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Best wrestlers/performances after 40?


Ramsey

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dare I say... Hulk Hogan?  As a non-fan, I found Hogan pretty entertaining after age 43 or so, and not at all entertaining before 1996.  From a character standpoint, nWo-era Hollywood Hogan was the only time Hogan really interested me.  And a lot of his work from his end-of-career WWE run compares favorably with his 1980's WWF run (it helps that the guys he worked with were generally worlds better than his opponents in the 80's).

 

I dunno if I'd say Hogan could still "go" after age 40, exactly.  Kinda hard to answer that because there are only a handful of matches out there that I think are great in-ring (Hansen!).  Not hard to stay near your peak when your peak is so damn low.  But Hogan kept himself relevant and could still put on a decent match at age 50.  Gotta give him some sort of props for that.

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Granted I've never been able to get into Lucha so I'm not fit to comment on Negro Casas, but best US worker at 40+ has to be Flair, right? I mean he turned 40 just 5 days after Chi Town Rumble and was a top US worker for another 4-5 years, in addition to sprinkling in great performances well into his 50s as previously mentioned. I guess Terry Funk would have a good case too given that he turned 40 in freakin 1984.

 

I also need to throw a Vader shout-out here in the "brief renaissance" department. His AJ run from 99-2000 was boss.

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Shit, Wikipedia says Virus is 45!

That little man is fucking awesome! He's had a good year so far as well, with his singles matches with Titan, Delta and Negro Casas. His trios work with the Busca De Un Ídolo tournament has been great.

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Shawn Michaels vs Undertaker II was one hell of a match I don;t care what anybody says both men put on the performsnces of their careers and left it all on the mat. Michaels vs Flair is another really good match from to men over 40.

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Yeah, I remember both Michaels/Taker Mania matches being particularly bonkers.

 

Also, Ramsey hits the nail on the head about the "the older you get, the better you are at wrestling" theory.  I heard a story about some luchador's kid telling his pop that Mistico was better than him because of all the high-flying stuff he did, only for pops to say "I can do that too, but I stopped ten years ago because I want to be able to walk when I'm fifty."  Of course, lucha psychology is a whole rigmarole in and of itself that I don't quite fully grasp.  As for puro, I'll point out Tsuruta again.  Not sure of anyone else in Japan who was actively excellent (as opposed to just really good) at that age.

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Ricky Steamboat hit the big four-oh in February of 1993, so the entire last year and a half of his career could make an argument for him.  His comeback matches at the age of 56 showed that he still had plenty of gas left in the tank, in a what-might-have-been scenario if he hadn't suffered that injury.  

 

Of course Tenryu and Hansen are shoe-ins, I figure that's why nobody's really talked about them much just because they're too damn obvious.  Ditto for Flair, Funk, Lawler, et al.  If one considers just doing the same shit they always did as being the best, then Dusty could go on the list too, I saw him and Lawler have one hell of a fun little match in 2002 (and it's weird how easy it is to forget that the American Dream actually wrestled in ECW).  

 

Someone mentioned Baba, right?  He should get an asterisk at the very least, for even being able to WALK after 40, let alone do one-hour-broadways in tag matches (which he totally did).  And really, Andre should be mentioned too; he was 41 as Wrestlemania III.  I've long been a proponent for Andre being one of the smartest workers in the business in his golden years, even when nearly immobile and stuck with working WWF-era Hacksaw Duggan or Brutus Beefcake or whoever he'd still have one of the better matches of the night.  

 

 

 

 

For sheer longevity, Gypsy Joe's gotta be mentioned, just because practically nobody else kept it up as long as he did.  He's not wrestling anymore, but he's EIGHTY DAMN YEARS OLD and still alive, which is insane after all the beatings he's taken over the years.  (Little-known fact: Joe beat Jimmy Snuka to the punch by jumping off the top of a steel cage in a match against Rusher Kimura in Japan in the mid-70s.)  I have no idea what prime-era Joe looked like, or if any pre-70s footage of him even exists; but as an aging novelty act after the year 2000 he was still pretty tough and lots of fun.  

 

Here's the infamous match where he beat the living shit out of a young bewildered Taz, just because.  Gypsy was a spry young lad of 60 here: 

 

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For one offs (WWE-wise) there are a boat load: Flair vs Michaels retirement match at Wrestlemania, Lawler vs Miz ladder match, Hogan's run was simply superb, at the time I loved his battle with Brock.

 

Love him or hate him HHH is a craftsman, reiterating the Bryan WM match here. Possibly Bryan's best match in WWE other than Cena.

 

Echoing the Finlay shout out too, Smackdown 06/07 is a personal favourite period for me and Finaly injected some proper aggression and ass kickery into the picture, of course his series with William Regal and Dave Taylor, tying up Rey Mysterio in the ring apron, Benoit et al. But I particularly loved him smashing Lashley in the head week after week with his shillelagh.

 

Undertaker too. THE STREAK was pretty much all 40+, all of them WWE classics.

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dare I say... Hulk Hogan? As a non-fan, I found Hogan pretty entertaining after age 43 or so, and not at all entertaining before 1996. From a character standpoint, nWo-era Hollywood Hogan was the only time Hogan really interested me. And a lot of his work from his end-of-career WWE run compares favorably with his 1980's WWF run (it helps that the guys he worked with were generally worlds better than his opponents in the 80's).

I dunno if I'd say Hogan could still "go" after age 40, exactly. Kinda hard to answer that because there are only a handful of matches out there that I think are great in-ring (Hansen!). Not hard to stay near your peak when your peak is so damn low. But Hogan kept himself relevant and could still put on a decent match at age 50. Gotta give him some sort of props for that.

World's better than Savage, Orndorff, Valentine & Dibiase? Do tell me more about this.

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dare I say... Hulk Hogan? As a non-fan, I found Hogan pretty entertaining after age 43 or so, and not at all entertaining before 1996. From a character standpoint, nWo-era Hollywood Hogan was the only time Hogan really interested me. And a lot of his work from his end-of-career WWE run compares favorably with his 1980's WWF run (it helps that the guys he worked with were generally worlds better than his opponents in the 80's).

I dunno if I'd say Hogan could still "go" after age 40, exactly. Kinda hard to answer that because there are only a handful of matches out there that I think are great in-ring (Hansen!). Not hard to stay near your peak when your peak is so damn low. But Hogan kept himself relevant and could still put on a decent match at age 50. Gotta give him some sort of props for that.

World's better than Savage, Orndorff, Valentine & Dibiase? Do tell me more about this.

 

Well, not worlds better than those four - though I don't know that I'd put Orndorff in that group, but that's just personal preference - but Hogan spent a lot of the "Hulkamania" era working the monsters like Bundy, Studd, and immobile Andre.  For me, at least, Hogan had better matches and more interesting feuds from 89-92 than 84-89.

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Lou Thesz was 46 when he started his last run as NWA champion, and was 49 when he lost the belt to Kiniski. He still main evented and wrestled at a pretty high level for several years after that.

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Wrestlers don't get really interesting until after they hit forty, in my opinion. Having to use one's mind and not only one's physical abilities, as well as having a greater wealth of experience to draw on, makes for a deeper performance. This viewpoint is skewed towards an older generation of workers who didn't have such an extreme high-impact ring-style to keep up with. Doing more with less it the sign of brilliance.

- RAF

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  • 6 years later...

I enjoyed this thread. All of the correct names were dropped. I’ll just elaborate on a couple. 
 

Hogan wasn’t bad, but heck he only wrestled once a month. Then he never did business of course so screw him and his 3 star matches in late 90s WCW.

I think Ric Flair is underrated here. What? We all know Flair did this and this and this etc etc etc right. Yeah but he was killing it every night until late 99. And he was still the workhorse. He was on every show and he was getting the mess beat out of him every show. He took every move that everybody had. There was no going easy on Flair and there was no taking it easy by him. I swear every back body drop he ever took looked like that one from the SST match. He somehow hung in the air for extra time then WHAM! It doesn’t sound like much because he did it every time but that was impressive for anybody let alone a guy over 40.

 

 

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Can we give some props to Inoki for the Vadrr match in 96? No reason a guy at 53 should've been taking those kind of suplexes on his friggin neck. It was definitely Inoki's last good match

James

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I was taking time away from here when this thread was created as I lost my Mum on the 26th of June and buried her in July. Interesting reading it now. A name not brought up, Minoru Suzuki.

Edited by The Natural
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What's interesting in this thread is because of how rapidly the WWE roster has aged there's a bunch of guys that now fit in this category. I mean, AJ was almost 40 when he got to WWE and had a really great couple year run before he's slowed down. 

Cesaro is now 40, as well. 

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