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Rey Mysterio vs Daniel Bryan


MoS

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They are almost certainly the two best wrestlers of the past 16 years. They are also perhaps the only 2 babyfaces in WWE in the last decade who have been loved and cheered across all demographics. Their biggest runs came as underdog scrappy babyfaces. Bryan has the advantage of being a very good and very over heel over Rey, but Rey was such a defining, transcendental babyface that it almost doesn't matter.

 

For me, it is really tough. I rate the best Bryan matches above best Rey matches, but Rey delivered more consistent good quality matches. There was a 2-3 year span where he was actually having multiple good TV matches every week, and which still hold up, something which is pretty mind-blowing when you think about it.

 

On the whole though, I will have to go with Bryan by the slimmest of margins, purely because when he was on, and he was on most of the time, he got me invested and immersed in his matches in a way Rey didn't quite at that level. It is very close though.

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I know I'm in the minority but don't view Mysterio's WWE run as part of any kind of GWE case. Almost always good, but he became a straight singles & doubles hitter. Fully recognize that part of that is due to how and where on the card he was used, and while I don't doubt that given the opportunity he could've done more, the fact is that's what he delivered for me. He'll absolutely rank and understand him coming up in these discussions, but pretty far from a top of the ballot guy for me.

 

 

Note: revised because as originally constructed pre-gym and coffee this post was as ambiguous as could be.

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I assume you are talking about Bryan? And is the singles and doubles thing a baseball reference? I am Indian, do all I know about baseball is "the game that looks like Cricket, which has given birth to sex innuendos" haha.

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I assume you are talking about Bryan? And is the singles and doubles thing a baseball reference? I am Indian, do all I know about baseball is "the game that looks like Cricket, which has given birth to sex innuendos" haha.

 

Ha! That is quite the error on my part. I was referring to Mysterio and will edit the original post. Bryan quite a capable singles hitter and slugger. Mysterio never did too much for me. And yes, baseball is responsible for many terrible things.

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Bryan's versatility makes him a slightly better candidate in my view. Rey specializes in being the flashy underdog and does it tremendously well... but that's pretty much the only role he ever plays. (And as shown by his pretty lousy heel run with the Filthy Animals in Russo's WCW tenure, it's probably best that he doesn't try to be a villain.) AmDrag has a lot more different tricks in his repertoire, and at his best he can be just as great a plucky little-man babyface as Mysterio as well. .

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I think throughout this process, I was imagining Bryan higher, but when I started comparing their careers, I couldn't justify it. In the battle of trailblazing, prolific careers from undersized guys, they are 1 and 1a, but Rey edges Bryan out. I keep thinking of things to write about Rey, then thinking "Well yeah, but you could say the same about Bryan", so I think the difference for me just came down to Rey having more longevity.

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Bryan is literally one spot higher on my working ballot right now.

 

I'm certain I'm lower on Rey's WWE TV resume (and everybody's, really) than most, but I do see Rey and Bryan as two of the only guys that frequently managed to sidestep or transcend the trappings of the style.

 

Having said that, I do feel like Bryan's WWE babyface work offers higher highs than Rey and the stylistic variety in Bryan's work -- even if it occasionally dipped into indulgence with some of his notable indie matches -- is enough to outweigh Rey's (somewhat overplayed) advantage in longevity for me.

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Odd to me that people want to compare the two so directly. Bryan's run in ROH was that of a bigger guy, because the promotion was made up of mostly small-to-midsize workers. It wasn't until he got to WWE that his size became a defining characteristic of his work. They are completely different cases to me, despite Bryan's late career underdog push.

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Rey has more longevity in years active, but when you factor in all the time he missed with injuries I'm not sure there's any difference.

 

Even if that is the case, Rey being around as early as 1989 and as late as 2016 means he has been privileged to work at a high level in so many settings that wouldn't be possible in Danielson's career.

 

It's not a huge gap. It's the only thing I could think of to distinguish them.

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Odd to me that people want to compare the two so directly. Bryan's run in ROH was that of a bigger guy, because the promotion was made up of mostly small-to-midsize workers. It wasn't until he got to WWE that his size became a defining characteristic of his work. They are completely different cases to me, despite Bryan's late career underdog push.

 

As MoS said in his original post, the comparison is interesting not because they're the same but because they're the two best guys who have made the majority of their cases since 2000. As the responses have indicated, a lot of people have them close to one another, so the supposition seems to hold.

 

I have Bryan six spots higher (something about that number, huh?) but the difference is essentially that I like his style a little more than I like Rey's style. He demonstrated a bit more range and I'd take his top 20 or top 50 matches above Rey's top 20 or 50. But Rey was about as effective at what he did as he possibly could have been and probably had more matches that were at least good. Rey had hundreds of good matches that made tape. That might sound easy for a great wrestler, but it really isn't.

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There isn't a consensus. Some say his WCW work was his athletic and artistic peak, others say his WWE tenure was more mature and rewarding, and you've got a few outliers who will claim his lucha days were the best. Personally I'd argue for his best WWE matches being his finest work, although his best WCW work was awfully close. (The difference being, his worst WCW matches during the unmasked period were easily shittier than his lowest lows during his WWE years.)

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Is there any agreement on when he became an indisputably great worker? I know mileage varies on the quality of his WCW run, for example, but it is generally agreed that he was a great worker in those years. Was he considered one before that as well? He was pimped pretty heavily by Tenay in his first few matches in WCW.

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If Rey hadn't gone to the WWE, I wonder how he would've been remembered in comparison to his contemporaries such as Psicosis, Sasuke and Ultimo Dragon. His WWE run makes up such a huge part of his case that the consensus has to lean toward his WWE work being proof positive of his greatness. I can see how that might bug people, though, especially fans who valued him for his athleticism and high spots and not his selling and storytelling.

With Bryan, I wonder if he'll be similar to Eddy and Benoit in that he'll finish high this time but maybe not so high in 10 years time when he's been gone a decade.

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If Rey hadn't gone to the WWE, I wonder how he would've been remembered in comparison to his contemporaries such as Psicosis, Sasuke and Ultimo Dragon. His WWE run makes up such a huge part of his case that the consensus has to lean toward his WWE work being proof positive of his greatness. I can see how that might bug people, though, especially fans who valued him for his athleticism and high spots and not his selling and storytelling.

 

With Bryan, I wonder if he'll be similar to Eddy and Benoit in that he'll finish high this time but maybe not so high in 10 years time when he's been gone a decade.

Bryan is cresting at the right time for this poll, no doubt. On the other hand, you have people revisiting his work from 15 years ago and saying it holds up, so maybe he'll have staying power in the upper reaches. It's an interesting question.
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If Rey hadn't gone to the WWE, I wonder how he would've been remembered in comparison to his contemporaries such as Psicosis, Sasuke and Ultimo Dragon. His WWE run makes up such a huge part of his case that the consensus has to lean toward his WWE work being proof positive of his greatness. I can see how that might bug people, though, especially fans who valued him for his athleticism and high spots and not his selling and storytelling.

 

With Bryan, I wonder if he'll be similar to Eddy and Benoit in that he'll finish high this time but maybe not so high in 10 years time when he's been gone a decade.

Bryan is cresting at the right time for this poll, no doubt. On the other hand, you have people revisiting his work from 15 years ago and saying it holds up, so maybe he'll have staying power in the upper reaches. It's an interesting question.

 

I wonder if the answer to that question will be, in part, based on how concussion research and its effect on wrestling plays out in the next ten years.

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I'd like to think Bryan's rep will age gracefully over the years if for no other reason than his ROH stuff is holding up well now while a some of the other stuff from that promotion's era is not. Plus it feels like we're swinging towards more of a mat-based future, and while not a Thatcher or Sabre, he worked more of that style than most guys. Plus he's not likely to dump on his own legacy with shitty behavior or sad comebacks. He seems too grounded for either.

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I am curious to see how far Eddie will drop this time. Benoit I know is going to drop significantly, because of both his actions as well as him being considered, rightly or wrongly, the progenitor of the go-go-go no-selling style. Also, the juniors stuff has not aged well. Plus, he was ranked way too high as it is.

 

But Eddie, at least in my mind, always liad more emphasis on selling and at least attempted more to have long-term storytelling in matches. I did not run around in these circles in 2006, but I did visit some websites back then, and mainly, people used to like Benoit more because he was stiffer and had more vicious offence. Those things have aged worse than Eddie's best attributes.

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