WXW Gary Albright Memorial Show 4/19/00

Full Show


Too Cold Scorpio/Sugaa vs. Tommy Suede/Mark the Body

ER: This wasn't great, but had its moments. The American Hunk Society were both really green, and it would have been cool to take advantage of Scorpio's presence and giving him a singles match against Sugaa or one of the other pros on the card. Tommy Suede would get quite good within a year of this match, but here he was a guy still getting crossed up and accidentally stepping out of the way of offense, making Scorpio look like a dummy a couple of times and somehow not getting his eye socket caved in as a receipt (although perhaps handing out receipts on memorial shows is bad business). Sugaa is a guy who would go on to work WXW for his whole career, and here he was dressed like a shock jock making a wrestling appearance in 2000 (pleather pants, chrome silver button up, wraparound sunglasses), but was clearly jazzed to be teaming with Scorp and took some big risks. He hit an awesome no hands tope con hilo and looked like a guy who you'd be excited to see at your regular indy in 2000. Mark the Body (who they also called Mark the Hunk and a couple other variations) didn't look great hitting offense, but looked great missing offense, including a great missed elbowdrop off the middle rope (I thought UPW trainees were the big bumping, bad offense guys, not WXW?). Scorp's tag ins were highlights, loved his flipping legdrop, and he finishes things off with a heavy ass 450.

Jimmy Snuka vs. Jak Molsonn

ER: When you're getting a 2000 Jimmy Snuka match, it's really up to the opponent how good or bad that match is going to be. From the mid 90s indy Snuka matches were already made up of a heel clubbing away at Snuka for a few minutes, followed by him throwing some chops, a bodyslam, and a Superfly Splash. I would guess by 2000 that it had been at least 5 years since he had worked a match that wasn't laid out that way. Molsonn looks like Scott Norton if Scott Norton didn't lift and was just more of a fat guy. He's really soft on his clotheslines, axe handles, and forearms, but he's also wrestling a near 60 legend so it's very possible he looked better than this in other matches. Snuka takes over with some bad chops but good headbutts, and puts Molson to the mat with a really nice flying headbutt attack (like a nice Tito Santana forearm) and lands an impressive, fully unprotected Superfly Splash. 

Doink vs. Showtime Shane Black

ER: A show like this is going to have a lot of matches that start with 3-4 minutes of heel control, before moving immediately into the one minute of "name" control to finish. Shane Black is a Quiet Storm type ponytailed Little Buff Boy, who doesn't wrestle at all like Quiet Storm, and actually seems like a guy with some nice tight basics. This match could have been good with a couple extra beats, as the 3-4 minutes of Black control were good enough, and Doink's 1 minute comeback was good (this was Ray Apollo, who is an underrated guy who throws a good elbow drop and a nice whoopee cushion), but a match layout of 80% Black/20% Doink taken in that order is the least interesting way for all of these events to happen. An extra kickout, some kind of unexpected beat, this gets suddenly good. 

Samu/LA Smooth vs. Big Dick Dudley/Hungarian Barbarian

ER: This kicked about as much ass as something on the lower parts of this show are going to. When there are 11 matches to get to on this show and the file isn't close to 2 hours long, you know you're getting a ton of 3-5 minute matches. So, watching four big guys throw mostly punches and chairshots for 5 minutes is going to be towards the top of the class. Samu is Rikishi size here (thus even better) and LA Smooth is his size equal. Hungarian Barbarian is a guy you'd think would be much worse given he's a guy with genuine size and a good look, totally unsure why he never went anywhere. This has a lot of Samu throwing potato shots, and the other three have no problem leaning into strikes. Chair and stair shots don't get swung at full strength, but the punches look good and that's more important. There are few moves beyond punches, but the big one is a BIG one. Hungarian Barbarian does a gigantic Undertaker style no hands plancha that sends him into everyone and into the front row. Insanity. How did this guy not get used on late 90s ECW house shows?  

Stevie Richards vs. Scotty 2 Hotty

ER: This is daisy duke Stevie, not the then-current Right to Censor Stevie, and at one point he even strips off the cutoffs and threatens to wrestle in his blue briefs. This is the first time these two wrestled, and it's kind of surprising they weren't matched up more often in WWF (they only worked a couple house shows and an international Heat) with at minimum a TV story where RTC wants to censor Rikishi's ass. Stevie vs. Scotty over the Light Heavyweight Title feels like a program most people just think they remember actually happening instead of ever actually happening. It's kind of a funny pairing, as Stevie isn't a guy with offense and Scotty during this era was also a guy with way less offense. Scotty was a great bumper who weirdly had better offense when he was a job guy than when he was peak of stardom. Scotty 2 Hotty filled up 30-45 seconds of his matches with Worm buildup/Worm, dancing, climbing turnbuckles for crowd reaction, and other things to stretch time (like a corner 10 count punch every match). 

Scotty 2 Hotty is the Wrestling Dream, where you put in the years and bruises as a big bumping job guy, and a few years later you're a guy getting insane reactions while working a high school gym Jimmy Valiant act on the biggest shows of the biggest money era of all time. After the first 3 minutes of this match were all about getting crowd reactions from different sides of the ring, I was actually convinced they would go out and work a juniors match using only headlocks and bullshit. I think that match would have been tremendous. This was fine, but not that. They do work headlocks, Scotty does get HUGE crowd reactions for every piece of Too Cool bullshit he does, Stevie hits a nice vertical suplex and excellent Stevie kick, takes a great bump when Scotty flips him into the ring from the apron, then does an incredible sell of an uppercut to the balls. Stevie sells that punch like a Shakespearean stage death, arm extended skyward while his other hand clutches his balls. The Worm is so over that Scotty soaks in literally 30 seconds of reaction before he even takes on hop. Good for them. 

Gillberg vs. Afa Jr. vs. Lucifer Grimm

ER: This did not need to be an elimination 3 way, but this was a very fun short Afa Jr. showcase. I've always been kind of fascinated with the Afa Jr. career, a guy who hardly spent any time in WWE developmental before being brought to the Raw roster, only to be gone 3 months later immediately after having his biggest TV singles match. I really liked Manu in those 3 months, a guy I was weirdly viewing as a someone to be excited about during the grim "everybody looks like Ted Dibiase Jr." 2008 WWE. I don't think "Manu is a cool WWE TV guy" was a real common talking point in 2008, but I always like a guy with a nice bump over the top to the floor. Afa was even more of a big bumper in 2000, because he is literally 15 years old. He gets fantastic height on a monkey flip and double backdrop, hits a big guillotine legdrop, a plancha over the ringpost to the floor, and a huge splash. Gillberg throws several nice uppercuts, nice headbutt, doesn't take a bump, and really smashes into Afa with a spear. This would have been a very fun Gillberg/Afa match, but I don't think we get big Afa bumps or flying offense without Grimm in there to help catch it all, so in that regard Grimm was a necessary presence. A 7 year old Lance Anoa'i does a People's Elbow on Grimm after the match. 

Crowbar vs. Judas Young

ER: The commentary guy who sounds like Sebastian Gorka is trying to figure out why Devon Storm went crazy and became Crowbar, and he hilariously comes up with "I imagine he waited so long to be signed by WCW that he just went crazy." He's joined by Little Jeanne, who lost several times to Mona on WCW TV over a several month period around this time. Crowbar was really generous with Young here, giving him a ton of this match, a ton of time that Young arguably wasn't prepared to fill. This felt like a 4 minute Worldwide match stretched out to 9 minutes, on a show where almost everything has been kept right at that Worldwide match length. Young has a decent elbowdrop and a nice top rope elbow, but he weirdly wrestled the match as a heavyweight peer of Crowbar and Young couldn't be over 170. Crowbar hits his slingshot splash and a nice flying crossbody on the floor (while Young was sat in a chair), gets a good nearfall off a northern lights, but this was just too long. You had Jeanne doing a mid match turn on Crowbar (leading to him taking an unexpected bump over the top to the floor) and then he has to get his revenge back on her, and I don't think they really even established their partnership anyway so it was just time spent that we didn't need. 

Taka Michinoku/Funaki vs. The Head Bangers

ER: I'm sure these teams had better matches on WWF Metal, but this was fine. You hope to see some cool Taka stuff in a match like this, and he is really great at bumping for Head Banger lariats. Take is great at just running in neck first and then getting hooked quick to the mat. He hits a nice rana on Thrasher and then goes for another one immediately after and gets planted by a kneeling powerbomb. Taka does his sick as hell seppuku taunt before appropriately missing a huge moonsault. The Head Bangers spent a good portion of their time making kung fu jokes or doing bad crane kick poses (got their asses for being Asian!), then just win with a flapjack. 

Johnny Smith vs. Maunakea Mossman

ER: This was one of the main reasons I went out of my way to watch this show, as we hardly have any footage of Johnny Smith wrestling in the states. There's some ECW shows and this, basically. And Mossman is being managed by Nicole Bass for...some reason, I suppose. And my time would have been MUCH better spent just watching the match or two on this show I really wanted to see, as this match delivered everything I was hoping it would, and actually got the time to deliver it. Seeing a 10 minute match on a show filled with 4 minute matches stands out as a downright epic, but these two also really expose how much everyone else on this show has either gone through the motions, or just has none of the dedication to making small exchanges look legit. Everybody else on the show had treated their match as an untaped house show obligation, which makes a lot of sense. And then Smith and Mossman come out bending limbs and snapping tendons with dragon screws and really laying it in. Their mat exchanges are super tight, the same kind of fast mat stuff that is popular today, only here none of the steps are skipped. 

Here you can see WHY Mossman had to turn a certain way to ease pressure off his arm, you can see WHY Smith had to roll the way he did to shake Mossman's grip on his ankle. They weren't just working the sequence they rehearsed and thinking about their next beat, they looked like they were naturally working to those beats. Smith whips over so fast for Mossman's armdrags, really everything they did made me expect a joint dislocation. Smith has such cool body control on his matwork, that kind of tripped out Regal wrist control spiraling out of a feinted kip up. Mossman goes after Smith's leg, Smith goes after Mossman's arm, and all of it is great. Mossman beats Smith up with a couple kicks, Smith hits a great bridged German (Smith is one of wrestling's great bridgers) and catches him in a great death valley driver, hits his fine middle rope dropkick, all of it looks great. This was a simple touring match but with expert execution, and that execution makes all the difference. They worked go behinds, wristlocks, and takedowns the same way Bret Hart would work them, and that kind of dedication to simply "making the moves look like what they're supposed to be" can be really exciting. 

Eddie Guerrero vs. Chris Jericho

ER: This was disappointingly only 5 minutes, keeping with the theme of most of the matches on this show, but both had just worked a week of house shows, and this show was the literal day after they had just taped a Raw on Monday and Smackdown on Tuesday. So they're good enough dudes to work a memorial show on what surely would have been a well earned day off. And Jericho responds by doing some Y2J mic work and that's about it. Because these 5 minutes are the motherfucking EDDIE GUERRERO show. Small show Eddie is really special, as I've yet to see any evidence of this guy not putting on a show. This was bigger than any indy show Eddie worked during his rehab tour the next year, but this show came the day after working a show in front of 20,000+. So here he comes out just scowling at the fans, looking at these memorial show fans with real disgust. He lets Jericho run through his catchphrases, and then, for 5 minutes, Eddie hams it up. 

He gets thrown onto his face twice after trying to lock up with Jericho, and immediately starts playing some greatest hits. He runs on his knees to the ref after getting embarrassed, he complains of hair pulls, and - and I've never seen him do this - he then starts trying to trick Jericho into locking up, only to pose. Was Eddie ever doing pose down stuff during heel exchanges? I have no memory of Eddie ever working Narcissist poses, and I love it. He tries to get a knucklelock, then flexes a bicep, then keeps doing it with a new flex each time. It's the best. He spends the first 70% of this match entertaining the crowd as only Eddie can, then of course hit a low dropkick into Jericho's knee, running around the ref to hit it. It was a short match, so it didn't get to go far, but I loved the (abbreviated) finish, with Eddie running up the ropes to hit his whipping headscissors, only for Jericho to catch him in the Walls. I wish we got more, but this was 5 special Eddie minutes I'd never seen before, and that's a great thing.  

Road Dogg vs. Rikishi

ER: This was a punch out until they gave every fan the exact thing they wanted to see that night: Rikishi grinding his ass into Road Dogg's mouth. I liked the kick-punch stuff a lot, with the match peaking around a fantastic punch exchange. Road Dogg dropped his knee and smashed Rikishi into the railing outside, and back in threw a few great right hands in the corner, really knocking Rikishi's head back, and Rikishi popped him with on solitary right hand after. Road Dogg sold the punch the way one might sell a punch to their nose/cheekbone, then took a couple of really hard whips into the turnbuckles before dropping to his seat, mouth open, head leaned back, fans dying to see his nose buried into Fatu's ass. And they got it. After, Road Dogg danced in the ring with Rikishi, Too Cool, and Jericho. Jericho didn't know the Too Cool dance moves so started doing Thriller Zombie instead.