[2003-09-21-FWA-Hotwired] Jonny Storm vs Chris Hamrick

[TonyPulis'Cap]

There is a ton of backstory going into and around this match, so settle in…

 

For the match itself, former ECW alum Chris Hamrick had been working regularly for the FWA during the summer and had won the All England Title from the Zebra Kid. He’d then put that up in a title vs title match against Storm’s (coveted) XPW European Title. Jonny was the one who walked out with both belts, before subsequently losing the All England belt to the former champ the Zebra Kid. Coming into this match, Hamrick, as former regular in XPW before the company folded is trying to win the title so he can retire it, arguing, perhaps logically, that it’s stupid to be carrying round a title from a dead company…although remember, this is a title where an actual physical belt was never made…

 

The wider and bigger backstory though was the completely out of the blue ‘retirement’ of Jody Fleisch, just at a time when the company had been building up to a big grudge match with him and Jonny Storm at British Uprising all year. Since he had turned on him earlier in the year the company had successfully put lots of heat on Jonny and into the feud. To this day, it’s still something of a mystery why Jody decided to take a year out of the business when he was arguably the biggest star in the company and had been booked semi regularly in ROH. It’s often sighted that it was due to family circumstances, some nagging injuries or just general burn out. Whatever the reason it was a huge blow to the company, both for the big match with Storm being planned but also in the sense that the FWA would struggle to identify that top babyface to replace him.

 

Jody’s absence is built into the story of this match, with Jonny making the demand that if he agrees to the stip that the XPW European Title is retired if Hamrick wins, then if he wins Jody can no longer wrestle in the FWA. I don’t know if the company knew he was going to be gone for a year at this point, but it works to give some sort of storyline behind why he would no longer be competing.

 

With all that out the way, onto the match itself, which is a hard one to gauge. In a vacuum I think it’s a lot of fun – the beginning portion with them both stooging massively is proper end of the pier, classic boo the heel/cheer the babyface stuff with them both trying to work the ref to where it’s legitimately very funny. The opening stages is a great example of how to do comedy in a wrestling match but without exposing it. During this opening Storm causes Hamrick to get a yellow card which plays into the finish. My problem is that they had spent the past several months trying to get Jonny over as a serious heel for the big grudge match with Jody Fleisch, only to turn him here into more of a stooging heel. Perhaps with the big grudge match no longer happening they thought that didn’t matter as much.

 

From the comedic opening the match progresses as you might expect to a more indie work rate contest, and there are a number of fun exchanges even if the match at just under 20 mins is perhaps too long for what they are going for. There’s a good story throughout of Storm trying to wind up Hamrick into getting disqualified and that’s the end of the match. With the ref distracted, Storm gives Hamrick a pile driver which is banned under FWA rules. When Hamrick reverses an attempt at a headscissors into a sit down pile driver of his own he is duly given a second yellow, leading to a red card and a DQ. If the big match with Jody had still been on the table then you would’ve liked Jonny to go over stronger, but you could already see they were starting to go in the direction of Storm being more of a stooging heel than a serious one. (***)