WWE Vault Appreciation Thread

[SaitoRyo]

11 hours ago, Chico Torres said:

And this is where I must differ from some of my fellow Vaulters. I’ve tried with Rey v Eddie at Havoc 97 a few times and it’s obviously not bad but just doesn’t do anything for me. Same as the Eddie vs Dean Malenko matches from ECW, they are the templates for the super workratey style which has become the predominant style of today.

See, I really don't get on with the modern style at all and concede that the Eddies, Reys and Malenkos helped inspire it, but I feel like there's a big difference and that, at Halloween Havoc '97, Rey and Eddie hit the sweet spot. 

If you watch the match, yes it's full of spectacular moves and sequences, but there's a psychology behind them and they genuinely do tell a story out there. Plus, the match has real stakes and you can tell the primary objective of both men is to win the thing.

I'm not trying to convince you to like it, because people can like what they like, but I just personally feel what they did back then is a lot better than what most are trying to do today with a somewhat similar style.

Of course, these days I'd rather watch Tully Blanchard take on Ron Garvin in a Taped Fist match over some supposed five-star cruiserweight moves fest, but I think Rey/Eddie at Havoc still holds up and is, in fact, a cut above.

[DavidB6937]

1 hour ago, SaitoRyo said:

If you watch the match, yes it's full of spectacular moves and sequences, but there's a psychology behind them and they genuinely do tell a story out there. Plus, the match has real stakes and you can tell the primary objective of both men is to win the thing.

That's definitely what a lot miss these days. They seem some of the flashy stuff and take that but completely out of context and don't bother to surround the moves with any sort of story telling or anything. There's a reason why someone like AJ Styles found his biggest success when he slowed down a bit and made what he was doing mean something. I'd say Ospreay has been getting better at that too compared to how he started. There's SO many guys that do flashy moves now. You really need something deeper alongside them to make it big.

[BarryOVega]

Seeing as he was mentioned in passing I'll make my long held point that Malenko was massively overrated and his only really good singles match was with Scotty 2 Hotty at Backlash 2000

[gmoney]

As someone who's watching 96 and 97 Nitros at the moment, that is factually incorrect - he also had a banger with Jimmy Graffiti.

[BarryOVega]

4 minutes ago, gmoney said:

As someone who's watching 96 and 97 Nitros at the moment, that is factually incorrect - he also had a banger with Jimmy Graffiti.

He's too small for any of his stuff to look believable, it's not that everyone has to be 6 foot 2 and 250 pounds but he's got such an odd body shape it makes everything he does look weird, plus Bret thought he was shite and he's the greatest 

[SaitoRyo]

9 minutes ago, BarryOVega said:

Seeing as he was mentioned in passing I'll make my long held point that Malenko was massively overrated and his only really good singles match was with Scotty 2 Hotty at Backlash 2000

I think Malenko is someone who, because of his style, rarely looked like he got out of third gear in the ring. Everything was always a little too smooth with him. A little sterile. Felt better suited to Japan.

In saying that, he was someone who could work with just about anyone, regardless of their style. He had many good matches (and some very good matches), but few 'great' ones. I really liked his '96 series with Mysterio. 

Oh, and I still get a chuckle out of this from the '97 PWI 500...

[BomberPat]

10 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

Oh, and I still get a chuckle out of this from the '97 PWI 500...

The story behind this is that Mike Quackenbush was writing for the PWI at the time, and pitched doing the top few names of the 500 as a non-kayfabe list that year and just rating the actual "best" wrestlers in the world, and the editor went for it, as they figured it would turn enough heads that more people would buy that issue than if they just said, "yeah, I guess it's Shawn Michaels or Steve Austin". Quack wanted Misawa to be number one, but the editor vetoed putting a Japanese wrestler the readership hadn't heard of on the front cover, and that's how you ended up with Dean Malenko in the number one spot.

I think Dean was great, and it's a testament to how good he was that he was getting phenomenal reactions in WCW despite everything you'd think would work against him. He was obviously never going to be a big star in the WWF, but they at least found a niche for him for a while. My favourite work of his was as a tag team with Joe Malenko, though, and I do wonder how things would have gone for them if they had been a team in the States as well - I think they had one match apiece as a team in WCW and ECW, but otherwise Joe barely worked in the US at all. My understanding is that Joe and Dean don't speak, but I don't know how long ago that split started.

 

Halloween Havoc '97 is fantastic, and even the flippiest stuff rarely feels like Eddy is waiting around for Rey to hit a spot, which can be the most frustrating thing in more modern matches. I think both wrestlers are the best ever at adapting from lucha libre to the American TV style without losing the spark that made them work as luchadores, and that match is probably the best example of it - they had other good ones much later in WWE, but by that point, as good as they are, they're both much more polished formula wrestlers in the WWE style. Halloween Havoc has the bonus of them still bringing something novel to the table, and still feeling like they had something to prove.

[Chili]

Dean Malenko had loads of bangers in WCW but he has such an odd build that it's difficult to understand it against bigger opponents. Against your Rey's and Ultimo Dragons of that ilk, he's quality. 

[wandshogun09]

I rated Malenko. Was quite a fan of his run in 96-98 at the height of the Cruiserweight division. I can see why others find him bland or don’t really get into his style though. And yeah, he was built like a sausage dog so it was hard to take him seriously any time he stepped in with someone who wasn’t also a munchkin.

His stuff with Rey was great. He was the perfect opponent for Rey’s first major exposure in WCW really, he was a great base for all Rey’s stuff. I‘m a big fan of all Rey’s matches with Kurt Angle later and I see shades of those Malenko matches in what Kurt did with him. Malenko also had some really good matches with Ultimo Dragon, Liger, Ohtani, Eddie. I really enjoyed his feud with Jericho in 98 as well and he was probably as over as he ever was at that time. The crowd reaction to the reveal that it was him under the Ciclope mask at whichever PPV it was, and then him battering and taking the belt off Jericho, was pretty nuts. He was never my favourite but I always appreciated that he brought a different flavour to the Cruiserweight scene in WCW. Pretty much everyone else was flying and wearing flashy gear and old Stinko Malenko wore black trunks, the little shooter boots and just did his best to ground the little fuckers every chance he got. 

This was always class as well…

His WWF run was a complete non-event for me outside of that Scotty 2 Hotty match and the Bond theme. But he was never gonna be much there and the Radicalz coming in was always gonna be about Eddie and Benoit more than anything. I know Bret isn’t a fan and I’m guessing that all stems from Malenko hurting him in one of their matches?

As for Rey vs Eddie, yeah I thought they were incredible together. By the time they were put together in 97 I think WCW had ran through almost every combination of matches possible from the Cruiserweights but oddly Rey and Eddie hadn’t really crossed paths. So it felt fresh and then they went and delivered a classic at Halloween Havoc on top of that. Thought they had great chemistry. The 97 stuff was their best because that was them at the closest to their physical primes. The WWE matches in 2005 weren’t always the best but they were at least decent and a few were really good. They had one on Smackdown in (I think) the June that I thought was their best singles match in that WWE style. They had a belter or two in 2002 in the Smackdown Five (I’m not counting Chavo) days as well. 

Edited Tuesday at 09:51 AM by wandshogun09

[davertfnewman]

With Malenko and some of the guys mentioned of his ilk, I often think of a Danny Doring shoot interview where he was complaining about getting bad advice from Dean as an agent but finding Ted Dibiase better (even though Malenko had a much longer career doing that). He said something like "What's he really going to teach me? A Texas cloverleaf? I don't know if Dibiase is a better wrestler but... actually, he is...". Dibiase may not have done the moves that Malenko did but I think you got a better overall package out of him.

[jimufctna24]

7 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

His stuff with Rey was great. He was the perfect opponent for Rey’s first major exposure in WCW really, he was a great base for all Rey’s stuff. I‘m a big fan of all Rey’s matches with Kurt Angle later and I see shades of those Malenko matches in what Kurt did with him.

I don't watch much modern wrestling, but I watched a match from last month featuring Rey vs Chad Gable a few days ago, If you enjoy the Rey vs Angle bouts, you should enjoy greatly. I did. 

7 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

The WWE matches in 2005 weren’t always the best but they were at least decent and a few were really good. They had one on Smackdown in (I think) the June that I thought was their best singles match in that WWE style.

Yep, June 2005 on Smackdown. They are not at their athletic peak, especially Eddie. They focus more on limb work and long-term selling, and it's quite a brilliant match. Their PPV matches at The Bash and Judgement Day that year are very good imo, but the Smackdown match is easily the best of that series. It's probably my favourite match from 2005. 

Edit: Their match on the Smackdown after WM20 is excellent too. 

Edited Tuesday at 05:15 PM by jimufctna24

[wandshogun09]

2 hours ago, davertfnewman said:

With Malenko and some of the guys mentioned of his ilk, I often think of a Danny Doring shoot interview where he was complaining about getting bad advice from Dean as an agent but finding Ted Dibiase better (even though Malenko had a much longer career doing that). He said something like "What's he really going to teach me? A Texas cloverleaf? I don't know if Dibiase is a better wrestler but... actually, he is...". Dibiase may not have done the moves that Malenko did but I think you got a better overall package out of him.

Oh if I had to choose only one guy’s career I’d absolutely rather watch Adidas Ted than Malenko. But Malenko had his place and I thought he was very good in that role as the grappler of the Cruiserweight division in those early Nitro years. I’ve heard a couple of wrestlers say they weren’t a fan of Malenko as an agent. Doring was one and I remember Maven outright saying fairly recently that he was an absolute dickhead. 

2 hours ago, jimufctna24 said:

I don't watch much modern wrestling, but I watched a match from last month featuring Rey vs Chad Gable a few days ago, If you enjoy the Rey vs Angle bouts, you should enjoy greatly. I did. 

I’ll have a look. It’s madness to me that Rey is still going. Given his style and the fact he was having to wear a massive knee brace starting as far back as 1998, you’d never have predicted his longevity. 

[AshC]

Yeah, literally a character on US wrestling TV before the nWo formed!

[BomberPat]

Dean Malenko agented the Jerry Lawler/Michael Cole Wrestlemania match, so he has that working against him.

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