This review was commissioned by GUTHRIE over on my Ko-fi account.
Tell you what, it’s no Canadian Stampede.
As talented as both of these men are, and as much as I’ve enjoyed a large amount of their work throughout their careers, this is far from their best effort. And look, I get it, 1999 WCW isn’t the place to be working to bring your dreams to life, and there’s a lot we’re going to get to that inhibit the innate things both men can accomplish. That being said, they’re far from blameless with regards to how this match goes.
Let’s start with the obvious.
There’s some primo late WCW bullshit in this. About five minutes, Dean Malenko in the saddest clown make up you’ll ever see charges in from the crowd and starts wailing on Benoit with a hockey stick as Lil Naitch exposes himself as a fraud and a huckster by letting this go on. Not too long after that, we get The Outsiders disrupting proceedings before Goldberg comes out to make a big save, all to the very lukewarm disinterest of the Canadian crowd. None of these feel like they matter to the match at all, and the apathy of the audience is matched only by that of the two workers wrestling in the ring as well.
Bret and Benoit clearly give zero fucks about whatever was on the call sheet tonight. The entire match reads as a very stubborn attempt to compartmentalize parts of this company. Very much a “We’ll do our thing, and you can have your bullshit” approach to late 90s WCW booking. In some others context, I might respect the bullheadedness of this especially when it’s so obviously not worth the effort to begin with, but here it just feels wrong.
It doesn’t help that even before the interferences start raining down, this is far from their most inspired work. Everything is clean mechanically, and everyone’s hitting their spots right (outside of a limp kitchen sink bump), but it lacks tension. There’s a soullessness to it all, very literally going through the motions.
There are ideas here, but none of them have the space to grow. There’s an attempt at dueling body part targeting with Bret spending most of the match going after Benoit’s neck and back. His signature clinical coldness reads much more like hollow base proficiency. It’s targeted, Benoit sells it decently enough (but not nearly as sympathetically as his best work), but there’s nothing to here support the kind of drama and gravitas that they probably would have wanted.
As much as they’re sticking to their guns here though, this effort feels like Bret and Benoit completely failing to read the room. When all the goons start pouring out, it’s probably best to give up on your highly focused technician’s bout and just go with the flow. A more explosive affair might have better complemented the chaotic booking surrounding it all. As is, it just feels like clocking in and clocking out to your 9 to 5, without any love or care involved whatsoever.
It’s pretty much impossible for anything here to have blossomed. It’s like planting seeds in concrete.
Rating: **1/2
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