[2000-11-11-CZW-Jersey Rulz] Nick Mondo vs Ric Blade

[soup23]

Awful choreographed wrestling as Blade continues to have a success rate that may be worse than RVD in 2000. I don’t think Mondo is some great worker either as he has probably been more disappointing in 2000 than I remembered. Still, he didn’t have much to work with here as Blade flips around and botches stuff almost constantly. Mondo attacks Shorty which is strange and out of character. This only serves as Blade having time to scale the fence to do a moonsault that barely connects. C Z Dub. This was actually the main event which is really disappointing and ends the night on a sour note. Blade does get better as the match progresses as both his powerbomb through the chairs and the split legged moonsault look great and get the crowd behind him. Mondo regains the control and botches his first attempt at a dive through the table before taking a traditional legdrop route for the pin. Honestly one of the worst matches of 2000. ¼*

 

[GSR]

End of the night and the mic quality still sucks here in Sewell as Mondo rags on the crowd, saying something about how not one fan here could last more than two minutes in CZW and that’s why he’s the one in the ring and they’re in the seats.  I’ve said many times this year about a wrestler “running down the aisle”, but I doubt anyone has made a quicker entrance than Ric Blade did here, he’s literally a blur as he runs past the cameraman.  We open with another highly choreographed sequence, so choreographed in fact that they end up on different pages, Mondo ducking under a kick that never came and then getting the errant toe of Blade’s boot in his nose.  It doesn’t take long before they screw things up again, Blade folding himself up and landing on his neck after a kick that missed by a fair distance.  Mondo rolls him out to the floor but Blade starts walking around ringside so he’s out of position for the dive.  ‘Sick’ Nick resets and connects with an Asai moonsault.  He throws Blade back into the ring however gets caught with a kick to the head as he tries to slide in himself.  Blade with a flip dive to the outside but Mondo is stood too far back and Blade’s heels come down on the top of his head.  Ouch!  As he heads to the side of the building to gather his bearings, Blade follows after him.  Both block the attempted suplex and Mondo then backdrops him onto some rather conveniently arranged chairs.  Shorty weakly slaps Mondo after they briefly exchange words and his response is to drag her to another part of the arena where he lays her on a table.  Blade comes to her rescue, climbing over the fence and coming off it with a moonsault; although yet again his errant feet kick Mondo in the head.  The wrestlers make their way back to the ring but the camera is stuck behind some fans so we don’t see anything that is going on.  Mondo snatches Blade on the tip up and hits some sort of neckbreaker.  Springboard guillotine legdrop but there’s no-one home on the Phoenix splash.  Rolling Fisherman’s buster by Blade finishing with a ‘Ki Krusher’ that Mondo kicks out of.  The powerbomb is countered with an ‘X-Factor’ and Mondo then lays Blade across a couple of chairs that his opponent had moments earlier brought into the ring.  He climbs to the top turnbuckle although is oblivious that Blade is up and he powerbombs Mondo through the chairs.  Blade runs through his moonsault sequence that starts with the standing and ends with the corkscrew but doesn’t bother with a cover, preferring to collect a table which he takes an eternity setting up.  Low blow by Mondo who then lays Blade on that table and places a chair over his head.  Springboard twisting legdrop onto an unbreakable table.  He’s straight back up there, this time with a legdrop off the top that does the trick and Mondo picks up the three.  Blade is holding his head after this and I wouldn’t be surprised if, for the umpteenth time this year, he’s hurt himself during the match.

I didn’t think this was as bad as that awful Mondo/Trent Acid match from Cage of Death II, even though at times it wasn’t much better.  The opening was a disaster, but things did improve when they returned to the ring after the Blade moonsault off the fence…that is up until the finish where Blade took an age setting up the table and then Mondo took two attempts to put him through it.