Most divisive wrestlers

[goc]

So I was reading through an old thread about "Guys who got away with being bad" and Don Muraco's name came up a few times but then someone would come in and jump to his defense and it got me thinking that Don Muraco might be the most divisive wrestler in history. It seems like people fall into the camp of "Don Muraco sucked and was lazy as shit" or "Don Muraco was fucking great and one of the best ever" and I'm not sure I can think of anyone else who elicits that type of response.

 

Yea yea I know Cena is divisive but outside of the most hardcore "I hate everyone that doesn't wrestle 100 miles an hour and do 30 moves a match" types, he seems to at least get credited as a good worker even if there is a lot of disagreement about how good. So who else would fit in the Don Muraco category of guys who are either "love him or hate him" types without a whole lot of in between?

[Judy Bagwell]

Ultimate Warrior

his detractors will say he was horrible and had to be carried to a good match

others like myself loved the entrance,the charisma, the wild promos and he held up his end in damn near every big match he was in

[goc]

Yea I would agree on Warrior because the people who dog him talk about him like he was completely worthless and not good at anything. You can't have the number of well regarded matches he did and be totally shitty and worthless like his detractors claim. Yes the stuff with Hogan, Rude & Savage was him against guys who were better and provided the structure of the match or was planned out in advance by Pat Patterson. But it doesn't take away that he held up his end of the bargain and the matches were really good.

 

Warrior/Savage is better than a lot of matches that Savage had with guys who are regarded as way better than Warrior. And Sid/Hogan doesn't come close to Warrior/Hogan even though I think the majority of Warrior haters rank him right at the same skill level of Sid.

[DR Ackermann]

I was about to argue with Judy, saying how horrible Warrior was and blah blah blah and talking about how poor his performances were in general when it came to wrestling, and how he did better in big matches because they were rehearsed and laid out and a complete carry job each time because the matches involved the entire promotion working as one to put something together based around what little he was capable of or willing to put effort into, and also how clearly poor he was outside the ring if you weren't looking at things through the subjective eyes of a child or a moron, and then I realized he was a great candidate for the topic at hand. (And that was a huge run-on sentence)

 

I wouldn't say he was completely worthless at all. He had a great look and he had energy and he knew how to work out. He did get into his character too, which I believe he developed on his own, and it appealed to people even though I personally feel he came of as a psycho that I wouldn't want my kids watching.

[DR Ackermann]

ENERGY WARRIOR

[Jingus]

Goldberg gets a somewhat similar treatment. Some people think he was legit a great wrestler from the way he could get a crowd to react, others insist he couldn't work at all and was dangerously reckless in the ring.

[NotJayTabb]

Ziggler was the first name that sprung to mind. There's a lot of fans who see him the poster boy for the charismatic superworker held back by the WWE so they can "keep Roman Strong", but there's also an increasing number of fans who see him as an egregiously over-bumper with soft-offence, brutal promos, an over-reliance on superkicks, woeful fashion and one of the worst characters in the company. I've had many conversations with some of my friends who can't believe I would rate (for example) Sheamus as a better in-ring wrestler than Ziggler.

[goc]

Actually yea Ziggler is a great pick, especially lately where even the smarkiest of places like wrestlingforum have started to turn on him. And there's not a lot of middle ground when people start talking about him it's either "he's fucking great and WWE should make him the champ" or "he sucks and needs to get the hell off my TV"

[Ricky Jackson]

Bob Backlund. A lot of people can't get past the look and bad promos (when he was WWF champ). Parv hates his "constant struggle", where he takes too much of the match. I love the guy, and so do a lot of fans. Tons of great matches against a who's who of opponents and a goofy charisma that I find endearing.

[goc]

Backlund is another great pick and one I can see both sides. If you were a fan at the time watching him and you were used to face champ Bruno cutting great promos (at least the ones I have seen) and then you get Backlund I can see how you would hate him. I've not seen a promo from Backlund in that time period that even approached being good, especially when he's almost immediately following a heel who just finished cutting a scathing promo on him and he starts in with his "oh gee golly I respect my opponent and I don't know why he can't respect me" stuff.

 

I've liked a lot of his matches though. He's a good comparison to Cena because I can see how people would hate his character but can't see how people can not like his matches or at least respect his ability even if they don't care for his style.

[Goodear]

I'm still stunned when I run into people online who consider Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle all-time greats.

[KrisZ]

Not much middle ground on Brody either

[El McKell]

I'm still stunned when I run into people online who consider Shawn Michaels and Kurt Angle all-time greats.

 

I think they're all time greats. But what's interesting about this to me about this is that if this thread existed at r/squared circle and someone said Michaels and Angle were divisive everyone would wonder what you're talking about.

 

Not much middle ground on Brody either

 

I'm in that middle ground when it comes to Brody, he doesn't sell which is annoying but from what I've seen he's not terrible, but he's far away from being some kind of all time great.

[Childs]

Yeah, divisive on this board and divisive in the larger community of wrestling fandom are very different things. Michaels was the first name I thought of, but if we're talking the wider world of fans, he's an undisputed GOAT short lister.

[SteveJRogers]

I find that a lot of the Warrior hate stems from Warrior being an absolute homophobic piece of shit who was usually in business for himself, and not a good guy to deal with.

 

As oppossed to not liking him for in ring and on camera reasons.

 

Ditto Shawn/Triple H/Hogan hate, I think a lot of it stems more from their political maneuverings that affected their personal favorities (mostly Bret Hart and associates) as political maneuverings and unprofessional acting of internet darlings tend to get passes (well it would have been bad buisness or oh well would you want that guy to go over you?)

[SteveJRogers]

Yeah, divisive on this board and divisive in the larger community of wrestling fandom are very different things. Michaels was the first name I thought of, but if we're talking the wider world of fans, he's an undisputed GOAT short lister.

That's because they are all sheeple to the WWE over hype machine *rolls eyes*

[goc]

Ditto Shawn/Triple H/Hogan hate, I think a lot of it stems more from their political maneuverings that affected their personal favorities (mostly Bret Hart and associates) as political maneuverings and unprofessional acting of internet darlings tend to get passes (well it would have been bad buisness or oh well would you want that guy to go over you?)

I actually saw some awful "who buried more people HHH or Cena?" thread on wrestlingforum where people were using that bolded part in DEFENSE of HHH. Of course Cena is the devil himself and HHH is our lord and savior because NXT but the amount of mental gymnastics was ridiculous. "Well why should HHH make Kozlov or Curtis Axel look good he's had so many world titles and they're not on his level" yet Cena was supposed to put over every brand new guy to the roster over the last 5 years.

 

When you're saying that Cena buried Umaga and HHH didn't you've gone past the point of ridiculousness into insanity.

[SteveJRogers]

The fact that Cena is considered on ANYONE'S level as a Machiavellian backstage politician is laughable and shows how much wannabe smarks people can be.

 

I mean the only example of a Cena power play is the Nexus SummerSlam match, and I doubt he had evil "these nerds are going to be soooo buried" intent. It was just a difference of opinion with Jericho/Edge about what the finish should have been.

[kingliam]

Lex Luger was my choice. Admittedly, I think he gets more love in places such as this, but he gets very polar responses depending on where he is being talked about.

[DMJ]

Great example with Luger.

 

One that I thought of was Bret Hart. Depending on where you go, who you ask, and when you asked it, you'll get all sorts of response about the Hitman.

 

In the 90s, Hart was promoted by the WWE as an incredibly talented technician, masterful storyteller, tough-as-nails underdog that used his unparalleled skills to best all sorts of Goliaths. He was the embodiment of The New Generation. Then, Montreal happens and, over the course of the next decade, Hart is painted in "Bret Screwed Bret" terms - a self-centered "traditionalist" who turned his back on tradition by refusing to do a job, overrated in his in-ring performances, "boring" and vanilla in his promos, retroactively made to seem like conservative/old guard when he actually played a huge role in the "main event style" that dominated the WWE landscape for the next decade both in terms of work rate and theatrics (is there any more proof necessary than Survivor Series 97' with its extended crowd-brawling, finisher theft, and Authority run-in?).

 

…And a significant portion of the audience, especially Attitude Era-and-After fans, bought it. For these fans, Hart is overrated and dull. These fans love to say that Benoit or Angle was a better technician. That Shawn Michaels was better at pulling in fans' emotions. That Hart lacked the charisma of Austin and The Rock and Cena and, thus, had no charisma at all. That Hart's criticisms of Flair, HBK, HHH, and others are proof that he's bitter and jealous. Sometimes they go as far as to say that Owen Hart was actually the better overall worker of the two in an effort to explain away the relatively high number of 4+ star matches Bret had in his career, as if Bret only deserves half-credit for his matches against his brothers, Curt Hennig, and Stone Cold.

 

I've read straight-faced arguments from the mid-to-late 00s that rank Randy Orton and Chris Jericho as better workers than Bret Hart and can only think, "This is the power of the WWE's spin on shaping the legacies of pro-wrestlers." This is also why there are many rabid Bret fans that might place him too highly - because they need to trumpet his greatness in order to counteract the WWE's lengthy smear campaign against him.

[khawk20]

Greg Gagne.

 

There are two distinct camps with Greg: Camp 1 states that Neopotism is the only reason he ascended to the top of the tag ladder with Brunzell, that he was not believable as a worker, and so forth. A lot of this camp were first exposed to Greg in the dying days of the AWA (when Greg was past his prime but still prominent...he could be trusted not to bolt, after all).

 

Camp 2 are people that both saw Greg actually wrestle back in the 70's and early 80's (admittedly there are less and less of us around now) and recognized that while he was Verne's son, he was a good worker and a good talker in his own right, AND people that have watched his footage with a critical eye and found him "not nearly as bad as they had heard, and cast just about perfectly within the AWA structure of wrestlers" in that same 70's/80's time frame.

 

Each camp is a loose representation of what I have encountered over the decades in terms of people's attitudes and opinions about Greg and the AWA in general, but trust me, for AWA guys, there has never been someone that had the "He's great/he sucked" dynamic argued over more.

[JerryvonKramer]

Jerry Lawler (and indeed Memphis in general) would be one I think, insomuch as here he is considered as a GOAT shortlister, whereas I get the impression from Matysik, Flair, and others of that generation that they don't really think of Lawler as being great in that way and don't have a great deal of love for Memphis -- Flair usually has a certain amount of contempt in his voice when he talks about Memphis, if he ever talks about it at all. I also don't think a guy like Nick Bockwinkel had a great deal of respect for the Memphis style based on shoots I've seen.

[Jingus]

There are indeed a ton of fans who don't think Lawler's an all-time great, or at least didn't believe it until the WWE started pushing that narrative during the Miz and Cole feuds a few years back. His 90s WWF work as a stalling, braying piece-of-shit heel isn't the sort of thing which would impress your average workrate mark.

 

 

Camp 2 are people that both saw Greg actually wrestle back in the 70's and early 80's

Oh, don't simplify it down to "if you think This, then you've not actually witnessed it". Lots of guys who actually worked the territory at the time, like Bobby Heenan, have their own personal opinions about Greg sucking hard.

 

 

And yeah, this is one of the relatively few places where Shawn/Angle are divisive. On most boards, they're still considered to be pretty great.

 

 

Ooh, here's one: Giant Baba. I dunno if I've ever seen anyone who was Just Okay with his work, it seems that either you're appalled by his terrible look and clumsy execution... or you're not, and you totally love the guy. I'm in the second group, but it took a few years and I don't blame anyone who can't get past the fact that he's one of the most creaky-looking workers in the history of da biz.

[Jingus]

EDIT: double post

[khawk20]

JIngus: Can't use the quote function at work for some reason, but I did not mean it to come across as "If you weren't there you wouldn't get it" or that general vibe. The division was there back then too, I concur, but in the present tense there are less of us that are in the "Camp 1" Gagne-supporter group as opposed to when the AWA was running full tilt.

 

 

It's a great point about Heenan and other workers of the day, and it extended to fans too, no doubt. It actually helps the argument about how Divisive opinions on Greg are, and were.