Chris Hero vs. Claudio Castagnoli - Opening Round match - King of Europe Cup (2007)
Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli AKA The Kings of Wrestling battle one another in this opening round match for the 2007 King of Europe Cup. At the time, Hero was representing Combat Zone Wrestling while Castagnoli was representing Chikara Pro.
The match itself goes nice and smooth until Chris Hero slams Claudio Castagnoli with enough force to leave a big dip in the ring. For the rest of the match, Hero and Castagnoli must fight around this indentation in the middle of the squared circle. From there, like the mat itself, the match pretty much goes down hill and is all about how the hell are these two guys going to end the match without using the middle of the ring.
Theme results
Ring Destruction: The ring collapses in the middle.
Chris Hero vs. Eddie Kingston - Loser Leaves CZW match - CZW Out With the Old, In With the New (2007)
In honor of Chris Hero's return to the Combat Zone tonight, I present the heated blood feud of Hero vs. Eddie Kingston - loser leaves CZW for good. You can tell that these two really didn't like each other, in the ring or out. That being said, this is less like a wrestling match and more like a straight up, back and forth stiff fest; slow brewed to the very final strike.
PS: The loser did happen to make a one match return to CZW in 2010.
Ron "The Truth" Killings & Rasheed Lucius "Consequences" Creed (w/Pacman Jones) vs. AJ Styles & Tomko - TNA Tag Team titles match - TNA Bound For Glory (2007)
If there's one year of TNA that I actually watched and forgot about, it's 2007. I guess that's why I thought it was mighty odd that people were saying that Consequences Creed, now Xavier Woods, had already teamed up with R-Truth before the debut of Woods on Raw tonight. As it turns out, before Lethal Consequences (Creed's tag team with Jay Lethal that I do remember), Consequences Creed was the guy added to the team of Ron Killings and... yep, you guessed it, Adam "Pacman" Jones of American football shenanigans fame in TNA in 2007. Since Pacman Jones was technically still under contract with the NFL (he just happened to be suspended at this time), Pacman was not actually allowed to wrestle, which doesn't sound that bad except for the important and incredibly inane fact that he was one half of the TNA tag champions. I'm not going to say this was a poor decision by TNA; putting the title on someone who has never wrestled and happened to be the bad boy of football that week is nothing new. Titles with more prestige have been put on worse nobodies, but here Pacman wasn't even allowed to wrestle. That's where Consequences Creed came in, however, and thanks to Pacman in a way, Creed made a big enough impact in this match to be called back and eventually had a pretty solid run in TNA until 2010.
So here's to the silver-lining of Team Pacman in TNA circa 2007. Here's to Xavier Woods hopefully getting to stay on the main roster for good.
I should also point out that Pacman returned to TNA two weeks ago. Maybe WWE saw this and remembered Team Pacman for the first time since 2007 as well, and remembered that they have the better halves.
Johnny Saint vs. Johnny Kidd - LDN Legends Showdown (2007)
In 1996, Johnny Saint, the master of reversals and World of Sport legend wrestled his retirement against Naohiro Hoshikawa in Michinoku Pro Wrestling. However, this would not be Saints' last match. It would just be his last match for over 10 years! Saint returned to the ring once more to compete for the British indie promotion, LDN Wrestling where he faced up against another former World of Sport alum, Johnny Kidd at LDN's Legends Showdown in 2007.
Despite being away from the ring for over a decade, Johnny Saint looked and performed just like he had all those years in the World of Sport era. Here's to the man of a thousand holds!
John Cena vs. Kevin Federline - No Disqualification match - Raw (2007)
Battle of the "rapper thugs"
Today was the day someone reminded me about Kevin "K-Fed" Federline, that guy who was once married to Britney Spears and apparently was a... nope. That's really it.
Thanks to my rediscovery of this forgotten "mogul", I remembered this longing-to-be forgotten match that took place on Raw back in 2007. The only reason I actually watched it was to make sure there was any fighting at all in the match, for better or for worse. And well, there sort of is.
"Black Machismo" Jay Lethal vs. "The Genius" Lanny Poffo - Pro Wrestling Syndicate New Jersey indie show (2007)
Channeling the spirit of Macho Man within, "Black Machismo" Jay Lethal takes on the real-life brother of the late great Macho Man Randy Savage, Lanny Poffo, best known for his time in WWF as "Leaping" Lanny Poffo or a bit more remembered as The Genius. The 50 something year old looks in great shape here and even pulls of some pretty agile moves including a moonsault... yep, some Terry Funk shit right there.
Unfortunately for Lanny, the much younger Jay Lethal pulls away with the win despite Lanny's best efforts to beat his "brother from another mother, so to speak".
The commentary is pretty poor, what more would you except from an indie show in New Jersey, and I have no idea what Jay Lethal said during and after the match. Other than that, this isn't really that bad of a match. Unless watching a 50 year old man wrestle in his speedo against a young wrestler pretending to be his brother isn't your thing, of course.
Cameo: Jay Lethal's family as Lethal is a native to New Jersey.
The Great Muta & Yoshihiro Tajiri vs. Goldustin & Jinsei Shinzaki - AJPW (2007)
Some really nice contrasting styles in this All Japan Pro Wrestling tag team match featuring Great Muta, Yoshihiro Tajiri, Goldust as Goldustin for copyright reasons, and Jinsei Shinzaki AKA Hakushi.
Speaking of styles, it appears that Goldust seemed to be a little more homoerotic, if you will, here in Japan than he would in the states. My guess is that those sort of old school sexual mind games that Goldust puts on his opponents are more acceptable there than in America. It's definitely not acceptable on a product like the G rated Saturday Morning Slam on The CW where Goldust will most likely end up wrestling on now that he's back in WWE after making his 3rd or 4th Royal Rumble return.
This match is all fun and games until Muta and Tajiri gang up on Dustin, giving him a double dosage of mist while Shinzaki was known out of the ring, followed up by a shining wizard for the win.
PS: I would have loved to see the oddball team of Goldust and Tajiri in WWE. I'm quite surprised now that they were never a tag team...
