Eddie Kingston vs Adam Cole
This kind of match is a little frustrating, and even more so when you try to "rate" it. On the one hand you had a guy putting on a hell of show and being off the charts, on the other you had a guy dragging him down and sucking hard. As bland as he is as a babyface, Adam Cole is worse as a heel and I found him nearly infufferable. Outside of playing from the generic cocky heel handbook 101, he is the indy Edge as far as shitty offence and absurd facial expressions go. I enjoyed Kingston wailing on him, but once Cole went on the offence the match plummeted. I almost felt bad for Kingston having to sell some of this shit, as Kingston screaming in pain and hobbling as Cole gently brushed his leg looked silly. Still, King tried and he atleast was great, and the finish with the seated backfist was pretty cool.
Johnny Saint vs Johnny Kidd
What you expect from this match, and a tonne of fun to watch. Plenty of cool mat trickery and neat counters, and even some amusing mind games as well. Saint did a lot of his usual spots, and they are still awesome, and it's impossible to have "running through his moveset" as a complain for a guy like Johnny MF Saint. I was actually more impressed by Kidd though, he was more simplistic and aggressive in comparison to Saint's flash, and he threw in a few subtle heel moments to make the match feel more competitive.
Mike Quackenbush vs Claudio Castagnoli
This was pretty underwhelming and maybe the worst match these two have had together. This is a pretty consistant match-up, so that's not to say the match sucked, but it just wasn't anything special. One of the best things about Quack vs Claudio is how slick their exchanges are but here a lot of stuff was executed pretty loose. Most of the wow factor came from the ridiculous height Quack was able to get off certain spots, inlcuding a huge asai moonsault. Most of the match was pretty dull and plodding, with Claudio vaguely targetting Quack's back, but mostly with restholds and shit. No urgency and felt like they were filling time for the end run. And a lot of the stuff near the finish came off very random, like Quack busting out a Dragonrana and a Ricola Bomb from the apron. It may have just been me but it felt like they were just throwing shit against the wall. Quack surving a big run of offence then coming back to win out of nowhere was a little annoying too.
Eddie Kingston vs Jigsaw
I liked this a bunch, but it once again fell down the same pitfall most indy wrestling does: trying to force an "epic". The first two thirds of the match were quality. Both guys being aggressive and bringing it without breaking the face vs face status quo. Jigsaw in particular brought it much more than I was anticipating and, outside a couple flubbed superkicks (seriously, stop them), was pretty stiff. Both guys targetted bodyparts and sold them well. One great spot saw Kingston egg Jig on to take him down only for Jig to whipe him out with a big flurry of strikes. Eddie wildly swinging punches whilest crumpling to the mat was also cool. It kind of fell off a cliff near the end with a bunch of finishers and forced "we are equal" spots, including Jig surviving all three of King's finishers in a row, which was baffling, and Kingston hitting the worst Sliding D ever, but it wasn't bad enough to drop this below "very good".
Mike Quackenbush/Johnny Saint vs Colt Cabana/Johnny Kidd
Another match that was a total blast and even better than the singles from the night before. Every match-up delivered and was awesome. I especially loved the way Quack and Colt were working the body-scissors early on. Saint and Kidd seemed to work a bit tighter than the night before, and they built on some of the spots from the singles match nicely. The finish was awkward, but all four guys looked like they were having a tonne of fun wrestling this and I dare you not to enjoy it too.
Claudio Castagnoli vs Sara Del Rey
Claudio has been kind of frustrating this year. His weaker performances have come against his better opponents and his better performances have been against weaker opponents. Case in point, this. These two had a match in the 2008 TPI that got a lot of love, but I thought it was really sloppy. Del Rey has a rep for being a "good" female wrestler, and while she's definitely better than Kelly Kelly or Mickie James I still think "good" is a stretch. As sexist as it sounds she is like pretty much every other female wrestler these days, sloppy and fairly unco-ordinated. Anyway, this was still pretty solid because of the intergender/underdog story, but even then it doesn't take much work to gain sympothy as a woman getting beat up by a guy Claudio's size. Claudio was a pretty good asshole, worked Sara over well and sold bigtime for submission nearfalls, making this better than their 2008 match. The outcome was pretty telegraphed, but Claudio's performance was still pretty impressive, even if this does read like I am underating the match. It was solid, but they didn't hit the high notes they were going for.
No comments:
Post a Comment