dedhemingway

My 'favorite' match of all-time is easy, but kinda cheap. At one of the WrestleReunions, PWG held a show that featured a legends battle royal that ended with Terry Funk and Roddy Piper having a bloody brawl. Getting to see two of my favorite guys ever do that live, makes it easily my favorite match. If you made me pick something I wasn't there live for, it would change based on my mood and when you ask, but right now I'd probably say HBK/Mankind from Mind Games '96. Edit: I think I said Magnum/Tully was my favorite earlier, which kinda proves my mercurial tastes.

I'm not really a regular around here, mostly because my interest in wrestling waxes and wanes in a cycle that even I don't understand, but I feel like, if you're even a somewhat regular poster (and you're well beyond that) on PWO you've watched enough wrestling to have your opinion respected on the subject. It's not rocket appliances... Of course, the more content you've seen, the better idea of where a story is going you'll have, but as long as you can accept being corrected if you're wrong, criticize away. I feel there is a big difference between 'best' and 'greatest', but that may be that I'm a jock at heart, college and pro football, and being the 'greatest' requires accolades, while being the 'best' is simply based on talent. Like, Bo Jackson is my pick for the 'best' runningback of all time, he's everything you could ever want from the position, 'better' than Jim Brown, Emmitt Smith, or Barry Sanders, but I'd never argue he was the greatest. Hulk Hogan is in the argument for greatest wrestler of all time, but I wouldn't call him the 'best'. I admit, it gets muddied with matches, because they're events, not individuals, but I think it still applies. You can have the 'best' match anywhere, from Arena Mexico to a guard armory in Florida, but the 'greatest' matches are the best big ones, titles on the line, biggest events, the total package. Tl;dr: 'Best' is a measure of talent in a vacuum. Great requires a convergence of factors.

I think that a lot of this feels more like 'best' match ever, and a lot less like 'greatest'. Then again, I really couldn't care less about 95% of stuff that happens in Japan, so I'm biased.

Rock vs Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania X8. You will never convince me that there is a better example of the drama and pageantry of professional wrestling than this match. They don't do a bunch of moves, but they play everything perfectly. It is easily the 'greatest' match of all-time. Magnum/Tully 'I Quit' is second, and in my preferred style, but Rock/Hogan is... transcendent, it's more than a match, it's a moment.

The issue isn't being stuck in the past as much as so many of the moves that are being used as transitions feel much more impactful than the finishers they are being replaced with. A regular old DDT looks much more vicious than the 300 different Complete Shot variations we see every week. Okada vs. Omega had a top rope dragon suplex, but ended with a short arm clothesline. The issue is that the hierarchy is completely out of whack when the moves that get the near falls are much more violent than the ones that get the pinfalls. That's a good point, and I intuitively want to agree but at the same time, how violent was Hogan's leg drop or Warrior's splash compared to their other moves? The people's elbow certainly wasn't a killer impactful move, and arguably the rock bottom wasn't the most violent looking Rock move either. Rock Bottom was the finisher, and I can totally believe it driving the air out of you long enough to get a 3. People's Elbow was, originally, a coup de grace, and could be used for nearfalls, but it kinda lost that feel later on.

It was definitely tone deaf, and I could see how certain segments of fans see it as insulting to their intelligence. I wouldn't have done it, but I think Snuka's death was more personal for a lot of the long time guys in WWE, including Vince, than many others, and maybe sentimentality played into it. Personally, it's just not something I'm too prone to care much about. Lots of famous people do horrible things yet get applauded in their industries. Short of convictions, it's hard to really draw a line on punishments/black balling, and the court of public opinion is notoriously fickle. Just murky waters all around.

I don't think how 'good' a match is, or even how well it drew, are necessary for it to be an important match. They can be part of it, certainly, but it's possible for a match to be important without it. I saw Foley/Taker in HIAC mentioned. How about the match that inspired Foley? Snuka/Muraco in the cage. Are we getting too reductive at that point? I'd also argue for Superstar/Bruno in '77, which showed that a guy who was a lesser wrestler, but a better showman, could thrive in NY, leading to Hogan.

Does Douglas/Scorpio, with Douglas throwing down the NWA title count, or would the importance be on the promo after?

Ratings are fine as a way to quickly say 'I liked this match more than this match', but assigning them more value than that is taking it strangely too far. I may be really stoned and on a radicalism kick, but it's almost a tribalism, you're planting your fandom flag in the ground depending on who's ratings you agree on. As far as a 6th star goes, if a match does something unique, that you never considered in your system, then sure, but paradigm shifts are pretty rare.

Not to disparage those who are more inclined towards ranking matches, but I've always felt it held little value to me personally. I either enjoy a match, or I don't. Trying to distill an art down into numbers is the antithesis of my entire view on it.

No one would ever hire a handsome, built, articulate Harvard graduate with a law degree and a Grammy (Or was it an Oscar?) winning wife. Yeah, that's not the type of successful, driven person you want in your company, it must be because they need more black dudes!

So that makes it okay to run tasteless body-shaming angles? Gotcha. I can't speak to Elizabeth's character, but who's to say Randy didn't have good reasons for his "protectiveness"? BTW, it irritates me that people blame Lex Luger for her death (and he even blames himself). She was a big girl. He didn't hold a gun to her head and force those drugs into her system. It's a tragic shame and waste what happened to her, but it was her fault, not Lex's. As someone who has been in similar, though not as tragic, situations, it's not about forcing it down their throats. Even introducing people to drugs, then seeing the negative effect on their life can make you feel guilty about it.

Seeing this come to fruition has made me a little sad that I didn't submit a ballot. For the best, too much happened for me to give it the go it truly deserved. Excited for the results (and stats!) though.

yeah, basically this. the gym shorts in particular are the turn-off for me, makes him seem like some random dude at your local gym's pickup basketball game. and ya, New Day is one of those acts that shows a clear generational divide. they're *easily* the biggest reason my wrestling-watching friends still tune into RAW at all. offbeat shenanigans are the cool thing these days yo~ EDIT: i think the appeal of these guys (and Ambrose, et al.) may tie into something larger. specifically, whether you got into wrestling before it became purely a nerd fandom. we have a whole generation now who has never experienced it as anything but that, with Jimmy Redman probably being this board's most prolific example. basically, to a lot of people, wrestling is more Star Trek or Doctor Who than the NFL, and that means goofier or nerdier guys will have a lot more appeal. i think of anarchistxx's post in one of the recent WWE threads, where they kept going on about how Reigns comes off as a real star and the other guys are indie geeks. a crucial point that misses is that the crowd themselves are geeks nowadays; of course they'll connect a lot more with people they see as "one of us"! i will once again go back to Cody Rhodes saying "the fans don't want to root for a Clark Gable anymore, they want to root for a Seth Rogen". most people here were raised on Clark Gables and John Waynes, but that shit is passe to twentysomethings. that's really at the heart of these kinds of arguments, i think. I'm a 33 year old American male who got into wrestling as a child in the late-80s, would put Terry Funk at #1 on my hypothetical GOAT list, and Owens, Ambrose, and Big E are probably my favorite acts in the company right now. For Owens, at least, it's because I watched his climb from PWG to here, have always found his trash talking on point, and thus have a connection to him. I know I'm atypical, though. I'm a raver, college football is my favorite sport, Hunter S. Thompson is my favorite writer, Southland Tales my favorite film, and on and on. I'm a jumble of contradictions, so my opinion on things really counts for little. I do think that if you're going to argue that the majority of the possible fanbase would find Kevin Owens a 'fat geek', you're wrong. All it takes is a look at popular culture to see that geek is chic.

I think Sabu would be the perfect example of this. It's quite clear he's charismatic, but never talked. Tajiri, in the US, at least, would be another example.