[The Beast Incarnate]

Read Brock's book the other day, and it seems like he pretty much loves everybody in the wrestling business but despises everything about backstage politics and on the road travelling. It was really interesting when he talked about what he felt were his best matches ;

- vs Rob Van Dam (Vengeance 2002)
- vs Hogan (Smackdown 2002)
- vs Rock (Summerslam 2002)
- vs Undertaker (Unforgiven 2002)
- vs Undertaker (No Mercy 2002) ; Brock Cites this is being his absolute best match in the book.
- vs Angle (Wrestlemania XIX)

The book is really WRESTLING heavy which makes it awesome automatically, but you can tell by reading it how much respect he has for guys like Taker (who he talks about like the locker room godfather) and how he feels Taker is essentially the greatest ever. He even talks about his respect for Ric Flair, even though he claims he never wants to be anything like Flair. FUCK, he dedicates a whole chapter expressing his love for Curt Hennig, what a great book.... Even though I know this isn't a BOOK FORUM (that would be hilarious) but I just needed to say that it's awesome.

Made me think about something ; Lesnar's most underrated match and Lesnar's most overrated match.

The obvious pick for most underrated would have to be the Stretcher match with The Big Show @ Judgment Day 2003. I've been pimping that match as a classic and Show's best singles for seemingly almost 10 years now but it seems as if nobody wants to throw more than *** at it. Fuck, a ton of people give it like... **. Complete fucking nonsense, it's a fucking classic !

Overrated ? I don't know about this one... Probably Backlash 2003 vs John Cena, which I do really like for the absolute stiffness by both men..... But it's not a four star match like some people claim due to who's in it. Just because they wrestled a top 10 match in company history 9 years later doesn't make the earlier one any better... Even though it's still awesome

[Big Z]

Brocks book was ok, nothing special imo.

There are an elite few of us who dig the stretcher match with Show BTW. Still probably his most underrated match (that and SS Vs HHH it seems ). Overrated? Fuck knows, he never really had a bad match. Short squashes were great, and his longer matches were great. Don't think many people consider his Cena 03 match to be anything special.

[The Beast Incarnate]

Read Jericho's second book in the same time-frame.... That guy is NEVER fucking happy with any of his matches it seems, unless it's an all-time classic. He refers to himself as basically being a TERRIBLE worker when it comes to the WWE style in 99 and 00 , and basically comes out and says that Hunter carried him in their Fully Loaded classic.

He fucking LOVES his matches with Rock, Hunter, and Benoit, and cites ROCK as being probably his best opponent in the WWE. Probably the most optimistic I've ever seen Benoit and his death portrayed since that horrible day, and I know Choke2Death would really enjoy reading about it.

Yeah, you're right about the HHH match... WHY DOES EVERYBODY HATE THAT SO MUCH... IT IS AN AWESOME MATCH YOU FUCKERS ... I just think that in this day in age it seems like everybody either hates Trips, or hates Brock's distinct style... Or both.

[sharkboy22]

Okay, I'm going to watch Lenar/Show JD and Lesnar/HHH in a while.

Also, what was the WWE style in '99? Was Jericho referring to the brawling style that was so popular back then?

A match with Lesnar that I find underrated in terms of the snowflakes, is vs Rock at SS 2002. Come on people! That match is at least 4 stars!! I've seen people throw 3 snowflakes at it and even Wrestling GOD himself, Dave Meltzer, threw 3 and a half snowflakes. The crowd was hot, the match had tons of drama, great story telling and it's considered to be in the same league as a Kofi Kingston and Dolph Ziggler? Wtf?

Another underrated one is Vs Show at Survivor Series.. Once again, people rate it very lowly. The Wrestling GOD gave it one star! One freaking star for one of the most shocking moments in WWE history? At least 2 and a half snowflakes, maybe 3. But one? One would suggest that the match was poorly worked and boring, IT WASN'T!

[Christian Louboutin]

WWF Backlash 2001 - 30-Minute Ultimate Submission Match: Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit

There were a lot of great parts, and about 95% of it made sense. But there were some logic flaws in it though. Both men worked down the body parts that would help lock in their respective finishers to start, but then at some point switched it up as Angle started working on the arm and Benoit on the leg. I'm guess that was because they wanted to beat the other with their OWN submisson move, they did have some good psychology and intensity though, but a lot of the stuff just didn't seem to go anywhere and the fast submissions really hurt don't get me wrong it's smart to tapout fast and "Live to fight another day" but doing it 6 times. C'MON. I would have liked more actual limbwork, but this isn't bad. Could have been better, but worth seeing. ***1/2

[sharkboy22]

I didn't like the Top 100 RAW moments all that much, tbh.

As for the Russo moment on the DVD, I'm pretty sure that was taken from some other DVD. A lot of WWE's DVDs feature commentary from other DVDs. All the commentary from Austin (and one from Jericho) was from his recent release.

Also, I found that disc 3 could have least included some of those moments in full length. The you had guys talking over the damn thing. I just didn't like. It was decent enough, I guess.

@WOOLOCK, Here's my take on Punk/Cena.

Punk/Cena MITB *****
Punk/Cena Summerslam ****
Punk/Cena NOC ****
Punk/Cena RAW **

I hated their RAW encounter. It was a finisher fest. There's no denying it.

MITB is perfection, the rest tried to follow. Great encounters though. I am a fan of their matches as you can see but I can understand why others would hate he matches that followed MITB.

[The Beast Incarnate]

The Survivor Series match was AWESOME for how long it was.

Jericho was referring to the more mapped out style that WWE has than any other Wrestling company in the world. It was new to Jericho to have his matches mapped out with an agent , and featuring a long heel control segment with a subsequent babyface comeback that's WWE's bread and butter formula. Here was a guy who in Japan, Mexico, ECW, WCW, etc, had a more free range style, but that shit dosen't fly in WWE apparently.

Something interesting that Jericho cites in his book is how much he fucking ADORES particular matches such as his match with Shelton at Taboo Tuesday 2004, and his match with Trips at Judgment Day 2002 which he likes to refer to as "groundbreaking".... He HATES his first two Mania matches.

[Big Z]

Russo has only been part of 2 WWE DVD's that I'm aware of; Attitude and Raw 1000. Likely he recorded that bit for the AE DVD set but it didn't make it onto the doc.

[The Beast Incarnate]

I'm glad those are the only two DVDs you mentioned

[WOOLCOCK]

Originally Posted by sharkboy22

@WOOLOCK, Here's my take on Punk/Cena.

Punk/Cena MITB *****
Punk/Cena Summerslam ****
Punk/Cena NOC ****
Punk/Cena RAW **

I hated their RAW encounter. It was a finisher fest. There's no denying it.

MITB is perfection, the rest tried to follow. Great encounters though. I am a fan of their matches as you can see but I can understand why others would hate he matches that followed MITB.

Haven't seen the Raw match, but I said a few weeks back I'd watch it since I saw it getting some praise. Will probably watch it tonight assuming I don't get distracted (which is more than likely).

I really liked the NOC encounter, especially as a nice homage to MITB with the roles reversed and Punk now controlling the match like the star he considered himself to be and countering all of Cena's trademark offence but slowly growing unhinged at his inability to finish the match. I didn't think the nearfalls were as greatly timed as they were at MITB, but there was only one instance where I thought a kickout wasn't sold as well as it should have been (think it was Cena springing up to hit a surprise AA). I can see why the nearfalls didn't hold as much impact here to some. At MITB it was unexpected and people didn't know what was going down, whereas since then fans have become conditioned to expect at least 1 big kickout from each man and subsequently both men have to work harder to time their nearfalls to cover up the belief that the fans can guess when the match will end. NOC was by no means perfect, but it was a fine callback to MITB and a nice extension of the story, albeit surrounded by a less partisan and magical atmosphere which really elevates the MITB encounter (though I'm a firm believer that the actual ringwork in MITB was purely special).