[1995-01-28-SMW-Super Saturday Night Fever] Buddy Landell vs Tracy Smothers

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Frankensteiner]

I know this has its fans but I did not like this at all. Smothers looking for fan approval in between every one of his moves killed it for me.

[Loss]

Yeah, the match is preceded by reputation, and I wonder if that's what ended up hurting it for me. I think my expectations were too high.

 

It didn't feel like there was much rhythm to what they were doing. Hold, accusation of hair pulling, move, accusation of hair pulling ... all the first five minutes of a match stuff happening until the very last few minutes of it when they just suddenly started trading nearfalls without anything really happening in between. I probably shouldn't say "without anything", actually, and instead I should just say "I wish there was more in between" -- they looked to have had an awesome slugfest at ringside that sadly the camera didn't really capture. There are some things I liked, namely Buddy's selling of Tracy's slap and hiptoss, and his always awesome elbowdrops.

 

I agree with Frankensteiner that Tracy's pandering really hurt the match. I think it worked against him as a babyface.

[Tim Evans]

Well with Buddy working later in the night, I can see why he mailed it in here. He had his classic buddy stalling early. The arena is almost as dark as CMLL's arenas these days.

[PeteF3]

This seriously had a "reputation"? There are good things here, and nothing really *wrong* with it, but it's pretty much USWA-TX By Numbers all the way. Stall, stall, complain to ref, stall, cheap chain finish. The ringside brawl looked good and there were more near-falls than usual down the stretch, and Landell stalling isn't *bad*, but there wasn't much remarkable about this either.