Choosing to watch the blow off to a blood feud - any blood feud - after having watched three Buzz Sawyer v Hacksaw Duggan matches the previous week might've been a poor decision on my part. I live around the corner from an exceptional Italian restaurant and I would never eat there on a Friday and then go to Pizza Hut on the Tuesday (or one could argue any day). To be fair this was always going to be more about the big spots and crazy looking shit. It's 2004 and that was the done thing then and is largely still the done thing now. When they brought the barbed wire board out though, it felt like the point of it was to maim rather than pop the crowd, so they captured the sense of hatred well enough. Even the goofier moments like the duelling chair shots were at least carried out with plenty of violence. The chair shot bit also led to everyone in the crowd hucking chairs into the ring while the referee covered up in the corner, then all four guys proceeded to wrestle on a canvas fulla folding chairs for the next few minutes. Punk and Whitmer doing a fighting spirit exploder sequence on the chairs was dumb as hell but still sort of amusing, I guess? All four guys tasted the blade and Whitmer leaned fully into his Dusty Rhodes side by blading his head and arm. Unfortunately his Dusty Rhodes side lies almost entirely in the shadow of his other side which isn't nearly as interesting. He and Maff are the heels and they stall early, flipping off fans and cussing people out rather than getting in the ring and giving this Chicago crowd the mutilation they want. Whitmer just always feels like a guy playing pro wrestler and not even an interesting one, zero conviction behind anything, hollow personality, no presence. He tries like a bastard and of course he'll bump wildly, but it's all in service of putting on the wrestling match that was mapped out beforehand. Nothing is immersive beyond the crazy shit he might do but three seconds later I'm back to not caring anyway. I could not have bought anything less than I bought Whitmer giving someone the finger and telling them to fuck off. Dan Maff isn't someone I've ever really cared about either but he was pretty fun as a stocky Bob Orton Jr. Some of his bumping was right out the Dick Murdoch playbook and once or twice it maybe never matched the tone of what they were aiming for, but I'd be completely full of shit if I sat here and said I wouldn't have loved it if the actual Dick Murdoch had done the exact same thing. The commentary was very bad. Holy moly Sapolsky is the most terrible and his partner on the night wasn't much better. If I can't buy anything Whitmer is doing in the ring then I'm buying even less of what Gabe is selling on commentary. Not for a second does it feel like HE buys what he's selling and everything just sounds like a shill. He's a car salesman who really does like that Skoda Octavia, but he's not convincing anyone that it's everything you'd get from an Audi Q8. You can tell me that this is one of the most savage things you've ever seen, but when you're using the sort of lingo you'd see on a wrestling message board to do it I can't possibly shake the sense that you're trying desperately to convince me. Then you get over the top nonsense like when Punk and Steel set up some mad shit they're about to unleash on Whitmer and Gabe says "oh god, they're gonna try and take his life!" And the actual spot was insane, as they prop Whitmer in the corner with a table jammed into his throat before Punk skites a ladder across it into Whitmer's face, but I couldn't appreciate it because I was too busy laughing. And then Steel tombstones Whitmer off the middle rope through a table and Gabe shouts "DANGEROUSSSSS" and whoever told him it was a good idea to ever do that should be shot point blank in the face.
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