[2000-09-09-CZW-Cage of Death II...After Dark] Trent Acid vs Nick Mondo

[soup23]

Some more “great” CZW angles with Robbie Mireno beating up someone with an umbrella. This segues into the Backseat Boyz coming out and then finally Mondo/Blade/Shorty. Blade cuts a perverse promo calling the BSB gay and we get a huge chant from the crowd. The match itself was sloppy and switched between sick spots semi blown and just blown spots. Mondo in particular was really off in the match for big points as he goes for a rana or something early on that was completely blown. He also throws Acid recklessly on the top rope. On the other hand, Mondo hits an insane asai moonsault where Acid catches him and eats a face full of gravel from the momentum. Acid has received a ton of praise in 2000 and while he was certainly the better guy here, he was also pretty sloppy and spot fu himself. It just shows he is young and hasn’t put all of the pieces together. He still has some amazing spots though such as the corkscrew legdrop onto a chair that gets the crowd to pop and applaud in appreciation. Mondo responds and hits a nasty springboard 450 where the table doesn’t break except for the end. He hits a springboard legdrop and that does the trick. Kashmere and Blade get involved and Blade is looking good tonight hitting his big spots and connecting on the kicks to Kashmere. The match gets thrown out there as it looks like these two teams will still keep battling. *** (6)

[AstroBoy]

This was so sloppy early on, with a slow-motion looking series of botches to start things off. Not a lot of flow but they settle into trading some nice spots and getting into a nice groove. Acid's corkscrew legdrop looked brutal. The 450 breaking only the corner of the table looked painful as hell. Not a ton special about this one.

 

**1/4

[GSR]

To fill time while the official clears the ring of all the glass and debris from the ‘Cage of Death’ we get some nonsense with Robbie Moreno and a guy in a Hawaiian shirt.  ‘Vice President’ Moreno announces Zandig vs Ryuji Yamakawa in a ‘pinfalls count anywhere in New Jersey’ match for tonight before going on to say how he would screw the Backseat Boyz again if he had to, just like he did last month.  That brings the former champions and Dewey Donovan out, Johnny Kashmere asking his brother to give them the opportunity of winning the titles back fair and square.  Moreno tells him that in CZW you have to earn your title shots they’re not just given to you and sets up Kashmere vs Ric Blade and Trent Acid vs Nick Mondo for later in the show, with the added stipulation that should the Backseat Boyz win both of those matches then they can have their title shot.  Blade, Mondo and Shorty join the party and Mondo is quite happy to face Trent and find out who the better man is, saying the only reason he didn’t neat him last time is because Nick Berk interfered.

That match gets going and the two run through a bunch of early near fall sequences although the execution is pretty sloppy.  I don’t know what Mondo tries next, maybe some sort of monkey flip, maybe a rana, but he slips and gets tied up in the ropes as the messy start to this match continues.  Quebrada to the floor, however Trent is stood too far back and Mondo’s legs kick him in the head while ‘Sick’ Nick lands face first in the gravel.  Jeez, Mondo now botches a simple front suplex where he was supposed to dump Trent across the top rope.  What is up with these guys today?  Acid is holding his head as it looks like he was shaken up a fair bit by that awry Asai moonsault.  He counters the leaping rana with a powerbomb and Mondo rolls to the outside.  Trent sits him on a chair at ringside only to then fuck up the suicide dive, getting his legs caught in the ropes and only just reaching ‘Sick’ Nick.  The fans are going to lose their voices here with the amount of times they’re chanting “you fucked up!”  Moonsault from the top turnbuckle to the floor soon followed by a draping DDT onto a chair.  Trent places that chair over Mondo’s head and comes down on it with a twisting somersault legdrop.  Mondo counters the tornado DDT into a sit out powerbomb and then with Blade’s help retrieves a table from under the ring.  Fucking hell, Mondo was supposed to do a shotgun dropkick/back flip but lands on his head.  That looked awful the way he landed.  Fortunately he’s not hurt and lays Acid on that table they’d set up at ringside moments earlier.  Springboard 450 splash to the floor, however his trajectory changes while he’s rotating and Mondo ends up landing on Trent’s face which is positioned right over the table leg, so the table itself doesn’t end up breaking.  After a slingshot legdrop does put Acid through the table, ‘Sick’ Nick carries him back inside only for Kashmere to disrupt the count.  As Mondo heads up top Trent falls into the ropes causing him to lose his balance.  Kashmere is now in the ring and hits an ‘Acid Bomb’ onto a chair before Blade, who obviously had his thumb up his ass missing all this, finally decides to help his partner out and the bell just rings.  The four go at it until order is restored, Robbie Moreno then announcing that if Mondo, Shorty, Trent or Dewey appear at ringside for the Kashmere/Blade match later there will be no tag team title match next month.  Surely as there was no winner to this match there won’t be one anyway?

Bloody hell, Trent was in the wars here!  I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many blown or botched spots in a match as I did in this and probably the worst I’ve ever seen Nick Mondo look.  It’s like these guys are now trying to live up to, if not exceed, what they did at the ‘No Rules, No Limits’ show but on this night failed badly.   This was the last match I watched from this card and it hasn’t been one of CZW’s better offerings that’s for sure.