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  " The Gravel Pit "

Wrestling

Finders & Keepers 5.28.03
Posted by Tony Jaymz on May 28, 2003, 20:05

So I sit down, and watch this tape set I recently got. IWA-MS� Ultra Styles Clash weekend, which tape one was recently reviewed by uber-swank Thomas Green here on The Smart Marks! Cheap Pops rule! Ahem... and the story proceeds, with my two friends coming in. Let�s call them Nick and Mike. Why? �Cause that�s their names...duh. Neither of these two have watched anything outside of WWE. Nick is a HUGE Shawn Micheals fan...he also hates it when I kick the shit outa him in Smackdown. Mike loves Kurt Angle and The Rock, to the point where he truly believes the German Suplex is cooler than the other side of the pillow. In short, these guys are WWE marks. On a very off topic rant, I got to address the whole mark/smark stuff: Everyone is a mark. Nobody believes wrestling is real no more, but they, and I, love to suspend belief. That�s what makes wrestling great, when it brings you in and gets you into the match. Just because you read all the ratings, like to know who is and who isn�t coming in weeks before their surprise entrance(which you then say is unsurprising) doesn�t make you a better fan. We�re all marks, admit it. Then look into the mirror and say �I�m a good person and gosh darnit, people like me!�

Whoa...glad got that out of my system. So here we have two major WWE marks(Mike and Nick) and a guy who is a bit more knowledgeable about wrestling, but doesn�t know everything(me). So we pop the tape in, and we watch, and slowly but surely, due to good wrestling( Rollin� Hard excluded) we start digging it more and more. It started to really come in in the Truth Martini vs. Jorge Estrada match. This is the first chance for me to see Estrada, whom I�ve heard bad things about. I was shocked and agasped(Is that a word? Is now). This guy is not a small guy yet he does a grand Red Star press. He and Martini brought us in, playing up the Martini is an underdog role. I mean yeah sure, martini looked like a drugged out zealot but dammit, he was out drugged out zealot! And the one thing Mike kept saying was �He looks like the Rock...with a bad ass �fro!� and then, it happened... Estrada hit his Swank~ finisher, the Trip To Graceland. For those that don�t know it, it�s like a low, fast spinning fireman�s carry/DVD. We stopped the tape, and rewound it, and watched it again. Yeah, take that Dames! We Jorge Estrada!

So then we go through more matches, with me and my boys getting more and more sucked in. Yeah, we didn�t dig the Bull Pain/Corporal Robinson match, even though I thought they�d love a real hardcore match, as they thought Steve Blackman was a hardcore god. I noticed they started liking the one-on-one matches more, as did I. Then the match that changed us happened. Jimmy Rave/CM Punk. Now, I�m not saying they are the greatest wrestlers ever, but this match was great. The announcers played up the Rave will tap due to his leg/Punk will tap due to his arm. And the wrestlers did too. Rave went after that arm like �Pac after some good grass. When you due a head scissors into a crippler crossface as good as Rave did, you notice. And Punk is just vicious, not only doing moves that would snap a leg, but also bring the Stiff~! Seriously, after watching these guys throw forearms, the WWE is play school. And I gotta say, the announcers hyped us up for certain moves. They would starting saying stuff like �I smell Kneescrapes� and �Shine The Wizard, Punch The Retard!� which just so happens to be the best line delivered this year. And then they�d go for the move, but it�d be reversed and so on and so forth. Until finally, Punk(for example) would hit the Boot Scrapes and we cheered...and shuddered. Boots scrapes are the definition of badass. And when Punk finally won with what looked like a Teguila Sunrise, we saw Punk and Rave as (in Nick�s words) �Two badass mofos. Either of them could have won!� In one match, we learned how psychology and anticipation can make a match *That* much more better.

And finally, came Ace Steel versus AJ Styles. Now, I�ve seen(a.k.a. illegally downloaded) a fair amount of Styles, so I was hyping him up big time. This was my first time ever seeing Ace Steel, and after reading Dames� stuff about him, I wasn�t looking to forward to him. But again, Dames (in this case...don�t fire me Bossman :) ) was incorrect. He�s nowhere near the talent of Styles but he held his own, and he has a certain intensity about him. But he really needs to get a new finisher...when you need your opponents help and the support of the ring ropes, then it�s a bad move. Hell, Victoria does it scores better than him....she�s also hotter but that�s pretty evident. Now Styles, he came off the best. And he lost. The reversals he was pulling off, like a suplex reversed into a neckbreaker was just great. What more can you say...he�s Phenomenal. Oh, and when my boys heard how he turned down a WWE developmental contract:� Good, fuck WWE!� My boys....

So let�s wrap up:
Nick: Still thinks HBK is gods gift to wrestling but now is digging Steel, Styles, Punk, Cabana(He�s such an asshole...groovy) and Adam Gooch. Don�t even ask me about the Gooch.

Mike: Angle still rules. He was looking for a German Suplex the whole show (�Mike that ring looks pretty stiff for a German..��So? They tough motherfuckers!�) Oh and he wants to know why Jorge Estrada is not in the WWE. He also dug the usual suspects.

Okay that�s it for this week(next week? week after?). Next time, I�m going to try my hand at actually reviewing a wrestling dvd...don�t expect Play-byplay but do expect an endorsement by Taco Bell. That�s right...tacos rule and you damn well know it.

Be sure to check out Nik Johnson , as he takes on the Women in Wrestling subject. But he said Stacy isn�t hot...so screw him..bastard.

Tony Jaymz



 

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