I went with Ken Shamrock. I was always a big fan of the man in both MMA and wrestling, so it was a pretty easy choice for me. Bossman? He was okay, Ray Traylor had two good runs during two vastly different eras, but he was never much of a worker. I was a big Bradshaw fan when he was the badass Texan and a part of the APA, and while I appreciated some of his run as JBL, for the most part his time on top bored me to tears. Oh and Tasty summed up this argument far better than I could have, bravo. Vote for Shamrock!
The Final Four: Pool A
- Thread starter klunderbunker
- Start date
Little Jerry Lawler
Sigmund Freud On Ritalin And Roids
The Undertaker wasn't doing much after WM except being in subpar feuds with Booker T and the Dudleys of all people. If they didn't want JBL with the belt, they could have kept Eddie Guerrero's reign going until Summerslam when he could have lost to Angle who was a heel at the time.
Lee
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's Supermod!
He was NWA champion in TNA.
klunderbunker
Welcome to My (And Not Sly's) House
At that point I'd hardly call the NWA Title a world title.
The only reason he faced Eddie at Summerslam is because he cost him the title, enabling them to set up a feud between the two while Angle was still recovering. Ignoring that fact, yes, they could have had Eddie "Bruno Sammartino" Guerrero hold the title until then, but the fact of the matter is he was also an awful champion who also got his opportunity in a fallow period.
In the 12 months between December 1997 and December 1998, Shamrock beat Shawn Michaels, The Rock, Kane, Triple H and, wait for this, won two tournaments. Two. Vote Shamrock, tournament specialist.
Muffin Top Merkley
Be a man!
JBL easily gets my vote to advance into the tournament. He had held various titles; everything from a seventeen time Hardcore champion to a one time/longest reigning World Heavyweight Champion on Smackdown. He was ranked as the #5 of the 500 best singles wrestlers in the PWI 500 in 2005.
While its true there might not have been much in terms of competition, wins over The Undertaker, Big Show, Kurt Angle etc certainly doesn't hinder him from getting into round 1.
While its true there might not have been much in terms of competition, wins over The Undertaker, Big Show, Kurt Angle etc certainly doesn't hinder him from getting into round 1.
Well shit, Crash Holly must be already in the tournament, because he has 22 Hardcore titles.
At a time when all the other possibilities weren't around, at least to begin with. Shamrock won a KOTR tournament that included Vader, Triplr H, The Rock, Owen Hart, Terry Funk and Jeff Jarrett. That's more impressive than beating second rate competition for a second rate title.
In a year when Shelton Benjamin was in the top 10. Shamrock was 8th in a year when Bill Goldberg and Steve Austin and Mitsuhara Misawa were all rampant, for example. Where was Shamrock in the all time 500? 226th. Where was JBL? He wasn't.
You know, I went to look at Shamrock's match record and saw that he'd beaten both Bradshaw and Bossman within the space of two weeks in 1999. He's also beaten, in no particular order Mick Foley (by submission), Owen Hart, Kane, The Rock, Faarooq of Nation period, Bradshaw!, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Vader as well as taking Steve Austin and Bret Hart to draws. There is no way that anyone could argue that isn't a more impressive list than WWE Booker T, Big Show, Kurt Angle in a triple threat, and Undertaker. Which is all JBL had in his best period.
Little Jerry Lawler
Sigmund Freud On Ritalin And Roids
Second rate competition? Let's compare the competition JBL had during his reign compared to Benoit's and HHH's.
RAW: Edge, Orton, HHH, Batista, Benoit, Jericho
Smackdown: Guerrero, Angle, Big Show, Booker T, Undertaker
Honestly I will say that it is pretty even considering that Jericho and Edge weren't doing much at the time and Orton was going through a terrible face run.
I seem to remember that Foley choked himself out instead of actually submitting to Shamrock so I'm going to throw out that one. Luckily the Rock was going through a good period before he turned crap before turning back to good. I can't believe you're throwing Vader out there because even Edge beat Vader. I have no problems with the rest of them.
Shelton was hot during 2004 beating HHH multiple times and Jericho for the IC Title so I see why he was in the top 10.
You make me work harder than anybody on these forums. Well done.
Jack-Hammer
YOU WILL RESPECT MY AUTHORITAH!!!!
Out of these three choices, I've got to go with JBL. JBL accomplished a lot over the course of his career, but really the last couple of years before he began commentating are really when he just really flourished and became an actual wrestling superstar. I thought JBL was a pretty good heel and he was average at best in the ring. Still, he was head and shoulders above Shamrock and Bossman.
As for Ken Shamrock, the guy just bored the piss out of me most of the time when he wrestled and is extremely overrated as an MMA fighter in my view. He did win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, I'll give him that. However, he won the title when, quite frankly, it didn't really mean anything. It was a title that only had past glories to keep it going.
As for the Bossman, I kinda liked the guy but he just never really did anything to set himself apart. He was pretty decent in the ring and could move really well for a guy his size. Probably the highlight of his career is a forgettable WWF Tag Team Championship run with Ken Shamrock and his feud with Hulk Hogan in the late 80s.
As for Ken Shamrock, the guy just bored the piss out of me most of the time when he wrestled and is extremely overrated as an MMA fighter in my view. He did win the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, I'll give him that. However, he won the title when, quite frankly, it didn't really mean anything. It was a title that only had past glories to keep it going.
As for the Bossman, I kinda liked the guy but he just never really did anything to set himself apart. He was pretty decent in the ring and could move really well for a guy his size. Probably the highlight of his career is a forgettable WWF Tag Team Championship run with Ken Shamrock and his feud with Hulk Hogan in the late 80s.
Where's Shawn Michaels? Where's Kane? Rob Van Dam? All three of them would have been in the picture on Smackdown.
RVD may be a bit far, but the fact that Kane and Shawn Michaels didn't even have title matches in that period truly says it all. Combined total World Championship reigns to the day before WrestleMania 21 of Raw wrestlers: 37. I'll reduce that to 21, because Flair shouldn't count.
So an injured Kurt Angle, Booker T, who hadn't been a World Champion in WWE, the world's worst champion the Undertaker, the world's second worst champion Big Show and the only man to come close to JBL in the title from nowhere stakes.
Combined total World Championship reigns of Smackdown wrestlers to the day before WrestleMania 21: 18, though I doubt that Booker T's WCW reigns when he feuded with Vince Russo should really be taken seriously.
Either way, the Raw list is more impressive, furthermore when you note that Batista, RVD and Edge, the three guys that had won no titles at the time, have since gone to win 16 titles between them, with Orton winning a further 5 while John Cena's 9 and Rey Mysterio's one is all the young Smackdown talent of the time had to offer. Raw had the stronger roster by a country mile.
What's even about it? Only two of the Smackdown guys mentioned ever won more than two titles, and one of them managed to do so because they had a 20 year career, and the other was injured when JBL won the title. Of the Raw guys mentioned by you, all of them have won more than 5 World Titles.
What? You are throwing out a victory because the opponent made himself pass out rather than tap out? How the fuck is a TKO not a victory?
What does that sentence even mean? If it means Shamrock beat the Rock on more than one occasion in the period when The Rock was on the rise, then you are right. If you mean he beat him at a point when The Rock hadn't suffered a single defeat for 3 months, you're right. I don't think that was what you meant though, so you're probably wrong.
Edge beat Vader when he was on his way out of the company and had lost to Marc Mero. Shamrock beat Vader when he had lost only to Mark Henry, Kane, Steve Austin, The Rock and Triple H, which isn't bad company to find yourself in.
But that's the point isn't it? In 2004 Shelton Benjamin was getting a push. In 1998 The Rock was getting a push. There's a pretty good yardstick in terms of roster quality right there.
Lee
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's Supermod!
So is that why you voted Big Bossman?
Little Jerry Lawler
Sigmund Freud On Ritalin And Roids
Muffin Top Merkley
Be a man!
I was just pointing out that he has held more than the World Heavyweight Championship. Being a seventeen time hardcore champion means nothing, but I didn't feel the need to list all of his title reigns.
I wouldn't say Big Show, Eddie Guerrero, Booker T, Kurt Angle, Batista, Benoit etc counts as second rate.
I'm not claiming JBL will be in the finals, but when he stands beside Ken Shamrock and the Big Bossman, JBL advances.
JBL did something that not a lot of other guys could do, he came straight from a tag team and embarked on a historic WWE Championship reign amidst doubters and people who thought he was a midcarder for life. Kayfabe wise, we should certainly take into account how long he held that title, and how he defended it against people like The Undertaker, Eddie Guerrero, Big Show, and Booker T. His ability to get heat was much more than people expected, even if he might have used some "cheap" methods to do it (and I personally think the whole "cheap heat" argument is horseshit anyway). And in the ring he might not have been the best, but I think he easily trounces his competition in those other two categories. He was also one of my favorite commentators ever, although I'm not sure if that should be considered in a wrestling tournament.
Christian Battlez
Getting Noticed By Management
How can it not be the longest reigning WWE champion in Smackdown history?
A former United States, Intercontinental, Hardcore, and Tag Team Champion. The guys is a legend what have Shamrock or Bossman ever done besides be career midcarders. Shamrock was the first ever TNA champion back when TNA was a indy fed but thats his only claim to fame.
A former United States, Intercontinental, Hardcore, and Tag Team Champion. The guys is a legend what have Shamrock or Bossman ever done besides be career midcarders. Shamrock was the first ever TNA champion back when TNA was a indy fed but thats his only claim to fame.
Basically, this. Because Tasty is awesome.
JBL was the longest world champion during a time that they had.....all of....who else to be world champion? Yeah. Okay. JBL was world champion back then in 2004 simply because he was the only legit choice really. He was a decent heel that could wrestle a match and get the fans to boo him after saying "I have more money than you." Not that I'm saying that's not legit to do as a heel, but come on. To say JBL is better than Shamrock or Bossman because he got a "You're the only heel I can use to keep Smackdown just barely afloat" title and then go around giving clotheslines to people and somehow claim it a finisher is beyond me. I mean, for every win that people claim he got over Cena or Guerrero he also followed it up with how many loses? Cena beat the man's ass on a regular basis after that loss. JBL regularly ended feuds a few matches down. It doesn't matter if you beat Stone Cold Steve Austin once if he ended the feud 99 wins to your 1.
Shamrock beat...well, he beat quite a few people. And he beat them more often, and with less of a 5 loss aftermath, than JBL. Bossman was a huge character back in the 80's (right?). He might not have any titles, but during that time who had a title whose name wasn't Hogan or Savage or Warrior? To hold that against him is to not understand that Bossman was under Hulk Hogan during that entire time. Hulk Hogan. And you think that John Cena is bad about winning titles. Hogan held his first title for 4 years and 13 days. 4 years and 13 days. And people were bitching when Cena had the title for more than 9 months.
I'm going with Bossman. Simply because I can't bare to vote for JBL, a man with one shitty title run and multiple shitty feuds. Especially when he was only a decent heel at best.
Little Jerry Lawler
Sigmund Freud On Ritalin And Roids
They could have had Guerrero keep the title until Angle returned so he can drop it at Summerslam. Undertaker wasn't doing much at the time except be in a shit feud with Heyman and the Dudleys. Booker T was the hottest thing last year and he could have certainly had a run with the belt as a heel so JBL wasn't the only heel around.
I could direct you to the thread I made about JBL being the greatest heel of the last decade if you want me to
All those guys you mentioned (Taker, Guerrero, and Booker T) were faces at that time.
They were all busy with feuds, and JBL was a millionaire Republican. That, and apparently JBL had a great Clothesline that could knock out anyone ever.
Booker T wasn't even Heel again until he was feuding over the United States Championship. He would have had no reason to turn heel by...defeating a Heel Champion. I don't know of a single person that could turn heel against a heel champion, unless that Heel was hella incredible. And JBL was by no means good enough to force a Booker T turn and help it stick.
I could direct you to the thread I made about JBL being the greatest heel of the last decade if you want me to
JBL the greatest heel in the last decade? That last decade would, I assume, include the likes of Heel Batista, whom not even the IWC can like right now. That last decade would, I assume, include the likes of Heel Rock in...2003 (?). The Rock is by no means a worse heel than JBL. No way. You can argue until you're blue in the face, but there is no way in hell JBL is a better Heel than The Rock.
ALL of JBL's title defenses were won with the help of his Cabinet, essentially. After he lost the title to Cena he immediately went into jobbing mode. His title run was so shit, I fail to see how he is anything but a mid-card WWE Champion.
And I'm Awesome
Mr. Money in the Bank & US Champion
Have to go with JBL...in a wrestling sense, Shamrock wasn't around long enough to even be worth considering. Bossman, while an excellent midcard guy, wouldn't last long in any tournament where he's (theoretically) lacing up the boots against people like Hart, Austin, Rock, etc. While I greatly respect what Bossman did with his time in the business, the best name in this group has to be JBL...
Big Nick Dudley
Nick
JBL, and for me, it's not even close. Bossman was an underrated big guy, IMO. Shamrock transitioned quite well from MMA to the WWF. But JBL was with Ron in the APA, a great tag team. Then he became one of the best heels on television. He is a former World Champion. He had the biggest career of the three.
I'm reading through the thread I don't see how a case can legitimately be made for Bossman or Shamrock over JBL here. JBL was a legitimate champion and has more relevance in the history books of pro wrestling than the other two men do. Voting JBL does not take away from Shamrock or Bossman, who were credible stars in their own right. However, they never took it to the next level and therefore should not be in this tournament if they have to get through JBL to get in.
Shamrock or Bossman wouldn't even get passed the 1st round if JBL was their opponent, plus 77% of the board is already in agreement that JBL is the hands down most deserving of the 3. There really is no contest here on who your vote should go for to get in.
Shamrock or Bossman wouldn't even get passed the 1st round if JBL was their opponent, plus 77% of the board is already in agreement that JBL is the hands down most deserving of the 3. There really is no contest here on who your vote should go for to get in.
JBL had one good year as a main eventer and had a nice long title reign, but you have to look at the era he did it in. JBL was in the era of two world champions. I will almost guarantee you that if there were two brands back in the late 90's with two world titles that Shamrock would have gotten some sort of title run. JBL got his run on the B show and well it was decent there was nothing overly spectacular about it. He was a product of right place, right time. There were no other legitimate heels on Smackdown at the time and JBL benefited greatly.
