Ahmed Johnson vs. Jeep Swenson (and other Dream Matches!)

Welcome back to more Dream Matches! This week, I have an IMPOSSIBLY bad match on paper for you, as the future Ahmed Johnson continues his run in Global (Texas) and faces the incredibly immobile roid-monster JEEP SWENSON! A guy so bloated that even Vince didn’t take him on- too big to even bump right or run the ropes properly! And Ahmed is called “Moadib the Nubian Terror” and doing an Evil Foreigner gimmick with Arabian pants! You gotta see this!

Speaking of abysmal matches “on paper”, there’s also a 2000 WCW match between Vampiro and the KISS Demon from PPV, as they have a Graveyard Match in near total darkness, featuring “drowning in the river” spots, Charles Robinson’s flashlight being the only source of lighting, a Chyna rip-off taking TWO off-camera beatings, and hilariously bad weapon shots! Then it’s a request, as AJ Styles wrestles Matt Sydal in 2006 Ring of Honor, in a match someone said was Sydal’s breakout performance! Then my look at the PWI 500s past continues, as I find 2009’s Shockwave the Robot, a comedy gimmick tiny guy in a robot suit do a LONG comedy match against Colt Cabana in DREAMWAVE Wrestling. Also, I found more of Jammer & Slammer, as the former takes on a baby rookie Cowboy James Storm in a high school gym!

MOADIB THE NUBIAN TERROR (w/ Gen. Skandar Akbar) vs. JEEP “THE MERCENARY” SWENSON:
(Global Wrestling FEderation, April 17th 1994)
* WHAT SORT OF LOVING GOD WOULD ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN!?! Ahmed Johnson, pushed in Global as a foreign menace character from “North-Eastern Africa” (which is actually pretty much where historical Nubia was, to be fair), with the evil Arab Skandar Akbar as his manager. Love those fluffy green Arabian pants- Vince McMahon would never allow thighs so meaty to go covered. Jeep is of course Bane from “Batman & Robin”, and doesn’t have too much of a wrestling career. He is MASSIVELY roided. And I mean so much his heart basically exploded while BILL KAZMAIER AND TED ARCIDI made it to senior citizenhood (Kaz is 71 now!!). Like, the immobile kind of roided where your arms are stuck at a 45-degree angle to your body no matter what.

MOTHER FUCK hahahahahaha Moadib flies out to ringside with a TOPE SUICIDA over the top rope to start the match and fucking BIFFS IT, slamming his entire body flat on the cement floor while Jeep is like “oh woah”- like he dropped vertically so fast I don’t think anyone coulda caught him. Jeep at least has the wherewithal to dive down on top of him and brawl to cover it. They start clubbing each other’s backs as all the ringside personnel fight to split them up, and they finally hit the ring, hopefully not completely blown up. Then it’s a mutual no-sold shoulderblock, then clotheslines, then Jeep just sorta collapses into a “lockup” and then “runs the ropes” in an absolute must-see- just sorta speed-walking over to them and leaning down to “bounce off”, Moadib leapfrogging him, changing his mind and droipping down so Jeep can awkwardly step over him (thank god he was moving slow) on the second, then another leapfrog once Jeep is more ready, but “The Scandinavian Lion” comes back with a big clothesline (sort of a stumbling “chest slap” but whatev) to flatten him. Jeep doesn’t follow up and everyone acts like Moadib bumping is an impossible feat, and Jeep stares down Akbar, allowing Moadib to recover and dropkick him over the top rope. Akbar chokes away with his baton while Moadib murders the ref with a turnbuckle shot just for scolding him. Moadib hits a clubbing blow off the apron (Jeep is now too blown up to sell properly, just jittering) as the ref calls for the bell at (3:38). We come back from break with a downed Jeep in the ring rolling over to avoid a SENTON ATOMICO of all things from Moadib. Jeep lumbers over to kill Akbar, but he hits an AMAZING fireball right under Jeep’s face, leaving him rolling around in pain. The Rough Riders (Black Bart and John Hawk- aka Bradshaw/JBL) come out to lay the boots to him.

RIGHT UNDER THE NOSE. A+ fireball work there, Akbar.

This was AMAZING, haha- first Moadib eats shit on an absolutely insane bump (dude is like 270 lbs. legit at least and completely wipes out on the floor from over the top rope with a running start), then they club at each other, then Jeep gets blown up after only a minute, can’t run the ropes so Moadib has to rely on his own agility to leapfrog a guy who can barely move, then a “clothesline” hits him and that’s his last offensive move, as he’s dropkicked to the floor and it’s a DQ finish. Then a wild brawl happens AFTER, with Moadib hitting another crazy bump (dude is huge to be eating flat-back bumps off the top like that). It feels like a lot of this was to protect Jeep, who could barely move and got blown up so fast he hit the dread “can’t sell because he doesn’t have the energy to move his body like he’s hurt”. In so doing it was about as good a match as it could have been. Which is still not good but I was entertained, and not just by the shittiness! Nice post-match, too!

Rating: 1/2* (about half a star higher than I thought it would be, and only because Moadib did some crazy bumps and the post match ruled, and this is the only recorded match where he doesn’t get a wedgie)

GRAVEYARD MATCH:
“THE DEMON” DALE TORBORG (w/ Asya) vs. VAMPIRO:
(WCW Bash at the Beach, July 9th 2000)
* The famously bad WCW run of The Demon continues with a *PPV* match! And now he’s called “the dark side of Dale Torborg”, as they more or less do the “Vince Russo” thing of explaining phoniness by claiming it’s a mental problem. The funny thing is the name “Dale Torborg” meant nothing, as he was a barely trained job guy. And now he’s walking around the woods with a TORCH (yes, not a flashlight, but a giant burning torch, like you get at Kmart), dragging Charles Robinson & Asya (his fiancée on-camera and in real life- I believe they are still married!) with him. At least Li’l Naitch has a flashlight. The mind games of Vampiro appear to be working, as the Demon gets flustered, opens a random coffin lying on the ground, then looks up… Vampiro was hiding in a tree all along! He takes a ten foot leap to the ground and immediately gets punched in the head. I guess that’s the start of the “match”? The purpose is to be the first to ringside, however far away they are.

How the opening minutes of this match look.

The Demon immediately takes over and starts slugging away, then hits a chokeslam on the dirt. Probably, because WE CAN’T SEE SHIT. I thought Robinson’s flashlight is actually the only lighting they’re using. Demon uses some sticks (?), hitting Vampiro in the back but missing a shot into a tree, so Vampiro does a kick combo to put him down. Vampiro chinlocks him until Asya comes in with a kick. Demon slowly goes over and Vampiro rolls into an open grave, but fires back with a shovel to the shins, and drags away Asya, who is apparently helpless despite being muscular and treated like she can hurt men. I love how there’s this random arch put there by the production crew and the guys have to walk THROUGH IT as if there’s not room on either side because it’s just there in the middle of a field. Demon comes over to rescue his fiancée, who is seen rocking back and forth on the edge of a riverbank, and Vampiro (obviously standing in the water) reaches out and drags him in, Mark Madden acting like this is some HUGE SPOT on commentary. They “punch” each other in the water, actually slapping down on it to make noise while they tread water (Tony correctly pointing out in Florida there could be alligators in that water- Floridians understand that ALL water should be treated as if this is a fact). Finally Vampiro smashes Demon’s head against the ground and leaves him floating in the river while he drags Asya off.

We finally see Robinson helping the Demon out of the water, even pointing out “they went that way, Demon” as I can practically hear how Jesse Ventura would rant about such biased refereeing. They hop back to the “grave” where Asya is lying unconscious beside the coffin from before, but when the Demon goes to his fiancée’s side, the GREATEST SPOT IN HISTORY happens, as Vampiro slowly raises the coffin lid from within and awkwardly spits blood in the Demon’s face. Vampiro asks again if “Dale” will join him (“NEVER!!!”) and grabs a “cinderblock” that he both forgets to sell like it’s heavy (easily one-palming it by one edge, carrying it so lightly I thought it was a paper bag at first) and holding it tightly enough that it starts to crumble in his hands and POOF- it detonates on impact with the Demon’s head. He then rolls him into the coffin and dumps it into the grave, spitting on it and saying “Say hi to Sting for me… when you see him in hell”, then throwing the torch in after. I guess that’s it at (6:12). Vampiro heads back to ringside in seconds (don’t tell me they pre-taped that fight! They couldn’t have chosen THAT take, could they?!) to properly win (nobody knows how far away they are), claiming “the Dark Circle… has now been completed. The Demon is DEAD” and is all celebratory while the lights are out and things are lit only by spooky blue, but then SOMETHING SPOOKY happens, as a bunch of pallbearers in Sting masks come out carrying the coffin from the match, and when Vampiro reacts in disbelief, they point their bats at him and STING springs out of the coffin (to almost no reaction since NO ONE CAN SEE SHIT), smashing Vampiro with the bat and putting him in the coffin. So that feud must continue!

The hilarious thing is there was like 4-5 punches apiece in the whole “match”, maybe? Like they did almost NOTHING to one another but the Demon was acting like he was gonna drown. Then the REFEREE has to save him, making him look like a pussy for nearly dying to a handful of punches. The weapon shots were from stuff we couldn’t see, and when they finally got where the lights were active, it was enough to see how obviously phony the weapon spot was, haha. Granted the lighting and match construction was so bad that even fantastic workers couldn’t have made this good, so the incompetence of these two couldn’t really hurt it. Also the “offscreen violence” either traumatizing Asya or just knocking her out is weird. She was fired a month after this. But yeah, the match was super-obscured by poor lighting, poorly-worked, didn’t really have much TO it (a violent graveyard match with weapons and there’s like… two sticks, some water-slapfighting and a “cinderblock” made of cocaine?), and was overall really lame and EXACTLY the kind of shit dying stage WCW was known for.

Rating: DUD (a disaster)

AJ STYLES vs. MATT SYDAL:
(Ring of Hnor, Hell Freeze Over, 1/14/2006)
* From the AEW YouTube channel comes a request: AJ Styles vs. Matt Sydal! Styles was like THE Guy in the indies at this point I think, showing up in ROH as well as TNA. Sydal had been in ROH for a couple of years already, and debuted in 2000 or so, so was kind of late getting discovered by comparison. I really haven’t followed ANY of his career, though- he was WWE’s resident Flippy Guy for like five years, and has spent the last five as a JTTS in AEW/ROH. He’s in long green tights, AJ’s in shiny black bicycle shorts. Both have very similar athletic physiques and sizes, Sydal a bit slimmer.

They do some snug mat-wrestling to start as it’s explained AJ asked for this match as “test” earlier in the day. Sydal dose a good job “accidentally” leaning in for AJ’s grounded rana, then they do armdrags, Styles countering one with a faceplant- see, I like that it looks like they’re thinking and not just dancing. Sydal tries to work counters of the armhold, finally popping up with his own headscissors like an “eat THAT!” to show he can do it too. Styles shows his own superiority with a big dropkick & vertical suplex, then slows the pace. One thing I notice about Styles is that ALL his moves look like there’s something “extra” to them- he doesn’t just do a jumping kneedrop as filler- he does a GIANT flurry in mid-air to fling all his limbs like he wants this to be the most devastating kneedrop ever used. Sydal eats an elbow to the floor then an apron fight sees a VICIOUS vertical brainbuster to it- AJ actually made sure to duck down so it’s “only” a 2-foot drop for Sydal, but he makes sure to hold vertically to show EVERYONE how he landed. Neckbreaker & crank keeps working on the neck (EVERY big ROH match I see has “work a body part” at least thrown in for perfunctory psychology, which is something 1990s websites mentioned a lot like it was the only kind of psychology there was). Sydal gets a boot up & a spinning wheel kick/stump puller combo turns the tide, then works the back with stuff.

Things slow a bit to build AJ’s springboard forearm, Sydal anti-airing him with a dropkick in a tight bit. He ends up enzuigiri’d off the top, and Sydal wins a floor fight into an Orihara Moonsault into the stands. They thankfully sell that to put it over, but Sydal barely turns to the fans and holds his ribs before he’s back doing agile flips in the ring, backsliding Styles then hopping into his arms wheelbarrow-style- thankfully AJ just counters him like “thanks for the set-up”. They sell this a while as they must not have invented the “This is awesome!” chant yet because this is totally the spot to entice the fans into doing it. Styles puts everything into a suplex but gets countered into a leg-assisted inverted DDT for two, then they kinda fuck around with slow reversals until a sit-out flapjack gets two for AJ. Sydal counters a legsweep and standing moonsaults AJ for two, but misses his Shooting Star Press finisher, then is able to counter the Backflip Inverted DDT, then leaps into AJ’s arms, where he’s spun around and stretched across his back (isn’t that supposed to be his uranage? was it supposed to look like that?). Sydal keeps countering the Styles Clash, getting a BIG hurricanrana (AJ clearly flipping himself HARD) for two. They fight onto the second rope as AEW has uploaded these so badly the AEW LOGO pops up on-screen to indicate the end, which calls out the finish as Sydal tries a rana, gets caught, and AJ aims for a Styles Clash from THERE, but Sydal flips him with a rana, but AJ re-rolls him over and pins him at (17:09).

GEE I WONDER IF THE NEXT COUPLE SECONDS IS GONNA BE THE END.

A very, very tightly-wrestled match, with precision offense and dead-on accuracy with every move. In terms of execution, these two were among the best of this time period, I think. BUT of course Sydal lacks that extra “something”, and Styles only kinda has it- Sydal sells in a perfunctory, “gotta sell the limb” kind of way, but only between moves, then he hits things as perfectly as ever. Not that “working the neck” was done as anything but “you gotta work a body part” as AJ didn’t bother to touch it afterwards (same with Sydal working the back)- they do things just to do them, really. Sydal also doesn’t really connect with the audience- he barely looks at them ONCE all match long, and never does his selling invite empathy or anything. And he never really responds to AJ’s douchery with annoyance or aggravation- he’s basically the prototype for a generation of Bland Flippy Guys. I mean there were always guys like that but the ROH era is sorta where they congealed. AJ at least had solid D-bag energy- I’d even argue today guys like Ospreay succeed more because of their character/persona than just their flips- but even he wasn’t really trying to get boos. The match was good but nothing special- had some good bits with tight execution, but things get a bit “dance-y” as the match goes on and they get tired and won’t put as much heft into things, Sydal never really “works” so much as he flips, nor adds character. The finish was very “protect both guys”, treating it like it could have gone either way, as Sydal keeps countering AJ but AJ just reverses the super rana for the pin and neither guy has to eat the other’s finisher and thus hurt it’s cred.

Rating: *** (a well-executed, if bland, ROH match with a few well-laid-out highspots and counters)

THIS WEEK’S PWI #500: SHOCKWAVE THE ROBOT:
#500 appearance: 2009 (#500 in 2009, #490 in 2010, #475 in 2011)

-Shockwave the Robot is a comedy wrestler whose gimmick is that he’s a robot. Billed at 5’8″, he’s a teeny-tiny li’l guy. THe gimmick goes WAY back- I see a “Shockwave” wrestling in “World of Hurt” as far back as 1998, and he still wrestles to this day, despite being like 45 years old. He only made three PWI 500 appearances, never breaking the bottom 25.

SHOCKWAVE THE ROBOT vs. COLT CABANA:
(DREAMWAVE Wrestling, 4/13/13)
* Well Benjamin Kellogg showed me a match against an actual pseudo-name! Cabana is a longtime indie guy who never got to sniff WWE credibility, and when he got to AEW he was already washed and having awful matches. He’s super notable for mostly not appearing when his former friend CM Punk was wrestling there, then suddenly getting a big TV match against Chris Jericho as soon as Punk was gone… and the match being TERRRRRIBLE, and Cabana never appeared on Dynamite again. He absolutely towers over Shockwave here, despite being barely 6’2″. Shockwave’s “Robot Walk” is actually pretty good, showing he worked at this. He has a silver “metal” head and red tights with some padding for “armor lating” on his limbs.

Shockwave does a herky-jerky robot walk across the ring, Cabana openly laughing at him, then he slaps the robot’s ass. However, it turns out that part of Shockwave’s psychology is that he is MADE OF METAL and thus heavy, so Cabana can’t Irish whip him. He’s able to pick Shockwave up and bash his head into the corner, but Shockwave merely spins around (making sure to turn his body, limbs and head at different moments to complete the “act”) and crushes his hand in an iron grip. But Colt grabs the lady referee’s hand and Shockwave does a wave dance, forcing Colt and the ref to complete it, and they oscillate the wave back to him involuntarily. Colt finally demands Shockwave “un-robot” so he can wrestle him, and the robot acquiesces, vibrating in place and suddenly wrestling smoothly. By which I mean doing lucha spots at 1/3 speed and then breakdancing (or “breaking”, as it’s known to the connoisseurs now), shaming Colt into doing his own clumsy version. Another set sees Colt leaving in a huff. He finally returns, tossing Shockwave for a sec, then more comedy spots see them lying in a double-pin, alternating raising their limbs to kick out. Colt throws some punches and then a self-inverted crab, but Shockwave touches the button that turns him back into a robot, now no-selling Cabana’s stuff and flinging him around. He keeps running into the robot’s straight arm, then takes a tornado bulldog for two. Man, someone is either farting on the hard cam or has something that makes that noise. Shockwave goes into the ringpost but no-sells repeatedly until he goes into a feedback loop, repeating the same elbow repeatedly even after Cabana moves, and Colt finally douses him with water to “short-circuit” him. This shockingly only gets two, and Shockwave appears stunned by Go 2 Sleep… and Colt just tips him over for three at (12:13).

A very Japan-style comedy match. In that it’s at least twice as long as it needs to be and carries on gags longer than necessary. Cabana also seemed to want to play “flustered boob” and also “self-aware joker” all at the same time, when just doing the former would have been more effective. Right away you can see how Shockwave would amuse little kids, but once he actually has to start working he’s just kind of a “lucha cosplayer”, not helped by Cabana being the most lumbering, unathletic 230-pounder in wrestling.

Rating: DUD (see it’d be fun stupid nonsense in 5-6 minutes… doing 12 is nuts)

COWBOY JAMES STORM vs. JAMMER (w/ Slammer):
(HCW, July 25th 1998)
* I FOUND MORE OF SLAMMER & JAMMER! And it involves a future star, even! James Storm was just a struggling indie guy in 1998 apparently. This is a short JIP clip, with Storm in a spectacularly ugly ensemble of green trunks over red tights. He’s only 21 here, looking like a fresh-faced baby, with Jammer now wrestling shirtless, in black tights- he is now grotesquely bald, with a receding hairline AND bald patch, despite keeping his hair ultra-long. There can NOT be more than twenty people here in this tiny gym.

We’re joined with Storm being choked out on the ropes by Slammer, then Jammer whips him off the ropes and has a seizure. Oh wait that was supposed to be a spinkick. Jammer chokes away but puts his head down early and gets backslid, Slammer distracting the ref so he’s late on the count. Jammer hits a clothesline-adjacent move and tries a pin with only one hand, then thrice more Slammer keeps the ref from counting him down on flash-pins. Storm manages a spinning headscissors (I am shocked Jammer didn’t fuck that up) for a double-down, then an AWFUL cartwheel elbow in the corner for two. wait why is Slammer not distracting the ref now? Storm dumps Jammer and hits a Cactus-style elbow on the bare floor, punches him a couple times, then rolls in as the ref Counts Jammer Out at (4:18 shown), giving us a hilariously lame finish. The heels pull Storm out of the ring after and beat him around ringside, then Jammer does a CHAIR-VAULT, leaping off it Sabu-style from an elevated stage onto Storm. Gotta get that heat back!

Rating: DUD (just a weak, sloppy match, but Storm’s stuff looked fine as long as he wasn’t jacking Muta stuff)