Rey Misterio Jr vs Dean Malenko, WCW Monday Nitro 07/08/96 Options

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Pretty sure this is the best Nitro match of the year. Rey wins the cruiserweight title in an outstanding match. One of the better spotfests you'll see, with everything hit cleanly and the pace being pretty consistently fast. I think about someone like Jerome who doesn't like modern Rey in WWE and say he'd probably love this match because it's Rey doing all the stuff that got him over.

I like this match-up more than I used to after seeing this and the Bash match.

[El-P]

Yeah, I do like this match a lot, although I thought Dean wasn't at his best against Rey and grounded him too much at times. But yeah, Rey was allowed to shine by doing *his* stuff and got himself over like crazy. This is what was great about WCW, they let their guys do their own stuff, and this created an interesting mix and diversity. The opposite of the modern WWE philosophy.

[shoe]

I thought this was just a great sprint. I thought Rey almost killed himself on that Asai Moonsault to the floor. I didn't understand the point of picking up Misterio twice on pinfall attempts. It kinda buried his victory instead of giving him the momentum he deserved and needed to be the ace of the division. Still a fun filled match. Their were a couple miscues. Malenko covered for the 1st one really well. The Asai Moonsault thing I'm not sure who to blame. Malenko looked to be selling and then Misterio did the move while Malenko wasn't 100% ready to catch him. Oh well still a really good match between the 2 who were having the best matches between one another in WCW in 96.