Matches that happened too early or too late

[Mr. Lacelle]

I was watching some Mid South tv on the network & a match popped up between a young Buddy Landell & Ted Dibiase & I thought how awesome that match would have been in 86 as opposed to 82. Which in turn made me think of some other matches that just happened at the wrong time in each other's career. Savage vs Austin happening in 95 when Austin was an afterthought & Savage was on auto pilot kinda stinks. Bret vs Misawa happening four years later would have been grand.

[Jmare007]

Misawa vs Bret is an interesting one. I'm not even sure how a match between both of them would've worked at their peaks but it would've been very interesting to see.

 

Bryan Danielson vs Hiroshi Tanahashi (too early)

Bryan Danielson vs Jerry Lawler (too late)

Eddie Guerrero vs Terry Funk (too early, though it was still pretty damn good)

Vader vs Hashimoto (see above)

[stro]

Bryan vs Lawler sounds like a match that would never be good at any point of their careers. Bizarre styles clash.

 

Vader and Hashimoto had both too early and too late as their match in Hustle was so fucking bad

[SmartMark15]

Not so much in terms of career trajectory but in terms of style and audience reaction, Braun vs. Roman from Payback would have been massively over in the 80s WWF landscape. Children would have literally wept.

[WingedEagle]

Brock vs. Rock from '02. Pretty terrific match given Lesnar's experience at that point, but imagine what it could've been later.

[rzombie1988]

Too late - Demolition vs LOD

[spaldoni]

How about Sting defending the WCW title against Mean Mark (Undertaker) at a house show in 1990.

[JRH]

Too late-Bret Hart vs Sting in 1998. Would have been a dream match in the late 80s/early 90s.

[stro]

You could add Bret vs anyone in WCW as too late, really. Sadly, the problem in the Sting/Bret matches wasn't even Bret. Sting had been around Nash too long, was....cloudy....in the head, lazy as fuck for basically all of 1998 outside of one or two matches.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Are you implying that Nash was responsible for Sting being fucked up on drugs? I know Nash is one of the go to villains responsible for everything bad ever, but really?

[stro]

No, I'm implying that Nash's laziness rubbed off onto Sting in 1998.

[zep81]

Leanar/Nakamura from '06. Would love that match now if they'd let Brock off the leash for it.

[BigBadMick]

Bret v Rocky Maivia in Spring 1997.

[BigBadMick]

Other way around - if 1994 Pillman was let loose on 1997 WWF.

[Microstatistics]

Hashimoto vs. Kawada, 2004. It was still really good and I know it has some big advocates but a 1994 version sounds more compelling.

[rzombie1988]

Hashimoto vs. Kawada, 2004. It was still really good and I know it has some big advocates but a 1994 version sounds more compelling.

The amount of money NJPW and AJPW pissed away by refusing to work with each other is astounding.

[G. Badger]

Too late: Vader's run in AJPW. I liked it a lot but, Vader joining in '92-96 (perhaps instead of Albright???) - That would have been gold!

 

Edit: adding KENTA & Jun Akiyama vs Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue (NOAH Great Voyage 10/03/09)

 

Maybe sometime in 2005...

[C.S.]

I'm surprised no one mentioned Hogan vs. Flair. I thought that would be in the first post. Even in the WWF in '91-'92, it felt a few years too late - never mind WCW in '94, where the bloom was really off the rose.

[El-P]

Shane Douglas vs Ric Flair (old ECW fan talking). 5-6 years too late.

[JNLister]

Flair-Michaels in 1991 was likely too early for Michaels, while Flair-Michaels in 2008 was clearly too late for Flair. In theory there might have been a sweet spot between, but the matches they had in 2003 were disappointing, so it may just be they didn't click or contrast right.

[El-P]

Flair-Michaels in 1991 was likely too early for Michaels, while Flair-Michaels in 2008 was clearly too late for Flair. In theory there might have been a sweet spot between, but the matches they had in 2003 were disappointing, so it may just be they didn't click or contrast right.

 

Flair sucked by 2003 and Michaels, well, the less said about his vaunted "great" comeback the better, so it's still a matter of too late to me. In 1995 I guess it would have been the best time considering their career, although I doubt it would have got as great as the Jarrett match.

[TonyPulis'Cap]

AJ Styles vs Rey Mysterio.

 

This happened for the odd 5* promotion in the UK at the beginning of 2016, just before AJ came to the WWE. While I still love Rey, and have quite enjoyed some of his Lucha Underground matches (where I guess there's probably some heavy editing work going on) I think we can agree that a few years earlier this match would've been tremendous.

[Tim Cooke]

Tamura vs. Sakuraba

[Cap]

Joe/Regal - Probably could been pretty great anytime after Joe really got his legs under him, esp after like 2003 until Regal retired in 2013, but 2008ish seems pretty ripe for this one.

[supersonic]

CIMA vs. AJ Styles

 

Styles needed to experience his NJPW run to best compliment CIMA's bump-centric philosophy. Instead they just did moves with zero meaning in 2005.