[2003-04-20-FWA-British Breakout Tour: Night 2] Doug Williams vs Chris Hamrick

[TonyPulis'Cap]

This match is from the FWA’s British Breakout Tour, which was part of the company’s desire to become a more national promotion, branching out of the South coast and London area which was its base. We are in the glamorous setting of Cleethorpes on one of the nights of the tour in the North of England at the Winter Gardens, which was one of your classic British seaside music hall venues. This is very much a ‘house show’/B show type card, compared to the bigger standalone shows the FWA was putting on in and around the London area.

Doug is a month on from defeating Christopher Daniels for the FWA Title at ROH Night of the Champions to begin his second reign. Worth noting at this point FWA Title matches were 2/3 falls. Hamrick would be a semi-regular for the FWA in 2003, and for this match is billed as ‘representing XPW’ which the FWA had a partnership with.

In the opening exchanges, Hamrick is in full stooging heel mode, trying to convince the ref Doug’s used a closed fist on him behind his back. We also get a load of spots involving atomic drops, with the early stages being worked as a comedy match. It plays well to the family type crowd in attendance, but you have to think they wouldn’t have gone down this route in front of the regular more hardcore FWA fanbase. What’s good though is that Doug, as the top guy in the company doesn’t get portrayed as an idiot, and doesn’t fall for any of the mind games.

Things start to pick up with some brawling on the outside, and from there we lead to a sequence back in the ring where William’s picks up the first fall with a tornado DDT. The start of the second fall sees Hamrick faking trying to leave, but again Doug isn’t your standard babyface idiot and continues to be on top. With his regular tours to the US, Doug is so smooth and confident in everything he does.

One of the problems with the match however, is that every time it looks to be escalating, Hamrick rather jarringly goes back to the stooging and there’s an odd sequence in which he goes for a split legged moonsault, but ends up botching it and selling that he’s seriously injured. The ref calls for assistance with other wrestlers coming out, and given the old school/family seaside crowd, people seem to buy it’s a real injury, but he then hops up to superkick Doug and get the second fall. Usually on a fake injury angle you don’t go to the trouble of deliberately botching a move badly, but then I guess, he could’ve in kayfabe terms be covering the fact he’s made an error and sees it as a way of working an opening? Either way, it’s all a bit odd in the execution.

The final fall is more serious and moves into a more typical indie back and forth contest with Hamrick getting a series of near falls, including his top rope leg drop. However, we then get a convoluted ending with the ref being knocked down when Doug has the match won with the Chaos Theory, allowing Hamrick to hit a low blow and a piledriver (illegal in the FWA) to seemingly win the title when Head Ref Steve Lynskey runs down to count the pin…however, as you probably guess, we get the original ref waving it off – not clear if it’s because he’s the designated official or if it’s because of the use of the banned piledriver – and restarting the match. From there, it’s another Chaos Theory and Doug retains.

This ended up really disappointing me. If you’ve read any of my FWA reviews, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of Doug Williams, who was consistently putting in excellent performances at this time, and I also like Chris Hamrick, but this is a really schizophrenic match alternating between stooging comedy and indie nearfalls, and includes both a fake injury angle and a Dusty finish that suffocates any of the good parts. (**)