Evolution vs. Chris Benoit/Shawn Michaels/Mick Foley/Shelton Benjamin, WWE Raw (4/12/2004)

Commissions continue, again from Shock, as the snake reverses. 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 is much more like it.

Something you should know is that, at least as it pertains to the upper section of the card, I love 2004-5 Raw.

Call it a guilty pleasure if you would like. You could also call it the tail end of childhood nostalgia, as 2004 was the last year I was really like a WWE Fan proper, before the combination of TNA on free television and starting to regularly download matches from ROH and other indies at the end of the year got rid of that pesky little habit. But all of the different combinations of Evolution tags and matches against a tremendously skilled upper to midcard babyface core (Benoit, Shelton, Jericho and Edge when they were capable of being in good matches, Tajiri) do a lot for me. They’re not always perfect, old man Flair is not the most physically gifted and not every babyface there is great on their own, Shawn Michaels and/or Triple H is often also involved, etc., but any combo of Orton, Batista, and Benoit in a tag in 2004 is a slam dunk, and the brand has an astonishing success rate when attacking the rim here, so to speak.

(does 2004 Raw follow the theme of the year and Go To Work? Some would say yes. There is a man called Big (first name), an undersized all-world talent running the point, part of the team is now a coach for one of the most loathsome outfits in the sport, someone constantly getting in foul trouble, etc. If a basketball cannot hold a grudge, it also probably does not lie.)

I would love to write a bunch of words about the better Evolution tags of 2004, and their many virtues. The way they feel like updated versions of old Horsemen TV tags, the old style structure wholly unique in a WWE environment, the emphasis on hard hitting and violence, the manic finishing runs, all of that. Outside of Bryan vs. The Shield, it’s the best continuous series of matches involving a singular faction in WWE history, and I have a whole lot of time for these matches, and for writing about these matches.

This, however, is not one of the better ones.

Part of that comes down to the line up, as the very best ones tended to have a Benoit/Edge/Jericho babyface core, or the one-off Benoit/Orton/Shelton combo that came after Orton’s turn at the end of the summer. Despite the all-star line up, this makes a few choices that separates it in a more negative way from the better Evolution tags and six-mans that mostly followed.

Specifically, because this is essentially the root of every choice made, there is too much focus here on wrestlers who either totally mail it in or are not very good, and sometimes the two overlap. Almost every other great Evolution tag does not involve Triple H, who is simply not an especially good wrestler on a week to week level. The best Evolution tag work sees Orton and Batista in there for long stretches against Benoit, as he basically spends the year molding them into great wrestlers in a way you may have seen a decade later in the Bryan/Shield series (these have basically the same idea, glue your golden boys to the best wrestler in the company for 6-12 months and force them to get great as quickly as possible). Likewise, there’s a lot too much here of Shawn Michaels and Mick Foley compared to the other two babyfaces, with one (Foley) who would have been out of his element in a match like this even as an active wrestler in his prime and who now is semi-retired and clearly saving himself for the weekend’s pay-per-view, and another (Michaels) who has none of those excuses, but simply turns in an uninspired house show ass performance.

The latter is the one that really hurts, as while Foley is minimized and Hunter only in for bursts, Shawn Michaels is the one who gets the majority of the match’s big moments like the dive into break, the hot tag, and the majority of the finishing run. It’s not surprising, of course it is all about Shawn even when he is like the sixth best wrestler out of eight in the match and the third best on his team, but it’s especially grating when he turns in a dull and passionless performance off the tag and two wildly energetic and/or psychotically intense wrestlers wilt on the apron.

Generally speaking, the match simply lacks the energy of the best Evolution tag work, especially down the stretch, where a lot of things do not go right, and the usually more intricately put together Benoit-led finishing run is instead taken over by a half-speed and quarter-assed Michaels style one instead.

It is not without its virtues though!

The first half in particular is especially good. This is mostly Flair playing the hits against Shawn and then trading leather and some heavy hands (again, Flair never quite gets credit for those great corner punches) with ex-Horseman Benoit. Shelton gets in on the act and the big fella Big Dave has a few really impressive moments. Up until the commercial break, it is a genuinely super fun match. The control work on Benoit and then Shelton is also very good, largely led by Batista and Orton against both guys. The weak spots are there sprinkled in, but most of this is really really good. It’s just that it falls apart in the key moments, and for all of these foundational strengths and great flourishes throughout, it lacks the quality moments in the most memorable parts of the match, and suffers for it in ways other Evolution tags simply do not.

Shawn pins Orton with the kick, whatever.

Real far from the best version of this thing, but a fun enough house show version that just so happened to make it onto television.

three boy

Daniel Bryan vs. Shelton Benjamin, WWE Smackdown Live (6/12/2018)

WWE television has not been in a great place for the last several months.

Nothing I can write will be all that surprising or new. The usual combination of handcuffing great wrestlers with subpar opponents or stories that get in the way of wrestling, poor television structuring that rips the heart and guts out of promising matches by lobbing off half of them with commercial breaks, lots of bad habits, all of that. The main thing is that they tried to give fucking Seth Rollins the Great TV Match Worker rub with a bunch of long matches, which tricked the rubes well enough, but mostly resulted in the few long matches that were featured simply being bad matches. We did not get nearly enough great television wrestling from a roster this good.

(That is to say, up through this point in the year, which is where I stop having things on a spreadsheet for WWE 2018, having deleted all of that at one point before the blog existed, to try and make myself do the full forum review, which I later realized was a very silly thing to do given how bad most of this was. So, all or most of the WWE 2018 stuff I

What we have here is yet another example of that, a promising match cut damn near in half by a poorly positioned commercial break, an excessive and stupid handicap put on a match by the most upsetting wrestling promotion of all time,

Still, Bryan’s Bryan, and what could be an easily ruined five to ten minutes of nothing is instead transformed into an expression of his greatness (and also how much Shelton Benjamin still has to offer) by sneaking in a double limbwork match into a sub ten minute WWE television throwaway.

It ought not to come as any sort of surprise at this point that Bryan is again great in  a match like this. Not just in terms of the mechanics of the thing (duh, he’s exceptional at these, from the way he holds the hurt leg at all times to the beautiful brained decision to sell his leg off the landing on a Superplex from Shelton rather than his neck or back), but that every decision made in terms of construction and timing feels like the correct one, and that while the match is short and upsettingly truncated, it still feels like a complete match in a way so many of these types of matches (unfairly short WWE TV matches) never ever feel close to. Yet another one of those innocuous matches and performances that maybe do not open your eyes to someone’s greatness, but go a real long way in continuing to reaffirm it.

This is not to diminish Shelton. His work is fine when attacking Bryan’s leg. His selling is adequate on the other end. His offense all looks really good. Tight, crisp, any kind of superlative you want to throw out there to describe the bevy of things that he’s doing.

But this is a Bryan Danielson match, the kind of can have and has had against probably hundreds of others, and that works as well as always.

One of the core elements there, and why Bryan is better at these matches than most other people to emulate them or do the same things (and, of course, that can be said about like ninety percent of the things Bryan’s done, ever), is that it is more than just a showcase of some nerd bait limb stuff. There’s a point to it and something being said about wrestling itself, ideologically speaking. Shelton tries to lean on veteran stuff and take out a leg, but in doing so, he opts to take on Bryan in a very specific Bryan kind of a match, and does so without a real way to turn that into a win. By taking it to the ground, rather than using his power or size, Shelton chooses the away game, and nobody wields home court quite like Bryan does. He comes back with a better attack on Shelton’s leg, one with more aggression, nastier holds, and more diverse offensive attacks to the leg than Shelton showed himself capable of, on top of being way more comfortable turning up the pressure on the ground, even while hurt.

Shelton has the leg hurt enough to give him a way out of the Yes Lock, but is ultimately still playing with things he hasn’t mastered yet. He can go to the leg, but cannot finish on the leg. Bryan finds a way back out and into the heel hook he’s started using recently as a short-lived new finish, and Shelton taps out.

One part WWE time filler Good TV Match, but more importantly, another part sneaky great little story about those pesky little away games.

Not the greatest thing in the world, real borderline, but another one of those situations where I cannot help but be impressed, given how easily this could have been nothing in the hands of almost any other wrestler in the world.

***

Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Shelton Benjamin, NOAH Great Voyage 2015 in Osaka (9/19/2015)

banger

everything that happens whips ass and nothing that happens sucks

trying to do shorter reviews, etc.

***

 

Takashi Sugiura vs. Shelton Benjamin, NOAH 15th Anniversary Vol. 1 (7/18/2015)

A nice thing, and another for the “did you know?” pile.

Despite a few hits in his rivalries with Tanahashi and Nakamura and some of the better SZKG tags, Shelton Benjamin never totally fit in in Japan. That isn’t to say he magically does in NOAH either as he’s still a big guy working a more WWE style, but it’s a more natural fit in NOAH. If for no other reason, because he gets to work with people closer to his mindset. Nobody’s working over twenty minutes seemingly just to do it, and he primarily faces heavier hitters and more suplex oriented guys.

In this respect, Takashi Sugiura is a perfect opponent for him.

Sugiura not only is exactly the sort of wrestler I mean by “heavier hitters and more suplex oriented guys”, but he’s exactly great enough to bring a greater effort out of Shelton than he’s showed in a little while now. Shelton early on makes the mistake of throwing a not great sounding elbow, so Sugiura treats him like anyone else and pastes him until Shelton begins throwing the best elbow shots of his life. Shelton still makes the error of filling time by going to the leg in the first half, but given that a.) he does use a pronounced ankle hold on the back half & b.) Sugiura’s selling is actually pretty good, it’s not the end of the world. Even in this regard, Sugiura has a way of fixing Shelton Benjamin.

Sugiura wins with the Olympic Slam, ending right before the match can jump to another level. There’s perhaps an even better match in the two of them, but given the wildly erratic nature of Shelton’s Japanese work, one great match is still pretty impressive.

One of Shelton’s better matches in Japan, if not exactly #1.

***

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Shelton Benjamin, NJPW Destruction (9/29/2013)

This was for Nakamura’s IWGP Intercontinental Title.

These two had a subpar title match in May and a not-great match in the G1 Climax (I didn’t cover this, but fuck off, I don’t have to cover everything), but showed in a tag match at Dominion that there was something to it. This is the match where they seem to get it as right as they’re ever going to get it.

The reason for that is that they finally seem to get that this is a purely offensive match.

Nakamura is not going to sell leg work in a match that isn’t the main event or on a major show (and I mean the Tokyo Dome or the G1 Finals or something, actual major). Benjamin mostly avoids that, instead using brief Ankle Locks to set up for other things. Shelton finally bends himself to what Nakamura’s match is, does his super impressive and cool big athletic spots, and it all works out. Nakamura’s ready for his stuff in a way he wasn’t before, following the upset wins, and it’s all very cool. Shelton can’t handle  a prepared Nakamura, very few people can, and the Sliding Boma Ye leads into the Standing Boma Ye for the win.

Much like the Tetsuya Naito vs. Masato Tanaka match earlier in the show, this is one of your big repeat NJPW pairings of the year, and it’s the best version of that match up.

three boy adjacent 

Shinsuke Nakamura/Tomohiro Ishii vs. Minoru Suzuki/Shelton X Benjamin, NJPW Dominion 2013 (6/22/2013)

Nakamura’s war against Suzuki-gun now finally gets him in the ring with the kingpin, armed with trusty deputy Big Tom at his side.

Stunningly, this is a genuinely great build up tag. The sort of thing I’d also describe as great and lively television wrestling, and the sort of thing that always stands out big time in New Japan, solely because of how rarely they seem to do it in recent memory save for this 2013-2015 artistic boom period.

The hook to get you to watch is Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Minoru Suzuki, but that is ABSOLUTELY not the thing here. Early on, Suzuki takes some disrespectful little shot at Tomohiro Ishii and it is on. Ishii absolutely explodes, once again just about god damned sick of this shit, and he puts Suzuki’s dick down in the dirt virtually every single time that Suzuki tries to go after him. After the first time, each occurrence feels like Minoru Suzuki being more and more desperate to reassert the previous order. And he never does! Ishii drops him with better elbows, he cuts off his big dismissive slap spots, he even maybe kind of knocks him out at a point. Very few things in wrestling or sports are as satisfying as a team getting absolutely pummeled back down to Earth by a team that they expected to run through with very little true effort. It’s the main reason this works so well, and it’s the root of all the best Tomohiro Ishii stuff.

To be fair, Nakamura and Shelton also bring it here. It’s so much better than their mediocre title match six weeks before this. You’d never know that match was a total mediocrity judging by their three to five minutes at the end of this. Real exciting stuff, with a natural seeming chemistry. The work just totally jumps off the page. I’m smart enough to hold this hand in hand with the memory of their title match, so I don’t really want to see another match, but if the third goal of this (beyond Nakamura/Suzuki seeds and the continued slow elevation of Big Tom) is to make someone want to see it again, it’s not a hard sell. It’s especially not a hard sell if you skipped over that one or maybe didn’t know about it.

Shelton learns from last time and has all of Nakamura’s stuff scouted in a way that Nakamura absolutely doesn’t for him. Ishii can save Nakamura once when Suzuki tries to help, but without his deputy there to bail him out again, Shelton’s able to beat Nakamura with the Paydirt.

A surprising match with a surprising finish.

I know that this sounds like rocket surgery or something, but the best way to make these meaningless midcard tag matches feel like they matter is to actually treat them like they matter.

***1/4

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Shelton Benjamin, NJPW Wrestling Dontaku 2013 (5/3/2013)

This was for Nakamura’s IWGP Intercontinental Title aka the Shinsuke Nakamura World Heavyweight Title, and a continuation of Nakamura’s now-sprawling war against Suzuki-gun.

Sadly, it was a Shinsuke Nakamura knee work match.

Shelton Benjamin seems immediately like he should know better but then you remember that he’s a long term WWE guy who rarely gave a shit during his 2010s time outside of the system, so he’s prone to just doing some stuff to fill space. Shinsuke Nakamura is here in the semi-main event of a non major show, so you BET he’s not selling any of this for a god damned second once it’s done with. Nakamura responds to the knee attacks and ankle locks by just going through and doing his stuff.

Luckily, the Shinsuke Nakamura knee match is far less frustrating than the Kota Ibushi knee match because Nakamura has the decency to also mail in the rest of the match instead of having the bad selling drag it down.

Can’t drag down an already uninspiring effort.