Posted July 30, 201015 yr comment_5453746 Tracy Smothers v. Tom Marquez This was a really great performance from Smothers and Rich badly dragged down by an unbelievably bad performance from Marquez. Tracy and Tommy are on there A game from the jump with Smothers challenging fans to fights before he even gets in the ring and Tommy shit stirring the entire crowd before the introductions. Smothers works all the the stalling and distraction spots possible and Rich gets in his licks ont he outside but every time Marquez is asked to do anything, i.e. put forward the most rudimentary of offense or be in place for a simple spot he fucks it up. Really annoying to watch because Smothers and Tommy would have had a fucking great match against almost anyone else on the roster. The Dupps v. Jazz/Nova/Kid Kash The Dupps act seems really out of place here as they come out to "If The South Woulda Won" by Bocephus, chewing tobacco, talking about liberal Clinton supporters, et. They are also supposed to be heels. The show is in Cookeville TN. I've seen shows in Cookeville TN and that is not a gimmick that is going to get you heel heat in Cookeville TN. Anyway the match sucked though I did like the big Kash dive. Jerry Lynn v. Simon Diamond This was tolerable. Diamond's act and work is a lot worse than I remembered it being, but this was kept pretty short. Roadkill/Mikey Whipwreck v. C.W. Anderson/Billy Wiles Been waiting for Roadkill to team with someone other than Doring figuring the match would be pretty good and it was. This was a really solid tag. Probably would have been better suited as an opener, but I liked everyone in this. Wiles did some great teeter-totter bumping, C.W. brought the punches and the intensity, Mikey looked solid and Roadkill hit all of his big offense well and took nasty bump to the floor. Nothing special, but good. Mike Awesome v. Angel Awesome fights all of the Baldies and wins with a table powerbomb. Balls Mahoney v. Vic Grimes This actually isn't bad at all. They trade shots with the fork, Balls blades, Vic misses a twisting moonsault, later he hits a nasty splash off the top, and some other decent stuff happens. Sandman v. Sal E. Graziano Holy fuck this was a terrible idea. I like Sal more than most as a second, but this is a match that never should have been booked at all, let alone to go seven or eight minutes. Sal looked tired as fuck, Sandman looked annoyed. Just awful. No clue why but they seem committed to booking Sandman in unwinnable situations. Super Crazy/Super Calo v. Tajiri/Ikuto Hidaka Unbelievable that this match ever happened, let alone that it happened on this fucking show. In truth this was fairly disappointing, as we got no crazy Calo dive, it was fairly disjointed and at eight minutes you felt short changed. On the other hand Tajiri was awesome in this, punting Crazy off of the apron and laughing in his face, spitting on fans and laughing maniacally after every exchange. Corino was also great as a second, freaking out on the ref and cheering wildly for "his team." Way more interesting on paper than it actually was. Masato Tanaka v. Kintaro Kanemura (EXTRA) The booking of this show had to be a joke. Kanemura v. Tanaka on this show is just so randomly awesome that there is no way I'm shitting on this. In fact I thought this was a pretty fun, ten minute sprint. Whereas the match before seemed like a spotfest that was going to be really dynamic and ended up a pretty weak, this looked like a match where two guys might phone it in and was in fact a really dynamic spotfest. You got everything you would want here - Tanaka breaking down the cultural barrier and asking for chairs from multiple fans, a couple of sweet bumps on the floor, Tanaka chairshot hulk up, a great twisting DDT off the apron by Tanaka, the awesome Kanemura table splash on the floor, the awesome Kanemura top rope senton in the ring, and a diamond dust finish. Kanemura falls from the top on a key spot near the finish which is the only thing keeping this from getting a real nomination, but it's something so random I think people should see it so I'm tagging it as the most solid Extra so far. Rob Van Dam v. Uganda This match never should have been booked. This is a poor man's Kamala, who has been presented entirely as ten second jobber fodder to Spike Dudley up to this point working upwards of fifteen minutes in a very competitive match against the top star in the company on a spot show in rural TN. And the match was good as fuck. As a rule I hate lengthy RVD matches, especially at that point in his career when he was working non-stop prop spots or back and fourth even-steven matches. This was nothing of the sort. Van Dam gets worked over in two lengthy heat sections that are really pretty awesome. He bumps huge for Uganda who is actually really great in this. The high points include Van Dam making a comeback off of a missed Uganda sit down splash on a sunset flip counter, Uganda almost killing RVD with a leaping legdrop to the back of his head, a great Uganada flip splash, and Uganda being a really fucking great base for all of RVD's splashes (including a high cross body, front flip, and a moonsault off the railing all of which came early in the match before Van Dam got cut off). Uganda basically worked a modern day Kamala gimmick as great as you possibly could, getting in all of the expected stuff (nerve hold, throat thrusts, belly slaps, yelping and moaning every time he's hit with a strike), and dolling it up with bigger offense. I could have really done without the late interventions of Fonzy, though I had no real problem with the finish as Uganda kicked out of a lot of RVD's stock offense before finally falling to the five star. Shockingly good match. Tommy Dreamer/Raven v. Impact Players Terrible match but a great capstone to the bizarreness that was this show. Right after the bell rings Storm leans over and ask Gabe for the time and he tells him 11:05 and Storm bitches about it being 3 plus hours for a spot show and then teases Gabe that they may go to midnight. Seconds later a fan starts bitching to Credible at ringside about the previous match and Credible says something about how he has nothing to do with that and he just does what he is told. Then they engage in shitty crowd brawling for a few minutes before coming to the ring where Storm gets caught by Raven in a Boston Crab. Storm screams out "not Jericho's finish, anything but Jericho's finish" as Credible runs in and screams "you stole his finish you know good piece of shit" before losing to an awful DDT. Terrible match. The only one who looked like he was trying was Tommy. It's actually shocking how brazen a phone-in job this was.
