[1998-10-19-WCW-Nitro] Rey Misterio Jr vs Billy Kidman

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Rey is great in this match, going right to the mat and doing a rana from a Rocker Dropper position, which I'm not sure I'd seen him do before. He also made Kidman's dropkick look great by jumping up into it. They try to do a slow building match which the crowd doesn't appreciate. A GREEN BAY SUCKS chant starts, so I guess word of Monday Night Football spread during this match. Rey is really favoring his knee and Kidman is treating him so gingerly that I think their plans for the match may have gone awry because of a legit injury. Rey didn't miss any time, so it must not have been severe. Disappointing (even though I think it was pretty solid overall) when it seemed like they had a great match planned at the start that they didn't really get to do, but interesting to watch how this played out. I feel bad for these guys because Rey seemed to shake off whatever was ailing him down the stretch and the match was fun at that point, but the crowd is so distracted by football chants and doing the wave and they couldn't get them back. They went to a draw, which just seemed like the worst possible finish considering how this had fallen off the rails.

[soup23]

This crowd sucked but I liked this way more than Charles and thought it was a good match overall. They worked a slower pace at times but they also instituted nice tonal shifts to the match and Rey was able to remain spectacular enough without over doing it on his bum leg. I liked that Kidman was able to thwart some of the signature Rey Jr. moves and whether they intended to or not, little stuff like Rey not being able to do the rana because Kidman was too far away is a good strategy. This also went a time limit which was nice and all it needed was the crowd to follow along. Sometimes it is overblown how many great Nitro matches there were, but this was a solid edition to the long, cruiserweight style matches of the era. (***1/4)

[PeteF3]

This was good and solid and Kidman continues to surprise me by how fundamentally sound he is...but if you're one to place emphasis on crowd reactions, and I am one of those people, then it's hard to call this match anything but a failure.