Best Year by a Wrestler

[Gregor]

I imagine that this topic comes up on every wrestling message board in existence, but I haven't seen it here, so...

 

What's the best year a wrestler's ever had, from an in-ring performance standpoint? Baseball fans always talk about those magical years, like Ted Williams' 1941 and Bob Gibson's 1968. What are the wrestling equivalents?

 

Because wrestling's years aren't individual, separate entities like sports seasons are, you can be even more specific with your endpoints if you want. It's just that "the 365 days from December 28, 1996 through December 27, 1997, for Sting" doesn't pack the punch that "Sting's 1997" does, to use one example.

[Loss]

I would probably say El Dandy in 1990 is the best in-ring year I have ever seen a wrestler have. Ric Flair in 1989 is up there too obviously.

 

Kind of a left field sleeper pick for me would be Akira Taue in 1995. The big three all had better years than that, but Taue's '95 compares to just about any other year I can think of that a wrestler has ever had.

[Dylan Waco]

Not sure it's the absolute best, but Buddy Rose in 1980 is incredible.

[JerryvonKramer]

Hard to imagine that the answer to this isn't "Ric Flair" and any one year from the 1980s. I don't even know if 1989 is the lock, he had amazing years in 83, 85 and 87.

 

I think if you made a "top 20" sort of list for this thread, Flair would occupy about 5 or 6 of them just through the sheer number of good to great matches he had against different opponents in different territories in any given year of that decade.

 

Pick any year and there's stuff that you forget about in the context of Flair's career. The Kerry matches. The matches with Jumbo. The matches with Martel. The match with the DiBiase face turn. The Garvin matches. The Windham matches.

[Death From Above]

Based on all the TV we have, Misawa in 92 or 93 is fine by me.

[WingedEagle]

My first reaction is it had to be Kawada in '94. But then what about Kobashi in '93? Or Misawa/Taue in '95? I dunno how to pick the best of the bunch from one of those 4 over that period.

[KrisZ]

Ric Flair's 1985 is pretty damn hard to beat

[MikeCampbell]

Lex Luger in 1989?

[Beast]

Dylan, do you have your huge list of wrestlers with better years than HHH's 2000 around anywhere? Was lost in the DVDVR board crash last year, but I remember a lot of interesting choices there.

[Dylan Waco]

Unfortunately that is gone forever. I could probably replicate most of it if pressed, though it's notable that in some cases I specifically did not pick the best years for certain guys, as my intent was to show how overrated that HHH year was.

[Jordan]

John Cena in 2007 deserves some love. The Umaga matches, the Khali matches, the HBK matches, the Orton Summerslam match...and in everyone of those I feel like he was definitely the best guy. That really might be the strongest year an ace has ever had for WWE, in-ring wise.

[Dylan Waco]

Cena from the middle of 06-end of 07 is one of my favorite runs by an ace ever. Going through HHH at Mania, RVD in his building (yeah he lost I know), Umaga being Umaga, Orton at Summerslam, Edge in "his match," Michaels at Mania, Monsters like Khali and Hulking babyfaces like Lashley, and being universally awesome through all of it. It really felt like the true "fighting champ' vibe they tried to get over with Bret, but turned up to ten and presented in a more "WWE" way. I would love to see Bryan or Cesaro or someone else get a chance to do something like this at some point, but I kind of doubt we will see anything like that again.

 

I talked about this with my brother tonight, but Rey in 2009 was incredible enough where even with Christian right there being awesome every week in ECW, I thought Rey was the better week to week wrestler (though he did miss a month to suspension that year). I remember him having seemingly throw away matches that year v. guys like Shelton, shitty as fuck Edge and John Morrison, that were really dynamic and exciting, on top of crazy great performances like the Elimination Chamber match. I want to go back and watch all this stuff in bulk eventually.

 

Black Terry was fucking outstanding in 2010. At the time we were getting tons of IWRG and indie uploads from Black Terry Jr.'s youtube account, to the point where there were probably three or four dozen Terry matches available that year. I don't remember him ever having anything less than a good performance, and probably at least half of those were performances that I thought were tremendous. Of course I haven't watched them sense and who knows how much of that is even still out there. It's also worth noting that he didn't have a singles match make tape at all that year IIRC.

 

Also if you are including promos, character work/how they carry themselves, et. than I could very easily be convinced that Luger in 89 is a serious contender here.

[Eduardo]

Another recent candidate is Dave Finlay in 2006. Came back, and quickly was one of the best workers on the planet. His first six months were filled with good-to-great TV matches, and he had a match at Judgment Day 2006 with [x] that was a legitimate MOTYC. While SD! was really good during that period, his return felt like he upped a lot of workers' games. His offense felt so fresh and tight compared to everyone around him.

[Timbo Slice]

Rey in 09 is pretty ridiculously awesome.

 

Flair and Luger in 89. Kobashi in 93. Hokuto in 93. Aja in 94. Taue in 95 is a good one, too. Lyger had a great 96 that was kind of unsung, as did Ohtani. There's some people who loved Mariko Yoshida in 98 (IMO, she was fine, but nothing too crazy to write home about).

 

US is tough once you get to the 1990s. Eddy in 95 maybe? Scorp in 93?

 

Samoa Joe in 2004 was really fun but I don't think it's up to snuff. Danielson in 06 maybe?

 

I always loved this question. A definitive list would be neat to see.

[ohtani's jacket]

Yoshida was 1999.

 

Some notable ones for me:

 

Fujiwara in 1990 and Tamura in '96. Hashimoto in '96. Choshu in '86. Chigusa in '86. Mark Rocco in '78. Ozaki in '96. Pierroth Jr in '92. Steve Grey in '83. Carl Greco in '97. Bestia Salvaje in '92. Arn Anderson and Ricky Steamboat in '92. Windham in '93. Dustin Rhodes in '94. Negro Casas in '97. Satanico in 1990.

[El-P]

Yep, Yoshida was definitely 99. Seems like an eternity ago now.

[dawho5]

I would add Akiyama in '96 to this. Going from barely seen as a threat to holding his end of one of the greatest matches of all time in one year has got to mean something.

[Sidebottom]

Benoit had such an excellent 1999, that him entering the WWF climate in 2000 was a zenith for me in terms of anticipation of a debuting talent.

[DMJ]

Obviously it may be "too soon," but boy did Daniel Bryan have a year in 2013. Here's what I'm referring to, chronologically:

 

* The tag team run with Kane

* Good-to-great singles TV matches against Ziggler and members of the Shield

* Early summer series with Orton

* July 22nd's gauntlet against Swagger, Cesaro, and Ryback

* SummerSlam against Cena

* August's gauntlet against the Shield

* End of the year matches with the Wyatt Family

 

Personally, I think the Orton/Bryan matches that happened on PPV after SummerSlam will be remembered better in time, it's just that, at the time, the fact that Bryan wasn't going to be winning hurt my enthusiasm/enjoyment when I watched them.

 

Still, in terms of WWE, I don't think anyone had a 2013 even close to that if you look at consistency and "show stealing." One could argue Cesaro, but I think it'd be tough.

 

What do people think of HBK's 96?

[(BP)]

HBK had a lot of stuff in 96 that was OK at best, but he had the Jarrett Memphis-style match, the Diesel No DQ, and Mind Games, so it was still a pretty strong year. I think if the Iron Man match was better it could be called a great year. It also doesn't help that he was compared to Sting in some ways at the time, and Sting had way better matches with Sid and Vader a few years earlier.

[Gregor]

I think 1996 Shawn is held back from this discussion by a lack of must-watch TV matches and the incredibly disappointing Vader feud (which is even more disappointing when you see their house show matches).

 

I'm a Shawn fan, though. There are probably a lot of people here who don't like stuff like Shawn vs. Diesel and Shawn vs. Sid.

[Loss]

I don't know if these are career years in each cases, but the standouts from 1990-1997 are probably these:

 

1990 - El Dandy, El Satanico, Yoshiaki Fujiwara

1991 - Keiji Muto, Hiroshi Hase

1992 - Negro Casas, Vader, Rick Rude

1993 - Akira Hokuto, Kenta Kobashi, Mitsuharu Misawa, Stan Hansen, Vader, Genichiro Tenryu, Shinya Hashimoto

1994 - Toshiaki Kawada, Vader, Shinya Hashimoto

1995 - Akira Taue, Aja Kong

1996 - Toshiaki Kawada, El Hijo del Santo, Negro Casas, Shinya Hashimoto

1997 - Kiyoshi Tamura, El Hijo del Santo

 

To me, Vader is the only guy from the 90s that has a case for any years where part of it was made in the U.S., as the quality of American wrestling slipped in the 90s comparative to wrestling everywhere else in the world. There is no Flair/Steamboat-level rivalry in 90s American wrestling. The best guys out there were Bret and Shawn, and they weren't knocking on the door of Jushin Liger, much less Misawa or Kawada.

 

And Jerry, I think 90s All Japan will change your perception a little on Flair - not that you'll knock him down a peg or anything necessarily, but you'll see Misawa, Kawada and Kobashi hanging with him in terms of volume, year after year, even surpassing him in some cases.

 

Eddy Guerrero's wrestling career is terribly overrated prior to the 2000s.

[jpchicago23]

The Jarrett match was at IYH in 95

[(BP)]

I knew I should've looked it up first. I knew there was a Shawn match I liked the month before Mania 96. It was with Owen, I think he swung down from the inyh set like Tarzan during his entrance.

[thebrainfollower]

ok