There have been a number of things that have got me feedback over the years, but there’s always the same sort of question that I have to answer over and over. I know why it happens. Just as there’s probably somebody reading this that has been a diehard wrestling fan on the net for the past five years, there’s also a good chance somebody is reading about wrestling on the net for the first time right now. It happens. I was that “first time” guy at one point too. So were you. We weren’t all “smart” from the beginning. That’s why I understand it when I get asked constantly about the same thing: star ratings. Specifically, what do star ratings mean, where do they come from and why should you care? I don't have all the answers, but I'll try.
If you’ve read my work in the past, specifically a PPV recap, Raw or Smackdown recap then you know my favorite way to judge a match is to use star ratings. The scale that I use, and thousands of others, goes up to five stars. The highest possible rating a match can get is five stars. The lowest possible rating a match can get is negative five stars. The range is very large. There’s no rating of zero, it’s just simply called a DUD. It’s something that started in wrestling about three decades ago depending on who or what you believe. Most trace it back to influential wrestling manager/booker/writer/promoter Jim Cornette and one of his friends in the business as somebody who brought the star rating system to wrestling. It was something that was popularized by wrestling’s most well known writer and historian, the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer. From there, others started using it to rate their matches. I can’t tell you how many times people have emailed me comparing my star ratings to other people on the net I know whether it’s somebody I’m aware of like Wade Keller or Scott Keith or some guy at some site that I’ve never heard before. That’s the cool thing about being a part of the wrestling world on the net. There’s always something to read, always another opinion to be heard.
The star rating concept is obviously not something exclusive to wrestling. If you’ve ever picked up a newspaper to read a movie review then you see star ratings. Even in publications like TV Guide they list star ratings for movies that will air that night. It probably influences you too and you might not know it. You pick that TV Guide or other TV magazine up, you see that a five star movie (or maybe four stars on some scales that only go to four) like Braveheart is on and a one star movie like Booty Call is on. Chances are, you’re probably going with the one that’s got the higher rating even if you have no idea what those damn stars mean. Then again, maybe you’ll pick Booty Call because you’re alone that night and you think if you watch it you’ll know how to get a booty call of your own. The point is, it’s a system that is widely used. It’s not just in wrestling and it’s certainly not just me who is using it.
The reason I use the star rating scale is simply because I want to try to be able to put a label on a match in order for me to know whether it’s worth watching again down the road. It’s also something I do for you, the reader, in order to let you know what you may have missed if you skipped Raw or Smackdown that week. I know some people who don’t use star ratings at all. That’s fine. For me, though, I want to be specific in how I rate matches. I want to be able to use those stars to remember a match instead of saying something generic like “it was a very exciting match with a great finish” because it’ll make that match stick out to me more. That’s not just the good matches either. It works for bad matches. You say the words “Undertaker versus Giant Gonzalez” to me and I’ll say negative stars because that’s what it was. You say “Rock vs. Austin at Mania X7” and I’ll know five stars because I remember it so well.
Now that we know why the rating scale is used, it’s time to figure out how to use it. In order to do that, I think it’s important to look at other entertainment genres to reflect on ratings are used their too. As I mentioned before, the rating system is common in movies. There have been some common movies over the years that I think most people who have seen them would label them as being in that four to five star range, in other words being very good to excellent. Movies like The Godfather and The Godfather II could certainly be considered epic, five star movies. Others that could be considered on that level from the last decade or so are movies like Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, Braveheart and Lord of the Rings to name a few. Look at all those movies. They’re all so different. That’s why you can relate it to wrestling. Forrest Gump was a story about life, about love and about how hard it is for anybody to fit in with society. Pulp Fiction was about corruption, drugs and the dark side of life. Both movies worked, though. It’s the same way in wrestling. It’s the same reason why a spotfest like those TLC matches over the years are nearly five star matches and a technical wrestling showcase like Angle/Benoit from the 2003 Rumble is also on that same level. It stretches to music too. An Outkast album, a Green Day album and a Beatles album have all been considered to be in that high range. They’re all different. You can’t listen to Stankonia and come away from that thinking it’s exactly the same as American Idiot, you know? You can, however, say that was a damn good album. Four and a half stars. You know? It can be done.
The point I’m trying to make is there’s no set of rules or limits on what makes a match three stars, four stars or five stars. There’s nothing that says a match has to be this many minutes, has to see one guy losing this much blood or has to end a certain way. There are certainly things to look for. For example, I don’t think you could ever have a five star match that is under 10 minutes. I don’t think you have enough time in ten minutes to get in enough nearfalls, to make it look realistic and to try to sell me on the match being a classic. I think you could have a five star match that’s under 15 minutes, though. One of the shorter matches that I’d label five stars was Rey Mysterio vs. Eddie Guerrero from WCW’s Halloween Havoc in 1997. It was flawless wrestling from two fantastic athletes with tremendous chemistry. It was one of those matches where maybe if they got 25 minutes it would have actually hurt the match because the pace would have slowed down in a way that wasn’t helpful to the match.
The main reason I wrote this column was because of the Michaels vs. Angle match from this past Sunday’s WrestleMania. It was a match that has been universally panned as being excellent. It was. I think anybody can see that. Even if you hate Michaels because maybe you like Bret Hart or you hate Angle because he comes across as an arrogant guy then you should still have been able to walk away from that match knowing it was damn good. In the days that have followed I’ve had emails and discussions in forums (specifically, the Oratory Forums, which are the only ones I regularly post in) about the match. I asked how people rated it. Most say five stars just as I did. The ones that said ****3/4 or slightly lowered offered explanations as to why. They didn’t like that the ref or Angle screwed up that one nearfall. You know, the one where Kurt might have not got his shoulder up in time because the ref’s count might have been too quick for him. The announcers brushed it off as nothing, but if you saw it you know it. Others said there wasn't any blood present. They need to see blood to help tell the story. Some said it was too slow in the first five minutes with Michaels trying to ground Angle. They’re all little things, but they’re all viable gripes too. I know it’s nitpicking, so do you. We don’t do it because we want to criticize. We just do it to be fair. I’m certainly not going to call you an idiot or make fun of you because you disagree with a star rating. If you thought Angle/Michaels was only like three stars then maybe I’d question your reasoning. I wouldn’t say you are wrong, though. There’s no right or wrong star rating. It’s not fact. It’s opinion.
It’s hard to differentiate what’s five stars and what’s ****3/4 or ****1/2. I think about Shawn Michaels vs. Mankind at Mind Games 1996. What a great match. Fantastic work by both guys in taking hard bumps and selling every damn thing perfectly. The problem with the match was the ending was a DQ that literally came out of nowhere. Do you take off a quarter star even though 27 minutes of it was perfection and ten seconds of it was stupid? Some people don’t. Me? I call it five stars. Same with Michaels/Undertaker in the first Hell in a Cell match. Kane’s interference and tombstone fit in the match, in my eyes, so it got five stars. Another good example is Steve Austin vs. Kurt Angle from 2001’s Summerslam event. Great f’n match. So much drama, nearfalls and action here that it was hard to keep up. The damn thing never slowed down. Problem was, the match ended in a DQ with Austin beating up all those referees. To me, that doesn’t make it a five star match, but it’ll always be the best ****3/4 match I’ve ever seen.
Then there are the matches that as matches aren’t so great technically, but people will overrate them using star ratings because of how memorable the match was. Two recent examples would be King of the ’98 as Mankind wrestled Undertaker in the Hell in a Cell match and WrestleMania X8 as Rock wrestling Hogan in that Icon match. The HIAC one is a perfect example. Mick Foley himself said in his book that as a match it wasn’t very good, yet people always tell him it’s his greatest match when clearly it was not. As a match, I’d probably give it **3/4 or so because aside from the memorable two falls by Foley, it was still a guy who was barely conscious wrestling another guy with a broken bone in his damn foot. Even though it wasn’t a “great” match in terms of quality, it was amazing in terms of leaving a memory. Rock/Hogan is an example of a match again leaving an indelible impression on you, but not blowing you away because of how good it was. It was awesome to see those two legends in there. No doubt about that. However, if you eliminate the crowd noise and you forget that it’s Rock and Hogan in there you’d see it’s just a match that is about ** or so. That doesn’t take away from the moment at all. It just says as a match it was flawed.
I know there are some reading this that think star ratings are stupid. You may be right. It’s not like every match is wrestled in order to get five stars. It’s not like Hogan has a bunch of four star matches on his resume. He was damn successful without that stuff. The appeal of Andre the Giant was never his work in the ring. His appeal was his look and his stature, obviously. Not everybody can be Chris Benoit in the ring. We all know that. As mentioned above, you don’t need to go four or five stars to leave a lasting memory. It happens in many different ways.
One of the things I hated about doing recaps of WWE PPVs live was sometimes I’d overrate matches when I’d watch them live. It was something I wasn’t very good at doing specifically when I started in 2003. I liked WrestleMania XIX a lot that year, but it was only the second time I did a live recap like that. The result was I went too high on some ratings. I gave Michaels/Jericho five stars initially. Now, after seeing it about three or four times, it would be in that four to five star range, closer to ****1/2 or so. I overrated Rock/Austin too. I marked out hard for it, but as a match I think it was about ***1/2 instead of the four plus stars that I gave it. It’s hard doing ratings when you’re watching it live. Sometimes it’s good to wait for the show to be over, get some perspective on what you saw and then go from there.
There are other genres that use the star rating system too. You’ve probably heard of four or five star hotels or restaurant. You don’t hear about the three star ones for a reason. If a critic reviews your hotel or restaurant and they give it something like five stars then you can better believe that the owner of that place is going to put that on every piece of advertising they have. You know why? Because if I’m some rich dude going to New York City for a three day business and I look at the hotels I’m looking at the ones in that four to five star range because I know they’re going to be excellent. I know, because of those stars, that some critic with credentials liked what they saw there. I’m going to that place. Forget the place with no stars mentioned. It probably got two or three stars, you know? See what I mean, people? Those damn stars are everywhere.
I even had a friend who I went to college with that was a hardcore wrestling fan the way I am and the way you probably are if you’re reading this. My friend Jake, after we’d watch some NFL or NBA game would turn to me near the end of the game and be like: “That was a four star game, man. I liked it.” I’d look at him like he was crazy. Rating a basketball game? Man, that’s nuts. Or is it? I know I’ve caught myself a few times in using the star rating system. What I don’t suggest is you use it on somebody you’re attracted to. I don’t think it’ll work if you go up to some girl and say: “you’re four and half stars, baby. You’d be five, but I can’t see enough of that ass!” Don’t do it, unless you want a trip to the hospital. However, Trish Stratus, if you’re reading this then I think you’re five stars. Hey, I might as well see if this works, right? Mae Young, if you’re reading, you’re about negative four. You’re not negative five because of the alcohol. Plus, I want to show some respect to that prosthetic hand you gave birth to five years ago.
How did I get from talking about star ratings to talking about Mae Young’s prosthetic hand baby? I have no idea, but I’ll try to bring this to a close anyway.
Everybody is different in their star ratings. When I was subscribing to the Pro Wrestling Torch newsletter there was a discussion in their forums about five star matches. The Torch’s editor Wade Keller, who I feel is a fine writer that I respect a lot, has only five or six WWE matches ever that he rated at the five star level. I don’t know them from memory, but I’m pretty sure that the Angle/Lesnar Ironman was one of the more recent ones. I agree with that, by the way. Dave Meltzer, probably the finest author on the subject of wrestling, editor of the Wrestling Observer has only four five star matches from WWE over the years from 1990 up until today. (For those wondering, the matches are Michaels/Ramon, Hart/Austin, Michaels/Taker and surprisingly Hart/Hart from Summerslam '94). Me personally, I think there’s been about eight or nine five star matches in WWE over the past five years alone. I have some friends who won’t give a match five stars simply because they already one or two matches from that year five stars, so they won’t let two or three matches in a year be five stars. To me, that’s insane. You can’t punish one match because of a previous one. That’s me, though. It’s not you. It’s me. Star ratings are unique to you. You may not even use star ratings. You may use a 10 point scale to rate matches. You may just use words to rate them. That’s fine. I’m not saying you have to rate matches using any scale. I didn’t always use the scale. It just sort of happened. Most importantly, know that there is no “wrong” rating. My five star match could be three stars to you. That’s fine. All I ask if you disagree is that you back up your ratings with analysis. Tell me, or if you’re writing to the public, tell your readers why.
As I wrap this up, I hope that you came away from reading this knowing a little something more about how you can separate wrestling matches from eachother with something other than words like “good” or “bad” when you rate them. If you came into this thinking “I know everything about star ratings” then I hope this wasn’t a complete waste of time for you. It wasn’t written to insult people’s intelligence, believe me. It was written more to inform those who have asked me over the years and hopefully answering some of those questions that seem to be perpetually asked.
Thanks for reading.
Smell ya later,
John C. - oratoryjohn@gmail.com
Related Content
These are columns I've written about a select few five star matches:
- Steve Austin vs. Chris Benoit - Two of the best wrestlers ever in a twenty-minute match for the world title. What more could a wrestling fan ask for?
- Undertaker vs. Michaels - The first Hell in a Cell and in my opinion one of WWE's five best matches ever.
- HHH vs. Cactus Jack - Maybe the best match in the careers of both of these guys.
- Bret Hart vs. Steve Austin - In my opinion the best match ever and my favorite match ever.
