This is the kind of post that is probably only interesting to me, but the kind I feel that i have to write because it has been weighing heavily on my mind. In the past few weeks I have been watching Raw every week and Smackdown, TNA and NXT whenever I get the chance. Been playing way too much TEW. I’ve read the Dynamite Kid’s book, I’ve read Bret Hart’s book. I’ve also re-subscribed to F4WOnline and been reading the Wrestling Observer like the bible. What can I say? I’m an obsessive person. At a friends house for Wrestlemania I suddenly realized something that I’ve never really thought about before and that’s that I know more about wrestling than I know about just about anything else. I can remember the days when I could say the complete ECW title histories off the top of my head, the main event to every Wrestlemania (which I could probably still do, really) and all sorts of random, useless stuff like that. A lot of that has faded, but a whole lot more of it hasn’t. I don’t think I’m being facetious when I say that I know more about wrestling than anyone I know. I’m definitely not bragging, but it’s just something that is. I don’t know what made me realize this, but maybe it was seeing Bret Hart back on Raw for the first time since 1997 that did it.
In 1997 I got kicked out of high school (because I was clearly an incredible bad ass both then and now) and I took the added free time I had to have an e-mail wrestling newsletter, website and hotline. (Hilariously, we thought the newsletter was more important than the website.) When the Bret Hart to WCW story first broke I was in such shock that I did a profanity laced tirade about how Bret would NEVER go to WCW and that he was WWF for life. (It’s funny in retrospect because of how wrong I was, but also because I know now that my thoughts mirrored Bret’s thoughts except there was nothing he could really do about it. Vince didn’t want him. (btw, the fact that my newsletter and hotline were never archived is probably one of the top five greatest achievements of my life. 15 year old wrestling journalist was not a good look for me.)) I also had a pretty successful tape trading business. At one point in 1998 I owned EVERY WWF pay-per-view ever as well as every single ECW show and 75% of WCW PPVs. I had boxes and boxes of VHS tapes and would dub and sell them to people (1 for $5, 3 for $12). At one point in 1998 I flew, by myself, to Philadelphia to watch an ECW show. I was 16. It was a strange time.
Back then I can remember chatting with people about wrestling all the time. I made a lot of friends online at that time, one of whom I correspond with almost daily to this day and another who I still keep in contact with through facebook. (Both at some point wrote for my newsletter.) We used to talk about stuff like “what’s your favorite show?” and “who’s your favorite wrestler?” Stuff that I haven’t thought about in a really long time and stuff that for some reason, I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. To me, it’s a really interesting question with the addition of hindsight. So without anyone really caring except for me, here’s the answers to a few pertinent questions.
What is your favorite show of all time?
Wrestlemania X
I decided to start myself off with a softball question because no matter what happens this has always been and will always be my favorite show. It’s the first PPV I can remember telling me dad that we HAD to watch. It had one of my favorite buildups of all time and it had two of my favorite matches of all time, Bret Hart vs Owen Hart and Shawn Michaels vs Razor Ramon in a ladder match. As a kid it was great to see my favorite wrestler at the time, Razor Ramon, get the big win in the big match. As an adult it still stands up as one of the greatest matches I’ve ever seen. It also has one of the great all-time endings to a big show as Bret Hart ends Yokozuna’s long reign as champion and the entire roster comes out to celebrate with him. Great show, heavy dose of nostalgia, great matches that still hold up and a great ending. Not sure this one will ever be topped.
As for second place? Wrestlemania X-7. While the ending still bothers me to this day, Austin and The Rock had a really awesome main event with some of the most amazing crowd heat I can ever remember. From a wrestling quality standpoint this is the best show of all time as nearly every match was ****+ stars, but in my opinion that ending is what killed the wrestling boom. Nobody wanted a heel Austin and a heel Austin aligned with Vince was one of the worst ideas of all time. Still, a hell of a show.
Who is your favorite wrestler of all time?
This is a tough one. I mean, I don’t even know how to judge this. By in-ring? By mark-out factor? By amount of t-shirts owned? It’s a question that is probably asked a million times by wrestling fans all over the world and that’s why it surprises me so much that I really don’t know. I can remember when Triple H was my favorite wrestler (I even named my newsletter “The Pedigree” after his finisher). I can remember being an insane mark for The Sandman, going so far as to regularly break beer cans on my head after finishing them. John Cena is probably single handedly responsible for getting me back into wrestling in 2007 (and Benoit is single handedly responsible for getting me out of it. Fucker.) I’ve said The Rock and Steve Austin’s catchphrases literally thousands of times and I’ve seen more matches involving Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels than any other two wrestlers.
I think that I have to go with Chris Jericho though. In the end, he’s been my guy for the longest and he’s one of those guys that I would just really want to hang with. His WWE debut is the stuff of legends.
Technically speaking, he has his flaws and he couldn’t dream of having anywhere near the charisma that a Rock or Cena has, but overall he is the total package. I’ve been watching him since 1997 and he’s reinvented himself so many times and just became better and better at being a wrestling character. It’s a shame that Vince doesn’t see him for the asset he truly is because he is probably the best true heel in the business right now and the evolutionary Ric Flair, which is kind of amazing when you think about it. His only real flaw is that he doesn’t have a defining match, but that’s okay because I’ve never gotten sick of being a Chris Jericho fan and I can’t imagine I ever will.
What is your favorite match of all-time?
I found myself writing this post and putting things like “greatest matches of all time” multiple times and I kept having to delete those references. It’s insane to think how many of those I could really put in there. If I were to be asked “What are some of my favorite matches?”, I could probably list 30 off the top of my head with another 20+ coming from when I think about it. There are so many matches that I’ve seen and so many that I love. Do I go with something like Kenta Kobashi vs Samoa Joe from ROH? That is a total fight and one of the most “real” wrestling matches I’ve ever seen. They beat the holy hell out of eachother and it tells a great story. That’s important. Is it something like Bret Hart vs Owen Hart? A perfectly executed match that really surprised you? Because I think that’s really important. The element of surprise, the difference between watching something live and watching it when you don’t know what the outcome is going to be is huge to me. Being surprised as a wrestling fan is a really great feeling. Think about Mankind vs the Undertaker, Hell in a Cell. That wasn’t a good match, but if you were watching it live and you saw Mankind fly off that cage you thought it was the most amazing thing you’d ever seen. I know I did. I guess that it could even be something like Hogan vs The Rock (which I am not a big fan of actually), something where the crowd completely takes it over. Crowd reactions in wrestling are the key. A great crowd can make a good match, great and a great match legendary. That stuff matters. There is just so much stuff out there that I love and so much stuff that I have seen literally hundreds of times. It’s hard for me to pick just one thing.
(Now would be a good time to point out that there is one match that for a long time was my actual favorite match and that match was Jericho/Benoit vs HHH/Austin for the tag titles on Raw. That was awesome. Unfortunately Benoit killed his wife and kid and I don’t want to ever see his face again.)
To help me narrow this down I decided to make a list of criteria that my favorite match must have.
- I must have seen it live. It’s one thing to hear something is great, then watch it and agree. It’s another to watch something great live and know for yourself. This also helps out with the next part.
- I must not have known who was going to win. I love Razor Ramon/Shawn Michaels from Wrestlemania X, but there was no way Razor was losing that match. Same with Rey Mysterio/Eddy Guerrero Mask vs Hair. WCW wouldn’t be stupid enough to take his mask away. There are lots of great formula matches, we need something more here.
- It must tell a story. All the great matches do this. This is actually just my excuse to rant about the Young Bucks and the Dragon Gate USA style. I love athletic moves. I love 450 splashes, moonsaults and everything else. That stuff is great, but when I decided to check out a Dragon Gate USA show because of the excellent reviews it’s been getting I absolutely hated it. There was so much shit where it was completely obvious that they planned it out like “wouldn’t it be cool if we did this? and then we could do this!” to the point that some of the stuff seemed so fake and pre-planned that it barely resembled a match to me. The sad thing is that this is what’s cool with the kids these days. I don’t get it.
- It must have crowd heat. A great match can involve two young guys on the undercard, but a truly epic match features two main eventers with the crowd going insane for everything that happens.
That being said, I think we have the following finalists:
- Bret Hart vs Steve Austin I Quit Match, Wrestlemania 13. This is one of my favorite matches of all time for a lot of reasons. For one, it’s a straight up fight with two guys who hate eachother beating the crap out of eachother. Second, it’s two of my favorite guys of all time in a match that completely stole the show at Wrestlemania. Third, it features the greatest double turn in wrestling history as when the match started Bret was the good guy and Austin was the bad guy and when it was over, their roles reversed. Pretty amazing stuff. I actually didn’t see this one live and I put it on the list, that’s how good it is.
- Kurt Angle vs Shawn Michaels, Wrestlemania 21. This match is kind of forgotten because Kurt Angle has kind of been forgotten, but it’s really a great match. The reason I put it on this list is because I didn’t know who was going to win and it actually passed the “Star Trek” test. A couple months ago I was watching the new Star Trek movie and towards the end when stuff started getting intense I stood up to watch the rest. Watching this one live, it got so crazy with the near finishes that I actually stood up for the end. That’s an awesome match.
- Dean Malenko vs Ultimo Dragon, Clash of the Champions January 1997. (Or their match from Starrcade 1996.) This is probably the match that gave birth to the modern wrestling watching Vince because after watching this my interest in main eventers like Scott Hall and Kevin Nash waned and my interest in great wrestlers grew exponentially.
- Ultimate Warrior vs Randy Savage Retirement Match, Wrestlemania VII. This one probably doesn’t have any right to be on the list. For one, I saw it on video about ten years after it went down. Two, I hate the Ultimate Warrior, but there is something about this match that always sticks out in my mind. When I watched it I didn’t know who was going to win (because despite being a retirement match I’d seen the loser wrestle about 100 times since) and there was a lot of drama towards the end. Really though, the match is great but the post-match is probably the greatest thing the WWE has ever done. It made me cry. It literally made me cry. Oh, Elizabeth how I love you so.
- Shawn Michaels vs The Undertaker, Wrestlemania 26. Surprised? Honestly, I am too. When I was making up the list of criteria for my favorite match this one kept popping out. Before the show and right up until the match started The Undertaker winning and extending the streak seemed like an inevitability, but once the match started they really made you believe that there was a chance that the streak would end. I can remember actually saying out loud “how is he going to beat him?” because honestly, I didn’t know and for wrestling to do that to me at 27 is pretty amazing really.
- Samoa Joe vs Kenta Kobashi. This plays. After watching this match Samoa Joe immediately became my favorite wrestler and seemed destined for stardom. (Good job with that one TNA.)
- Raven and Stevie Richards vs The Pitbulls, Double Tables. This is another one that plays despite me seeing it on tape delay. I didn’t know the victor before hand, so it plays. This is probably the most perfectly overbooked mess that I have ever seen. Overlapping angles, tons of interference, really crazy spots and some really cool stuff from Raven make this a winner. Best match in ECW history, by far.
I’m sure I’m forgetting about 15 more, but that seems like a decent list (even if I only saw half of them live). If I had to choose one, I think I’ll have to go with….
Shawn Michaels vs Kurt Angle. Seems about right.
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