[2003-08-03-FWA-Northern Exposure Tour - Night 2] James Tighe vs Jack Xavier

[TonyPulis'Cap]

Night 2 of the tour is from Bolton. Coming in, Tighe is the one with the momentum in 2003 having just pinned Jody Fleisch on the last big FWA show (Hotwired) and would go on to main event the biggest show of the year (British Uprising 2). Xavier by contrast has been up and down.

I like that this match doesn’t start with the usual indie reversals and standoffs (a standard trope of many an FWA match at this time) and there’s some nice matwork at the beginning to enjoy. They each try some ‘mind games’ at the beginning to try and get the advantage, with Xavier winning the battle of wits to get a couple of close near falls. Tighe is the better, more in form wrestler of the two, so Xavier keeping him off his game is how he is able to get the advantage.

As the match goes on however, you can see Tighe’s quality coming to the fore, and increasingly Xavier is having to go more high risk to hang in there. This leads to him taking a really scary looking bump off a moonsault to the floor landing on his leg. It would’ve been nice to see Tighe then go after the leg and show a more vicious or focussed side, but they then go to the finish fairly quickly after that. Xavier gets a close 2 count off a flatliner, but gets caught going up top, and Tighe his the Tighetanic off the ropes for the win. (** ¾)