10 Wrestlers You Won't Believe Never Had A Five Star Match
Not even with a surgically-repaired freakin' neck.
Dave Meltzer's The Wrestling Observer newsletter is a cherished wrestling institution.
It's not an understatement to claim that the online wrestling community would be a drastically different place without him at the helm. His connections are as endless as his exclusives. Much of the WrestleMania 33 card was broken by the Observer months in advance, but he is no mere investigator; his writing is as expansive as it is often heartfelt.
But even though he is on record as saying he puts nowhere near as much of an emphasis on his star ratings as his readers, his excellent features - the Ivan Koloff tribute bio a month or so back is a must-read, in particular - are sadly ignored. He isn't known for them; he is unfairly pigeonholed as a critic with a certain bias.
His controversial star rating criteria incorporates workrate, crowd heat, the history between the performers and how the moves reflect it - and the difficulty, variety and inventiveness of the moves in and of themselves. The tiresome joke has it that Meltzer refuses to acknowledge the men on this list simply because they were not born in Japan.
But on the basis of that criteria, like all cliches, it is rooted in some truth...
10. The Rock
The Rock doesn't get enough praise for his ability between the ropes, but that his mic game overshadows it is no real (or disheartening) surprise.
He is easily within the bracket of top five all-time stick men, objectively, and his style though limited was far more athletic and pacy than is often credited. He never did much beyond his brawling power game - and when he deviated from that template, the results were mixed. His use of the Sharpshooter was gentle and clunky, but he occupied the space between moves as well as anybody.
His body language and crowd awareness during his match with Hollywood Hogan at WrestleMania X8, in which he improvised a pseudo heel turn perfectly, is evidence of that - but his crowning moment took place one year earlier.
Closest Candidate: The Rock Vs. Steve Austin, WWF WrestleMania X-Seven.
Meltzer afforded the match a rating of ****1/2, and it's not too difficult to determine why it did not receive the maximum five. The opening two thirds of the match were a nuclear-powered exchange of brawling and signature offence, pitched perfectly to convey the tension and the microscopic difference between their storyline stature - but Austin's intra-match heel turn was cheered by his home state Dallas audience.
You could perceive it is nitpicking, but Meltzer uses his gut to determine whether or not a match reaches true greatness - and as brilliantly as even the most derided portion of the match was performed, that churning sense of unease - was it really the way to go? - was shared by damn near everybody.