4 interesting comparisons between Johnny Gargano and Shawn Michaels following NXT Takeover: Portland

#3 Quality of match

Johnny Gargano vs Andrade from NXT Takeover: Philadelphia

Given the fact that wrestling is subjective, judging how good each man’s matches have been will cause some debate.

Amongst fans, there are two common methods that seem to be used more often than not. One is that from the Wrestling Observer, which sees journalist Dave Meltzer give his respective star ratings. The other is an application called Grappl, where fans can put in their ratings, producing an average number.

Over both these metrics, Gargano once again comes out on top. He fares very similarly across both The Observer and Grappl, scoring an average rating of 4.58 and 4.45 respectively.

Looking more closely at the numbers, Johnny has had 15 Takeover matches that received more than four stars from the Observer. The best of these, his first bout with Adam Cole, receiving a WWE record of 5.5 stars. Whilst still scoring well with Grappl users (4.6), the match which averaged out the best on the app was his second match with Andrade from 2018.

Michaels also has a five-star rating to show for on his CV, with his WrestleMania 10 match with Razor Ramon receiving this honour. Despite this, he didn’t score as well across both metrics, hitting an average of 3.88 on Grappl and 3.77 with The Observer.

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#2 Non-tag team matches

D IY

Looking at Michaels’ numbers, he suffered from several low-rated tag team matches earlier in his career.

When removing these from the analysis, he compares better with Gargano, scoring an average rating of 4.09 on Grappl and 4 from Meltzer.

Despite having some stand out tag matches with Tommaso Ciampa in NXT, removing these from analysis saw Johnny hit a higher average (4.75) with The Observer.