[quote=@Raijinslayer]
[@Weird Tales]Oh yeah, I was talking about in Shippuden because that was the focus, but Gaara vs Lee is easily one of the top, if not the top fights of the entire show. 

Edit: It's also kinda weird how it foreshadows what happens to Might Guy years later in Shippuden when he finds himself in a similar situation against Madara.
[/quote]

See in my opinion one of the problems with Naruto was that Kishimoto decided to focus more on Sasuke and the Uchiha and didn't allow other characters to flourish as much. Originally Sasuke wasn't a character in the initial idea for the manga, but the publishers decided that he needed to have a rival character for Naruto. I would have preferred to see Naruto focus on all nine of the jinchuriki, and instead we got Naruto and his quest to get back Sasuke.