[1995-08-04-SMW-Superbowl of Wrestling] Shawn Michaels vs Buddy Landell

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Not a great match, but a really good one that accomplished quite a bit in the storyline, and gave Buddy the chance to work a long, relatively high-profile match with a top shelf opponent. I wish they'd doubled the amount of time they gave them and had them work a more traditional main event-style match, just because I think it would have gotten Buddy over even more. But otherwise, they pulled this off well. My original thought was to do a comparison to the Jarrett match at In Your House, but that's not exactly favorable for this match. This is more back and forth action than any type of consistent narrative. I enjoyed it, but I was hoping for more.

[Tim Evans]

What was up with the timecode? Did this air on tv like that cause it's got commentary from Chip and Les? Good match with Buddy looking like a top star. Buddy also sold the Sweet Chin Music great.

[Bix]

What was up with the timecode? Did this air on tv like that cause it's got commentary from Chip and Les? Good match with Buddy looking like a top star. Buddy also sold the Sweet Chin Music great.

They shot the show as if it was going to be a comm tape but never released it, but raw footage leaked out via Tommy Noe years ago. Since this match wasn't available complete from TV or the handheld, Will used this raw footage version.

[El-P]

Not a great match, but a really good one that accomplished quite a bit in the storyline, and gave Buddy the chance to work a long, relatively high-profile match with a top shelf opponent. I wish they'd doubled the amount of time they gave them and had them work a more traditional main event-style match, just because I think it would have gotten Buddy over even more. But otherwise, they pulled this off well. My original thought was to do a comparison to the Jarrett match at In Your House, but that's not exactly favorable for this match. This is more back and forth action than any type of consistent narrative. I enjoyed it, but I was hoping for more.

Pretty much sums up my thoughts about this match.

[PeteF3]

Landell comes out to "Gimme Back My Bullets" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, which is one of the most badass entrance themes not to be widely used by a thousand other guys, and so, so perfect for the story Landell is telling.

 

This was good, and I only had so much hope for HBK in this setting. He came through fine, and the ending was well-done enough, as Cornette violates Landell's directive not to interfere and it ends up costing Budro the match. It also felt like a SMW match and not a WWF formula match, so it was refreshing to see Shawn work in that setting.

[JKWebb]

Man, I was excited to stumble across this today while searching for something else. Talk about something I wish I could have attended, this would have been awesome! I didn't know this had taken place, but I'm thrilled that it did. The Skynyrd intro was clipped out of the version I was able to see unfortunately. I thought Shawn more than came through fine honestly. He was fired up. He was selling Buddy's offense at full throttle. Like mentioned, it was really cool/refreshing to see HBK in this setting and style vs. the WWF around the same time. I'm looking forward to getting to this in the storyline when I dive into 1995 someday. I agree, it could have been better if it had gotten more time, but honestly I'm just glad it's out there. This was fun to watch. The Cornette involvement was fantastic.