A DIFFERENT KIND OF HIGH! Look, it's impossible for me to be impartial about this for obvious reasons. That finish is one of my favourite moments ever and the post-match celebration will never not put a smile on my face. No joke, I can remember exactly where I was when I saw this match, my exact reaction when the ref' counted three. I'll always cherish it, as stupid as that sounds. The actual match almost feels like a precursor to Suplex City, if for no reason other than the size difference. Obviously 2004 Lesnar didn't have the same aura as 2014 or current day Lesnar. He hadn't demolished any legitimate MMA heavyweights or won a World Title in a combat sport yet. He isn't quite as menacing in 2004, a bit less imposing, not as juiced and has a regular human being skin tone as opposed to the demonic purple hues he has now. But he was an even more spectacular athlete, even more explosive and agile. He throws Eddie around and asks for more, then Eddie charges and gets thrown around again. For the first half he's about 90% on top, with Eddie's hope spots coming sporadically. It of course looks like an uphill struggle at best and an impossibility at worst. Lesnar's work on Eddie's midsection is good and Lesnar can apply a regular bodyscissors or lying bearhug and it'll look painful just because of who he is. There's never really a point where Eddie's in control of things, he can never fully swing momentum in his favour, but he'll chip away at Lesnar where he can and almost all of it is focused around taking out the knee. I think the first real bit of offence Eddie gets leads to him wrapping Lesnar's leg around the post, but he only manages it once before Lesnar uses that leg to just yank Eddie face-first into it instead. It highlighted the sheer gulf in raw strength, that Lesnar, from his back with zero leverage, could outmuscle Eddie like that. Eddie doesn't get a real opening until Lesnar misses a high knee in the corner, something he hit successfully earlier before Eddie painted a bullseye on it. After that Eddie works the STF, the figure-four, and a couple ugly variations of them both with Lesnar's knee twisted at awkward angles. He'd throw a bunch of low dropkicks whenever it looked like Lesnar was picking up steam again, and soon the low dropkicks would open Lesnar up to being dropicked in the head. Lesnar grounding Eddie and trying to squeeze the life out of him after that made sense and Eddie breaking it by punching Lesnar in the knee was great. You could tell Lesnar was getting frustrated as well, telling Eddie to just die already, whipping him around the mat in a waistlock like a gator with a deer in its clutches. There was one German suplex where he almost lost grip but Eddie was already airborne so Lesnar just hooked him by the hips and snapped him to the mat, Eddie landing almost flat with the back of his head smacking the canvas. The stuff with Goldberg probably needed to happen and I'm honestly not arsed about him being involved. I don't think it cheapened Eddie's win because ultimately in the end he used his resourcefulness to counter the F5. As a match it was Lesnar's power and savagery against Eddie's strategy and smarts and veteran wiles. It might've been WWE's best approximation of Hashitmoto v Fujinami if Fujinami was a lying cheating bastard. And again, there's the post-match. A moment that's 99% sweet and 1% bitter, if only because we never got the chance to see him celebrate winning another one.
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