100 Matches You Really Should See...

[ShortOrderCook]

#69 John Cena vs The Undertaker - WWE, Smackdown, 24/6/04

 

 

 

WATCH IT HERE

 

 

 

WHY SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

 

 

 

The night John Cena proved he was a top guy, long before being crowned as one. Undertaker was working as a semi-heel for a couple of weeks (because he was under the 'control' of Paul Heyman), on this night, Cena stood up to him, and put in a courageous performance that got the majority of the crowd on his side for the match. Not many people can say they've done against 'Taker that in the 9 years since.

 

 

WHAT DO I THINK OF IT?

 

Another fine choice from Cleetus. This is an interesting one to look back on and watch today with Cena where he is today and with the infamous crowd reactions he's received throughout his run on top. This match may well have done him favour in getting that very push to the top the following year. Undertaker is in tremendous form here and the match provides an interesting dynamic with 'Taker playing to the heel side of things. Watching this can't help but make you wonder what a match between them now on the appropriate stage would bring.

[air_raid]

Very happy with that selection, I remember the match well. It was one of my favourites in the year between Mania XX and XXI.

 

For me, it was good to see Cena back in the ring with a guy on Undertaker's level. He had been red-hot at the time of Survivor Series in mid-turn, he'd already worked Lesnar, Taker and Angle in increasingly high-profile matches on PPV and looked great in the respect/rivalry matches with Benoit as each jockeyed for a shot at Brock's title, he looked the part in the top contenders match at No Way Out, and I thought that the fans were ready to embrace him as a main eventer already. The US title felt an unnecessary and LENGTHY detour away from actual superstardom and I felt the runs with weaker guys, the endless run with Booker T and the nonsense with Carlito and Jesus (?) were increasingly contrived and boring ways of keeping Cena busy, while I found myself boring of him, because it felt like inconsequential filler. It didn't help his cause when his eventual ascension to the top came at the expense of, for me, the weakest WWE Champion to date and in incredibly predictable fashion in a short, disappointing match.

 

However, on this night, while still getting positive responses from the crowd, Cena was pulled off the backburner and placed into the spotlight, cheered against a man they were perceiving as wussing out and forgetting his principles. Cena was great here at making us see that he was tough and had the "never give up" attitude without the need for WWE to ram it down our throats, as they would come to. Very enjoyable match.

[Accident Prone]

#92Team Ultraviolence (John Zandig, Lobo, Ian Knoxx, Wifebeater, Nick Gage, and New Jack) vs Hi-V (The Messiah, Nate Hatred, The Backseat Boyz, Adam Flash, and B-Boy)

 

CZW CAGE OF DEATH 5, 13/12/03

 

 

WATCH HIGHLIGHTS OF IT

 

 

 

WHY ON EARTH SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

 

lostprophet_y2j did and this is why;

 

I always enjoy CZW's Cage of Death main events, partly because of the crazy ring/cage set-ups. This had 2 rings. 1 with a 'million' thumbtacks and 1 surrounded by a cage filled with weapons. The ringside was covered in tables and the competitors entered Royal Rumble-like every 90 seconds but on a suspended scaffold bridge that was above the thumbtack ring. It sounds as crazy as it was.

 

WHAT DO I THINK OF IT?

 

Morbid curiosity would be the reason to check it out then I guess. Unfortunately (or maybe not so), seem to be unable to find a link to the full match. But check out highlights of it from the link above and if you like what you see, seek out means of acquiring the full match. Or, if anyone has or can find a link and wants to provide it, then muchas gracias. This isn't my bag at all, but it's interesting to see nonetheless, purely for just how ridiculous some of the shit is that CZW gets up to. This isn't wrestling though by the looks of things, just stupid, crazy, reckless stunts - one after the other. I'd be interested to hear a different viewpoint from someone who does enjoy CZW, if they feel that isn't all there is to it.

 

 

Although i hate replying to old posts, i was having a peruse through this thread and had to bring something up in regards to this match.

 

Firstly, a bit of background; i was a MASSIVE CZW fan back in their heyday. And by that i mean 2002-2005. They were absolutely untouchable. To my teenage eyes, CZW were the absolute best. And, to this day, i still believe that period of time to be one of the greatest indie runs in history, second only to PWG's current since-2009 run.

 

CZW during 2002-2005 was THE place to be for indy wrestling. A huge chunk of current indy darlings/NXT hopefuls got their first shots at stardom through CZW and it was fucking glorious.

 

Strong style, lucha, hardcore, high flying, technical, comedy...all under one roof with (mostly) coherent storylines and red hot crowds. Just because they hold a deathmatch tournament ONCE A YEAR, suddenly the view of CZW is they are 'no talent hacks' or 'backyarders'?

 

Fuck that. El Generico (Sami Zayn), Chris Hero (Kassious Ohno), Jon Moxley (Dean Ambrose), Roderick Strong, Sami Calihan (now signed with WWE), Adam Cole, Kevin Steen, Eddie Kingston...all of them huge stars either on the indy circuit, in NXT or in WWE, all plyed and perfected their craft within CZW. And that's just scratching the surface. Our own Jody Fleisch and Jonny Storm cemented themselves as worldwide stars after their brilliant showing at CZW's 2002 edition of Best Of The Best. CZW also gave MASSIVE exposure to CHIKARA and PWG, as well as shining a huge spotlight on other companies like IWS and IWA-MS. Just pure and utter class.

 

Sure, they've been pretty dire for the past 6 years or so; bad booking does that to a company. But for four years, CZW was the best thing since sliced fucking bread. It shat on everything that everyone else was doing. I've never seen an indy company produce so many stars, have faith in so many guys looking for a break and produce so many great moments in such a short period of time.

 

Anyway, onto the match itself. Cage Of Death 5 from 2003. I too couldn't find the whole match anywhere which is a damn shame as it needs to be seen to be really appreciated. Sure, you can watch a clip show and think whatever of it, but it doesn't convey the story and emotion of the match. This wasn't some swiftly thrown together spot fest. It is the culmination of a year's worth of storylines...and also a massive a spotfest, because y'know, its SEEEEEZEEEEEFUUUCCCKKIINNNDUUBBBYYAAAA.

 

You had two teams who had been feuding practically all year. Each wrestler had their opposing enemy on the opposite team. It was built up incredibly.

 

Nate Hatred and Nick Gage were a tag team called The H8 Club, who bulldozed through everyone and dominated the tag scene. Hatred had turned on Gage to join the High-V, a group of rebels led by Mr.Thumbs Up himself, Messiah. This team of angry blokes (including CZW mainstays Adam Flash, Trent Acid and Johnny Kashmere and SoCal's B-Boy) ran roughshot on CZW for months, trying to take control of the company from the owner, resident mental case and soon-to-be-wrestling-meme, John Zandig. Through a series of battles and attacks, Zandig enlisted a team of his own who all had a personal grudge against the High-V. His team consisted of CZW badass The Wifebeater, returning legend Lobo, the hungry youngster Ian Knoxx, Nick Gage and a mystery partner. And that's just the simplified version of the storyline; the full, padded-out version included an IWA-MS invasion, an angle in which Zandig is hung by his own skin, twists, turns and swerves and plenty of multi-man brawls. Absolute fucking greatness.

 

. Also at the time, CZW were the absolute masters at the build up vids. Real top notch quality, especially for an indie in 2003. Now tell me that you don't wanna see these guys go turbo. That last part of the vid where the Gladiator soundtrack kicks in...awesome.

 

So the match had rhyme and reason to happen. Two teams of guys who can't stand each other and have battled in increasing intense wars for ages? Settle it for good then at the company's biggest show of the year, Cage Of Death. Chuck in two rings for that added WarGames factor, a factory of thumbtacks for the UltraViolent factor, tons of tables surrounding the ring in the name of Cage Of Death tradition and, not only that, but a fuck off scaffold that connects the whole thing up. I was quivering at the knees. This was truly the match beyond for a new era.

 

Contested under staggered entrances, the only way to eliminate an team member was to send him to the arena floor. You knew that shit was about to go down.

 

Then the match began. I'm not gonna go through a full move-by-move analysis (stuff like that is better suited to more talented members of the forum) but by God this was the perfect end to the feud. Everything came to a head and everything meant something. Team Zandig's mystery partner turned out to be New Jack (!!!) who then promptly turned on the CZW owner to join the Hi-V. Now with the teams at 7-5, Messiah had pulled one last trick on Zandig. At the biggest show of the year, no less. Zandig was quickly (and surprisingly unceremoniously) eliminated via the cage door and then promptly took out of the match completely by a New Jack cage dive. It was up to the rest of Team Zandig to overcome these massive odds and gain victory for CZW. And boy did the rest of the match ride out in style, as you can tell from the highlights. There were more twists and turns chucked in, the heat was off the charts and everybody bust their ass to put on the match of a lifetime. The evening's previous three matches had been belters in their own right, so this had a lot to live up to.

 

I'll leave it at that, as i truly believe i cannot do the match itself justice with mere words. I just hope i provided enough backstory and info to defend the match against it's critics.

[ShortOrderCook]

Please don't hate replying to old posts with regard this thread - that goes for everyone. This is a thread I'd hope exactly that would happen. I don't expect everybody to watch and discuss matches when I post them and I'm posting very sporadically so I hope this thread gets dipped into every so often to check one or some of the matches out. That's kind of the point.

 

And your post about that match is precisely the sort of passionate posting I hoped the thread could bring. It is a shame I or others couldn't view the full match (although good in that it inspired your post) and that I've had the same issue with other CZW matches offered up, as it will only really come across one way through a highlights vid.

[Accident Prone]

CZW has, rather unfortunately, gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to their reputation. Having a legion of fans who make sloppily done highlight videos to the sound of some nu-metal blandness doesn't really do them any favors. Also, the booking of the promotion since the end of 2005 has done nothing but add to that unwanted aura of awful. Its such a damn shame. I'm going to dig deep tonight in the bowls of Tube sights to find some classic 'dub action to add to this topic (if there is available room, that is).

[Vamp]

And your post about that match is precisely the sort of passionate posting I hoped the thread could bring. It is a shame I or others couldn't view the full match (although good in that it inspired your post) and that I've had the same issue with other CZW matches offered up, as it will only really come across one way through a highlights vid.

 

From my experiance CZW tends to come across better in highlights than it does in its full form. The matches that I saw tended to have very little flow or structure, and the highlights of the cool stunt tended to make it look more excitign than the matches themselves. They had a Best of the BEst hype video where you thought "holy shit these guys are awesome" and then when watching some of it I was a bit disappointed with it all.

 

They did at one stage have a certain aura in such videos though. I dunno what it was though.

[Accident Prone]

It depends on what era you were viewing. I've been shown highlight packages of some of the more recent events and, in an attempt to get back into the CZW grooves, watched a couple of shows. And it was all very...eh. A very dry crowd, a supply of uninteresting characters, horrible pacing, spots pulled off for no reason or meaning...i just couldn't get into it.

 

There is one match that happened in 2004 at CZW's Overdrive, and i swear it was some of the most picture perfect storytelling i have ever seen and i was engrossed all the way through it. A very simple concept too; a 6 man tag where each member of the team had a direct rival in the opposing team. The guys had been feuding since the aforementioned Cage Of Death 5 event so this was a blow-off of sorts to get each guy into something new the next month. Also, it was 2/3 tables match because...well...CZW. Thats why.

 

Anyway, my point is (instead of gushing over how well booked the promotion was back then) you can find any old highlight video of this match and just see the major high spots, but you wouldn't see the over arching story of the whole thing, what came before it and how it affected the future. The highlight videos (and the matches off that) that casual fans see do nothing but to put a brown smear over the CZW name. Well, at least over it's current state, which in turn effects in past. I'm struggling to make an actual point here. I'm going to blame the power of nostalgia and move on.

 

Starting to wish i didn't get rid of my old SMV-UK VHS copies of these events. Where's David Pick when you really need him?

[ShortOrderCook]

... action to add to this topic (if there is available room, that is).

 

Certainly. I've had some matches suggested since starting the thread and some matches seem to have sparked some memory of other matches for some posters, so I definitely welcome that, as there's plenty i'm happy to sacrifice from the initial batch that are probably pretty widely seen for the more obscure and also plenty I can only find highlights for.

 

 

I did actually give CZW a bit of a go when TWC was around to be honest, didn't take to it much. I think Nick Gage in particular really put me off.

[Maverick]

I gave it a chance years ago on TWC aswell, I remember actually quite enjoying it in a ECW lite kind of way (lazy comparison I know), much more so than the robotic ROH that was on around the same time, I remember seeing a Daniel Bryan match and thinking look at the state of that short arse, shows what I know. My abiding memories of CZW on TWC were a really fun cage match Zandig had with someone for the ownership of the company and the awesome theme music for the show

[bAzTNM#1]

My memory of CZW on TWC was Zandig getting hung up on those meathooks. Wasn't it on one of those "Sunday Supershows" that they used to run? Did that really happen there? Herbie? Thanks!

[Tommy!]

I'll ask now, is there a way, or some one out there who may be willing to, drop the forthcoming list on to a set of disc's?

 

Did any one put forth to make this happen?

[SiMania]

Is this project continuing?

[ShortOrderCook]

#68 Rick Rude vs Masahiro Chono - NJPW, G1 Climax, 08/12/92

 

 

 

WATCH IT HERE

 

 

 

 

WHY SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

 

TheCumDoctor tells you why;

 

Rick Rude is one of the most underrated wrestlers ever and Chono was always great. I actually didn't like watching Rude in the G1 stuff that I watched so I was worried about this one, but he delivered in spades. Rude was intense as fuck here, and I think the crowd heat helps too. This was definitely a "where did THAT come from?!" match.

 

In looking up stuff on this match I found another forum discussing this particular match too, so here's a couple of reasons to watch it from them too:

 

This was without a doubt Rick Rude's finest hour. In a career filled with some great performances, in a year that was easily his best, this stands out above all of them. Now in terms of match quality, the Steamboat match is comparable to this, but as an individual Rude performance, this is a master's class. Selling at just the right times, setting up Chono offense, really well-timed kickouts, cutting a pretty intense pace from the beginning and putting Chono over strong. Chono shines here too, and this is one of his best matches. But this may be the best performance of Rude's life.

 

Rude with his usual pre-match schtick that seems to go over well, though he was apparently compelled to include a a pretty derogatory term that hopefully the live crowd didn't pick up on. We get both national anthems to set the stage for the tourney's climax. Rude went out of his way to bump really well for Chono throughout the match to put him over as strongly as possible. Loved him taking Flair's face first bump after eating a ton of offense. Things slow down a bit which was probably necessary given how long they were going. I actually thought Rude could've sold quite a bit more here, as Chono spent a lot of time on his knee and arm, and Rude was right back with a jumping piledriver and top rope dropkick showing no ill effects. The crowd really got into things after they traded superplexes, before kicked out of a sleeper like Austin/Hart for a near fall.

 

After Rude used the top rope kneedrop as a finisher throughout the tourney, Chono kickd out to a massive pop. By the time we get to the STF spot that followed, it even looks like Watts & Dusty are marking out. Great finish and post-match celebration as well. No question this was a great match but it didn't rise to MOTYC level for me, even for Rude, as I preferred the Steamboat Iron Man match.

 

What a fucking crowd this is. Seeing Americans cut loose in Japan and showing off all the shit they know but usually keep in the holster in North America is great, but Americans like Savage and Rude who can take their American-tailored shtick and bring it over to a foreign audience who pops for different stuff, and still get over doing it, sometimes comes off as even more impressive. Rude does the full mic spot and this crowd fucking hates him to a degree incredibly rare for a Japanese audience--they'll boo tactics but not wrestlers (except Taue and Fuyuki), but here they really want to see this guy get his ass kicked. Also the play-by-play man cracks me up on multiple occasions through this--I love that he completely loses his shit for some reason during the pre-match spiel, I love his "GRRRINND-OH!" call for Rude's hip swivel, and I love whatever the fuck he said when Chono did the Bret Hart sleeper counter.

 

So not only does Rude come off like Rude, but he's clearly leading the match:

 

- Pinballing for rapidfire clotheslines: check.

- Pratfall sell: check.

- Babyface does Rude's own hip swivel: check.

- Camel clutch with butt drops: check.

- Tombstone reversal: check.

 

All this was missing was Chono doing atomic drops and Rude trying to hip swivel and clutching something in pain. This is deliberately paced but even during Rude's long chinlock they never lose the crowd--probably the second-best crowd of the year behind the All-Asia tag. Chono gets chants whenever he's on the defensive, and when he comes back they actually do an "S-T-F" chant. And the crowd pop for the victory is awesome as well. As an overall match I don't think this is quite as good as the Ironman, and as a Rude match I think SummerSlam '89 is a bit tighter with a more compelling personal issue. But this is a worthy follow-up to the previous year's G-1 final and in the running for New Japan heavyweight MOTY.

 

 

 

WHAT DO I THINK OF IT?

 

Yeah, enjoyable watch this. These matches pitting the big Jap names against massive North American stars are always really interesting. The crowd is hot as shit for this and they are absolutely lapping up the last 10-15 minutes of this one (it's a fairly long match) which is full of some really awesome near falls. Indeed, the near falls start with plenty of the match left to go but are all really convincing and only sink the crowd deeper into the match, they've got them in the palm of their hand here and when Chono applies his STF they really lose their shit.

[ShortOrderCook]

#67 Brothers Of Destruction vs. KaiEnTai - WWF, Sunday Night Heat, 11/02/01

 

 

WATCH IT ON ONE OF THE LINKS HERE

 

 

 

WHY SHOULD YOU WATCH IT?

 

 

It's destruction, pure and simple. Joyous. Undertaker was, is and will always be my favourite.

 

Says HarmonicGenerator

 

 

WHAT DO I THINK OF IT?

 

Just a totally fun squash. KaiEnTai in their subtitled gimmick, from the glory days of Heat when it was just tremendous every week. Few do destruction better than Undertaker and Kane and Taka and Funaki are the absolute perfect fodder for that destruction.

[Daaaaaad!]

The above was part of the first wrestling show I'd ever watched (which is why my sig is the HeAT sign from 2001) and it's a glorious, glorious squash.