NintendoLogic

This discussion speaks to the inherent tension between the performance art aspects of wrestling and the sport aspects. But even from a performance art standpoint, compare the career of someone like George Carlin to the career of someone like Gallagher.

For the same reason a thrown baseball travels further after being hit than a stationary one.

The Eddy/Rey program did great ratings, but I have recollection of it doing much for attendance or buys. If they had no intention of putting Lesnar over Cena, they should have held off on the match.

Yes, Hashimoto getting destroyed time and time again hurt him. But you're underselling the importance of the idea that pro wrestlers are the strongest fighters and pro wrestling is the king of sports, which was very important to 90s New Japan but isn't at all to 2010s WWE. Also, look at other notable New Japan feuds from the time period. The Mutoh/Takada rematch drew less than the first one after Mutoh won the first time out. And Kawada (who was not the third most important guy in post-split All Japan) vs. New Japan stopped drawing when Kawada started losing. Rocky was a series of movies. And people did come back after he lost to Creed in the first movie. Which is a more compelling storyline? "Who can beat Lesnar?" or "Who else can beat Lesnar?" Looking at the Summerslam buyrate is instructive. It was way up in North America, indicating that Lesnar's name value is a plus for the big shows. But it was way down internationally. UFC isn't popular in most of the foreign markets where WWE runs PPV, so his only value there is as an unstoppable monster, which went out the window when he lost the first time out.

The question in this thread isn't whether Shawn is top 10 all-time. It's whether he's top 100 all-time. Saying that Dustin is but Shawn isn't is a bit dubious in my eyes.

So I rewatched Breaks/Saint from 5/73. I think I might have been selling Breaks short, because he comes across here as the best possible Ric Flair. For most of the match, he stooges his ass off, bumps like a madman, runs his mouth at Saint and the audience, even bleeds. But when he senses that his title is in serious danger, he goes into full-on asskicker mode and wipes Saint out.

Yeah, this. The problem wasn't that Hashimoto lost to Ogawa, it's that he lost over and over again without getting his win back. Also, it needs to be pointed out that Rocky didn't face Ivan Drago until after he killed Apollo Creed. And in the previous film, he got destroyed by Clubber Lang before getting his win back in the rematch. Either the Drago route or the Lang route would have been fine. Instead, they went the Thunderlips route.

I have heard literally nobody say that Cena/Lesnar should have been booked like Hash/Ogawa.

OK, here's the long-awaited expansion pack for my list. My original goal was to get it up to 100, but then I decided that rather than shoot for an arbitrary numerical goal, I should just make a list and let the chips fall where they may. I came up with 28 matches, bringing the total up to 68. Oh, and part of it is restoring the matches I had previously removed from the list, for those of you who were giving me grief about that. (EDIT: I swapped out Chono/Mutoh and Regal/Finlay for the Clash tag and Liger/Sano) Jim Breaks vs. Johnny Saint (5/5/73) Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Jack Brisco (8/28/76) Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Dynamite Kid (2/5/80) Nick Bockwinkel vs. Billy Robinson (12/11/80) Jerry Lawler vs. Terry Funk (3/23/81) Stan Hansen vs. Terry Funk (4/14/83) Jim Duggan vs. Ted DiBiase (3/22/85) Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage (Wrestlemania III, 3/29/87) Lex Luger/Barry Windham vs. Arn Anderson/Tully Blanchard (Clash of the Champions I, 3/27/88) Lex Luger vs. Ricky Steamboat (Great American Bash, 7/23/89) Naoki Sano vs. Jushin Liger (8/10/89) Ultimate Warrior vs. Rick Rude (Summerslam, 8/28/89) Stan Hansen/Genichiro Tenryu vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Yoshiaki Yatsu (12/6/89) El Dandy vs. Angel Azteca (6/1/90) Mitsuharu Misawa/Toshiaki Kawada/Kenta Kobashi vs. Jumbo Tsuruta/Masanobu Fuchi/Akira Taue (4/20/91) Sting's Squadron vs. Dangerous Alliance (Wrestlewar, 5/17/92) Ricky Steamboat vs. Rick Rude (Beach Blast, 6/20/92) Shinya Hashimoto/Riki Choshu vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Takashi Ishikawa (4/2/93) Bret Hart vs. 123 Kid (Raw, 7/11/94) Vader vs. Dustin Rhodes (Clash of the Champions XXIX, 11/16/94) Dynamite Kansai vs. Aja Kong (8/30/95) Mitsuharu Misawa/Jun Akiyama vs. Steve Williams/Johnny Ace (6/7/96) Rey Mysterio Jr. vs. Eddy Guerrero (Halloween Havoc, 10/26/97) Daisuke Ikeda vs. Alexander Otsuka (4/26/99) Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Vader (5/2/99) Chris Jericho vs. The Rock (No Mercy, 10/21/01) John Cena vs. Umaga (Royal Rumble, 1/28/07) John Cena vs. Brock Lesnar (Extreme Rules, 4/29/12)

I'm pretty sure Tanahashi's character is "the Shawn Michaels of Japan."

It'd be more accurate to say that it started during Benoit's series with Austin. Benoit did ten Germans in a row in the Smackdown match, and of course Angle had to follow along.

I will grant that Flair/Luger from Starrcade is more storyline-driven than the typical Flair match. Also, since so many of you seem to be tracking the status of my desert island list, I'm currently in the process of of expanding it to 100. Keep your eyes peeled.

I saw Hansen/Tenryu vs. Jumbo/Yatsu from 12/6/89 for the first time last night. It's pretty rare that I get emotionally invested in a match these days, especially one from decades prior, but I was seriously rooting for Yatsu to pull it out and was legitimately bummed when he didn't. So I guess what keeps me going is that just when I think I've seen it all, I'll come across something new that has that kind of impact on me.

I don't want to turn this into a semantics debate, but I would say that Flair's matches presented themes rather than stories. If you watch a Flair match, it effectively gets across the idea that he's a chickenshit pussy who was lucky to escape with the title. But if you dig beneath the surface, there isn't really a logical progression from point A to point B to point C to the finish. That's why I think the term "Flair Formula" is a bit of misnomer. When, say, Lawler drops the strap, that's a clear signal that the match has reached a certain point. By contrast, there's no real rhyme or reason to whether Flair gets thrown off the top in the fifth minute of a match or the twentieth minute. For what it's worth, I don't have much bad to say about early 80s Flair. It isn't until about 1985 that the things that annoy me about him really came to the fore.

I sometimes think that in discussions like this, "objectivity" is code for "the way I see things." Objectively speaking, the greatest wrestler of all time is Hulk Hogan. Wrestling is entertainment, and different people are entertained by different things. Talking how hard Flair worked every night and the great reaction his matches got isn't terribly persuasive if you think that, by and large, the matches weren't that great. For the record, I'm abstaining in this poll.

I'm not going to argue that Bret's WCW run particularly redounds to his credit, but nobody was consistently having great matches during that period. If late 90s WCW hurts Bret, it also hurts Eddy, Rey, Benoit, Flair, and everyone else.

Yeah, I don't see this at all. What exactly do you consider a narrative? The difference is that he didn't try to shoehorn them into every match. There were quite a few matches where Bret didn't even apply the Sharpshooter. By contrast, you'd be hard-pressed to find a prime Flair match where he didn't apply the figure-four and have it applied to him in turn. And he didn't do something new in every match, but he did consistently add new wrinkles and build off of previous matches. For example, he beats Bigelow at KOTR with a victory roll, but when he tries it against Owen, he gets countered and defeated. Another example: he does that reverse splash thing against Hakushi on Raw, but when he tries it against Davey Boy, he gets splattered. He was infinitely better than Flair at logically building up and paying off spots. I don't even see how that's arguable.

Sure. But Austin, Owen, Hennig, Davey Boy, Waltman, Nash, Undertaker, Yokozuna, and Piper all at least arguably had their best matches with Bret. If that's not versatility, what is? There are lots of things that wrestling used to be based on that are no longer relevant, like having the cardiovascular conditioning to go 60 and being a legit badass so your opponent couldn't shoot on you and take the title. But yeah, the whole deal where the champ spends the match bumping and stooging and escapes by the skin of his teeth because the local hick promoter didn't want his guy to do the job isn't really my thing. It was just one spot, and it wasn't that long. The truth is, I don't really disagree with this. I can't in good conscience place Bret in the GOAT conversation precisely because his peak was so short. And Flair absolutely belongs in that conversation due to the sheer volume of good-to-great matches under his belt. But when it comes to whose best-of compilation I'd rather fork over money for, I'd take Bret in a heartbeat.

Also, I was really into both of them in 1994.

Let's not overstate Flair's versatility. Flair/Steamboat, Flair/Windham, Flair/Jumbo, and Flair/Kerry may have all taken place in different promotions, but they were worked in basically the same style. Shouldn't that count in Bret's favor, though? Having a great match in 90s WWF was a far more daunting task than having one in 80s JCP or All Japan. The touring heel champ style was shitty. Flair made it less so. Anyway, you asked me what I thought each guy's best matches were in the other thread, so I'll answer it here. For Bret, his best matches were vs. Austin at Survivor Series (which, again, is the greatest US match of all time) and WM13, vs Mr. Perfect at KOTR, vs. Owen at WM10, and vs. Davey Boy at IYH. For Flair, his best matches were vs. Funk at the 89 Bash and vs. Steamboat at the Chi-Town Rumble. Note that both of those matches are quite a bit shorter than a typical Flair title match and are tighter and more structured as a result. I have to say that the last time I tried to watch Flair/Luger from Wrestlewar, I turned it off halfway through because it was boring me to tears. Same with Flair/Windham from the Crockett Cup.

See, I have it the exact opposite. I think that Flair's baseline was higher than Bret's but Bret's peaks were higher than Flair's.

I'm aware of that. It still sucks.

On the Battlarts front, you have to include Ikeda vs. Otsuka from 4/26. I can't think of another match quite like it. It's like a cross between shoot-style and a lucha brawl. The two guys spend 20 minutes kicking the crap out of each other, choking each other out, and doing insane dives. Seriously, Ikeda does a space flying tiger drop. That alone should be enough to get it on the set.

I'll watch the rest of the show later, but I skipped to the last two matches because those are the ones with the most buzz. Nakamura/Sakuraba took a bit too long to get out of first gear, but it was good once it got going. However, I didn't like Sakuraba no-selling the Boma Ye and Landslide to apply his submissions. Also, I really hate slaps as strikes. Charlie Murphy said it best: you don't slap a man. The main event felt like a fall-out-of-bed Tanahashi/Okada match, solid but nowhere near as good as the best New Japan matches from last year. Somewhat amusingly for a Tanahashi match, he didn't work the leg nearly enough for how much Okada was selling it. And there was really no need for the match to continue after the first High Fly Flow. Still, it wasn't bad at all, and it worked as a Dome main event. Based on those two matches, I'd say the show was pretty good. But unless the undercard was off-the-charts great (and by all accounts, it wasn't), there's no way this is a serious contender for greatest show of all time.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Can you elaborate?