Tony Halme Reminds Me Bout a Symphony on the Radio

Tony Halme vs. Ron Simmons  WCW/NJPW 1/4/93 - VERY GOOD

ER: I think they could have had a really great singles match if they were around each other a bit more regularly, and weren't thrown into a kind of Special Attraction match. This was the only match on a huge Tokyo Dome card to go under 10 minutes, and it barely even went 5. It's pro style, not Halme working as a massive boxer and Simmons trying to find his way around that, and I think a great hypothetical match exists in both styles. We didn't get either great match, but what we got still had some predictably cool moments. Jim Ross and Tony Schiavone are on the call, and refer to Halme as either "Home" or "Holmes" the entire match, but I liked Tony shaping a little narrative by saying that Halme is pissed because this match was signed when Simmons was the WCW champ and was supposed to be a title match. There's a long feeling out process, and I thought Halme was good at setting up Simmons' offense, and much of the match was him setting up offense for Simmons. Halme ran through a lot of major NJPW guys during his time there, so I was surprised at them letting Simmons mostly control this (his status as recent champ notwithstanding). 

Halme's awkwardness adds to these matches for me, as it makes his reversals look more like failed shoots than guys just on different pages. He lets Simmons lay into him and nicely sets up a Simmons bulldog, takes a nice piledriver, but then just stays standing when Simmons hits a flying shoulderblock, just shoving Simmons into the ground. For his part, Simmons was completely looney about leaning into Halme strikes, particularly a clonking headbutt and a big right bear paw attack that knocked Simmons through the ropes to the floor. Halme's avalanche and big heavy feet-planted clothesline looked great, and Schiavone and JR seemed pretty impressed at how high arcing his powerslam was. The finish was weird but not bad? Simmons hits a powerslam of his own but it doesn't look great, then tries to get a small package twice in a row on Halme. Both small packages look loose, but to me it made it look like Simmons was trying to shoot pin Halme and Halme wasn't having it (I am projecting all of this on the match, I don't think anyone was being unprofessional here). Halme misses a haymaker and Simmons hits the spinebuster with a fantastic float over pin holding Halme's legs down. I think you can improve on literally every section of this match, and a great match wasn't far off, but what we got was plenty cool and it was always going to be a treat seeing Halme cheered as a babyface against Simmons in front of 60,000+ Tokyo Dome fans.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE TONY HALME