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DVDVRMM: FINAL FOUR: CESARO vs. ROMAN REIGNS


CESARO vs. REIGNS  

146 members have voted

  1. 1. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH FUCK YOU CENA.



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I'll end up cross posting this in the Final tomorrow, but for now it can go here.

 

For starters Daniel Bryan is going to win and I don't have a massive problem with that.  I submitted my WKO ballot a couple of weeks back and this year there were really seven guys I considered viable number one contenders. Daniel Bryan was one of those seven guys and I strongly considered him for my top spot for 2013.  He had a great year, and I agree with the sentiment expressed earlier that in many ways this was his best year yet in the WWE. 

 

Having said that I honestly think Antonio Cesaro was a better wrestler in 2013 and a better wrestler going from March-to-March as well.  And I say this despite the fact that I really didn't count myself a Cesaro/Claudio fan when he was on the indies, and in fact really hated the Kings of Wrestling stuff that he was doing right before he came to the WWE. 

 

Now the real murderers row of weak opponents Cesaro had in 2013 was heavily concentrated on the front end of the year that is irrelevant to this tournament.  Having said that on paper it seems obvious to me that Cesaro got far fewer golden opportunities than Bryan.  For example Cesaro had a couple of matches v. face Randy Orton, as opposed to heel Randy Orton which makes a world of difference.  He had the Kofi matches and Kofi is Kofi.  He was expected to carry Leo Kruger and Bo Dallas to good matches in NXT.  He was basically asked to save Swaggers career by teaming with him.  Then he had to go onto shows like Superstars or Main Event and work guys like Sin Cara, Justin Gabriel, et. who really had nothing going on.  For all the hand wringing about Bryan (and tag wrestlers in this tourney) this year, the guy got hot working against The Shield in trios (possibly the "easiest" job in recent memory in terms of turning in good matches), often as a hot tag where he worked his Mark Briscoe tribute act extremely well, but wasn't necessarily asked to carry the match.  He got to main event a major ppv with Cena, which is probably the second easiest job you can have when it comes to turning out good matches in the WWE.  The Orton series was with Orton as a heel which is a much easier gig (does anyone disagree with this?).  Then he had an awesome match on the last Raw of the year - with Luke Harper a guy who is arguably better than him right this second. 

 

Now I know what the comeback to this will be - "yeah, but Cesaro worked good/great wrestlers too during the period."  And that is true.  He worked opposite Cena in some awesome six-mans,where their exchanges were the best part of the matches.  He had the great series with Zayn.  He had an awesome and unheralded series with Sheamus that produced one of my top ten matches of the year.  He had great one offs with Bryan himself and Regal.  This year he had the great match with Cena, was great in the Chamber, had the really awesome performance v. heel Orton.  But he never got to work The Shield, he wasn't getting feature matches on ppv, he wasn't put in position to have marquee matches on the marquee shows nearly as much.

 

And yet Cesaro had a unique year.  This wasn't Chris Masters running the gauntlet of C-show guys, in seven-twelve minute matches.  Cesaro was carrying Kofi to the match of his life - for twenty-twenty-five minutes on a C-show.  He was doing the same with babyface Randy Orton.  He was going to NXT and playing an entirely different role working with Zayn, Kruger, Dallas, and Neville.  He was having wildly different matches with Sheamus on Smackdown v. what they did on Main Event.  I watched all of this and never saw a disappointing Cesaro match.  Even though I am generally a fan of formula in wrestling, I saw disappointing Bryan matches (namely an Ambrose match where I thought it was obvious that he was plugging Ambrose into his template, with no interest in mixing things up to play to the strengths of his opponent). 

 

Cesaro had three matches in my top ten matches of the year, all against different opponents (Regal, Sheamus, Zayn) and all worked in very different ways.  When and if I get around to doing a top fifty matches of the year, I expect that he will appear more than anyone, possibly as many as eight or nine times.  And that doesn't count the awesome stuff he has done so far this year (to be fair to Bryan the Bray Wyatt match was great and is a big feather in his cap for this year). 

 

Cesaro had good or great singles matches in the relevant time period against Sin Cara, Justin Gabriel, Dolph Ziggler, Sheamus, Leo Kruger, Adrian Neville, Sami Zayn, John Cena, Randy Orton, Daniel Bryan, Bo Dallas, Kofi Kingston, William Regal and Zack Ryder (these are just the ones I remember, it's notable that Ryback and Miz fall outside of the relevant period).  Several of these people he had multiple good matches with.  This despite the fact that he spent a big chunk of the time period as a tag worker.  By comparison I can remember Bryan having good matches with Cena, Orton, Wyatt, Harper, Rollins, Ambrose, Ryback, Cesaro, Christian, and Reigns.  Part of this is just a booking advantage, but there is a pretty noticeable difference in these set of of names, and yet I really don't feel like Bryan's best stuff stands out as better than Cesaro's, nor do I think he has more volume. 

 

Cesaro is the best base in wrestling.  He is one of the stiffest/snuggest workers in wrestling.  He has the most varied and interesting offense in wrestling (see the Sheamus Main Event match for a good example of this in action).  He was in arguably the best singles, trios and tag match in the WWE last year, and was the best guy in this years Elimination Chamber.  He played a variety of roles this year and was good in all of them.  he sells well, has strong timing, and is excellent at adapting to his opponents.  While he has many regular spots, and something of a formula against certain wrestlers, you never feel like he is working a "greatest hits" match.  He is probably as good at working hope/cutoff spots as anyone on the modern scene, and because he is such a great base there are things he can do with this that others can't.  He is the closest thing to a Finlay/Regal type on the modern scene in the sense that he does lots of little things right, whether it be the way he positions himself to block certain holds, the way he positions himself to apply extra "emphasis" to certain holds, or the way he adds extra spark at the right moments to maximum something's importance.

 

None of this is to say that Bryan is weaker than Cesaro in all of these categories.  But I do think Cesaro is clearly better in certain categories, and I don't know if I would rate Bryan as clearly superior in a single one of those categories. 

 

Cesaro had the volume.  He had the individual performances.  He has the versatility as a worker, in terms of the roles he played, and in terms of the settings he worked in.  He has the variety of opponents and match types that you ideally want to see in the "best in the world."  He has the carry jobs.  He has the ring time.  He has the absolute high end stuff you want to see out of someone at this level, albeit with some of it popping up in odd places (the Main Event matches v. Kofi and Sheamus, the NXT stuff with Zayn, et).  Pretty much the only thing he doesn't have is the push, which is kind of funny in that he is up against a guy whose most diehard fans have spent the bulk of the time period bitching about their guys push. 

 

So when I step back and look at it, Cesaro has to be my pick.  Bryan gets the benefit of every doubt, and is the closest thing to a "smark" consensus favorite in our increasingly fragmented universe.  I get that.  I know he is going to win, and it's hard to be mad about it.  But Cesaro was the better wrestler in 2013 and the better wrestler from March-to-March. 

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