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Strangely enough, I think Benoit's promo with Maven from two weeks ago, when he tore Maven a new asshole for even thinking about not facing HHH for the title, was his best ever. Great promos never sound scripted, and Benoit usually sounds as though he's trying to remember the words to his promo.
But saying he doesn't know ring psychology is mentalism. That's like Bret Hart's recent comments, in which he claimed that Flair wasn't a good wrestler because he doesn't know psychology.
Benoit and Bret are very similar workers (not a surprise, I suppose, considering they were both trained by Stu). Both have a very "realistic" way of selling. They NEVER oversell a la Shawn or Curt Hennig or Steamboat, they don't do anything unnecessary like the Flair Flop, and they rarely showboat. Most of the newer guys don't work that way anymore, so his style might seem boring to some because he relies less on flash and highspots.
Benoit consistently makes lesser workers look good. He carried the likes of Batista (before he got good), Albert (who was never good), and Big Show to good matches. He did it my selling his ass off, timing his comebacks perfectly, and generally making it look like he slogged through hell to get through the match.
Benoit beats the piss out of people. That's great to see. Nobody else in the WWE makes wrestling look so real.
His moveset is vast, he can wrestle almost every style you care to name, he can resort to highspots and big bumps when he has to.
Having said all this, the IWC's collective jizzing over Benoit goes way too far. He's a fantastic worker, but Angle and Jericho (and even Austin, when he was fully healthy) are his equal or close to it, except those other three guys have the charisma and promo ability to match their in-ring ability.
Essentially, given Benoit's personality detrement, he'd HAVE to be one of the greatest workers ever in order to get as far as he has.
― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Tuesday, 30 November 2004 02:45 (nineteen years ago) link
Jericho has been plagued by a bit of sloppiness throughout his career. In general, movesets become predictable when the wrestler isn't motivated, or has to face a series of shitty opponents. There was a long run on Raw (from around Jericho's jump from Smackdown right up until Benoit's jump this past January) when Jericho was just about the only reason I kept watching Raw. He was dynamite on the mic, had to feud with a never-ending stream of lunkheads from Kane to Nash to Mark Henry to Scott Steiner to fucking GOLDBERG -- and worked his ass off to pull decent matches out of all of them. Remember the time around WM XIX? Jericho was feuding with Test, Jeff Hardy and Shawn Michaels simultaneously. He got decent feuds and matches out of all of them, including the show stealer at Mania with a still-shaky-post-comeback HBK. Then he moved on to carrying one of the best-built stories the fed had seen in a while -- the Trish (tri)angle -- while still finding time to "feud" with Austin to set up the main storyline at Survivor Series 2003.
All this time, very few feuds with high-level opponents who can work, and yet he's stayed motivated in the ring. I respect the hell out of Jericho. But I grant that for the last couple of months, despite being involved in decent storylines for ones, his in-ring work has been a bit sluggish. But when he gets in there with decent opponents such as Benoit or Rock, he tears the house down, with matches that are anything but formulaic.
― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 3 December 2004 04:29 (nineteen years ago) link
one month passes...
two years pass...