[2001-01-20-CZW-Delaware Invasion] Ric Blade vs Super Crazy

[GSR]

After Ric Blade makes his entrance he’s joined in the ring by Zandig, who says that he forgot to book Nick Mondo’s flight for tonight and therefore Ric doesn’t have an opponent. Zandig is fairly dismissive of Blade’s wrestling ability, calling him a ‘gymnast’, before apologizing to “all the suckers who came to see Ric Blade flip and fly like a ballerina” because it ain’t gonna happen. Justice Pain’s music kicks in and he joins the two of them in the ring. Zandig tries to get him to leave thinking that he should be concentrating on his match with Tajiri later, however Pain has a few words to say. He tells Zandig that this might be his company, but Zandig didn’t build this company; he built this company, “the number one high flyer on the independents” Ric Blade built this company, Lobo falling from the ceiling, falling from scaffolds built this company. Although he doesn’t like Ric Blade, he respects him as an athlete and for what he does in this ring and for the boys in the back. Zandig may have cancelled Nick Mondo’s flight, but he thinks he deserves a match and introduces Super Crazy as his new opponent.

 

Great reaction for Crazy from the crowd here in Delaware. They haven’t even locked up and a “five star match” chant has broken out, proving that that nonsense has been going on longer than we realised. A meticulously rehearsed and co-operative opening finishing in the ‘respect stand off’ and the audience are giving them a standing ovation for it. Yuck! “C-Z-Dub” chant with the wrestlers encouraging the fans instead of concentrating on the match. Crazy hot shots Blade across the top rope and hits the double jump springboard moonsault for a two. Blade takes to the floor, however Crazy crashes and burns on the pescado as he ducks back in to avoid it. Big running flip dive over the top to the outside. A couple of kicks to the head by Blade with some of the most blatant thigh slapping you’ll see. They return to the ring where Crazy catches him with a quebrada body block. Springboard missile dropkick gets him another two. Irish whip, Blade with the Tajiri handspring and he drops Crazy with a bicycle kick to the head. ‘Swanton bomb’ for Blade’s first near fall of the match. He grabs a couple of chairs and then sits Crazy on the top turnbuckle. Blade positions them where he wants whilst Crazy has to pretend to sell as he does the furniture arranging. Crazy blocks the rana and counters with a sunset flip powerbomb off the top onto those chairs. Of course in typical Ric Blade style, that’s not enough to put indestructible Ric away. Blade counters a second powerbomb, this time DDT’ing Crazy onto the chairs. Shooting Star press and here’s your ‘Ric Blade botch of the night’ as he doesn’t get enough rotation and looks a shade away from breaking his neck. He’s just lay there and this actually looks serious. Not serious enough to stop the match though as Nick Mondo, presumably fresh off chartering a replacement flight, rushes out and starts putting the boots to Blade. The ref rings for the bell awarding the match to Blade via disqualification due to the outside interference (I think). Crazy and Blade team up to run Mondo off, hitting five consecutive moonsaults between them at one point, culminating with Blade’s corkscrew variety. A bit of mic work follows as they set up a three way for a future card.

 

With ECW no more, so begins Crazy and Tajiri’s tour of the independents. Cheap ass finish aside, the match worked a treat for those fans in attendance but you’re having a laugh if you think this is anything other than bad. A co-operative spotfest with zero transitions and the wrestlers going straight from one high spot to the next. Add in the lack of urgency with the way they were happy to stop wrestling to encourage the chants, the sitting around waiting to set the spots up; no thank you. As someone who finds neck compression bumps/injuries extremely uncomfortable to watch, I genuinely thought the worse on that Shooting Star, but fortunately ‘indestructible Ric’ lived up to the name!

[soup23]

Crowd goes nuts for Crazy and that shows that for this crowd, the ECW stars are presented as a big deal. This match was a total spot fu showcase. Certainly not my favorite style at the time and it looks even worst in retrospect. Still, I can appreciate the fluidity that some of the stuff executed and the crowd was going pretty bananas which does account for something. Blade continues to be perplexing executing some spots flawlessly and then nearly killing himself on the botches as you see with the SSP here. Overall, I can’t call this good but can look from the rear view mirror and see how something like this was beneficial for CZW as a whole in getting Blade’s name out there. Shit finish straight out of the AJPW mid 80’s playbook. **3/4