[2004-11-07-TNA-Victory Road] Raven vs Abyss vs Monty Brown

[El-P]

Raven vs Abyss vs Monty Brown (Monster's Ball)

 

Monty cut all those cool promos that made him look like a star. He had the cool finisher but wasn't much of a worker apart from this. Not Goldy-like.

Abyss had the Foley fetish.

 

Raven was insane and fat. And was a babyface, or a heel. Not sure.

Not terrible, they kept it fast and non-offensive. Until came the finish, with Abyss finally getting a "Foley !" chant when he got the tacks on the mat. I think that gave him a hard-on. So we get Raven powerbombing Abyss on the tacks, making it a first obvious fail. Tacks 1 - Abyss 0. Then soon enough, a "holy shit" chant emerge followed by a "This is awesome !" chants when Raven puts a table in the ring, near the tacks. To whomever said this very first chant during this match was ironic, it's clearly not, the crowd was hot after the tacks bump. ANd did they get more, with Raven bumping AByss through a table at ringside, immediately followed by a pounce through a table, with, back to back, did look quite impressive, brutal and cool, despite the meh match until that point. So, theer we have the second "This is awesome !" chants on a TNA broadcast, the first appearing during an AJ Styles vs Alex Shelley match two months earlier. This one was much stronger though. Nice to spot Dixie in the crowd too, totally not believing what was happening in her ring. That was both neat, cute, and... kinda stupid when you think about it. But mostly neat.

 

Monty Brown surely had the charisma to become a star. The in-ring skills, not so much, but he wasn't worse than… well, he wasn't worse than a lot of people pushed at the top at one point or another, and still pretty green.

[Boss Rock]

One of the first TNA matches I ever saw. Overall, a pretty fun hardcore match. I also liked how they sold the stipulation of "no food and water for 24 hours" by having each guy appear disoriented by the bright lights. Monty Brown was indeed a star in the making and while turning him heel is probably what killed him, you could also argue he was the first victim of the "push every WWE guy we can grab" trend.

[Migs]

TNA video packages are always very bad at getting across the story of the match. It's always just PEOPLE. ARE. FIGHTING.

Very fun hardcore match, reasonably well paced, not too many long pauses except for Abyss getting the tacks. Hate ref bumps in this stuff, but at least the bang-bang table spots at the finish were a good climax.

[TonyPulis'Cap]

All for people trying to be creative with stipulations and be different, but the whole "24 hours spent in solitary confinement with no food or water" is pretty hokey and save for them initially selling the reaction to the bright lights, means nothing once the actual match starts. There's some decent intensity in this, but it's a fairly average brawl with your typical garbage spots. Given he often put together the WWF Hardcore Title matches, I wouldn't be surprised if Raven was the one structuring this. I did enjoy Monty Brown a lot in both the match and his pre-match promo and it just reminds me that he could've been such a big star. He's still rough around the edges in the match itself but he had so much natural charisma and Goldbergesque explosiveness to him. As others have highlighted the double table spot for the finish is really well done and builds to a good crescendo, but I thought the rest of what went before it was pretty uninspiring. Abyss in particular would go onto have much better hardcore/Monsters Balls matches against the likes of Jeff Hardy and Sabu the next year.