King What Are You Doing, You're Driving Me to Ruin

Jerry Lawler vs. The Barbarian TNT 5/20/06 - FUN

ER: Woof. This was the match I assumed both Kamala matches would be. Barbarian could not have been more listless, just sleepwalking through this. The match starts with a nerve hold, and for 8 minutes we get a variety of Barbarian "body work", which was just him kind of holding onto a part of Lawler. Chinlock, nerve hold, abdominal stretch, you name it. There are ways to make holds compelling. Lawler is good at looking like he's not in a rest hold. Barbarian just sat there and held onto him. He didn't even look gassed, just super bored. Lawler gets to throw his great kneeling punches to a downed opponent, and Lawler leans into the Kick of Fear (and sells his face great afterwards), but Barbarian really only takes one bump in the match and calling it a bump is generous. Match ends awful, with Barbarian's morbidly obese second Mr. Terrific hitting one of the weakest one arm swing kendo stick shots you've ever seen, then Barbarian doing that goofy spot where he swings a chair, it bounces off the ropes and he hits himself (which nobody ever makes look any good), and then a Lawler roll-up. Just a real disappointment all around, especially now that I've seen what other wild indy brawls Lawler has been involved in the last decade.

PAS: I liked this slightly more then Eric did. The rest hold stuff and finish was pretty bad, but at least the match was pretty stiff. Barbarian's opening punch looked great as did Lawler's comeback. Still this is an on paper awesome looking match, Lawler really worked some loads in the indies in the 2000s and was almost always able to do something more. Really an issue of poor structure. I expected more from Barbie for sure. Still the potato parts of this get it up to the FUN threshold, although just barely.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING