The King Got Kind of Lost, Lost in Giving

Jerry Lawler vs. Sid Vicious NEW 8/25/07 - FUN

ER: Frustrating match as Lawler turns in an epic performance but Sid works the match at half speed. I'm always a sucker for matches where the mean age of the participants is over 50, but damn if Sid had hustled things up a little bit this could have been great. "Methodical" is how announcers politely refer to the pace Sid worked this match, and because of that it felt like it never really got going. If you cut out all of the Sid downtime this match instantly becomes awesome, and that's including Sid's weird punches (alternating between politely knocking on a door with your knuckles, and pounding on a door with the side of your fist). So, about that Sid downtime. It basically forces a match restart every 90 seconds, completely grinding any momentum to a halt. There would be a lock up exchange, Lawler would sneak in a punch, and then Sid would lean on the ropes for 20 seconds, staring. There was a great exchange where Lawler snuck out of a lock up in the corner, started wailing on Sid and then started stomping the life out of him, getting the crowd completely fired up. So Sid rolls to the floor, walks around for awhile,  then eventually rolls back in and we start all over again. At one point Sid also locked on a looooong d'arce choke that looked more like when my cat is sleepy but wants his mouse, so he lies on his back stretching his arms above his head to grab for it. But hot damn did Lawler look great in this with cool corner stomps I've never really seen him do and built to a super high dropkick to knock Sid off his feet for the first time. He also did some nice callback stuff including hitting a bodyslam to a huge pop, that he had earlier attempted and failed at. He also threw some of the best punches I've ever seen him throw (I'm sure you know the ground that covers), lobbing them right at Sid's nose. I think Sid was trying to sell them with intense seething anger, but he came off as more lethargic than intense.

PAS: Yeah it was too bad such a great Lawler performance was wasted on such a dogshit Sid performance, it feels like Lawler would have a better match with an enthusiastic ex-Huskies center. I imagine if it was Lawler v. Haseem Thabeet it would have had more heat and Thabeet might have tried. Nothing Sid did suggested he was a trained wrestler and he looked like he couldn't give a shit. I did love Lawler though, the set up to the big dropkick and the big bodyslam were perfect, and his offense and selling were great looking, but man Sid, fuck that dude.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE KING