[2001-02-10-WWF-Metal] Essa Rios vs Kid Romeo

[GSR]

A quick video recap of what happened on Raw Monday, when Kurt Angle confronted Essa Rios in the dressing room accusing him of stealing his T-shirt to sell for tequila.  Those good ol’ wrestling stereotypes there!  He insults him once more by offering money to go and buy him a replacement which leads to Essa challenging him to a match that is set for tomorrow’s episode of Heat.

Nice roll up counter off the go behind by Romeo for a super early two.  He ducks under a swinging right but Kid’s not as smart as he thinks, as while he points at his head Rios lands a spinning kick to the upper back.  Romeo with a side step and Essa goes crashing head first into the turnbuckles.  Rios lands on his feet following a monkey flip, however a drop toe hold sends him sliding along the canvas and all the way to the outside.  He avoids the baseball slide and floors Romeo with a thrust kick.  Jawbreaker to escape the rear chinlock.  Essa goes for a satellite headscissors but Kid just pancakes him instead.  A wheelbarrow bulldog gets him a near fall and it may well have been a three if he hadn’t played to the crowd before making the cover.  Romeo heads upstairs, but Rios falls into the ropes and he crotches himself.  Big slam to the mat.  Essa heads to the top himself, hits that beautiful looking moonsault and he takes a win into tomorrow’s match against Angle.

I was thrown when I saw this match because Romeo is a WCW Power Plant graduate and thought he was under contract to WCW at this point.  I checked my records and it turns out his last match was back in April 2000 before next wrestling Chris Harris in the ‘Superbrawl Revenge’ dark match eight days after this appearance on Metal.  Guess someone wasn’t too keen on seeing one of ‘their own’ on WWF TV and signed him back up pronto.  He stayed with the company for the final few months and was one of the contracts that the WWF picked up when they bought WCW, although got zero look in and was farmed out to HWA until his eventual release.  I’ve always like Romeo and he was tailor made for WCW, but as someone who was a small guy and not a flyer, there weren’t too spots available for guys like that in the WWF back then.  Another fun (that seems to be the key word on this show) Metal match with Rios looking better here than he did against Scoot Andrews.