Tag: pro wrestlers

365 Wrestling, Day 29: Serial Thrillaz vs. Hardy Boyz (OMEGA, 1/29/99)

365 Wrestling, Day 29: Serial Thrillaz vs. Hardy Boyz (OMEGA, 1/29/99)

365 match reviews, one for each date on the yearly calendar? Challenge accepted. Welcome to 365 Wrestling.

How many wrestlers who step through the ropes today grew up watching Matt and Jeff Hardy? They rank as one of the most beloved duos in the history of tag team wrestling. While each has spent some time on the Dark Side as an individual (Matt more than Jeff), the Hardys as a team were consistently fan favorites … but not always. In this installment of 365 Wrestling, the Hardys take to the ring as heels, in this match from OMEGA (the promotion the Hardys helped start themselves) on January 29, 1999 against Shane Helms and Mike Maverick.

This match is available in two parts on YouTube, and embedded below:

The Match

You know three of the players in this match. ECW diehards may recognize Maverick as Jack Dupp.

For all the details on this match, I went straight to the source: Thomas Simpson, one of the co-founders of the OMEGA promotion, and someone I did commentary for on some independent shows in South Carolina a few years ago. The Hardys had been OMEGA champs for about six months, winning the titles off of Helms and Venom (aka Joey Abs from the Mean Street Posse in the heyday of the WWF Attitude Era). Simpson noted Venom was substituting in that match for Maverick, who had broken his arm when he fell off a roof while working a construction job.

This match takes place at East Wake High School in Wendell, NC, also the alma mater of Helms and Maverick. The challengers are out first and greeted as conquering heroes. Meanwhile, the Hardys already are a known presence on WWF TV but they get booed mightily. Matt stirs them up even more, stating that he and his brother will be “winning on Sunday Night Heat” after beating Helms and Maverick.

This match is filmed on a handheld camera and, once it’s under way, you can hear someone in the crowd say, “They’ve gotta win the belts or the crowd’s gonna riot.” That’s a good summary of the raucous atmosphere for this match. The crowd at East Wake High helps elevate what’s happening in the ring — and the match itself already is quite good.

Maverick and Helms work with a big man/little man dynamic that I’ve always enjoyed in tag teams, and they do it well. Twice, Maverick flings his partner into the air to do damage to their foes: a gorilla press that turns into a splash for a close two count, or launching him out of the ring to land on both Hardys. Such power already has been established through some early interactions with Jeff: delivering a brutal-looking spear and then catching him in midair to disrupt the Hardys’ now-well-known Poetry In Motion double team.

Helms plays a spectacular face in peril and is the engine that keeps this match going. He spends more time in the ring than anyone else, and the fans bite on every bit of offense he musters up. When he gets cut off, it just builds the anticipation. Helms continues to sell but never completely fades, showing enough fight to keep the already-rabid crowd engaged.

Jeff Hardy is in splendid form here. This is 1999 and well before many of the catastrophic landings and injuries that Jeff has accumulated through the years, so he is still at his physical peak. At one point, Jeff busts out a springboard swanton off the top rope, chains it directly into a quebrada and makes it all look effortless. In front of a different crowd, it might have earned a golf clap of appreciation or even outright applause. Here, Jeff culminates the high-flying combination by hugging his brother, only further enraging the crowd.

As the match progresses, Matt ensnares Helms in a sleeper and many of the fans start clapping and stomping, to the point that the camera filming literally starts to shake. We’re 15 minutes into the match at this point and it feels half as long — if that.

There is creativity on display here. These four twist the standard tag formula, first during their control of Helms. Then Helms makes the “hot tag” to Maverick, who promptly gets cut off. A ref bump leads to a visual pin by the Hardys, not the fan favorites, as is usually the case. When a replacement referee finally scurries to the ring and makes a count that ends in a long two, Matt responds as a true heel would: first by powerbombing referee #2, then hooking Helms by the arms while Jeff brings a chair into the ring.

By now, you can see what’s coming from a mile away, and so does the crowd, but that doesn’t make it any less satisfying. Helms moves, Jeff pulverizes his brother and gets knocked to the outside. Helms and Maverick both scale the nearest corner, with Helms leaping off of his partner’s shoulders with a splash to score the win and take the titles to the delight of the packed crowd.

Final Rating: 8.7

These four combine to create a love letter to Southern tag wrestling with a modern adaptation through the moves used. The crowd is red-hot throughout and shows no signs of tiring out or losing interest. The end result is fantastic, and a must-watch, especially if you’re a Hardys fan.

Here’s the complete, ongoing list of matches in this project.

Up Next

We take a look at another wrestler who embodies excellence over the long haul.

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365 Wrestling, Day 28: John Cena vs. Umaga, Last Man Standing (WWE Royal Rumble, 1/28/07)

365 Wrestling, Day 28: John Cena vs. Umaga, Last Man Standing (WWE Royal Rumble, 1/28/07)

365 match reviews, one for each date on the yearly calendar? Challenge accepted. Welcome to 365 Wrestling.

The Royal Rumble match is a spectacle that wrestling fans anticipate every January. The event itself has produced some gems on the undercard in recent years. This entry spotlights one of those standouts, from the 2007 Rumble: John Cena vs. Umaga in a Last Man Standing Match.

You can watch this match on the WWE Vault YouTube channel:

The Match

This is Cena’s third, and longest, reign with the WWE Title. Umaga has been built as a juggernaut since returning to WWE in April of 2006. He went undefeated for about nine months, a streak that ended earlier in January when he challenged Cena for the title and lost on a roll-up after dominating the match. After that outcome, heel authority figure Jonathan Coachman (and hasn’t that become an overdone storyline trope in wrestling?) made this rematch.

Cena might be the box-office draw but the star of the match is Umaga. The anything-goes format provides a fine showcase for his athleticism, size and overall fearsome presence. He’s also a credible threat here after several months of steady build as a force. Would this match have so much sizzle if Umaga had been trading wins and losses, instead? Definitely not.

Umaga is such a force here. The tale here is less a battle of two competitors, but one between man and monster. Cena takes a beating throughout and when he does rally, it usually ends with him getting clobbered by the Samoan Bulldozer. Overwhelmed by his foe, Cena has to escalate the violence beyond the normal standards of a wrestling match to even faze the challenger. As a result, Umaga takes some insane bumps down the stretch: getting the ringside steps thrown into his face, and having one of the commentary monitors smashed into his head while Umaga’s head hangs, seemingly lifeless against the ringpost. And yet, like the killer in a slasher movie, Umaga rises again and again.

As the violence builds, Cena pays the consequence and bleeds profusely. In fact this stands out as the last memorable use of blood in WWE until the promotion makes its PG pivot. To this day, WWE continues to avoid blood as a storytelling device, while chastising would-be competitors for it.

One moment in this match sticks with me, which I can describe best as a stunt. With this being the era of three brands of main WWE TV (ECW being the third), there are three commentary tables at ringside. Umaga stacks Cena on the ECW table, climbs on the far edge of the far table (where Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler are calling the match) and gets a running start. He leaps off the middle table for a splash that Cena avoids, and the table does not so much break but explode under Umaga’s mass. The challenger barely beats the 10 count in a delightfully close and completely believable false finish.

We reach the climax when Umaga’s manager, Armando Alejandro Estrada, literally dismantles the ring and removes the top rope and one of the turnbuckles. Umaga wields the turnbuckle for a version of his Samoan Spike, but Cena turns the weapon on the wielder and uses the top rope to throttle the challenger into unconsciousness. The fact it takes two separate stranglings to finish the job only underscores the unstoppable atmosphere of Umaga.

Speaking of the commentators, Ross is in his prime here and I can’t think of anyone better to provide the soundtrack for this match, in this era. His “Oh Jiminy God!” when Cena smashes a monitor into Umaga’s head, is a genuine reaction and his line that “even monsters have to breathe” at the finish provides logic and justification for Cena’s brutal tactics.

Final Rating: 9.2

This is one of the best WWE matches of the decade, and maybe the best modern example of the last man standing stipulation. It’s also a perfect example of Cena as the never-surrender fan favorite, and who was, at his peak, the closest approximation to Hulkamania that WWE has produced. It’s also the peak moment in WWE for Umaga, whose fantastic second run with the company as a singles competitor is somewhat overshadowed by its brevity. Consider that, 2 1/2 years after this match, Umaga was released by WWE after two violations of the company wellness policy. He sadly died a few months later, at just 36 years old, of a heart attack brought on by acute toxicity from taking several painkillers.

Other pro wrestlers usually point to the Kurt Angle vs. Chris Benoit match from the 2003 Rumble as the best non-Rumble match ever. If Angle-Benoit is the wrestling equivalent of a symphony, this is the equivalent of a blockbuster action movie. Is one better than the other? That’s really in the eye of the beholder, as the two products are so different that it’s difficult to compare them outside of the shared setting of a WWE ring.

Up Next

We head to 1999 and a packed high-school gym in the Carolinas to see one of the most beloved tag teams in wrestling… as heels?

What’s your favorite non-Rumble match from Royal Rumble pay-per-views? Agree or disagree with my take on this match? Let me know by using the contact form on this site, or reach me on Twitter.

365 Wrestling, Day 27: Chris Adams vs. Gino Hernandez (World Class, 1/27/86)

365 Wrestling, Day 27: Chris Adams vs. Gino Hernandez (World Class, 1/27/86)

365 match reviews, one for each date on the yearly calendar? Challenge accepted. Welcome to 365 Wrestling.

Some wrestlers are just meant to be the bad guy. Gino Hernandez is one of them.

Hernandez is in my personal pantheon of the most effective heels in wrestling. He oozed arrogance, wasn’t afraid to let his opponent get their comeuppance (working multiple head-shaving angles during his career), and had one of those intrinsic qualities in a wrestling villain: he made you want to see him take an ass-kicking.

Much like another standout of the territorial era of wrestling, Hernandez doesn’t get his just due. He’s best known for his work in three territories — World Class, Southwest Championship Wrestling and Mid-South — and while all three definitely are worth watching, they have less following than other major promotions of the era: the WWF, Jim Crockett Promotions and the AWA. Had Hernandez not died suddenly at the age of 28 (and more on that later), I feel his joining one of these companies would have been inevitable, and then, who knows?

Today we take a look at Hernandez’s final match before his death, a grudge match against former partner Chris Adams from World Class’ Wrestling Star Wars event on January 26, 1986.

You can find this match on YouTube.

The Match

As the Dynamic Duo (a team name Hernandez also used for his pairing with Tully Blanchard in Southwest), Adams and Hernandez won the NWA American Tag Titles in World Class on two occasions. They replaced the Freebirds as World Class’ top villains in 1984, moving right into a feud with the Von Erichs and headlining at the Cotton Bowl in the fall of 1985, where they lost a hair vs. hair match. Soon thereafter, Gino turned on Adams, setting the stage for a feud between former partners. This was their first match –and, as it turns out, only match — since the split.

The psychology around this match is great, and something modern wrestling should look at. In a grudge match, it generally doesn’t make sense to come out and lock up collar and elbow with your hated rival. Or chain wrestle. This match has none of that. Adams comes at Hernandez with fists flying before the official starting bell. Gino begs off as the Fort Worth crowd howls for blood, as he keeps taking a beating. I especially love his woozy punch-drunk swing at nothing after getting thrown headfirst into the top turnbuckle.

Rage quickly trumps discretion. Each man goes for bigger moves off the second rope and, each time, that backfires. One of these misses sets up the finish, as Adams hits a back body drop (have I mentioned I’m a sucker for a good one of these), then clocks Gino with his superkick. The crowd erupts and Hernandez sells it like he got clocked on the jaw with a hammer, rolling semi-conscious out to the floor. Did I mention all this happens before the five-minute call in the match?

Adams has the match won but pulls up Gino from a decisive pin attempt twice. After this second reprieve, following a piledriver, Hernandez goes for the shortcut… a bottle of “Freebird hair cream” at ringside. This is a great example of long-term storytelling, a well-established piece of the World Class mythos with an unknown list of ingredients but powerful hair-removing quality. Gino takes the cream and puts it into the eyes of Adams, who drops to the mat like he’d been burned with wildfire. There’s a nice touch where the referee promptly removes his shirt, trying to rub the licentious lotion out of the eyes of the Englishman. This is a repeat of the same angle the Freebirds had run with Junkyard Dog in different territories

Final Rating: 6.8

This match is an excellent example that, sometimes, less is more. Not every major match has to be a lengthy epic containing multiple false finishes. Bell to bell, this match is well under the 10-minute mark but Adams and Hernandez make the most out of every second they have in the ring. The stage is set for a tantalizing feud between the former partners but Hernandez died just a few days later, with his body being discovered February 4 in his apartment after he missed several dates for World Class.

His cause of death was listed as a drug overdose but the circumstances have remained under scrutiny, especially after the “Dark Side of the Ring” episode on Hernandez.

Up Next

We head to the Los Angeles territory.

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365 Wrestling, Day 24: Eight Man Tag (WCW Souled Out, 1/24/98)

365 Wrestling, Day 24: Eight Man Tag (WCW Souled Out, 1/24/98)

365 match reviews, one for each date on the yearly calendar? Challenge accepted. Welcome to 365 Wrestling.

If you wanted to introduce wrestling to a friend of yours who hadn’t seen it, what would you show them? This is a question I’ve tossed about in my head for years, and one with endless potential answers depending on what you define as good wrestling. What about if you wanted to show someone a specific style of wrestling… lucha libre for example? I might suggest showing them this match that served as the opener of Souled Out 1998. Sit back and enjoy this eight-man tag (or, to use the parlance of lucha libre, atómicos) in all its splendor.

You used to be able to watch this match on Peacock but I’m pretty sure it takes some Internet black magic to access it now.

The Match

This match kicked off the pay-per-view card, and we’ve got Chavo Guerrero, Jr., Lizmark, Jr., Super Calo, and Juventud Guerrera facing La Parka. Psicosis (billed as Psychosis at this time by WCW), El Dandy, and Silver King.

This is positioned as a sprint to fire up the crowd before moving on to other matters that are higher on the booking priority list. Still, there’s lots to like here and plenty of highlights. Whenever Dusty Rhodes is on commentary, you can always tell when something really cool is about to happen because Dusty drops his accent.

Silver King and Lizmark really get the crowd going with a swank exchange of chops punctuated by a titl-a-whirl backbreaker by Lizmark, Jr. El Dandy doesn’t play a big role in the match but he makes the most of his ring time, most notably taking a monkey flip by Chavo and then delivering a headfirst suicide dive as part of an amazing sequence of dives near the end of the match. La Parka stands out by being the only man in the eight who really plays up to the crowd.

If I had to give an MVP to the match, it might be Silver King. He fully commits at every moment he’s in the match, whether on offense or feeding into one of the four tecnicos. He also takes the biggest bump of the match, springing off the middle rope on a plancha to the floor only to miss and eat the concrete.

After Chavo pins Psicosis after a tornado DDT, La Parka runs amok with a steel chair, wiping out each of the four men on the opposing team, and then blasting two of his own teammates for good measure. Following a celebratory dance on the chair to the delight of the crowd, La Parka tucks it under his arm and strolls out. The character work here is a delight.

Final Rating: 6.5

This match lasts less than 10 minutes but damn if these eight don’t make the most of their time — and then some. It’s also a fantastic opening match for a card, with nothing but action and a bunch of big moves to get the crowd fired up for anything and everything coming next.

Eric Bischoff and his role in wrestling remains a pretty polarizing topic, but I always felt he deserved credit for the WCW cruiserweight division — the predecessor in many ways to Ring of Honor and the X-Division of TNA and the style that is now popular across a variety of promotions with TV exposure. Bischoff also brought in a solid contingent of luchadores in the summer of 1996, most of them straight from Mexico, and several of them taking part in this match. Both these moves — emphasizing the cruiserweights and giving luchadores a platform on nationwide American TV — changed wrestling. Not only that. Bischoff let the Mexican luchadores wrestle their style, as opposed to signing them and trying to “Americanize” them.

Here’s the complete, ongoing list of matches in this project.

What’s Next

Now, how about an American twist on lucha?

Got a match you’d like me to watch as part of this 365 Wrestling project? Agree or disagree with my take on this match? Let me know by using the contact form on this site, or reach me on Twitter.

365 Wrestling, Day 22: Diesel vs. Bret Hart (WWF Royal Rumble, 1/22/95)

365 Wrestling, Day 22: Diesel vs. Bret Hart (WWF Royal Rumble, 1/22/95)

365 match reviews, one for each date on the yearly calendar? Challenge accepted. Welcome to 365 Wrestling.

There are certain wrestling tropes that always will hook me. One of them is the matchup between a big person and a smaller person… power versus speed. Height and weight against quickness and savvy.

I think you’ll enjoy this version of that tale, coming from the 1995 Royal Rumble when Bret Hart challenged Diesel for the WWF World Title.

You can watch this match on Peacock.

The Match

This is the first major challenge for Diesel (aka Kevin Nash), who became champion in November of 1994, defeating Bob Backlund in eight seconds at Madison Square Garden just three days after Backlund dethroned Bret at Survivor Series. That included a banner 1994 for Diesel. After eliminating seven wrestlers from that year’s Rumble, he went on to win the tag, Intercontinental and World titles in WWF before the calendar turned to 1995.

Bret is seeking his third reign as champion but finds he can’t match up against the size and power of the champion. As a result, he comes at this match with a more aggressive attitude than at any point since his days as part of the Hart Foundation tag team when they were heels in the 1980s. Working over Diesel’s legs around the ringpost becomes a repeated tactic of the Hitman, as is keeping submission holds applied after Diesel has reached the ropes to break. Bret actually plays the de facto heel for most of the match with his rule-bending, relentlessly attacking Diesel’s left knee.

Hart takes a few chances that are not part of his standard approach, diving through the ropes on Diesel and then going for a plancha over the top to the floor. The latter works out poorly for the challenger; Diesel runs him back into the ringpost, and note the priceless expression on Bret’s face prior to impact.

Diesel gets Hart back in the ring and delivers his Jackknife powerbomb, and here’s where the match enters strange new territory. Shawn Michaels, Diesel’s former partner turned rival, hits the ring and attacks Diesel–albeit a beat late, forcing Bret to kick out of Diesel’s finisher. Despite Michaels’ beatdown, the referee says the match will continue. Later, when Bret hooks Diesel in the Sharpshooter and Bret’s brother-turned-nemesis Owen Hart attacks, once again the match continues. It takes a ref bump, which cues a slew of rule breakers to storm the ring and attack both competitors, before the match ends in what is ruled a draw.

This match represents a great example of why Bret Hart is held in such high regard. His fingerprints are all over the match layout. Bret comes up short against the size and strength of the champion, but shows his savvy as the more experienced competitor and actually controls the majority of the match. I’ve seen this referred to as a carry job by Bret Hart but I don’t see it that way. Diesel serves a needed presence here with his presence and power. I thought he does a solid job selling the work done on the knee.

One thing is certain: in today’s wrestling climate, the interference / draw finish would have been roasted on social media. For good or for worse, fans will not accept non-finishes in major title matches today.

Final Rating: 7.3

This is a challenging match to rate. As mentioned, I think Bret puts in an all-time performance here and Nash deserves a share of the credit as well. In this case, I think the efforts of the wrestlers are hamstrung to some degree by all the interference. This is definitely the best match involving Kevin Nash I’ve seen so far, but all the shenanigans held it back for me from all-time-great territory.

Up Next

Two really good wrestlers walk into a bar in Asheville. Good wrestling ensues.

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