WWF Raw 30/05/1994

Crush vs Tatanka

This is the final qualifier for the 94 King of the Ring. It’s interesting that Tatanka, who is a pretty big lad, is dwarfed by Crush and has to work the bout from underneath. Loved some of Crush’s early heeling, especially him holding Tatanka in a headlock, turning his back to the ref and jamming a thumb into Tatanka’s throat. Tatanka is accompanied by Chief Jay Strongbow, but he does more harm than good in his attempts to counteract Mr Fuji. Indeed, it’s due to going outside to protect Strongbow from Fuji that Tatanka is hit by a surprise Crush superkick, giving Crush control. Crush’s control is fine, and I liked the Tatanka comeback, wearing Crush down with chops until he’s felled like a mighty oak. Strongbow and Fuji get into it on the outside, and Crush and Tatanka get drawn out, leading to a double count out. Terrific work Strongbow.

1-2-3 Kid vs George South

Fun squash match, with Kid looking really good. Absolutely loved his quick kick combos, especially the spot where South celebrates ducking a roundhouse, only to turn round to a brisk flurry of kicks. La Majistral cradle gets the win for Kid.

Smoking Gunns vs Austin Steel & Reno Riggins

Really comprehensive squash. Riggins is a fun jobber, stooges about a bit, and he eats a nice neckbreaker from Billy. Steele is more lumpy, like a Poundland knock-off of Buddy Rose, and he takes a bigger beating. Really great top rope bulldog from Billy, nasty kneedrop to the skull from Bart and a nice looking Sidewinder to finish the job.

Jeff Jarrett vs Chris Hamrick

Would loved to have seen this circa 1999-2000. Jarrett is a lot of fun here, preening around and pointing to his head after every move. Just a glorious, arrogant jerk. His offence is on point here, hitting a beautiful dropkick to the face at one point. I’m not normally the kind to notice dropkicks, but this one was terrific. Jarrett’s stun-gun and slingshot suplex both are nice looking moves that I wish he’d kept doing. Hamrick, as you’d expect, takes a nutty bump in the corner, missing a running knee and flying over the top rope. This gives JJ a focus point and he locks on the figure four for the win.

WWF Raw 20/03/1994

The Bushwhackers vs the Quebecers

Oh, this was very much a poor match. This is non-title, the Quebecers still the champions following Wrestlemania X, and for a lot of the match you feel like they’ll put the Bushwhackers over, as they control the majority of the bout. There’s one bit where the tag champs have to stand around like idiots for 30 seconds as the Bushwhackers dance around the ring, then attack them. It feels like the heel/face divide is all wrong, with Jacques having to power out of a chinlock in order to make a “hot tag” to Pierre. Except that Pierre then also gets dominated. The Bushwhackers are an aged comedy tag team and they totally blitz the tag champs. FINALLY, when we get back from the break the Quebecers have control. We get a few nice Quebecer double teams, where Jacques uses Pierre as a weapon, and the champs work over Luke. The hot tag gets made and Pierre has to be saved by Jacques in order to keep from being pinned by a battering ram. It takes a Johnny Polo distraction and a knee to the back from Pierre to give the Quebecers the win. Ridiculous.

Tatanka vs Chris Hamrick

Pretty fun squash. When I saw Hamrick was the jobber, I wondered to myself if he’d take the Hamrick Bump, and I wasn’t disappointed. It comes in the first few minutes, and Vince near loses his mind over it. It even gets a mid-match replay. That aside, Tatanka’s offence looks really good here, more in line with grouchy stiff Tatanka from 2006. Big clotheslines, nasty stiff chops and a bit of added emphasis on all his moves. The End of the Trail gives Tatanka the win.

Diesel vs Ken Lucia

JIP after we watch Diesel’s entrance. Basic, nothing squash with Diesel slowly beating up Lucia. Powerbomb gets 3.

                                         

Jeff Jarrett vs Koko B Ware

Nice to see Koko still appearing in 94. Unlike the Bushwhackers earlier, Koko can still go and this is a good little bout. Jarrett’s character work is terrific, so cocky at the start just by virtue of hip-tossing Ware twice. Then, as soon as Koko takes over, Jarrett stooges about, dizzily putting over his offence. Koko misses a corner splash, and an angry Jarrett is all over him, viciously wearing him down. What’s great is how Jarrett slowly regains his arrogance as the bout continues. Ware gets a brief flurry of offence, but ducks his head to allow Jarrett to nail a DDT for the win. 

XPW FreeFall

Sometimes, I hate wrestling

Scott Snot vs Vinny Massaro
Ever wanted to hear a joke beaten into the ground? At the start of this match, commentator Kriss Kloss doesn't know who Massaro is, so only refers to him as "Spagettios" for the whole match, despite his name being announced by the ring announcer. This isn't very good, as Snot is pretty poor. A poor bump off a Massaro kick sees him getting booed, and his offence is weak, including a soft looking bulldog. Massaro is better, with non-flashy, but effective moves, and he nicely folds up Snot on a belly-to-back suplex. Snot gets 2 on a Tomikaze, but Massaro picks up the win with a swank pump handle pile driver.

Evan Karagias vs Psychosis
Karagias is brought out as the new client of heel manager Kevin Kleinrock as his other client, the prissy Preston Ascott III is injured. Despite this, Karagias wrestles like a face, hitting a plancha after Psychosis bails to the floor, whilst Psychosis wrestles like a heel, hitting a low blow to take over, then picking up Karagias at 2 on a pin. Baffling. They then switch rolls, with Karagias doing a sexy dance to rile the crowd. Decent German suplex by Karagias. This is pretty sloppy on the part of both however, they just don't seem to be in tune. Nutty bump from Psychosis, as he slingshots from the ring to the floor with an elbow drop. The end sees Kleinrock distract Karagias by offering him a chair as he goes to the top. This allows Psychosis to recover and throw him from the top, before hitting a top rope legdrop to win. A bit of a letdown, as I hoped Psychosis could get something out of Karagias.

D vs Pogo the Clown
D comes to the ring slapping hands with the fans...then cuts a promo slagging them off, as no-one in XPW fucking understands heels and faces in wrestling. Kriss Kloss seems shocked by the wrestling "skills" of Pogo, as he throws some shitty armdrags. Despite Pogo's ineptness, this turns into a presentable big-vs-little match, as all Pogo has to do is stand there whilst the more able D throws himself at the clumsy clown. Pogo is in control following a missed D splash, before the ring gets surrounded by a group of unknown guys. Pogo and D both wield chairs to protect themselves, before D "shockingly" turns on the man he's just been fighting. This is all set up for an invasion storyline with D's old SCCW promotion. Of course, Kloss being the worst commentator ever puts over the threat of this new union by referring to them as jobbers and backyarders. Match was watchable, almost solely due to D.

Kaos vs Angel
Kaos is defending his TV title here in a gauntlet, and is accompanied by his stablemates GQ Money and Veronica Caine of the Enterprise. Despite a little hesitancy between both guys, this is worked at a good pace and is a decent little match. A crossbody to the floor by Angel is particularly good before Kaos wins with a piledriver from a powerbomb position. What is less good is that Angel's "hardcore homo" gimmick allows Kloss to crack "hilarious" gay jokes on commentary.

Kaos vs Chris Hamrick
In a terrible display of booking, the heel is at a disadvantage due to having just wrestled. Hamrick uses his veteran skills and freshness to dominate before a trademark bump through the ropes. He then takes another, more nuts bump by flipping backfirst onto the floor when dropkicked off the apron. Kaos wisely works over the back by whipping Hamrick into the railings, but Hamrick recovers and in a big spot hits a Van Terminator across the ring to dropkick a chair into the face of Kaos, who is still on the floor outside. Hamrick is doing everything he can to make this match memorable. The top rope legdrop only gets two. GQ Money takes advantage of a ref distraction to knock Hamrick off the top rope, and Kaos nails a top rope gourdbuster for the win. Easily the most entertaining match of the card thus far.

Kaos vs NOSAWA
NOSAWA schools the exhausted Kaos for a bit, before Kaos decides to totally non-sell his previous matches, and bounds around the ring, springboarding hither and thither. This match is an utter mess, with outside interference and belt shots in front of the ref, who seemingly couldn't care less. Kaos gets a blockbuster to win this gauntlet.

Juventud Guerrera vs Mosco De La Merced
This match is set up by Juvi turning on his La Familia stablemates (Psychosis, Halloween, Damien 666 and Merced) to join Rob Black's Black Army faction. This is all Juvi early on, even getting the highspot with a big plancha. The face Merced does get his own spot to shine, with a nutty diving swanton to the floor. Juvi nails two powerbombs and a weak chairshot, but these two don't seem to be clicking. A swift Juvi Driver ends a total squash.

Veronica Caine vs Lizzy Borden
Fuck me, Kloss makes the WORST fucking noises every time he sees a woman, making groaning noises like a confused virgin. This is a buck naked lumberjack paddle match, with the aim being to strip your opponent totally naked. Both are heels, accompanied by heel stables at ringside (the Black Army for Borden, the Enterprise for Caine). Rob Black bans the Enterprise from ringside, before we get to this appalling match. Weak wrestling starts off before it devolves to it's natural state as a catfight. The bout clearly only exists for titilation, with the crowd knowing that Black being a pornographer means there is a very good chance of actually seeing someone naked. But no, as Borden is about to remove Caine's top, the lights go out to a big groan from the crowd and they come back on to find Caine gone. Terrible booking. Afterwards, GQ Money cuts a promo lambasting the crowd and taking credit for turning off the lights. So the feud between the two heel stables continues. WHO THE FUCK IS THE AUDIENCE SUPPOSED TO BE CHEERING FOR?!?!

Steve Rizzono vs a Monkey
So right after being part of a major heel angle as part of the Enterprise, Rizzono is facing...a man dressed as a monkey. I say this, but Kloss spends the entire bloody match yelling "Rizzono is facing a real monkey! An actual monkey from a zoo!" like an unbearable berk. This is another largely pointless match, with the monkey controlling with some weak offence before winning with a facebuster. Afterwards, Rizzono gets beaten to shit by a mysterious masked man.

Webb vs GQ Money
Webb is dressed like karate Elvis and, by virute of GQ Money being an appalling irritant, is the more sympathetic character. Money is not much of a physical threat to Webb, so sneak attacks to gain an advantage. Neither guy exactly carries themself like world championship material, but I thought Webb looked pretty decent in places. I really liked him chaining from a side-Russian legsweep into an armbar/headscissors. They don't quite click in the match, with awkward moments like Webb watching GQ position himself on the top rope and hitting a move on him, and not trying to counter it due to mistiming when he would turn around. Money misses a terrible looking spinny top rop legdrop and Webb goes to work. I liked the snap he put into a spinning uranage, before tapping GQ Money out with a rear choke. Afterwards, the Black Army cut off Money's thinning hair.

The Sandman vs Supreme
This was set up by an earlier heel promo by Sandman, proclaiming himself a big star, before Supreme challenged him to fight for the Deathmatch title. Sandman is avoiding the hardcore style, so goes to the mat with a headlock on Supreme. I've commented in the past how I liked the way Supreme built towards barbed wire spots, but here he just hurls Sandman in the first few minutes. Sandman is happy to go outside to stall, so Supreme baseball dropkicks him into some more barbed wire outside the ring in a decent spot. Sandman starts using weapons himself, setting up a bed of thumbtacks that he ends up getting slammed into himself. Supreme goes up top, but the Enterprise, all fully recovered from their very recent beatings, interfere. A sloppy looking three-man cutter onto the tacks gifts Sandman the win. Not very good.

New Jack vs Vic Grimes
Right, this match is probably the most famous in XPW history, and not for the right reasons. This is the FreeFall match, a scaffold 40ft in the air with 12 tables stacked in the ring (four tables high, three tables across) with the aim being to through your opponent from the scaffold to the ring. So the story goes, New Jack hadn't forgiven Grimes for the incident at ECW Living Dangerously 2000, which left him temporarily blinded, and plotted him revenge for this match. Of which more later...

The match itself is largely awful, just two guys hitting each other with the odd weapon shot or walking around the ring punching each other. It features a lot of my least favourite hardcore match feature, the "weapon that will make you bleed and scar you, but isn't going to win you the match". Stuff like staple guns, forks or, in this case, pizza cutters, which I'm sure would really hurt, but would mutilate the opponent rather than incapacitate him. Hate that stuff. Eventually, they stop fighting and decide to slowly climb opposite sides of the scaffold. They brawl for a bit more up there, before Jack brings out a tazer. After a few tazer shots, he throws Grimes off the balcony, sending him off course so he only just grazes one of the top tables and bounces off the top rope in a truly horrifying scene. Honestly, Grimes was very lucky not to be seriously hurt or even dead, and it's really uncomfortable to watch. In a way, the perfect metaphor for this horrific show.

XPW Fallout

For all the negative views of XPW (and it was often poor), they did have some good moments. Shows like this one, where they'd imported some decent talent, actually had some worthwhile matches. So, even though the Shane Douglas era pretty much killed off the company, at least we got some good matches out of it. At times...

Pogo the Clown vs the Sandman
Oh God, this match is terrible. Pogo is essentially a big fat lad in a clown costume who seems to be pretty much useless, aside from one nice bump right at the start. Sandman basically tries to carry this with some nutty bumping, but Pogo’s offence is really shitty, with a weak facebuster and a horrible top rope splash. They really go all out to put Pogo over here: at one point Sandman’s wife runs in, only to get caught from the top rope and splashed. Pogo then barely sells Sandman’s rage-filled cane shots and powerbombs him onto some safety railings in the ring for 3. The sad thing is, this is clearly using the big star to put over the local talent, which makes sense, but Pogo is so poor that the fans simply don’t buy it.

Juventud Guerrera vs Julio Deniro

Juvi cuts a rambling promo pre-match, which is amusingly subtitled. They blow something early doors, but recover quickly and work a decent match. Julio looks a bit shaky on the more complicated stuff he tries, but his basics seem pretty good, which means that Juvi is able to carry him well enough. Deniro does hit a pretty good top rope reverse suplex, and I really appreciated him going for frequent pins in an attempt to beat his more illustrious opponent. However, Juvi is too much for him, though it takes a Juvi Driver on a chair for Guerrera to pick up the win.

Mexico’s Most Wanted vs Dead Prez

The Dead Prez team aren’t announced, instead being nameless debutants who enter through the crowd. As far as I’m aware they were Boogalou (of early RoH fame) and Low Ryder, whilst MMW are Damien 666 and Halloween. This is a pretty fun tag match, as both teams are use some fun double teams, and both work a high energy pace. I liked the move where MMW grabbed Boogalou by the arms and legs and rammed him into the ringpost from outside. After a back and forth match, MMW retain the tag titles with the Montezuma’s Revenge, a giant swing into a standing dropkick. Really good fun.

Chris Chetti vs Chris Hamrick

This actually starts off pretty well, despite Chetti selling a phantom armdrag. The fans seem to dislike the face Chetti, until Hamrick takes a ludicrous bump to the floor and Chetti follows him out with a corkscrew moonsault from the top rope. Chetti seems to be trying really hard here, which is good to see. However, there is a minute where everything goes to Hell and never really recovers. In this case, they manage to botch a clothesline-in-the-corner spot twice. From there, things go a bit sloppy, until the end sees Chetti kick out of a top rope legdrop and hit a top rope Amityville Horror for the win.

Psychosis vs Super Crazy

It probably won’t be a huge surprise to learn this is the best match of the night. Crazy is massively over here. You can get an impression of the pace they work here by the fact that Psychosis takes a nuts guardrail in the first 10 seconds. Very high tempo stuff, but everything is cleanly hit and looks good. Crazy hits a sweet looking asai moonsault into the crowd at one point, getting insane air. They run through a nice series of counters and reversals, until Psychosis hits a diamond dust from the corner and nails the top rope legdrop for 3. After, Crazy goes nuts with a spike and starts attacking Psychosis. Great match.

Malice vs Vic Grimes

Before the match, we get a worked-shoot promo from Malice complaining about his XPW gimmick and saying he’s representing TNA. It’s a decent big man match, though Grimes is noticeably running out of breath after the opening minutes. But they throw each other about impressively enough, with Malice hitting a good top rope butterfly suplex on Grimes. Grimes is pretty agile for a big lad, walking the ropes and hitting a nice pair of top rope splashes. Most impressive of all is the finish, which sees Grimes hit a top rope cannonball to the floor through a table (as well as through Malice) which picks up the win. Grimes cuts an anti-TNA promo, but seeing as how XPW is seen as even more of a joke than TNA...hindsight.

Supreme vs Altar Boy Luke

This is for the Deathmatch title held by Supreme. The Altar Boy is better known as Luke Hawx of WSX fame. Supreme actually outwrestles Luke to start, but bumps for a whiffed dropkick and lands in a tray of lightbulbs outside the ring. Supreme pretty much no sells that, which makes sense given his “Human Horror Film” gimmick. We get an odd looking legsweep into barbed wire, where they both seems to take equal impact. I like the fact Luke hits 3 or 4 moves in a row designed to drop Supreme into the barbed wire over and over again. Supreme slams Luke into the wire, and he reacts less well than Supreme had been. Supreme drags Luke to the crow’s nest, but Angel (the “Hardcore Homo”) interferes and helps throw Supreme off the edge. After Angel setting it up, Luke hits a 450 splash through tables and tacks to pick up the shock win. More enjoyable than I expected, with a few fun highspots and Supreme actually holding his end of the bargain up well. Not amazing, but fun.

Kaos vs Danny Doring

The opening stages of this match are shockingly good. Like, really enjoyable pro-wrestling, especially when Kaos threatens to leave and Doring dives off the top rope onto Kaos and his entourage. I also loved how Kaos decided to wrestle with the XPW TV title still on. However, things so a bit wrong after Doring gets blindsided following interference from valet Veronica Caine. First, Kaos botches a few moves, including a sloppy looking cutter. Then Kaos and manager GQ Money hit a rolling thunder/450 splash combo in front of the ref, despite having relied upon ref distractions earlier in the match. Worst of all is a nonsensical sequence, where Doring (the face) gets outwrestled by Caine (the heel valet), which is such an unspeakably stupid bit of booking. Things pick up again shortly after Money takes a sickening bump over the top onto the guardrail. Kaos hits a Ganso Bomb for two, before a fun sequence of reversals leads to Doring hitting a reverse stunner to win. Of course, a Dusty Finish is used to stop Doring getting the TV title, with Money revealing the contract signed was non-title. The good just about outweighed the bad.
 

Shane Douglas vs Chris Candido

You know a match is going to be bad when the ref counts two following a post-match attack, before he’s actually called for the opening bell. There is some very lacklustre brawling to start, though I did enjoy how, following a table being set up in the ring, Douglas and Candido built anticipation to the table spot by gesturing to it and threatening to use it. Eventually, Candido misses a top rope legdrop which sends him through it. We get a sequence where each man uses offence designed purely to hurt the opponent’s balls. Like, 3 moves a piece. The valets (Tammy Sytch for Candido and Lizzy Borden for Douglas) fight in the ring, and Shane gives Tammy the belly-to-belly suplex. Candido hits a top rope headbutt, but Borden puts Douglas’ leg on the rope. Douglas fires back with two Pittsburgh Plunges (the second onto a chair) to retain the title. Boring brawling, not recommended at all