Can’t Knock The Hustle: GOAT Talk, Volume Four
If you’ve been reading my work for longer than a couple months, you already know what’s about to happen this week. As the title suggests, this is the fourth edition of my GOAT Talk column series, so this is nothing new.
If you’re new to my work, allow me to quickly break it all down. On the YouTube channel for the Complex media company, they have a series called GOAT Talk. The gist of the series is taking two celebrities that have something in common… John Cena and Idris Elba star in a movie together, Nelly and Ashanti are married to each other, Lonzo Ball and GELO are brothers, Rob McElhenney and Quinta Brunson are comedic actors from Philadelphia, and so on… and those celebrities would be given a bunch of topics that are at the very least semi-related to the guests, where they would be asked to choose the GOAT (Greatest Of All-Time) of said topic. If you’ve got action stars on the show, the topics are going to be very action-centric, etc.
I’ve decided to “borrow” the idea for wrestling, minus the celebrity inclusion. I have a specific “team” that I have put together to send me wrestling-related topics… some serious, and some completely off-the-wall silly… and I run through them and choose my GOAT in each one.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Let’s rock.
GOAT Non-Catchphrase Promo One-Liner: “You people… you know who I am, but you don’t know why I’m here.” It’s not the funniest line in the history of wrestling promos, nor is it the most emotional, the scariest, or the most badass sounding. However, with that one line, Scott Hall turned the entire business on its side, started one of the greatest storylines that wrestling has ever seen, and had everyone who saw it live scrambling to discuss the promo with any and everyone they could reach out to. That’s impossible to beat.
GOAT Non-Regular Ring Gear: When Seth Rollins wears his white attire, you know you’re about to witness something special. He took the “he’s got his working boots on tonight” phrase and elevated it to another level entirely, having his working gear on. It looks great to begin with, but then the extra guarantee of it meaning that his upcoming match was going to be even better was the fun bonus of it all.
GOAT 7th Match At A WrestleMania: First of all, I love that this continues to be a running gag in the GOAT Talk columns. If you didn’t read the first three editions of the series, I’ve had the same person ask me to name the GOAT 4th Match At A Survivor Series, GOAT 2nd Match At A SummerSlam, GOAT 5th Match At A Royal Rumble, and now this. The other three questions were relatively easy to answer, either having one clear cut choice or two options that I would pick from depending on my mood on a particular day. This one, though… this was WAY more difficult. When I tell you that I could’ve gone with eight different matches here, I mean it. I’m going to go with a cop out again, simply because I can. If I’m in the mood for something more based in the technical aspect of the sport, give me Kurt Angle vs Chris Jericho vs Chris Benoit from WrestleMania 16. Do I want to feel deep emotional connection? Then I’d go with Randy Orton vs Batista vs Daniel Bryan from WrestleMania 30. If I want a grand spectacle, I’d pick Shane McMahon vs Vince McMahon from WrestleMania 17. How about the perfect depiction of modern day “sports entertainment?” Then I’d pick Roman Reigns vs Cody Rhodes from WrestleMania 40. Do I want something great with a historical twist? That means I’m going with Sasha Banks vs Bianca Belair from WrestleMania 37. If I want a surprise roller coaster that had no business being as good as it was, I’d go with The Ultimate Warrior vs “Macho King” Randy Savage from WrestleMania 7. Again, it really depends on how I feel on a particular day, and what kind of match I’m feeling the most.
GOAT Manager & Wrestler Pairing: Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar. There haven’t been many people in the history of ever that are more physically imposing and more terrifying than Brock Lesnar. If he had a “weakness,” it would be his promos. Funny thing about that is that he’s actually not a bad “talker.” He just doesn’t seem to like doing it very much. That’s where Paul Heyman, one of the best mic men in the history of pro wrestling, comes in. Together, these two were an amazing duo, playing off of each other and getting to shine at what they excel at.
GOAT Jobber: Barry Horowitz. That was easy. He was so well-known for his losing ways that the WWF decided to turn it into a storyline in 1995, when he would shock the world by defeating Skip of The Bodydonnas on an episode of Wrestling Challenge. This led to Horowitz gaining another victory over Skip, this time taking place at SummerSlam. One of the jobbiest jobbers to ever job earned a pinfall victory at a WWF pay-per-view. Yes, you could say that it’s an indication of how bad the business was in 1995, and especially how bad the WWF roster was at the time, but it happened nonetheless. What separates Horowitz from other enhancement talent from his era was the fact that he was a really solid in-ring performer. He saw a pretty good amount of success outside of the WWF, winning titles in places like Championship Wrestling From Florida, Global Wrestling Federation, Continental Wrestling Association, and more. When the bell rang, you could always count on him to deliver in the ring, whether it was to make himself look good, make his opponents look great, or some combination of the two.
GOAT ECW Moment: The ECW Arena burying Public Enemy beneath a mountain of chairs gets the nod here. In the main event of ECW’s Hardcore Heaven 1994 event, Terry Funk took on Cactus Jack. During the match, The Public Enemy (Johnny Grunge and Rocco Rock) would interfere, causing a No Contest. Both Funk and Cactus would fight back, and during the fight, Funk would call for a fan to give him a steel chair to use. The fan obliged… and so did seemingly every other fan in the arena. Chair after chair after chair rained down upon Grunge and Rocco, literally burying them underneath chairs for about 45 seconds. If your eyes and your brain can move fast enough when you watch the clip, you can safely assume that there were AT LEAST 200 chairs in the ring when all was said and done. Someone even took one of the big Rubbermaid trash cans and threw that into the ring. At some point, Terry Funk was hit with a flying chair and he had to take a dive before quickly getting out of the ring. It was wild, chaotic, memorable… and it was hardcore. Everything Eastern (they hadn’t even changed their name to Extreme yet) Championship Wrestling was looking to be in an attempt to stand out from what the WWF and WCW were doing at the time. It was the perfect showcase for the company, even as dangerous as it may have been.
GOAT “What If” Scenario: What if the “Curtain Call” never took place? We know that Scott Hall and Kevin Nash were leaving the WWF, no matter what. That’s the easy part to figure out. Because this happened, Vince McMahon needed to punish someone. He couldn’t punish wrestlers who were already leaving, and, right or wrong, he felt as though he couldn’t punish Shawn Michaels, who was the reigning WWF Champion at the time. That left Hunter Hearst Helmsley to famously “learn to eat shit and like the taste of it.” The first domino to fall is that Hunter would no longer be winning the upcoming King Of The Ring tournament, as was planned. A last-minute decision was made to let Steve Austin win King Of The Ring that year. If Hunter won the tournament that year, would we ever get “Austin 3:16” and the meteoric rise of “Stone Cold” that largely helped the WWF win the Monday Night War and become the gazillion dollar business that it is today? Would there even be a gazillion dollar business today, or would we be talking about WCW still? Then, there’s the flip side to it. It is well documented that a huge reason for Triple H’s eventual main event success and what we would become is due to how he handled his Curtain Call punishment. The company saw that he was a great “soldier,” so to speak, and took his lumps without ever complaining. If he won the 1996 King Of The Ring, would the company view him differently? Would he have gone on to become Triple H and win 14 World Titles? There’s also the possibility that he never would’ve started dating Stephanie McMahon in the first place. He would’ve remained in a relationship with Chyna, but that means the rise of Paul Levesque, the executive, perhaps never happens, either. What happens to WWE when all of the accusations against Vince McMahon are made public? If you’re someone who is of the thinking that Vince McMahon is guilty, but also that Paul Levesque knew about what was going on, what happens then? Does Vince get caught earlier? Does he have someone who rats him out? The list goes on and on and on and on, and all of it… the personal ramifications, the professional ramifications… could have changed EVERYTHING in pro wrestling over the last 30 years.
GOAT WWE Hall Of Fame Speech: Paul Heyman. Call it a recency bias if you want, but I fell in love with that speech immediately. Heyman, one of the most gifted speakers in the history of the business, went absolutely crazy in front of “his” Philadelphia fans. For me, the speech itself was tremendous, but what made it even better was the fact that it signaled a CLEAR end to the Vince McMahon “era” of Hall Of Fame ceremonies. Some of the things Heyman said would’ve had Vince blow a gasket backstage if he were on the headset like he would’ve been in years gone by.
GOAT Non-Death Farewell: Ric Flair had the perfect sendoff on the Raw after WrestleMania 24. Even though he ruined it in typical pro wrestling fashion by returning 286 times through the years, his 2008 farewell was a beautiful and emotional tribute to one of the single greatest careers that pro wrestling has seen. Seeing many of Flair’s biggest allies and opponents all in one spot was a really nice touch, and seeing people like The Undertaker break character to pay tribute was especially noteworthy back then.
GOAT Tag Team: The Usos. I’ve said it in my columns before, and I continue to stand by it. They don’t have the most Tag Team Title reigns in WWE history, let alone pro wrestling history, but with eight total reigns, it’s not like they’re hurting in that category. As twins, they have an in-ring chemistry that is unmatched by almost every team to ever step foot inside of a wrestling ring. They held the Smackdown Tag Team Titles for a whopping 622 days, from July 2021 to April 2023, which also led to them being the first team in history to defend Tag Team Titles in the main event of WrestleMania. Chances are, they aren’t even done yet, and still have plenty of time to add to their list of accomplishments before they decide to retire.
GOAT Stable: Honestly, I don’t think you can pick anything other than the nWo here. From the moment Scott Hall showed up on Monday Nitro and asked if WCW wanted a “war,” the group changed the entire landscape of wrestling. If it wasn’t for the pure ineptitude of the decision makers on and off-screen in WCW, the nWo very well could’ve changed the landscape of wrestling on a permanent basis. The group got way too big, and it added a bunch of terrible members, but those early days were incredible and had millions of viewers tuning in every week to see what would happen next.
GOAT Meme: There are a ton, but I’m pretty partial to the shot from the Boneyard Match between The Undertaker and AJ Styles at WrestleMania 36, where AJ was smiling a huge grin, thinking he had gotten rid of Taker, not realizing that an angry Taker had reappeared behind him. It’s a funny shot to begin with, but it’s versatile with a bunch of meme options. The best ones are the easily relatable ones. AJ is “me about to break all of the quarantine rules” and Taker is “Dr. Fauci.” A similar one sees AJ as “2020 is my year” and Taker as “COVID.” AJ as “the best part of the song” and Taker is “the GPS voice.” Another great one is AJ as “family unwrapping their Christmas gifts” and Taker as “dad waiting nearby with a trash bag.” The list goes on and on. It has been over five years, and I still see new memes using this format on a regular basis these days. Amazing.
GOAT Family: Whether you like it or not, it’s the McMahons. You have Jess McMahon and his son, Vincent J. McMahon, founding the Captiol Wrestling Corporation in 1953. The CWC would go on to become the World Wide Wrestling Federation, then the World Wrestling Federation, and now, it’s the World Wrestling Entertainment promotion that everyone knows today. Vincent K. McMahon (Vince Jr.) would take over the company upon his father’s retirement in 1982, turning the company into the global powerhouse that changed the wrestling business forever. Stephanie and Shane McMahon became two of the most over on-screen performers in an era completely loaded with all-time greats, and both of them eventually became powerful backstage figures, as well. Linda McMahon is also someone that is alive. You can make arguments for the Rhodes family, the Anoa’i family, the Funks, the Guerreros, the Harts, the Von Erichs, the Ortons, the Armstrongs, and many more, but without the McMahons and their contributions, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place.
GOAT Non-Console Game: WWE SuperCard. I downloaded the game on day one, back in August 2014, and I continue as a daily player, 11 years later. Shout out to my team, Ang3lz of De@th, who are currently the 18th ranked team in the world for Team Battleground events. SuperCard is an addictively fun game to play, as well as a great way to pass the time. If you haven’t played the game yet, you’re really missing out on things.
GOAT Shoot: If we’re talking about shoot interviews, I’m going to choose the clip of Simon Gotch destroying Enzo Amore. If you’ve ever been on YouTube once, you know the clip I’m talking about, as the YouTube algorithm loves the clip and seems to promote it all the time, no matter what you’re watching. I have literally seen zero seconds of Gotch’s interview outside of that clip, but it’s absolutely surgical how he decimates Enzo verbally. If we’re talking about shoot promos on wrestling shows, I have to go with Mick Foley’s “Cane Dewey” promo in ECW, where he was going off of the real emotion he felt as he saw someone in the crowd hold a sign that advocated the physical abuse of his then three-year-old son. Yes, Foley’s promo weaved in some storyline stuff, too, but I’m still counting it. If we’re talking about physical shoot events during matches, I’ll go with the infamous Act Yasukawa vs Yoshiko match from Japan’s Stardom promotion in 2015. Calling that “great” in any way is a bit misleading, as it remains one of the most despicable acts performed in a wrestling ring, but it’s easily the top shoot that comes to my mind when the topic is brought up. Yoshiko beat the holy hell out of Act, breaking multiple bones in her face, and forcing Act into an early retirement (she would return to the ring years later) because of her injuries. It’s one of the wildest scenes I’ve ever watched as a wrestling fan, and it really makes me wonder why Yoshiko not only didn’t go to prison, but remained in the business, still wrestling for several years after the incident.
Now is when I turn things over to you. Using one, some, or all of the topics listed above, what are your choices for the GOAT? As always, feel free to hit me up in the comments section below, or on Bluesky (@aaronhyden.bsky.social), and let me know what’s on your mind.
Let’s switch things over to my Weekly Power Rankings, before we close it out with the list of songs I was listening to as I put this week’s column together.
Weekly Power Rankings
Brody King & Bandido vs The Young Bucks: The pairing of Brody and Bandido is such a weird one on paper. It doesn’t seem like it should work in any way, shape, or form, and yet… it’s working. Even though I still NEED Brody to be pushed as a big time singles wrestler in AEW (Bandido, too, for that matter), this appeases me for now. They’re having some great matches on a weekly basis.
Charlotte Flair & Alexa Bliss vs Raquel Rodriguez & Roxanne Perez: Like Brodido, Charlotte and Alexa shouldn’t be working out as a team, but they’re doing just that, and live crowds are eating it all up. I don’t see it lasting too long, but it’ll be fun while it lasts.
“Speedball” Mike Bailey vs Jon Moxley: Remember when everyone was SURE Mox, and maybe his entire entourage, would be taking a break from AEW programming once he dropped the World Title? It has been a full month since he lost the title, and they’re still making regular appearances. Perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised. I’m pretty sure it has literally been years since we first saw reports that Mox was set to take a well-earned vacation, only for something to happen that “required” him to stick around some more. He’s not going to get a true break until 2040, at least.
Joe Hendry: I love how absurd pro wrestling can be sometimes. Wren Sinclair saying Joe Hendry’s name backstage, only for Hendry to pop smooth the fuck out of a refrigerator, is the type of absurdity that I enjoy. I laughed a hearty laugh when I watched this live. I’m well aware that he has done similar things in the past. Like I said, it’s the absurdity of it all that makes it enjoyable. He really does appear when you say his name, by golly. More on the absurdity that makes me laugh a bit later.
Seth Rollins vs LA Knight: Some people were upset that the match ended in a disqualification, but I was prepared for it. I didn’t think there was a chance we’d get through it without some sort of interference. Honestly, the match lasted longer than I expected it to. No complaints here. It was a good match, done in front of a hot, receptive crowd, and it leaves the door open for multiple different matches in the future, especially with all the post-match happenings involving Paul Patrol, Knight, CM Punk, and Roman Reigns.
Kyle Fletcher vs Tomohiro Ishii: Do you know that Ishii has never won a singles match on AEW television or pay-per-view before? Not one time. That’s part of why I didn’t think he had a chance to win this match. Sure enough… he lost. Yes, it was a lot of fun, but that type of thing can hurt the overall enjoyment of a match. Not always, but it can.
Sol Ruca vs Tatum Paxley: There might not be a more underrated performer in all of NXT than Tatum Paxley right now. The attention she gets is due to her character work, but she has continuously risen to the occasion when her number is called on in the ring. Sol is going to get the focus here, as she won and is rumored to be heading to the main roster much sooner than later, but Tatum deserves her flowers, too.
Thea Hail vs Nia Jax: One thing Thea does very well is play the underdog role. She is able to get live crowds behind her, and it helps to make her matches more enjoyable. As the much smaller competitor here, that underdog role made this match a blast. Nia has gotten so much better at what she does, too. Fun stuff.
Sami Zayn vs Solo Sikoa: Outside of CM Punk and Chicago, is there a combination of a wrestler and their hometown that is as special as Sami Zayn and Montreal? The love Montreal shows Sami is nothing short of incredible, and this was made even better by the fact that nobody thought they were going to see him here.
An Awesome Stable That May Not Be A Stable: Chad Gable, The Creed Brothers, Ludwig Kaiser, Pete Dunne, Tyler Bate, and Ivy Nile would make for an insane stable of wrestlers. I don’t think it’s happening, but seeing them all working together with the El Grande Americano storyline has been entertaining.
Alex Windsor vs Queen Aminata vs Skye Blue vs Billie Starkz: Windsor is the latest “flavor of the week” free agent signing in AEW. Can she avoid the fate that most of the previous ones have had? They’ll get a nice push and some attention, and then the company will move on to someone else, and that will be the end of it. It seems to happen more frequently with the women, too. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
“Hangman” Adam Page, “Speedball” Mike Bailey & Kevin Knight vs Rush, Dralistico & The Beast Mortos: Man, you’d think that creative control Mercedes Moné has would allow for her boyfriend, Mortos, to win more often. Apparently not. How selfish.
Sheamus vs Rusev: It wasn’t as good as their previous matches, but the focus here was more on chaos and setting up a future match/matches, anyway, so that’s fine. It’s still fun to watch these two beat the hell out of each other.
Xavier Woods: Remember what I said earlier about the absurdity of pro wrestling? It doesn’t get much more absurd than the hat Xavier Woods wore on Raw. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw it. The only reason this ranks so “low” here is because I understand the frustration some people have with Woods and Kofi slowly returning to comedic antics. After their big heel turn, many fans were hoping for a change in tone with their characters, making them much more serious. That lasted a while, but we’re slowly turning back to comedy. We’ll see how it goes.
This Week’s Playlist: “many nights” by Gunna… “forever be mine” by Gunna & Wizkid… “won’t stop” by Gunna… “him all along” by Gunna… “Yours For The Breaking” by Bailey Zimmerman… “A Little More” by Ed Sheeran… “Holy Water” by Marshmello & Jelly Roll… “Community” by JID & Clipse… “Sk8” by JID, Ciara & EARTHGANG… “Hell At Night” by BigXThaPlug & Ella Langley… “Make You Mine” by The Black Keys… “All My Life” by The Black Keys… “Neon Moon” by The Black Keys… “Rain” by Craig David… “Specter” by Bad Omens… “Why do I bleed this way?” by We Are The Empty… “Say It Again” by Bad Wolves & The Rasmus… “Born For This” by The Score… “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang… “Perfect To Me” by Josh Tatofi… “Melia” by Josh Tatofi… “I’ll Never Love This Way Again” by Josh Tatofi… “COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS” by $uicideboy$… “Oh, What A Wretched Man I Am!” by $uicideboy$… “Self-Inflicted” by $uicideboy$
