This review was commissioned by CJ over on my Ko-fi account.
You could call him Pinball Rocco the way that man stooged for a lot of this. All credit to Chic Cullen here, but this feels like Mark Rocco’s match from bell to bell as that man puts in a delightfully well-rounded heel performance here. He feels masterful and so keenly confident in conveying not only being a cheap, underhanded cheat, but also being a cruel and unpleasant bastard to boot as well. It’s despicable stuff all around and he makes it feel effortless, in the way all the best heels of the 80s especially did.
He does so much here on the offense that rules. His whole arsenal just feels so deeply unlikeable. It’s in the way he sort of stalks about the ring, always peppering his offense with these mean short strikes. There’s a lot of cheating here too whether it be hanging Cullen up in the ropes, throwing him out to the floor to body slam here, or grabbing whatever ringside items aren’t pinned down to bash Cullen with. It’s all that classic heel goodness, slimy and vicious in equal measure.
Importantly though, Rocco always complements the underhanded tactics with some lovely stooging bumps here. One of the best ones comes early when Rocco first tosses Cullen to the stage on the outside, only allowing Cullen the room to launch back into the ring with a beautiful missile dropkick that takes Rocco to the floor on the other side. That’s just pitch perfect stooge work and it runs through the entire match. Every time it seems like Rocco’s got the upper hand, he always overextends himself and gets too cocky, allowing Cullen to fight back with an equally satisfying comeback maneuver.
Outside of those wonderfully structured comebacks, I can’t say much for Cullen here. He nails all his spots and he slots into the formula with ease, but as far as drawing sympathy and passion, he doesn’t do much here. Structurally too, his comebacks are never given too much time to flourish as they always return to those mean Rocco cut offs, so the babyface leaves very little of an impression here.
All that aside, there’s other great choices here like how much the narrative puts over the danger of the top rope. It plays into the finish with Rocco catching Cullen on the top rope which leads right into his tombstone for the pinfall victory. But it’s all built up to quite smartly with the referee often refusing to count on moves done from the top rope, or otherwise both competitors being caught or evaded when coming off the top. Rocco himself takes a great bump off an attempted Tenryu-style falling elbow that ends up landing him right on his neck.
A real hearty piece of wrestling that’s snugly worked and given a lot of life from the performance of a truly great heel.
Rating: ****
