Hell yeah dude.
The best Fenix matches — first of all, all of them are singles matches — are not these total stunt shows where he is against an equally skilled rival and peer. It is not to say that cannot be good as hell — the ACH matches in 2018 may not be worth writing about, but they do prove it — but that generally speaking, the Fenix work that really really does it for me is when he faces a bigger guy, and ideally, a much older and bigger guy.
Of course, that is not to say this is on the level of Grave Consequences or the other Mil Muertes match exactly.
Simply that it works in a lot of similar ways.
Namely, that Fenix’s wonderfully fantastical bullshit feels like something he genuinely has to do to survive in the match, let alone win. Jaw dropping is jaw dropping, there are very few big Fenix spots that are not impressive on some level, but so often, they are applied to these lifeless and toothless sorts of fireworks displays. Put into this sort of a context, not only big aerial attacks against a wrestler who rarely does that, but also executed in response to a more guttural and vicious attack, it all works and feels so much better.
L.A. Park, of course, is also a delight.
That comes both in the usual ways — taking it to the crowd, powerbombing Fenix out of sight (single location hardcam shot on this bad boy), encouraging fans to throw chairs down onto Fenix, finding a large plastic dumpster and hurling it at Fenix — and also ways unexpected. Park adapts to Fenix by deciding to break out not only his usual bits of big offense, but also some stuff I genuinely did not see coming from him, like a top rope hanging DDT, a real wild tope, and a half chancery suplex into the turnbuckles (in a chat room once upon a time, a few friends and I began referring to this as the ’05 Plex, if I ever drop that here and there without thinking, this is what I mean).
It is not perfect. There’s a real unfortunate stretch where L.A. Park does a catch spot to a flying elbow drop and a minute later, Fenix no-sells a Tombstone to grab a shitty looking double armbar.
Still though, a deeply impressive thing.
This wound up on my project watchlist as a weird curiosity, the sort of thing I mentally chalk up as something I will watch but probably not write about, but that clearly was not the case. It ruled in ways I didn’t expect, and whipped so much more ass than I would have expected.
HANDWERK 