Dr. Darin Davis

Wow. What a difference a month makes. I take back what I said about Kofi Kingston a few weeks ago. Actually, I don’t take it back since it was true at the time, but I thought it would take longer to get a good match out of him. His match with Shelton Benjamin on this week’s ECW program was really good. I guess it goes to show you how someone who’s a little green needs someone with experience to lead him along. Usually it’s the heel that does the leading in this type of situation because they can keep taking control.

Kofi’s undefeated streak is over. That’s a good thing. Even though Kofi lost, he came out of the match looking good. The dynamic of having him be the underdog and almost winning several times worked. Benjamin would have the upper hand, but when Kofi needed to take over he had the athletic ability to pull off one exciting move after another. It didn’t have the paint-by-numbers feel that his other matches have had. And now that they don’t have to continue the streak they can put him against other wrestlers and not worry about what the finish is going to be.

The test will be seeing whether he can continue the momentum in his next match, or if it really was all Benjamin making this one turn out as good as it did.

In his early days, the wrestler now known as Bam Neely spent a lot of time wrestling in a tag team with his uncle. They were known in the area as Blood and Gutz- The Hellraisers.

Blood had wrestled several years before in a tag team with someone I believe was his real life brother. I think the team was called the Blood Brothers, but don’t quote me on that.

Although the following match is unstructured (it’s pretty much a free-for-all at times), and it’s definitely not their best match as a tag team, I thought it would be worth posting to see four guys having fun beating each other up at a bar.

This match originally aired on “Slick” Mick’s Bodyslam Review, hosted by Mick Karch and produced by Al Pabon. It was taped at Sharx in Fridley, MN. I believe it was in 1998.

I’ve never really liked “gimmick” matches. By that I mean matches that either have some kind of special stipulations or special equipment needed.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like most of what happens during a ladder match, or during a TLC (tables, ladders, chairs) match. We get to see incredible moves off of ladders, sometimes to the outside of the ring. We get to see wrestlers get smashed through tables. We get to see inventive uses of chairs- wrestlers launching themselves off of chairs, launching chairs at other wrestlers, double team moves, multiple chairs, etc.

If the goal of the match (i.e. the way to win) was to be the first to put your opponent through a table, I’m fine with that. If the winner had to have the most pinfalls or submissions within a certain time limit, that’s good also- there have been a lot of great matches over the years with that theme. The majority of the time though, the way to win these gimmick matches is to reach something. In a pole match, you have to grab something off of a pole in the corner. In a ladder match, you have to grab something suspended above the center of the ring. In some cage matches, you have to climb over the top and touch the floor, or climb out the door and reach the floor. In a bullrope match, you have to touch all four turnbuckles in a row before your opponent does. And that is the biggest problem I have with them.

As soon as getting somewhere becomes the way to win, then the way you end up building suspense is to have someone almost get there and then get stopped. Sounds good on paper but can be difficult to watch in practice.

I just laid you out so I can climb this ladder to get the belt. Let me adjust the position of the ladder for about 20 seconds, then I’ll get up to the first rung and have to rest. I just did a top rope bulldog, but for some reason I get winded taking one step. Okay, now I’m up to the second rung. I’m going to look up- yep, it’s still there. Made it to the third rung, gotta rest again (Dude, get up!). Going for the fourth… oh, I got knocked off (Whew!).

TNA wrestling had a women’s match last week that was a “hair clipper on a pole match”. Same thing. Someone slowly climbs up and waits to get knocked off. The winner of this match would be granted immunity from the “hair” match at Sunday’s Pay-Per-View. In this match, the loser gets their head shaved. But if you win the “clipper on the pole” match and you lost Sunday’s match, you wouldn’t get your head shaved but the person that pinned you would. Or something. Sounds like too many rules to me, which is another problem some of these match types.

And why does “TNA managment” think that I would be more likely to buy their PPV if I got to see one of their hot TNA Knockouts get their head shaved? If they really wanted guys to tune in they would be… never mind.

I guess gimmick matches will probably be around forever (in the future they’ll probably involve robots or flying cars). I’d be curious to find out if PPV orders or TV ratings were actually higher because of these. I have a hard time believing they would be.

Since there seems to be a lot of interest in ECW‘s Bam Neely (a.k.a. Hellfire, Gutts, Gutz, Magnus Maximus, etc., etc.), and not a lot of information on some of his earlier work, I went digging around to see if I had any footage of some early matches.

Turns out it would have been easier for me to create a Claymation re-enactment of this match than to dig through a pile of tapes to find it. Should have done a better job of indexing this stuff.

As I think I mentioned before, both he and Prime Time had initially trained with another wrestling promoter and had a few matches before coming to Eddie Sharkey and Terry Fox‘s training camp. I believe this was their first match after switching to Sharkey.

This match originally aired on “Slick” Mick’s Bodyslam Review, hosted by Mick Karch and produced by Al Pabon.

I can’t help but feel like ECW’s Kofi Kingston is being forced on me week after week. Instead of bringing this guy in and building him up slowly (kind of like what they did for Cody Rhodes), they seem to have decided that the best way to introduce him is to bring back squash matches from the 80′s, give him an undefeated streak, and constantly put him in my face. And now recently, they have one of their top guys, Shelton Benjamin, put him over. Twice.

I don’t really have a problem with him personally (since I’ve never actually met him that’s hard to say I guess), I just have an issue with them pushing him the way they are. Having a storyline where part of the character’s gimmick is that he is undefeated shouldn’t be used often. It works for a Goldberg, or a Samoa Joe, or Umaga. It doesn’t really work for a laid-back dude from Jamaica.

The biggest problem I have are his matches so far (with the exception of the Benjamin matches, which I don’t think he had a lot to do with). Yes, he’s very athletic. Yes, he has a great vertical leap. But it always feels too “scripted” to me, like they are just going through the motions.

It’s as if he’s back in the locker room talking to his opponent and saying, “Listen, mon. I’m going to do a leapfrog over here, den a dropkick over there, den my patented leg drop here, and a spin kick over there. Your job is to get in my way, mon.” I almost expected to see numbers and arrows drawn on the canvas. “Go to #1, take a bump, get up, go to #2, take a bump, wait for me at #3…”.

If I remember right, they tried to push Rocky Maivia like that when he debuted, and people hated him. They pushed him to win a title belt (Intercontinental?), and people hated him. Then he came up with “The Rock” gimmick, had time to put over his character, and people started to like him. Then they loved him.

Let us decide whether or not to like Kofi on our own. Whenever they “tell me” I have to like someone, which the announcers do every week, I end up not liking them.

Until they turn heel.