[2002-02-09-FWA-Revival] Jody Fleisch vs Doug Williams

[TonyPulis'Cap]

For more detail on what the King of England Tournament was see the link below to a write up of one of the semi finals between Doug Williams and Eddie Guerrero: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/39613-doug-williams-vs-eddie-guerrero-fwa-revival-king-of-england-tournament-02092002/

 

This is the final of the tournament. Doug had defeated Eddie Guerrero in the semi-final, while Jody had to get through Drew McDonald, which played into the overarching New School vs Old School storyline that was going on in the FWA at the time. In that match, Fleisch takes a beating from McDonald before winning so he's coming in selling his arm.

 

At this point, and for almost all his run in the FWA, Doug is nominally a face, but always with an air of detachment, that suits his technical ring style. In this match, because of the storyline injury to Fleisch's arm and the size difference, he plays a more heelish role, looking to work the arm but also dominate with his size and suplexes. You can see the comfort and familiarity the two already have with each other with lots of smooth sequences and it's always good for a tournament when the best match of the night comes in the final.

 

Jody is great at being a underdog and getting the crowd behind him, with Doug dominating large parts of the match. At this stage, Jody could always be somewhat hit or miss, but here he hits his most impressive moves like the springboard shooting star press and 720 DDT dead on. The SSP gets a great reaction, and was a pretty revolutionary move for the time. One of the criticisms of Doug is that he can sometimes be somewhat cold and clinical, but here he shows a good vicious side and really throws Fleisch around. There are two crazy bumps - one where Jody gets suplexed from one side of the ring to the other off the top rope (admittedly in the smaller FWA ring) and another where Doug powerbombs them both off the apron that was particularly nasty looking.

 

The small size of the UK ring almost makes the rollup finish a little awkward, but it works really nicely, with the twin storyline that Doug got a bit cocky while Fleisch just survived following all the punishment he took. It also works as a little nod to the Bret/Bulldog finish to Summerslam 92 (*** 3/4)