DylanWaco

The Panther is amazingly good for a legit rookie. I will say this for Lethal - the way he was booked and his character made him a reasonably interesting part of ROH tv for much of the voting period. But the guy still sucks in the ring and he's no Cachorro

Hechicero was never going to win this and that is fine. I give my honest opinions of wrestlers in these polls and always have. And in the case of Zayn I think he's borderline great but also wildly overrated. When people talk about his year last year as an all time great run, or claim he had a dozen story driven epics in the voting period, I have the same reaction you have when I say he's on the way to being the most overrated wrestler on history. And that's ok.

The term fetishsts is in no way meant as a troll, but rather as a descriptor for those so wedded to a certain brand, style, worker, et. that any nuanced position, measured criticism of them, et. is viewed as an attack rather than...well...a nuanced position or measured criticism. Having said that if people object to the term in the context of this tournament, I won't use it going forward.

The last time I thought he was legit good in that role with his consistency was when he was working in tags. I will grant there are times I think he's good, and I think he may be getting better at certain things, but I still don't think he knows how to control a person from the top in an interesting fashion, nor do I think he sells very well when working underneath.

I get it. You are an emotional cripple, incapable of interacting with other humans in a civil fashion. You are too cowardly to address a direct question because you know it will expose you as both a liar and a fraud. Earlier I implored you to try harder. Now I see that was a waste. You can't do better. This is all you have.

This is a bizarre reaction, but I get that there are some people here who are so emotionally invested in NXT that they think any criticism of anyone on their roster is an attack on one of their real life friends. I see this with New Japan fetishists a well. It's unfortunate since I like both NXT and NJPW. I understand that your response was intended as a personal attack, and you aren't interested in engaging any argument I raise, but I will ask the question again, framing better this time - who are the good faces in WWE? For the record my argument has never been that Zayn is a bad face, who just happens to be the best of a shit field. My argument is that NXT in general, and Zayn in particular (or Neville for the purposes of this thread) benefit dramatically from how dire the rest of the U.S. wrestling landscape is. The booking in NXT is good. Zayn is very good, if not great as I have consistently said here and elsewhere (conveniently ignored by you for obvious reasons). But he is doing it in a wrestling universe where faces are rarely presented well at all, let alone with the sort of consistency and long term detail that Zayn has had. Zayn deserves credit for his performances, as do the NXT writers. But let's not pretend being the best babyface in the WWE, or the world for that matter, means the same thing now as it did in 1985.

I said flat out that he was the best face in the WWE, while also pointing out the WWE is weak on faces. Do you dispute that? I await your honest, fair minded response.

Thatcher suffers because his best stuff is not available for free. He wouldn't have beaten Nak anyway, but still

That's a lie, which is worse than alleged trolling. In that very thread I said I thought Zayn was the best babyface in the WWE. Try harder.

When was WeeLC? Feels like Galloway's bumping in that, combined with ICW return, are better than anything Bray has done in his entire career.

I didn't do a pick em' but without being around here for a while, I would guess that Zayn, Nakamura, and Rusev would be among the favorites in a bizarro, weird year, with no clear winner

Except I do t think that's true. I enjoyed Pentagon v Arez as a mauling. There are hundreds of matches last year I preferred

I would take that criticism more seriously if it wasn't in defense of a guy who has yet to work a single compelling heat section from the bottom or the top in NXT excluding bouts where he's in the ring against a guy we both regard as the best babyface in the WWE. Neville is basically Cody Rhodes with flashier highspots.

* I edited out stuff for the sake of reducing scroll bomb not to reduce your argument. I'm going out of my way not to shit on your guy here but reducing Sami to "booked really well" is such hockey you should start booking your flight to the next Winter Classic. The very idea that Sami had good matches or had a good period because of booking is so pants-on-head ridiculous that you can make that argument about anyone ever. Ric Flair? Totally only good because of booking. Totally. See how silly that sounds? Because it's silly! I don't give a rat's fart about what his name means in Spanish. Honest injun, could not possibly care less. Screech? Really? You're going with Screech? Okay. Even by your admission, you are 'giving' Zayn 3 in the last 3 months. That's a pretty good rate if that's all he had. But it ignores the prior Neville matches and any of the matches with Graves, Titus O'Neil, Tyson Kidd, Bo Dallas and Leo Krueger. All of which included story in some capacity beyond what you will see typically. Now you might not go so far as to call them epic, and that's fine. But let us not call them nothing like Zayn just figured out how to do what he does because you're upset that people like a wrestler more than your guy. I'm not upset at all, but let's leave the world of fantasy. My guess is that most people voting watched little if any Hechicero, especially relative to what they saw of Zayn. Even those who did likely have no connection to him as many of them do to Zayn through his previous work as Generico, and through the episodic booking and great presentation of his character on NXT. There will always be a bias toward native language promotions, which I fully understand and have no problem with either. Am I saying it is impossible to have watched the full 2014 runs of both men and concluded Zayn was better? No. Just pointing out the obvious, which is that the vast majority of voters almost assuredly watched a much higher percentage of Zayn's run than Hechicero's, and on top of that many who may see them as equals when it comes to work, may be giving the nod to Zayn due to presentation (again, I have no problem with this). My biggest criticism of Zayn, is less a criticism of him, than it is a criticism of people making claims like you have made in this thread - claims which effectively conceded you can't and won't defend. As I said before Zayn is a very good wrestler, probably even great at this point. But the idea that he's coming off of an other worldly year, or had a dozen "epic" matches, is something I can't wrap my head around at all. And I love NXT, think Zayn is better now than he's ever been, and enjoyed his entire run last year.

One thing I will say for Breeze - he's vastly better than Neville.

There are political reasons that match wasn't booked

Zayn had ten to twelve "story driven epic encounters" in the voting period? Really? I will buy that description for the Cesaro match, Neville and Owens matches. I'd even concede it for the sake of argument for the four-way and the Breeze match, even if I think that "epic" is a massively generous label for either of those matches. But where are the other five to seven matches of that ilk? I mean...I enjoyed the Kidd stuff but "story driven epic encounter?" I don't want to hear anybody complaining about the D-Show contributions of Titus O'Neil, if Samuel Zayn is getting that kind of NXT original(!) affirmative action bump. I get that NXT is easily the best thing about modern WWE, but reading some people talk about Zayn, is like reading Meltzer on Tanahashi, with the caveat that Zayn is at least a very good wrestler. Edit: Note that the Cesaro match is outside the voting period, so looks like Screech needs six to eight more matches of that ilk to fit the standard alleged by his booster

What are the chances of doing a tag team tourney after this? I mean, I'm delusional enough to like the idea of an NIT with Harashima, Titan, Jay Briscoe, et. and I know the idea of a woman's tourney is already on the table (full disclosure: I understand why this would be done, but if overrated NXT acts are going to e getting pushes deep into this thing, I really wish I could be voting for Sasha, instead of against Neville), but the were a lot of good tag teams and/or tag teams with a buzz last year. I think you could get a 32 team field, with probably twenty-twenty-five of those being teams with a lot of solid support. Anyway, just throwing it out there

NXT benefits a ton from the rest of WWE being shit. And I say that as someone who really likes NXT

Digression - watch the recent Kyle Matthews v. Jimmy Rave match. Matthews is probably Dustin's equal at this.

I watched the Owens match the other day. I thought it was fine, above average, but not anything special either. I thought the match was actually TOO grounded because Neville has no clue how to work a match from on top in an interesting fashion.

Is that a joke? Pentagon Jr. killed Arez in a match last year. As in I think Arez might literally be dead.

Two things about this. 1. I voted Nakamura WOTY for the Observer last year. I thought in many ways he was the most important guy to his promotion in the World last year. I think it is worth recalling that he was asked to carry feuds and big time matches v. Bad Luck Fale and the Gracies, and while we can argue about the quality of the matches produced, I think generally he succeeded at doing what they were asking him to do against deadweight. IT's also worth noting that on an international level I think he's more over and has more star power than anyone else in that company by far (see the matches v. Steen and Sabre Jr. respectively). 2. Having said that - and I have made this point many times before - Nakamura is your .240 power hitter. He will step up to the plate every time with swagger and confidence, and will let you down with uninspired, thoughtless performances far more than he should. If he gets jammed up early he'll give up and turn into a lazy fuck. But when he makes contact, he's going to completely crush it and a deliver a MOTYC level match. I thought last year was one of his better years from start to finish - I'd say he may have hit .280 last year for analogy purposes, which is a good clip for a power hitter - but he still had matches that left you shaking your head thinking "how the fuck is this the same guy from the G1 Final and/or the Invasion Attack match with overrated fraud Tanahashi?" This year he made everyone lose their shit at WK9 and became a favorite with nominal NJPW fans - but it's notable that he's done fuck all since then in the way of delivering.

Prior to coming into this thread I had no clue there was a world where people thought Neville had been great in NXT. I suppose deep down I always knew it was possible people believed that, but I'd never seen that opinion expressed anywhere before. Not once. So it's completely new to me. Having said that, citing hateful, violent offense as a reason to vote for Neville in this match up is comical. Pentagon Jr. is pretty much the god of that. It's what he does.

The NXT fetishism has gone to far. If overness within the DVDVR universe was enough to get Masters into the tourney, and have Cesaro beat Ishii in the first round, than long time DVDVR favorite Goldust should not be losing to Tyler Breeze. I like Breeze, and if he had a bunch of really good matches I'd certainly consider it, but I can only think of three or four I'd rate, and none out of this world. That's not enough to retire a godhead.