Unless you’re brand new to my columns, you already know what’s about to happen this week. For those of you that are new, though…
The Complex media company has a series on their YouTube channel called “GOAT Talk,” where two celebrities that share something in common… Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista are starring in a movie together, Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz are both rappers, Nelly and Ashanti are married to each other, Quinta Brunson and Rob McElhenney are both comedic actors from Philadelphia, etc… and those celebrities are given a bunch of topics that are generally semi-related to who they are and what they do, and they choose the GOAT (Greatest Of All-Time) of said topics.
Back in 2024, I decided to borrow the idea for a column, and I enjoyed it so much that I made it a series. In case you couldn’t put two and two together by the title of this column, this will mark the fifth GOAT Talk column that I’ve done. I have a “team” that I’ve put together to send me wrestling topics… some serious, some not-so-serious… and I go through them to choose the GOAT.
Seems like enough of an explanation, so let’s go ahead and have some fun.
GOAT Iron Man Match: MJF vs Bryan Danielson at AEW Revolution 2023. I wouldn’t say that I hate Iron Man Matches, but I wouldn’t exactly call them my favorite type of wrestling match, either. A lot of the time, there’s no need to really pay attention to things until the very end. On top of that, too many of the matches end up being put together terribly, with way too many falls, and with falls taking place after moves that never end matches. What I really liked about this match was the psychology that it had. Danielson had an arm injury, and MJF continued working on it. MJF had a knee injury, and Danielson continued working on it. They paced themselves well, and they delivered on a frantic final stretch that drew the crowd in even further. Counting an Overtime period, the match went over 65 minutes, and there weren’t any real slow spots for that duration, which is very difficult to pull off.
GOAT Real-Life Romance: Seth Rollins and Becky Lynch. They’re adorable together. Plain and simple. If you see the way they look at each other, or speak about each other, you can feel the love. That doesn’t even count how adorable their daughter is, or how much Seth and Becky seem to love being parents. Cheesy, cutesy love all around.
GOAT AEW Match: Will Ospreay vs Bryan Danielson at Dynasty 2024. I think Bryan Danielson is the best in-ring performer in the history of pro wrestling. I think Will Ospreay, over the last few years, is on one of the most legendary streaks of in-ring quality in the history of pro wrestling. They wrestled this like they were trying to have the greatest match of all-time. From bell-to-bell, they threw everything at each other, with counters, reversals, submissions, and everything else you can think of. At 33 minutes, the match was given plenty of time to work with and tell a magnificent story. In my opinion, it’s as close to wrestling perfection that AEW has been able to deliver.
GOAT Thing Missing From The Territory Days: A rotating cast of characters. Most of the big-time territories kept rotating wrestlers in and out, allowing them to show up, stick around for a few months, and then move on to another territory. It made sure that wrestlers didn’t overstay their welcomes, and it also made sure that feuds were kept fresh. Wrestler A was only going to be in town for a few months, so he couldn’t feud with everyone on the roster. That meant that when he returned to town at whatever point in the future, there would still be a bunch of people for him to face. It just isn’t something that can be done in too many places these days. Obviously, it’s understandable why we can’t have it for companies like WWE and AEW, but could you imagine? Think about someone coming to WWE, having a major feud or two, and then heading to AEW for a bit, working some fresh matches, and then heading to New Japan for a while before eventually coming back to WWE for a triumphant return.
GOAT Music Video Cameo: Captain Lou Albano in Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun.” There are a lot of fun ones for this category, but without Captain Lou and Cyndi Lauper working together here, there’s a pretty good chance we aren’t even having this conversation right now. Their chance meeting on a flight to Puerto Rico led to them working together for this video, and that led to Ms. Lauper coming to the WWF, giving us the “Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection” that helped catapult the WWF to heights the business had never experienced before. A live broadcast on MTV called The Brawl To End It All drew a massive television audience, Hulk Hogan’s popularity skyrocketed, and the first WrestleMania took place eight months later. The rest is history.
GOAT Camera Shot: “Stone Cold” Steve Austin being a bloody mess as he screams in pain while locked in Bret “The Hitman” Hart’s Sharpshooter at WrestleMania 13. There have been a million shots in the history of pro wrestling that, for one reason or another, will go down as being memorable or even legendary. Lots of them would be good choices here. However, I went with the one that truly “made” Steve Austin. He was already catching fire as a character, but that performance in that match solidified his place in the eyes of WWF fans around the globe. In an instant, Austin became “our” guy, and became someone we wanted to get behind and root for. His ascension to megastardom helped to change the entire course of the pro wrestling business.
GOAT TNA/Impact Match: Christopher Daniels vs AJ Styles vs Samoa Joe at Unbreakable 2005. This seems like the popular choice. If you asked 100 people to name their GOAT match for the company, I think this would be the choice you’d see the most. While TNA was already around for just over three years when Unbreakable took place, this was the match that helped put the company on the map and helped show people that the company wasn’t just some WWE or WCW retread. Daniels, AJ, and Joe had so much in-ring chemistry together. You can tell right away that they traveled the roads together and were very familiar with each other from their time on the independent scene. As I type this, I realize that it has been too long since I’ve seen the match. I should fix that.
GOAT Tag Team Feud: The Hardyz, The Dudleyz, and Edge & Christian. I don’t think you can go wrong if you choose Rock N Roll Express vs Midnight Express here, or if you went with New Day vs The Usos. My selection has to do with a few things, though. In a company run by someone who notoriously dislikes tag team wrestling, those three teams helped to create a LOADED tag division, chock full of Hall Of Fame pairings. They took the “car crash” match style and made it accessible to bigger and broader audiences than ever before. Perhaps most importantly, though, the feud crated real deal bonafide superstars, with five of the six men going on to become World Champions because of it. That’s an important thing to think about when discussing this type of thing. It did so much for Matt Hardy, Jeff Hardy, Bubba Ray Dudley, D-Von Dudley, Edge, and Christian. As a matter of fact, it continues doing things for them, all these years later. All six of them are either still wrestling or are working in the podcast/radio world because of what this feud did for them.
GOAT “Real Life & On-Screen Personas Don’t Match” Wrestler: If we’re talking about people I’ve met in real life, it would be Haku/Meng. Otherwise, I think my answer would probably be Stephanie McMahon. I’ve mentioned it in my columns before, but Haku (or “Uncle Tonga,” as he likes to be called) finds a way to simultaneously be the toughest man to ever step foot inside of a wrestling ring and one of the sweetest and most gentle human beings to ever step foot inside of a wrestling ring. You hear a billion stories about how much of a badass the man is, but do you know what you never hear? That he was the aggressor in any incident. He’s never looking to start things with other people, but he’s damn sure willing to finish things that come up. Stephanie McMahon is someone who has made a name for herself on-screen as a heel that isn’t afraid of being 28 types of bitch to get whatever she wants. While she’s doing that, though, she doesn’t have any negative stories about who she is backstage. I couldn’t even count the number of “Vince McMahon was a prick and impossible to work with, but Stephanie was such a sweetheart” stories that I’ve seen and heard through the years.
GOAT Surprise: Brock Lesnar ends The Undertaker’s WrestleMania streak. Deep down, I think every wrestling fan knew it was always a possibility that The Undertaker would eventually lose a match at WrestleMania. Even if you thought he should retire with an undefeated record at the biggest show in all of pro wrestling, you knew there was always a chance that someone would topple him. When it finally happened, though… it floored everyone watching. It was one of the rare occasions when a match ends, and a live crowd doesn’t react right away, because nobody knew what to do. Did that really just happen? There’s no way that really just happened. The looks on the faces of person after person shown in the crowd said it all. “Surprise” would be an understatement, to say the least.
GOAT Wrestler & City Connection: CM Punk and Chicago. There are a few others that I enjoy… Sami Zayn and Montreal, John Cena and Boston, Edge/Adam Copeland and Toronto, ECW wrestlers and Philadelphia, just to name a few… but Punk and Chicago have a special connection that has been unparalleled in wrestling history. To say the people of Chicago love Punk would be an incredible understatement. He is a God to those people, and they shower him with love and affection when he’s around. Many of the loudest crowd reactions that pro wrestling has seen in this generation have been Punk appearances in Chicago.
GOAT Trading Card: 1982 Wrestling All-Stars Series A Hulk Hogan. Baseball has the 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle or the T206 Honus Wagner. Basketball has the 1986 Fleer Michael Jordan or the 2003-04 Upper Deck Exquisite LeBron James Rookie Patch Autograph. Football has the 2000 Playoff Contenders Tom Brady Championship Ticket Autograph or the 2017 National Treasures Patrick Mahomes Platinum Shield Autograph. Hockey has the 1979 O-Pee-Chee Wayne Gretzky or the 2005 The Cup Sidney Crosby Rookie Patch Autograph. Golf has the 2001 Upper Deck Golf Tiger Woods or the 1982 Donruss Golf Jack Nicklaus. Soccer has the 1958 Alifabolaget Pele or the 2019 Topps Chrome Bundesliga Erling Haaland Superfractor Autograph. They’re the most coveted and recognized cards in each given sport. The wrestling example would be the 1982 Wrestling All-Stars Series A Hulk Hogan. Hulk has multiple “rookie” cards… his VERY first card was a 1981 Popy that was printed in Japan, and his 1985 Topps WWF is his most recognized because it’s the first mass produced card with the WWF… but this is the one that collectors have gravitated to the most. A PSA 9 graded version of the card sold for $132,000 recently, making it the highest selling wrestling card of all-time. A mint PSA 10 has never been revealed, but it is rumored that such a card would sell for over $1 million if it ever surfaced, which would put it in rarified air in the world of sports trading cards.
GOAT Tony Khan Moment: Selling a pro wrestling attack by wearing a neck brace to the NFL Draft. When Tony Khan was attacked on an episode of Dynamite by Jack Perry and The Young Bucks, it was praised by some fans and trashed by others. What I noticed, though, is that the people who said the angle was dumb generally made the same comment… it would all be worth it if Tony sold the attack at the NFL Draft that started the day after Dynamite. We all assumed he would be there. Not only does his father, Shahid Khan, own the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars, but Tony is the Chief Football Strategy Officer for the franchise. We watched, and we waited, and we watched, and we waited… and sure enough, that son of a bitch was shown at Jaguars HQ wearing a neck brace and fighting for his life to hold back a smile for the cameras. Fantastic.
GOAT Musical Artist: Insane Clown Posse. Okay, okay… hear me out. In my entire life, I have MAYBE heard a grand total of six or seven ICP songs. Of those MAYBE six or seven ICP songs, I think “Boogie Woogie Wu” is the only song I even remotely come close to enjoying. However, I have no choice but to respect ICP’s grind. They’ve been in the music game for nearly 40 years, have sold millions and millions of copies of their 17 studio albums, and have toured all over the world seemingly 100 times over. They have one of the most loyal and passionate fan bases in the history of music. Yes, I’m aware that this is “cheating” a bit, as they’re musical artists that became pro wrestlers, instead of the other way around, but they’ve done so much wrestling and so much for the wrestling industry that I felt like including them here. Sue me.
GOAT Line On Commentary: “The irresistible force meeting the immovable object.” There are funnier lines, more articulate lines, and more passionately delivered lines throughout the course of wrestling history. However, there has never been a more perfect encapsulation of big-time pro wrestling than Gorilla Monsoon talking about the pre-match stare down between Hulk Hogan and Andre The Giant at WrestleMania 3. Hogan vs Andre was the biggest match that the sport had ever seen, and it was taking place at the biggest show that the sport had ever seen. Hulkamania was already running wild, with Hulk being the biggest star in wrestling, plus appearing in a Hollywood blockbuster (Rocky III), donning the cover of Sports Illustrated (the first and still the only pro wrestler to ever do so), and hosting an episode of Saturday Night Live (the first pro wrestler to ever do so). He really and truly was the irresistible force. Andre, on the other hand, was someone that was a true-to-life “giant” that was one of the biggest (literally and figuratively) draws that the sport had ever seen. He was billed as having a 15-year unbeaten streak and someone that was impossible to take off of his feet, and in the era before everything was televised and on the internet for the world to see, those were claims that nobody could refute. He really and truly was the immovable object. If I’m still alive 100 years from now and this exact topic comes up again, I have to believe this will still be my choice for the single greatest line ever delivered on pro wrestling commentary.
What did you think of my choices? Do you agree with them? If not, who/what would you pick as your GOAT of that particular category? As always, feel free to hit me up in the comments section below, on Twitter (@HustleTheSavage), or on Bluesky (@aaronhyden.bsky.social), and let me know what’s on your mind.
Now, let’s switch things over to my Weekly Power Rankings before closing things out with the list of songs I was listening to as I put this column together.
Weekly Power Rankings
Kenny Omega vs Swerve Strickland: AEW always has really good matches on television, but this went beyond that. It was yet another fantastic match that might end up in the running for Television Match Of The Year when 2026 is coming to a close. Two of the best wrestlers in the business, facing each other in singles action for the first time ever, and they knocked it out of the park with a pay-per-view main event quality banger. Everyone is talking about the post-match heel turn for Swerve, and rightfully so, but I’m in wait-and-see mode. I love Swerve’s work as a heel, but I think he had more mileage left as a face. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here.
Je’Von Evans vs Dominik Mysterio vs Gunther: A really fun Triple Threat that featured three names who have legitimate cases for winning and moving on to Elimination Chamber. What a concept! I do like the decision to have Je’Von win, though. The things that he might be able to pull off inside the Chamber could end up on highlight reels for decades.
Zachary Wentz & Dezmond Xavier vs FTR: Quite the clash of in-ring styles, but those often make for the best matches, and this was no exception. FTR, specifically, seems to work well with the faster, high-flying teams. Technically, they work well with any team of any style, but you get my point.
Stephanie Vaquer & Liv Morgan: Even if you don’t understand Spanish and didn’t know a single word that was said by Stephanie Vaquer, you could follow along with the story being told. She barges in as Liv is trying to do a sit-down interview, and she cuts an old school style promo, where she is carried by her passion without needing to yell and scream every word. Dominik Mysterio did a great job of not only translating what Stephanie was saying, but also selling how intimidating Stephanie was. Then, the segment wraps up nicely with Stephanie walking away, leaving Liv to get emotional and start crying. They all did such a great job here that you could almost… almost… say that a double turn is coming. I don’t think that’s the case here, but Liv definitely came out of this with more sympathy than she had going in, that’s for sure.
Damian Priest vs Carmelo Hayes vs Trick Williams: Again, it’s a fun Triple Threat that features competitors working for some actual stakes on the line. Trick’s rapid rise on Smackdown continues with his victory here. I don’t think he wins the Elimination Chamber match, but I do think that this shows he isn’t far off from being on that level.
“Hangman” Adam Page, “Speedball” Mike Bailey & Kevin Knight vs Ricochet, Bishop Kaun & Toa Liona: The usual AEW Trios spotfest, and in no way is that meant as a complaint. They fit a ton of action into the match, but the champions’ reign continues on.
Ilja Dragunov vs Tama Tonga: The singles push for Tama continues as he picks up a victory over the former United States Champion. I don’t know how serious the company is about pushing him as a singles guy, and what his ceiling is, but I’m intrigued nonetheless.
Claudio Castagnoli vs Josh Alexander: Two incredibly solid veterans that are capable of having good-to-great matches with anybody. Hard to dislike that. If there’s a complaint you can make, it’s that the outcome was never in question, but if you can look beyond that, this was a lot of fun.
Charlotte Flair vs Nia Jax vs Kiana James: After her performance in the Royal Rumble match, I asked for Kiana James to receive some sort of push. Fast forward a couple weeks, and she defeats two women who combine for a total of 16 World Title reigns, in a match where she gets a prime spot in a high-profile pay-per-view match. That works.
Randy Orton vs Aleister Black: Yes, it was thanks to a distraction assist from Drew McIntyre, but the fact of the matter is that Aleister Black has a victory over Randy Orton now. It immediately becomes the biggest victory of Aleister’s career. Is he in line for an actual push now? I guess we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?
“All Ego” Ethan Page vs Shiloh Hill: While this admittedly isn’t the highest bar based on his lack of experience, this was the best match of young Shiloh’s career. It shouldn’t be a surprise that it came with Ethan Page as his dance partner. “All Ego” is so good, and so criminally underrated. He’s more than ready for a main roster run.
This Week’s Playlist: “Ca$ino” by Baby Keem… “House Money” by Baby Keem… “100%” by New Found Glory… “Laugh It Off” by New Found Glory… “Car Crash” by Scottzilla, Royce Da 5’9″, KXNG Crooked & Joell Ortiz… “Beneath The Surface” by Sylosis… “Everywhere At Once” by Sylosis… “Twisting The Knife” by Ice Nine Kills & Mckenna Grace… “Good Enough” by Rising Insane & Caskets… “Very Special” by Big Daddy Kane, Spinderella, Laree Williams & Karen Anderson… “Jay & Twan 1” by Tee Grizzley… “Summertime In The LBC” by The Dove Shack… “The One Time In Houston” by Wale… “The Matrimony” by Wale & Usher… “Don’t” by Bryson Tiller… “Testify” by August Alsina… “Make It Home” by August Alsina & Jeezy… “I Luv This Shit” by August Alsina & Trinidad James… “Numb” by August Alsina, B.o.B. & Yo Gotti… “Charlene” by Anthony Hamilton… “Finding My Way Back” by Jaheim… “Missing You” by 112… “Don’t Hate Me” by 112 & Twista… “Do What You Gotta Do” by 112… “Still In Love” by 112… “Crazy Over You” by 112… “Someone To Hold” by 112… “The Box” by Roddy Ricch… “Often” by The Weeknd
