[2001-01-27-IWA-MS] Corporal Robinson vs Trent Baker & Shadow Kid (Handicap)

[GSR]

Sex Pistols in the ‘House of Hardcore’ courtesy of Baker’s entrance theme.  Trent says that tonight marks the end of Corporal Robinson because last week he made the mistake of doing what Americans do so well, running their bloody mouths.  He claims to fear no man; well tonight he faces not one man, but two.  Corp’s response consists of making homophobic jibes at the two and getting his catchphrase over.  Baker is announced as being from Liverpool, England, although surely if you’re doing a rugby gimmick somewhere like Leicester or Gloucester would be more apropos?  Also I detected no Scouse accent whatsoever.  The man advantage plays dividends at first until Corp levels Trent with a clothesline and then dumps Shadow with a German.  The fight takes to the floor where Corp whips Baker into a row of chairs.  You have to admire Ian’s optimism with the amount of rows he puts out every show.  As he stalks the ‘Rugby Thug’ with some light tubes he’s handed by a fan, Kid nails him with a baseball slide dropkick through the ropes.  The action returns to the ring where Trent drops an elbow from the second rope.  Lovely looking middle rope moonsault by Kid.  The heels get a raft of two counts, Baker even pulling out a Brad Armstrong style Russian legsweep.  Suplex/flying crossbody combination.  Kid chooses not to follow up, instead collecting a chair from ringside which he piledrives Corp onto.  Facebuster onto the chair and Corp comes up bleeding.  Rolling neck snap.  Baker mounts and reigns down punches trying to open that cut up more.  Shadow does Elix Skipper’s ‘Play of the Day’ finisher, of which I think he’s only the other person I’ve seen use.  He sits Corp up top but it appears something goes wrong as Shadow slips on the ropes.  Possibly trying to get their footing for a superbomb maybe?  Anyway Shadow ends up low blowing Corp.  He misses a top rope twisting senton and then Trent misses on the somersault.  Baker accidentally blasts Shadow with his rugby ball, and as he tries to apologize, Corp facejams him into the match.  ‘Bootcamp’ and Corp picks up the win.  Strangely he doesn’t bother to stick around to celebrate, immediately heading to the back.  Trent is sick and tired of the fans calling him a pussy and showing him no respect.  If these people want hardcore he’ll show them what hardcore is and challenges Corp to a thumbtack death match on the next show.  That turns into a tag match involving Shadow and Suicide Kid, the former not too happy, although Trent tells him it’ll be fine.

The heat section went too long for my liking and felt even longer than it actually was.  I found my mind wandering and was actually quite bored.  Shadow is an incredibly irritating character too, and not in a good way, doing the horn hand sign after every move and constantly laughing “ha ha ha” throughout.

[soup23]

This is a handicap whether officially or not as Shadow Kid is involved and takes the pin at the end. I don’t like Shadow or Trent so I didn’t have high hopes and those were realized. The opening brawl between Corp and Trent was fine and Corporal knows the general rules of how to look sympathetic as a face but overall this was a slog with some really poor execution and in true IWA style, it went about 5-10 minutes too long. *1/2