smkelly

Haven't thought about this for a few years, but this would be my tentative top ten: * Bryan Danielson * CM Punk * Toshiaki Kawada * Stan Hansen * Mitsuharu Misawa * Kenta Kobashi * Jushin Liger * Ric Flair * Jumbo Tsuruta * Bret Hart

First match I remember seeing was Hogan vs. Warrior at WrestleMania 6. I recall seeing some WCW around the same time and was an instant fan of Sting - I even had a few of the WCW action figures, which IIRC, included Sting and Brian Pillman. I recall seeing some ECW, don't know the year, but I was young enough for my mother to censor my viewing it after she saw bloody faces. My memory becomes clearer during the Attitude Era, particularly of Stone Cold. I was grounded from watching wrestling after me and a few friends at school had a Royal Rumble match and I gave one of them a Stone Cold stunner...and subsequently got suspended for it. I followed Goldberg all throughout 1998, and this is when I became aware of Chris Benoit if memory serves right. During this time I had the N64 and the IMO, very best wrestling games ever made: WCW/nWo Revenge, WWF No Mercy, WWF WrestleMania 2000 and WCW vs. nWo: World Tour. I became involved in the tape trading scene in 2000 or 2001, which is when I was exposed to puro, joshi and lucha. I took an instant liking to puro, especially All Japan and the New Japan juniors. I continued watching wrestling after graduating high school and joining the Marines. When I was in the fleet I ordered some DVDs from Will, the 2005 MOTYC set IIRC. After getting out of the Marines, I continued watching regularly until June 2007, when the Benoit murders happened. After that, I sporadically watched, mainly All Japan from the '90s. My interest waned considerably thereafter following a family tragedy. I downloaded a few matches here and there that had received praise, but otherwise didn't watch much of anything wrestling related on any sort of regular basis. It wasn't until recently that I started watching wrestling again, mostly documentaries or compilations I could find on Youtube.

Bryan Danielson's "pre-peak" ranks in my mind.

There are some real wrestling fans in this thread.

The powerbomb and chokeslam come to mind for big guys.

Meltz: "In my opinion this was even better than Hansen/Kobashi and was an all time classic match. This was the best performance I've ever seen of Williams. A major match of the year candidate." I don't agree with his sentiment, but Kobashi's bump taking here was extraordinary, one of his finest performances for sure.

Just watched this tonight on a Schneider Comp with my dad and fiancee. I've seen this match several times over the years; first time was in '02 IIRC, so it isn't new to me, but it was brand new to them. They dug it for about all the same reasons all us hardcore or smart fans do. The early rudoing of Samurai, the brawling on the floor, the revenge spots, the comeback of Liger, the comeback of Samurai, and then the comeback and finishing run of Liger's. My fiancee actually clapped when Liger pinned Samurai.

Watched this with my dad (of all people) tonight. I've seen it several times, and the only reason why I'm commenting is because of his reactions. He took a liking to Kudo right away, and likened Toyoda to my sister (which is an accurate description). He noted the difference in how they were hitting each other, "A lot different than them women on the WWE." "Holy shit," was his response to the first explosion. "Holy shit," was his response to several of the head-drop suplexes and the follow-up explosions, especially the, "Had to be planned one." Overall, he thought the match was exciting, but was downright cruel on par with some of the MMA female cage fights he's seen recently online.

John Cena 1. Umaga 2. Edge 3. Batista 4. Punk 5. Jericho William Regal 1. Finlay 2. Benoit Bret Hart 1. Owen 2. Davey Boy 3. Benoit 4. Hennig 5. Piper

Those are considered pythons?

Agreed, had Hashimoto delivered the Scott Norton 'chest collapse' strategy here, oh man.

It's one of the better matches they had together. This was gut-check city for Misawa. The weird thing is that the kick didn't look any worse than a normal hate-filled Kawada kick. Weirder yet, Misawa is so epically stoic about it. 6/4/94 is def. their best. 5/98, 10/92, and 7/95 are all excellent as well. Matches they had in the Carny, like 3/93 and 3/98 and 3/00, I'm drawing a blank. IIRC their first Carny match in '97 was a great performance. Pretty much, they're all awesome matches, and it would be splitting hairs to rank them.