Greatest Match Round 1: Lesnar/Guerrero NWO2004 vs. Taker/HBK WMXXV

[Everlong]

SquaredCircle's Greatest Match of All Time!

(4) Brock Lesnar vs. Eddie Guerrero, No Way Out 2004



VS

(5) Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels. WrestleMania XXV



VOTE NOW for which you liked better. Voting will last six days. In the event of a tie, the winner will be decided by which match had more people commenting in its favor.

[Everlong]

I haven't watched Taker/HBK since I saw it live, so I'm going to be interested to see if my opinion about it has changed at all since then.

I just skipped ahead to the very end of Lesnar/Guerrero just to see the moment Eddie wins the title again. Man, they just don't have moments like that any more. People went fucking nuts for him winning the belt, and you can see just how much it meant to him. His first action is to jump into the audience, and people hug the crap out of him

[KaiserGlider]

Dammit, this is a hard one. Two of my favorite matches ever. I expect Eddie/Lesnar will win this one since a lot of people here don't like Shawn/Taker.

Lesnar/Eddie was a better match on a technical wrestling level. It had brilliant emotion and storytelling behind it with both men playing their roles to perfection - Eddie as the undying babyface and Lesnar as the unstoppable champion who underestimates the heart of Eddie. It also has what I consider one of the greatest finishes of all time. No wonder everybody wanted Daniel Bryan vs Brock Lesnar to happen this year.

Despite all that though, I'm going to vote for Shawn/Taker which in my opinion is the better match overall. It felt like an epic clash of the titans where two legends hit each other with everything in their arsenals and pulled out all the stops; the very best of Shawn Michales vs the very best of The Undertaker. The atmosphere and crowd was great throughout the match. J.R. had some good calls. It also had memorable moments that I still remember: Shawn faking a leg injury in a nice callback to his feud with Batista in 2008. Undertaker's insane Suicide Dive into the cameraman. The look on Taker's face when Michaels kicked out of the Tombstone Piledriver. HBK's crazy DDT counter. By comparison, Lesnar/Eddie did not have as many moments that stand out, aside from the final five minutes or so.

The "finisher fest" has been done before Taker/Shawn and since, but in my opinion it's never been done quite as as well as it was here. Everything felt epic, and The Streak being on the line really added to the drama of the near-falls. This is Undertaker's best Wrestlemania match, and in my opinion WWE has not had a match this good since.

That's my two cents, now feel free to rip this match apart.

[Circled Square]

HBK/Taker brought something out of me, emotionally, as a fan, that I've never experienced since. I'd feel disloyal to one of (if not my number 1) the best matches I've ever seen. No disrespect to Lesnar/Guerrero. It was a better match if you look at it logically. But that damn Taker/HBK match, with it's storytelling, is a better watch to me. And I saw both live when they happened.

[Everlong]

Ok, I just watched HBK/Taker again for the first time since it aired. I still don't understand the praise.

I don't really see the storytelling element here, at least nothing earth shatternig. The last 13 minutes (!) of the match consist entirely of swapped finishers and crawling. I'm not even exaggerating here. I understand the story being told here is "hitting them with everything they've got," but there are much more compelling ways to accomplish the same story. For example, busting out moves you'd never see either of these guys do, or at least occasionally getting the pace of the action to be a lot quicker to make those moments of rest/crawling mean more.

This is one of those matches that I think would be great in person, but just doesn't come off as well when you watch it from home. I understand why people would be excited about it in the moment, but it's just not a great match when you take it as is. It's decent, it'd be a good RAW main event, but it's not an all-timer by any means based on the action of the match.

It's also left a bad taste in my mouth to this day because the WWE hype machine tried to convince everyone after the fact that this match WAS the greatest of all time (it's not) and that these are the two greatest WWE superstars of all time (they're not). They ran markeitng promos on WWE programming with this sort of propaganda about the match. They didn't need to do that with other, true great matches to convince people that they were great. That really detracted a lot from the moment.

In total contrast, Brock/Eddie is about as genuine as it gets in terms of emotion and greatness. You can just feel the passion emanating from Eddie throughout the entirety of the match, but especially at the end, as I mentioned before, when he finally achieves his dream of winning the WWE championship. It's just an incredible, natural moment that doesn't need the WWE marketing machine to make it feel any bigger.

Additionally, the action of the match is simply superior basically all the way through, both technically and in terms of how much it makes sense according to basic ring psychology. The payoff at the end with Guerrero hitting the frog splash to win after the cheap shot feels like a much better climax than Undertaker getting the pinfall victory after a 13 minute slogfest to close the match.

In short, Eddie and Brock takes this one, and it's one of the easier decisions of the tournament for me so far.

[CubsIn5]

Eddie vs Brock is easily one of my top 5 all time. That moment was special, not that the Taker vs HBK match wasn't but you dont get the emotion in that match as often any more. Also even in 2004 beating Brock was not common, he was close to unbeatable.

[KaiserGlider]

Current score is 9-2

[Everlong]

BROCK BEATS THE STREAK AGAIN

[Str8Shooter]

9-2!! Fuck right off.

[Everlong]

^^10-2 actually

[Circled Square]

i focus, on the pain

the only thing

that's real

[Str8Shooter]

^^10-2 actually

Eddie couldn't even win without Goldberg's help. Paper champion he was!

This is a miscarriage of justice! I'm voting against whatever matchup faces Brock/Eddie in Round 2, just because.

[KaiserGlider]

^^10-2 actually

Eddie couldn't even win without Goldberg's help. Paper champion he was!

This is a miscarriage of justice! I'm voting against whatever matchup faces Brock/Eddie in Round 2, just because.

What did you vote for here?

[Str8Shooter]

^^10-2 actually

Eddie couldn't even win without Goldberg's help. Paper champion he was!

This is a miscarriage of justice! I'm voting against whatever matchup faces Brock/Eddie in Round 2, just because.

What did you vote for here?

I didn't vote yet, I want to watch both still first. But I am almost certain i'll be voting for Taker/Shawn. Not that it'll matter

[Viazon]

I regret that I didn't have time to vote on some of these rounds. I wanted to watch the matches first but I have been back at work this week and didn't have as much time. At least these next ones run until Monday, which will give me time at the weekend to properly watch and decide my vote.

[VaderBomb]

BROCK BEATS THE STREAK AGAIN

BROCK IS THE 11 IN 11 AND 3.

[The Legend]

Taker/HBK kinda sucks if I'm being honest. It tries to force itself to be everything that HBK/Flair turned out to be organically and didn't measure up to its hopes. Lesnar/Guerrero is a fantastic wrestling match.

[KaiserGlider]

So much death... what can men do against such reckless hate?

[Hanley!]

There's not a lot of categories where I could even consider ranking Michaels/Undertaker above Guerrero/Lesnar. Their match was technically inferior to the match between Eddie/Brock. The storytelling wasn't as strong. The psychology wasn't as strong. It didn't have anything remotely close to the same level of emotion. It didn't have as brilliant and surprising a pay-off.

The only thing Michaels/Undertaker really wins on is "epicness". That's what the match was sold on, and it never really worked on me at the time because it felt too forced. Before the match, every piece of commentary, every advertisement and every promo revolved around telling the audience "this is going to be the greatest match ever". During the match everyone was talking about it being the greatest match ever. And after the match, they spent months (if not years) telling us "that was the greatest match ever".

Now WWE gives all of their big matches a bit of a hard sell, but not to that extent. They really wanted us to think that was the best match ever, and they succeeded in creating an epic atmosphere as a result. And they managed to convince a lot of people that it was the best match ever. But taken on its own, I don't think it's close.

[Viazon]

Just watched both matches today. Undertaker vs HBK was a great match. No doubt about it. But I gotta go with Eddie and Brock. Undertaker and HBK and two of the greatest showmen and performers in the WWE but Eddie and Brock I believe are better technical wrestlers. And I think it made for a better match. Not to mention the emotion in that match. I know some people don't like to use that when deciding which match is better but for me, that's just one part of a match that can determine how great it is. I think it all adds to it.