# Most Underrated Wrestler



## WeaponsGradeAutism (Jul 11, 2017)

I'm going to make this simple, I may be a nerd. But I also appreciate wrestling.

To start this off, who was that one guy that people overlooked. That guy who should have been world championship material, but wasn't.

My pick to start us off. Darren Matthews/Lord Steven Regal/William Regal. He is a literal wrestling encyclopedia. He knows his history and his moves.

When you see his work, it's pretty much spectacular. However, his personal demons kept him out of that spotlight. What if, folks?


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## CatParty (Jul 12, 2017)

probaly tully blanchard or barry windham


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## GS 281 (Jul 12, 2017)

Bobby Eaton, Bubba Rogers (Big Bossman), Vader, Mr. Perfect, Honky Tonk Man, Jerry Lawler


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## Karen Riley (Jul 12, 2017)

WeaponsGradeAutism said:


> I'm going to make this simple, I may be a nerd. But I also appreciate wrestling.
> 
> To start this off, who was that one guy that people overlooked. That guy who should have been world championship material, but wasn't.
> 
> ...



It never won't upset me that Regal seemed to be on the push of his life as King of the Ring AND GM of Raw around a decade ago, only for him to end up getting suspended just as he was about to start a pretty big feud with Triple H. That always felt like Regal's last chance and yet again, his issues with substance abuse ended up. Someone as talented as Regal deserved much, much better


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## WeaponsGradeAutism (Jul 12, 2017)

yawning sneasel said:


> Bobby Eaton, Bubba Rogers (Big Bossman), Vader, Mr. Perfect, Honky Tonk Man, Jerry Lawler



Agreed on all. And Vader had his shot blown by Shawn Michaels. Which caused Shawn a lot of grief when he appeared for a spot in FMW, and there were Yakuza fans of Vader looking for him.


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## TiggerNits (Jul 12, 2017)

Scott Steiner, in his prime and even a little past it, was always a great technical and highly athletic performer that could put together a really explosive match with anyone. And as he got crazy his promos got so much better


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## XYZpdq (Jul 12, 2017)

yawning sneasel said:


> Jerry Lawler


Lawler was basically God Emperor of Memphis. He gets plenty rated.

I'm gonna go with Bobby Lashley. Yeah he was mostly ass in WWE but since then he's worked around the world and he's actually a pretty good big guy these days.


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## WeaponsGradeAutism (Jul 14, 2017)

I also think Brian Pillman didn't get his due. Injuries, mental illness and his heart exploding took him before his true prime.

Dean Ambrose hasn't even come close to the true lunacy of Brian. And as I said about him, Brian would either be a successful man... Or a subject in the Lolcows forum under Skitzocow.


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## Flowers For Sonichu (Jul 14, 2017)

Arn Anderson worked the mic like a champ and could work a match like no other. He made wrestling believable but always played second fiddle to Flair or was stuck in a tag team

Jerry Lynn, Dean Malenko, and Lance Storm were aces in the ring and generally likeable guys backstage but were classified as "vanilla midgets".

Rvd fucked up bad getting busted for weed right after winning the WWF title...   I don't even think he held the world title in the original ECW even tho he rarely lost.

Mike Awesome was a monster got fucked by WCW and never recovered.

Scott Hall never got a huge ride on the top like Nash did.

Roddy Piper main evented both Starcade and Wrestlemania and yet it always rubbed me wrong that he never held a major title.

Raven had a lot of success in ECW but got buried in WCW and WWF


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## Doc Cassidy (Jul 14, 2017)

I haven't watched wrestling since punk left so maybe he's a bigger deal now but I always felt like Dolph Ziggler never got the recognition he deserved. 

The dude would sell a move so well my heart would stop because I worried he'd injured himself. He's an absolute joy to watch in the ring which I think is his problem, it made more sense to make him lose become of how good he was at it.


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## CatParty (Jul 14, 2017)

WeaponsGradeAutism said:


> I also think Brian Pillman didn't get his due. Injuries, mental illness and his heart exploding took him before his true prime.
> 
> Dean Ambrose hasn't even come close to the true lunacy of Brian. And as I said about him, Brian would either be a successful man... Or a subject in the Lolcows forum under Skitzocow.




Good call on pillman. If he had come around today, he'd be a world champ. He wasn't the smallest guy, but he wasn't big enough in the 80's and 90's to be a top guy


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## WeaponsGradeAutism (Jul 14, 2017)

And honestly, Davey Boy Smith... Should have been a world championship holder. But another casualty of the Michaels ego train.


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## Lorento (Jul 14, 2017)

Flowers For Sonichu said:


> Mike Awesome was a monster got fucked by WCW and never recovered.



I recently watched a classic WCW PPV from 2000, and there was a match between Mike Awesome and the Insane Clown Posse. A real mat classic right there.

I felt bad for Mike, especially when he delivered an Awesome Bomb on top of a bus and one of the Posse landed too close to the edge and slid head first onto concrete as Mike desperately tried to grab his leg to save him. 

He always struck me as a guy ruined by the booking of WCW (I think he was working the 'That 70s guy' gimmick at the time.) because his moveset was pretty cool.


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## Francis E. Dec Esc. (Jul 14, 2017)

Art Barr. He would have made a great WCW cruiserweight competitor if he hadn't died when he did.


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## The Nothingness (Jul 14, 2017)

On WWE's current roster, I would put Luke Harper since his push prior to WrestleMania 33 was halted by the time the event came around.


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## Flowers For Sonichu (Jul 14, 2017)

Lorento said:


> I recently watched a classic WCW PPV from 2000, and there was a match between Mike Awesome and the Insane Clown Posse. A real mat classic right there.
> 
> I felt bad for Mike, especially when he delivered an Awesome Bomb on top of a bus and one of the Posse landed too close to the edge and slid head first onto concrete as Mike desperately tried to grab his leg to save him.
> 
> He always struck me as a guy ruined by the booking of WCW (I think he was working the 'That 70s guy' gimmick at the time.) because his moveset was pretty cool.


Don't forget the fat chick thriller. I hope Russo got a shout out in the suicide note


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## Flying McDaniels (Jul 16, 2017)

I'll probably get some disagreement on this one, but Sean Morley/Val Venis.  Around the early 2000s he started working under his real name and was a solid upper midcard/low tier main event heel, and then one day he randomly gets fired by Steve Austin and rehired under his old stale Val Venis gimmick and was a jobber to the stars for the rest of his career.

I don't know how far Psicosis could have gotten - I'm not saying he was World Champ material - but he deserved way better than he got. If Rey Mysterio got to be World Champ, Psicosis should've at least made it to US or Intercontinental level.


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## Darwin Watterson (Jul 16, 2017)

Muhammad Hassan. Over a decade later, and I'm still upset about what happened to him. He was a bit green in the ring, but he was getting better. The dude was _AMAZING_ on the mic, though, and his character was a clever play on the classic "foreign wrestling heel" gimmick.


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## Flowers For Sonichu (Jul 16, 2017)

Darwin Watterson said:


> Muhammad Hassan. Over a decade later, and I'm still upset about what happened to him. He was a bit green in the ring, but he was getting better. The dude was _AMAZING_ on the mic, though, and his character was a clever play on the classic "foreign wrestling heel" gimmick.


Yeah Idk why the just didn't rebrand him... He wasn't even of middle eastern descent


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## XYZpdq (Jul 16, 2017)

Flying McDaniels said:


> I'll probably get some disagreement on this one, but Sean Morley/Val Venis.  Around the early 2000s he started working under his real name and was a solid upper midcard/low tier main event heel, and then one day he randomly gets fired by Steve Austin and rehired under his old stale Val Venis gimmick and was a jobber to the stars for the rest of his career.
> 
> I don't know how far Psicosis could have gotten - I'm not saying he was World Champ material - but he deserved way better than he got. If Rey Mysterio got to be World Champ, Psicosis should've at least made it to US or Intercontinental level.


iirc Psicosis stayed pretty active down in Mexico after WCW


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## Darwin Watterson (Jul 16, 2017)

Flowers For Sonichu said:


> Yeah Idk why the just didn't rebrand him... He wasn't even of middle eastern descent


If I remember correctly, they wanted to but he didn't want to change his gimmick. They couldn't come to an agreement, so he got released and left wrestling to become a teacher.

Still reeks of wasted potential, though. Dude could've been a big star.

I don't understand why they didn't just send him back to Raw. From what I understand, the issue was that UPN had a problem with him being on their network. Spike TV evidently had no such issue because he was doing more or less the same shit on there for months without incident. I remember the stipulation being "if Muhammad Hassan loses, he'll never show his face on Smackdown again." Even my 10-11 year old brain was able to register that they specified Smackdown and there was no reason he couldn't be on Raw.


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## Charles Morgenstern (Jul 17, 2017)

I would have liked to have seen Steve Blackman ascend to the level above that of the janitor in WWF. He had a good look to him, he inspired at least mild interest from the crowd with his glow-stick routine before his matches. He knocked JBL the fuck out in an airport. He even went undefeated for nearly a year after his debut... though it didn't amount to much. He was pigeon-holed into the same routine that Lance Storm was, that of a boring straight man to those with more influence.


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## Flowers For Sonichu (Jul 17, 2017)

The sad thing about Storm is that while he will never be mistaken for Dusty Rhodes on the mic, he is an engaging likable guy. I used to read his blog back in the WCW/ECW days and listened to his podcast. He was saddled with some shitty gimmicks when he could have just gone back to his ECW/SMW gimmick


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## WeaponsGradeAutism (Jul 17, 2017)

Flowers For Sonichu said:


> The sad thing about Storm is that while he will never be mistaken for Dusty Rhodes on the mic, he is an engaging likable guy. I used to read his blog back in the WCW/ECW days and listened to his podcast. He was saddled with some shitty gimmicks when he could have just gone back to his ECW/SMW gimmick



Check out the podcast he does with Don Callus (Cyrus the Virus/Jackal). They talk about a lot of their careers in a fair light.

Edit: Unless you listen to this already. Ignore my exceptional post, otherwise.


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## PTNR 2.0 (Jul 17, 2017)

Kanyon. Entertaining, pretty good on the mic, good worker, interesting/innovative move set.

Had a shitty construction worker gimmick, a shitty Mortal Kombat gimmick, a pretty okay run as himself when he feuded with Raven which transitioned to a pretty okay run with Paige and Bigelow, a quite funny but not overly substantial DDP parody gimmick and just as he seemed to be getting things back on the right track with a serious, edgier gimmick, WCW folded. He was brought in to WWE, buried along with most of the rest of WCW talent during the Invasion and utterly wasted from that point on with his last prominent role being a throwaway gay joke; a rib based on his real life homosexuality.

He could've been a lot more, possibly even a main eventer if he had ever been given a proper, serious gimmick and a push. He had an idea for presenting himself as a gay wrestler but one that fought against stereotypes. Had he been 5-10 years younger and hit his prime that much later, it may have had legs since that's where the culture zeitgeist was at the time, but people in 1999-2005 were not ready for it.


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## XYZpdq (Jul 17, 2017)

PTNR 2.0 said:


> a shitty Mortal Kombat gimmick,


WCW's Mortal Kombat division was great.


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## CatParty (Jul 21, 2017)

was watching old haku matches. he could go. he seems to get way more credit for what he could do outside the ring


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## Flowers For Sonichu (Jul 21, 2017)

CatParty said:


> was watching old haku matches. he could go. he seems to get way more credit for what he could do outside the ring


Oh fuck yeah. Faces of Fear was woefully underused in WCW


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## CatParty (Jul 21, 2017)

Flowers For Sonichu said:


> Oh fuck yeah. Faces of Fear was woefully underused in WCW




yeah barbarian could move really well for a big guy


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## Flowers For Sonichu (Jul 21, 2017)

CatParty said:


> yeah barbarian could move really well for a big guy


He gets a bad reputation cuz warlord was shit


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## TiggerNits (Jul 21, 2017)




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## Hollywood Hulk Hogan (Jul 24, 2017)

Darwin Watterson said:


> Muhammad Hassan. Over a decade later, and I'm still upset about what happened to him. He was a bit green in the ring, but he was getting better. The dude was _AMAZING_ on the mic, though, and his character was a clever play on the classic "foreign wrestling heel" gimmick.



Hassan was amazing. They never should've gone the terrorist route, as it made no sense. He had a perfect gimmick as the non-white heel, but yet he was still American and could've gone over as a babyface.

Sadly, he was booked to win the title from Batista at Summerslam, too


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