The Complete History of Paparazzi Productions (2006-7)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from friend of the program Eamonn. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

As with the last piece of this kind, also from Eamonn, I would like to just talk about some stuff that comes to mind during all of this, along with offering some kind of look at what’s in this wonderful wonderful compilation.

• The story begins in late 2005, when Alex Shelley, adrift in TNA’s X-Division (using a classic Dale Oliver rip off of his indie theme, “Six Barrel Shotgun” by the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club), began bringing a camcorder to the ring to work a neat little, and ahead of its time arguably, tape study film nerd gimmick.
• Before long, he would find himself employed as — get this — paparazzi for main event heels on the roster like, initially, Jeff Jarrett and the all-time goon stable Planet Jarrett (and later Father James Mitchell), resulting in one perfect image, capturing a perfect Double J outfit and a great stooge look from Shelley.

• After this weird little Jackie Gayda/Gail Kim/Jeff Jarett thing, something far more interesting happens, with Jeff employing Shelley to stalk Sting out in California to prove he’s really retired, since Eric Young won’t stop claiming Sting is back.
• Shelley referring to him as “Uncle Jeff”, also gold, alongside Sting as “Mr. Too Good For the Phone Book” (this suggests the greatest possible stooge heel bit, where Shelley tries to look up “Sting” or “Stinger, The” in the phone book).
• In the Sting stuff especially, Shelley immediately gets the concept of TNA Humor right, looking at Sting’s big house from far away, and breaking up the silence with, “I definitely want something like this when I move out of my apartment.)
• The story itself is one of TNA’s better ones, although hitting speed bumps in the middle as most do, with Jarrett being humiliated by Sting’s return and going so far to prove he’s actually retired when he says he is by sending Alex to do this and then, a week later, to get Sting on camera saying he’s quit, that it draws Sting out of an earnest retirement to kick his ass for violating his privacy like that, ensuring that he was in fact correct, but at great cost to himself. It helps also that it is one of the best babyfaces ever in Sting and a perfect coward heel in Jarrett, and that their eventual match rocked, but the Shelley part of the story is one of the highlights of the entire piece.
• Just as good is that, when presenting that final video, Shelley is a nervous wreck while everyone praises him, not having seen the video yet, eventually resulting in one of the great reaction shots ever.

• With this over, the story turns towards Shelley’s involvement in the also really good Christian Cage vs. Abyss NWA Title program in the spring of 2006, which has him in essentially the same role, but taken even further with a Father James Mitchell home invasion angle.
• Shelley is a little more out of place in a more serious thing, but his place as a little bit of a goof and stooge previously also REALLY helps get this over as some serious stuff the evil heels are doing wrong.
• It also sets up a GREAT angle where Abyss then attacks Christian at his home when he goes to get Shelley and Mitchell the next week, complete with almost drowning Christian in his own pool, only stopping because James Mitchell says he has to be alive for Abyss to win the title from him.
• While not in this compilation, as these are not about matches, there’s also a VERY fun Christian vs. Alex Shelley TV match as part of this, that I think not a lot of people know about, which you can see here.
• Anyways, the prelude is over, and now it’s time for the meat of this thing.

• These initial interviews are, genuinely, probably the TNA thing that I’ve watched the most in my life.
• Kevin Nash and Alex Shelley have an on-screen chemistry that cannot be just manufactured. I don’t know quite what it is, some things evade any sort of quantification or explanation and simply work, and the fact that Kevin Nash and a classic golden era ROH guy in Alex Shelley have it — arguably more then Nash had with anyone except Scott Hall himself — seems to fit that bill. They bounce off each other and tee each other up perfectly, and it’s all probably more than a little bit responsible for the revitalization of Kevin Nash’s image after this, making it harder and harder to hate him for WCW nonsense when he leans into it like he does going forward and constantly involves himself in TNA’s more comedic aspects.
• In these first pieces (which seem to be the regular version and not the director’s cuts you can find on Youtube, in another genius bit of TNA character work), there are a million perfect lines and bits, so, fuck it, here are some of them.

• Nash claims to be largest grossing champion ever in 1995.
• “Number one, always take credit for anything you can. You should have said, ‘I came up with that’.”
• “Madison Square Garden doesn’t hold 28,000…”, “It did that night.”, etc.
• A classic old 90s bit with Nash facing a little person under a mask in his X Division debut, highlighted by Don West yelling “HE’LL BE HERE ALL WEEK, TRY THE VEAL”.

• Disappointingly, this doesn’t have even close to all of these bits, in a baffling choice (yes, it would have been worth it).
• SIMOLEAN JOE
• Madagascar’s greatest wrestler, alongside Super Blue Cross VI
• “I’ve never seen a two-sided ring before.”
• The training vignette with the Madagascar Pro Wrestling guys where Shelley tries to teach Nash advanced holds but all he does are sledges to the back is especially great.
• In between all of that, there’s a nice little angle with Nash wanting to ruin the X Division so TNA stops ignoring him after refusing to bring him back after injury, trying to drive up his price before his deal runs out the following October, all capped in beautiful Kevin Nash fashion by building up the Nash/Sabin rematch in which Sabin is supposed to win, only for Nash to be hurt, and Sabin only beat Shelley to end the feud. At the end of a feud all about Nash leaning into the perception of him and joking around with it, it’s almost too perfect.
• Kevin Nash then returns, months later, to hold a press conference from a dive bar announcing a gauntlet battle royal for Bound For Glory
• Some of the names Nash and Shelley claim might be in it: Bob Newhart, Cecil Fielder (Shelley says this one and Nash just completely breaks on camera), Tom Zenk, Erik Watts, Carol Burnett, Foreigner, and all the living members of ABBA.
• Disappointingly, total loser gimmick Austin Starr will win it.

• The PCS is a multi-month challenge featuring Shelley, Starr, Jay Lethal. Sonjay Dutt, and Senshi, and although more obvious than the initial Shelley/Nash work, it produces a million great bits in its own right, at a higher clip.
• Nash stirring a jar of piss like coffee
• The Rorschach test in general, not only featuring Shelley saying one blot is “my heart, after you broke it”, but Nash following Senshi (Low Ki) answering “WARRIOR” to every one by asking if he really sees Jim Hellwig in all of these.
• “So Jay, have you ever actually administered a lethal injection?”
• Nash repeatedly accusing Sonjay Dutt of being on steroids
• THE BOB BACKLUND SYSTEM
• Everyone humming to “Push It” during a push up contest, and Shelley singing “push up REAL GOOD”.
• “Wouldn’t it be an inspirational story if someone with chlamydia won this event?”
• Kevin Nash encouraging everyone to kiss the winner, but only after events Lethal wins.
• Everyone singing the ADRENALINE RUSH ADRENALINE RUSH song for musical chairs.
• TNA Legend Bob Backlund serves as the judge for the finals between Starr and Shelley, which Shelley wins to achieve the greatest prize in his career, leading to the dream of Backlund putting Starr in the Crossface Chickenwing.

• WAY MORE IMPORTANTLY, we shift to Shelley filming JB and Eric Young buying condoms for Eric (after Shelley said not to get chlamydia like him), leading to one of my favorite TNA line reads ever when James Storm and others also come in the convenience store.
• “ERIC YOUNG, BUYING RUBBERS!”
• “Two guys, buying rubbers, four o’clock in the morning. Have a great night.”
• Eric also gets Cheese Nips.

• Kevin Nash, PhD, then treats Lethal and Dutt for Dysfunctional Wrestler Syndrome.
• This whole thing, Paparazzi Idol, is where the wheels begin to fall off.
• Black Machismo, and what not.

• Nash reassures Sonjay about Oz by saying he worked two matches in a year with this gimmick and made six figures.
• The Guru Sonjay Dutt is also very bad.
• They close on a high note with a old vs. new debate between Bob Backlund & Jerry Lynn and the MCMG. The writing for this is bad and it is classic Russo style short and cramped, but Bob going insane with the chickenwings is impossible not to get SOMETHING out of.
• The last line here is a great little bonus, beginning Kurt Angle’s search for backup, which will eventually lead to the also great Kevin Nash as backstage counselor bit for a few months.

 

 

It is not all perfect, you can really chart the creative decline (relatively) of TNA from 2006 to 2007 through this compilation as the bits become increasingly labored from late 2006 on, but I’m so happy that something like this exists, because all in all — especially the initial Nash/Shelley work — this is some of the best work TNA’s ever done, the sort of thing that justifies a company’s entire existence if nothing else would, as well as being some of the finest pro wrestling bullshit of all time.

Watch it.

Bryan Danielson vs. Nigel McGuinness, ROH Driven (6/9/2007)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from Dan Vacura. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or thing or $10 for anything over an hour, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

During the last several years of the 2000s, there was a contingent of ROH fans who very much so wanted to say that the Danielson/McGuinness series had eclipsed Joe/Punk as Ring of Honor’s best. I never quite agreed to it, in part because of a nostalgic attachment to what first got me into this, and also because by the time that conversation struck, I had begun to branch out away from that, more into NOAH and NJPW and PWG and IWA and even CHIKARA, and disagreed with that.

However, in those disagreements, largely over that the 6YA match was also a masterpiece and better than UNIFIED or about how their very first match in 2006 was comically underrated, this was never a match I has it in me to insult.

Gun to my head, it is maybe their best work together.

This lacks the stakes or the occasion or the pure sense of importance of some of their World Title matches, you are absolutely correct.

For me, that’s a lot of what makes it so impressive.

Bryan and Nigel are left out there on their own, in Philadelphia and meant to go last on a pre-taped pay-per-view otherwise filmed in Chicago (I should have been at this one, yes, but I wasn’t, I instead spent my work money on an IWA-MS show a week before and a visit to my girlfriend in Chicago who went to a private Christian school, more on that if I ever do a 2007 YEAR IN LISTS), and not only do they kill it, but without the assistance of a Gabe narrative nor a crowd particularly inclined one way or the other, they succeed anyways.

Now, to be certain, as with a match any truly great wrestlers, even lightly, there are narrative qualities to this match.

Danielson wrestles this with a little more desperation than usual at the start, while Nigel wrestles it with a (false) confidence. Every previous encounter came with a feeling, even in his home country, of McGuinness trying to prove he belonged on this level with Danielson and the others, while this is the first to have McGuinness presenting otherwise, even if it is all bravado in the face of a Bryan comeback in which he genuinely feels to be the wrestler he spent so much of 2006 posturing as and pretending to be. Nigel’s mistake is classic Nigel as well, not pressing a slight advantage on the arm, and letting Bryan hurt his back with a suplex onto the railing, in a way that hinders McGuinness just enough for the rest of the match to matter, in one of Nigel’s better understated selling displays ever.

It’s perfectly them.

Unlike UNIFIED, there is no obvious thing to point to. No mistake Nigel makes. No obvious error, though Bryan’s attack on the back does matter, even in the slightest possible way.

They fight each other, and Bryan Danielson simply has more in him.

McGuinness’ third act is brilliant, but Danielson’s is astounding,

Nigel is unable, either through the pain in his back or the inexperience in winning matches of this caliber, of besting someone like Bryan Danielson. The tragedy and the beauty of it is that, this time, there is no lesson to learn. No major or even minor mistake he makes, save for giving the best wrestler alive and maybe the greatest of all time half of a second too long when beating his ass on the outside, and the same inside of the ring.

Danielson survives the flurry inside, again having the stronger skull than McGuinness when he resorts to simply hurling his head and skeleton in the path of the best in the world. Following the headbutts and a block of the Rebound Lariat, Bryan get Nigel into the elbows, and then yet again, the Cattle Mutilation.

All men are not equal in God’s eyes, and the referee calls it off for McGuinness.

If you are so inclined, you can put another match or two above this, and I will not mind. However, the thing that seems undeniable to me, is that of all the big prestige wrestling classics, very very few feel as close to a textbook definition and answer to the question of “what is 2000s Ring of Honor?” as this. The only ones that do, and I can count them on one hand if that, might be among the greatest matches of all time.

What sticks around in the head, and what is the real thing about this goes beyond that.

Between the long term psychology and structure and unrepentant damage to the skulls only two weeks before that would be a true concern and adherence to the fucked up PPV vs. DVD timeline issue, the overall sort of undeniable quality with some sort of mass appeal, what this is more than anything else, is very arguably the most 2000s Ring of Honor match of all time.

****

 

John Cena vs. Umaga, WWE Royal Rumble (1/28/2007)

Commissions continue, this one from Ko-fi contributor Secretcow42. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $10/hour for things over an hour in length, and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was a Last Man Standing match for Cena’s WWE Title.

Aside from a few genuine apostates, those who have looked something so pure and correct in the face only to go, “it’s pretty good!” in response to, I think nearly everyone who’s ever seen this match has fallen in love with it.

For some people, they were kids seeing not only John Cena against a genuine monster for the first time, but the greatest and easiest formula in professional wrestling in an environment that hadn’t seen it on this level in years. Others maybe came to it years later, and saw something wonderful. There’s also the boring option, regular grown adults watching at the time who happened to see something incredibly sick. Personally, having started to grow bored with ROH in late 2006 and expanding my tastes more in early 2007, this was the match so great that I not only became a whole ass John Cena fan, but began watching the WWE again after like a year and a half away, relapsing into that nasty habit that took another seven or eight years to break completely. The real credit to this match is that I’ve never held that against it.

Every one of them fell in love with this for a great reason, and they might not all be the same reason, and they also might not be the same reasons they love it now. Every one of those reasons is correct, because all of them are part of just why this is what it is.

This is great in nearly every way a match like this can — and should — be great.

What stands out on this watch that either didn’t the last time I saw it over a decade ago, or that fell through the gaps since then, is just how well this thing is not only constructed, but in a rarity for the WWE, also how well it’s filmed. It feels like, at least relative to the Kevin Dunn approach, the ideal version of this sort of production. The way the camera cuts when Cena hurls the steps over the top into Umaga’s head lands at the perfect moment so you never see (probably) arms or hands go up to block it too much. The blocking of the shot when Cena falls into the steps in the ring and comes up bloody, from the other side with Cena’s head in the valley, so he rises up cut open, is one of the best ways to disguise a blade in recent wrestling history.

The match is also so well plotted out, not even getting into things like the what or the why of the way the match unfolds. Each little part of this — Cena’s hurt ribs, the struggle to even knock Umaga down, Cena getting cut open, the comeback — not only has enough time to breathe, but they build on each other perfectly. I think sometimes, the early parts can move a little slow, and I wish Umaga got a little color of his own, “if it bleeds, you can kill it” being one of my favorite tropes there is, but that get every other thing imaginable correct. Each thing is this new mounting challenge for Cena. Once he pushes past the injury, somewhat, he still has trouble with the size. Once he starts to push through that, even just a little bit, he gets cut open. It’s the rare case of a slower, or at least more regular wrestling centric, start to a WWE gimmick match working, both because there’s a point to it and these pay offs that come with it, but also because it’s all so well done on a nuts and bolts level.

On a performance level, it is immaculate.

So much of the credit goes to John Cena, and that isn’t a mistake, but before that, it’s worth noting how great Umaga is in this match. He isn’t asked to do as many different things, an unbeatable monster finally running into something that doesn’t break, but he nails the beats perfectly. The brutal offense, the cut offs, the selling in general, but also the gradual increase. It isn’t just that it finally happens, it’s how, and the transition that makes that not only work, but feel like a genuine accomplishment. The way feeling no pain turns into feeling some, to the famous ending. The way he takes longer to get up each time but still looking unbeatable every time he gets up so even as John comes back, it balances hope and hopelessness. Most famously, there’s the moment at the end, when Cena gets the ropes around his neck and Umaga displays, through his eyes alone, the first ever appearance of fear in the history of the character, offering up as much of a feeling of victory for Cena in that moment as the actual ten count, if not more.

The match revolves around Our Hero, and it would be a lie to suggest otherwise, but if Umaga wasn’t as committed and great as he was, the entire thing would have felt so much less genuine and landed with so much less force than it did.

John Cena though man.

I remembered the blood and the big stuff, but a Cena bump and sell this great gets lost in all the bigger stuff. the total commitment. pic.twitter.com/XOjKGganUy

— killer spelled backwards (@ElHijoDelSimon) January 11, 2024

There are hundreds of great John Cena performances, and a handful of the truly elite ones. Your Lesnars and various different Punks, some of the earlier ones against Randy Orton. There aren’t a whole lot of picks I would fight against, really. My personal favorite comes at Money in the Bank four and a half years later, but a lot of that has to do with a more complex narrative and the transformation Cena undergoes in that match.

When it comes to pure mechanics and babyface heroics though, I don’t think any of them can stand up to this.

On the most basic level, Cena’s surface level physical selling is outstanding. It starts with the taped up ribs, which always matter and always hinder him. As pictured above, Cena goes to such great lengths to communicate the struggle, purposely doing normal things in a messier way to sell the damage, on top of just holding his side, or the usual stuff that he also always does well.  Cena is the rare talent to regularly sell the weight of large object he’s lifting to hit people with, but this is his finest performance there, because there’s an extra element of pain behind the struggle of every lift. When he gets cut open, not only does he hit a genuine gusher, but he carries it off so well. The stumbling, the wooziness, slow blinking, the loss of energy and coordination (a great little moment to sell this where he intentionally gets a foot caught on the middle rope coming back inside, not to slip and fall, but just portraying not doing something basic as clean as usual, because he’s so beat up), all of it.

Cena also has one of the greatest single fire-up comeback spots ever, based around and enhanced by blood.

the real stuff pic.twitter.com/15ytOpU3Wp

— killer spelled backwards (@ElHijoDelSimon) January 11, 2024

To illustrate how good Cena is here as a beat up, selling his ass off, all-time great fiery comeback babyface against a monster, rhere’s a moment in this match where, I swear to God, it sounds like Jim Ross yells, “how about Sting?!”.

He’s so great that he sends JR fifteen years back in time, and you totally get it.

When it comes to the smaller things like body language and facial expressions, Cena is just as good, if not better. Cena’s had a lot of matches coming to the ring serious and tense, but before the bell, he looks maybe not so much resigned to a fate, but less confident than ever. There’s a weight to it, that even for someone who excels at putting weight behind major major matches, you don’t often see. He never looks surprised or gets all theatrical when Umaga keeps getting up, and even in the end when he chokes him out, Cena stands there like he’s expecting him to get up again. It’s so unlike what we think of as John Cena, big and animated, shouting his way through it, and I love this match and performance for that. It not only makes those fire up moments stand out so much, Cena seeming to realize at points that this is possible, but also adds so much gravity to every other moment.

It all ties in perfectly and enhances the pretty simple narrative of the match in a larger sense, beyond the construction and escalation, the why behind the what and how of the things that make this work like it does.

Three weeks prior, John Cena was the first guy to beat Umaga, but barely escaped and certainly didn’t do it in any definitive way. In a match that, by definition, guarantees a clear winner and loser with no arguments, John Cena has to do what he couldn’t before. The beauty of that is, in part, the struggle in each step of the process just as much as the forward progress, and that John Cena never stops moving forward, eating the elephant one bite at a time because there’s no other way to do it. It’s also how the match backs him into a corner as a character.

Cena, like any well booked top babyface, is not someone who hasn’t been through it on the way here. JBL and Edge and Triple H and Kurt Angle and all these guys, challenges put in front and gradually overcome, all of that. The thing is though, he never really had to get violent. He got bloody in the I Quit match against JBL in 2005, but JBL gave up because he was a coward in the end. He was the one who bloodied up Triple H (great proto political hit work that failed because Cena was too great, but this isn’t the time for that), and when he got past Edge, he was giving a slippery heel the beating he had earned for the last year plus, but it wasn’t like this. Pushing through some bullshit isn’t this level of survival, and what he has to do to beat Umaga is so much more guttural and grimier.

Beautifully, again, the match takes its time and brings everyone there. After the initial burst with that great throw into the steps, everything Cena does, he either gets cut off doing because he is just throwing his fists and power out there, or he does by avoiding Umaga. Dodging him running into the steps, moving when he tries a splash through the announce table, things like that. The entire point though is that, unlike their first match, John Cena cannot win like he usually does. He cannot simply muscle his way through, and more than anything, he cannot escape and run away with the win a second time.

John Cena only wins when he gets up, looks it in the eye, and does it himself.

He blocks the use of the steel beam after Umaga’s manager Armando Alejandro Estrada takes down the top ring rope, beans the big guy with it in the head, and chokes out Umaga not once but twice — resulting in that famous visual of him covered in blood, pulling back, and shouting, while Jim Ross declares that even a monster has to breathe — before standing back and watching to make sure, covered in blood and seemingly ready to do it again if he has to.

John Cena keeps the title, finally gets past his greatest challenge, and in the process, takes the first leap from being a great wrestler to not only being arguably the best in the entire world (I vividly remember a conversation with a friend around when this happened, and really wondering if in Bryan’s injury absence at the time, if John Cena was the best wrestler in the world now), but also one of the greatest of all time.

Truly.

Because while Umaga helps make this great and lends the foundation of the match, it’s John Cena who I think makes this one of the greatest matches of all time.

Even after the match is over, there’s something from John Cena that stands out so much, with the simplest facial expression and motion. There’s not elation in victory, just this nearly vacant stare, and the most exhausted salute John Cena’s ever thrown out there. It’s up there with Toshiaki Kawada finally beating Mitsuharu Misawa and finding that the victory changed absolutely nothing as the greatest post-match expression ever, the best portrayal of shellshock or single match PTSD in wrestling history, and not only does it tie the entire thing together, but it actively makes it better.

To me, as much as the punch flurry or the famous finish, that’s the match.

Performance and narrative and production and beautiful action all working hand in hand in hand like they rarely ever do, enabling something genuinely special from two great wrestlers, including one of the greatest of all time as he first becomes that, and using every tool in the promotional tool box to make it even better.

I mention, relatively often, the idea of the machine working like it’s supposed to.

WWE as this gigantic and expensive piece of equipment that has the power to do things other places rarely can. Through the money to pay the majority of the best wrestlers alive, in theory, the production experience and quality, the minds on staff that include even more all-time greats to help everyone out as best they can. All of that. In the last fifteen to twenty years, it hasn’t run as often or as smoothly as anyone could like, but it’s a thing I use to point to this idea that, at a high level, this is what the richest and largest wrestling company in history ought to be capable of.

This machine, in its purest form, in ways the people behind it intended it to run rather than times they were pressured to even turn it on in the first place, may never have run better or more smoothly or with greater accuracy than it did on January 28th, 2007.

****3/4

The Briscoes vs. Murder City Machine Guns, ROH Good Times, Great Memories (4/28/2007)

Commissions continue again, this one coming from friend of the program Eamonn. You can be like them and pay me to write about all types of stuff. People tend to choose wrestling matches, but very little is entirely off the table, so long as I haven’t written about it before (and please, come prepared with a date or show name or something if it isn’t obvious). You can commission a piece of writing of your choosing by heading on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon. The current rate is $5/match or $5/started half hour of a thing (example: an 89 minute movie is $15, a 92 minute one is $20), and if you have some aim that cannot be figured out through simple multiplication, feel free to hit the DMs on Twitter or Ko-fi. 

This was for The Briscoes’ ROH World Tag Team Titles.

It may come as a surprise due to being a real big public proponent of both teams, specifically on this site, but I don’t actually love this match. I’ve always wanted to, it was one of the first times in my time as a fan that I really felt that sort of disconnect, which had/has a way of breeding some resentment that was not totally deserved, but it’s never been a match I’ve been all that interested by. To put it more succinctly, if not for the commission, not only would I have probably never watched it again, I likely never would have even had the thought that I might want to watch it again some day.

Like Bryan Danielson in 2006, my least favorite version of The Briscoes came in 2007, during their big sort of rigging-the-WON-ballot prestige wrestling run with the ROH Tag Team Titles. While you have the undeniable stuff like the Steen/Generico feud or the PPV match against Claudio and Sydal, there’s also so many dull overlong epics that drag it way way down. Even more obviously than Bryan, it very much feels like a mandated thing, Long Matches Are Great Matches, this sort of checklist being ticked off in a way that feels maybe not outright phony — it is still The Briscoes after all — but that always felt so much more manufactured than the majority of their work before and after. This is nowhere near the worst offender, I do actually like this match problems and all, but as a half hour plus epic where clearly twenty-ish is the natural wheelhouse of everyone involved, it suffers under the weight of those certain expectations.

It is also just kind of weird, in ways that aren’t just about having or choosing to go so long, but that are made worse by it.

More than anything, the match feels like a large collection of ideas. Like they came up with every potential thing they could think of against each other at this point and just did all of them, without the sort of thought put into shape and form that you usually get from both teams at almost every other point in their careers. Shelley and Sabin — at least at this point, something like their 2009 NJPW work sees them improve so much in this regard — are not an especially good heel team either, cheating on occasion and doing a few stooge spots early on that feel sort of performative, but the match also feels like it’s hesitant to ever do more than pay light lip service to this being anything more than a prestige epic semi dream match.

There’s the idea that, in theory, this is about the Guns mocking Mark’s recent head injury from botching a Shooting Star Press and being heels, but they’re only ever really lightly aggressive and the head never comes into play. It’s why the SSP getting hit only for a nearfall isn’t as upsetting as I used to find it, but the dissonance between what this occasionally is and what it mostly is is also real distracting. Not helping that is that there are like five or six switching control periods in a row, which isn’t inherently wrong, but neither ever really gets the time to develop, so only one hot tag (the final one) really lands with any impact. 

Hypothetically, if I had to point to a match to show why the old Gabe hype phrasing of “state of the art” wrestling was usually some real bullshit, this might be the match I would point to. A lot of stuff, resulting in far far less than it ought t.

Ultimately though, the real problem is that on top of the Briscoes going long being a Gabe Thing in 2007, the Guns also weren’t exactly the Guns yet either. It very much still feels like a team of singles guys rather than the perfect unit it would become over the next year or two, figuring things out and experimenting. Watching them here — and kind of the match as a whole — feels like watching a super team in the NBA or a brand new high level recruiting class in college. There is something there, the design is maybe not perfect and not everyone is playing to their strengths, but on raw talent, you know they can figure it out eventually.

You know they can because in the last quarter or so of the match, they do.

The ultimate testament to these teams is that problems and all, in a few different ways, this is still great. Just barely.

When the switch does flip, the fireworks show is amazing. A bunch of really really cool ideas (for the jumble of stuff presented here, almost all of the individual concepts whip ass), and when they finally just present it as a pure display of stuff and hit the gas entirely, it feels like the match people always say it is, like all they saw was a 90s Japanese TV version of it that only had the last ten minutes. The crowd is obscenely into it, making nearfalls far bigger and more engaging than they might seem on paper, and in what is essentially a cool moves arms race, the coolest and sickest move in the Briscoes’ old Cutthroat Driver/Flying Legdrop move gets the win, as it should.

Really, that’s what gets me.

That what’s there is still as good, and sometimes as great, as it is.

You’re never disappointed in people who can’t do better, it’s the people who can who always do it. Not only in the great work done by both teams before and after this match, but by another match a year later, and also in the ways so many of their best matches were great. Hell, in the way that this match eventually became great itself. It doesn’t feel natural, it takes like three-quarters of the thing to really come together, and BECAUSE it was as great as it was when it really did begin to connect, one cannot help but wonder what might have been, had these two teams met each other at a more equitable point. One both where the Guns had it figured out and where they would simply get to be, like 2009 or 2010, or maybe even 2022. We’ll never know, and it’s nice that we at least got some idea, but this will always been one of those might have been scenarios.

I haven’t seen it in at least half a decade, but at this point, I think I might like their pure fireworks show sprint the next year better. It isn’t necessarily smarter, but from my memory, it is more honest, and given that that usually isn’t something either team struggles with, a match like this feels a little more disappointing every time I see it.

three boy

Typhoon (CIMA/Dragon Kid/Susumu Yokosuka/Ryo Saito/BxB Hulk/Anthony W. Mori/Matt Sydal) vs Muscle Outlawz (Speed Muscle/Gamma/Magnitude Kishiwada/Genki Horiguchi/Cyber Kong/Jack Evans), Dragon Gate Glorious Gate 2007 Day Eight (4/17/2007)

Commissions continue, this time from an anonymous contributor (if you don’t leave a name on the ko-fi, I will put you under this umbrella, or you can always just ask, if you want, I suppose). You can be like them and pay me to write about anything that you want. Usually, people just want wrestling matches, but you ought to not let that limit you if you have a mind for something more ambitious, as this post suggests. You can purchase these things by going over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon, where reviews currently go for $5 per match (or $5 per half hour started, if you want a movie or TV episode or something, so like an 80 minute movie is $15). If you have a want for something that cannot just be solved by multiplying a number by five, drop into the DMs, and we can talk.

This was a Naniwa style Elimination Match.

For me, having just gotten into Dragon Gate around the start of 2007, the Typhoon vs. MO’z feud is something of a blur. At the time, it was seen as a real down period for the company. Not just from when the Typhoon stable formed in January on, as they would stay in existence until the end of 2008, but the preceding six to nine months centered around a CIMA face turn against heels Yoshino and Doi (bad casting), and CIMA vs. Gamma as the top feud in the company. The problem was less the idea of the company primarily splitting into two gigantic groups, as I adore the Junction III vs. Blood WARRIORS feud a few years later, but more so that this involves many of the least interesting wrestlers possible, without a great central babyface, and with many of the better wrestlers hamstrung by the house DG heel style.

That down period ends with this match, less so because of the match itself and more because of what follows it (more later), but it’s still a pretty great match that stands out as pretty easily among the better ones of this little holding period.

It also has some usual problems.

Some are out of the control of anyone in the ring or laying the match out.

As is often the case before they began airing full shows around the first few years of the next decade, this is clipped for television to air on the Infinity program. No matches were greater victims of this than the longer elimination matches — as discussed previously — and this is no exception. While not quite as extreme as losing half the match as in the match linked above, this is still a thirty minute match that television editing cuts down to some twenty-three minutes, and it’s not great. On top of a few real haphazard edits, it’s a bummer to clearly just be missing part of a match.

There are other things here though that they can control, but simply don’t put a lot of effort towards.

Like usual with the majority of these staggered entry elimination matches in Dragon Gate, the first half is almost entirely filler. You have you flashes here and there with the runs that are effectively hot tag bits when someone comes in, like Yoshino or Saito’s attempts at it, or the Sydal vs. Evans stuff when both get in, but primarily, the first half is a lot of guys simply trying to fill up space. When the switch suddenly flips and the match shifts towards a stunning amount of activity, it’s pretty jarring, as yet again, Dragon Gate opts to do something in a very weird and annoying way.

Of course, once all the fireworks get flying, a lot of that just doesn’t matter all that much to me.

Many of the fastest and smoothest wrestlers in the world throw their stuff out there for the last ten to fifteen minutes of this, and it whips ass. Some is down to pure performance. Matt Sydal is the best junior heavyweight wrestler in the world at this point, at the peak of his athletic powers (you can argue 2004-7 or 2014-15 for overall peak, each has its merits) and the match lets him show off. The same goes for Masato Yoshino here, and in a different way, the match also gives Typhoon’s big likeable babyface Ryo Saito a bunch to do too. So much more of it comes down to design though, as again, the Gate is so skilled at throwing more mercurial guys like Susumu, CIMA, Doi, Kishiwada, BxB, etc. into matches like this and only letting them do the stuff they do incredibly well on offense. The layout is pristine, building different guys up to throw them at each other, like establishing Sydal as the match’s best flier, only for Kishiwada to truck him, which then makes it more impressive when he can be taken down. It all leads to an especially great run at the end, putting Speed Muscle against Yokosuka and Kid, in which all of these different bombs get set off all in a row, creating that Dragon Gate Magic once again, if on a smaller scale than they would in the past or in the future.

Everyone gets involved again at the end, and after a crutch shot from Anthony W. Mori, Doi backs up into the springboard Ultra Huricanrana from Kid, and Typhoon wins.

The greatest drama here comes not in the match itself though, but in the teased payoff that comes only once the match is over. Going into the match, each stable promised someone on the other side would stab their team in the back, and once Typhoon had won, BxB Hulk and Cyber Kong both turned on their teams. Rather than a mere effective trade though, they shook hands, announcing that soon-to-be-returning Shingo Takagi and YAMATO were with them, forming New Hazard.

It’s here that, for me at the time, the company became roughly a hundred times more interesting, not only putting an end to a fairly stale two-sided war, but introducing a stable that still, sixteen plus years later, is probably my second or third favorite in company history.

(Monster Express forever. Too easy.)

Great match too, I suppose.

***

Chris Hero vs. Eddie Kingston, CZW Out With The Old, In With The New (4/7/2007)

Commissions continue, this time from Eamonn. You too can be like them and pay me to write about anything you’d like. Most people tend to pay for reviews of wrestling matches, but I am happy to talk about real fights, movie fight scenes, movies in general, make a list, or whatever. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that, just make sure I haven’t already written about it first. The going rate is $5/match, or with regards to other media, $5 for every started thirty minute chunk. If you have a more elaborate thing in mind, hit the DMs, and we can talk about that too. 

This was a Loser Leaves CZW match.

It is the end of one of the great feuds in wrestling history, or at least the main branch of it. They will have another match in IWA Mid-South in 2007, they will have a very strange feeling feud in Ring of Honor in the last third of 2009, they will have weird little offshoots in PWG and Beyond and they will have that wonderful epilogue in AIW that was one of the best matches of the next decade. (You can read all about all that came before and after this over at Brock Hates Wrestling, where a better writer than I explored the entire feud in detail in an invaluable read.) But more or less, this is it, and it feels like the one that counts the most, certainly the one with the most poured into it.

You can argue — and more than most feuds, there is real room for a long discussion and argument — over what the best Hero/Kingston match is. They’ve had so many different versions of this thing with different tones and slight character differences, and I think it comes down to what you value the most as a wrestling fan. Among the absolute best they put together (this, IWA-MS TPI 2007, ROH Final Battle 2009, AIW), there isn’t truly an answer that I would be upset for somebody for.

Personally, I waver between two of them.

I just know that the best Hero/Kingston match took place in 2007.

Part of that is the live experience. Being there in Midlothian, Illinois and seeing and hearing all of that up close in a sizeable-but-not-that-large rec center (aka The Midlo-Dome) at seventeen years old leaves an impression that never quite leaves, but it does not have the specific strengths that this match does. Hero and Kingston’s last match in a two year CZW feud lacks the bombast and spectacle of their Last Man Standing match in IWA, but something more primal about this has always appealed to me just as much, if not more.

It’s not perfect. Not completely. They arguably go a little long, and because of the way it’s wrestled and paced, immediately all back and forth and a whole lot of striking, it begins to wane at points once they get past twenty minutes and a few things find themselves repeated. It proudly has a more spartan nature than their bigger show gimmick matches, and the sorts of nonsense they got into in IWA or ROH has a way of helping to avoid the lulls this occasionally wondered towards.

However, of all of the Hero/Kingston matches, this is the one with the most feeling.

King and Hero also have, of all their matches, the one that I think feels the most desperate and frantic, and down to Earth, so to speak. I mean that literally, as much as I do figuratively.

This is a dirty match.

I don’t mean that they cheat a lot here, or that they get especially hardcore. There isn’t a weapon used in this match. What I mean by that is that there is just something kind of disgusting about this match on a human level, as we see the different depths that both wrestlers sink to and the different ways that both men go about reaching their absolute moral bottoms.

The way this reveals itself through the match is also a fascinating contrast. Everything that happens here is enormously mean-spirited and rude and petty, and as insulting as possible whenever there is a split path before either man. For Hero, it means trying to insult Eddie as a wrestler, doing things he knows will make him unbelievably mad, like using the Kenta Kobashi machine gun chops, or breaking out a rare Lariat. Hero also beats the shit out of him and taunts Eddie when he shows weakness, it’s not all some mental warfare using Eddie’s established favorites against him, but they’re these wonderful attacks on him as a person. In contrast, when Eddie goes low, he goes low. He is desperately gouging eyes, swinging for the fences, biting, cursing up a storm, all of that. It feels just as hateful as everything Hero does, but in a totally different way.

Another big thing this has going in its favor for me is that it is the one match between these two in the 2000s in which Chris Hero feels like the protagonist.

Kingston isn’t purely antagonistic, the villain to Chris’ hero, but as the crowd has embraced Hero following a double turn months earlier involving the best and most unhinged and most realistic choking angle in independent wrestling history, it feels more even than it ever has before or ever will again. When things get tough, Kingston is the one choking and reaching for the eyes. He is still naturally likeable enough and Hero still just sort of offputting at times, as mentioned above, that you can go for Kingston if you want, but what this match does so well is that, really, you can support anybody.

Between these two, things have simply broken down enough that there is no right or wrong anymore between them, and while I would usually find such a concept an unbearable eye-roller, between Hero and Kingston, it feels completely correct.

In the moments where Hero shows off a rarer protagonistic side, it is a genuine blast. Not just because it’s novel at this point, not really having come out in a major match since his summer/fall 2005 feud against Arik Cannon in IWA Mid-South, but because he is now genuinely good at it. There’s a confidence to his appeals to the crowd that wasn’t ever there before that makes it work better than it ever had, and in contrast with this rabid animal in Eddie Kingston, it’s genuinely appealing on some level.

There’s a moment maybe midway through the match on the outside of the ring, where both men have been cracked open seemingly hardway (if not, don’t fucking tell me, the beauty is in the illusion) and Hero fires off a string of real gross headbutts, before Eddie grabs him to try his own, and cannot. He collapses, while a blood soaked Hero lets out this kind of guttural scream as the CZW crowd fully embraces him and chants his name. Hero cups his ear and then points to them, and there’s something beautiful about it. Not just in the sense that Hero had always been hated by this crowd and learned quickly to play into it and now he gets this response at the very end, but within Hero’s larger career, finally learning how to be a genuinely awesome babyface.

As much fun as it is to see Hero live up to his name like this for the first time anywhere in over a year and a half, Eddie Kingston is maybe even better on the other end.

This is Kingston-as-Kawada through and through.

Not just because he gets booed by a chunk of the fanbase against a guy throwing elbows who keeps adjusting his pants, but the anger and hostility and the struggle above all, before he brute forces his way through at the end, only to be completely unfulfilled by what he though he wanted the most.

I write all the time when talking about big dumb wonderful heavyweight bombfests that nobody gets why some of that stuff works like it does, but Kingston in this match (and in general) gives one of the best performances ever in terms of clearly actually getting it. It is never that he gets up or stands and takes it that works alone or even just that he himself returns fire in ways just as violent and as disrespectful as his opponent’s attacks, it is all about the moments in between. Eddie struggling to stand and take it, exhausting himself solely to avoid giving Hero an inch of satisfaction, the way he looks angry at himself when he eventually does go down or register any kind of pain, that stuff. Eddie Kingston has made a career out of moments like this, and while he may have maybe better individual selling moments throughout his career, I don’t know that any one match has more great individual Kingston sells than this one.

The best of them comes right before the moment previously mentioned where the crowd embraces Hero, where Eddie tries to grab onto him to return fire, as he had done all match, but simply cannot anymore.

Hero and Kingston carry on like this for some time, taking the match in unexpected directions with less familiar offense, delivering the expected hits, and largely expanding upon every strength already mentioned, while also expertly showing the effects of the exhaustion in a match like this, and the toll that such vulgar displays of power exert in the end.

There’s another choice at the end that I find really interesting, in which there is never any one hard momentum shift or transition spot at the end, so much as there is the result of pure attrition.

Kingston simply is better in a low down and disgusting fight like this than Hero is, and in a match all about him going to lows Hero won’t and him struggling to hang on, it just feels right that in the end, he just very casually wins out. Hero eventually crumbles forward after another headbutt, and either through luck or divine providence of just being at the right place in the ring at the right time, Kingston finally the opening. A backdrop driver leads to a short-range Lariat in its own little bit of vengeance, and finally, Eddie’s Backfist to the Future nets him the victory he’s spent years hunting at the expense of everything else.

Of course, nothing this good at this point in CZW can stay that way for long, even like five minutes.

Famously, after Hero has his farewell speech thanking everyone, Zandig gets into it with Eddie Kingston, before Eddie storms off and shouts at him for ruining their moment. Zandig fires Eddie, and both men are effectively done with CZW barring a handful of guest appearances years later. It’s a hell of a thing, CZW willingly and unwillingly losing its two biggest stars not just in one night but in one five to ten minute span.

It also, super accidentally, feels like the finish that they deserve.

Kingston wins, he finally gets his legitimate win over Hero, but it only comes after totally alienating everyone with how far he was willing to go leading up to it, resulting in Eddie having to leave as well, to far lesser fanfare. In the process of getting what he wanted most, Eddie Kingston ensures he loses what was, up to that point, his home promotion. Nothing feels more like Eddie Kingston than this, his greatest victory absorbed by a heavy loss and mass applause for his opponent anyways, a Pyrrhic victory through and through, leaving Eddie Kingston more upset and aggrieved than ever.

As such, what’s meant to be the end between these two is really only the beginning.

Nothing ever ends.

A must-see, all-decade level great, chunk of violence, as two of the best to ever do it hit arguably their apex both as wrestlers and as characters. A mother fucker in every way that a match can be, spiritually correct professional wrestling on a generational level.

****

 

Minoru Suzuki vs. Munenori Sawa, Ring Soul Pro Kasuichi Vol. 4 (6/22/2007)

This is another piece of commission work, this time from Ko-fi contributor RB. You can be like them and pay me to watch and write about all manner of things, although most people tend to choose wrestling matches and/or individual fights. As always, do your work first and make sure I haven’t already written about it. The current market price for such things is $5/match (or if it’s some movie or show, $5 for every started half hour, i.e. $5 for 20 minutes, $10 for 33 minutes, etc.), but if you have some larger goal in mind like a list or some other project, hit the DMs, and we can work something out. You can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon for all of that. 

Hey, this is cool!

I mean, yes, listen, I know it is not the best version of this that could maybe exist.

It is a small little produce show in Shinjuku FACE. It is also a small little produce show in Shinjuku FACE at a time at which Suzuki was the Triple Crown Champion in All Japan, at a time at which All Japan still ran some respectably large venues with regularity (hilarious to think about people online in 2007 talking about how far AJPW had fallen, like oh man buddy, just stick around), and when he was a week and change from a big title match against Keiji Mutoh.

Still, hey man, it’s Minoru Suzuki vs. Munenori Sawa. Additionally, it is the exact sort of wonderful smaller show Suzuki match that’s always so much more fun, and often times, more entertaining than the larger show ones due to him riffing around and experimenting where he often doesn’t in bigger title contests for bigger promotion.

Had you, at the time or at any point after, ever conjured up a picture of this match in your mind, this is probably what you’d come up with (unless your brain sucks and you imagined something bad, like them trying to go half an hour or Sawa getting some unbelievable dramatic victory). Munenori Sawa cannot stop disrespecting his elders, and Minoru Suzuki cannot help but trying to eat the young, and when it comes to Sawa’s fingers, sometimes that turns literal. The old reliable circle of violence. Grappling gets harder and a little meaner as hands and feet get shoved into faces. Grappling turns into striking, and everything keeps degenerating from there.

It’s not exactly a tired script, and in fact it might be the most reliable one in wrestling, but this is all fairly routine.

As is often the case, it relies on the strength of the people carrying it out, or rather, on the strength of their performances in the moment. Luckily, we have two of the better suited wrestlers in the world for this type of thing in this exact moment.

Sawa is one of the pre-eminent piss and vinegar wrestlers of the time, both a ball of energy and super likeable at the same time. A delightful little shitkicker. Every shot is awesome, he’s both a believable ass kicker and a sympathetic underdog when on the receiving end of yet another masterclass in cruelty. Suzuki is Suzuki, you know? He’s the guiding force here, directing all of Sawa’s energy and activity towards something more unified than Sawa often came up with in his youth, and adding in all the little touches that make this more than simple mathematics. Sometimes that means little looks that help the narrative out a lot, like responding to a first slap with a smile and a second with an unbelieving and now suddenly deathly serious glare. Sometimes it means little shittty things like giving someone a thumbs up when he has Sawa in a hold, or reacting to the referee warning him about a closed fist in a mount by throwing the meanest god damned palm strike possible right after it and giving the referee a look, like it doesn’t matter at all if his hand is open or closed.

The match is really made in these moments, simple and common material elevated by spirited and delightful smaller venue performances.

Minoru Suzuki wins with a sleeper, and that’s that.

Nothing unexpected, nothing surprising, but sometimes you don’t really need the surprise. A reliably great match from two reliably good wrestler, delivering both the match you’d expect and more importantly, the match you’d want.

***

Yellow Guy vs. Red/Orange Guy, Crazy Clay Wrestling (12/9/2007)

This was a commission from frequent Ko-fi contributor Alistair. You can be like them and pay me to review basically anything, although if you choose an actual wrestling match, the odds are higher that I will (a) get to it quicker & (b) have more things to say about it. But, spend your money as you wish, I am not your dad. (If I am your dad, disregard.) One can pay me to do this over at www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon, where the current market price is $5 per match or thing, so long as it is under an hour. If your thing is over that, consider it $10 for one hour, and an additional $5 for ever half hour thereafter. If you have greater designs than just one thing and it cannot be squared away by simply doing math, hit the DMs, and I’m sure we can work something out. 

It was also, technically speaking, one of those Dragon Gate style no rope deathmatches, and based on the set up, perhaps the forefather of those Beyond Wrestling Secret Shows, WXW Inner Circle, Dojo Wars, and things of that nature.

Claymation is a new one for me. We hit the action figures, CAW wrestling, comicon cosplay wrestling, Himalayan quasai shoot fighting, a backyard wrestling ladder match from the mid 2000s, and now this. I’m not sure what else there is, but I have full faith in you absolute perverts, The Readers, to figure out a new frontier for me to write about.

Relative to the artform, a stop motion Youtube claymation short, there is a lot to love. The cute little three count numbers appearing from the ground on every cover is my favorite, but it works surprisingly well in terms of just animating an approximation of a wrestling match.

It’s six minutes and clearly done by someone who is something of a pro wrestling fan. There are pro wrestling transition spots here, there is a real struggle over things, Steamboat Rule in effect, etc., and mostly you can tell from some work done about the no rope ring and specific dream spots that a professional wrestling fan would conjure up in their heads when doing some fantasy nonsense like this, like a real nasty wall bump or a springboard off the wall DDT on the corner of the ring spot that would be wild NOW, let alone nearly fifteen years earlier. As someone who spent a good chunk of their teenage years writing matches for e-feds (Used to be in one place with this other writer who would invent deeply convoluted scenarios, such as someone backflipping out of a German Suplex and landing standing up on the top rope. If there’s any wrestler that can do that, I’ll eat crow here, but that one’s always occupied a small little corner of my brain. She also loved kidnapping angles. Anyways.), I can always sense that maniac instinct out in others. Someone doing a mock up of a claymation wrestling match wouldn’t do this, but an absolute freak completely would. A fisherman always sees another fisherman from afar.

There are also a few fun little wrinkles here in terms of the claymation itself. Flexes and facial expressions, but my favorite is that after the aforementioned apron corner DDT spot, Red/Orange Guy has a dot indent on his forehead from where he hit the corner for the rest of the match. Yellow Guy’s got some marks on his back from the wall and floor in the same spirit, it’s just a real cute and endearing little bit.

As a wrestling match, it is not bad!

Certainly it’s rushed and not super well tied together, but given the limitations of the medium, it’s good. They teases of the ring outs and use of the gimmick is pretty interesting, as previously mentioned. Red/Orange Guy is kind of a boiler plate villain but he’s got some real sick power move between the throw into the wall and a few real nasty powerbombs on the apron.

sick bump in the latest match someone paid me to watch, this time between Neon Orange Guy and Yellow Guy from 2007. pic.twitter.com/7PEYnTxvhK

— killer spelled backwards (@ElHijoDelSimon) September 14, 2022

For his part, Yellow Guy is kind of genuinely a pretty good babyface. He sells his head after hitting a German Suplex, his bumping is off the charts, he’s a great adherent of the old Steamboat Rule, and his kickouts and comebacks are pretty good too. I feel for the Yellow Guy and I rejoice in his success.

Yellow Guy wins with a Death Valley Driver near the edge of the ring (the hardest part).

Not all that coherent as a match itself, outside of adherence to basic structure and roles, but a lovely little piece of nonsense which you can see here, again proving that old bit from the Community pilot about how human beings can connect with anything. There are any worse ways you can spend time online.

John Cena vs Umaga, WWE New Years Revolution (1/7/2007)

It’s another piece of commissioned writing, this time again from friend of the program @beenthrifty on Twitter. You too have the ability to pay me to watch and write about whatever sort of wrestling you’d like, or I guess other stuff too, I’m not your father. Head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that. The going rate is $5 per match, with an extra $3 tax if you’re purposely trying to make me suffer and hate-write something, because that’s just not a fun thing to do. Hit the DMs if you have an idea more complex than just counting the number of matches you want. 

This was for John Cena’s WWE Title.

It’s not the Cena vs. Umaga match, of course.

That doesn’t matter though, because this is still so god damned great. It lives in one of the biggest shadows in all of recent wrestling history, and it exists alongside a lot of matches like that. Usually, the matches that live in those shadows to this extent are rematches of these big iconic matches. Joe vs. Necro II, a Joe/Ki follow up years later in PWG, the “other” Punk vs. Cena matches. THINGS OF THAT NATURE. Usually, matches like that aren’t the sorts of things that we, or I, think of as tragically living in the shadow of another, because that shadow hasn’t been created just yet. This is a little bit different in that this not only comes first, but is also very much devoted to setting up the big one.

Usually, with a match that so obviously sets up another, it suffers from being held back and from obviously caring more about the future than the present.

Such is not the case with this match, which may be the most impressive thing at all.

The other most impressive thing here, on top of that, is that this match is clearly just their take on one of the oldest standards in the Great American Match Book, only to stand out because of the efficiency and force of talent that they play this particular edition with.

Nothing about this match reinvents the wheel.

Cena vs. Umaga is simply a modern re-emergence of the same medium vs. big match up that’s worked all throughout wrestling history. Lawler against all the Memphis monsters from Bigelow to Kamala to Gang. A billion Hulk Hogan matches. Bret Hart and Yokozuna. You might have a pet favorite here that you’d like to throw in, mine might be the brief CM Punk vs. Mark Henry series in 2012. The most famous example, or at least the most widely cited one, is the famous 1992-1995 series between Sting and Big Van Vader in WCW, given both the amount of times they got to have matches like this, the variety of different matches they got to have, and the regular quality of all of those matches (someone pay me to watch all of them and write about them on here).

So nothing about this is all that new or unique. It’s a wheel, innately, you kind of understand how and why it works.

This is, however, perhaps the best ever version of the wheel that we’ve ever seen.

You can argue Sting and Vader, for the reasons listed above. It’s an option I won’t dispute too heavily, although obviously the major Cena/Umaga match may be the best ever version of this sort of a thing, and this version of the Cena/Umaga match is still one that I think is better than almost every Sting vs. Vader match, save maybe one or two, and it’s not all that far of a gap. The Vader/Sting matches put an emphasis on excitement and action in a way that’s made them so durable, but also that sometimes undercuts the struggle of Sting, which isn’t so much the case here, in a match all about the struggle. Your mileage may vary on what’s better, but I prefer the struggle. I’m not quite ready to say Umaga is better than Vader, but in this series, he puts forward a better performance as a pure monster than I think I’ve seen Vader ever give, or that I’ve seen almost any wrestler in history ever give.

It’s all quite basic, what they do here, but I loved it. Even more than I remember, which was already quite a lot. I would have already gone to bat for this as one of the more underrated matches of the 2000s, but I came out of this second watch an even bigger fan of this iteration of the classic pairing.

The thing that works so well about this is how well they commit to every inch of it, and how much they get out of every single piece of the match. It’s a match in which all the pieces matter, and the sort of match that still floors and astounds me fifteen plus years later, because of all the things they did right or all the little extra touches that they put in that nobody would have ever expected or demanded out of them. It’s a match up that, based on their other work together and the work of both Cena and Umaga in matches like this, is probably always going to be great. The sheer EFFORT of this one in particular though is what makes this such a special match, despite the monolithic shadow it lives underneath.

If we can go back to the idea of this being a tried and true thing, there are certain beats you’re always going to find here. A struggle to lift the monster, a series of cut offs, Our Hero outmaneuvering and dodging the big guy, things of that nature. You’ll find all of that here, but it’s just so much tighter and done with so much more conviction than usual.

Really though, again, this match goes from “great” to “really really really great” because of all the small touches throughout the match. This is, as expected, where John Cena shines and really elevates the material. Between Umaga’s nerve hold and his work in the body, Cena is given so many chances to get creative with his selling, and it’s one of my favorite Cena selling performances ever. The way he sells nerve damage in the left shoulder minutes after the nerve hold is great in an obvious way, but the gem is the way he specifically sells the shoulder in the process of being hurt, showing it starting to become less useful, and trying to fight it, but ultimately not being able to. The joy can come from seeing the result of something, but there’s even more of it to be found in the process itself, and that’s maybe the most beautiful part of this match.

Somewhat less flashy is his response to the body work, but there’s something so charming about the way he repeatedly takes moments where the big guy is down to stretch on the ropes or walk around weird. It’s not exactly the old Bret Hart thing, but there’s some shared DNA to it, going about the motions without making a huge show of it, but communicating in a relatable working-man sort of a way that you are not healthy at all.

Both of these aspects contribute greatly to the one overarching theme of the match, the thing that this match commits its whole entire ass to, and that does so much for them as a result.

John Cena cannot handle Umaga.

That’s the story of the match, it’s what they come back to time and time again. A lot of other wrestlers and matches would betray that so as to try and have a Great Match, but thankfully, someone realized that with wrestlers this great (and also this over in their roles), that you can have an actual great match simply by letting it be. Commit fully to the bit, and achieve something wonderful.

Cena never even makes a real comeback, at least in the way that we have this idea of the John Cena comeback. He lifts him once for the Proto Bomb, but never for a slam, and never for the Attitude Adjustment, then the FU. There’s this great thing they do where Cena’s hope spots become bigger and longer, but still always get cut off, and in increasingly brutal ways. It’s not a unique idea for John Cena, it’s a formula he’s employed to greater success than most, but it’s done especially well here. Not in all the most creative ways exactly, but in the most effective ways, so as to illustrate the severity of his challenge and the steep climb ahead of him just to avoid losing.

Umaga isn’t quite as great as Cena in 2007 — really only the greatest of all time and a handful of others were — but he is remarkable here. He stumbles, staggers, and eventually bumps without losing anything. His offense is nasty as hell, real crisp, but also interesting. Never repetitive or dull, and really incredible at selling on Cena’s occasional comebacks. He immediately seems to get Cena’s mindset of always doing more and more with the hope spots, always selling just a little more each time, before an even bigger cut off.

Two perfect performances that match up this well together is a rare thing, one that I think John Cena’s only ever found once or twice outside of these 2007 Umaga matches, and it leads to a kind of perfect synchronicity here. Two wrestlers, at the peaks of their powers, with the same exact ideas and visions, coming together to create something really really special.

At the end, removed of the full use of his left arm, and with his ability to lift PERIOD hindered, Cena is left with only his wits about him. One might not expect much in the moment, after Cena’s career so far has been largely predicated on strength and power, but he’s able to dodge Umaga once in the corner, kick him back again, and get a real high stack roll up to just barely survive.

The perfect ending to a match like this, adding a new dimension to the superhero babyface.

You can craft a thousand stories to tell me someone is tough and powerful and cool, but what a hundred other things couldn’t do, this match does. It’s one thing to be shouted at that John Cena is this or that, but this is a match that actually bothers to show it. He’s a survivor, not because he took a lot and fought back and won with what he always wins with, but because he was outmanned and slowly had all of his weapons taken from him, only to not give up and to find a way in spite of that. As opposed to so much other early Ace Cena booking, this is one of the first signs of the sort of real and genuine heroics that would go on to make him one of the best of all time.

It’s not the best version of this. You went into this review knowing that, I went into this viewing knowing that. That’s not the end of the world. Given how great the follow up to this match was, all that really means is that on this night, a near-perfect pairing simply had a really great match and not, you know, one of the greatest matches in wrestling history.

***1/2

Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Samoa Joe, NOAH Autumn Navigation 2007 Day Twelve (10/27/2007)

Another commission, this time from Will Young. You too can and should pay me to watch and then write about wrestling matches, and you can head on over to www.ko-fi.com/elhijodelsimon to do that. That’s $5 per match, and you can hit the DMs if you want something longer and/or more complex than that. I’ll also pretend to like matches for an extra $200. 

This was for Misawa’s GHC Heavyweight Title.

A real weird and cool oddity, but definitely not a great match.

They tried. Through force of talent alone, this match isn’t totally awful.

Misawa’s elbows are good and he mostly just sticks to that. Joe’s offense is all still very impressive. They’re able to occasionally come together and have a few nice little exchanges. Misawa’s proto-Death Blow style diving cerebral cortex elbow to a seated Joe is a nasty way to end this that doesn’t take away too much from Joe either. I can’t really call this a bad match, even if it can’t help but be disappointing.

The real issue here is that there’s no way this could have ever been more than passable.

Firstly, 2007 is not the best time to run this match.

Misawa, obviously, is very much past it. The elbow still works and the brain is there so things like the 2007 Taue title match three months before this and the title loss to Morishima five months after this can be a lot of fun. In the right setting, he’s still a great tag team wrestler too. Samoa Joe is also not too far removed from his ungodly 2004-2006 prime in which he was the best wrestler alive for two or three straight years. He’s still got it physically in a lot of ways and is still probably a top twenty five wrestler of 2007 (the Christian series in 2007 TNA is genuinely very underrated), but as a TNA only guy now, you judge on output and it’s not there. The prime isn’t OVER over until he knocks the greatness out of himself on an ill-advised bleacher dropkick a year after this, so there’s still something in Samoa Joe that can and will work under the right circumstances.

Unfortunately, just hurling these two at each other in the year 2007 with little more put into it than that does not qualify as a circumstance in which this could work.

Another reason this falls short is some classic lazy NOAH booking.

This is Samoa Joe’s second match in Pro Wrestling NOAH.

It may as well be his first though, given that said first came only two days prior in a non-televised build up tag. Not a match on the previous Budokan to set it up, not a televised build up tag, nothing. Ideally you have a two or three match run beating guys of some credibility, if only so NOAH fans have some sense of who and what Joe is, and the threat that he can be. Instead, as is typical of NOAH from like 2006 on, there’s not really that sense of effort. He’s thrown out there to fill a space, a defense because a Budokan show needed a defense, with no real care or attention paid to getting there or how it would go when they got there. Emblematic of why NOAH was where it was, and why NOAH went where it went.

The big takeaway here is that 2007 Misawa looks and moves better here than 2021 Okada.

(2010 Misawa also looks better than 2021 Okada)