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.
Eddie Guerrero vs. Super Crazy - ROH The Era of Honor Begins (2002)
The late great Eddie Guerrero wrestled the "Insane Luchadore" Super Crazy at ROH's inaugural show, The Era of Honor Begins. This match was the finals for the Puerta Rican promotion, IWA's Intercontinental Championship tournament to crown the first-ever champ - as well as the first time these two crafty individuals had wrestled each other in the US.
Katsuyori Shibata vs. Tomohiro Ishii - NJPW G1 Climax 23 Day Night 4 (2013)
If there was one bit of hype that I read on the internet that I did believe this year, it was the hype for New Japan Pro Wrestling. With an incredible good match to match ratio, exciting wrestlers, and outstanding events, I think it's safe to say that NJPW was the best wrestling promotion of 2013.
One outstanding event NJPW put on this year was the 23 annual G1 Climax, a super tournament featuring 20 of the top wrestlers in Japan that took place over the course of 9 days. That's right, a 9 day event that NJPW streamed lived every day featuring pretty much only good matches. One match in particular that got mega attention over the course of the 9 days is the Shibata/Ishii match from Night 4.
Tomohiro Ishii versus "The Wrestler" Katsuyori Shibata is an adrenaline rush of stiff strikes and Japanese fighting spirit (which would be called no-selling in America). There's no feeling out process in the beginning, no rest holds, and absolutely no slowing down. There is a story to it however and that story is: who can look the most legit.
"Mr. Instant Replay" Matt Jackson vs. "Slick" Nick Jackson - HPW Heavyweight title tournament first round match - Hybrid Pro Wrestling (2006)
Currently, the brother team of Nick and Matt Jackson AKA The Young Bucks are one of the top indie tag team darlings going today with their constant spots and superkicks. It wasn't too long ago that the brothers were just two kids inspired by The Hardy Boyz and The Rockers to put on exciting matches together. Here's a match between the two brothers from Southern California in their early days before making a name for themselves and touring the world. They are clearly very green here, but they show a lot of potential even without the multiple dives to the outside, flips for the sake of flips, and superkick after superkick.
This Jackson brother's match also features the now-retired Human Tornado providing color commentary.
Brian Pillman vs. Owen Hart - Intercontinental title tournament semi finals match - Raw is War (1997)
The Loose Cannon takes on his friend and fellow Hart Foundation comrade, Owen Hart in what would become his last televised match. The match was a semi finals tournament match for the vacant Intercontinental title against the two - who had both won their opening match of the tournament, but Pillman had other plans as he did not want to fight his friend, Owen. So, Pillman came out with a sling on and informed the crowd that he had slipped in the shower and broke his arm while doing non-PG things with Goldust's wife, Marlena (Terri Runnels).
Commissioner Slaughter, however, didn't buy the whole arm injury excuse and forced the two Stampede Wrestling alum to fight it out regardless of their partnership in the Hart Foundation.
Around this time, Brian Pillman was in a heated feud with Goldust, who had beat him at Summerslam with the special stipulation that Pillman had to wear one of Marlena's gold dresses if he lost. Pillman eventually got his revenge on Goldust at In Your House: Ground Zero when the Loose Cannon defeated Goldust to win the services of Marlena for thirty days. This was day 16.
Brian Pillman's next match on WWF TV was scheduled to be against Dude Love at In Your House: Bad Blood, but Pillman did not make it to the event. It was later revealed that Pillman had passed away from an unknown heart condition that day.
Owen Hart would go on to win the Intercontinental title tournament when he defeating Faarooq in the finals at Bad Blood that night.
It has come to my attention today that New Jack has retired from wrestling. I guess there's one less liability to worry about.
Rather than posting his retirement match (against Necro Butcher at this years' PWS Super Card), I've decided to just post this match instead for no reason other than I didn't want to post his notorious scaffold match with Vic Grimes yet or any match where he tries to stab his opponent to death.
That's New Jack's thing. Stabbing people to death.
New Jack vs. Sandman - Finals for the Hard 10 championship - NWA:TNA (2003)
Back in '03, TNA decided to add a little hardcore to their menu. So what better way to do this then by making a tournament revolving around a few ECW alumni mixed in with some guys who wrestled a couple times for ECW (Devon Storm, Vampire Warrior, Wolfie D) along with Mike Sanders and Sonny Siaki from WCW's Power Plant. But here's the catch - because this is TNA remember: there's got to be a catch on top of a catch - there was a point system.
A hardcore point system!
Apparently the way to win a match in this tournament was to get 10 points by using the weapons that were strategically placed around the ringside area and held by fans. The weapons that the competitors brought to the ring themselves did not count, however. Also, using a table was 5 big ones alone. So basically this tournament was just an excuse to see wrestlers get hit with random objects for five minutes like WWF's hardcore division circa 2000.
But it had a hardcore point system!
New Jack and Sandman, the two people hardcore enough to make it to the finals, battled it out in a back and forth struggle for points using the weapons they could find just laying around. Towards the end of the match, everyone loses count of the points and New Jack and Sandman make their way to the nearest balcony for New Jack to fall off of.. I mean get pushed off of.
Classic New Jack.
All that's missing is "Natural Born Killaz" being played on repeat throughout the duration of the match.
The New Breed vs. The Armstrongs (Brad & Bob) - NWA: Jim Crocket Promotions (1987)
A couple of days ago I introduced this blog to the glorious gimmick of Hector Guerrero as Lazor-Tron, the masked laser-tagger from outer space. But what I failed to mention was that Lazor-Tron may have actually been not only a real robot but a decepticon. Yes, decepticon - as in the evil robots from Transformers!
The team of Sean Royal and Chris Champion AKA The New Breed were a due of young time traveling cool dudes from 2002; a 2002 from a parallel dimension where Dusty Rhodes was the president and the Rock 'n' Roll Express were being used for medical experiments. They were also probably the coolest forgotten heel tag team of the 80's.
h the recently passed-on Brad and Bob Armstrong. And while this match saw no official winners, you could certainly tell that The New Breed were way before their time - because they were - and really were the winners of this match which was stop due to the time limit.
Unfortunately, like a lot of things in life, The New Breed was short-lived, due in part by Sean Royal's car accident and Chris Champion's hand injury leading the team to lose their push and . Eventually Sean Royal would walk out of the wrestling business leaving Champion to work alone before becoming Yoshi Kwan (an Asian-themed wrestler). Champion was also one of the Ninja Turtles from USWA.
A little side note that I find kind of interesting but quite unfortunate is that Chris Champion would later have a stroke (due to drugs and what have you) which left him in real bad shape. This jut happened have taken place in 2002; the year The New Breed were from.
My theory is that this is why The New Breed time-traveled back to the mid to late 80's; to wrestle back at the prime of tag team wrestling as well as to somehow try to reverse terrible events that had transpired. They also had to go back in time in seek revenge on Lazer-Tron and "Boogie Woogie Man" Jimmy Valiant just because.
