King Steventon

Ok, so earlier I watched a match between two Japanese jobbers you won't have heard that went on for just under an hour long. Now I'm a fan of both wrestlers, but it was clear this was just too ambitious for them and that they would have been best to stick with a 20 minute or so match-up. The main problems were that there just wasn't enough ground work done to lay the foundation for the match, and that it often just broke down to big move, rest, big move, rest, etc. This got me thinking, this criticism isn't necasarily a big knock on either man as there are so few amount of wrestlers around these days with the ability to work a 60 minute match and make it work. The only ones that I think would be able to pull it off are Bryan Danielson, Austin Aries, Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho, Tanahashi and maybe CM Punk (based on his pre-wwe work).

Can anyone one else think of someone who has the technical ability to work a good hour long match? Or is everyone today best suited to shorter, faster-paced matches?

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horrorfan_1986

You forgot the main one, Ric Flair. Flair was talented enough to help make a long match go by fairly quickly, which is something that most people are incapable of. Of course it all depended on who his opponent was. Someone like Dusty Rhodes wouldn't be a great pick for an hour long match.

I would actually disagree about Shawn Michaels. The guy's limit was about 40 minutes, if that. Michaels would have a lot of slow dull segments of a match and repeated spots. Which if you look back at his career, many of his best (according to fans, the WWE and myself) matches rarely went over 30 minutes. Two of his more disappointing matches (In my opinion): The Hell in a Cell w/ Triple H and the Iron Man Match w/ Bret Hart, biggest flaws were the fact that they tried making it as long as possible. With the HIAC match, they had a 50 minute match that could of easily been 25 minutes which I believe would of had a better reception to it. With the idea that they'd have to go at least an hour, Bret and Shawn had such a slow start that they barely did anything for 45 straight minutes. It didn't matter how exciting the final 15 minutes were or the Sudden Death was, the majority of the match ruined the match for many fans, myself included. Michaels and Bret had so many entertaining matches, however; most were just around 20 minutes.

Truthfully, with the exception of some of the epic older Puro 2/3 Falls matches that went an hour, there's no need to go that long. Just like with the HIAC match, you should be able to fit everything you want in just 25 minutes. Wrestling became scripted in the first place due to fans becoming more and more disinterested in pro wrestling because matches lasted far too long.

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King Steventon

I was thinking of Flair, but his hour long matches seem to suffer from the same problem alot of the old All Japan 2/3 falls matches did. Which is just long winded rest holds followed by five minutes of action, then back into another long rest hold. I don't mind submissions at all, but it becomes a little tedious after a while. I'm no expert on Flair in his prime, but thats my take from that which I've seen atleast.

BigDaveBatista

Benoit, Hero (Punk v Hero 90 Minutes plus FTW!), Eddie, Strong, HBK, a lot of the indie wrestlers from ROH etc. could easily i'd say.