[2000-10-21-IWA-MS-KOTDM 2000: Night Two] 2 Tuff Tony vs Alistair Fear (Fans Brings the Weapons Cactus Death)

[soup23]

A really strong death match. Tony seems to have these every once in a while in a tournament setting where he really goes balls to the wall with the weapon shots and is able to interject the indie spots well using the weapons. Here his light tube flip legdrop gets over huge and a standing ovation. The cactus is a unique weapon and they use it well and the action never lets up as it feels like two people fighting and just happening to hit big weapon shots and cool spots instead of trying to design the “craziest stunt show” bump and it disrupting the flow of the match overall. Finish kind of stinks as crowd is chanting for Tony when Alister gets an ace crusher on a light tube set for the pin. Strong showing for Tony and in the US Death worker pantheon right now, he is up there. ***1/4 (6.6)

[Tim Evans]

Yeah, this was surprising. I wasn't expecting much given the stip but they made it work. Some sick bumps into the cactus especially that leg drop. Tony's arm gets cut to hell. They do the brawl around the building stip but actually fight during it instead of just walking around. Good match.

[GSR]

It doesn’t take long before these two are on the floor helping themselves to some of the weapons that the fans have bought along.  Tony grabs a pair of plastic baseball bats covered in drawing pins and by the time he’s done swinging them it looks like Fear’s wearing a metallic gold wig, a ton of tacks embedded into his skull.  Allister even does the Ric Flair face first bump on the concrete after having a pumpkin broken over his head.  An eye rake briefly stops Tony in his tracks, but as Fear goes to powerbomb him onto the cactus, he blocks and backdrops him onto it instead.  Providing that was a legit cactus, and knowing how Ian is about these things I expect it is, there is no way that didn’t hurt to high heaven.  2 Tuff rests a batch of light tubes between a couple of chairs but before he can finish what he started, Fear fights back.  He sits Tony on the top turnbuckle and hits a brainbuster onto the light tubes.  I don’t know if that was meant to be a superplex and he didn’t get him all the way over, but it looked brutal.  Low bow by Tony who then rolls to the outside, setting up some chairs before covering them with all manner of items (light tubes, barbed wire, cactus etc.), even managing to dent a chair over Allister’s head while he’s doing it.  He drapes Fear across the top rope and then balances a handful of light tubes on his back.  Somersault legdrop from the top!  That gets an incredible reaction, incredible in the sense that there can be no more than 200 people in the building, just the noise that they make after it.  He looks to follow up but is caught and Fear suplexes him out of the ring and into all that debris.  Tony picks up a huge metal sign which he wallops Fear with, drags him inside and as he staggers around, hits him over the back of the head with another object.  “Tony, Tony, Tony” the crowd are loving this.  Another low blow by Fear followed by an ‘Ace Crusher’ onto whatever that object was that Tony hit him with.  That surprisingly puts 2 Tuff away as Fear moves on in the tournament.  We get a close up of Tony’s elbow which is all cut up and bleeding something rotten from when he took that suplex to the floor.

I agree with the other commentators, a real good Death match with some nasty ass bumps in there.  I don’t know how heralded he is compared to the likes of Ian Rotten, Corporal Robinson, J.C. Bailey etc. but 2 Tuff Tony is someone who impresses me the more I see of him.