First time I've watched this in 10 years. It is, as you can imagine, still a wonderful bit of the pro wrestling, just two guys at the absolute peak of their powers having a sensational wrestling match. I've said this about three dozen times over the last 15 years and more than a handful of times on this here stupid blog, but Eddie's performance is one of the absolute best I've ever seen. It's right there with Fujiwara v Maeda in '87, Hashimoto v Tenryu in '93, Misawa in the '96 Tag League, Piper against Valentine at Starrcade, Lawler in the '85 Loser Leaves Town, Casas v Ultimo Dragon in '93, the Tonga Kid on any MSG card. He's a cold, twitchy mess on his way out and I don't know if it was the make-up crew working some magic or he went full method actor and didn't sleep for a week, but he had those bags under his eyes that I would have when I was doing a PhD and I too wanted to murder someone. His inability to beat Rey was literally giving him sleepless nights! I thought they managed to strike a great balance between highlighting the right aspects of a hate feud, while also reinforcing that at its core this was about WINNING. That's what Eddie's obsession stemmed from, the fact he couldn't beat Rey Mysterio in a wrestling match. If Rey's out for revenge then the best way to get it is to yet again beat Eddie in a WRESTLING match. It's not a blood feud in the way Slaughter/Sheik was, it was more like a Steamboat/Savage only with Eddie in a bastardised heel Steamboat role. Prolly. Anyway the urgency early on is great. There's no wasted motion, to borrow some cliché terminology. Everything is hit clean and it has snap and there's no daylight on any of it. Even something like Eddie yanking Rey into a drop toe hold or Rey whipping Eddie over with an armdrag has a little extra bite. Rey hits a running legdrop and I loved how he bounced off the ropes as quick as he could and landed with almost no vertical height on it, all the force coming in at a horizontal angle, just because it gave Eddie less opportunity to recover or sit up. Eddie takes no liberties in that opening stretch and even breaks clean a couple times, maybe somewhat surprisingly, but Rey still comes away with a bloody lip just from a tie-up. You know Eddie is going to let loose eventually, though. He's just building anticipation with smirks and faux-sportsmanship, waiting for that one moment, but through it all you can SEE how much he hates Rey. If looks could kill then Mysterio would've been in the ground six times over already. The work on Eddie's bruised oblique makes sense because that thing is a livid purple bullseye to be targeted, plus Rey is appropriately violent going after it. Then we get the transition with Eddie being unable to keep his temper in check any longer. Or maybe he never planned on keeping it in check anyway and just wanted to fuck with Rey, but however you slice it the shove off the top was great and the perfect dickhead move, the one they'd been building to all match. Then Eddie ramps everything up to 14. He goes after Rey like a demon and it's some of my favourite work of his career, and Cole's line about metamorphosis feels dead on. That switch is flicked and he's in kill mode now. It's not just the actual STUFF he's doing, not just how he works the control segment by going after the back, it's the way he does it, the way he puts across his own frustration when Rey won't stay down and how that frustration grows as the match progresses, the way he'll cut Rey off and that'll settle him down a bit, how he'll show how much he's enjoying hurting Mysterio, the shit-talking, the assuredness in the moment even though he's been bitten enough times that you know he shouldn't get ahead of himself, everything just lands perfectly for me. Then there's the blatant cheating, using the carny moves like grabbing Rey's tights so the ref' will admonish him which will then allow him to outright choke Rey with the other hand, Rey gagging and spluttering so it looks like Eddie has a proper handful of trachea. The part where he has Rey in a full nelson and uses the straps on Rey's mask to choke him is fucking incredible stuff. Those are the little things that put it over the top; things like Rey firing back by kicking Eddie in that bruised side and Eddie reacting to it exactly how you'd expect someone being kicked in a bruised side would react. The finishing run has all the selling and pacing and drama and everything else and you can see it slipping away from Eddie again. Rey's too quick and he's in Eddie's head and Rey will find a way, because against Eddie he ALWAYS finds a way. Eddie's maniacal laugh as the show closes is an absolutely brilliant visual. This might be the peak of 00s WWE.
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