This is something that I've wanted to do for a couple of years now and actually started a couple of times. I usually started in 2000 but seeing as how LKJ's doing his thing from the beginning, I'm just going to start from 1990 since there really aren't that many matches in the 90's that were good.

I'm going to be watching matches that Meltzer gave over **** to. And in writing that last sentence I now feel this is almost the exact same as LKJ's. I guess I'm ok with this. I'm not going to be grading in stars. I will be grading in %'s. I am doing it this way so that I don't have a bunch of matches that are "tied" at ****1/2 or whatever. Ratings system would be **** is 0-25%, ****1/4 is 26-50%, etc..

To make this different from LKJ's, I could do AJPW matches during the 90's and ROH matches during the 00's. This is problematic though in that 90's AJPW probably has 200+ matches of 4* or better and ROH has ~100 that people would deem 4* or better. For now, I commit to nothing featuring AJPW/ROH but am leaning towards doing them when bored of WWF/WCW.

The thing that makes this easy to do with starting from 2000 is that WCW isn't around except for like one match but there are a ton of great WWF/E matches. Maybe I'll start from 2000 so me and LKJ can have different content in our respective threads and then go back for the 90's.

Matches will not include write-ups. Those will be thrown in LKJ's thread when he gets to whatever match.

This will wind up being a greatest match of all time thread to because with the way I'm ranking them, it will be easy to combine and make a GOAT list. This thread will likely take around if not well over a year for me to do especially because if I finish a portion of it I will start something else (90's if I start at 2000, AJPW if I finish everything, ROH, ECW, TNA).

Gonna sleep on it and then decide.

I started this thread at a time when I was watching a **** ton of wrestling. Then the next day, for no reason, I just stopped watching all together and watched nothing outside a ppv for around 2.5 months. Now, I'm catching up on what has happened in NJPW and going to watch their good matches. So I figured I'd start this thread by keeping up with 2015 and keeping a MotY list here. Today, I watched all of the WWE matches Meltzer rated ****1/2 or higher (there are none higher!). Here's what I thought:

Brock Lesnar vs Seth Rollins vs John Cena - Royal Rumble: ****1/4. This match exceeded the expectations I had for it at the time. It had good psychology, something that really lacked in Rollins/Cena @ SS because in this match the other competitor could break up the pinfall attempts after finishers. I think the Brock injury angle was terrible but I guess that was the only way to let Cena/Rollins tear it up for a bit but that was the only time that I actually felt the psychology and flow felt off.

Sasha Banks vs Bayley - NXT Takeover: Brooklyn: ****1/2. Incredible match. I'd have given it 5 stars without Bayley doing the Banks Statement. I cannot praise this match enough.

Roman Reigns vs Brock Lesnar - WrestleMania 31: ****1/4. I'm giving this a very low ****1/4. I really enjoy this match. It's a great mauling that has a finish that makes you question how the same person can book this and then book Taker/Brock or Rollins/Cena @ SummerSlam. I've made no bones about Reigns smiling while getting the utter **** kicked out of him making me get a bad taste in my mouth. Do it once, fine, I get it, twice, maybe, three times or more? **** outta here.

Roman Reigns vs Daniel Bryan - Fast Lane: **. I can't get into matches where the crowd gives no ****s. It takes the drama away. I wouldn't even call this a decent match. With a good crowd, I may bump it to ***. It was a chore to watch. You have to look no further than my 5-star list to see I'm a huge Bryan mark but this doesn't deliver.

John Cena vs Seth Rollins - Summer Slam: ***. For the first 10 minutes, Seth did MOVES!!!!!~~!~!~!~ He could've did those with literally any opponent. The height on his frog splash was incredible. Seth makes a mistake and in what is about his 7th move in the match, Cena hits the AA for the anticlimatic 2-count. Then we delve into the 10 minute finishing stretch where John actually does something once in a while. I had to turn this off once Stewart appears because that's just disgusting. Seth looked like a million bucks. John Cena sucks. ***3/4 with a normal finish. *** for the garbage we got.

Eventually I want to get to the NJPW ****1/2+ matches. There are 19 of them! I've watched one! I will also be going back to watch WWE matches that were ****1/4 for sure and then **** if I have time at end of year.

Naito vs Ibushi - Semi-finals of New Japan Cup: ****1/2. I'm usually not the biggest fan of high flying matches and much prefer brawlers/heavy hitters (Brock, Kobashi) beat the **** out of each other or a mix of aerial and mat wrestling (Bryan, Okada) but this match left me almost breathless.

List so far (only listing ****+ matches):
1. Sasha vs. Bayley
2. Naito vs. Ibushi
3. Brock vs. Cena vs. Rollins
4. Brock vs. Reigns

If anybody wants to make their MotY lists here, feel free, or just whatever you think the best match is.

I couldn't believe when I saw Meltzer rated Cena/Rollins 4.75 and Sasha/Bayley at 4.5.

Sasha/Bayley was an incredible piece of storytelling in the ring, marred only by a couple of flubs (the botched rana and Bayley doing the Banks Statement).

Rollins/Cena was just "here I'll do my spot, then you do you spot" over and over again. Yes, the spots were bigger and better done than Sasha/Bayley, but there was no storytelling at all in the match. Both Rollins/Cena/Lesnar and Rollins/Reigns/Lesnar were better matches than Rollins Cena.

Forgot about the Owens/Cena matches. For some reason they weren't listed on the star ratings website.

Going to watch all three consecutively starting now. Can't wait to see 35 AA's!!!

Luckily their 3rd match got only ****1/4 so I'll watch that later this year.

Cena vs Owens - Elimination Chamber: ***3/4. Owens did stuff. Cena did stuff. LOL Cena Loses. I liked it more than the first time I watched it but I don't think the match is great, at all. Lack of selling, reliance on finishers, and a crowd that wasn't that into it took me out of it a bit. I know I'm in for a treat with the second one as I loved that one. Finisher count = 6.

Cena vs Owens - Money in the Bank: ****. Great match. Better pacing, better crowd. The finish really put me off of this match because Cena does the stunner but he gets so little of it and the cameras out of place for Owens' reaction that I thought Owens just brushed Cena off and Cena was going to be the one hurt but Cena gets up > AA > 3. LOL Cena Wins. Finisher count = 15.

Will they hit 25 finishers?

15 finishers in 2 matches is disgusting.

Just missed the editing time. Finisher count is actually 13. Much better.

Forgot about this . After the first Owens vs Cena match:



The sweet delicious tears of Cena's fans.

Cena should just switch his finisher to the springboard stunner. The career record for most botched finishers will be shattered in a week.

you're supposed to be ranking these in percents, silly

Wow. Good call. Totally forgot and was instead keeping note if it was a high/medium/low star or quarter star.

Tanahashi vs Nakamura - Final of the 2015 G-1 Climax tournament from 8/16: 80% (low ****3/4). Two guys giving every ounce of energy they have to be the winner of a shiny briefcase to hold until 1/4/16. This is in keeping with their series of amazing matches. They had a trilogy last year where each match was rated ****1/2 or more by Meltzer. This one, however, he gave 5*, and despite my love of giving out 5* and not really being into giving ****3/4, there's just something missing here. The beginning is mehhhhhh.

Kyle O'Reilly vs KUSHIDA - Best of the Super Juniors XXII from May: 89% (mid-high ****3/4). As I mentioned in the first match I did for NJPW, I'm not a fan of the juniors but this received high praise. Now, in PWG, I can't get through a match with Kyle because he's a no-selling machine who just spams kicks and submissions. KUSHIDA has been my favorite junior since I started watching NJPW in 2011 and he was a rookie and like 19. The guy is seriously underrated and awesome. KUSHIDA for those that don't know him:



KUSHIDA is a high flyer full of high spots and is mostly in a tag team with Alex Shelley called "Time Splitters". So, despite 'ing KUSHIDA I had little hope for this match because of the charisma vacuum named Kyle O'Reilly. I came in thinking KUSHIDA would fly and Kyle would do moves. Man, was I wrong. From the very first minute, I knew it would be really good as Kyle finds a sneaky way to cinch in a headlock. KUSHIDA, didn't fly. He worked on Kyle's arm with some high flying mixed in. This was a back and forth match with both guys going after each others arms and without either of them saying die. In one spot, KUSHIDA nearly broke his neck due to a botched jump (think nearly Hayabusa injury) and that just a couple of months after he suffered a concussion in a match with Kota Ibushi. This match had all the limb work payoff. I'd rate this 5* if not for a botch very very late in the match that could've been covered up but wasn't. This match also went over 30 minutes which is an ironman match for Juniors in Japan as that's usually only reserved for IWGP matches on ppvs and Jr's typically get 15 or less in their title matches. Super freaking amazing match and you can probably tell by the length of this . Go watch it!

I finally got NJPW World (NJPW's Network) so I could do some of these .

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kota Ibushi - WrestleKingdom IX: This match told an incredible story. Nakamura thought Ibushi had no chance with him and refused to take him seriously:




Also, "anything you can do, I can do better" as told by Kota Ibushi. When Ibushi was using Nakamura's moves, Nakamura got mad and things turned nasty:





This match made me buy-in to Ibushi as the superstar he's been made out to be since this match. I actually remember feeling this the first time I watched it, but luckily for me, I had forgotton everything about this match except the result. Ibushi would never say die which made Nakamura turn to something very rare in NJPW (outside of Bullet Club matches, cheating. He pushes the ref into Ibushi and then punches him in the face (punches are actually taken seriously in NJPW).







In the end, Ibushi succumbed to Nakamura's Boma Ye finisher.



Meltzer rating: *****
My rating: ***** (100)

On a side note, I need something besides having 100 being 5* match because there's a difference between 5* match and greatest match in wrestling history.

Young Bucks/AJ Styles vs Okada/Trent Barretta/Rocky Romero - Global Wars 2015 Night 2: For some reason, I thought this match was rated by Meltzer as ****1/2 but I actually can't find what he rated this match. But this is just a match thread so I'll throw it here. Great action in this interpromotional match with NJPW and ROH. A match with some psychology but it's mostly full of high spots which isn't bad. It was also a lead in to Okada challenging styles two months later. Styles and Okada had lots of great interactions. Then the tag team expertese of Romero/Bucks really helped keep the match in check. A truly great match that I'd recommend especially if you like high flying non-stop action. 10% (****).

Best part of the match was before it even started. "Red Shoes" (NJPW ref who is probably the GOAT ref and only refs main events and title matches) gets a chant from the crowd and acknowledges it



Kota Ibushi vs AJ Styles - G-1 Day 1: Another high flying match that was really good. I just couldn't get into it for some reason. Perhaps it was from seeing all the high spots in the previous match and watching this one immediately after it. The match gets all kinds of praise from other forums but I can't feel it.
Meltzer rating: ****1/2
My rating: ***3/4

Tomohiro Ishii vs. Tomoaki Honma - New Beginning in Sendai (2/14/15) for the NEVER (Openweight) championship: Back story here is actually quite weird/good. Honma gets over with the crowd by losing because eventually he's going to get that win. He hasn't pinned anybody in a flipping year+. Why did he get this title shot? Because he's over as ****. He gets over because he plays his role so well and almost always, comes within an eyelash of hitting his finisher and winning. Ishii and Honma faced each other the previous August in the G-1 tournament in one of the best matches of the year (I've easily watched this 10+ times...I've never rated though, so it's not on my 5* list) and shockingly, people want to see it again. So here we go, semi-main event for this show.

A little bit about these guys. Honma is the underdog, always. He's a scrappy little dude who wears the red and yellow and embraces Hulkamania...er I mean, Honmania. Honma loves his headbutts and chops. Ishii is billed as one of the stiffest workers on the planet and one of the toughest. Ishii's offense primarily consists of chopping you until you give up and if that doesn't work, he'll throw in some headbutts for good measure. So going into this match we expect a slugfest and a slugfest it was:





Too bad the sound doesn't come through on this. The first headbutt is sickening.


Honma puts up a great fight but in the end, Ishii hits one of his finishers to finish off Honma.


It was a great match for sure. Something was just lacking in it for me to give it the same rating as Meltzer though. This was my second viewing of it and in the first viewing, I felt the same way. I'll probably watch it once more just to be sure.

Meltzer rating: *****
My rating: ****1/4 (30%)

On a side note: I've figured out how to make gifs. This should make me get to more matches and have much more fun.

Great review Isolated!

Went on a spree of watching matches a couple of nights ago.

Bryan vs. Orton vs. Batista - WM XXX. At the beginning the crowd seems completely out of it, but I'm assuming this is from Undertaker losing a match or two ago. It's funny that the best heel work in this match comes from HHH and Stephanie when they interrupt midway bringing out some crooked referee. I still cringe at the bump Orton took putting Bryan through the table when landing on the monitor. The match was never really in question and that takes it a couple of notches down for me, but, it was Bryan's crowning moment which balances it out. I'll give this a 55% for ****1/2.

Kobashi vs Joe - Kobashi vs Joe in 2005. Possibly the best match in ROH history. Hard hitting match that everybody should watch at least once. *****

Tanahashi vs Okada - Invasion Attack 2013. After NJPW takes all the heat off of Okada by having him lose at WrestleKingdom VII 3 months earlier we get this obvious Okada win. Without a shadow of a doubt the greatest match of the 2000's. 8 billion stars.

Benoit vs. Brock - Smackdown! 12/3/03. Great match. Came about after Benoit made Brock tap at Survivor Series. Just a super crisp and great match, as you'd expect from these two. **** 5%.

Bryan vs. Nigel - 6th Anniversary Show. Great match. If you want to see great heel work, go watch this. Nigel is the man. A shame he never made it to WWE. I may do a better write-up on this one later but not feeling well atm (reason for all short stuff and no gifs). This one deserves gifs. *****

I think I need to go through ROH stuff and figure out my top 20 or so. It would probably go Joe vs Kobashi and then 19 Bryan vs X matches.

Watching Kobashi/Joe for the first time right now, damn.

Good stuff . I've watched that match well over 20 times in the last 3 years. The only match from ROH that I may have watched more is KENTA vs Bryan from Glory By Honor V Night 2.

Tyler Black (Seth Rollins) vs. Bryan Danielson - Breakout. At this point, Tyler has been in ROH for two years and these two haven't crossed paths yet. That makes sense though, as Bryan was ROH World champ as Tyler was coming in.

Tyler disrespects Bryan a bunch of times at the beginning by pie-facing him. Around five minutes into the match Bryan finally gets his hands on Tyler. Bryan unmercifully slaps the living **** out of Tyler around 10-15 times while screaming at him. Now I never followed ROH while it was happening so I have to make judgment calls. Tyler is definitely the heel but Bryan looks to be a tweener. The fans love him because he's the legit bitw at this point but he's cocky because he knows he's the bitw.

The two have some more cool hatred spots and really lay into each other. Some cool back and forth action with a few near falls bring us to Tyler doing the Phoenix Splash to only get a two count and Bryan just flip him over in a small package and Mr. Small Package gets the W.

After the match, Seth attacks Bryan's eye that Morishima injured the year before and gets some heat which leads to a rematch soon after which I'll get to tonight.

There are two more matches from 2008 between the two and I'm looking forward to watching them, a lot. I didn't realize it when I started the match but they're the last two winners of the WrestleMania main event.

Rating: ****. I was pretty disappointed by this tbh. I've watched it once before earlier this year and thought it was much better. But as the title of this show indicates, this is what shows Tyler can hang with the big boys and starts his ascension to the world title.

Tyler Black vs Bryan Danielson - Southern Navigation: This was a few months after the first match and apparently Bryan forgot what happened because he was very sad that Tyler wouldn't shake his hand.

The first match started off slow with Tyler punking Bryan a lot. This was the very opposite. Tyler was clearly more confident in his skills in this match. Before the first one, he was mostly tagging with Jimmy Jacobs but had been focused on singles since.

Tyler, once again started on offense, dominating Bryan for the first few minutes. Some back and forth action afterwards until Bryan gets Tyler hooked in to do his elbows and annihilates him...so naturally, Tyler gets right up and gets back on offense. This is something I always hated about Bryan's matches. Bryan first used the violent elbows to finish off a personal match with Roderick Strong at Vendetta but the fans loved it so much that he just had to do them every match which in turn made many opponents afterwards no sell them even though they look like they'd kill you. Bryan wins a couple of minutes later when he forces Tyler to tap to cattle mutilation.

Rating: 42% (****1/4)

Here's a nice list of every Meltzer 5 star match ever. Key part: most of the matches have links to videos of the match:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCirc...tzer_has_ever/

Believe me, I can probably rattle off 95% of the 5* matches off the top of my head if not more and have seen just as many. Sadly, he's never given a Bryan match 5*. Bryan is probably the best US worker since Flair. These matches are (obviously) my own opinion and I'm not doing them in any kind of order.

Never seen a Joe match before and wasn't sure how he'd mesh with Kobashi. But who was I to worry, Kobashi is only one of the best workers ever. Great match with a super hot crowd.
I'm getting caught up on NJPW 5 star matches and caught this one and the Tanahashi/Suzuki one. The Suzuki match was a little disappointing for a 5 star match, as it seemed that Suzuki was limited as to what moves he could take and they were trying to work around that. Tanahashi/Okada was much better, definitely one of the best matches I've ever seen.