Yeah great match. I don't really like star systems at all but I'd definitely rate it as one of the best matches I've seen in the past few years.

I rewatched HHH and Austin vs. Y2J and Benoit for the tag-team championship on Raw in 2001 last night. What a match. Everything about it is so good. The crowd is hot throughout, everyone is super over and work really well together. JR and Heyman were one of my favorite announcer pairings, and they make this match feel like the most important thing in the world. HHH tearing his quad and still getting in the Walls of Jericho is one of the toughest things I've ever seen in wrestling. I'm not sure what Meltzer rated it, but imo this match is clearly 5 stars.

While I didn't enjoy Jericho's second book much, the passage about Jericho asking HHH what he wanted to do in that moment, and HHH answering with "put me in the Walls," just felt so epic. I can only imagine the intense pain that he was volunteering for in that moment for the betterment of the match.

I'm happy to see some love for this match. I've seen in other forums where people have rated this just 3*. IMO, the match is incredible. Easily one of my favorites. It's short, action packed, and the crowd is white hot which makes it easier to get through than some matches that I think are better. Also easily my favorite RAW match ever.

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Watched Okada vs. Omega again this morning. On a 4th watch, it's still incredible. Since I hadn't watched in weeks, I forgot quite a few spots so that was nice. Just like the first time I watched, I found a bunch of points in the match where I was jumping and saying "holy ****" and "wtf". That spot near the end where Okada is hanging onto Omega's wrist and just won't let go despite forearms and the V-Trigger knee like three times just so he could hit a desperation Rainmaker was amazing. Incredible match. I'll be hard pressed to find a better match this year than that one.

I also love that match for a reason that WWE fans really can't and I think it's why WWE fans "hate" on it. In WWE you're conditioned to expect 800 finishers per main event match. That's not the case in NJPW. Omega never hit his so Okada never kicked out. Okada hit his first Rainmaker and Omega kicked out. That was the first time somebody's kicked out when Okada has immediately covered them since he came back to NJPW at the 1/4/12 Dome show. Then he hit it two more times but couldn't get a cover which was superb before that ****ing jumping corkscrew tombstone plus Rainmaker.

I'm surprised there's any significant sentiment for that Raw tag match only being three stars. I definitely had it at five stars upon last viewing.

3 stars is absurd, but I don't see the 5 star love at all.

I watched it recently because of this thread. It's a very good match, but not THAT good. (I'd say something like 4.25)

The Benoit/Angle vs Edge/Mysterio match from around that same time frame was much better imo.

Yeah not seeing 5* for the tag match either, although it was excellent.

My current dream WM match is AJ vs. HBK.

Never happening but a man can dream.

Shawn is 51 now. Granted that if he could be 90% as good today as he was at retirement then that match would still be awesome.

19 was sweet too. Heel/Hollywood Rock cut some great promos. Also it gave us stuff like this.



The two had unrivaled chemistry.

Can't fathom being a wrestling fan and having an opinion like this. The Rock & Hogan totally scrapped the entire booking and wrestled it on the fly based on crowd reaction. The match is one of the all-time greats. How would Austin had reacted to a pro-Hogan crowd? Would he have been willing to sell to Hogan like Rock did? Set him up to Hulk up? Don't think so. Hence the match not happening.

It's one reason I think Austin is a little overrated. Don't get me wrong I still have him as one of the (if not the) GOAT's. But part of being a great wrestler is being willing to put other guys over.His entire run was one giant push. He didn't lose clean in 3 years and a lot of times was making the entire roster look stupid. Who knows how he would be regarded if it was happening today, maybe smarks in the know would hate him. See: Cena, John (who actually has lost clean many times at this point).

Apparently they tried for you and Michaels turned it down. Too bad, that would have been great.

I totally agree. The promo stuff was great. That promo you linked, them singing together, the first Rock Concert, and the Toronto promo are all legendary. The match was a disappointment. Given the odd circumstances of the night before, I'll forgive them.

How many times did he lose clean from WM XX-MitB 11? That's over 7 years.

Rob Van Dam

Did he lose to HBK in London or was that a draw?

he didn't lose clean to RVD. Edge interfered.

Austin does get the historical advantage of not living long enough to see himself become the villain. He could have been the one special talent who was immune to crowds eventually getting tired of him, but I don't think that's overly likely.

The RAW match in London was a clean HBK win. Great match too.

cm punk circa his feud with the rock vs attitude era rock would be an all-timer for sure. it's too bad rock phoned it in so bad and punk absolutely carried that feud

also thuganomics cena vs attitude era rock

As far as active wrestlers go, I'd say Roman Reigns vs Katsuyori Shibata would be my #1 available dream match.

have styles and roman wrestled besides the rumble? cuz i feel like that would be a really really good match. maybe triple threat with señor joe

They wrestled twice after Wrestlemania and they were fantastic matches.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4c52z3 <-- the better of the two matches

I probably should have said my dream match is current AJ vs. like circa-2005 HBK. I know we won't see HBK back in a ring now and that's fine. I always think about these things from an "if we could have them in their prime" way.

My current "active wrestlers" dream match is Okada/Naito and we're so gonna get it, probably multiple times. (Yeah, I know it's happened many times before, too.)

So I stumbled across this thread title over at wrestlingforum:

There were already 3 threads dedicated to the match. This is the OP of said thread:

I've also never ever seen that Raven/Punk match praised as one of Punk's best never mind a GMOATC. A Raven match? LOL

Though this got me thinking what my top 10 or 25 matches would be and I have no idea. I know 6/9/95 is what I consider the GMOAT and runner up is Tanahashi/Okada from 4/7/13. Beyond that, idk what I'd put in the top ten, much less the order of doing so. Locks to be in top 10: (4)Austin/Bret, (3)HBK/Taker, (5)Punk/Cena. 6-10 = ???

edit: These are the lengths that Da Meltz is going to try to justify his rating of 6.25 stars.

10.25 stars made me legit LOL. It's weird how determined Meltzer is to break the rules of a rating scale that he himself decided on.

I thought the 6 was stupid at the time but I didn't mind it because I was caught up in the hype. The 6.25 was just dumb, he should have just given it a 5 and said what he thought about it.

That's my other criticism of Melzter, he hardly ever explains his scores well. In the podcast where he discusses the recent match he doesn't say anything insightful or interesting at all. Just "I thought it was better". The only thing he goes into detail with in his critique is praising the pacing which I completely disagreed with.