1 hour ago, sek69 said:

He also squashed RVD in 2001 when he was red hot, and of course the years long feud with Jericho where the only win Y2J ever got was winning the tag titles with Benoit over HHH/Austin which no one remembers because it's the match where the quad tear happened.  

Plus he killed the love triangle storyline with Steph and Kurt (that was honestly one of the best they've done) because he didn't think it would be believable for Olympic Gold Medalist Kurt to go over because he was smaller. 

The roster was so good then but a lot of the usage of the roster was so bad. 

The Angle deal did end up providing one of the best "sit the fuck down" moments that I can recall, when Gerald Brisco asked Hunter who'd he think would win a shoot (in response to the idea Kurt was too small to believably beat him). 

I agree with OJ in that he is a much better worker than people say. All in all, I would say he had a respectable career with an impressive resume of strong matches. 

I feel people here are overly and sometimes unfairly critical of him. Yes, there was the 2002-03 reign of terror, that awful Booker T finish, curbing Orton's first title reign, the pointless Brock feud, the overdrawn promos and self-centered tendencies etc. But on the flip side, he made Batista in 2005, and put over the Shield (thrice), Benoit, Shelton Benjamin, Cena (WM22), Seth Rollins, Bryan, Reigns. He has actually lost a lot of his high-profile matches, especially against younger, up-and-coming talent in an effort to help them get over. Who cares that he beat a 50-year-old Sting?

I think people care less about him beating Sting (that was largely seen as another case of Vince still fighting a war than ended long ago), and more about things like the Reign of Terror which helped accelerate the loss of audience after WCW died.  His legacy was largely more negative than positive until, ironically, he created NXT and inadvertently set the wheels in motion to create the first real competitor to WWE in 20+ years. 

It's probably true that his legacy is largely positive if you subtract the reign of terror. Yet it's the first thing people think of whenever he's mentioned and is enough to move his overall legacy to the negative side of the ledger in a lot of people's minds. That's how bad it was. He also played a key role in the Montreal Screwjob, so fuck him for that as well.

He also did his best to sandbag Cena in their feud, constantly undercutting him and acting like he was not a real wrestler, which is exactly what some fans were grumbling about Cena at that time and it was the last thing the young ace needed. It was the same as what he would do to Roman 10 years later, except Cena was generationally charismatic and was able to withstand it and remain a face. This especially after the Edge feud had started and Cena was finally getting unanimously cheered again. 

The benevolent NXT "Can't wait until HHH takes over when Vince is done" Godfather of Real Pro-wrestling was a carny con-job, and although it changed the perception of his character for a while, it had been exposed pretty badly in the last years. 

People being driven by emotions, of course right now there's this temptation of looking back and go "Oh, but it wasn't that bad". Live through those years again people, and let's talk about it then.

FWIW, I still think WWE would be better at least creative wise if Hunter was in charge. His vision of wrestling is pretty solid as long as he's not the one getting pushed as the top in ring star. No one really cared about his self serving intros when NXT was producing banger-ass Takeovers like it was going out of style. 

NXT's real creative peak was when Dusty was in charge. After Dusty passed, it became more of an indy dream match promotion. Having an unlimited budget to sign the top indy talent and letting them do whatever they want in the ring is the equivalent of Mr. Burns telling Darryl Strawberry to hit a home run. Like 90s All Japan, the NXT workrate style ended up largely collapsing under the weight of its own excess due to the lack of compelling storytelling to give the matchups added weight.

To me NXT started to lose its luster when they kept pushing programs past their sell by date and everyone had to have their own version of "I love you, I'm sorry".

22 hours ago, El-P said:

People being driven by emotions, of course right now there's this temptation of looking back and go "Oh, but it wasn't that bad". Live through those years again people, and let's talk about it then.

Um guys, we living though it now with Roman Reigns,  yes its not Roman burying the talent with his backstage shenanigans. But the results are probably worse with sure fire talent being let go or just shitty booking getting nobody but Reigns and Brock over.