[2000-09-17-WCW-Fall Brawl] Rey Mysterio Jr & Disco Inferno & Konnan & Juventud Guerrera & Big Vito & Tygress & Paul Orndorff vs Mark Jindrak & Sean O'Haire & Mike Sanders & Chuck Palumbo & Shawn Stasiak & Reno & Johnny the Bull

[soup23]

Paul Orndorff is revealed as the surprise partner of the Animals and Tony and crew do a good job putting over that he trained them. The action in the early portion is a little blah mostly due to Disco and Konnan doing the lion’s share of the Animals work. I will give Konnan credit for being the first elimination on his side in a shocking selfless act on his part. Disco follows soon afterwards and the match picks up. O’Haire and Jindrak looked like monsters hiptossing Juvy back into the ring in the same spot we saw a couple of weeks ago. Orndorff gets the hot tag and it is fun seeing him in the legend role taking it to his former proteges. He hits a piledriver but hurts himself in the process. I had actually forgotten about this and it being the Russo era, thought it was a “shoot” for the first minute or so. That shows how far the boy who cries wolf philosophy has entrenched itself into this time period in regards to injuries. The match gets waved off which is a shame as it was shaping up to be really good. I still enjoyed what we got. *** (6.1)

[Mrzfn]

I thought it was a pretty telling sign of the times that the other wrestlers tried to continue the match around the body of Orndorff, who was still in the ring, for several more minutes before the match was finally stopped. In an era full of worked shoots where talent is not always told what's going to happen, you end up with the somewhat ghoulish moment of people doing Bronco Busters while EMTs are checking a real life injury only a few feet away.

[AstroBoy]

I think Jindrak looks like he has some potential as a base for smaller guys. O'Haire and Jindrak have nice chemistry with Rey and Juvy in particular and there's no reason why they couldn't have had a really stretched out series of matches with each other over the tag belts. Jindrak in particular is great catching Rey off a springboard with a tilt-a-whirl. Reno and Vito are in there and they do a good job of making them seem like guys with some potential, playing up whatever their story is. Somewhat disappointing that they build Reno up pretty well and then he jobs out quickly to the leg drop to the groin from the Filthy Animals. The injury really was too bad as Orndorff was working his ass off and doing a great job.

 

***