Great Wrestlers You Saw Live...

[Triangle Lancer]

But Were Disappointed In?

This popped in my head when Gary Michael Cappetta posted a photo of the Poffo Family on Facebook.

In a poll we all took years ago here, my personal top guy overall was Randy Savage.
Yet the one time I saw him in person, he basically phoned it in, waffling Sting and the Giant with a chair within 2 minutes of a triangle match, getting DQed and eliminated.

I'd say Rock would fit on this list, but he was a young, smiling babyface named Rocky Maivia, so I don't count him.

Shawn Michaels wrestled Chris Jericho on the main of my son's 8th birthday (his first live match), and...it was just there.

Abdullah the Butcher WCW live just went through the motions in 3 minutes.

Stuff like that.

Do you have a wrestler that you were excited/amped to see (finally!) and it falls flatter that a fart in church?
Why was it disappointing?

[Chiral]

I don't blame them at all ofc, but I've seen some wrestlers at house shows firmly in house show "I don't care about this tiny town" mode. One time I saw Orton just stay on the tag rope for an entire main event practically unmoving lol

[Stone Coke Miami Watson 🥃]

Seeing CM Punk (for the first time ever) wrestle Rey Mysterio at WrestleMania….hyped to finally see him wrestle live, and the match between both didn’t live up to the hype and left many of us dejected or thinking “this match sucked!”

[Bo Rida]

Jake without his snake Roberts. When he was at one of his low points. His no-name tag partner did all the work and Jake staggered in to do his spots at the end.

All the praise for DDP is fully deserved.

[tirtefaa]

Eddie Guerrero at a house show wrestled Scotty 2 Hotty. Not only did Eddie look very out of it, but he was incredibly pale. He may have been sick from something, but I heard from other people similar situations. Also, he looked absolutely enormous for a guy who at best was 5'8, like there is absolutely no way to get that big legitimately. Most of the match Eddie just shut down Scotty quickly and then stood around eating time. The crowd initially cheered Eddie and booed Scotty, but eventually they just turned on the entire match. Eddie acted like he didn't want to be there, while Scotty tried to play to the crowd.

Two or three months later, Eddie died. My initial thoughts after it happened went back to that night and how Eddie looked.

[BorneAgain]

Not his fault at all, but I saw the Great Muta live... at WCW Thunder taping in summer 2000. Not only had he not quite reinvented himself at that point, but the whole Dark Carnival stable wasn't exactly producing great matches to begin with. Cool thing to note on the bucket list even if it was the worst possible context to see Muta actually wrestle in.

[Citizen Snips Has Left]

The one time I saw Savage was during his Midlife Crisis phase in 1999. Really glad I got to see my all-time fave but it was far from his best (working a match with The Disciple didn’t help, though at least I saw Brother Bruti in his prime back in 1988)

I went to an NXT house show that featured an incredibly phoned-in performance from Shinsuke Nakamura. It was at the tail end of his run there on a freezing cold night at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby so I get that it wasn’t exactly Wrestlemania but still.

[Mochi Lone Wolf]

Dec 11, 2022 7:49:35 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Not his fault at all, but I saw the Great Muta live... at WCW Thunder taping in summer 2000. Not only had he not quite reinvented himself at that point, but the whole Dark Carnival stable wasn't exactly producing great matches to begin with. Cool thing to note on the bucket list even if it was the worst possible context to see Muta actually wrestle in.

I saw Muta in a match with George South at Wrestlecade s few years ago. It wasn’t much of a match as South just heeled on the crowd until getting misted and taking a shining wizard before getting pinned.

I’ll take that over The Dark Carnival 100 times out of 100.

[FinalGwen]

Josh Alexander is a beast of a wrestler and I'm excited to see him in February at SovPro, but the first time I saw him was in an AIW match against Michael Elgin where I saw more piledrivers and near-fall kickouts in one match than I've seen in the rest of my wrestling watching life. There was no tension, it was just repetitive.

[Deleted]

I saw Christopher Daniels in a Hogan/Bischoff era TNA dark match. Dude totally half assed it. I don't blame him, it was a dark match small arena that was only about a quarter full if that. It just kinda sucked seeing as how the Unbreakable triple threat is legit one of my favorite matches ever.

[DSR]

The only time I got to see Hiromu Takahashi live, his opponent (Mark Briscoe) suffered a dislocated elbow a minute into the match, and it was ruled a no contest. Now, I was more disappointed in the situation than either of the wrestlers, stuff happens, but I was still looking forward to seeing him in action. *shrug*

[Triangle Lancer]

Dec 11, 2022 7:49:35 GMT -5 BorneAgain said:

Not his fault at all, but I saw the Great Muta live... at WCW Thunder taping in summer 2000. Not only had he not quite reinvented himself at that point, but the whole Dark Carnival stable wasn't exactly producing great matches to begin with. Cool thing to note on the bucket list even if it was the worst possible context to see Muta actually wrestle in.

My one Muta event was WCW, same one as I mentioned the Iron Sheik vs. Norman match.
Sting, Arn Anderson, & Ole Anderson defeated the Great Muta, Buzz Sawyer, & the Dragon Master when Anderson pinned the Dragon Master with the DDT.
Muta spent 90% of the match furiously shaking his waistband, and a lot of us laughed at him. Some adolescents younger than me (I was 15 at the time) were yelling at him to stop doing "that". (Yeah, it looked like he was no longer "master of his domain", shall we say. Turned out - as I read years later - that he had a 'mist packet pocket' in his pants, and it slipped down his leg. So he was shaking his waistband to hopefully get it in his boot.)

[David-Arquette was in WCW 2000]

Now some of the blame goes to the opponent, Tyson Tomoko, but Chris Jericho was definitely phoning it in with this match. A match that was no holds barred but the only interaction with a weapon was Jericho doing a drop toe hold to Tomoko onto a steel chair. Not even the cool Raven style one. Tomko was simply holding the chair and walked into the move. Shite.

[DiBiase is Good]

The one time I saw DiBiase wrestle live was SummerSlam 1992. The crowd was really into it as Money Inc. were over as heels and despite this being their last match with the WWF for a few years LOD were still the most popular tag team there. DiBiase didn’t really disappoint as he could still go despite being a year away from retirement but it’s a shame the one time I saw him he was jobbed out to a team with one foot out the door.

["Playboy" Don Douglas]

The one time I know for sure that I saw Bobby Eaton was an early 2000s match with Ricky Morton at a pop culture convention in Knoxville. Obviously, neither guy was in their prime anymore, but I believe both could still go at the time. The problem was most of the people there just weren’t paying attention to the wrestling. They were shopping vendor tables and getting autographs. I was standing practically at ringside and at one point Ricky looked me in the eye and said, “If it looks bad down there, just imagine it up here.”

They phoned it in for about 5 minutes and went home and I don’t blame them.