[1993-04-12-AJPW-Championship Carnival] Steve Williams vs Terry Gordy

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Disappointing match. Not on the level of their best UWF stuff. I enjoy with mat-based matches, but this was a lot of laying around and felt uninspired. Gordy holding on to the ropes out of desperation to prevent the Oklahoma Stampede was the best thing here. His comeback clotheslines were also pretty awesome. The clothesline is probably the best move in wrestling history because it's so simple, works in any environment and always gets over. Gordy gets the win with a powerbomb, which was a surprising result to me.

[Kevin Ridge]

We are JIP to Gordy putting on such a lazy and awful looking sharpshooter. Match wasn't that good overall.

[PeteF3]

Laying around, lazily applied holds, long arbitrary and non-selling-related pauses between moves...this is everything you want out of the MVCs colliding. Gordy's clothesline is about the lone highlight.

[WingedEagle]

Nice back & forth struggle over a brainbuster before Williams takes him down into an armbar. Gordy goes for a DDT but Williams counters into a fisherman northern lights. Williams goes for the Stampede but Gordy hooks the ropes and lands on him, injuring Williams's arm or shoulder. Gordy can't hit powerbomb, but does hit a flat bump backdrop suplex. Williams does a good job of repeatedly avoiding the powerbomb. Williams counters backdrop into a pinfall, hits his own high angle backdrop driver for near fall. Another dangerous backdrop. Gordy again avoids the Stampede by hooking the ropes. Really liked how they had them countering each other's big moves here. Gordy with an awesome KO punch and cross body from the middle rope. Williams blocks yet another powerbomb. Gordy hits huge a lariat, then finally connects on the powerbomb but Williams kicks out. Another powerbomb wins it. Guess I'm alone here as I thought this was an awesome bombfest and better than most of what they did as a team.

 

***3/4

[soup23]

Pretty mundane action for me. When I get the handheld, I will see if my opinion changes but this felt long even with the time given.

[garretta]

I think Bamm Bamm and Doc were trying to sell the effects of their respective arm injuries, which would have made it difficult for each of them to lift or hold one another. That might account for the slowness of pace here. Still, I agree with those who say that this was nothing like the action-packed brawls that these two had when Bamm Bamm was UWF champion and Doc was his top contender. Those were real rock 'em sock 'em affairs, to say the least.

 

It's a bit of a surprise to me that Bamm Bamm went over. I have no idea if Baba had any plans for him as a single, but it seemed to me that Doc had more upside at this time, and a win or two in a round robin like this might have helped boost his singles career, even if he wouldn't have won the tournament or made the finals.

[Kronos]

You guys that watched the clipped version -- starting with the sharpshooter -- who thought this match was dull? That doesn't happen until nearly 12 min into the match. You should try the handheld version.

 

On second thought, run away screaming. They should put this match into the dictionary next to "rest hold". I don't know what was going on - maybe one or both weren't feeling well.

 

I kept thinking about a 70's match I watched recently with Jumbo and the Funker. They also worked long headlock and armlock spots. But never once did it seem like rest holds. They managed to create all kinds of drama.

 

MVC? Not so much.