Alex Shelley

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[NotJayTabb]

Was kind of surprised he'd not already been nominated, especially when both members of American Wolves and ReDRagon are. It's funny, I was looking through the dashboard for my blog, checking if there were any wrestlers who I'd reviewed a lot of matches by but weren't nominated, and Shelley's name popped up. In each review, I've been very glowing about Shelley, how fun his offence was, how I enjoyed his smug character work and how surprisingly effective his selling was. Yet despite this, I can barely remember the matches. Not sure what this say about him, the fact that he's pretty forgettable despite my enjoying his matches, but it made me think he's at least worth revisiting in the next week or so.

[Timbo Slice]

When he was in Generation Next, he was exciting and new, and although he had his bullshit spots, he was at least smooth and tried to work relatively smart. Although he was definitely predisposed to bullshit in some of his bigger matches. I don't think he can be anywhere close to my list, but there was definitely a time where he was enjoyable enough that I sought him out.

[Grimmas]

When he first arrived in TNA with the camera, I thought he was a top 5 worker in the world. Did all the little things right. He started to speed up too much in tags for me later on.

 

Going through the candidates, sadly he has no shot.

[InYourCase]

I echo a lot of Grimmas' thoughts. I think he's excellent even today. Love the Gen Next run and his later run with The Embassy. I mentioned it on Twitter a few days ago but in hindsight, MCMG's run in ROH was insane. Nothing but high quality matches. The two with The Briscoes, a great (long, but great) match with Jacobs & Black, a fun Steenerico match, and that great Kings of Wrestling match. Technically he's superb and he's a charisma machine. Sadly, I don't think there's room for him on my list.

[Quentin]

I think Shelley deserves some reevaluation after having some stuff during the last few years that help his case as a singles guy like the Lee Moriarty and Gresham matches. His tag teams with Sabin and KUSHIDA were consistently awesome and as I keep digging through IWA-MS stuff, in 2003 the dude having killer stuff with Claudio and the Jacobs feud has been great. He may not have any super high end stuff but this idea I’ve seen that he doesn’t have strong enough singles work is complete nonsense. He’s no guarantee for my list but if I keep coming away loving his singles matches, it’ll be hard for me to not have him.

[Clayton Jones]

He's definitely under consideration for me and one of the names I have down I'm most excited to spend more time on.

[simon]

Far from a lock, but someone on a preliminary pre-cut sort of a list. 

It's more then Generation Next and MCMG, honestly. Having done the deepest dive on 2000s IWA Mid South of probably anyone ever, there's so many little Shelley gems in there, as a guy who got it remarkably fast. Also a delight whenever he popped up in PWG or wherever. Beyond that, he's up there with AJ as one of the best television workers in TNA history, which is both impressive and a little depressing. Once he's out of there, the KUSHIDA team is one of the most fun and reliable tag team acts of the last decade, and the career revitalization over the last eighteen months as a singles guy has seen him not only produce these great matches, but also do that with talent that is best described as "unrefined", if we're going to be nice about it, outside of the three match Jonathan Gresham series in 2019-20. It's not the career it seemed like he was going to have in 2004 and 2005, but becoming your generation's Bobby Eaton instead of your generation's Chris Jericho isn't the worst thing in the world. Hardly a disqualifying factor.

And outside of Roderick Strong, there's not a better or more prolific tag team wrestler to come out of that generation, and Shelley is probably more diverse than Roddy in that regard. 

Pair it with the Generation Next/Embassy runs, some of my favorite stuff ever (especially on Shelley's end, playing a different sort of heel in each environment, calculating leader vs. total stooge), and all the Motor City Machine Guns stuff, genuinely one of the best tag teams of the last twenty years largely led by Shelley, and it's enough for me to at the very least put him into consideration. High chance he winds up on the final cut, even if it's the bottom ten to twenty. 

 

[NotJayTabb]

So I watched the Shelley/Ruby Soho match from Beyond last night, and it really made me want to do a dive into Shelley's back catalogue. It was a good match with a great Shelley performance where he seems fully aware of the size difference between the two and how to incorporate it into the match. He even uses a bearhug, which is not a move I'd associate with Alex Shelley, but totally works in this context. I don't know how long this IWTV title reign will last, but he feels perfect for the role. An elder statesman of the indy scene, going from territory to territory defending the belt against all comers certainly fits him better than it did Warhorse. Given that he's been good for 18 years now, I think he's a good contender for my 100, looking forward to revisiting his older stuff.

[El McKell]

There's something sad for me about someone like Alex Shelley who I've always had a positive opinion of, who watching more of them for this has only improved my opinion of but I know that there is no way I can put them in my top 100

[Clayton Jones]

I really loved the first batch of Shelley matches I watched for GWE. He had a feud with Trey Miguel between a few promotions that made me much more excited to watch Miguel wrestle than I ever had been before. Not trying to knock the guy, Shelley just has that factor where he finds and brings out such an engaging quality in most of his opponents. He still executes technical one upsmanship and intricate sequences in a way that feels competitive like few modern wrestlers are able to do. Versus Bandido in Prestige in 2022 was also very good, with much more focus than your typical big singles Bandido match usually has. A little meandering towards the end as you might expect  but overall a very enjoyable match with great contributions from Shelley as the vet. Then I went back and watched him VS Shocker in TNA, a match I probably watched decades back, but had zero recollection of. It was a ton of fun, not much more you could want, and great chemistry from two wrestlers from very different walks of life. I'm excited to go back for more Shelley when I'm able to circle back to him. I've never loved his team with Sabin so in the interest of fairness I'll probably pick back up there.