WWE Worst Match Ever - 93 - Billy Gunn vs. Kenzo Suzuki - Great American Bash 2004

 93.

Billy Gunn vs. Kenzo Suzuki

Great American Bash 2004

2004 SmackDown was a weird, sad, grim place. The main event scene had a giant Brock Lesnar sized hole that needed patched up. Undertaker was back as the Deadman, but WWE were still getting the grips on how to book this supernatural being in a post-Attitude era world - no doubt we’ll get to that later in this project. Bradshaw was suddenly thrust into the main event as the brand’s champion after Eddie Guerrero struggled with the pressure of heading a brand. Beyond that, however, the brand had lost Benoit, but it wasn’t like it had been culled like they had in, say, 2007.

Speaking of post-Attitude era world, this is where Billy Gunn got lost. After a relatively interesting gimmick with Chuck (at least interesting by Billy Gunn standards), he was back to where he was. See WWE as a whole had an issue with reverting back to what was popular 4 years ago. Back in the late 90s into the early 00s, WWE was hotter than ever, with seemingly every midcard act being popular. But as time grew on, many talents like Billy Gunn, Rikishi, the Dudleyz, Hardcore Holly just loitered as the leftover remnants of a time when WWE was the hottest thing in the world. They weren’t getting fresh new gimmicks, just existing in much the same way they had for years earlier except with more mileage on the clock. 

In among this, however, SmackDown in 2004 was clearly making an active effort after Wrestlemania to promote new stars. As you’ll see in the list to follow, we can generously say this is a mixed bag of success at best. JBL is the obvious example. Beyond that however, there was a conscious effort to heavily push young talent like John Cena (probably a smart decision) and Renee Dupree who had been around a couple of years. As well as this, SmackDown began introducing new stars such as Mordecai, Mark Jindrak, and our showcase wrestler here, Kenzo Suzuki. 

Michael Cole comments that Suzuki is undefeated since coming in to WWE, not 30 seconds before we are presented with Suzuki being disqualified on the Thursday before this show to set this match up. I’m a big Cole fan nowadays but my god he didn’t half come out with some rubbish lines in his time. There is a fantastic exchange between him and Tazz regarding Suzuki’s geisha manager’s name.

Tazz: “Hiroku”

Cole: “It’s Hiroko”

Tazz: “All right, all right, I don’t speak Japanese!”

Cole comments that Kenzo is out for vengeance … because of reasons. He’s basically a typical anti-American evil foreigner fit with every stereotype of a Japanese samurai. This gimmick feels incredibly dated for this time period - made even worse by Kenzo’s goofy mannerisms. If you dumped Kenzo into 1980s WWF, maybe he wouldn’t stand out as badly as he does here. But if you think his awkward wannabe samurai mannerisms were bad, his wrestling here was even worse.

If I didn’t know better this felt like it was an effort to fit as many long drawn out restholds in a single match. I counted 4 decently long rest holds, including 2 nerve holds, one of which sucked all the life out of an already tepid crowd. Yep, he would definitely fit into 1980s WWF. By the final nerve hold, the fans generously give Gunn a rousing USA chant. During Gunn’s comeback, Suzuki was absolutely nowhere he needed to be for Gunn’s comeback, to the point that Billy was awkwardly picking him up during a basic comeback routine. This man was woefully underprepared for a pay-per-view match. It is not often I watch a Billy Gunn match and think he’s comfortably the better wrestler in the match. There’s parts where Suzuki is building up that he’s going to hit Gunn with some big move after he gets up, just to put him in another rest hold, or do the world’s worst shining wizard. 

A low blow followed by an ugly looking neckbreaker picks up the win for Suzuki.

Shockingly, Suzuki would stick around a fair bit longer than this, even going on to win the WWE Tag Team Titles with Renee Dupree before being released in 2005. Billy Gunn would go on to leave WWE in 2004, hang about in TNA for a while, and is still relevant on television in 2023 as part of AEW.

Up next - I’ve got two traditional Survivor Series matches coming up one after the other. This recent Survivor Series match is lucky that I consider it just a little bit better than the match with the midgets and the clowns. 

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