Slim J is Brain Dead like Jim Brady

Slim J vs. Patrick Bentley NWA Anarchy 12/29/07 - EPIC

PAS: I think Slim J will come out of this project as one of the great brawlers of the 21st century. For a guy who is best known as a juniors highflyer, he is a hellacious asskicker. The backstory of this match is that Bentley is a protege of Slim J who turned on him and joined the Devil's Rejects. J jumps him right at the bell and wails on him, with some especially ground and pound punches, it is hard to make those look good, and he looks like he is beating his brains in. Bentley is able to go to the eyes to get some respite and he brains Slim J with a chair, which starts the blood flow. J gets the hell beaten out of him and leaks all over the ring. It is a 21st century cage match, so we know we are going to get big stunt spots, but they have the sense to bring the violence too, and the stunt spots look so much better in the context of a blood feud. I did dig the huge electric chair off the top rope, and I loved how the match didn't end on Slim J's cage dive, instead he hooked on a super nasty reverse STF and made Bentley quit. This was quite a discovery and a real treat to watch, I have a feeling there are more gems to unearth.

ER: This was really great and I think the more we watch of Slim J the more we'll discover not only one of the great brawlers of the 21 century, but also one of the great babyfaces, and great gimmick match workers. What I'm saying is that we may find out that Slim J has been a top 10 worker for the past 15 years and hardly anybody noticed. I said to someone earlier today that I think Slim would be the best chance WWE had at making a "new Mysterio" like they've been trying to do for much of this decade. He's small, but really muscular (not here, but now), and he throws great strikes, so he'd be able to look sympathetic for being undersized, while being able to believably hang with larger guys due to his punch power. Mysterio was king in the Elimination Chamber, Royal Rumble, and others gimmick matches, Slim J has shown he's always the best guy in indy gimmick match staples, as well as other, weirder gimmick matches. Truly one of the most well rounded and excited wrestlers of our time.

This was a cool fusion of a late 80s style cage match with a modern cage match. You had cool stuff that felt straight out of a classic WarGames, like the greatest possible brawling punches, or great color out of the hairline, or awesome spots like Slim ramming Bentley face first into the cage a couple times before muscling him into a nice powerslam. But we had a bunch of modern stunt bumps, big slams off the ropes with the cage as assistance; Slim backdrops Bentley off (which looked like a tremendous bump) but sets it up with smart stuff like smashing Bentley's head into the cage bar before flinging him. The punches from both men looked tight and mean, Slim being the best ground and pound wrestling puncher other than Lawler, Bentley throwing this hard clunking hammerfist blows, and later Slim hitting sick grounded punches with a couple of slashing forearms thrown in. Offense overall was real nice, loved Bentley's fireman's carry backbreaker. If you were putting that move in a video game you would want Bentley wearing the motion capture suit right here. He rolls Slim forward over his head and just plants that knee right in the back, perfection. Slim has a great set up to a sliced bread type cutter, hitting his excellent cravate knees to the side of Bentley's head before running up the ropes to stick the cutter, really using logic to set up a move like that. Also loved Slim's cool leaping inverted DDT to set up the finish, leaping off the top to Bentley standing in the ring, and you couldn't physically place Slim better on his jump. Really impressive body control, always seems to land precisely where he needs to be. I agree with Phil that it's awesome that didn't end the match, merely pave the way for his body bending STF. I've never seen this match and haven't seen it talked about at all, which is really surprising given its quality. This is starting to feel like a real unmined area of our wrestling universe.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SLIM J