Kairi Vs Mercedes Moné - NJPW Battle of the Valley (18/2/23)

Mercedes Moné didn’t make a great first impression in NJPW.  The IWGP Womens title match before her debut lasted six minutes buried in the undercard just to let you know how important the division she’s joined is, her new music is a big downgrade and she completely blew hitting her new finisher on Kairi.  It was a lacklustre arrival after months of excited speculation that Sasha Banks was returning to wrestling and not with WWE.    

Thankfully in the never-ending world of pro-wrestling there’s always a chance to make a second impression.  At Battle of the Valley Mercedes challenged her former colleague Kairi for the newly established IWGP Womens title and even on a show headlined by the famous rivalry of Okada Vs Tanahashi, it was the womens match that felt like the main event - Echos of Takeover Brooklyn.   To the fans in the arena, Mercedes’ Tokyo Dome disappointment didn’t matter, she was a bonefide star and the reason they were live in attendance. 

Mercedes took the early advantage in the match, showing no-ring rust as she ran through some lucha inspired armdrags and threw Kairi into the turnbuckle posts before focusing in on the arm to reduce the impact of her cutlass backfist and insane elbow drop down the pike.  As popular as Mercedes is, once the bell rings she’s at her best when she’s a heel and here she leaned into those mannerisms that have served her well in the past.  Mercedes paid tribute to Hana Kimura in her entrance with the gas mask and furry boots, but as the match got more intense, Mercedes ripped off one of the furry boots and chucked it at Kairi. 

This wasn’t just the Moné show though.  Kairi put on a great performance throughout the match, incredible facials and selling to put over Mercedes offence, but when it was her time to attack she made her impact.  Her rolling spear was a highlight, her pirate march corner elbow is always over, and in kayfabe her ‘Anchor’ double leg submission really worked well against Mercedes who’s knees would have taken a self-inflicted pounding from the multiple meteora’s she went for in this high-stakes match.

As the match heated up, Mercedes paid tribute to her best friend with a Belly-to-Bayley nearfall which the fans loved.  I hate the three-amigos tribute spot to Eddie Guerrero, so when Kairi countered the third suplex into a nasty vertical drop DDT I was howling.    This match took place on the same day as The Elimination Chamber, so I was certainly not in the  mood to see more ref bumps in big matches when Mercedes pulled the referee in harms way to eat Kairi’s backfist.  Thankfully this one set up for a big set piece spot up on the ramp resulting in Kairi powerbombing Mercedes through a table with the chefs kiss of her celebrating by kicking Moné’s fake dollar bills from her entrance down to her limp body.  Kairi dragged Mercedes back into the ring and attempted the insane elbow, only for Mercedes to counter by raising her feet – a textbook counter to a top rope move you’ve seen 1,000 times but looked incredible this time around.  Case in point, this is followed up immediately by Mercedes doing a frog splash and Kairi getting her feet up which looked less impressive. 

After some lovely counter-wrestling, Mercedes was able to get Kairi into a Gory special position and float her over into a DDT for the Moné Maker to end the match and win the title.  There must have been some nerves from Mercedes about executing her new finisher after the botch inside the Tokyo Dome, but this time everything went swimmingly. 

Mercedes is in a really exciting time in her career.  She was already in my mind the best womens wrestler the US has ever seen even if WWE never fully appreciated her, but now she has the chance to break new ground by being a top level drawing star in the business and establishing the womens division in New Japan.  Selfishly for me it’ll be great to see her have all these fresh matches with great wrestlers from Stardom rather than get back on the WWE hamster wheel against the wrestlers she’s spent the last decade facing.  I always admire it when wrestlers bet on themselves and go for a fresh challenge (look at Jon Moxley), and in Moné I’ve no doubt this next chapter of her career will be a successful one. 

Ed's Ongoing 2023 MOTY List

WWE Worst Match Ever - 94 - Dolph Ziggler & John Cena vs. Kane & King Barrett - Beast in the East 2015

 94.

Dolph Ziggler & John Cena vs. Kane & King Barrett

Beast in the East 2015

It’s fitting that this match takes place in Japan, as I haven’t felt a sense of existential dread watching an overly long piece of supposed entertainment since I watched Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbour. 

Yes, long before venturing to Australia and Saudi Arabia in recent years, the early days of the WWE Network saw the company experimenting with converting house shows into live events. With the Network still relatively new, they hadn’t quite worked out the quirks of these events. Beast In The East was nothing more than a house show that was promoted to a live event at fairly short notice - similar to Elimination Chamber 2015. What we have is the most house show match that ever existed to close out the show. But not only is it a house show match, but it is long. Very long. At 23 minutes it is easily the longest match on the card, and make no mistake you feel every second of it. While the other matches on the Beast in the East card felt like fairly big affairs that could have easily aired on a regular TV show or PPV, this was wrestled exactly like a house show match. Safe, boring, exaggerated expressions. One of my main gripes about this match is how distracting and corny the babyface mannerisms are on the apron all the time in this match. It's even worse considering Ziggler and Cena are both prone to being corny over-actors at the best of times. I think it reinforces how unsuitable for standard television this style is. There’s a reason that house show matches stay as house show matches. 

The lineup of this match is tragic. Wade Barrett is the latest in a long line of guys that get given a king gimmick following a King of the Ring victory, complete with the stupid recycled costume. He’s also feuding with R-Truth at this time. Kane is the Director of Operations for the Authority, and his ring gear is at its absolute worst. Plain black dress trousers, with a bad haircut. He’s currently in a sort-of feud with Seth Rollins. Meanwhile Ziggler, fresh off being depushed after a promising close to 2014, is in the middle of his summer romance with Lana - arguably the worst romance put to television since Anakin and Padme. He’s in a feud with Rusev which derailed both men's careers.  Meanwhile John Cena is actually having one of the most lauded years of his career as the United States Champion and having fun matches every week. He’s currently feuding with Kevin Owens.

So we have four guys in a thrown together tag match and none of them are feuding with one another. 

And I think John Cena sums up my frustrations with this match because it feels like a waste. The show is named after Brock Lesnar, so why not put him in the main event? Or what about the NXT Championship match between Kevin Owens and Finn Balor? Those two were special matches in their own way. If Cena needs to main event, why not make it an open challenge match to make it slightly interesting?

The match is so long and tedious that any commentary on it feels redundant. There’s a face in peril section featuring Cena which goes on for eternity. Cena, in what would become a running theme for 2015, would hit an AA in the middle of the match to zero consequence. Ziggler gets a hot tag, injects a bit of energy into the match, before we get a second excruciating face in peril section. Seriously, why does this match need two face-in-peril sections? Barrett and Kane are hardly the Midnight Express and they can’t keep a match like this interesting. Not only this, but they also lack credibility in comparison to Cena. This match would also be why I would not say Ziggler is a great seller. He’s fantastic at bumping, but for prolonged selling he kind of sucks. It’s why he’s never been a very good babyface wrestler. 

I think if this match were anywhere else on the card and a bit shorter, I’d just consider it a shit tag match. But the fact they made this a main event match with zero stakes, no build, and made it about twice as long as it needed to be, makes this an easy pick for this list. 

Up next - we’re sticking with a Japanese theme as we venture into the dark, miserable world of mid 2000s Smackdown. 

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Zack Sabre Jr Vs Tomohiro Ishii - NJPW The New Beginning in Sapporo (5/2/23)

How fitting that in the week that Lanny Poffo passed away, we were treated to yet another battle between these two former 'Champions of the British'

This was the first defence of Zack Sabre Jr's NJPW Television title after he became the inaugural champion at WrestleKingdom when he defeated Ren Narita in the tournament finals.   New Japan have had a chequered past with introducing new championships over the last decade.  The NEVER Openweight title originally was supposed to be defended exclusively on NJPW's NEVER events, before it quickly turned into an undercard title coveted by typical strong style wrestlers such as Katsuyori Shibata, Hirooki Goto and Tomohiro Ishii in show-stealing matches.  The IWGP United States Championship never really differentiated itself enough from the IWGP IC title as their US expansion stalled and both titles felt devalued by the existence of each other.  The NEVER Trios titles have been pretty worthless ever since their inception and the KOPW title was an pandemic era experiment that should have been abandoned by now.  By making 35-year old Zack Sabre Jr your first TV Champion instead of Ren Narita, and the next challenger being 47-year old Ishii, the early premise of the title being something for the younger wrestlers to challenge over already feels compromised.  What does give me hope that this title can find it's niche is in it's time limit rules.  By imposing a 15-minute time limit for every title match, it forces wrestlers to cut out the fat and the stalling of the house style and cut to the chase in a dramatic fashion.  I was a big fan of the 2012-2018 boom in New Japan, but have long since grown tired of the 30-40 minute epics that get served up for title matches in this company.  The main event of this show was Hiromu Vs Yoh for 30 minutes for example.  Who has time for that? 

Another cool aspect of this title is that all TV title matches are free to watch on NJ World without a subscription, so if you have a spare 15 minutes today there's no excuse not to check this out!

Zack is now the leader of The Mighty Don't Kneel, teaming up with Mikey Nicholls and Shane Haste (remember TM61?) which feels like a step up after being an upper-tier guy in Suzuki-Gun since he joined the company six years ago.  He also now sports the famous WrestlingClique Orange and Black colour scheme 😉  I'm not certain this will ever lead to him becoming a top guy in the company, but it's a positive sign nevertheless that he has been given the opportunity to lead a faction and carve this title in his image.  

These two have met six times before in singles action, so by now both men should know what to expect from each other, but Ishii has a trick up his sleeve straight away with a cross armbreaker which transitioned into a kneebar.  Zack was thrown off guard slightly by Ishii's 'teckers' as he called it,  This later turned into Zack returning the favour and firing off some Ishii like chops in the corner to let him know two could play at that game.  

The match then settled down more into the styles clash we expect of these two.  Ishii brings the brutal strikes and Zack goes for the submission work and show-off pins and as the clock ticked on it was a battle of whether Zack could snatch a win before Ishii knocked him out.  I particularly enjoyed Ishii countered an arm wringer with a headbutt.  I don't want to see a code red become a staple part of Ishii's moveset, it felt a bit PWG-era John Cena for my liking, but it was a cool spot in isolation.  The last 3 minutes or so of the match you could feel the pace and intensity increase as Ishii knew he needed unload his big hitters now-or-never otherwise the title would stay with Zack in the event of a draw.  There was a good nearfall off the sliding lariat for a 2 count, before Zack countered the 2nd lariat attempt into a roll up.  Zack's offence is perfect for this TV title environment where a quick, sneaky pin out of nowhere doesn't feel like a deflating finish.  That's actually how I expected this match to go down, so I was surprised when the brainbuster was countered into a Zack Driver to end this one with 22 seconds left on the clock.  

It might not be the best match these two have ever had together, but I'll champion anything that proves you can have a great match within 15 minutes - ESPECIALLY in this company.  

Ed's Ongoing 2023 MOTY List

WWE Worst Match Ever - 95 - Chavo Guerrero vs. Hornswoggle - Raw, 31st August 2009

 95.

Texas Bullrope Match

Chavo Guerrero vs. Hornswoggle

Raw, August 31st 2009

If you’ve ever thought modern wrestling was bad, let me remind you what the depressing world of 2009 Raw was. The everlasting main event trio of Triple H, John Cena and Randy Orton. The guest hosts. A jarring and excruciating overcompensation to the PG era. This is, for good reason, my least favourite era of WWE wrestling.

I’ve often said that the top end of the list is a perfect spot for matches you want to give a special shout out to that otherwise don’t fit every criteria. Consider this a sort of lifetime achievement award to this infamous feud which unanimously fit onto every worst feud of 2009 list. On its own this is a stupid segment befitting of 2009 Raw. But on its own this would just be forgotten about to history, like the Pilgrims vs Indians diva match; or JR vs Michael Cole main eventing the first ever Mexican Raw. However, this isn’t just one match. This is match SEVEN in this two month feud between the two men. We’ve seen a boxing match; a falls count anywhere match where Chavo Guerrero gets knocked out by Macaulay Culkin in a Home Alone skit; a tuxedo match; a match where Chavo is blindfolded; a match where Chavo has a hand tied behind his back. But this is the one I chose to include as the culmination of this feud that made the summer of 2009 feel excruciatingly long.

As the Raw Guest Host is Dusty Rhodes, the match is a Texas Bullrope match. First person to tie their opponent using the Bullrope is the winner. Chavo however has to wrestle this match in a full cow costume because that’s funny apparently.  “This the first time ever on Raw. A leprechaun dressed as a cowboy versus a cow” - Michael Cole summarising the sheer stupidity of this. 

The match itself lasts around 90 seconds, but through this whole segment, Cole and Lawler have just about every bovine joke known to man at the ready. This just reinforces my belief that Cole and Lawler were the worst combination of commentators ever. And I say this as someone who is a bit of a Cole sympathiser, but the combination with Lawler didn’t work at all. This is one of those matches where you just know that Vince McMahon was watching on his monitor laughing his ass off for every second of it. A particular highlight of this match is Hornswoggle grabbing Chavo’s tail, and Chavo selling it as if it were actually attached to his body. 

If you’ve ever seen one of these Chavo vs Hornswoggle matches, you know how it goes. Hornswoggle takes maybe a bump but otherwise it’s Chavo getting frustrated, making himself look like an idiot, and losing in a contrived way. It wasn’t funny in the first match, it wasn’t funny in the second match, and it certainly isn’t funny in the seventh match. Hornswoggle hog ties Chavo for the win of course.

The post match continues the shenanigans as Evan Bourne sets Chavo up for Hornswoggle to hit a Tadpole Splash. It also features perhaps the most painfully mistimed joke maybe in the history of humanity. Michael Cole says “I tell you one thing …” ready for the big joke when Hornswoggle hits the splash. Unfortunately, it’s a good 15 seconds before Hornswoggle is ready to hit it, meaning that Lawler has to awkwardly set it up once again, before a cow sound is played across the arena - and finally Michael Cole exclaims “WHAT A MOOOOOOOOO-ve”. All that set up … for that. It’s probably the most awkward joke in wrestling since Eric Bischoff’s “can’t find your scissors”.

Let’s not mistake this as the true end to this debacle. In 2010 they would briefly reignite the feud in the iconic Hornswoggle vs Swagger Soaring Eagle match. I did think about that match making the list, but the masochist in me actually enjoyed the comedy, and it wasn’t presented as Chavo in the eagle costume. Plus as it was a Thanksgiving episode it had somewhat of a reason to exist. This match is irredeemable. I do find a sense of strange enjoyment that Hornswoggle, having defeated Chavo for the Cruiserweight Championship he would retire, was probably Chavo’s biggest rival in WWE outside of Eddie and Ray. Poor guy, not even Chavo deserves that. 

Up next, terrible matches on international network events are not limited to Saudi Arabia.

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Mark Briscoe Vs Jay Lethal - AEW Dynamite (25/1/23)

Reach for the sky boy.

This was the Jay Briscoe tribute match between his brother and one of his closest friends after Warner Bros. Discovery finally saw sense and gave permission for AEW Dynamite to acknowledge The Briscoe Brothers and honour the life of Jay.

1. There’s elements of Jay Briscoes passing that have hit me differently to any other wrestling death I’ve experienced as a fan. Along with Brodie Lee, Jay Briscoe is one of the first wrestlers of 'our generation' to pass away. He's someone we've seen grown from teenager to man and that hits a little harder than a wrestler from the 1980s passing away. There's then the nature of the death and how we’re all susceptible to being in a car accident. This isn’t a wrestler dying from an overdose or what have you; This is something that could happen to anyone of us on any given day suddenly. Tell people you love them before you leave the house everyday, because there's no guarantee you'll be returning. There’s also the gutting sting in the tail that this happened on the eve of what could have been Jay Briscoe’s biggest mainstream run of his career. Jay’s career was already a huge ‘what if’ but now there’s another ‘what if’ to throw onto that pile with how the relaunch of ROH weekly programming on the back of a historic trilogy of matches with FTR could have taken his career to the next level. I think as much as the wrestling business offered Jay and his family, it also failed him. It should not have taken his death to get his name mentioned on national television, and there should be room in our society for people to learn from their mistakes and their ignorance and not be ostracised forever because of a horrible tweet nearly a decade ago. How can you not be impressed by Mark Briscoe this week with the strength and peace he is showing in the aftermath of a tragedy? There’s not a bone in his body that is angry about what has happened, not visibly anyway. I'm not about to turn this review into an Evangelist sermon, but as a lifelong Christian myself I'm still floored when I see this level of faith from people and how their faith helps pull them through the tough times in life. Caprice Coleman put it best in a video with Mark about how he thought everyone was coming to the arena to comfort Mark, but in the end it was Mark that comforted all of them and let them know everything was gonna be ok. Jay Lethal comes out to this match visibly choked up and fighting off the tears, probably how I expect most people would feel in his shoes, but then Mark comes out, fired up, holding up both original ROH tag team titles ready to put on a show for 'his boy'. Mark not only stole the show this week on Dynamite, his Eulogy at Jaymin's funeral was a sight to behold as well. What a guy. I know this is secondary to everything else, but the match rocked too. You can bet your house that an episode of Dynamite in 2023 will produce a very good match, and Mark and Lethal took the honour of match of the night this week. It shouldn’t go understated either that this would have been (to my knowledge) the first time Mark would have wrestled on live television in his career.

For the first minute of this match everything was very respectful, textbook wrestling drill stuff. But then Lethal threw in a cheapshot chop when backing out of the corner, and Mark responded with 'lets do this' and fired back with a chop of his own. The match then turned into a hard hitting scrap, something more befitting of a tribute to Jay Briscoe. Any newcomers to Mark Briscoe's work were treated to his Chicken style of Kung Fu. Don't let the squawking fool you, Mark chops just as hard as anyone in the business. I loved that Mark rolling out of the ring after the Lethal Injection gave the commentators the perfect excuse to bring out the classic story of Mark having the highest IQ of the ROH lockeroom. The froggy bow through the table was a great high spot that put over that this ain't your regular tribute match, this ain't Bret Hart having the sort of match he would have had with Owen against Benoit on Nitro. This is Mark Briscoe having the sort of match he did have Jay as kids wrestling on their trampoline in their backyard.

Mark winning with the Jay Driller was the obvious finish, but I loved how Mark had to go for it 4 or 5 times before it worked so that the payoff was even more satisfying. It came off like Mark was stubborn and fully committed to winning only via his brother's finisher, sometimes to his detriment when Lethal always had a counter for it.

Before I finish up, I want to give some praise on Ian and Caprice on commentary who I think masterfully nailed the tone of the evening while still calling the action as if it was just as important as their heart-felt tributes and stories about their friend Jay. I always enjoy those two guys together in ROH but here they were a perfect accompaniment for this match and they did Jay proud just as Mark did. I watched this match right after watching some of the Royal Rumble where I had to endure Pat McAfee ruining the event by bringing Michael Cole down to his childish, distracting, look at me everybody level, so I was in even more of an appreciative mood for good commentary and how it can enhance the work of the wrestlers in the ring.

I've nothing else to say but God Bless The Briscoe Brothers.

Ed's Ongoing 2023 MOTY List

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WWE Worst Match Ever - 96 - Batista vs. The Great Khali - Summerslam 2007

 96.

World Heavyweight Championship

The Great Khali (c) vs. Batista

Summerslam 2007

SmackDown in 2007 can only be described as a cursed brand. After being absolutely rinsed in the draft (losing Booker T, Chris Benoit, and Mr Kennedy with not a lot in return), the World Heavyweight Champion Undertaker ended up getting a serious injury. Enter Edge, who came over from Raw to save the main event scene …until he himself got injured and had to vacate the title within a matter of weeks. To further these injury woes, SmackDown was already dealing with long term injuries to Rey Mysterio. What about Raw and ECW? Surely they had more talent that they could lend to the cause. Well no, because in the aftermath of the Chris Benoit tragedy, a massive steroid scandal saw the aforementioned Booker T and Mr Kennedy - and others - in some trouble that left the other two brands in their own mess. 

With a vacated World Heavyweight Championship, it was time to find someone new. WWE in all their glory, decided that Khali was the guy going forward. In fairness, due to the above situation, the choices were slim. Just look at the guys involved in the battle royal to decide the vacated World Championship:

Great Khali, Batista, Kane, Mark Henry, MVP, Finlay, Matt Hardy, Chavo Guerrero, Chris Masters, Brett Major, Brian Major, Dave Taylor, Deuce, Domino, Eugene, Funaki, Jamie Noble, Jimmy Wang Yang, Kenny Dykstra, Shannon Moore

After you get past Batista, it’s real slim pickings. If it were me, and you really didn’t want to give it to Batista for whatever reason, then MVP was the guy. Instead we got this iconic image:

That leads us to this match. After having a shockingly ok match with John Cena at One Night Stand, you’d be forgiven for thinking this might have some potential. Not only that, but these two actually had a fun Punjabi Prison match two months after this one. Khali, with enough smoke and mirrors to make Robert Angier blush, could in fact be dragged to something resembling a competent match. However - while people cite that fun Punjabi Prison match, or the John Cena One Night Stand match as the shining moments of Khali’s in-ring career - they overlook that both matches were sequels to awful singles matches. 

There’s a lot of scope for Khali matches in this list and a lot were in consideration. Some may yet to appear. This is a man that was deemed so horrible that WWE were embarrassed to have him wrestle on live TV for a year after his first PPV match. Expectations for most Khali matches are rock bottom, so filling the list with too many Khali matches feels like low hanging fruit. Batista, on the other hand, had found himself in the middle of a career year in terms of in-ring quality thanks to the discovery that he and the Undertaker had remarkable chemistry with one another.

Going into the match, the story is that Batista can’t survive the Khali vice grip, however he did manage to get Khali off his feet a couple of days earlier on SmackDown. The main problem this match has is Khali’s offence looks awful. You can almost forgive Khali’s poor selling because he’s a monster who isn’t supposed to sell. That said, his orchestra conductor arms will always be some of the goofiest selling you’ll ever see. 

But by far the biggest issue is Khali’s offence just doesn’t look impactful at all. For such a big guy, none of his offence looks like it would hurt. When a guy has to bump around trying to make it watchable, it only works if the offence looks slightly impactful. Not once when watching this match would you ever assume Batista is hurt by any strike. That in turn makes Batista’s selling look stupid that he’s selling so much trying to put Khali over.

Following the opening exchanges, Khali gets a nerve hold which leads to “you can’t wrestle” and “boring” chants. This lasts for approximately 50% of the match until Batista hits a singular Spinebuster. Khali catches Batista coming off the top rope, hits the tree slam and gets 2. Khali then hits Batista with a chair after the referee practically begged him to take it from behind his back, leading to the anticlimactic DQ finish. 7 minutes of alleged action for a DQ finish. If the play-by-play is short here, its because there’s so little to discuss because nothing happens. 

Even more insulting was the commentators trying to justify the DQ. Cole claims that Khali knows he couldn’t beat Batista so he got himself disqualified. This was a classic Cole line tht he’d always use in situations like this. That barely works at the best of times, but the rare times it does is when it feels earned. Batista hit one move in the entire match. A spinebuster. What part of this entire ordeal made anyone think that Khali didn’t have the match comfortably in hand? If you’re going to do that story to justify your awful finish, at least try to make it seem that way. 

Furthermore, this was another in a trend for SmackDown Summerslam main events. This was the third time in four years that the SmackDown world title match ended in a disqualification. It certainly reinforces the B-Show stigma that the brand had in the post-Brock era, and each time seemed to get lazier and lazier. 

I know a lot of people talk about the Kane vs Khali match from Wrestlemania 23, and while that is pretty bad, it at least didn’t have a finish this stupid (and given that finish involved a giant rusty hook, that’s impressive), nor was it 7 minutes long and a world title match on a big four PPV. For that reason, I give this match the nod over it, though I certainly wouldn’t begrudge anyone who opted for that instead. 

Up next, the most infamous feud of 2009.

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WWE Worst Match Ever - 97 - Dean Douglas vs. Razor Ramon - In Your House 4: Great White North

 97.

Intercontinental Championship

Dean Douglas (c) vs. Razor Ramon

In Your House 4 - Great White North

By 1995 the Kliq had a strong influence on the direction of the company - the Intercontinental Championship was for two years almost solely in possession of one of them (with the exception of a couple of brief Jeff Jarrett reigns). The WWE Championship had been held by Diesel for nearly a year to this point. Naturally that meant if you weren’t in their good books, things didn’t look great for your prospects unless Vince really liked you. 

This is a rematch from the previous month’s pay-per-view but under slightly different circumstances. Michaels was the Intercontinental Champion going into this show, but the previous night had an unfortunate run in where he flirted with the wrong lady and got IRL beaten up by a marine. That leads to this show where he turns up with a nasty looking bruise beneath his eye and vacates the Intercontinental Championship. The title is then handed over to Dean Douglas, the ill-fated gimmick of the Franchise Shane Douglas.

This was a doomed match from the start, and a bad situation all round that could have never led to a good match. For starters, Razor had already wrestled earlier in the night. Secondly, it’s clear Douglas had mentally checked out by this point. He was reportedly deeply unsatisfied with the gimmick and position in the company, not to mention the backstage politics surrounding him. This is where my opening paragraph comes into play. Douglas and the Kliq did not get along, in particular tensions between Douglas and Michaels and Douglas and Hall. Depending on who you listen to, this match was designed to humiliate Douglas by giving him the distinction of being the shortest reigning Intercontinental Champion in history. 

Knowing this, it’s not surprising how this match plays out. This match is just pure laziness from start to finish. Razor works over the arm of Douglas. And it goes on. And on. And on. Every now and then Razor lightly slaps Douglas across the head. Whatever offence Douglas gets is brushed off by Razor. It’s clear Hall has no interest in making this a competitive or interesting match. At numerous points, Razor is essentially laughing off or making Douglas look like crap. The icing on this shit cake is the finish. Razor hits a very basic back suplex near the ropes and lightly puts one arm over Douglas’ chest. That is inexplicably enough to give Razor the win, despite Douglas being under the bottom rope. If you’re going to bury Douglas then do it decisively, I’m not sure why you need the controversial finish here. Everything about this match is miserable and you can tell nobody involved was enjoying any of it.

As an aside, In Your House 4 is one of the more miserable events in WWE history. Goldust vs Jannetty, Yokozuna vs Mabel and Douglas vs Razor might be the worst three match stretch in WWE history. The other two matches just missed this list but will be on the honourable mentions list. 

Up next - what does a year of injuries, steroid scandals, and vacated championships give you? The 2007 SmackDown main event scene.

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