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Friday, October 12, 2018

Best Matches: Chris Benoit

1990:
1992:
  • The Pegasus Kid Vs Jushin Thunder Liger – NJPW G1 Climax ’92 – Day 4 – 4 ¾* (Can't find link, sorry.)
1993:
1994:
1995:
1996:
1997:
1998:
1999:
2000:
2001:
2002:
2003:
  • Chris Benoit Vs Kurt Angle – WWE Royal Rumble 2003 – 4 ¾* - This to me is Chris Benoit's and Kurt Angles best match in WWE, well for me at least. These two had wrestled many, many times (hell if you’ve actually read the list you’ll see they’re listed several times.) I love these two mens wrestling abilities, two technicians giving their absolute all in a close to 30-minute match. This is the perfect 5 star match to me, and if you don’t agree with me, rewatch the match and be the judge for yourself. Also watch after the match finishes when Benoit finally gets to his feet and you can hear the crowd give Benoit a standing ovation for his performance. This match goes to show that WWE saw Benoit as one of their future World Champions.
  • Chris Benoit Vs Kurt Angle – Smackdown 07/02/2003 – 4 ¼* - This is a rematch from their Royal Rumble match a week or so prior and it’s just as good and I highly recommend everyone watches this forgotten gem.
  • Chris Benoit Vs Eddie Guerrero – Vengeance 2003 – 4* - These two are best friends, who just love professional wrestling, staggering throughout tiny promotions, all the way to the big wrestling world of Japan, back to America in companies such as ECW & WCW finally to make it to WWE. This match was the final for the tournament for the inaugural WWE United States Championship. This is close to five stars for me, if this match didn’t include a screwy finish I would award it that. But don’t disregard that as anything bad at all. This is my favourite match between the two.
  • Chris Benoit Vs Brock Lesnar – Smackdown 02/05/2003 – 4 ¼* - This is a very underrated gem from the great Smackdown era from 2002-2004. Two of the best athletes of all time compete in the squared circle for the WWE Championship; previous to this Benoit had made Lesnar tap out at the Survivor Series PPV. Benoit would compete against Cena earlier that night in a number one contender match. This match gives us a tease of how Benoits 2004 would go.
2004:
  • 30-Man Royal Rumble Match – Royal Rumble 2004 – 3 ¾* - This match helped build up two of WWE’s biggest stars at the time, Chris Benoit and Randy Orton. They entered as number 1 and number 2, and Orton lasts more than half of it and Benoit would actually go on to win this match from the number one position, the only person to do it since Shawn Michaels. But it’s a 30 men royal rumble match, not a 2 men royal rumble match, so credit goes to everyone involved it’s a very good match and is one of the more funner Royal Rumbles to sit back and revisit. The ending of Big Show & Chris Benoit has been repeated many times since, but this is still the best.
  • Chris Benoit Vs Triple H Vs Shawn Michaels – Wrestlemania 20 – 4 ¾* - It’s a shame that WWE can’t really talk (and show for that matter) about how great this match is, and the post-match celebrations were. For rightfully reasons I guess, but I digress this isn’t a ‘WWE should show and talk about Chris Benoit’ post. This is probably my favourite Triple Threat match of all time, these three men just work so well with each other. This also has one of my favourite Wrestlemania moments, and that’s the post match celebrations. Eddie Guerrero as WWE Champion and Chris Benoit as World Heavyweight Champion embracing each other in a WWE ring to end Wrestlemania 20. Emotional, perfect and very fitting. This is possibly the greatest end to a Wrestlemania of all time.
  • Chris Benoit Vs Triple H Vs Shawn Michaels – Backlash 2004 – 4 ½* - This was a rematch to their Wrestlemania 20 match, and by all means it holds up as just as great as this. They say most rematches can’t live up to what we first saw, but this is definitely exceptional to the rule.
  • Chris Benoit & Edge Vs Batista & Ric Flair – Raw 26/04/2004 – 3 ¾* - WWE trusted Benoit so much in 2004, that they not only had Benoit hold the World Heavyweight Championship, but also the World Tag Team Championship alongside with fellow Canadian Edge.
  • Chris Benoit Vs Triple H – Raw 26/07/2004 - Triple H yet again has a 60-minute iron man match, this time against Chris Benoit, one of the best pure wrestlers of all time. This match really doesn’t get noticed or really talked about much, maybe it’s because people don’t enjoy long matches or purely they just didn’t like this match – but I’ve always enjoyed this match. I think they could’ve saved this match for a PPV personally, but that’s not a big deal.
  • Chris Benoit Vs Randy Orton – Summerslam 2004 – 4 ¼* - This is Chris Benoit’s swan song as World Heavyweight Champion. He had a decent run as champion with some great matches with some of Raw’s top talents including: Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair and Kane. But this was the first of Randy Orton’s World Championship win; he really has the crowd behind him during this match. This was the start of WWE’s first time trying to build Orton as the face of the WWE, and he certainly earned the respect of Benoit after the match.
2005:
2006:
2007:

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