October 2003

I haven't been keeping track of Super Dragon, largely because I can't get my head around the gimmick, but I really liked his performance here. Grimes was a big, burly fella, who didn't have great timing but was committed to the match. Dragon bumped his ass off for him all over the garage. I liked the change of pace from a typical Dragon match and enjoyed watching him deliver a different type of performance. The finish was bullshit, but the key point here was Dragon playing pinball to a big man.

NWA World Heavyweight Champion AJ Styles vs Dusty Rhodes - NWA TNA 10/8/03 THIS EXISTS!!! Dusty challenging for the NWA World Championship 24 years after he first won it in 1979. Crazy! I cant believe AJ vs American Dream exists. Unfortunately this more sad than fun. Dusty just does not have anything left in the tank. He does not even have his charisma and schtick to salvage something. AJ tries his best busting him open with some great punches and bumping everywhere for Dusty. Great selling in the figure-4 (hurt his knee on springboard 450) and tap out but ref didn't see it. AJ gets a baseball bat from drunken Vince Russo (less said the better) and takes out Dusty's k…

Kazunari Murakami vs Katsuyori Shibata - NJPW 10-13-03 Tokyo Dome This is on the undercard of Hogan vs Chono and a Shooters vs Pro Wrestlers 5-on-5 Elimination Match. This was more angle than match. My sense was this was either a hazing of Shibata or he proves he was tough enough to be a member of Makai Club. You’d think Murakami death glares, stiff strikes and Shibata bleeding buckets would be an easy thumbs up but the majority of the match is Makai Club mugging Shibata and Shibata selling the selling loss of blood. Shibata jumpstarts the match attacking Murakami as he enters the ring but Murakami says if you’re gonna do that you better finish me as he recover …

Talk about it here.

Talk about it here.

This is another match that the FWA had been building up pretty much all year, with the Duke of Danger – a stereotypical British aristocrat heel – having been ducking the challenge of Burchill. He is one half of Hampton Court, alongside his butler Simmons, who was massively over as the put upon loveable baby face. Burchill meanwhile is coming in as the unstoppable monster with the Goldberg push that has been destroying lower card wrestlers – often in similar handicap matches – since debuting. The Simmons dynamic makes all this rather odd though. Whereas usually you might expect the crowd to be fully invested in the sneaky heel that has been ducking a challenger to fina…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4UtOsujdMQ This is both men’s UK debut, and is an ROH guest match, building on the working relationship that the two companies had built over the last year. It’s an interesting parallel as well to the year previously when Jonny Storm and Jody Fleisch had been taking their touring match to the US. I don’t think I need to go deep into the backgrounds of these two, but at this point in 2003 I believe both were aligned as part of the Second City Saints in ROH while Punk was still in the midst of his cross promotion spanning rivalry with Raven, that would also make an appearance in the FWA in 2004. Going into the match the commentators …

As with British Uprising I the previous year, it’s good to see the show main evented by the FWA Title and main evented by two British guys. Over the year since that show Doug Williams had been firmly established as the ace of the company having brought the title ‘home’ by beating Christopher Daniels at ROH’s Night of Champions in March. Following that he successfully defended the title against a series of imports including Chris Hamrick, Juventud Guerrera, Christopher Daniels and Bryan Danielson. This is his first home grown challenger. This is a really well built up match. Back at Crunch 2003 in March, Doug defeated James Tighe in a match that showed that Tighe could…

This was set to be Zebra Kid defending his All England Title against Flash Barker, a match originally scheduled for Hotwired the month before. That match never really got started due to the appearance of the recently fired Hade Vansen turning up to spoil the show and subsequently getting chucked out of the building. As you’ll see Vansen is very much the focus here. After Flash Barker’s entrance there is an announcement that Zebra Kid is not at the building and so the title can’t be defended. I’m not sure if this was a legitimate no show or storyline (Zebra Kid is back at the beginning of next year, although there is a five month gap in shows after British Uprising) bu…

https://vimeo.com/19142823 British Uprising was designed to be the FWA’s signature show each year. Coming off the success of Uprising I and a good year for the company, the pressure was on for Uprising II to live up to expectation. It was a show which the company poured a lot into, but while no means a bad show – I think there’s a lot to like, especially viewed many years after the fact – for whatever reason it just didn’t land as was hoped for. As with the previous year, the FWA ran the York Hall – a great venue for wrestling – and there is a good crowd on hand. The production; from the entrance way, the video screens, onscreen graphics, ramp and use of pyro show…

Before the match we see a really nicely put together video package on Jody Fleisch following his retirement the month or so before this. It’s a great video and once again, something the FWA was very strong at compared to other indie companies. For way of comparison, I’d argue that a lot of the companies’ production, particularly their videos was much better than ROH’s at the time. They were also way ahead of the curve when it came to developing their own entrance music for wrestlers – most of which were more than decent – so not having to worry about licensed music, particularly given that in 2004 they would get their first national TV deal. The package leads us nicel…

Due to the relative lack of women’s wrestling options on the British scene at the beginning of the 2000s, Nikita continues to be booked in intergender contests. Because of this it’s almost to the point that she is playing a standard underdog baby face in her matches, rather than a female wrestling a man. A recent storyline had just been started whereby a £10,000 bounty had been put on her head. Given her popularity it was important to get Nikita on the card for the biggest show of the year, with Mark Sloan being the first person to try and earn the bounty. Another little note is that recent FWA arrival – loud mouth Northern wrestler Stevie Knight acts as misogynist ring a…

This is a match with a huge amount of backstory coming in and a huge amount of controversy coming out. It’s the final chapter in a violent rivalry that had been building since The Family defeated the team of Shane and Herman for the tag team titles at Crunch in March. Since then almost every FWA show had seen an escalation of the feud, as different combinations of The Family clashed with Shane, Herman and others such as Nikita and Stevie Knight, with the tag belts changing hands at different times but always ending up back with corrupted quasi-religious cult The Family. This match is titled, rather grandiosely, as an ‘Apocalypse Grudge Match’ but that basically means …

WWE Champion Brock Lesnar vs Undertaker - No Mercy 2003 Biker Chain Nowhere near their No Mercy 2002 Hell In A Cell Match classic, but few matches are, but I thought this was pretty good. It was just way too long. Clocking in at around 25 minutes, they could have shaved off ten minutes and it would have been a lot tighter. I still thought there was a lot to love. There was a great undercurrent of how important spacing is in pro wrestling. Anytime, Undertaker has space he is able to unload with those big soupbones and is able to stagger Lesnar. If Brock can close the gap and crowd Taker, he can control the match based on his size. It is two very different ways to contr…

Wasn't sure what we were in store for here. It was either going to be a waste of Benoit's talents, a classic Benoit carry job, or an overrated Benoit carry job. The verdict? Pretty good. Benoit worked from underneath and bled hard way from the mouth. A-Train was okay. He was a bit too methodical at times, but he hit Benoit with some good looking shit, and I liked the wrinkle of A-Train having a counter for the german suplex and the crossface. There was a blown spot where A-Train was supposed to gorilla press Benoit onto a chair that looked scarier, and nastier, than the planned spot would have. Benoit won with a sharpshooter, which was fitting as it was a very Bret-like p…

Kurt Angle vs John Cena - No Mercy 2003 Some things never change like people kicking out of the FU. I forgot how foul-mouthed Cena's promos were at this time. He is like the reverse Bob Saget. Total random note, but I watched the opening video package to this PPV and the Vinny Mac & Steph storyline was some fucking dark shit. Really strong fundamentals-based match for the vast majority of this match. It is nothing that really pops, but it is just solid, entertaining. Some Kurt-isms pop up late in the match where he just starts suplexing Cena as his hope spots, but there are no real transitions to the Germans or out of the Germans to get back to Cena on offense. I …

This was okay, but they went for more of a story match than their initial meeting, which was pure technique. I can understand why they wanted to tell a story, but from a purely selfish point of view, I would have rather seen them work a pure technical bout. For one thing, the whole "heart and soul" of Rey Mysterio thing kind of works better against a bigger opponent than Tajiri, and it gets a bit boring seeing Mysterio work injured all the time. I'm pretty sure these guys would've stood out more being lightning quick, but I guess the road agent had different ideas. Can't think of any great cruiserweight matches that were a prolonged beatdown followed by a comeback, though…

Crazy match. Not a classic by any chance or anything, but two guys who just hate each other brawling it out. Homicide is coming in off a loss to Samoa Joe in a world title match and his frustration due to lack of title wins is starting to kick in. Worth noting Julius Smokes is an incredible hype man. His ringside work never gets the proper recognition it deserves. The match itself is just built around both guys just hitting each other with stiff strikes for 12 or so minutes while it slowly escalates to a brutal finish with Homicide using a noose to choke out Joe.

This was looking to become a full-on Chris Daniels 03 classic akin his matches vs. Doug Williams & Xavier, but in the last third (or so), they decide to pretty much say "fuck you" to the whole story of Walters' working over Daniels' leg vs. Daniels doing a number on Walters' back. Daniels in particular disappointed me a lot when it came down to that, as he was doing his moonsaults as clean as ever & running full speed -- I think it's especially disappointing when you know that he could also sell extremely well if needed. OH WELL & all that. I still enjoyed this tremendously, because the hold-for-hold back n' forth technical rasslin' in the beginning was really…

This is SUCH a blast right from the introductions to the post-match promos by both men. It's two huge personalities going at it, and they play off of each other wonderfully throughout. The "actual wrestling" part of the match rules too, with them blasting each other with some fantastic looking punches, forearms, chops & kicks. Corino faking that ear injury in a nice ode to his fantastic fight vs. Homicide was awesome, and the flurry he went on after revealing that he wasn't actually hurt was some truly great stuff. And yeah, then there's indeed the joyous pre-match w/ their ridiculous introductions + the post-match with them bonding over Corino swerving the crowd &amp…

Don Frye has one of the best looks in all of pro-wrestling, pulled straight out of a 90's Capcom beat 'em up. The match itself had a lot of fun moments but unfortunately, the general clunkiness and shitty finishing stretch prevent it from being a great match. Kawada spends the early minutes of the match hacking out Frye's leg and even when he gets floored with a punch, Kawada is still kicking at the leg. The selling from both guys was terrific. Kawada takes a punch from Frye, falls, gets back up and then immediately collapses out of the ring in classic Kawada fashion. Frye works a front guillotine, turns it into a sleeper hold until it appears Kawada has passed out and t…

Starts off really good with both teams attacking the injured arm of first YASSHI and then K-Ness. Both teams take turns doing some very smooth double teams. One thing I do appreciate about Toryumon/DG is that the teams have very cool and fun double teams. Good popcorn fare. I kind of wish they had stuck with the arm theme though. Finishing run sees YASSHI & Shuji go after K-Ness's arm with a vengenace to get Yokosuka isolated and eventually it works. After an over the top lariat exchange anyway. Not a great match, too many different things going on that don't tie into a coherent story. Also, more liberal interference from YASSHI/Shuji's teammate. And brin…