[2003-01-18-XPW-New Year's Revolution-Night 2] Kaos vs. Jonny Storm

[TonyPulis'Cap]

Storm had beaten Jerry Lynn the previous night to get a shot at Kaos' XPW TV Title. He looks great early on, getting lots of shine and flustering Kaos. Given he had only had a couple of appearances in the company (and a only a few in the US) Storm is really over with the crowd. Kaos is athletic and can hit big spots, but feels like a rich man's backyarder whenever I've seen him - he doesn't really do transitions, and also doesn't act too well as a base here, meaning that some of the sequences come off looking a little rough. As was the way with Kaos matches at the time there is way too much outside interference (think the RVD/Bill Alfonso dynamic with the volume turned up) from GQ Money (the future NXT producer Ryan Katz). Speaking of which, Bill Alfonso is actually the 'trouble shooting ref' on the outside here to try and counter that interference, however it just ends up being another factor that overwhelms the match.

As you would imagine, there's lots of early 2000s indie style exchanges, and not at the top end of that style either, with no real rhyme or reason behind what they are doing. Storm is a better technical wrestler than just the highflying he gets to do here, but Kaos doesn't show much appetite to want to do anything other than a spotfest. Although to his credit, he does hit all his big spots well. Down the stretch there is a good nearfall off a Storm top rope DDT, but then the match ends rather abruptly with Kaos hitting a piledriver for the win. If they had just gone pure spotfest then this probably would've been more exciting, but with all the stuff on the outside, there was just too much going on. (** 1/4)