Wrestlers you thought sucked but they were actually pretty good or great
The Brutus Beefcake HoF discussion got me thinking. A lot of people tend to take periods of certain wrassler's careers and decide that their entire body of work was the shits.
I was probably guilty for feeling this with Beefcake, but even watching OSW reviews I could see he had some good charisma, a great look, a cool gimmick, and the crowd loved him. But my most egregious misconception of a wrestler was Sgt. Slaughter. He was so past his prime in 1991 and that was all I saw of him. Then I started watching him from the early 80s and he is legitimately an all-time IN-RING great aside from his cool gimmick. In the past months I've seen him have barnburners with Shiek and Shultz plus there's his epic motherfucker of a streetfight with Pat Patterson. I also didn't give King Kong Bundy much credit but in the early-mid 80s he was 400 pounds and had the mobility of a 225 pounder. I've seen several of his matches that both had great heat and solid work. Who were you wrong about? |
I remember back in the day thinking Backlund was the dirt worst until I started getting into late 70's/early 80's wrestling
Slaughter is the best bumping big man of all time. |
Guys like Slaughter, Lawler, and Duggan wrestled a yearly match from like 2002-07 and it was invariably always cringy. Unfortunately when that’s the only exposure you had to someone’s in-ring career it was easy to form unfair biases.
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Just thought of a great one: Lex Luger.
Between the fall of 95 and Summer 96 he's the best thing on Nitro |
he was a natural heel.
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His gimmick of being Sting's best friend but a heel behind his back is so fucking good lol
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Lex Luger and Sgt. Slaughter are good shouts. It's a different sort of thing, but I used to think Bret Hart was the shits until my tastes matured.
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Vader.
Because I only watched WWF stuff at the time, never saw any of his non-WWF work and didn't find him to be that special in the ring or as a character. Wasn't till years later that I found out he was actually really great in both WCW and in Japan. |
Ooh, throw Dr. Death into the "check out his Japan stuff" basket.
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The Heavenly Bodies .... thought they were awful and now I can truly appreciate how they were bumping machines.
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Yeah they were really good.
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Chris Masters
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Wait no, I still think he was terrible.
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And I will say that '70s/'80s era Backlund is bad if you look at him under a modern lens. By which I mean that people today expect a guy to be at least somewhat capable of talking, and during that time Backlund seemed completely incapable of putting together a coherent thought. This is especially bad when put against the likes of Harley Race or Ric Flair, who could talk them into the building. But in the context of that time period, he is damned good. Hell, he'd be a top attraction in the Indies now. |
Yeah, Gert and me have discussed how fucking paltry he was on the mic. Then you compare it to his heel run and it's like "WHERE THE FUCK WAS THAT?"
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Gert and I
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I will find you. Then, I will murder you.
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Adrian Adonis
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Especially before he put on all the weight he was a hard hitter who was super agile. Even after he put on the weight he could still move just not as well as in his prime. But people probably just equate him to Adorable Adrian and ignore all of his prior awesome work. |
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John Cena is someone I can see myself revisiting without my angry smark glasses on.
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For me it was Bret Hart, not that I ever thought he sucked, but I didn't truly appreciate him until in the middle of his 2nd World Title run. I remember as a kid not liking when he beat Perfect or Piper for the IC titles, and my even younger self thought Anvil was the far more entertaining guy in their tag team.
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He had got himself in good shape and was planning a comeback to the WWF before he died. Only 34 so he had another 5 years or so in him performing at a high level. Possibly even more if he kept in shape.
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Hulk Hogan
Stone Cold Steve Austin as a face |
Until I went back and watched a bunch of 2001 stuff, I didn't realize how great Stone Cold was as a heel. He was amazing.
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Throwing this one out there: The Nasty Boys
They were a really good team. |
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That said, after King of the Ring when he got hurt all the way through Survivor Series, that 5 months or whatever, he has said that he had a blast. That's when his character shifted, due to the injury, and it was absolutely amazing. I think that 5 month period is right up there with just about any other 5 month period in his whole career. Certainly was the best work of anything he did after Summerslam 99. |
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I was going to sound off until I read this. I honestly did not know that. 34 is so young. What a lost talent. |
Hope you're talking about Adrian Adonis btw Gertner.
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Yup, Adonis. There was talk he was going to return to the WWF as a tag team with Dick Murdoch which would have been amazing. They were an awesome team and would have had killer matches in that era
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Yep it was a fantastic run for him. I hated it when I was 12 but appreciate the brilliant heel work now.
I think Austin just hated the run because he feels like him shaking hands with Vince is viewed as the singular moment that signified the end of the Attitude Era. That's why he said if he could do it all over again he'd have played out everything exactly as it happened only for him to call an audible and Stun Vince after the handshake so everyone would know he'd just played Vince like a fiddle. |
Heel Austin is a good shout. Because it marked the end of all that is happy it kind of washed over the specifics of the performance which you can watch with distance.
It took me ages to appreciate Rock too, as embarrassing as that is to admit. |
I like how me saying face Austin led to a lengthy discussion about heel Austin, who I actually enjoyed as it was happening.
I can get on board with not appreciating The Rock as well in his face days. |
Hollywood Rock.
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I didn't think he "sucked" back then but I have watched nothing but old 90-93 WCW PPV's recently and Dustin Runnels/Rhodes was absolutely incredible back then. He is probably the greatest underrated talent of that era. I would need to watch the weekly shows to catch up with the angles but by God does he have great matches in WCW at that time. I think I love WCW from that time more than anything. It was so sincere even with the worst gimmicks in history.
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