He's a big Cena fan too, the enemy of the supposed ignorant smarkdom masses. I agree it was a bit tedious to complain about Cole's announcing because we know Cole sucks, but he gets caught up in minor details like that alot. He never says anything about Punk carrying Cena or anything though and praised the whole thing and gave it five stars, so it didn't come off as very smarky to me. Generally anytime a John Cena match is being praised as a five star affair, that doesn't seem "smarky" to me, atleast not according to the smark stereotypes.
I can't believe I'm saying this, especially in a discussion about John Cena, but I support everything you just said here.
I don't read the Observer, but reading over the ratings Cena matches have gotten over the years, it seems pretty obvious he likes Cena's work.
I don't get this at all. Let's be honest, as long as Punk won and the whole thing wasn't a complete fiasco, we all knew it'd get five stars from him.
For those keeping track, that's better than every single match in the careers of Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, and Chris Jericho, and the post-injury comeback career of Shawn Michaels. Meltzer was pretty unflinchingly calling it WWE's best pay per view ever. Does that make sense to anyone? It was a great PPV but I don't see it being above Wrestlemania X-7 or Summerslam 2002.
Past mistakes shouldn't determine future mistakes. I haven't seen the match, but saying it doesn't get five stars because other matches didn't get five stars is kind of silly. Why not say those other matches also deserved the five stars? It makes a lot more sense than setting some arbitrary level of quality and then deciding nothing can ever live up to it.
Besides anyone who takes Meltzer's ratings as serious is dumb. I've said that for years and still believe it. You can take Meltzer as a general guideline, perhaps, but never seriously. As I pointed out in the non-spam thread about this, Meltzer claims Kenta Kobashi had nearly 20 matches, from 1990-1995, better than Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage from Wrestlemania 3, a match many consider the best ever. That's just silly.
As you can see from the example, taking Meltzer's word seriously is just foolish, and trying to say one match cannot be good because another wasn't considered is good is equally foolish.
I can't believe how highly some of you rate Michaels vs. Angle from 'Mania 21.
I've said this for years, as well.
There are two reasons people think that match was so great. The first is the names of the wrestlers involved and the second is the length of match. Nothing an IWC fan holds more dear than the names Angle and Michaels, and matches which push nearly 30 minutes or more.
Anyways, haven't watched this match yet... will when the DVD is released. I'm sure it's going to live up to the hype.
Same here.
Jesus it's amazing how late into his career Undertaker was able to become so good in the ring. Throughout the nineties and early 00's the guy fucking sucked.
He certainly wasn't consistent, but he wasn't usually working with top flight guys either. His work with Hart and HBK was pretty good. And if his match vs. Mankind in the Cell hadn't been about how much pain Mankind could take, I think they would have worked a great match as well.
And thinking about it now... Meltzer's 5 star criteria is heavily flawed without including one Kurt Angle match on the entire thing. That's just mind-blowing when you think about it.
There are many reasons Meltzer's ratings are flawed.
