[2000-06-14-IWA-MS] Tracy Smothers vs Chip Fairway

[soup23]

This is a decent sized crowd for IWA-MS for a Wednesday night. This is a rematch from the prior week which ended in a 20 minute draw. This had no time limit. This has a slow start with a lot of restarts but the action is compelling and the way Smothers moves keeps you invested in the match. He has a great ability to feel unhinged as evidenced by him showing heel tendencies throughout this match and constantly jawing with some fan at ringside. The action picks up in the last five minutes with great nearfalls and action. Corp Robinson interferes against Tracy but Chip doesn't want any help and pops him to remain a face. Chip is able to gain the win due to the damaged leg of Tracy. I have never thought too much of Chip and this didn't change that but this was a fun match from the perspective of the time it got vs the output. Tracy's performance was strong. ***1/4 (6.3)

[GSR]

A no time limit return grudge match after their bout last week went to a time limit draw.  This might be billed as a ‘grudge’ match but we still get a shake of the hands.  You can tell this is going long by the pace they’re cutting intermixed with plenty of stalling and jawing with the fans.  We get the “ten minutes have gone announcement” and it feels as though nothing has happened.  The two are nose to nose, they exchange shoves and it looks like this is finally getting going.  Fairway with an armdrag and Tracey complains of a non-existent hair pull and pull of the shorts.  That old staple!  Smothers shouts out “there’s Jim Cornette and Danny Davis”, jumping Chip when he falls for the distraction.  Big sideslam by Fairway after reversing the Irish whip although Tracey is soon back in control.  He sits his opponent on the top turnbuckle but is too slow in following up, allowing Fairway to catch him with a tornado DDT.  Chip heads upstairs, however Tracey hits the top rope causing him to lose his balance and crotch himself.  This looked pretty bad as their timing was off, Fairway already starting to take the bump before Smothers had even touched the ropes.  Lovely float over into a pin attempt from the superplex.  Tracey slugs Corporal Robinson, who had made his way out and onto the apron, but Corp gets a bit of revenge, shoving Fairway out the way of a charging Smothers high knee, resulting in Tracey crashing knee first into the top turnbuckle.  Again, like the crotch spot, the set up looked bad.  Fairway’s response is to slap Corp, clearly wanting to win this on his own.  Robinson’s going nowhere mind, continuing to loiter at ringside.  When Tracey hits the ropes, more involvement from Corp who trips him up.  Fairway then kicks that injured knee, slaps on a Texas Cloverleaf and gets the submission win.  A bit of post-match mic work follows as they set up a third match for next week, Tracey insisting that he would’ve won here if it wasn’t for the interference of Corporal Robinson.

Is it wrestling folk lore that just because a match went the time limit previously that the rematch automatically has to go longer?  The opening ten minutes or so did nothing for me, purely because they were blatantly stalling and playing for time to drag this out.  I lost count of how many lock ups we had.  Things did pick up towards the end (I liked how Corp’s interference ultimately did lead to the submission) and they had no problem in laying those slaps in, but considering they billed this as a ‘grudge match’ it wasn’t really wrestled as one.  A couple of bad looking spots in there too and I’m sort of glad that we don’t have the follow up.