[1997-12-08-WWF-Shotgun Saturday Night] Doug Furnas & Philip LaFon vs Jeff Hardy & Matt Hardy

[Ma Stump Puller]

Interesting clash of teams here that I was actually pretty shocked to find did interact with each other, albeit very briefly and not exactly on any major platform. The Hardy gang are still pretty new to the whole "wrestling" gig and had spent most of their first few years as jobbers; this is no different but they are starting to have more competitive matches despite said jobbing and are slowly crawling up the card. This match also randomly captures one of the very last instances of the Can-Am Express in action before they went to ECW and spilt (to my knowledge they only show up on TV maybe once or twice later but I haven't seen any proof of that so take it with a big pinch of salt) so lots of important stuff happens here despite this being a nothing D-show. 

They give the Hardy duo a decent amount of time here to get their spots over (including a horrific springboard moonsault botch which has Jeff flop to the floor in a painful bump) which the crowd seem receptive to in general, helped by Can-Am's general cocky heel antics grinding Jeff for most of it and shutting down the ring. The two look sharp for their offence as per standard, including a gorgeous dropkick by Furnas and Jeff fucking destroying his back when taking a double backdrop with a huge bump to the mat. Interestingly we get a symbolic three count when Jeff goes for a small package, but the ref is distracted by some outside stuff so he can't count. Matt mostly does nothing, which I'm fine with because Jeff is obviously the far better worker here and is a good underdog babyface working underneath the two, dude bumps big and his comebacks are fairly nifty, working off the fact he can't overpower the two so using a lot of snappy agility instead. 

Matt's inevitable hot tag is fairly decent, mind you; just nothing that great, outside of a random springboard moonsault. We get a slightly botched brainbuster/inverse springboard splash by the two for a near fall before Furnas just shoves Jeff super up and over to the outside (again, it's a real nasty bump given Jeff goes high as anything) allowing the Cam-Am to land a nifty superkick/lariat/DDT combo for the win over Matt. This is good enough despite the limitations of SSN, but I wouldn't be lying if the novelty of the matchup is fascinating: it helps that the Hardy lads outside of some botching already have their tag routine down-pat basically, and it is refreshing to see them work a more spotty 90's style Jr-heavyweight style as opposed to their hardcore stuff, which would oversaturate their showings for a lot of their career. Cam-Am looked solid, though Furnas seemed a bit more into this than LaFon/Kroffat. Shame we couldn't get the two working even a year later, because this was surprisingly well-done for a SSN sprint.