411Mania.com Fan Forums: Is Shawn Micheals the greatest WWE/F wrestler ever??

There is no way that you can say that Bret's best stuff was with Shawn. He went ***** with Davey Boy, ***** TWICE with Owen, and ***** with Austin in what stands as probably the best Wrestlemania match of all time (yes, I'm including the WM XX 3-way. That match is overrated because how much people mark for Benoit and HBK). Oh, and he went well over **** twice with Henning. He also put on about **** stuff with Diesel. Bret had better matches than his matches with Shawn. It's ludicrous to act like it was Shawn and not Bret who made their matches.

Also, "Shawn worked with everyone Bret worked with only with Shawn it was more memorable."

Oh, really? Shawn had some good stuff with Austin but nothing that compares to Wrestlemania 13. What did Shawn ever do with Davey Boy Smith that is as good as Summerslam 1992? What did Shawn do with Mr. Perfect that's better than Summerslam 1991 and King of The Ring 1993? What did Shawn do with Owen that's better than Wrestlemania X and Summerslam 1994?

While I'm ranting, the Hart Foundation was a better tag team than the Rockers and I'd say that the tag partners were about equal. I don't think many would argue that Neidhart is significantly better than Janetty.

People want to criticize Bret for always wrestling the same match, but that's bogus. Bret's cage match with Owen from Summerslam 1994 looks COMPLETELY different from their Wrestlemania X match. He proved that he could do technical wrestling as well or better than anyone ever did. He brawled his ass off with Austin. He had classic tag matches. All different types of matches.

Sure, Bret relied on a pretty particular moveset (bulldog, backbreaker, Sharpshooter, side Russian legsweep, etc.), but he never really throws them in the same order to much. It's not like Cena with Protoslam (or whatever that move is called) invariably into the 5 Knuckle Shuffle into an FU, sometimes into an STFU. Sure Bret's toolkit was always the same, but the constructions were always quite different. Watch Bret's DVD collection. He finishes all different ways. He wins a couple with the Sharpshooter, sure, but he also finishes with a victory roll and a whole host of other rollups. He didn't finish matches the same way every time. Certainly, he didn't rely on the Sharpshooter as a crutch the way HBK relies on Sweet Chin Music. And don't act like HBK has some huge moveset. He's pretty much just limited to chops and slams and basic stuff that leads up to the big elbow and Sweet Chin Music.

Shawn is actually quite one dimensional if you ask me. He belongs with Mick Foley and Ricky Morton in the Hall of Fame of people who built entire careers off of being willing to bump like crazy men. Certainly, there's a certain charm to being able to do that, but Bret could sell well, too and then attack on offense.

I'll give that Bret was never quite the personality that Shawn was or never had the huge impact that Shawn did with DX. DX, in my opinion, was kind of just a lightning in a bottle thing. He got lucky. It's hard to hold that against Bret. And Bret was fine as a face. People really got into him, and his heel stuff was pretty hot, too. He never had the verve of Shawn, but he could hold his own as a personality and as an entertainer.

Personally, I think everyone here goes gaga over Shawn because he's someone who has been good for a very long time, probably since a lot of people here were children. He has nostalgia on his side, as well as a long career. People fondly remember his emotional comeback and revere him (and rightly so) as an all time great who is presently wrestling. Bret did his best stuff from about 1991-1997. His career for all intents and purposes ended with Montreal. He made the mistake of going to WCW and getting stuck in that morass before sustaining the career ending concussion against Goldberg. If he had stayed in WWF and put on another 5 years of great matches, who knows how many more ****+ matches he could have racked up. Bret was on fire at that time.

Bottom line, HBK is great, but I'd put Hart ahead of him any day of the week. And if people are seriously talking about best wrestler ever and aren't limiting that to WWE/F that's sillier still. Guys like Kobashi, Kawada, Hijo del Santo wipe the floor with HBK. Not to mention guys like Flair, Steamboat, and even Benoit all of which I would put on a par or perhaps ahead of HBK.

Is Shawn ONE of the best wrestlers ever? Probably. Is he THE best wrestler ever? No freakin' way.