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Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

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Which match was better?

Poll ended at Jun 16, '15, 1:08 pm

John Cena vs. CM Punk, Money in the Bank 2011
17
81%
Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness, ROH Unified
4
19%
 
Total votes : 21

Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby VaderBomb » Jun 14, '15, 1:27 am

Locke wrote:I think we're forgetting something about these matches when it comes to voting.

It has to -matter- to us. The ROH match just didn't fuckin' matter to me. No matter how big of a wrestling fan you are, whether you dig story or technicality, it all comes down to relevance. This ROH match had no relevance for me. I'll preach until my dying day that DB/BD mattered more to WWE than any other wrestler ever, I'll argue it until I'm blue in the face, but in this case, it just didn't fuckin' matter to me. It's why I probably won't vote on any other matches in this "tourney" unless it involves this match. I can watch 'em all, I -will- watch 'em all (even if I'd already seen them) if links are provided, and it still won't matter to me.

Beyond CM Punk VS Cena, the only other match that mattered so much to me was DB vs Cena when DB won clean. God damn that was amazing, too.. but these ROH matches don't do shit for me. Then again, I'm not the kind of guy that watches because "they put on a clinic." Even if I wanted to be, it's always got to be about the build up, the booking, and the result. As someone that doesn't watch ROH, I miss out on way more than these single displays deserve.


That's all fine and dandy! I love DB vs Cena from SummerSlam too. Incredible match. I don't watch ROH either. Haven't seen a full show since probably 2009-2010, but for me that match at Unified mattered a ton.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Locke » Jun 14, '15, 3:16 am

^I gave you rep but the edit system messed up and it just made it sound weird to me.

What I was trying to say is:

Replies like this, from good people, from forums like this, is what keeps wrestling alive to me these days. I don't/can't watch "live" anymore (though to be fair I wouldn't if I could at the moment), but the discussion is still real and respectful and I love that.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Circled Square » Jun 14, '15, 3:17 am

I wonder what would happen if VaderBomb and Matteo got into an argument.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Hanley! » Jun 14, '15, 5:47 am

Jesus, @Vaderbomb. I'm knackered just looking at your response and that's coming from me. :lol

VaderBomb wrote:I usually try reserve the tiny amount of hatred that I'm capable of projecting for something that actually matters. Hating a wrestling match is pretty silly, especially one that isn't offensive and is as entertaining and important as the main event of ROH Unified. Lot's of people love this match and to tear it apart as if it's some hardcore shit-show is smug as all shit. Unless your agenda from the get go was to tear this match apart, then I really don't see how you can be so passionately against this match as if it's on the level of Nazi propaganda. I find it to be one of the more entertaining matches of the 00s and I don't really understand the hostility, especially considering that I disagree with almost all of your points.


You're taking this personally right from the get go. I said I "kinda hated" a wrestling match. No I don't think it's as bad as Nazi propaganda. That's childish. If you see yourself stooping to shit like this when you argue, then just don't bother. And no, I didn't intend on ripping it from the start. I said some positive stuff about the match, because I found it entertaining for the first few minutes and didn't start to "hate" it until the last five.

And fair enough, maybe hate is a strong word, but that's such a semantic argument. I won't give this match much thought from now on, so I probably can't say that I "hate it" with 100% honesty, but we all use language like this all the time. It's a needlessly pedantic road to go down.

VaderBomb wrote:If you're going into a smaller promotion expecting audio and video as slick and highly produced as WWE, you've got some bad expectations. The camerawork is totally tolerable and no where near as shoddy as you make it seem to be. All of the shots are clear and there's no examples of "submissions where you couldn't see exactly where the pressure was being applied". What the fuck does that even mean? There are also no examples of "punches that we could see weren't landing". Were you watching a Hogan match? All of the strikes within this match were tight, stiff and full of energy.


I think the submission line is pretty clear. The example I can remember was when Danielson had McGuinness in a hold on the top turnbuckle. We could only see the move side profile and it wasn't clear if it was a choke or what exactly was happening. Maybe Danielson used to use that move a bunch so you know what was happening, but that doesn't mean everyone else would.

And yeah, most of the shots were stiff. That's the kind of thing that actually annoyed me about the match. But some of them weren't Some of them barely connected, and the camera made it more clear than it might otherwise have been.

I already said in another post though, the camerawork was something I could accept. It's not what pissed me off about the match. It's Ring of Honor, I'm not expecting WWE levels of production.

VaderBomb wrote:There just aren't any truly contrived spots. There's some impressive chain wrestling near the beginning of this match and every big move afterwards is confident and impactful. You state that one of them stands waiting to take a move. That happens in 98% of wrestling matches. These guys are humans, not perfect specimens. How can you expect them to be 100% in the right place at the right time at all times? With that question out of the way, this claim is just not apparent within this particular match. These two really have their shit together and neither man makes any big, prevalent mistakes that could potentially detract from the match.


Maybe wrestlers standing there waiting to take a move does happen in 98% of wrestling matches. Maybe we should only be considering that other 2% the greatest matches of all time. There were just a couple of times here where it was really obvious, and saying "other matches do it too" is a lame defense. And the spot where McGuinness stood on his head on the turnbuckle, Danielson looked at him and then ran under him just so he could take a spot looked very contrived to me. The bashing his head spot looked similar.

VaderBomb wrote:You mention how they stop for awhile on the top rope, but fail to mention how Bryan had Nigel locked into a chicken-wing submission hold which disallowed him from easily escaping the grasp of Dragon. Bad stomps are also just not there. Bryan does some killer stomps on Nigel, including one where he bends Nigel's forearm backwards and vertical and stomps on his hand, driving the radius of his arm into the mat. It looked beyond excellent.


No, you're thinking of a different spot. There was a time when they were both standing on the top rope, probably for 10 seconds before Brian did a suplex on Nigel (I think ... it might have been the other way around). It looked really weird. And there were some lame stomps early on. Before they had settled into the match and started bringing the stiff shots.

Vaderbomb wrote:The ring post spot didn't look terrible at all. It was absolutely barbarous but it looks legit because it was. Nigel cut himself the hard way? Big fucking deal. I've seen guys get busted open with more ferocity than that spot, and I probably like Nigel's more. You claim that he leans into each shot, but I already tore that false claim apart while quoting Kirbi. Bryan was holding onto both of Nigel's arms and using leverage to drive him forward. There's no way he'd realistically be able to get out of that predicament. This is not wrestling at it's ugliest. Try watching some stupid backyard shit or some Japanese exploding death-matches. Even ECW had stuff that was far more tasteless and brutal.


Fair enough, you thought it looked good. But it really didn't from my perspective. It looked so fake. There were a bunch of ways he could have tried to avoid hitting himself off post, but he didn't. He just clearly tensed up his face and took the shots until he started bleeding. It was dangerous and it didn't look good. It seemed like a spot that fans were supposed to cheer for just because it was barbaric, not because it looked impressive or reliable.

Vaderbomb wrote:You chose Mankind vs Undertaker from KOTR 1998 for this tournament as one of your top 20 matches of all time. Isn't that like, really, really hypocritical?

It includes some super-famous, classic spots off of the Cell and onto the tacks but in the end it's hardly a wrestling match. It's more unnecessarily brutal than this match ever even comes close to being. Yet I don't go around acting as if I'm better than Taker and Mankind for pushing the limits of what a pro-wrestling match is, which is what you've been doing in this post a lot.


I'll give you this, I can see how you'd think it's hypocritical. But it's not quite the same for me. For starters, @SlightlyJames covered a big part of it already: these spots were huge and memorable and very impressive, while the post spot looked pretty stupid. It's not nearly as memorable, and I thought it looked pretty bad. And I'm obviously not alone here.

Plus, I feel like the spectacle was the selling point there. The big falls looked amazing. It wasn't the violence that sold people on the match. These were dangerous spots. But in Danielson/McGuinness they took safe spots and made them dangerous. Not just dangerous but kinda gory? Not sure that's the word I'm looking for. But I can't enjoy that post spot maybe for the same reason that I can't enjoy the movie Hostel: it just doesn't connect with me, it's not the kind of wrestling I like to watch.

Vaderbomb wrote:The psychology was not killed, but heightened by their headbutt battle.


A guy with a head wound chose not to sell it and instead started a headbutt battle. No, I can't agree that added to the psychology. He was basically no-selling. Also, I just don't like those spots (I felt the same with Ziggler/Danielson recently). I don't think they look realistic enough.

Vaderbomb wrote:Hah. Dutch Mantel's quote is a straw man argument if I've ever seen one and a misrepresentation of the current state of pro-wrestling.


I don't really think so. An exaggeration certainly, but it definitely shows in matches like this one. And in a bunch of matches since the 90s. In fairness it applies to Mankind/Undertaker match too, although at least that one had the advantage of people thinking parts of it might have been "real".

Vaderbomb wrote:While Nigel/Bryan at Unified is one of Bryan's most famous and important matches from ROH, PWG, Japan etc. He's had much more technical clinics that you should check out and would likely prefer.


Look, you could be right. Honestly, I've talked on the forum before that I've never seen Danielson as one of the very best wrestlers ever. He's good without a doubt. Great even. I was one of the few that chose his match with Sheamus against Angles vs Michaels in the other thread. I just never saw him as one of the very best. I figured that it was his ROH matches that were supposed to make the difference. If this was the best of them then my opinion of him would remain the same.

I wouldn't be surprised if he had other ROH matches I liked better, but I'm hoping they're not generally as willfully violent as this. I know from WWE that Brian can have very good matches without stiffing the shit out of his opponent.
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Last edited by Hanley! on Jun 14, '15, 6:48 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Kirbi » Jun 14, '15, 6:44 am

VaderBomb wrote:
Kirbi wrote:D/G was a wretched, crushing disappointment. Maybe my expectations were a little high, but if this is the very best that ROH has to offer - the only match to make it through - I won't be looking for any more. The storytelling here was utter rubbish, the production exacerbated every minor flaw in a match by two talented performers, and you can clearly see them 'helping' each other frequently i.e. McGuinness does not even slightly look like he's resisting being brained into a pole; he looks like he's remaining braced for it. Sheer stupidity.


First off, of the seven Danielson matches that I chose for this contest, Danielson/McGuiness is the furthest from a technical wrestling clinic. I chose this match for many reasons. It's very different from most of the matches that both of these guys worked and also very different from every other match that I chose.

It was the peak of a bitter rivalry which didn't end at Unified because of the controversial finish. Bryan and Nigel would fight again a few weeks later at Epic Encounter II, where they wrestled to a time limit draw. Bryan would retain his world championship. Almost two years later, Nigel tapped out Bryan to retain his World Championship and went on to pin him to a three count in two more subsequent defenses, the latter being one of the last times that Danielson got a shot at the ROH World Championship.

The reason why this Danielson match made it to this tournament and the others (which are much more technical and much less brutal) didn't is purely because it got multiple votes. I'm pretty sure that Daz voted for it and perhaps one or two others.

The storytelling isn't rubbish at all, there's a lot going on here! These two guys had been in wars together and this was the rubber match as far as their championship bouts were concerned. At this point they wanted to not only beat their opponent, but fuck them up beyond repair and both wrestlers did a damn good fucking job at making that unbridled passion and anger look convincing.


Look, this match is the one in the tournament, not the other ones in their feud, so they have no relevance to the argument I was making. The question was which one of these two matches was was better, so I watched both of the matches (for the first time); I was kind of expecting to prefer the ROH match, but on the merits as I saw them, and based on what I value in wrestling, I thought that this match was rubbish. It was good at first, and seemed primed to improve as it went along, but instead I disliked it more and more.

I saw little story in the make-up of the match. It lost momentum for me as it progressed. And a lot of the body language and demeanor of the wrestlers seemed to be 'going through the motions' at certain points in the match. This does not help to build intensity.

VaderBomb wrote:As far as them "helping" each other, it's a wrestling match and it takes more than one performer to make the match compelling.


What I meant by this was that there were points where they didn't appear to be fighting, but seemed to assist each other quite obviously in setting up spots. Aside from the head-bumps, the point where they both stand atop the top turnbuckle together is a prime example of this. They stand quite slowly and carefully together, with McGuinness obviusly helping Danielson so they can both get up and remain stable - but given that D's supposed to be forcing Mc up in order to do a move on him, this makes no sense. I realise that wrestlers do help each other all the time in these things, but I object to it being that visible - that's sloppy work.

VaderBomb wrote:How could McGuiness resist hitting the pole if Bryan was holding onto both of his arms and pulling him forward? Bryan uses his boot for leverage and disrupts Nigel's only chance of escaping.

You ask why Nigel looks as if he's bracing for it? He's about to get his head smashed multiple times into a solid steal pole. You wouldn't brace for that? Like I said, Nigel had no way of escaping seeing as Bryan was holding onto both of his arms and using his entire body and legs as leverage.


And again, what I meant is that it looked too much like Mc was allowing it to happen. It doesn't matter to me that it was theoretically booked to look like Mc couldn't escape from D. It should have looked like that; but to me it didn't. The performance wasn't quite there, the sell was off, and it didn't look believable to me. This was exacerbated by the fact that D stopped as soon as Mc was successfully hard-wayed - it really brought home that this was what they were waiting for.

There was one main problem I had with this match, but for me it was all-encompassing; I found it fundamentally un-immersive. It didn't allow me to 'forget' that I was watching performers putting on a show-fight, rather than just watching a fight.

And this is the one place the production (mainly the camera work) bothered me as well. I think that quite a few of the moments that stood out as fake could've been disguised by using different camera angles. The top-turnbuckle thing, for example, was obvious to me because the camera was very close-in for the whole set-up. They had a farther out angle that they used at other points in the show, and I think it would've come off better if they'd broken up the shot using that angle. This would've had the added benefit of under-lining how high they were.

I don't think super-slick production adds too much, to be honest, it's mainly a style choice, and sometimes it adds its own problems. But I do think that the production should be aiming to make the action look believable, and to make the wrestlers look great. In my opinion, the production here made these guys look less good than they actually were. It should always, always be striving to make them look better than they are. No wrestler can be flawless, but minor flaws can be disguised by smart story- and match-booking, and by production of a sufficient standard. Not magnificent, just sufficient.

I went in to this match wanting to like it, being in a mood to watch it, and enjoying it at first; and I still wound up with a really bad impression of it. So, yeah, I was pretty fucking disappointed.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Str8Shooter » Jun 14, '15, 8:00 am

Guys, let's save some of this for the other match ups in the tournament, it just got started!
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Hanley! » Jun 14, '15, 8:34 am

Well look at the score - this is the only chance we'll have to go off on this match. Which is why I've kept some of my opinions on Cena/Punk to myself since watching on Friday. :P

It's a good sign that we're getting good discussion this early. And we probably haven't reached the better rounds yet.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby VaderBomb » Jun 14, '15, 9:52 am

I guess we are at a standstill. :lol Good points from both of you, I just happen to disagree and I love the match. Enjoyable discussion though. I'm definitely looking forward to the rest of this tournament, despite both of Bryan's matches being eliminated in the first round.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby VaderBomb » Jun 14, '15, 9:54 am

Circled Square wrote:I wonder what would happen if VaderBomb and Matteo got into an argument.


If it were about cinema, we'd probably agree with each other a lot. Not sure about his current opinion on wrestling, haven't really discussed that with him since his NoDQ days.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Daz » Jun 14, '15, 11:07 am

I'm still not seeing these "shots than don't connect" ... there's maybe two McGuinness slaps that just graze Danielson. Other than that, they absolutely lay that shit in.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby War Daddy » Jun 14, '15, 11:10 am

@VaderBomb vs @Hanley![tag] &Kirbi[/tag] LIVE this saturday for a Comedy Central Roast!
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Hanley! » Jun 14, '15, 11:46 am

Daz wrote:I'm still not seeing these "shots than don't connect" ... there's maybe two McGuinness slaps that just graze Danielson. Other than that, they absolutely lay that shit in.


Yeah, there were a couple of shots during the slap battle that missed. It's funny, because I think the mentality was to zoom in as close as possible to prove to people how stiff the shots were, but then some of them were anything but. Most of the shots were laid in, but I think it's a better philosophy to pan back and let the wrestlers pull their punches a bit to begin with. These guys were hurting each other for very little pay off. I don't think it improves the match much.

There were other shots that just looked light, like a couple of those stomps early on that didn't look like they'd hurt a five year old. It didn't seem like Danielson had perfected the craft of making shots look real without stiffing his opponent, because I thought the shots all looked either very stiff like he was actually just hitting the guy, or quite fake. I'm only basing that off this one match though, so it might just be coincidence.

Ultimately, in my opinion this was just a pretty good match that wasn't all that special unless you knew the story going on at the time. The only thing I had a very negative response to was the ring post spot and the needlessly stiff shots afterwards. I just found it kinda stupid to be doing such dangerous stuff in front of a small crowd when it didn't even look good. It wasn't as good as what had come earlier in the match. That's the only thing that really bugged me.

Though even up to that point, I was still thinking I'd probably vote for Punk/Cena.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Daz » Jun 14, '15, 12:18 pm

Hanley! wrote:
Daz wrote:I'm still not seeing these "shots than don't connect" ... there's maybe two McGuinness slaps that just graze Danielson. Other than that, they absolutely lay that shit in.

Ultimately, in my opinion this was just a pretty good match that wasn't all that special unless you knew the story going on at the time.


I think that's true of any match though. HBK/Flair from Wrestlemania 24 loses all emotional resonance if you're not aware of who Flair is, or the respect HBK has for him. The Punk/Cena match loses the spectacle if you're not aware of the contract stuff that surrounded it, or if you haven't seen the promos Punk cut in the buildup.

And in my opinion, the McGuinness/Danielson match did a better job of weaving in the small details that related to their actual story, than Punk and Cena did. The Punk/Cena match is just two guys having a match, a very good match at that, but the actual in ring content relates very little to the larger story being told. The only tie in to the buildup was really the finish involving McMahon, and that was cliched as hell. Plus it rubs me the wrong way that they felt the need to somewhat protect Cena instead of just letting Punk beat him straight up.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Hanley! » Jun 14, '15, 12:26 pm

You're right in that I think it's true of most matches, but I think it's unfair to say it's untrue of all matches. For example I watched Austin/Hart a few minutes ago and even knowing nothing about what was happening at that time, the match itself let you know what was going on. It told a story in itself, without needing a lot of other details to give it context. Watching Raw every week leading up to the match would definitely enrich the experience, but the match itself told a great story.

There probably aren't a whole lot of recent examples, but I thought the Zayn/Neville match from R-Evolution was a really strong example of this and that's one of the reasons I'd like to see it go far in this tournament. That match told the entire story by itself.

Some of the action in Danielson/McGuinness might have been better than in Punk/Cena, but I liked how they played up to the crowd reactions in Punk/Cena and made the match seem like something special. Punk really was coming across as this "cult of personality" type figure, and he looked like a massive star in the match. That was the X factor that put it far above Danielson/McGuinness for me personally.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby prophet » Jun 14, '15, 3:05 pm

I voted for Punk/Cena.

You can definitely argue that Danielson/McGuinness is the better technical match (because it clearly is) but to me that isn't the only criteria to take into account. I can completely respect someone who would say that these discussions should only be focused on the actual 'wrestling' but when I personally cast a vote I don't do so based purely on hindsight, I also (where possible) take into account every little emotion I felt at the time and the little details I'm aware of that contributed making the matches so spectacular for me.

I hadn't watched wrestling regularly in a long, long time until CM Punk brought me back into the fold with his infamous promo. Suddenly I became so invested and passionate again I felt like a child, when was the last time anyone had that 'big fight' feel about a professional wrestling match? That's what I had staying up watching Money in the Bank live back in 2011. Punk's entrance was phenomenal, the crowd was amazing, the in-ring action was superb and the ending was mind-blowing - I take ALL these things into account when making my choice and when you do so the decision becomes a hell of a lot more clearer.

*and this is coming from someone who loves the Danielson/McGuinness match and is a massive fan of both those guys, I'm not going to waste time dissecting the other match in order to further my point because I think I've done so sufficiently enough!
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Everlong » Jun 14, '15, 3:38 pm

This thread is great, this is what this tourney is all about :tim

Next set of matches to go up tonight or tomorrow morning!
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby The Legend » Jun 18, '15, 1:14 pm

I can't really say anything that bad for the Danielson vs McGuiness match and I'm not going to really try. I will say that I voted for Punk/Cena because I personally enjoyed that one more. I've never been a fan of the way ROH goes about matches. I don't like their timing or their structure. Not saying they are wrong, just they aren't for me. Punk Cena in the moment was a great moment in wrestling history in its own way.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby VaderBomb » Jun 18, '15, 1:20 pm

Off topic but this thread should go into the Classics section.

As far as discussion goes, it's up there and probably even more classic than the Savage/Cena thread from the Greatest Wrestler tourney from last year.
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Everlong » Jun 18, '15, 1:26 pm

VaderBomb wrote:Off topic but this thread should go into the Classics section.

As far as discussion goes, it's up there and probably even more classic than the Savage/Cena thread from the Greatest Wrestler tourney from last year.


Definitely will, gonna wait until we're at least in the next round though so I can keep all these tourney matches organized in the same place :tim
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Re: Greatest Match Round 1: Cena/Punk MITB vs. Danielson/McGuinness Unified

Postby Hanley! » Jun 18, '15, 2:52 pm

VaderBomb wrote:Off topic but this thread should go into the Classics section.

As far as discussion goes, it's up there and probably even more classic than the Savage/Cena thread from the Greatest Wrestler tourney from last year.


I quite liked the Bret/Jericho one from back then too.

Discussion has died down a bit since this round, hope it picks up again!
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