everything else is just him juicing for diminishing gains in so-so matches, at least for me anyway

 

 

Honestly fair. Seeing his shtick so often last year also left a sour taste in my mouth and there's plenty of other wrestlers that I do prefer. I just feel that when looking at the volume and consistency of his output over these last three years, it's hard for most to compare.

[Tetsujin]

He just went through a barbed wire table and started laughing and screaming "OH BOY". Top 100 lock.

[highflyflow]

Mox has a very strong chance of making my list, especially after the incredible performance he had at All In last Saturday, it's just a matter of combing through his pre-WWE Indies work and touching up on his WWE work to see what range I could place him in. I do fall in the camp of thinking he's been one of, if not the best wrestler of the 2020s so far, and for all the things I could nitpick at him for, I can only see him solidifying that case over the next 5 years into the 2030s.

[Phil Schneider]

Talking to Mox for Way of the Blade: AEW Edition helped me appreciate him more in the ring, he thinks about wrestling in a pretty interesting way and his willingness to break molds doesn't always work, but makes his matches way more interesting then guys who are pigeonholed into the same 2.9 count formula as every other Meltzer beloved 2025 wrestler.

[Tetsujin]

18 hours ago, Phil Schneider said:

Talking to Mox for Way of the Blade: AEW Edition helped me appreciate him more in the ring, he thinks about wrestling in a pretty interesting way and his willingness to break molds doesn't always work, but makes his matches way more interesting then guys who are pigeonholed into the same 2.9 count formula as every other Meltzer beloved 2025 wrestler.

That's hella interesting. Haven't read the book yet (will soon). Any examples of particular ideas and/or approaches he tried on a specific match(es)?

[Phil Schneider]

Someone posted a pretty long excerpt on Reddit where he talks about the first Hangman Page Texas Death Match

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/1lz6oz2/except_from_way_of_the_blade_aew_editionjon/

[Tetsujin]

That was honestly awesome, exactly what I wanted. Thanks!

Btw, Moxley just put on probably his best performance ever (alongside the Juice Robinson match imho) last week against Hangman in their Texas Death (re)match. His body of work this year has been so good he's making people believe the Death Riders storyline wasn't ass to begin with. He's the only guy of his generation of wrestlers who is still on his peak and I believe he could still add to his case for another good chunk of years, so, even if I'm almost surely gonna vote for him next year, I'm more excited about 2036 to see where he's capable of landing. Insane potential for a guy his age.