Finlay Be Chucked Out of the Boozer

Finlay v. Rey Mysterio WWE 8/31/07 - GREAT

PAS: This is for a title shot at Great Khali, and was the second match of a mini tourney. Rey comes into the match with a tweaked back from his match with Batista (man that was a great feud). You know it is going to be awesome if you give Finlay a bullseye to work on. There is an alternative Finlay career where he was an all time great rudo, as he is just an amazing base for all of Rey's offense. Loved Finaly doing a bombs away on Rey's back and bodyslamming him into the ropes to jar the spine. Finish was cool with Finlay slumping back first into the ropes and gets hit with a 619 to the back of the head, such a nasty looking variation, and then Finlay ducks the springboard senton and Rey adjusts mid air for the roll up. Not sure if they ever had a Pro match or something in WCW, but they clearly had great chemistry.

ER: Finlay coming out of retirement and getting a constant push on TV, resulting in weekly awesome matches and the opportunity to see my favorite wrestler live a bunch, was like a stupid genie wish for me. I would get excited just seeing him run out and break up brawls as an agent, and I never thought he would actually ever come back and wrestle full time. And then he did, when he was almost 50, and he somehow looked as great as he'd ever looked. My first genie wish was for all the children of the world to join hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace. Then the Finlay comeback wish. Then I blew the third wish on a turkey sandwich. It was all totally worth it for the zillion Finlay matches we added to the canon. Rey comes out limping from the earlier Batista beating, and Finlay is a shark in that water. Every little thing Finlay did is painful and smart and looks great. You've never seen a standing western lariat that looks this great. The follow through is incredible. Every slam looks skeleton rattling. But he's also super generous. He takes Rey's offense great, does an awesome tumbling bump to the floor, and we get some really smartly utilized Hornswoggle offense as he swipes Rey's foot from under the apron, allowing Finlay to hit his great bombs away to Rey's lower back. I don't ever recall him hitting that move to someone's back, and I love how Finlay never gets trapped into those kind of patterns, never goes through motions. Sure, he'll kick you in the spine and stomp your fingers, but you never know when that's gonna happen. The bodyslams into the ropes looked really reckless, only you never heard people complaining about Finlay being reckless, it's like he just had pinpoint precision on his violent tosses. The finish is really great and I love how unique Finlay was about finding plausible ways to get into position for opponents' signature offense. I don't recall anyone ever stumbling backwards into the ropes to take a 619, and he made it look really natural. Ducking the senton to only get sunset flipped (with Rey getting great high leverage on the pin) was a smart bit of "doing research on your opponent". Just a smartly worked 5 minute match with Finlay looked like the best in the world.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FINLAY