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Best and Worst Spotfests


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Seeing as TNA's X Division PPV is coming up, it seems as apt a time as ever to discuss Spotfests. Name your favourite, the matches that had more spots than a Clearasil research laboratory as well as a story behind them, and discuss your worst, the gymnastics displays with no psychology whatsoever.

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Some fucking awful mess involving the Maximos and possibly someone else against some combination of Special K on one of the earlier ROH shows before they started turning the lights off. Jose and Joel nearly broke a kid's neck with some ridiculous wheelbarrow double team cutter off the top, and one of them pasted one of the opponents with I think four powerbombs transitioned into a Maximo Explosion (down the back sitout piledriver) for a fucking two count. Idiots. To paraphrase a review I read of an equally terrible cluster from 2006 (involving Matt Sydal and Irish Airborne), that match gave me cancer.

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One of my favourites has to be the first Cage of Death match from Cage of Death 5 (i think?). It was BLKOUT vs people like Chris Cash, Nate Webb, Sexxxxy Eddie, JC Bailey and Jack Evans. It was one of the first CZW matches I saw and still one of the best, plenty of high spots and weapons etc. Highlights for me were Jack Evans trying to some sort of moonsault but just falling off the cage and Chris Cash doing the most ridiculous move off the top of a cage I have ever seen. Why Sabian agreed to take it is beyond me, could have gone hideously wrong

 

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That's Cage Of Death 6. Cage Of Death 5 is a fucking insane spotfest. It has one ring surrounded by the cage, attached to a platform suspended about 20 feet in the air and under that platform is another ring surrounded by 1 million thumbtacks. The brawling inebtween spots is pretty dull and the story twists in the match make no sense but it also has probably about 15 HUGE fucking mental spots. Several of which I would put up as even crazier than Foley's Hell In A Cell bumps.

 

My personal favorite spotfest is the 8 man tag of Super Dragon, Jack Evans, El Generico & Frankie Kazarian vs. Scott Lost, Joey Ryan, Rocky Romero & Davey Richards. Unlike alot of multi-man spotfests this match has a good structure and logic to it and it's probably one of the most fun matches I have ever watched. I highly recommend it.

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Worst is probably from Final Battle 2009 where Teddy Hart and Jack Evans just went out there and didn't do so much as do a match but something you would get on a school playground at breaktime.

 

There are so many great spotfests from PWG in the last two-three years I couldn't pick one. It remains one of my favourite TNA matches to this day: the first ever match on their first PPV between AJ, Ki and Lynn against the Flying Elivises. Sets up a new brand of highflying perfectly, establishing two stars in Styles and Ki as ones to watch for a new wider audience, and is just a really fun couple of minutes in front of a good crowd. Plus the costumes.

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Cage Of Death 5 is a fucking insane spotfest. It has one ring surrounded by the cage, attached to a platform suspended about 20 feet in the air and under that platform is another ring surrounded by 1 million thumbtacks. The brawling inebtween spots is pretty dull and the story twists in the match make no sense but it also has probably about 15 HUGE fucking mental spots. Several of which I would put up as even crazier than Foley's Hell In A Cell bumps.

 

Thank you for putting that bout to the forefront of my mind. I

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I'd argue that most Dragon Gate stuff isn't "spotfest" work at all. They very often have the "sprint finish" which will see things move up a gear and get kinda crazy in the last few minutes, but for the most part there is a hell of a lot more groundwork, submission and body-part working going on than many people give DG credit for.

 

Undercards will often contain a "comedy" match and some straight ground/striking based matches, before the more well-known names start tearing it up in the faster, more important matches.

 

If you have only ever seen guest matches for other promotions or youtube clips you could easily think DG was all spotfest stuff, but it really isn't the case. It's more like traditional Japanese light-heavyweight stuff - but with the last 4 minutes on super-fast-mode!

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I used to love a good, slick spotfest back in the day. It was different then to what it is now, because you were seeing loads of innovation and stuff you'd never seen before. Nowadays everything's been done, anything new invariably involves being unnecessary overelaborate and convoluted, and the novelty's totally worn off. That and just a general changing of tastes through time. Obviously their very nature means they rarely hold up well, but seeing the likes of a Space Cadets vs Rudos De La Galaxia sprint, Rey Jr/Psicosis exhibition, Michinoku Pro v Kaientai tag like at These Days, or even Crazy/Tajiri was pretty impressive at the time.

 

Old AAA is where it's at for the craziest examples imo. From the early days you had the guys who ended up in WCW. Moving on to around 96/97 the above mentioned Space Cadets/Vipers were flying all over the place. WWF fans might remember their nuttiness from their few appearances in the spring of '97. Into the new millenium you had teams like the Barrio Boys and Kumbia Kids v The Black Family for your highflying 'tna' fix. They weren't as innovative as what came before and after them but were still fun to watch. In the latter half of the 00s a new faction appeared on the scene, 'La Real Fuerza Aerea'. This crew took things to a whole other level, having loads of crazy spotfests vs rudos such as the Black Family (know known as La Secta Cibernetico) as well as evil Barrio Boys/Gran Apache, the junior Pirata Morgans and so on.

 

I don't have any links to them which I know renders all this a bit pointless as hardly anyone will know what the hell I'm talking about, but some memorable ones include;

Rey Misterio jr/Super Calo/Winners v Heavy Metal/Psicosis/Picudo (29/1/93, Mexico City)

Venum/Super Nova/Ludxor/Discovery v Maniaco/Histeria/El Mosco/Mach-1 (5/4/97, Acapulco)

Rey Cometa/Super Fly/Laredo Kid/Nemesis v Ozz/Escoria/Cuervo/Espiritu (30/4/96, Guadalajara)

Rey Cometa/Super Fly/Laredo Kid/Nemesis v Ozz/Escoria/Cuervo/Chessman (7/7/96, Zacatecas)

Super Fly, Laredo Kid, Pegasso, Aero Star v Gran Apache/Super Calo/Alan/Decnnis (6/7/07, Oaxaca)

 

CMLL matches have traditionally been more structured and tempered in contrast to the balls out mayhem and overkill of AAA, but there's still been a few over the years that I've enjoyed purely for the spectacle and the spottiness of them. One of the first ones I saw and which I still like was an elimination match around late 1998 - Tajiri/Tony Rivera/Astro Rey Jr/El Oriental v Ultimo Guerrero/Karloff Lagarde Jr/Zumbido/Valencia. Pretty shallow, but great to watch, especially as there were luchadores you never got to see as often. Oriental will go down as one of the forgotten great highflyers.

 

There were also a few standard tv matches that were memorable for their non-stop action around that time, for example, Mr Aguila/Pantera/Olimpico v Ultimo Guerrero/Rey Bucanero/Zumbido from late 98, and Antifaz/Mr Aguila/Tony Rivera v Rey Bucanero/Violencia/Zumbido from around a year later in 1999.

 

More recently, we

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I don't have any links to them which I know renders all this a bit pointless as hardly anyone will know what the hell I'm talking about, but some memorable ones include;

Rey Misterio jr/Super Calo/Winners v Heavy Metal/Psicosis/Picudo (29/1/93, Mexico City)

Venum/Super Nova/Ludxor/Discovery v Maniaco/Histeria/El Mosco/Mach-1 (5/4/97, Acapulco)

Rey Cometa/Super Fly/Laredo Kid/Nemesis v Ozz/Escoria/Cuervo/Espiritu (30/4/96, Guadalajara)

Rey Cometa/Super Fly/Laredo Kid/Nemesis v Ozz/Escoria/Cuervo/Chessman (7/7/96, Zacatecas)

Super Fly, Laredo Kid, Pegasso, Aero Star v Gran Apache/Super Calo/Alan/Decnnis (6/7/07, Oaxaca)

I guess you mean 2006, not 1996, on two of them, but I'll agree with pretty much all you said. Some cracking, red-hot stuff from the early days of AAA, then some 'next-level' flying from the Venum etc vs. Histeria etc series in 1997. I believe I've still got the TV recording of the one you identified above, plus a couple from WWE weekend shows.

 

More recently, it has been the daredevil flyers which have made AAA undercards worth watching.

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I don't have any links to them which I know renders all this a bit pointless as hardly anyone will know what the hell I'm talking about, but some memorable ones include;

Rey Misterio jr/Super Calo/Winners v Heavy Metal/Psicosis/Picudo (29/1/93, Mexico City)

Venum/Super Nova/Ludxor/Discovery v Maniaco/Histeria/El Mosco/Mach-1 (5/4/97, Acapulco)

Rey Cometa/Super Fly/Laredo Kid/Nemesis v Ozz/Escoria/Cuervo/Espiritu (30/4/96, Guadalajara)

Rey Cometa/Super Fly/Laredo Kid/Nemesis v Ozz/Escoria/Cuervo/Chessman (7/7/96, Zacatecas)

Super Fly, Laredo Kid, Pegasso, Aero Star v Gran Apache/Super Calo/Alan/Decnnis (6/7/07, Oaxaca)

I guess you mean 2006, not 1996, on two of them, but I'll agree with pretty much all you said. Some cracking, red-hot stuff from the early days of AAA, then some 'next-level' flying from the Venum etc vs. Histeria etc series in 1997. I believe I've still got the TV recording of the one you identified above, plus a couple from WWE weekend shows.

 

More recently, it has been the daredevil flyers which have made AAA undercards worth watching.

Yeah, that should be 06, i'm always doing that when referring to the 00's. Don't think I ever mistook a horned luchador with a Spanish city before though :blush:

 

Do you have much of the early AAA stuff? I always had the best intentions to eventually get that Barnett 93-95 set but just never got around to it for one reason or another.

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