With Steen’s final days on the independents now in full swing, it’s one of the final weekend of Canadian independent shows that Kev ever does. There’s a SMASH show the day after this and a few before Steen’s ultimate exit in July that spoils it being THE last one, but C*4 makes far better use of him here than the other company does in any of those dates, both in who he faces and what he does.
It’s a hell of a match to go out on, and a hell of a thing he does in his exit.
Kevin Steen shows up to a much smaller and less important show and he puts on PWG level working boots, with a clear story of Bailey standing up to someone who used to bully him as a rookie. It isn’t that Mike Bailey needs making in front of this crowd at this point, but Steen still busts his ass to give him as much as possible on his way out the door. And yet, it’s a balance he’s struggled with sometimes in PWG and it’s something he’s always struggled with more in ROH over the last several years, so it’s a hell of a thing that he gets it right here.
It’s classic heel Steen. He’s angry and mean, but always shows just enough ass to keep the other guy in the fight. The crowd work is entertaining, but never so much that it distracts from the match or makes him likeable. He’s always just barely on the edge, constantly doing these very mean things to the crowd’s hero, but without ever making some big switch in himself to insist that everyone hates him now. It’s the magic of Kevin Steen from 2011 through the end of his independent career, that he could balance these things so flawlessly. It helps too that Mike Bailey is the closest thing the indies have come to an El Generico type since Generico himself went back to the orphanage, so it’s a very easy thing for Kevin Steen to slip back into. Nothing is exactly the same, but it has this very similar feeling. A classical underdog, but one who can kick ass too, and who refuses to take a single second of Steen’s bullshit.
They also manage to strike the perfect balance between keeping it small and efficient and focused, but also going big as hell when it matters. Things build up perfectly and they leverage both things earlier in the match and then the situation they’re in to create some genuinely surprising nearfalls. Bailey exhausts something like ninety percent of his arsenal in the process of coming back and he’s already this underdog local who hasn’t QUITE broken out of Canada just yet, so it’s believable that all these different Steen things could beat him. Maybe not the powerbomb or the F5, but they’re done with enough force and intensity that, shit, maybe.
It builds up perfectly from the ground, and when Steen survives Seedball’s newer Triangle Choke finish and is able to get the Package Piledriver on, it’s as great and logical an ending as you could ask for, given that Steen doesn’t do a lot of jobs and that Bailey is so far beneath him outside of this room and this company.
But then Seedball kicks out.
The entire room jumps and starts high fiving like it’s the liberation of Paris.
It’s a move built up well enough throughout multiple promotions that a kick out genuinely feels like a big deal, and it’s done by someone likeable and beloved and believable enough in the role that you get the most jaded people in the world to stand up and begin hooting and hollering, because their hero might just have an honest chance after all.
Pro wrestling is so fucking good.
Bailey is able to come back after that. A top rope version is blocked. Bailey hits a gorgeous and truly nasty top rope poisoned rana, and while Steen survives a Shooting Star Press, he’s not able to kick out again when Seedball breaks out an ultra rare Shooting Star Senton, and the hero does indeed get it done at the end.
A wonderful and beautiful sort of a match, a refinement of some of the best things wrestling can do, even on a smaller scale. Most of all, more than a fitting farewell to Kevin Steen, going out with an above and beyond effort in the exact sort of match he’s always been so at home in and against his career rival’s spiritual heir, and finally doing something that he absolutely never had to do.
***1/2
HANDWERK 