Minus-Star Match Reviews: Chris Harris vs. James Storm – Blindfold Cage Match – TNA Lockdown 2007

Once upon a time there was a longstanding and passionate debate among wrestling fans over who was the worst “Vince” in the business, McMahon or Russo. Both men had legions of passionate and vocal detractors claiming that one or both “ruined” the wrestling business in some way or another. Both men had transformative impacts on the business for better or worse. And there are many people within the wrestling business that have decried both men for coming up with bad creative and promotional ideas that ended up ruining careers and taking pro-wrestling in a more negative direction.

Some people would call Russo a success; some of his bigger ideas during the late 1990s were critical to WWF’s success and his story-driven style (which often came at the expense of actual wrestling) did bridge the gap between the pro-wrestling bubble and the masses. But there was a caveat to his success: as Jim Cornette, Gene Okerlund and many others have noted, Russo was successful because Vince McMahon kept (and tweaked) his best ideas and rejected his worst ones. But once Russo was in an environment that lacked that filtering mechanism he was given carte blanche to do as he pleased, which in turn was a critical factor in WCW’s demise.

One would think that wrestling promoters would learn from past mistakes but pride and ego run wild in this business, as does nepotism. Despite all the warnings, Russo was hired brought in to TNA as a creative writer. This is one of the fruits of his labor.

The Story

In the grand pantheon of bad ideas, having all matches on a single show be in a cage stands somewhere at the top. Instead of using the cage as a gimmick to signal the big blowoff to a feud, TNA under Russo’s direction decided to put every match on a PPV inside a steel cage because. Why? To attract viewers. That’s it. No storyline reasoning per se or any sense of finality to any of the matches; just a drug-induced fever dream brought to life by wrestling’s most controversial “creative figure” and his uncanny ability to siphon money out of an energy company’s daughter.

As for this match in particular, well, it was the result of a misfire of a storyline that nobody wanted. Harris and Storm, America’s Most Wanted, were TNA originals that teamed together since the beginning. They were so popular as a team that the company’s first attempt at splitting them up resulted in immense and immediate backlash and so those plans were scuttled before they got off the ground.

Then Russo got involved.

At some point AMW did split up and Storm decided to add more significance to this breakup by smashing a beer bottle over Harris’ face. This caused Harris to be “blinded” and for a while he wore an eyepatch as a result. Now, on paper that sounds like something deep and serious; after all Shawn Michaels and Chris Jericho managed to have several outstanding angles, promos, and matches out of this only a year later.

But this was TNA under Russo and so the execution of the angle fell flat. The following verbatim quote from Bryan Alvarez from F4W captures the sentiment perfectly:

“No one bought it, largely because A) no one buys anything in TNA because everything is hokey, and B) this was twice as hokey because every time Harris cut a promo, sad music played in the background. It was like a parody of a great wrestling angle. And then, their first singles match was signed. After teaming for five years, a bitter break-up, beer bottles and blindness, their first big singles match was A BLIND FOLD MATCH IN A STEEL CAGE.” – Bryan Alvarez, April 23, 2007

So instead of milking this blinding angle for a lot more and stretching it out over multiple matches as any sensible promoter/booker would, TNA sprinted towards the finish. I guess the idea here was that they wanted Storm to face Harris on a level playing field, which does make sense from a certain point of view. But if so, WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE CAGE?!

The Match

This took place on April 15, 2007. It was rated -** by the Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer and was voted the Worst Match of the Year by his readership.

As both guys don their hoods/blindfolds Don West notes on commentary, “And now maybe James Storm will understand what The Wildcat has been going through these last few months”. Because apparently wearing an eyepatch on one eye makes you completely blind in both. A “FIRE RUSSO” chant begins as the two wrestlers stumble around the ring. There is incredibly loud booing as Storm grabs the referee not knowing that it’s the ref. You can’t really book/layout a match like this so it’s in all likelihood a 100% shoot, which in turn makes Russo giddy because he’s all about the shoot, BRO!

The ref spins Storm around and then both guys come inches of touching each other. The crowd boos heavily as both guys lightly tap each other and then blindly swing and miss with punches. A “we want wrestling” chant begins and for once I can’t blame the audience for trying to vent their frustrations. They’re pissed that their financial and emotional investment into this feud is being answered with this shite and so they’re justified in wanting TNA management to know it. Harris touches and then double-legs Storm but Storm crawls away frantically.

A lightbulb goes off in Harris’s head and so he starts using the crowd to help him locate Storm, which is actually genius. The fans grow louder as he points in Storm’s direction which allows him to take Storm down again. Harris lands some mounted punches but Storm escapes again. Storm hits first the next time and sends Harris into the ropes but Harris holds on to avoid some punches. Harris lands another big punch which actually knocks Storm’s blindfold off and forces the ref to reapply it. The crowd chants ‘BORING” as Storm lands a scoop slam and misses an elbow drop.

Storm puts a thumb on Harris’ eye and HIS (Storm’s) blindfold comes off again. He gets in the ref’s face about putting the blindfold on and the crowd boos even louder as he agrees to put it back on. He somehow manages to maneuver into position to land a Christian-style inverted tornado DDT but only gets a two-count which leads to a “SOMEONE END THIS” chant and a few fans chant “END THIS NOW”. Harris blocks a second attempt at that same move with knees to the head and hits a Tower of London diving cutter for a two-count of his own.

Harris uses the crowd to locate Storm again and cut him off as he starts climbing the cage wall. Both guys end up on the same cage wall and trade blind punches until Harris spears Storm back down, knocking his hood off again. The fans chant “SOMEONE STOP THIS” as Harris counters into a full nelson slam for a two-count as his hood comes off. Isn’t that cheating? Then the fans start chanting “Goldberg”, because of course they do. Harris confuses the ref for Storm and locks in a sharpshooter but then lets go when he realizes his target is wearing pants and Storm doesn’t have any on. Then Storm, with the hood off, flips Harris off as the referee’s back is turned, and lands a superkick. Then he puts the hood back on as he covers and gets the three-count.

Winner after 9:50: James Storm

Review

I was waiting for the part where I was supposed to laugh but it never really came. Maybe that was because I watched an unedited version of the match for this review instead of the Botchamania version with 8bit chiptune music added in to make it might lighthearted. Sadly, this wasn’t all that funny the longer it went. It became sad, pathetic, and then embarrassing. It barely passed the low threshold for what passed as wrestling in TNA at the time since ¾ of it featured two blindfolded men stumbling around literally incapable of seeing one another. If there was some skeptic out there wanting to see if wrestlers can still do their moves without sight (since it’s all, you know, rehearsed beforehand and whatnot) then here’s your answer.

It was a dumb idea on paper and in execution. The audience hated this from the first second because all they got to see was two vague shapes slowly moving in the general direction of one another. There wasn’t even any of the G-rated slapstick violence one would expect of such an over-the-top gimmick. I’d be pissed off if I was in that audience, too: you paid for wrestling and you were given something decidedly not wrestling.

It wasn’t surprising in the least that the audience chanted “Fire Russo”, even if it might’ve been perceived to be somewhat misguided. As far as I know Russo wasn’t in charge of TNA creative at the time; here was merely a contributor. But chanting that he of all people be fired was the slightest bit more justifiable because, a) chanting “Fire Dixie” or “Fire Jarrett” wouldn’t’ve made sense since they were top financier and owner of the company, respectively, and if there was anyone that could be let go following this fiasco it would’ve been Russo; and b) Russo had a documented track record of dumb ideas that hurt the wrestlers that were forced to go along with them, either physically or psychologically as they risked damaging their credibility and reputations by getting negative stigma of being associated with Russo’s ideas.

But even if you ignored all of that and wanted to give TNA the benefit of the doubt, there was nothing to actually enjoy here. Since both guys were blinded they moved with natural apprehension, unable to execute the same smoothness and crispness of a pro-wrestling performance. It was hard to see what was going on if you were there live and those who watched from home weren’t treated to all that much action inside the cage anyway. The cage was a non-issue that only served to setup one moment that didn’t have all that much impact or excitement. The wrestling was limited to maybe three moves over ten minutes. There was no sense of claustrophobia or isolation with the cage to give the match that grudge match “you’re locked in here with me” atmosphere. The match, if you can even call it that, ended up being nothing more than a thrown-together collection of ideas written on small pieces of flash paper and then stuck together without so much as an outline of how these ideas would work in concert with one another.

Final Rating: -*****

Pro-wrestling as an endeavor is hard enough; a big part of training is overcoming deeply-ingrained natural instincts to protect oneself and make doing unnatural things look natural. Now imagine overcoming those instincts with the added challenge of being artificially blinded. No person, no matter how well-trained or experienced in wrestling, could make this bad gimmick work and this match was and is living proof.

Putting a hat on a hat, as Jim Cornette would way, is a clear sign that a company’s creative powers-that-be are scraping the bottom of the barrel. There was nothing to enjoy here because the story, setup, and execution, were all piss poor and downright refund-worthy. This match is actually worse in hindsight because it has lost its sense of “so bad it’s funny”. Now this is just a sobering reminder that some people aren’t cut out to be decision-makers in the wrestling business, especially if their goals are so short-sighted that they fail to see the forest for the trees.

Thanks for reading.