Brian Kendrick is So Messed Up He Wants You Here

Brian Kendrick/Paul London vs. The Young Lions (Lucky Kid/Tarkan Aslan) (DWA 4/5/14) - FUN

ER: What a confounding match; one which, while I was watching, had a feeling would completely break Phil. The next day when I told him about it, Phil sure enough proclaimed that he had watched enough professional wrestling in his life, and that he was done. His first act as a human who doesn't watch pro wrestling will be to start watching Ray Donovan, where he can enjoy modern performances by great old guys like James Woods, Stacy Keach, Dabney Coleman, and Elliott Gould, and not have to listen to me tell him about matches that he would hate. Because this was a confounding match. The good was really great. The bad was the exact kind of thing I hate in wrestling. This was in Germany at what appeared to be a tiny hunting lodge. The building was small, and there couldn't have been many people in attendance. The match begins with them playing musical chairs for 5 minutes. WAIT NO KEEP READINGGG!!! All four men played musical chairs, Aqua's Barbie Girl played (and stopped, intermittently, per the rules), and it was actually 5 minutes. Paul London made a lot of really lame gay jokes ("I like girls dude!" as the music stopped and Aslan sat on his lap), and they completed the musical chairs, the match actually started.

And it didn't take too long to get really good. Paul London, especially, was awesome. He matched up with Lucky Kid, who appeared to be basically working like 2007 Brian Kendrick or Paul London, complete with overly baggy vinyl shorts. They both did some shoot shoulderblocks with London challenging to hit him off the ropes as hard as possible, naturally building to London hitting a dropkick. Their mat work was fast and landed hard, especially a great go behind waistlock takedown from London. The clubs to the back looked good, and Kendrick/London were great at cutting off the ring. The musical chairs bit was becoming a distant memory, something I could easily tell people "Just start the video at the 5:00 mark".  And then, out of nowhere, the match reverted to comedy, and stayed that way until the end, 7 minutes later. It's like they had all planned on working a normal match until the got a signal, and once that signal hit, the actual match was over. All four men got into the ring, stood in a circle, and just took turns chopping each other. For 5 minutes. Everybody just chopped the person to their right. For 5 minutes. Then the ref got involved, clotheslined London and Kendrick, everybody involved collapsed into a pile, more gay jokes happened, and then the match ended with a sunset flip. That 7 minutes in the middle was so much fun and was really going to a great place. And then they had to go and make Phil finally quit professional wrestling for good.

Brian Kendrick vs. TJ Perkins (WWE Raw 1/2/17) - SKIPPABLE

ER: Alright, bringing some fresh match-ups into the new year! Been waiting for these two to lock horns for awhile now. Wait AND it's under 3 minutes long?? Yeah you don't need this. Even in a total throwaway match Kendrick drops in a few cool moments, especially his weirdo little leap through the ropes to send TJ recoiling back into the ring. The sliced bread reversal was fine and there was nothing terrible about it, it's just that the whole thing was unnecessary.

Brian Kendrick vs. Cedric Alexander (WWE Raw 1/16/17) - SKIPPABLE

ER: These short TV matches have been some pretty uninspiring stuff, and I'm someone who likes short TV matches. This mostly felt like a Cedric showcase, which is a shame as he wasn't on his A game. He does this ugly split legged moonsault to the floor that looked like he was trying it for the first time on a lark, sloppily crashing knees first into Kendrick's head. That was the worst offender as none of his stuff looked very good. Match picks up when Cedric goes for the lumbar check and Kendrick rakes his eyes and yanks at his nose to drop down into the bully choke and I'm digging it...but then Alicia Fox runs out to continue the confusing and poorly acted love triangle plot, made slightly more bearable as I believe Kendrick calls her "toots". We get one more cool bully choke finish tease, but Cedric hits the lumbar check fairly effortlessly after that. Kendrick takes it really nasty, less spring than other guys but his landing looks more brutal, like parts of his body all landed at different times. Nice Kendrick performance, poor Cedric performance, lame angle continuation.

COMPLETE & ACCURATE MODERN BRIAN KENDRICK