This was a good Samoa Joe v Homicide match. I've watched a handful of them over the last couple weeks and I haven't really loved any of them, but this one was very good. Watching it in the context of their feud from this period helped as well. Homicide has been on a rampage and wants Joe's belt, and at the previous week's show Low Ki returned and joined the Rottweilers. They all stomped Joe to bits and Gabe suggested on commentary that they might actually murder him, which was very Gabe. This is now Homicide's last shot at the belt as long as Joe has it. I hoped he would be extra wild to match the occasion and I was not disappointed even a wee bit. Straight away he runs around ringside kicking over chairs and pulling apart bits of ring barricade, giving the finger to fans, delivering fuck yous all around. The rest of the Rottweilers are in attendance and Smokes jumps on the apron to distract Joe as Homicide attacks, a trick as old as any in the book and the mark of truly dishonourable individuals. Mark Nulty makes note of how he's "never seen Samoa Joe more focused," as Rocky Romero immediately gets up on the other apron and the laser-focused champ is reeled into being sucker punched for the second time in 15 seconds. At this point the ref' ejects all of Homicide's THUGGISH companions and I love how that really formed the story of the match; the story being that Homicide will lean all the way into being a bastard, even when doing so often ends up being actively detrimental, because he's Homicide and fuck everyone else and particularly fuck Samoa Joe. Trying to stand and trade blows with Joe is almost certainly not the strategy he wants to employ, but to hell with it. Maybe he's doing it because someone said he shouldn't, or that he wouldn't be able to, or he just can't help himself and he'll die on his sword no matter what. After Joe mauls him a few times he then starts going to the eyes, and obviously that ruled because the eye poke is one of the great, underutilised moves in modern wrestling (especially in a place where such dishonourable behaviour won't be tolerated). Homicide tries to brawl, Joe gets annoyed and fires back, Homicide pokes him in the eye, Joe goes down. Look, if it works it works. The big turning point comes when Homicide finally pushes one too many buttons, as he attempts Joe's own Ole kick and gets heaved across the floor with a nasty belly-to-belly. I liked how he sold it the rest of the way, how it stopped him from being able to hit a piledriver later, how he couldn't really go for the cover at points, how it felt like he never truly recovered from that moment on. In one sense I suppose it made it difficult to buy him actually winning, even when he was kicking out of Joe's biggest bombs down the stretch. Even when he hit three lariats on the spin it never felt like they would be enough, and shortly thereafter Joe was back in control again anyway. He fought hard until the end, refused to be pinned and never in a millions years was he going to submit, but when Joe grabbed that choke the lights were going out whether he liked it or not. Post-match the Rottweilers lay another gang beating on Joe and they all spit on the belt and Gabe shouts in his nasaly whine that "THEY'VE RAPED THE BELT OF ITS DIGNITY!" What a strange fellow.
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