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Non-Wrestlers Having Good Matches


Thomas Bugg

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This often happens on major cards or PPV's, but every once in a while a manager or valet or someone who's not trained to be a full-time wrestler will come out of nowhere and get carried to a good-great match by a good worker. Sometimes the non-worker outright steals the show.

One of the best examples that immediately comes to mind as I'm watching the Network is Mr. McMahon. This man bled a gusher in a lot of his matches, takes an inhuman asskicking, and....well, he's a funny motherfucker! His match with HBK at Wrestlemania 22 was highly entertaining. And while we're talking about McMahons being entertaining in the ring, Steph had a match with Brie Bella that had absolutely no business being as good as it was.

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Show/Mayweather is probably the best example of a non-wrestling athlete being awesome in the ring. That match is awesome. 

 

I've seen clipped versions of Lawler/Kaufman and the surrounding matches as well as versions of Kaufman's Intergender Challenge, and both of those are examples of a guy who just knew how to be a slimy, infuriating piece of shit in the ring as well as on the mic. 

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Mayweather/Big Show for me.  That had no right to even work much less be great. As for the Brie/Stephanie match I'd say Brie is way more qualified to be the non worker of that match. Steph carried the entire thing on the mic and in ring. Plus Steph's match with Trish blows away anything Brie has ever done.

 

Yeah as far as really having two non workers Beulah/Fonzie is incredible.

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Why do people still count the McMahons as "non-wrestlers"?  Do y'all seriously believe that Vince and his kids never did any training before they wrestled in front of fans?  

 

I still think the Jay Leno match was harshly underrated by many.  Leno is a guy who hadn't done anything remotely athletic since he was in school... which was literally forty years ago.  Yeah, he did a few days of training with Kanyon, but that's not enough to make your average guy off the street look any smoother than Jenna Morasca did.  Leno did everything he was supposed to do (which granted wasn't very much, but still) and did it reasonably well.  He sure as hell put on a better performance than an inebriated Dennis Rodman did in the previous PPV's terrible main event.  

 

And you know a non-wrestler who NEVER got the respect he deserved?  David fuckin' Arquette, that's who.  Go back and watch those matches he had; the poor schmuck was taking Tim Donst-level beatings and selling better than half the WCW roster.  Hell, he even did a splash off the top rope in that triple-cage match.  But people were so infuriated over the terrible booking of the championship (and the terrible movie it was promoting) that Arquette himself ended up being a scapegoat and a lightning rod for most fans' complaints and contempt.  

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I think the wrong team went over but I really enjoy DDP & Karl Malone vs Hogan & Dennis Rodman to this day. Malone works his ass off and the crowd was electric.

 

Really?  I was there and the match sucked all kinds of dick live.  It went on far too long and Rodman was clearly In No Condition To Perform.

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All of the McMahons sans Linda have had their share of fun matches. The Mania 17 family feud match was a really well-done attitude-style clusterfuck. The Vince/Austin cage match (St. Valentine's Day Massacre), Shane/Blackman (Summer Slam 2000), and Steph/Trish (No Way Out 2001) are my favorites of theirs respectively.

 

Nick Patrick vs. Chris Jericho with one arm tied behind his back (WW3 96) was a lot better than it sounds on paper.

 

Kevin Greene always seemed like he could've been really good if he wrestled full time. He had a ton of charisma and held his own in tag matches and had a decent quick singles match with The Giant too. Speaking of The Giant, he has to be the king of the non-wrestler match. The Greene match was solid, but not anywhere near his later work with Shane (Judgment Day 2000) and Mayweather (Mania 24).

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What are we saying is a good match. The crowd not shitting on it or the guy or gal managing not to get themselves and their opponent seriously hurt doing a basic move?

 

Kaufman has to be the king of this category. But yeah the Steph/Brie match should have just been a wild brawl and instead it was a damn masterpiece with Stephanie looking like she had been wrestling for like a decade up to that point. I seem to remember her hitting some pretty damn crisp arm drags which made me legit go DAMN.

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