This was a Best Two of Three Falls match.
It’s a rare match beyond even the stipulation. It’s rare in the sense that it’s a 2013-2015 Biff Busick match, a Mike Bailey match against another great wrestler, and a Biff/Bailey match that isn’t great. It’s a weird match that feels real out of line with the rest of the series. It’s a total aberration, but there’s no mystery as to why. These two have a great match set, but it’s a sprint. If not an out and out sprint, it’s a shorter match in which nothing ever feels held back. In this match, a lot does, as they go for a longer match and lose a significant amount of that old urgency, with a less vocal and heated crowd not doing them any favors. Mostly though, it’s that they pace it like their other matches together and with a runtime of two to three times as long, it’s unsustainable throughout the duration.
Of course, these two are simply too great to have a BAD match. Everything mechanically works. I can’t say either performance in the match wasn’t good in a raw data sort of a way. Busick’s shots are nasty, Bailey’s selling and comebacks are good, they do some gnarly stuff and I think you can isolate most few-minute segments of this and watch it and go “yeah, that rules”. It’s just not a pairing that works especially well in this format.
Ultimately, this match stands as another example of how making a thing into the longer version of itself can often often water the thing down beyond recognition. These are two of the best in the world, likely top ten guys at the end of 2015, but this is not what they’re best at. Take them out of their element — and give them a more subdued audience — and it just doesn’t work as naturally. It’s unfortunate that this series couldn’t have gone perfectly, but it’s not like fruit, one doesn’t spoil the whole bunch. It’s just not a match anyone needs to see, and one that’s been largely forgotten for a reason.
Truthfully, any company who books this match at this point and wants it to be longer and more cerebral doesn’t really understand what the match is and what either wrestler is about and deserves what they get.
HANDWERK 