Congratulations to AJ Styles and Daniel Bryan for putting on one of the best wrestling matches (without all the hoopla and interruption rubbish) I have seen for a long time! It lifted that episode of Smackdown to another rarely seen level!
It just shows that THIS is what you are about and not all the Monday Night Messiah crap and no talent losers like Bayley, The Iconics, Dolf Ziggler and Lana etc.
Well done boys!
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Was it the best wrestling match ever?
We had a few weeks of past Wrestlemanias in Australia recently. Triple H v The Undertaker, Lesnar v Triple H and The Undertaker v Lesnar over three years were hard to beat for the greatest of all time.
But Styles and Bryan was a rarely seen quality recently…and I know where you are coming from with the question.
Edge v Orton will have been done and dusted soon so I don’t know how this will compare yet.
Let wrestlers wrestle.
Obviously AJ and Bryan are in rarified air among the best in the world — not to mention two guys that people care about. But in general, letting your incredibly talented roster have real wrestling matches feels like a better starting point for a booking strategy than expecting wrestlers to be good actors.
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Just watched the match today, and damn! Maybe the best empty arena match I’ve seen.
Kudos to AJ and Bryan for a great match, kudos to wwe for letting them go.
I totally get it if you are down on the way these wrestlers are being used, but these talents (especially Baley and Dolph) are hardly talentless losers. Even Lana, look how good she was when she first came to WWE, it’s the booking that has killed her character.
The Lana character, in real life, is married to the Rusev character, in real life. Aren’t you fascinated that she has also totally lost that Russian accent!
Give me a break. This is just rubbish. I suspect she might be gone soon.
As for the others I mentioned, I came up with their names because they top my list for who I fast forward through.
Anyway, we all have our preferences.
I don’t understand the point you are trying to make by telling me that Lana and Rusev are married in real life. If you are trying to say that WWE has done a poor job writing for Lana, especially since she came in with a full blown Russian accent only to have it just disappear overnight, I agree. I am not disputing that you should or should not be entertained by her character. My point was that she is not a “talentless loser”, as prior to her having the change in her character with huge gaps in logic, she was an entertaining character on TV, at least IMO.
I also get it if you fast forward through the segments of the other wrestlers you mentioned, but when you call a guy like Dolph Ziggler a “talentless loser”, I can’t help but think it’s his portrayal that is getting to you, opposed to his in ring talent.
Dolph’s character is very tiring, I would even argue exhausting, I’m sure the majority of the board would agree. In ring however, I dont think anyone who watches wrestling would call him talentless, the guy has amazing athleticism. I would reserve a term like “talentless” for a wrestler/character who can’t wrestler, can’t talk, isnt entertaining.
Thank god they got rid of that Kofi guy when he dropped his fake Jamaican accent.
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That’s a bit harsh I think. Bayley is doing really well I think, Dolf is putting everyone else over, Lana is doing character work (which I enjoy), Iconics are good characters, they can do better in ring, maybe they will improve. I would not put everyone in the bin.
Everyone?
I am talking about a very small number who are struggling…
Do you understand what we are talking about when we discuss the way a talent is presented vs the skill set of the performer?
It’s funny, I was listening to an old Rewind a Wai yesterday, the show was a Nitro from 1997. John will talk about it as basically accepted fact that, during “the wars”, wrestling wasn’t the draw - we didn’t get matches over 4 minutes on tv cos people would change the channel.
Then over the weekend I saw people so happy with the Styles/Bryan match… which wasn’t even very good. Like, 3 and 3/4 at best.
It’s funny how what draws seems to have changed so dramatically.
I thought it was an excellent match, one of the best I have seen all year. Now, I have said many times that whether we are talking AEW, NXT, WWE main roster etc. having no fans sucks. I have come around to having fake fans as it does create a better environment, but there is still something disingenuous about it.
With that said, if we are not grading on a curve and we are comparing this match to your typical matches that take place in front of fans, I agree with your rating.
If we are grading on a curve, then I disagree. I thought these two had excellent chemistry and had a better match then what they had in late 2018 when they feuded over the world title.