no thanks.
Good weekend of indy wrestling on tv. Rosey (going by Kimo again - I almost forgot seeing "The Island Boyz," Kimo and OG Ekmo, at the HWA events I went to every week for two years) wrestled some fat shit who couldn't wrestle out of a paper bag. The poor guy had punches worse than Tommy Dreamer, moved at a pace half that of a sea slug, and was just not ready for an audience, much less TV. Worse yet, Kimo gave the guy a good amount of offense, when he shouldn't have. Perhaps Kimo's just a good guy (he was quite kind the time I chatted with him at a bar, though Ekmo/Jamal/Umaga is a certifiable asshole to the tenth power), so him giving the poor slob a bit of offense is precisely what he would do.
Nigel McGuinness worked the HWA main event, with some useless talent (HWA sure doesn't discriminate between talent that should and should not be on television), and other great workers who will never get their due in the States, such as Chad Collyer. At least he gets to wrestle as "Chad Malenko" in Japan (for those who've never seen Collyer, he's the spitting image of Malenko in looks, stature, and style - even using the Texas Cloverleaf as a finisher).
Malenko trained him, I think. He sure works as someone trained by Malenko (a delight to watch, but please don't let him near a microphone) would.
OVW featured two major title changes, the first coming after Chet "The Jet" finally won his big match over champ Jacob Duncan (a big muscle-headed suck-at-wrestling guy, so he'll probably be on Raw Monday) - then "The Torture Device" Paul Birchall laid out Chet with a chair and demanded his "anytime, anywhere" title match, hit Chet with his finisher, and ended Chet's 45-second long title reign. Overbooked, sure, but it's always a pain in the ass to get the title from one heel to another, I suppose.
"Fearless" Jack Bull got his decisive win over Joey Mercury in a "this must have been taped before Armageddon" match. Good to see the feud end well for Bull, and this probably means that OVW fans now bid adieu to Mercury for the time being. Thanks for sharing your hair extensions with us, darlin'.
Lastly, (technically three title changes, I guess), Cody Runnels and Shawn Spears regained the OVW Southern Tag Titles in a WWE-PPV quality street fight tag match. Well wrestled, good momentum, good pace, and great storytelling. I don't much care for Shawn Spears, but Cody Runnels, unlike David Flair, got "it" from Daddy Dusty. He has great motions, great selling, and knows where he is and should be in the ring at all times. His only downside is he's kinda smaller than WWE likes (he looks more like AJ Styles' brother than "The American Dream's" offspring); I think he'll be a major player for some national group in the coming years, but he needs to add at least 20-30 pounds of muscle first. As for the now-former champs, The Untouchables, I've said all I needed to say before. They'll be going to WWE sooner than later, and hopefully they won't be relegated to the "Highlanders/Cade and Murdoch" tier of the tag team division (that they should be major players, rather than wrestling Viscera and Val Venis for 8 straight months on "Heat"). Their gimmick is great, played well, and with some fine-tuning to make it more current, could work quite well for them.
There was a women's title ladder match b/w Katie Lea and Beth Phoenix, which was alright, but not my thing. Lastly, Boris Alexiev continued to impress. Shame the WWE just debuted Oleg Vladimir Kozlov Prudius, because all accounts say Prudius is another Nathan Jones, while Alexiev has a great, fast-paced and hard-hitting style that's a real treat to watch.
My christmas wish is for all of you to get to watch OVW on your televisions soon.
im feeling tipsy...
