Greatest Match Round 3: Michaels/Angle vs. styles/Joe/Daniels

[Everlong]

SquaredCircle's Greatest Match of All Time!

(1) SHAWN MICHAELS VS KURT ANGLE, WRESTLEMANIA 21



VS

(2) AJ Styles vs. Christopher Daniels vs. Samoa Joe, Unbreakable 2005



VOTE NOW for which you liked better. Voting will last six days. In the event of a tie, the winner will be decided by which match had more people commenting in its favor.

[Everlong]

Sorry about the delay all, this tournament had sort of slipped to the back of my mind... lots going on in my life these days!

My guess is this'll be a close one!

[VaderBomb]

The triple threat is the better match.

[Hanley!]

It's gotta be the triple threat. On pure technical and athletic terms, it's the best match in this entire competition and it's not even close. These guys pulled out a wide range of truly impressive and unique moves, and combinations. They worked really well together, and even avoided the triple threat trap of constantly having someone outside the ring. It's the best triple threat match ever, one of the most cleverly constructed matches I've seen, and possibly the best match in TNA history.

Angle/Michaels is a very good match, but I wouldn't say it's particularly special. I can't think of anything it did much better than a lot of other great Wrestlemania matches. I think it being two big stars facing each other for the first time on the biggest show in wrestling adds a lot to the match's reputation. Watching it back, I wasn't as impressed as I was expecting. I'd say it was a 4 star match, and one of the better matches of that year, but I wouldn't call it a 5 star match. Joe/Angle/Daniels was a 5 star.

[Viazon]

Angle v HBK was a hugely entertaining match. Two top competitors going at it on the biggest event of them all. You knew it was gonna be a great match and it was. I have to give this one to the triple threat though. When I first watched it, I couldn't remember the last time I saw a triple threat as good as that. Hell, I can't remember the last time I saw a match as good as that, period. Lots of love for the other match but gotta hand this one to the triple threat.

[KaiserGlider]

This is one of the hardest decisions of this tournament for me. Two really good matches that are different from each other, with their individual pros and cons.

Michaels/Angle told a great good story and did an excellent job with the characterization of both wrestlers throughout the match. That's what I took away from it the most - the style of Kurt Angle vs the style of Shawn Michaels going head-to-head. I think the pacing here is better than the pacing of the triple threat match. It starts slower as both men try to outwrestle each other and gradually builds up to an awesome series of near falls in the end. We've seen great matches with this same structure before, but I don't know if there's a better example than this match - in any case it's certainly way up there.

The first time I saw the triple threat match I was absolutely blown away, it was my first time seeing a TNA X-Division match and I had never seen anything like it before. Watching it again many years later, my opinion on it has changed somewhat. It's a spotfest. A fucking incredible one, but a spotfest nevertheless. There's a bit of story with Daniels getting double teamed at the start, then trying to cheat his way to victory. But mostly the match is going from one cool move to the next with the crowd and commentators giving their mark-out reaction to it. Maybe it's the audio of the video (or just Don West), but the pattern kind of irritated me after a while. That's my criticism of the match. The pace is truly Total Nonstop Action from start to finish, in comparison to Angle/Michaels which had slow parts. (which is my criticism of that match).

In the end I'll throw a reluctant vote to the triple threat. It's the best match of its kind; a truly innovative, memorable, and balls to the wall athletic contest. Angle/Michaels had better pacing, story, emotion and atmosphere, but you could make a case for several other big singles matches that can rival or surpass it. Joe/Styles/Daniels is more of a once-in-a-lifetime match and it's just more fun to watch.