[1997-08-02-OMEGA] Surge vs Cham Pain

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The first OMEGA footage on a yearbook. Surge is Matt Hardy. These guys look like they are pretend wrestling, but I guess everyone has to start somewhere.

[Kevin Ridge]

Hardy has Misawa like green tights. Just him and another guy doing a bunch of moves on each other.

[Childs]

Not sure I'd call it "pretend" wrestling. But OMEGA has always struck me as a "had to be there" thing. Whatever made people fall in love has never come across to me on tape. I'll be interested to see if the more pimped matches from later years strike me any better.

[soup23]

Had high hopes for Cham Pain given his sleazy look. First time seeing Omega to so excited about that. I can see how something like this was appealing in 1997 but now after seeing those spots performed better with more rhyme or reason, it does look dated. Hardy also hasn't aged too much in 16 years and the live announcing is so FUCKING annoying. Hoping the other stuff has more structure to it.

[Robert S]

Is the ring announcer doing live play-by-play via the arena microphone? It sounded that way.

By the way: Cham Pain seems to be the guy who took the Pedigree straight on his head in that famous clip where some people claimed that it was Jeff Hardy taking the move.

[PeteF3]

Yes, the live play-by-play is Strike 1, right to begin with. Cham Pain has indeed recovered from the Pedigree Driver '97 to reach the semifinals of whatever the hell tournament this is. This could charitably be described as "raw," but it's an interesting enough time capsule. Matt Hardy already knows how to connect with an audience, and the audience themselves make for an interesting contrast to your typical American crowd of 1997--way more kids and families, no snark seen anywhere. In that sense, this was kind of refreshing. This would have been, all in all, a pleasant enough diversion but the use of the table at the end was pretty gratuitous.