7. Rey Misterio, Jr. vs. Dean Malenko (Halloween Havoc 96)
In the parentheses above, there were any number of options to choose from. Matches from The Great American Bash (the bout actually pictured above) or Nitro could have been chosen. Any time that Malenko and Misterio stepped into the ring with each other, magic happened. That is not meant to echo a tired cliché. In this case, it is meant to help you understand where the cliché came from in the first place. To many fans tuning into WCWs product for the first time, Malenko and Misterios matches were unlike anything they had seen before. There was a novelty to cruiserweight wrestling, in general, which added so much panache to the great storylines going on in the WCW main-event. How do you counter, when attempting to deliver PPV payoffs to cutting edge television, what mostly was a group of former WWE guys that you had seen in the ring a thousand times? With an alternative like cruiserweight wrestling. It was something that WWE simply had no answer for. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_klUn3g2XE From the purely aesthetic perspective, there was never any combination of wrestlers better suited to showcase what made the style of wrestling presented in the cruiserweight division amazingly different than Misterio and Malenko. The Man of 1,000 Holds was the sort of wrestler that was strong enough to catch the talented high flyers on all of their aerial assaults and had enough in his own offensive arsenal to both wrestle them to the ground and beat them at their own game. Naturally, his work with Misterio was breathtaking. The blowoff to their feud at Halloween Havoc 96 was the most complete match of their series.
"The Doc" Chad Matthews has written wrestling columns for over a decade. A physician by trade, Matthews began writing about wrestling as a hobby, but it became a passion. After 30 years as a wrestling fan, "The Doc" gives an unmatched analytical perspective on pro wrestling in the modern era. He is a long-time columnist for Lordsofpain.net and hosts a weekly podcast on the LOP Radio Network called "The Doc Says." His first book - The WrestleMania Era: The Book of Sports Entertainment - ranks the Top 90 wrestlers from 1983 to present day, was originally published in December 2013, and is now in its third edition.
Matthews lives in North Carolina with his wife, two kids, and two dogs.
