If the cylinder was full of water your motor would be locked. You can not compress water, Not even a little. If the gasket is blown real bad you might be pushing the water out but it would be real slow. Most likely you have a spun bearing. That is the most common issue with cars that are hard to turn over by hand. Your on the right track. Pull the plugs and try to turn it over. If its tuff to turn over with no plugs you got major issues.

If you crank it with plugs out it should sound really fast due to the lack of compression. WARNING Make sure you disable the ignition before/if you try crank it with the plugs out. You would be amazed at how far the fire will shoot out of the spark plug hole. I would rather not talk about how I know

 

I think I missed what year car was did you try pulling any codes? Don't need engine running topull obd2 codes

 

It is a 98 with a 3.8L. No, I did not pull any codes. I had it hauled to the shop where I will be working on it. I did pull the plugs today. All of them look good except front cylinder plug on the drivers side. It had some brown rusty looking stuff on the tip of it. I put some tranny fluid in that cylinder and let it sit for a few hours and was able to free up the motor. I can turn it pretty easy with a breaker bar on the crank until it get to that cylinder and then it gets some resistance.

Geez, the plugs in this thing are a PITA to get out, even with it sitting on stands. The 96 we worked on previously seemed like it had alot more room around the plugs.