The Single File #22
Posted: 10/23/01

Ahh, the joys of a freshly installed DSL line, which now allows me the opportunity to watch wrestling shows over the Internet. One of the federations that offers online shows is Ultimate Pro Wrestling, based out of California. Run by Rick Bassman (1), it's one of the WWF's many farm teams. They have a lot of talented guys on the roster, but one I've been hearing a lot about was Samoa Joe. Who's Samoa Joe? Well, here's his listing in the PWI 500:

#314 Samoa Joe (6'3, 310, 2 year pro, NL in the last PWI 500)
--Upset Christopher Daniels for the Ultimate Pro Wrestling title…wrestled William Regal, Essa Rios, Tommy Dreamer, and Vic Grimes at various WWF shows…his great power allows him to throw the biggest men in UPW…called "The Samoan Suplexing Machine…Breathing a sigh of relief since the Prototype left for Ohio Valley.

Notes: That weight is either a typo or a blatant lie. He beat Daniels for the belt on 3/14 of this year. His only WWF appearance I know of is a 3/3/01 match against Essa Rios on (where else?) Jakked.

As you probably guessed, whenever I do a match for the Single File, I have the match on tape so I can watch at my leisure and absorb all the subtle nuances. But while watching a Samoa Joe match online (2) I thought I'd try something different and review a match off the net. The upside is that everyone who reads this can watch the match and see for themselves. Go to http://upw.werlcast.com/Archives/default.asp, check out the May 2001 show ("Powerplay"), and this match is about 2:07:00 into the show (right after the announcers predict that ex-XFL'er-turned-wrestler Josh Wilcox will end up in XPW).

Samoa Joe [c] vs. Sean O'Haire (UPW Title Match)
Where: The Galaxy Theater, CA
When: May, 2001

Backstory: You know the deal with these minor leagues-the WWF will sometimes send their wrestlers down to these shows for a variety of reasons-it boosts attendance for the feds, allows WWF workers to shake off any ring rust, and lets the developmental talent work with established WWF stars. This show was before O'Haire's WWF debut, so he was probably sent down to work off any rust. Keep in mind that the WWF guys rarely win at these shows, so the local folks think "Hey, Joe Local beat a WWF superstar. Maybe I'll come back to the next show."

O'Haire's partner Chuck Palumbo was also at the show, as he beat Samoa Joe associate "The Miracle" Mikey Henderson (3) with the Jungle Kick (the match also featured the worst small package ever). Joe attacked Palumbo before O'Haire made the save. Remember that.

The Match: Samoa Joe comes out first, even though he's the champ. The announcers insist that it's some kind of punishment on behalf of UPW head/president/owner/whatever Rick Bassman, so I'm assuming Joe and Bassman have an Austin/McMahon thing going (Austin/McMahon in '98, anyway).

(Speaking of the announcers, the UPW ones really aren't all that good. They'd make the occasional good point about Joe working a body part, but on the whole they made a bunch of lame comments and really lacked any chemistry or charisma. There's a color commentator sitting in named "Schwag" that's especially annoying, trying at various points to sound like Mark Madden, Shane McMahon hosting Sunday Night Heat, Howard Cossell, and Frank Sinatra. More from him later.) 

Joe doesn't look like any of the other Samoans-in fact, with his bleached hair he sorta resembles the Sandman. O'Haire comes out to his old WCW theme and still has his WCW Tag Title.

O'Haire plays to the crowd and he and Joe circle each other. Collar and elbow tie-up, and O'Haire shoves Joe into the corner. Another tie-up, and this time Joe maneuvers O'Haire into the corner. Joe acts like he's going to break clean, and then smacks O'Haire in the face and lays in some chops. Joe tries a cross corner whip, but O'Haire runs up the ropes and backflips off, and then hits Joe with an odd-looking spinkick.

O'Haire picks up Joe and hits a decent looking punch, then sends Joe into the ropes. O'Haire hits a cruddy looking spinning chop to the guy, followed by a kneelift. Sean then picks up Joe again and hits a move not unlike Jason Jett's suplex-into-a-powerbomb. 
O'Haire covers, but only gets a 2 count. O'Haire follows up by sending Joe into the corner, but when he tries to follow up with a kneelift, Joe moves and O'Haire's knee rams into the top turnbuckle. O'Haire is momentarily dazed, but he charges at Joe again and tries a jumping kick, but Joe catches the leg and hits a bee-you-tee-ful Dragon Screw. Joe starts a'stompin' on the leg, then drops an elbow on it and applies a kneebar. See, some good ol' fashioned psychology. Joe realizes that if he takes out the knee, O'Haire can't (a) do any power moves, because he's on the mat, (b) can't go to the top rope, and (c) can't do any of those kicks like earlier in the match.

Schwag drops this pearl: "If you were going to chop a mountain down, you'd start at the limbs. Or the roots. Or something like that."

Joe drops another elbow on the knee and reapplies the hold, but O'Haire makes it to the ropes. Joe releases the kneebar and stomps on the knee some more. O'Haire tries to get to his feet, but Joe kicks his leg right out from under him. O'Haire is selling the knee, I have to give him that. Anyway, Joe rams O'Haire's head into the corner, then props up O'Haire's bad knee on the ropes. Joe lays in some elbows and chops, then goers back to stomping the knee. Joe then bounces off the ropes and hits a nice short dropkick right to the knee. Man, I gotta tell ya, I'm digging this the most. 

O'Haire slumps to the mat, where Joe lays in another kick to the knee. The announcers make reference to Joe leaving for a tour of Japan shortly. Maybe that's why he's so good. Joe slaps on a standing anklelock on O'Haire, but when O'Haire starts to crawl to the ropes, Joe turns it into a single leg Boston Crab. O'Haire manages to make it to the ropes anyway. 

Joe goes to pick up O'Haire, but Sean surprises Joe with some punches. O'Haire bounces off the ropes, but Joe manages to kick him in the leg again on the rebound. Joe follows that up with a running enziguiri to the back. He covers, but O'Haire gets the shoulder up at 2. 

Joe grabs O'Haire and rams his head into the turnbuckles, then lays in some more chops. Schwag thinks that O'Haire's half of the tag titles should be on the line too. Uh huh. O'Haire hulks up, tosses Joe in the corner, and lays in some chops of his own. Sean hits a sub-Tatanka overhead chop, and Joe rakes the eyes to escape the corner. Joe takes a breather to shake off the chops, then tries to cross corner whip O'Haire, but Sean reverses. O'Haire advances, but Joe explodes out of the corner with a another dropkick to the knee. O'Haire flops face-down, and Joe slaps on a Crossface on the knee, but O'Haire is in the ropes. Joe jaws with the ref, then grabs O'Haire and elbows him in the back of the head, followed by a European uppercut. Joe tries another punch, but O'Haire blocks it and fires back with some of his own. He sends Joe to the ropes and tries a clothesline that gets ducked, but manages to connect on a second one. 

O'Haire catches his breath for a minute, then picks up Joe and sends him to the ropes, but Joe manages to hang on. Joe tries a clothesline, but O'Haire ducks and manages a go-behind. Joe does elbow O'Haire a few times, then hits a rolling kneebar, but O'Haire grabs the ropes. Joe tries to send O'Haire into the ropes, but Sean reverses into the Road to Hell (4). Our pal Sean seems to have forgotten that his knee should be oatmeal at this point in the match. Anyway, O'Haire then heads up top and hits the Good Intentions (5) (As in, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." So, shouldn't the Good Intentions have come first? ). He covers for what should be a sure pin, but apparently senses that someone is coming to the ring. And indeed, Samoa Joe's pal Mikey Henderson runs into the ring and tries a clothesline, but O'Haire ducks and hits one of his own (don't ask why that isn't a DQ.) O'Haire stomps on Henderson and knocks him out of the ring, but when he turns around Joe kicks him in the knee and hits the Island Driver (6). Cover, Joe hooks the leg, 1-2-3 (7:12).

Henderson and Joe decide to have some more fun with O'Haire. Then send him to the ropes, Henderson hits a drop toehold, Joe follows with a kneedrop. But wait; here comes Chuck Palumbo, who cleans house with punches for both men. Joe gets tossed outside, then O'Haire and Palumbo turn their attention to Henderson. They double-team him and O'Haire hits a Seanton Bomb.

Joe and Mikey regroup on the entryway, and Joe gets on the stick and challenges O'Haire and Palumbo to a match for their tag titles the next month. Joe's a dead vocal ringer for Lance Storm., BTW. Palumbo gets on the stick and asks for the fan's approval, then agrees to the match. Chuck calls Joe and Mikey "girls," which is weird, because we saw him fixing his ponytail like six seconds earlier.

Match was pretty good, all thanks to Joe. It's nice when an indie guy knows how to tell a story in a match, rather than busting out highspots 20 seconds into the match. It would have been super if he had used a leg submission to finish off O'Haire, but he did kick him in the leg before hitting the Island Driver, so he gets partial credit. O'Haire didn't do the match any favors with his erratic selling and crappy punches, but hopefully he's working on those problems now. It's probably best they kept it short, since both guys have roughly four years combined experience in the ring.

Fallout: I don't know if that tag match ever occurred, but if it did, I think it's safe to assume O'Haire and Palumbo won. Sean and Chuck soon appeared in the WWF, but after a short while, O'Haire was deemed unready for WWF television and was sent to the minors himself. Life is like that sometimes.

Joe is still in UPW, and still the champ, and actually just beat Christopher Daniels in a Loser Leaves Town match. If you want to see more Joe, I know he had a match against Tommy Dreamer on the "It's On" April show. Joe's got a website at http://www.samoajoe.cjb.net/, and visit http://www.upw.com while you're at it, and hell, throw in http://www.socaluncensored.com/ for the best coverage in Cali Independent Wrestling.

That's all for now. Be back soon with another exciting match (hopefully on tape).

Joe Gagne
Bwo@ifni.net

Endnotes:
(1) Bassman is best known as the manager of the old Powerteam 2000 stable, which is notable only because the stable included both Sting and the Ultimate Warrior very early in their careers. [He was also on Dave Meltzer's show exactly five billion times - tcf]
(2) There's also a Nova tag match after Samoa Joe's, in case you were curious about what the hell ever happened to him.
(3) May as well add Mikey's profile:

#291 Mikey Henderson (5'9, 220, 2 year pro, NL in the last PWI 500)
--Failed to take the Ultimate Pro Wrestling title from Christopher Daniels…Turned against the fans in frustration…A contender for every UPW belt…Gained prominence in smaller Southern California independents before joining UPW…Wrestled dark matches in the WWF and WCW…Lobbying for a shot at current UPW champion Samoa Joe.

(4) The Road to Hell is a fireman's carry into a spinebuster, done off the side.
(5) Good Intentions…um, remember that rolling neck snap Curt Hennig used to do? Well, O'Haire does it off the top rope. It's really dumb looking.
(6) Otherwise known as the Emerald Erosion or Dreamer Driver.

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