1-2-3 Kid & Bob Holly v Bam Bam Bigelow & Tatanka

[Loss]

1-2-3 Kid & Bob Holly v Bam Bam Bigelow & Tatanka - WWF Royal Rumble 1995

 

This was the final round of tag titles tournament, with Kid and Holly as the major underdogs. Considering that 50% of the participants were pretty good around this time when the planets were aligned properly, and another 25% had his moments as well, I was expecting this to be decent, especially since I'd seen it called "good" in some circles. This was actually a horrible match, brought down almost entirely by Tatanka. The announcers refer to Kid losing to Bigelow on Action Zone in the weeks before the show, and I wished I was watching that match instead, because it has the potential to be much better. Kid is barely in the match; the majority of it is wrestled by Holly, who is perhaps the most perfectly average wrestler of all time. He doesn't have the charisma to make the face-in-peril stuff work, and he's not given any hope spots to speak of anyway, as Tatanka keeps slowly dominating him and killing the pace Bigelow establishes when he's in the ring. One rather embarrassing miscue sees Waltman dive in for a dramatic save, only for Tatanka to move out of the way, leaving Kid to accidentally elbow his partner and express grief over it. That's a perfectly good heel spot, but to put the underdog faces in that position when they aren't even getting any offense anyway is death to them. The finish provides them neither credibility nor heat, as Tatanka accidentally knocks Bigelow off the ropes and Kid crawls over for a pin 30 seconds later. If that's not bad enough, the tournament would be rendered meaningless the next night, when Kid & Holly would drop the title back to the Smoking Gunns. The tag division was suffering at this point in time, and that problem wasn't helped by the use of Sean Waltman, as they kept putting him in makeshift tag teams that would get over big, only to be broken up shortly thereafter for no real reason.