Chilly Willy v. "Mad Dog" Rodney Mack

 

This is easily the best Chilly Willy match I've ever seen. Rodney Mack totally carries him here punching him in the face as hard as he can, bumping solid for him, working schtick, giving us a true heat segment, taking a nasty spinebuster, and making a leaping butt bump look like a potentially concussion inducing move. This was really just a basic match, but it was well executed which at times can be a difficult task for a guy like Chilly Willy.

 

Julio Dinero/EZ Money/Chris Hamerick v. Chris Chetti/Nova (EXTRA)

 

Hamerick is in Hot Commodity's corner which immediately pisses me off as he's about 500 times better than everyone else in this match. Fortunately Hamerick is heavily involved in this interfering freely and openly, strutting around and taking some insanely high elevation bumps from the babyfaces. He's so involved in fact that the babyfaces demand he come in and he does and it turns into a pretty good handicapped match. Dinero is a real bump machine in this getting spiked and flopping around like crazy and Chetti is actually really good in this punching the shit out of people, hitting stiff clotheslines and actually making his kick based garbage look good for once. Utterly enjoyable though not a must see.

 

FBI v. Tajiri/Mikey Whipwreck

 

I remember being pretty low on their tags so I was pleasantly surprised by this. Mikey wasn't really any good but he wasn't bad. Mamaluke took a few big bumps, Guido was Guido, there was some low key FBI comedy and Tajiri provided stiff kicks and some big spots including a brutal brainbuster for the finish. Guido skipping rope over Mamaluke during a giant swing spot was pretty cool as well. Solid tag.

 

Danny Doring/Roadkill/Tommy Dreamer v. Simon Diamond/Johnny Swinger/C.W. Anderson

 

This was an amazingly fun match. The crowd has been great all night, but they are fucking molten here and everyone really delivers. I expect Roadkill and Anderson to work good exchanges together and they do, but you don't expect Doring to look like he is relatively polished or a pose down comedy spot mid-match to be this entertaining. Really loved the story of the babyfaces getting over on the heels, the heels demanding a pose down, Roadkill working a Hogan schtick to massive pops and C.W. beating him to a chair, with shit breaking down to wild crowd brawling. Gabe had to get wide shots of the brawling but it came across as pretty intense and the shot of Dreamer shaking a beer and spilling it all over the place moments after Roadkill stormed someone into the railing was pretty great. This kept a real breakneck pace the whole time and it was an occasion where the right heels were paired off with the right faces in just the right setting. Good stuff.

 

Justin Credible v. Kid Kash

 

Say what you want about Francine, but she was a really over act and could work a crowd into a frenzy. Credible would have been lost without her. Credible takes a couple of his stock bumps in this and they are as crazy as ever. i actually thought they did a good job of keeping this moving along at a solid enough pace and Kash was really running through some of Justin's strikes and making them look pretty brutal. Nearfall segment was actually pretty well done to and didn't even approach overkill. Armdrag through a table was an inventive spot that fit Kash who continues to impress me. There has yet to be a bad match on this show.

 

Christian York/Joey Matthews v. Da Baldies

 

This was an effective sprint. Baldies took some decent bumps, York and Matthews hit some big moves, et. There was one minor botch, but this was not bad at all. Post-match spike run-in with York and Matthews joining Spike to get their heat back was pretty fun as well.

 

Jerry Lynn v. Rhino

 

This wasn't bad. I had feared they would work this as a total workrate sprint as Rhino is a guy that can go that route and that is obviously Lynn's preference, but they actually settled this down and had a decent hybrid of spot, spot, spot and old school rasslin. Lynn got his spots in okay and Rhino hit a pretty wicked spear to set up the heat section. Nothing special, but solid enough.

 

Rob Van Dam v. Steve Corino

 

I liked Corino a lot in this. There was plenty of typical RVD bullshit but it was heavily tamed and tempered by Corino's bumping, selling, stooging, punches and cutoff spots. RVD was a surprisingly decent FIP and Cyrus was an entertaining second for RVD at ringside adding a few bumps and some nice touches here and there. Not a knock out blow, but this was a good cap to a show that didn't have a single bad match even if there weren't tons of nominated matches off of it.

I rewatched the FBI vs. Tajiri/ Mikey match and I thought this was a pretty fun tag. I need to rewatc hthe one that finished at #29 though before I nominate this one. If this was arun of the mill house show tag then I can see keeping it off. If the other one had different stuff playing out then I will nominate this. My nephew and I got a kick out of the Devil's Rejects taunting the FBI early on after being taunted themselves. These fucking boring chants are killing me. I used to agree with them in the 1980s during Prime Time WWF matches. Another example of ECW Fan stupidity.