Cases of two good/great wrestlers with zero chemistry

[bmfjules]

What are some examples of good to great wrestlers facing each other with consistently disappointing results? I'm not really talking about one offs here, as even Flair and Steamboat probably had to have an off night at some point (or maybe not) but basically wrestlers in a program with each other with consistently bad to mediocre results where you would expect instant classics on paper.

My first thought that always comes to mind is the series of matches between Ric Flair and Rick Rude. Two of my all time favorites that for whatever reason, mixed like oil and water.

[Rave]

Cena/Orton. Not that it stopped WWE from trying that 40 billion times.

[Captain Stud Muffin (BLM)]

AJ and KO. For some reason there matches did not really click. They just never felt on the same page during the US title feud and it showed

The Rock and Taker: This is a bit of an asterisk. Taker wasn’t as good in the ring then as he would become damn near 10 years later but those two top guys just did not mesh.

[petef3]

Jumbo Tsuruta and Stan Hansen.

[XaviersSS2015hair]

Oct 4, 2019 11:43:58 GMT -5 bmfjules said:

What are some examples of good to great wrestlers facing each other with consistently disappointing results? I'm not really talking about one offs here, as even Flair and Steamboat probably had to have an off night at some point (or maybe not) but basically wrestlers in a program with each other with consistently bad to mediocre results where you would expect instant classics on paper.

My first thought that always comes to mind is the series of matches between Ric Flair and Rick Rude. Two of my all time favorites that for whatever reason, mixed like oil and water.

Flair did not like Rude at all. Flair says that Rude was on a a lot of drugs. So that might have had something to do with it. Although I still enjoyed their Fall Brawl 93 match.

[Blindkarevik]

HBK and Mr. Perfect.

On paper, they seem like a can't miss match. But when their primary strengths involve bumping like madmen and making their opponents look like they're superman. It just doesn't flow when matched up with each other.

[Mozenrath]

Batista and Booker T spring to mind. Doesn't help that they flat out didn't like each other at this point in time, apparently, but they wrestled over and over and the results were always pretty lame. They were both perfectly capable with other guys, but really didn't click in the slightest. So, naturally, WWE had them face each other roughly 2 million times.

[cabbageboy]

Yeah but why would anyone think Booker vs. Batista would be anything special? Anyway I will have to go with Jericho vs. Austin. There's two guys that just didn't click at all, at least in that Feb. 2001 match.

RVD is the king of this sort of thing. Most of the Eddie matches and Benoit were okay but not quite the classics people predicted, ditto the AJ matches in TNA. Yet he also had great matches with some random and bizarre opponents.

[Deleted]

Triple H and Orton are two great wrestlers whose individual skillsets align in just the right way for every match between them to be the most boring thing ever.

Here's a weird but consistent one - while their Mania matches are great, every single time Taker and Triple H have wrestled on any non-Mania show, it's absolute trash. Every time.

[OVO 40 hunched over like he 80]

Austin and Undertaker. Austin admitted that the problem was that they were very similar.

[chronocross]

Oct 4, 2019 13:35:40 GMT -5 cabbageboy said:

Yeah but why would anyone think Booker vs. Batista would be anything special? Anyway I will have to go with Jericho vs. Austin. There's two guys that just didn't click at all, at least in that Feb. 2001 match.

Yeah their matches were pretty meh, I remember not liking their Vengeance 01 match or the No Way Out 2002 encounter. They tried but it just never clicked.

Another one was Undertaker and Austin, their match at Summerslam 98 was so clunky as well as their matches in 99, aside from the Fully Loaded match.

[BorneAgain]

Honestly given how good HHH can be in certain major matches, its a bit of surprise how meh his series with Lesnar was. Even their best match at Summerslam 2012 didn't really compare with Brock's efforts against the likes of Cena, Bryan, Styles, Punk, or even Reigns at WM31.

[Aceorton]

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall Savage and Dusty doing anything really decent when they feuded in 1990. That should have been golden.

[cabbageboy]

Dusty at that point was already about to head back to WCW I think. Oh, and I meant Austin and Jericho from Feb. 2002, not 2001.

As far as HHH and Lesnar goes, why would it be a good match? The problem with HHH in general is that he's a dull wrestler to watch and always insists on setting his own pace. He's also not a small guy that can bounce and sell for Lesnar. Nor is he someone who could have a stiff, vicious power match. Austin/Taker is odd because it was a huge money feud but didn't yield many great matches. But then it's a real problem having a feud with Taker where his opponent cannot take a Tombstone due to the neck injury.

[Cyno]

Cena vs Orton should've been like, instant money. It was at a time that both were really coming into their own as wrestlers, too. But they just like, never clicked. Didn't help we saw it a dozen times, too.

[petef3]

Oct 4, 2019 17:09:58 GMT -5 cabbageboy said:

Dusty at that point was already about to head back to WCW I think. Oh, and I meant Austin and Jericho from Feb. 2002, not 2001.

As far as HHH and Lesnar goes, why would it be a good match? The problem with HHH in general is that he's a dull wrestler to watch and always insists on setting his own pace. He's also not a small guy that can bounce and sell for Lesnar. Nor is he someone who could have a stiff, vicious power match. Austin/Taker is odd because it was a huge money feud but didn't yield many great matches. But then it's a real problem having a feud with Taker where his opponent cannot take a Tombstone due to the neck injury.

Also, their best shot at a "great match" in the star-rating sense got partially de-railed at SummerSlam '98 when they bumped heads and Austin got concussed in the opening minutes.

[HMARK Center]

I'm going to go with Tetsuya Naito and Minoru Susuzki.

I adore watching both of these guys, but when they've had major matches with one another they've been good...not that as good as they seemingly should be.

It's too bad, too: their personalities and characters are so strong and well-defined and an absolute joy to watch bounce off one another, but once they get into the nitty gritty of their ring work it just doesn't quite flow like you'd hope.

Tough to say why it is. Might be that Suzuki, while quick, is a strongly grounded wrestler, and doesn't fully keep up with Naito's luncha-infused style, while Naito isn't going to make a strike exchange with Suzuki pop the way a guy like Ishii or Goto can. Still, Suzuki has wonderful chemistry with Okada, who also isn't a killer striker, but I think Okada gives Suzuki a better base to make his offense look deadly against than Naito does.

All in all it's not like these two are bad together or anything, and again any time we get to see Super Troll Naito try to piss off Murder Grandpa Suzuki it's almost always great character work, but it just feels like a combo that should be able to bust past four stars pretty easily that just doesn't fully click together like you'd hope.

[bmfjules]

Oct 4, 2019 13:35:40 GMT -5 cabbageboy said:

Yeah but why would anyone think Booker vs. Batista would be anything special? Anyway I will have to go with Jericho vs. Austin. There's two guys that just didn't click at all, at least in that Feb. 2001 match.

RVD is the king of this sort of thing. Most of the Eddie matches and Benoit were okay but not quite the classics people predicted, ditto the AJ matches in TNA. Yet he also had great matches with some random and bizarre opponents.

RVD could have okay to good matches with a lot of people, but he could really only have a great match in a very specific set of circumstances and with an opponent that was willing to let him basically do an RVD match, but could adapt their style into said match in a way that worked. Jerry Lynn was by far the best at this.  Having to work within rigid time structure also hurts an RVD match, as most of his ECW classics were, if you really nitpick them, filled with a ton of downtime with either him posing or just laying out while building up steam for the next big spot.

Guerrero and Benoit were basically having normal matches with RVD where he would work in a few of his spots, and while it was far from bad, it's not the kind of match where Van Dam was going to shine and really get over like Heyman let him when he was convincing people that RVD was equal to or better than HBK---which of course he was nowhere close to that at any point in his career, but Heyman and RVD made a lot of hardcore fans BELIEVE he was, and that's what mattered. They sold him as an athletic attraction the same way Vince Sr. sold Andre as a pure physical attraction.

By the time he got to TNA and worked with AJ Styles and others, while he may have had the freedom to have an old school RVD match from time to time, a whole generation of guys (like AJ for instance) had passed him by in the 'wow' department and he had also slowed down considerably as well, so I give him a pass on those.

[DZ: WF Legacy]

I remember thinking that Triple H vs King Booker "King of Kings" match at SummerSlam was really underwhelming considering the pedigree (pun well-intended) both men had earned at that stage of their career. Haven't seen it since it aired, though.

[Nickybojelais]

Whenever Jericho and Angle were in the ring together I often felt underwhelmed. Not sure if that was just me expecting Y2J/Benoit levels of chemistry, but Jericho & Kurt squaring off never did much for me.