Gunther vs. Orange Cassidy-Better Title Run

[MrElijah]

Over the last year or so, we've seen 2 of the best midcard runs in quite sometime. On one hand, the former Walter, re-established the Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship. Not just in the "workhorse" sense but made it important, nearly every match of his was must see. Including his series with Drew and Sheamus, matches that will join hallowed halls of great IC matches with Bret/Bulldog, HBK/Razor, Orton/Foley. His Oh, he also had the longest reign in history ended by someone busting out of the most dangerous moves ever to finally put him down.



The other was establishing run of a new championship, the AEW All-Atlantic, later, International Championship by the unlikely, Orange Cassidy. OC, is unassuming, to say the least but be it apathy, no f***s given or mind games, the man can go. And his story was accumulation of injuries from his various defenses, be it from Kip Sabian, hosses like Lance Archer, a 4 way with Shibata, Zack Sabre Jr & Danny Garcia or a hard hitter like Tomohiro Ishii. He made a title a desired prize, taking all comers until Jon Moxley had to beat him down, hard, to take the belt.

So who did you prefer?

[UN PLOMBIER NIGHTMARE #blm]

i'm gonna go with both because each of the title runs were great but had some issues.

oc's run is soured a little bit from when they had to get the title right back on him not long after because of moxley's injury, which led to what is a very boring roddy title run now. ospreay is surely taking it off him but that title lost a lot of shine pretty quickly.

gunther's run may have gone a little longer than most people would have preferred and many still don't think sami was the right guy to end it. it made for an excellent mania moment so i wouldn't go back and change it but it had the same issue that OC's run did, it didn't get the eventual winner more over.

each title is more important than they were coming into their reigns but the jury is out on if their losses should've happened to already made people. at least both of their title losing matches were amazing.

[Instant Classic]

Both were fantastic. OC has probably my favorite title reign in AEW. Well, his first reign as International champ.

[Super Duper Dragunov]

May 15, 2024 13:20:54 GMT -5 Instant Classic said:

Both were fantastic. OC has probably my favorite title reign in AEW. Well, his first reign as International champ.

Agreed.

Aside from Hangman's ascent to the world title, I think OC's International title run was the best storytelling TK has done in AEW (so far), and easily the best title run in AEW to date.

[froggyfrog]

Both were good

[SneakMan]

Both were great. I'd give a slight edge to OC since losing to Mox how he did and when he did was pretty much perfect, whereas I still am not entirely sold on Sami being the right guy to have beaten Gunther, but both reigns were the highlights of their respective companies while they were going on.

[The Summer of Muskrat XVII]

Both. Gunther's reign cemented Gunther as an absolute killer on the main roster, meanwhile OC's title reign cemented the International Title as a important belt when it was basically a punchline when it was created. Two entirely different runs, both incredibly successful it what they were attempting to do

[Gerard Gerard]

That's a really hard question and I cheaped out an hit 'both.' Gunther's an all-timer, no doubt, but OC literally took AEW's non-entity belt and crowbarred it into relevance by just wrestling a lot, really well and telling a simple story of the belt meaning a lot to him by showing rather than telling.

[The Kevstaaa]

Both were great but it's pretty handily Gunther for me.

[ayumidah]

Hmm I enjoyed both in different ways.