SLL on Angle v Joe IRON MAN

Samoa Joe vs. Kurt Angle
TNA - 1/14/2007 - Orlando, FL
30-Minute Iron Man Match
for the #1 Contendership to the NWA World Heavyweight Title

I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to review this. Actually, I know WHY I reviewed this. I wrote something shortly before this happened about how I felt this really had the potential to be one of the all-time terrible matches, and how I kinda felt like I should watch it just because it was the kind of landmark moment in shitty wrestling that I didn't want to miss out on. I mean, the first match they had was supposedly so wretched that acclaimed wrestling scholar Kevin Cook saw it and spent the next few weeks declaring that pro wrestling was dead. That match went 15 minutes, and was supposed to go longer, but noted drug-free, perfectly healthy person Kurt Angle had to cut it short to avoid dying mid-ring. Add in the fact that Samoa Joe was going into this match with a bad wheel, and that this was a 30-minute match in a promotion booked by Vince Russo, and there was no way it could be anything less than dreadful. I mean, seriously, how does Vince fucking Russo go about booking a 30-minute Iron Man match? People don't want to see that for five minutes, nevermind thirty. 30-minute Iron Man match built as a dream match between two great workers seems like the antithesis of Russo booking. Doesn't make it good, but it does make it really out of the ordinary for Russo. I could maybe see him doing this as his version of the 30-minute Brian Pillman vs. Johnny B. Badd match, only instead of aiming it to ridicule a single wrestler, he was aiming it to ridicule his entire profession. And really, on the surface, he couldn't have picked a better match to do it with. The one upside it does provide is creating this meta-angle in my head of Samoa Joe being tasked with saving professional wrestling from the wily scheming of Vince Russo, which is pretty much the ultimate in smark-friendly angles, and is really more compelling to me than the "look at these guys have great workrate" plot the match actually had.

In the end, I never did see the match until just before writing this. Kevin Cook didn't have another e-heart attack, and no one really seemed to be heaping any strong praise or hate upon it, so I just let it go. Still, I said some stuff about the match, and I'm a guy who makes a lot of snide remarks about TNA and Kurt Angle while generally avoiding both like the plague, and people tend to like my stuff better when I write about things I hate instead of things I like, so I figured I may as well review it.

So I know WHY I did this. What I don't know is why the part of my brain that tells me not to waste my life watching awful wrestling matches didn't intervene before I could do it. Not sure why that little voice in my head that says, "Steve, you're doing two TNA reviews in a row? Wouldn't you rather watch some good wrestling?" didn't step in and stop me from watching this. And while I could be sullen and remorseful over this....well, actually, I am. But what are you gonna do?

So, yeah, the match. One of the hallmarks of Russo booking - specifically Russo booking anywhere but Attitude-Era WWF - is his constant need to remind viewers about how much less awesome what you're watching is than Attitude-Era WWF. Post-WWF Russo booking is all about taking existing promotions with existing characters and storylines and resetting them to late-90's WWF, otherwise he can't be "creative". Post-WWF Russo booking is all about telling viewers that the promotion stinks, but the good news is that it's becoming more like Attitude-Era WWF, so it will become good. So when Russo takes the until-just-recently dominant Samoa Joe and books him as the young, unproven underdog trying to unseat the dominant A-List wrestler who just got here from a bigger, more important promotion who rightly felt they didn't need him around, it's kind of surprising and not very surprising to me at the same time. On the surface, this is pretty much Russo's MO, but Kurt Angle wasn't even brought up to the WWF until a month after Russo left. Russo pushing Angle as better than TNA isn't really a Russo move in the strictest sense of the term. Angle's prime came in the time after Russo left the WWF and their profits went up while he proceeded to tank WCW. It's a period that Russo doesn't just like to forget, but actually outright denies the existence of. Now he's pushing one of it's big names as being bigger than the promotion he's booking. On the surface, that's an unlikely move from Russo. But it's not an isolated incident. Tom's written before about how the build-up to Lethal Lockdown mirrored the build-up to the Elimination Chamber match at New Year's Revolution '05. Maybe Russo pushing Angle as above TNA marks a shift in his booking. I've criticized Russo as being a booker who, like many others, found one successful thing and rested on it for the rest of his career. Maybe this is him moving in a new direction. Russo likes to criticize other bookers for lacking "creativity". He also likes to deny the existence of the WWF's continued boom after he left. Bringing in Angle and pushing him as a big star when his only previous big league experience never happened according to the booker means that Russo must be the one who made him a star. It's kind of ingenious in a really pointless, stupid way.

They don't just book Angle's character as dominant in terms of persona and legacy, he's dominant in the ring, too. Really, I'm not sure he was ever this dominant in the WWE outside of the Angle Challenge series. Kurt was always booked as guy with a rep for greatness who got "surprisingly" one-upped by his opponents. Olympic gold medalist who "surprisingly" would lose matwork exchanges with lesser opponents. Every single time. Kurt was booked as a great wrestler in much the same way Abyss is booked as a monster: by having the announcers say it over and over again, while everything Angle himself does shows the exact opposite. But here he's utterly dominating Joe for much of the match. Samoa Joe catches some shit for being booked as a tough badass while being a doughy guy with highlights, but he's bigger than Angle, he's successfully established himself as a badass tough guy within his context, he doesn't have highlights here, and fat guys have always been tough in wrestling. Point being that to book a creepy, misshapen, tiny guy who looks to be moments from a fatal heart attack at all times to be dominant over Samoa Joe is really screwy. I mean, at least Mike Graham was the promoter's kid. What excuse does Kurt have?

It's really rare that I enjoy watching the TNA crowd during a match. Enough has been written by myself and others about how irritating they are that I don't need to remind you. And I don't need to write more about how irritating dueling chants can be. I mean, even Rob Naylor hates them now. Rob Naylor! Think about that. But this was the first time I saw dueling "_____ Sucks!" chants. Really got the sense that this wasn't just TNA fans doing masturbatory "look at us enjoying wrestling" chants. The TNA fans, whether doing "Let's Go _____!" or "____ Sucks!" seemed like they actually had something to say, and this was the only way they knew how to say it. I felt there was actually a divide in the crowd between guys who liked Samoa Joe and felt Kurt Angle was fucking up their good time, and guys who liked Kurt Angle and felt that his greatness exposed Samoa Joe as a fraud. This really would've been a hell of a match to have a riot break out in the middle of. Tubby guys and scrawny guys awkwardly flailing away at each other. Bags of Funyuns and whole fried turkey legs flying all over the place. That would've shown Russo what the fans wanted.

Incidentally, if you're wondering what's actually happening in the match, you're wasting your time. When I first wrote about this match, I was hoping for a train wreck. I was hoping for Kurt dropping dead in the first five minutes, and Joe still having to drop 20-or-so falls to him before Russo runs out and shoot stabs him to death while Tenay shouts that this isn't in the script. Instead, it's just kind of boring. Samoa Joe tries, God bless him. He sells enough to make Kurt's strikes look convincing, and kind of makes me buy the tiny crippled dude owning him for most of the match. But this is a workrate dream match that's structured like Cena/Khali, but way less emotionally compelling and four times as long. Joe may or may not be capable of playing John Cena's role effectively, but The Great Khali is far, far better at being The Great Khali than Kurt Angle is. Joe is a guy typically booked as dominant, but I buy that he could be effectively booked as an underdog. I don't buy the comedy upper midcarder turned crippled midget as dominant monster. And at this point, Angle is really only slightly more mobile than Khali is. Phantom Lord bitched about Khali not being mobile enough to properly sell Cena's punches. Khali didn't do much more than flinch for Cena's punches, but Angle doesn't do much more than that here for Joe. And at least Khali has gigantism to blame for his inability to sell punches normally. Kurt's excuse is a series of neck problems he's too stupid to let heal and a severe drug problem. Do people still get on Angle's jock for being a great worker? If they do, I assume they're the same people bitching about Khali. I'm not about to declare Khali a superworker or anything, but at this point, I'm having a hard time arguing that he's a lesser worker than Angle. They're bafflingly working the same role in their matches, they're both crippled, they're both largely immobile, they're both incoherent on the mic, and they both have two matches they can work, one of which is a squash. The difference is that The Great Khali is a massive freak of nature, and actually fits his role, and seems aware of all of these things, and knows how to work within that. Kurt Angle is the Hollys' old "super heavyweight" gimmick being played straight, only without the crisp athleticism of Bob or the credible look of Crash.

Joe dives out of the ring for an elbow suicida and Kurt sells it by stepping back a little bit and letting Joe fall on his face. Did Kurt just watch a lot of Mike Graham matches and decide that this guy knew how to work? "Yeah, dives outside the ring aren't credible. If I step aside and let him faceplant before dominating the vastly more physically imposing guy with my shitty looking punches, that'll help people buy into the legitimacy of the match." Angle scores back-to-back submissions with the Ankle Lock. Joe doesn't get to reverse out of either of them even once. What a pussy. He's working as lightly against Angle as Cena would a few months later with Khali. HE'S PERFECTLY OKAY, FOLKS! Angle does a really neat sliding tackle into Joe's leg at one point, so he's got that going for him. It takes a good 20 minutes, but eventually, this becomes kinda fun. I think these two might have a better, shorter match in them, though I assume it wasn't either of the two shorter matches they actually had. But Joe sells his injured leg really well, and Angle has enough stuff to build a match around if he's not utterly dominating the whole thing for 20 minutes. But a long Angle match really exposes how bad he is. For a guy popular among moves marks, Angle sure doesn't seem to have a much deeper offense than Khali. He doesn't seem to execute it much better, either.

Kurt Angle goes up 3-2 and time expires while Joe has Angle in the Ankle Lock. God, they're not even working in the WWE, and Kurt still has to work WWE workrate-style matches? Joe got Angle to tap once in this match to the Rear Naked Choke, but as time runs out, he instead he goes for the shopworn WWE Workrate "wrestler attempts his opponent's finisher" spot. Why? There's 30 seconds left. Kurt's not going to tap to a lesser Ankle Lock in 30 seconds. Kurt can't even make people tap to his own Ankle Lock in 30 seconds. He has to let Hardcore Holly reverse it 80 times before he can get the tap. But Kurt has two matches that he can do, and the other is a two-minute squash. Kurt can't wrestle Joe's match. I thought going into this that he could meet Joe half-way with his usual "Clash of the Titans" type "epic" match, but apparently he's too frail to go toe to toe with him. So Kurt wrestles his WWE workrate match, but gives up almost nothing, bumps as little as possible, sells as little as possible, and leaves Joe to work for two. So it's Cena/Khali booked as a 30-minute WWE Workrate style match. One guy can definitely go, one guy definitely can't, they're booked as workrate equals, and it brings the better guy down to the other's level, leaving you not particularly psyched up to see either of them again. I was predicting "Hogan and Savage vs. The Alliance to End Hulkamania"-level badness here, and it really wasn't nearly that bad, but it may have been more depressing. Next time I'll listen to the voice in my head and review something I like.