Rey Mysterio, Great flippy floppy guy or greatest flippy floppy guy? Options

[NintendoLogic]

Per the orders of goodhelmet, the Rey discussion going on in the Punk thread must now be directed here.

[smkelly]

Rey has been awesome since...well, his debut. But I wouldn't call him the best flippy-floppy guy, as Jack Evans and PAC's 3rd best highspot beats out anything Rey has ever done highspot wise.

He's certainly in the top hundred of the GOAT though - Evans and Pac - not so much.

[Tim Cooke]

I think Rey's hardest and most innovative flying moves blow away Evans and Pac. Mascarita Dorada might be. Rey's flipping plancha into a rana > any 630 or whatever the highspot of the month is these days.

[goodhelmet]

Rey has been awesome since...well, his debut. But I wouldn't call him the best flippy-floppy guy, as Jack Evans and PAC's 3rd best highspot beats out anything Rey has ever done highspot wise.

He's certainly in the top hundred of the GOAT though - Evans and Pac - not so much.

Really? Best 100? Rey is easily in the highest of highest echelon of pro wrestlers to ever wrestle. Rey can flip and fly but that is hardly the only thing he does well. In fact, I want to edit the sub title to this thread because it offends my internal wrestling fan meter. Fucking flippy flop guy.

[Sean Liska]

I kind of started this by saying he should be in the discussion for best ever, and now I'm second-guessing myself. But I think Rey's sheer volume of really good to great matches has to be up there with anybody. I can't think of many times in the past 9 years where WWE has given him 10 minutes of TV or PPV time and he hasn't delivered an above average match. It's crazy. He must be responsible for hundreds of quality TV matches, which you can't say for many wrestlers because you can only do that in modern WWE.

I really started thinking about this during the RAW a few weeks ago when he had matches with Miz and Cena. They were both super-heated, exciting, fun, and different matches. It feels like we just take it for granted at this point. In the past few months he's had a great 3-way with Del Rio and Punk, a great tag match with Riley against Miz and Swagger, the Punk PPV match, falls count anywhere PPV match with Rhodes, 2 good Punk TV matches, and a great 3-way with Del Rio and Miz for the #1 contender spot. Who else but the early 90s AJPW guys have produced that volume of output? And Rey isn't exactly working with Kobashi and Jumbo every week.

I do think you need to enjoy modern WWE to see Rey in this light, since that's where his best and most consistent work has been. I don't get the sense that modern WWE is too well-regarded around the internet, which is probably an issue for him.

[Dr. Reverend Vic...]

Rey's clearly the flippy flying dude. The real discussion is where he ranks overall.

[NintendoLogic]

Rey has been awesome since...well, his debut. But I wouldn't call him the best flippy-floppy guy, as Jack Evans and PAC's 3rd best highspot beats out anything Rey has ever done highspot wise.

He's certainly in the top hundred of the GOAT though - Evans and Pac - not so much.

Really? Best 100? Rey is easily in the highest of highest echelon of pro wrestlers to ever wrestle. Rey can flip and fly but that is hardly the only thing he does well. In fact, I want to edit the sub title to this thread because it offends my internal wrestling fan meter. Fucking flippy flop guy.

I agree that calling Rey a flippy guy is selling him criminally short. The subtitle was a tongue-in-cheek reference to jdw's post in the Punk thread.

[MJH]

Just for the sake of stating a number, whilst I'm not sold on Rey as an absolute GOATC, I don't see how he's outside Top 25 and that's being loose; I probably have him in the 15-20 bracket but that's without making a conscious list in my head. Like I said in the Punk thread, I think he's become "THE" US Babyface worker, and he's also my '00s WOTD.

[Col. Da Bears]

Rey is very likely greatest flyer of all time. He's almost peerless.

But I think if more people saw Pac, he'd be untouched these days as a current flying wrestler. Pac and Ricochet are so fucking improved and both do things that defy description!!!! I just wish they were seen on a wider platform. Pac is so fucking underrated it's a sin.

But yeah, Rey is untouchable. Greatest flyer of all time. I agree that he's "never" been not good... and I can't think of many wrestlers I'd say that about.

[Tim Evans]

I think the lowest point in Rey's career had to be the Devil horn days of 2000 when he was wrestling guys like Kronik and the Harris Twins. But even then he was the best guy in the company.

[smkelly]

Rey has been awesome since...well, his debut. But I wouldn't call him the best flippy-floppy guy, as Jack Evans and PAC's 3rd best highspot beats out anything Rey has ever done highspot wise.

He's certainly in the top hundred of the GOAT though - Evans and Pac - not so much.

Rey is easily in the highest of highest echelon of pro wrestlers to ever wrestle.

I'm glad you like him more than I do, but what were you trying to do there exactly? I'm not going to change my mind that easily - hell, Rey could be in my top twenty/thirty but I used a different umbrella number and I didn't make a list.

Besides, I said it without saying it that Evans/PAC < Rey @ highspots (flippity-floppity) but Rey < Evans/PAC overall - i.e. he is more than just flippity-floppity.

Maybe a POLL and DISCUSSION FORUM should be erected because these conversations keep coming up - GOAT?

Nevertheless, I'd wager to think that being in the top 100 of all-time wrestlers would be an accomplishment in itself, not disparaging commentary of someone's career.

How many pro wrestlers have there been - a few thousand at least?

100 / 2,500 = .04

So he would be in the highest echelon of wrestlers all-time (top 4%) just being inside the top one-hundred if there are or have been at least twenty-five hundred pro wrestlers. Top four percent is up there in my opinion.

[cm funk]

I remember a discussion on dvdvr a few years ago about Rey v Liger. I think it was pretty split. Personally I think Rey is clearly superior

[Loss]

Rey is of course awesome. But I feel like to balance out the discussion, it should be mentioned that most of the 1992-1996 AAA trios matches he was part of opposite Juventud or Psicosis and company really don't hold up well at all. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't mean much, but I don't think "he was always awesome" is accurate. I would say 1995 was his first great year, and a lot of the matches people praised at the time -- especially the touring matches in ECW and WAR -- don't look all that good today. Still, 16+ years of being awesome is a remarkable ride.

[El-P]

Rey working the shitty WWE style based around one of the most ridiculous and annoying spot ever really disqualifies him from being considered a GOAT contender to me. I'm blaming the company and its policy of molding workers, not Rey, who by all acount is an awesome worker.

[jdw]

I agree that calling Rey a flippy guy is selling him criminally short. The subtitle was a tongue-in-cheek reference to jdw's post in the Punk thread.

"He's just a flippy floppy guy."
-WrestlingClassics

What a stupid thing to say.

Just for reference, in case it wasn't clear:

That was a (paraphrased) statement by some crank on WrestlingClassics more than a half decade ago. He wasn't without supporters who thought the say thing.

So please credit it to WC cranks.

I like Rey. Suspect I saw and liked him before all but one or two posters on this board, and certainly have defended him against cranks over the past two decades.

John

[jdw]

Rey Misterio Jr.

I think there's another one as well, since I seem to recall one of the old cranky wrestlers who posted to Classics saying something similar.

John

[El-P]

For all the criticism you can adress to Rey over the years, and there is some I guess, to say he's a "flippy floppy guy" is really stupid.

[Dylan Waco]

Rey is of course awesome. But I feel like to balance out the discussion, it should be mentioned that most of the 1992-1996 AAA trios matches he was part of opposite Juventud or Psicosis and company really don't hold up well at all. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't mean much, but I don't think "he was always awesome" is accurate. I would say 1995 was his first great year, and a lot of the matches people praised at the time -- especially the touring matches in ECW and WAR -- don't look all that good today. Still, 16+ years of being awesome is a remarkable ride.

Really disagree that the ECW stuff doesn't hold up. Overall it is a VERY tiny portion of his career anyhow, but from where I stand those matches hold up remarkably well when you consider what we have seen since then.

[Dylan Waco]

Rey working the shitty WWE style based around one of the most ridiculous and annoying spot ever really disqualifies him from being considered a GOAT contender to me. I'm blaming the company and its policy of molding workers, not Rey, who by all acount is an awesome worker.

As a counterpoint I just want to thank god for modern WWE "style." It has given us more quality tv matches than any promotion in history, with far fewer duds than any promotion in history. Rey is the undisputed king of the most consistent week-to-week in ring product in the history of television wrestling. I also agree with MJH that he is the best U.S. babyface in history, though I could probably be convinced that Terry Funk is the greatest all around babyface. Either way Rey does not look out of place in a GOAT based on those two things alone.

[El-P]

As a counterpoint I just want to thank god for modern WWE "style." It has given us more quality tv matches than any promotion in history, with far fewer duds than any promotion in history.

Modern WWE style (and I put the entire production into the word "style") has basically killed my love for wrestling and has only produced an entire landscape of dullness to me. Fuck modern WWE style. Good for those you can still find something to love in it, I sure can't no matter how many chance I give it. Like I said, either it has passed me by completely, either it really sucks.