CWF Mid-Atlantic Worldwide Episode 90

Episode 90

1. Donnie Dollars vs. Percy Davis

PAS: Dollars is coming off a heel turn at BattleCade and goes through this match with kind of an dead eyed stare. Davis talks a lot of smack, but is constantly met by huge shots by Dollars. Davis gets a bit of a run, starting out with a nasty looking discus slap, but mostly gets thrown around the ring. Dollars lands some big shots, so this was a pretty entertaining semi-squash.

ER: I liked this quite a bit, and as I didn't watch all of BattleCade I thought Stutts did a good job of explaining what had happened. His commentary in general was really good here, I liked him saying Dollars was like "a puppy with large paws", how they thought he would grow into his size and strength and he really hadn't, until possibly now. It's an expression I had never heard before and I really liked it, might steal it some time. Dollars did thousand yard stare nicely, and Davis seems like he has a fun bag of tricks: he mixed up punches nicely, to the body and a big Superman punch off the buckles, nice mule kick, that discus slap that Phil mentioned, and got tossed nicely by Dollars. Dollars played distant well and threw his offense out accordingly. Playing distant and then doing a bunch of reversal sequences would have been terrible, instead he played it like his reaction time was slower than normal, but his moves were more violent than normal. Very satisfying match.

2. Xsiris vs. Smith Garrett

PAS: This is the result of Xsiris jumping Garrett at BattleCade and was pretty much an all out brawl which never gets started. Really liked Xsiris here, he trapped Garrett in the ring skirt and gave him these nasty looking shots to the back of the head, he also threw a brutal looking palm strike to the throat. Garrett showed a lot of intensity and fire, although his offense didn't look as crisp, energetic fight which definitely wanted to make me see the blow off.

ER: This was awesome. You so often hear "I don't want a match, I want a fight", and then they proceed to mostly have a normal wrestling match. Well Garrett follows through on his promise and never makes it into the ring with Xsiris. I'd never seen either before but came away super impressed with Xsiris, dude looked like an absolute killer. He starts with these brutal clubbing shots, ties Garrett up in the apron skirt Finlay style, pops him in the face, chokes him with the skirt, but then when Garrett gets free Xsiris takes a nasty ring post bump. Xsiris also takes a mean back bump on the floor off a lariat, and a guy who works stiff and makes his opponents' stuff look good is always going to be an instant favorite of mine. The match never starts and the angle was effective, as I definitely want to see them go at it again. Garrett looked okay, didn't love his offense (against Xsiris or against officials in the ring) but his energy was believable and off the charts, and that is arguably more important to a match/feud like this.

3. Tripp Cassidy vs. Nick Richards

PAS: This was another story heavy match, which is something this fed does really well in the ring and explains really well in commentary. The idea is that Richards is an ex-death match guy and brawler who is trying to reinvent himself as a wrestler, meanwhile Cassidy is yet another in the endless indy children of Raven who is going to try to bring him back. Cassidy was pretty cornball in this, at one point he yells into the camera "I am counterculture." There were some nice shots and bumps in this, but I thought Richards wrestling looked kind of hinky, and his brawling wasn't great either. Felt like something which worked better on paper then in execution.

ER: Well Trip Cassidy gets the distinction of being the first CWF wrestler that I never want to watch again. He's got a beyond dated gimmick and a dated brawling style. If he didn't look so joyless I would think he was just doing a silly parody of something that even a parody of would be dated. But by god it looks like he means it. Richards was fine though. It's weird, as I thought his punches to the face sucked, but whenever he would go at the body those shots would look awesome! Dude needs to stick to a program of "punches to body, elbows to face".  He bumped around nicely for Cassidy even if I don't think Cassidy's offense earned it. I'd be curious to see Richards against someone else. I am not curious to see Cassidy against anyone else.

ER: Huge hats off to whomever assembled the episode-closing highlight video. It was professional as hell and looked awesome. Even though it focused more on moments than angles, it still made me feel like I had been along for some kind of ride. Tons of ambition, tons of giant fat dudes, tons of danger, the video was killer and made me want to just go back and watch everything the promotion has done. So again, hats off to whomever put this together.

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Finlay is Buggered to Damnation

Fit Finlay v. Lord Steven Regal WCW 12/20/97- GREAT

PAS: This was long after their big feud, but you have to love these guys seeing their name on a call sheet for a five minute WCW Pro match where the announcers are going to talk about Larry Zybsko v. Bischoff the whole time and deciding to go out there and have a Finlay v. Regal match. It has all the uncalled for violence this matchup promises, forearms right to the mouth, knees to the temple, elbows to the throat. Not really any near falls, just a pile of violence, Regal gets a flash pin, but that felt more like a pause then an ending, like these two just went into the back and continued fighting all the way to the Orlando Days Inn they were staying at.

ER: I tend to dislike how these two matched up, but on rare occasion they would get inspired and actually work a semi decent match. Seriously though this is one of my absolute favorite Regal performances. Finlay is a constant, one of the most consistent match to match performers in wrestling history. Regal was a little more in the weeds during this part of his career, dealing with personal problems. But he was monstrous here. His palm strikes and shots in the corner were insane! Finlay grabs a chinlock and Regal gets out of it by just palm striking Finlay's nose a couple times, rushing in and catching Finlay under the chin with a dropkick after Finlay gets tossed into the buckles, and throwing beastly uppercuts. You don't normally see Finlay get outstiffed by his opponent, but this match was it.

Fit Finlay v. Bret Hart WCW 7/13/98- GREAT

PAS: Finlay is really great at these short WCW television matches. He sets a relentless punishing pace and basically drags his opponent along with him. This had to be a relatively disheartening time in Bret Hart's career, couldn't blame him for dogging it on a throw away Nitro match, but Finlay is having none of it. When Hart sinks in a chinlock, Finlay starts squirming and countering, when Hart goes into his stock offense, Finlay fires back with a shot or a counter. He hits Hart with shots and makes him fire back with some mustard, and this match gets pretty damn exciting, I especially loved the fight over the sharpshooter, with Finlay grasping for the ropes and Hart ripping him off and really sinking it in.  Really fun discovery, and it makes me want to seek out all of the Finlay TV stuff and see what other ignored gems there are.

ER: Not sure what match Phil was watching as Bret Hart looked totally awesome in this match, and Finlay was the one who used a chinlock, not Hart. Hart definitely did not dog it in this one, he went right after Finlay and hit all sorts of great worked shots, backing him into the corner and landing nice body shots, and a killer leverage choke, just palming Finlay's throat while looking like he was leaning all the way into it. He drags him out and hits a beautiful headbutt and then Finlay starts firing back. These two went right at it the whole time. Finlay is an all time favorite of mine and I couldn't say he looked definitively better than Bret in this. I didn't think Hart came off disheartened in this match, I thought he came off pissed. And yeah, he really did have reason to be pissed. He went from being one of the hottest acts in wrestling in November, to being some guy in the nWo a few months later. And that aggression really came out against Finlay. Fit is awesome as always, stomping hands, hitting two short arm lariats, dropping a great knee, you know, being Finlay. Both guys have no problem running into the other's offense: Finlay makes a Hart backbreaker look crippling, Hart runs jaw first into a corner boot and sells a nasty uppercut better than most wrestlers could ever dream of selling. These two squeeze as much as you possibly can into 4 minutes, and while I've already seen all of the Finlay WCW stuff, now I want to go looking for WCW Bret hidden gems.

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