Reviews From The City of Orange: 2CW: Unfinishes Business 2: Night 2 - November 10, 2007
Posted by Mike Campbell on 05.23.2009
Edwards and Danielson put on the best match of the weekend, and not a whole lot else.
UNFINISHED BUSINESS 2: NIGHT 2
November 10, 2007
The weekend finishes with a whimper with the lowest attendance ever for a 2CW show. The whole crowd is literally in the front row. And, despite being in their territory, there’s no sign of Brodie, the Olsens, or anyone from NWA Upstate.
Portia Perez . . . seems to have learned that nice girls finish last after her loss to Nikki Roxx the night before.
Eddie Edwards . . . continues to tear down the house, this time stealing the show with The Best in the World.
Isys Ephex . . . works two matches in one night and they both wind up coming off disappointing, but having an off night happens to the best of us.
LOCA VIDA vs. AJAX 820
This seems like awfully weird choice for a match, given that it’s between two babyfaces and who’ve both got their own programs going on. But, this is little else than a vehicle to continue the Springate/Ajax issue, and, unlike the last match with that idea, this is kept short. Loca pulls out a few nice tricks, like his repeated kip ups to escape the wrist lock, which would become a trademark of him, and the 315 he hits Ajax with is probably the best that it’s ever looked. Ajax isn’t bad or anything, but it shows why he works better when he gets to work with guys like Springate and Dizzie, when he’s fighting from underneath. He’s not bad in the sense that nothing he does is blown, but he’s far from exciting, and just listen to the lack of any crowd reaction to see that. He tries to do something like a hanging armbar like Low Ki, but doing it to someone who’s nearly his size just makes it look goofy. Loca is clearly confused and winds up giving him a sidewalk slam. Ajax seems to have it won with a Tornado DDT, but his feet hit the ref, and Springate clocks Ajax with a foreign object and puts Loca on top for the win. It serves its purpose of furthering the Springate/Ajax feud and gets out of the way beyond that.
JASON AXE/GORDY WALLACE vs. K-PUSHA/K-MURDA (Tables Match)
Like the other matches in this feud, this is less a wrestling match and more a brawl. It’s just as intense and hateful as the rest, but without Spike to take the bumps and to make sure the crowd is hot, it’s missing the key component that makes the feud so fun. It also hurts that when Pusha and Gordy go “into the crowd” they look like they’re brawling alone on a soccer field. Axe takes his customary suplex on the floor and Gordy isn’t afraid to take chair shots to the noggin. There’s a noticeable lack of any table teases, beyond Axe looking like he’s going to play Steve Kruz in the remake of the AMIL/Killer Steves tables match. But then Gordy gets thrown to the floor through a table and a minute later Pusha hits a 450 and puts Axe through for a clean sweep. The placement on the card seems downright odd, given that the Axe/AMIL issue had been a main event program, but 2CW appeared to know what the lack of Spike would mean and placed the match accordingly so as not to be a huge disappointment.
PORTIA PEREZ vs. ALERE LITTLE FEATHER
It’s nice to see 2CW trying to follow in the footsteps of SHIMMER and promote women wrestlers as just that, wrestlers, but this makes it pretty clear that they’re still relying pretty heavily on Nikki Roxx. Taking away Portia’s heel 101 tactics (choking, hair pulling, eye raking, etc.) and Alere’s stomping and prancing around like a female Tatanka, and there is a little bit of good wrestling to be found, Alere’s transition to a backdrop suplex was a great moment, and their sequence with Portia trying to cradle Alere while she was in the sleeper, and Alere’s rolling cradle around the ring was also quite nice. But, it’s hard to appreciate it when having to wade through everything else. And, after spending the whole match cheating and heeling things up, why is Portia going over clean? I guess it’s notable that she beats Alere similar to the way that Nikki beat her the night before. Portia catches a charging Alere with a sunset flip out of the corner, outsmarting her by outwrestling her, but a Dizzie sort of finish seems more appropriate. And why is Portia playing female Dizzie tonight after playing spunky babyface last night?
ZAQUARY SPRINGATE III vs. KEVIN GRACE
Like the Ajax/Loca match, the actual match is completely secondary to the angle (Ajax costing Springate his match to avenge what Springate did previously), but this winds up being a better match. Springate shows that, much like in his first match with Ajax, he doesn’t take Grace seriously at all. Springate is more content to toy around with Grace and to jaw with the fans. Grace responds by foregoing his usual comedy routine and showing a more aggressive edge. He ducks a lazy swing by Springate and drops him with a big lariat, then a dropkick, when Springate goes to the floor Grace dives out after him. And while the lack of people makes their trip over the guardrail and “into the crowd” look more than a bit silly, it comes off well with the way they throw each other into the walls, and Grace back drops Springate into the penalty box.
Their work isn’t always very clean though, Grace’s jumping hurricanrana looked off a bit, and Springate winds up messing up his handspring elbow. Springate tries to sell his knee to cover it up, but he forgets about his knee two seconds later when he hits a charging lariat and goes up to the top for the swanton. Loca Vida distracts the ref and Ajax pushes Springate off the top and Grace rolls him up for the three count. Just like Ajax/Loca it serves its main purpose of pushing the feud a little further, but instead of just getting out of the way, Springate and Grace tried to work with what they were given, which makes this a better match.
BRYAN DANIELSON vs. EDDIE EDWARDS
At least the eighty or so people in attendance can say they saw the best match of the weekend. At first it looks like it’s going to be good, but nothing special. Danielson and Eddie do some chain wrestling, Danielson works a headlock and Eddie catches him by surprise and throws him off, they work the knuckle lock and bridge sequence, a lot of typical good stuff, but nothing to bring it to the next level. But then Eddie doesn’t quite leap high enough to leap frog over Danielson and appears to catch him in the eye (which had been injured by Takeshi Morishima in ROH), and then it goes from a respectful wrestling match, to an angry fight. Danielson unloads on Eddie with forearms to the face, and tortures him with his surfboard and a freaky combo of a Butterfly lock and Dragon sleeper. Eddie hands the abuse right back with a headbutt toward the eye, lighting him up with chops to the chest, and his jumping knee shots. The wrestling aspect is still present with their series of sunset flip and jackknife cradle and back again counters and reversals.
That aggressive drive to win that Eddie was showing in his July match with Isys, which was noticeably lacking in his matches with Dizzie, is back with a vengeance. One of their best moments was when Eddie backed Danielson into the corner and trying to set him up for the backpack stunner, Danielson was fighting him off, so Eddie took a page out of Danielson’s book and started bombarding him with elbows to the head, it wasn’t as overtly brutal as when Danielson does it, but it was still fairly nasty. They’ve got a great transition to Cattle Mutilation, with Eddie ducking Danielson’s rolling elbow and trying one of his own, only for Danielson to avoid the blow and take Eddie to the mat and lock in the hold. After seeing how quickly Isys tapped out to it the night before, it’s odd that Edwards is able to linger in it for so long and then escape. Of course, Eddie and Danielson both wrestle in ROH and NOAH, so it’s not too ‘out there’ to assume that Eddie had studied the hold or even tried to prepare himself for when Danielson used it. They go to the finish, with Danielson cradling Eddie out of nowhere, very soon afterwards, so it’s not like the hold is hugely disrespected or wasted. The only real disappointment lies in the number of people lucky enough to witness, the best 2CW match up to this point. ***3/4
STEVE McKENZIE/STEVE KRUZ vs. J.D. LOVE/ISYS EPHEX
The long awaited return of the Killer Steves after a seven-month absence should really have been a bigger deal than this. This isn’t really a bad match, it’s a solid tag match that follows the typical formula, but that’s about as far as praise can stretch. I’ve made the Tully and Arn comparison to the Steves numerous times before, but J.D. and Isys really aren’t even in the Steves’ league on this night as far as working the formula. There isn’t anything as far as the heels baiting in Kruz to keep the ref occupied to keep working over McKenzie, they don’t blind tag in and out, and they don’t illegally double team. In short, they don’t do anything to look like a real tag team (although that’s a bit understandable, given this is only their second match as a team), or to look especially heelish.
The wrestling itself is fine for the most part. They get the obligatory bare ass spot out of the way with dual sunset flips that cause Kruz and J.D. to have their asses hanging out and then they back into each other. McKenzie winds up as the Steve in peril after a nice spine buster from Isys, and J.D. and Isys are fine individually for working him over, there’s a nice moment from J.D. when McKenzie seems to be on the verge of tagging Kruz after he elbows his way out of a sleeper, but J.D. catches him and brings him back to the mat. McKenzie finally gets the tag and Kruz cleans house, Love’s attempt to do the Andre spot where he ties himself up in the ropes is amusing, although he doesn’t get it right. Isys gets taken out of the equation after a double team sidewalk slam, and Kruz pins J.D. after a cradle. Again, this isn’t bad, but it’s well below what the Steves, Isys, and J.D. have all shown they’re capable of. Why the Steves didn’t face The Olsens, or anyone from Upstate, is beyond me. Isys was pulling double duty anyway and Rochester is Upstate’s backyard.
ANTONIO THOMAS vs. BOBBY FISH
You win some and you lose some. Rochester may have gotten the best match of the weekend, but they also have the worst. It’s not bad as an exhibition of Thomas’ wrestling ability, but they just can’t seem to get anything going. Thomas does a bunch of sweet looking chain wrestling early on, and does a bunch of cool stuff, such as literally wrestling a circle around Fish to snap mare him. There’s also a nice spot when Antonio looks like he’s about to blindly charge into a boot, but Thomas puts on the breaks, grabs Fish by the leg, and takes him to the mat. Fish seems like he’s trying too hard to be different and not worrying about being good. He drops down so Antonio can jump over him, but drops to his back and not his stomach. Fish and Thomas have a nice little segment when they dodge each other, and Fish wins the exchange with a simple elbow strike, which hardly seems worth the effort. His offense mostly looks ugly because he does it differently. Aside from the snap mare, where he loses his grip, nothing it botched, it just doesn’t look very good, his Rude Awakening neckbreaker is a perfect example, Fish doesn’t land in a seated position, he stays on his feet and just squats down. There’s also his powerslam, where he scoops up Thomas like he’s going to do a running one, a la Davey Boy Smith, but he just slams him, and his crucifix counter to Thomas’ pin attempt with Fish having Thomas’ leg scooped up with both arms. The ironic thing is that two minutes later Antonio gets his own crucifix counter, done properly, and gets the win, so the moral of the story seems to be to just do your stuff and not try to be cute. Of course, without his oddball execution there wouldn’t anything at all remarkable about Fish.
The main event was supposed to be a three-way between Dizzie, Slyck Wagner Brown, and Samoa Joe for the 2CW Title, but Dizze and Isys attack Slyck during his entrance and Joe demands that it be turned into a tag match.
DIZZIE/ISYS EPHEX vs. SAMOA JOE/SLYCK WAGNER BROWN
This winds up being a somewhat better verison of Isys’ other match, Isys and Dizzie are a bit better at heeling things up, but the match still comes off feeling rushed. Isys does a respectable job of getting the cream cheese kicked out of him by Joe and Slyck, his selling of Joe’s big enzuigiri was spot on, and his yell when Joe kicked his leg (he’d gotten his foot on the rope to break a pin, and Joe kicked the leg) was hilarious. Later on, when the heel team gets control by double teaming, they’re pretty fun with cutting the ring in half and preventing Slyck from tagging, Dizzie egging on Joe by sticking out Slyck’s hand and mocking him was funny. And after Slyck tags and Joe cleans house. They briefly get Joe in trouble when he gears up for his charging kick to Isys, and Dizzie pushes him out of the way and Joe misses.
But where this goes wrong is that everything just feels too rushed. Things don’t look too bleak for Slyck when Isys and Dizzie get him in trouble, and when Joe gets hurt after he misses the kick, it’s really a case of blink and you miss it, because he quickly tags off to Slyck. The opening fun with Isys and Dizzie getting knocked around was even far too short. Even the finish happens too quickly. Joe tags in Slyck, and brawls to the back with Isys, and that allows Slyck to pin Dizzie with the Appreciation Bomb. They could have at least thrown in a few teases of Dizzie stealing the win in his usual manner before giving Slyck the duke. In a way, it’s fitting that a disappointing show, that drew a disappointing crowd, ends on a disappointing note. Along with feeling far too rushed, it’s got the same sort of stigma that the Ajax and Springate matches had, in that it makes its point (Slyck cleanly pinning the 2CW Champion) and mostly gets out of the way.
The 411: The first night had me slightly leaning toward a recommendation. This has the best and worst matches of the weekend, so they cancel out each other in my book. The rest is some good stuff for the storylines, and very little in the ring. So as a whole, I’m going to go the other way and slightly recommend avoiding Unfinished Business 2, there’s good stuff throughout the weekend, but it has a lot more disappointing stuff.
