BEST and WORST matches you've seen live?

[Buy Me a Burrito]

My favorite match I've ever seen live was a Cena/Bourne v. Edge/Sheamus at a WWE house show. It was the perfect southern tag match.

 

Worst not counting a no-name indie match? Probably some non-finish match on a Nitro when it came to town. I seem to remember Scott Norton fighting Hugh Morrus and even though it was under five minutes hating it.

 

From that same card I saw Flair and Arn Anderson against the Rock n' Roll express in a good twenty minute match.

[Phil Schneider]

I have seen a lot of live wrestling over the years (although nothing in the last couple). Best is a tie with El Hijo Del Santo v. La Parka from Atlanta which was an awesome blood soaked brawl, and the 30 minute iron man with Shinya Hashimoto v. Dylan Knight v. Steve Corino v. Gary Steele. I caught Hashimoto's bandanna and it was so great to see him in a 30 minute war in front of 80 people. 

 

I have seen a lot of bad matches over the years too, I seem to remember Sheik v. Fat Frank at a JAPW show being pretty bad and kind of racist.

[SturmCRF]

The best I've ever seen live was probably Bryan Danielson and Eddie Edwards vs KENTA and Taiji Ishimori for the GHC Junior Tag Titles in Coventry, when NOAH did their first UK shows in 2008. Danielson was heeling it up spectacularly, and the teasing of KENTA finally getting his hands on him was phenomenally done. I seem to remember it being about half an hour long, and including some kind of package DDT thing from Ishimori that I marked out for, regardless of whether it was guilty of being convoluted or Devaluing The DDT. They're too fresh in my mind to be sure, but either of Rampage Brown vs El Ligero or the harrowing hardcore match between Jimmy Havoc and James Davis from Progress Wrestling last Sunday would be well up there, too.

 

Not sure about the worst, but any of a selection of undercard filler matches from the Monday Night Raws I've been to over here would be in the running. Honourable mentions go to Austin Aries vs Mark Haskins at the TNA tapings last year (I like them both, but seeing Haskins Brock Lesnar a Shooting Star Press was an unpleasant mix of embarassing and frightening), and Yoshinobu Kanemura vs Jay Briscoe from NOAH, which was shorter and less eventful than I was expecting from a Junior Heavyweight Title match.

[Newb82]

Best for me is probably the Christian VS Yoshi Tatsu ECW title match that was on TV.

Nothing stands out as particularly bad.

[Concrete]

BEST MATCH: El Generico vs. 123 Kid CHIKARA KOT11. Loved this so much. Sat front row. Hopping up and down when Generico hit the BRAINBUSTAH. Wowzas.

 

Worst Match: One of the local promotions ran a match with a ref that knew NOTHING. Like a wrestler tapped out like 4 times right in front of him and just stood there pissing himself. Then the wrestlers go botch their way to a 2nd finish that the referee counted 3 for. It was cringe worthy.

[Shane]

Best: Probably Bret/Bulldog from the IYH ppv. I was in the nosebleeds for that, though. Best match I saw up close was probably a Dudleys vs Balls/Masato Tanaka tag from an ECW show in Lebanon, PA.

Worst: Nothing stands out, really. Maybe the first match I ever saw live, which was a Warlord squash with one of his interminable bearhug sequences.

There's also a pretty bad 6-man ECW street fight with Dreamer/New Jack/Kronus vs Victory/Kodiak Bear/?.

[Super Ape]

Best was Shawn Michaels/Mankind at Mind Games. DQ finish aside, it was the first time Foley's potential as a main eventer shined through since touching down on the WWF, and HBK's flying super kick is still the coolest thing I've ever seen live.

Don't really have a worst.

[SovietShooter]

I have seen a lot of live wrestling over the years (although nothing in the last couple). Best is a tie with El Hijo Del Santo v. La Parka from Atlanta which was an awesome blood soaked brawl, and the 30 minute iron man with Shinya Hashimoto v. Dylan Knight v. Steve Corino v. Gary Steele. I caught Hashimoto's bandanna and it was so great to see him in a 30 minute war in front of 80 people. 

 

I have the video of that match, and Knight dragged them boys down.  The Steele/Hashimoto/Corino "Iron Man Challenege" the day before in Pittsburgh was damned amazing, and damned good. 

 

When Gary Steel came over for that "tour" to defend/challenge for the NWA title he crashed with me and we trained and traveled together for a couple weeks, and it was pretty fn awesome.  He ended up having a really strong series of matches over here in four different territories.

 

Also, I was at the NWA Convention that year where they did the Hashimoto/Corino match that was solid, but the building had an insane atmosphere and the crappy boxing-style finish drew a ton of heat.  That card also had the first ever AJ Styles/Chris Daniels match, which was notorious at the time, and showed up on video like 7 years later. 

[Victator]

I loved how a few fans (at the NWA con) were all "You're FAT" at Hashimoto and after the first kick, they shut up. 

[S.K.o.S.]

Best: Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka at November to Remember 1999.  There was also an Ibushi-Generico ROH match in Chicago.

 

Worst: Only thing that comes to mind is L'Artiste vs. Jamie Jackson in a ladder match in AWF in 1999. About 3/4 of the way through the match the belt partially came off the harness, hanging low enough that you could've just reached up and grabbed it without the ladder, and they tried to work around it.

[Pete]

I have seen a lot of live wrestling over the years (although nothing in the last couple). Best is a tie with El Hijo Del Santo v. La Parka from Atlanta which was an awesome blood soaked brawl, and the 30 minute iron man with Shinya Hashimoto v. Dylan Knight v. Steve Corino v. Gary Steele. I caught Hashimoto's bandanna and it was so great to see him in a 30 minute war in front of 80 people. 

 

I have seen a lot of bad matches over the years too, I seem to remember Sheik v. Fat Frank at a JAPW show being pretty bad and kind of racist.

 

Aw, Fat Frank no-sold ANTHRAX. What more do you want?

[ultimoDANK]

Best is either Joe vs Punk 2 from the front row or DBryan vs Homicide from Reborn Stage 2.

After the first one hour draw I really didn't think they would do another draw. As the match went on it really seemed like Punk would win in the last couple of minutes. Fantastic drama live.

The DBryan vs Homicide match was about as perfect as a match could be. No wasted movement, everything had a point.

Honorable mention would go to DBryan vs KENTA from a Chicago roh show.

Worst... I sat through too many IWA-MS under cards to name one.

[keith_h]

Best: Either Blitzkrieg vs. Juvi or Benoit/Malenko vs. Raven/Saturn from Spring Stampede '99

 

Worst: Ugh... Booker T vs. Buff Bagwell from the infamous Tacoma, WA RAW that changed over to Nitro at the end... so, so bad. The crowd just shit on this to no end. We stayed till the end, but I would say most of the crowd was gone before the match ended.

[JRGoldman]

There's also a pretty bad 6-man ECW street fight with Dreamer/New Jack/Kronus vs Victory/Kodiak Bear/?.

I don't understand how a match that has New Jack fighting a bear is in the running for worst anything.

[cool arrow]

 

There's also a pretty bad 6-man ECW street fight with Dreamer/New Jack/Kronus vs Victory/Kodiak Bear/?.

I don't understand how a match that has New Jack fighting a bear is in the running for worst anything.

 

 

I'd pay good money to see New Jack fight a bear a la Fujiwara.

[davidb]

Best is easily Benoit-Regal from Pillman 2000.

 

Worst I'm not sure of, although I can probably guess the promotion it would have come from.

[Marty Sugar]

I can only imagine the comments, but two of the best matches I have ever seen live have involved Davey Richards. The first was Scotty Mac vs. Davey, in front of about 30 people in Burnaby. Despite the tiny crowd, they busted their asses to put on a really thrilling contest. The second was Davey vs. Bryan Danielson in Surrey: the first time I'd ever seen Danielson, and after years of hearing he was "the greatest technical wrester in the world," he went out and worked a 25-minute comedy match with Mr. Serious himself.  Tripping over his cape, an endless airplane spin, all types of great stuff.  Ridiculously entertaining.

 

Worst match has to be the Nash/Goldberg/Steiner match from New Blood Rising.  There's a really horrible match from a show I promoted last November (not a match of mine...but mine are no gems), but I refuse to bring myself to watch it all the way through. I was too busy organizing things to watch it in its entirely, live, which is probably a good thing for everyone involved.

[Go2Sleep]

Worst match has to be the Nash/Goldberg/Steiner match from New Blood Rising.  

 

This match needs to be seen on video in order to appreciate the sheer absurdity of Tony Schiavone talking about Nash and Steiner improvising a new finish. It's not good by any conventional measure, but it's so fucking weird you almost have to admire it on some level.

[Just Dave]

Best: Gotta be HHH/Undertaker in Atlanta for Wrestlemania. Just an unbelievable atmosphere and the reactions were fantastic. Crowd was much more 50/50 than I thought they would be. 

 

Worst match: I'm tempted to nominate Lawler/Cole from the same show, but that doesn't seem fair to Cole, as I feel like the match should involve two wrestlers, but I sat through a couple of absolutely godawful Nitros in Atlanta, and 15 yr old me having to sit through that 30 minute segment where Roddy Piper picked a bunch of unknown for "Team Piper" was paramount to a grounding. Seriously, I would've rather been in school. 

[Rev Ray]

Best Amatch:  Jushin Thunder Liger v. Flyin' Brian Pillman - WCW House Show in the Meadowlands.  Liger had just beaten Pillman for the title a few days earlier I think at Starccade and came out to a huge pop, those two tore it up.

 

As far as worst matches:  Pete, you and I both sat through USA Pro ticket seller matches, Ken Sweeney Matches, that god awful Women's match on that Alpha Pro show... Shane Tully was worse than that?

[paul sosnowski]

Shane-Tully could definitely be the worst I've ever seen live

[Noah Mark]

The best was Iron Sheik vs Sgt Slaughter in a barracks match at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.  The worst was also from the Pittsburgh Civic Arena, JYD vs Roddy Piper.  Both matches took place probably early-mid 80's.

[DEAN]

Best would be Dick Murdock vs Harley Race in 1977.  Honorable mentions:  A lot of OMEGA main events; Eddy Guerrero vs Ultimo Dragon in Fairfax, Low-Ki vs American Dragon at Super 8 1999; Preston Quinn vs Scotty Blaze; Harley Race vs BlackJack Mulligan 1979ish- first time I ever saw anyone pildriven onto the floor, which was treated like attempted homicide at the Norfolk Scope. 

 

Worst is all about the Midlo show.  HM:  Anything on the WWF TV taping where Shawn Michaels pretended to pass out- as he went to try to find his smile.  Any of the Jeff Jarrett/Mongo matches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ellsworth Toohey]

How the hell have we gone three pages with no one mentioning a Mad Dog O'Malley or Cueball Carmichael match?  I know a lot of you guys used to go to MEWF shows.