Tape Review
IWA Mid-South
Rumble in Rensselaer
12/18/04 - Rensselaer, IN
by Scott Christ

This is IWA's last show of 2004. It was supposed to have Jamie Noble's IWA debut but they started cutting costs and he was a victim of that, so then it...didn't. Ian talks and whatnot. This building is brilliant with the giant murals all over.

DAVEY ANDREWS & SHANE HAGADORN v. RYAN BOZ & TRIK DAVIS

Hagadorn/Andrews is kind of a neat pairing as Hagadorn is decent chickenshit already and Andrews is really good as the serious heel. Hagadorn wants nothing to do with Boz. They Davey/Boz segment here is pretty uneventful and the Davey/Trik section sucks, so Andrews tags out and Hagadorn comes in. It picks up with Andrews on the outside spitting at Boz and pissing him off as Trik becomes FIP. Boz's hot tag goes well and Trik wants to do the washing machine thing to Hagadorn, but unfortunately he's not tall or strong enough and it ends with Boz getting double-teamed. The ROH kids hit a Hart Attack on Boz, but Boz just comes back on both of them. Davis hits a double stomp off Boz's shoulders for the pin on Hagadorn. Standard.

LEXIE FYFE v. MICKIE KNUCKLES v. DAIZEE HAZE

Pretty stinky match with Fyfe trying to be "old school" but it comes off more as someone who sucks having an excuse for it, if that makes sense. Mickie is pretty bad here which is becoming quite a recurring theme for her matches. I hate saying that because Mickie is an awesome babyface and one of the people most fun to cheer for but her matches have been horrible for months now. Daizee carries the work end of this match which isn't saying much for what it ends up being, which is slightly better than unwatchable. The finishing sequence here looks terrible and Daizee ends up winning.

CHANDLER MCCLURE v. MATT TURNER v. CLAUDIO CASTAGNOLI v. EVAN STARSMORE v. JOSH ABERCROMBIE

I started off this match by saying, "Can I take a pass on this one?" I decided to not. I wish I had gone with my gut instinct. Abercrombie thinks he's a heel here. Starsmore and Turner are so bad in this match that it boggles the mind how the fuck they're in the ring on this show. I'm all about giving these guys a shot but both of them are absolutely horrendous in this match including Starsmore throwing the single worst dropkick I have ever seen in my life and Turner nearly falling on himself 37 times. Claudio is on a different planet than the other four in this match and I feel bad that he has to be out there for this shit wreck of a mess. Claudio pins Starsmore and the match mercifully ends. Jesus Christ that was bad.

TNA X TITLE MATCH
PETEY WILLIAMS (champion) v. NATE WEBB

Nate talks to a spying Nigel McGuinness and gets chased by a chair-wielding CM Punk before the match, then on his backflip into the ring Petey jumps him and the match starts fast. Ian adds a second referee to this match because last time they wrestled it had a crappy retard finish. Way too predictable but what can you do, wrestling is still wrestling. They're doing an opponents who know each other match where they throw dropkicks at the same time and all that shit. Nate's hot streak ends here as Petey isn't into having a good match. They trade finishers with Nate hitting the Canadian Destroyer and Petey getting Soylent Green but it ends when Tommy Thompson is bumped and Jon Lovitz ends up making the count after Petey low blows Nate, which pisses Nate off because that's kind of the thing from the other match blah blah blah. Par for the course for these two, which means "some stuff happens".

NON-TITLE MATCH
DELIRIOUS (IWA MS light heavyweight champion) v. MATT SYDAL (NWA Midwest X champion)

These two are of course quite familiar with one another. Good wrestling for a while and a nice little comedy spot on the floor by the internet geeks (many of whom I've met and thought were good guys so don't take my using the term "internet geeks" as me insulting them). This match is a match where the wrestlers know each other very well but don't see the need to throw dropkicks at the same time or try to crossbody one another so we can see that, like, holy shit, dog, these guys know the fuck out of each other. Basically this is a huge upgrade over the last match. Delirious hits a cobra clutch backbreaker that looks filthy. Nasty finishing sequence and Delirious wins with the Chemical Imbalance II. Good stuff as usual and both of these guys are bordering on underrated outside of IWA MS fan circles because they're really really good. Delirious more underrated than Sydal as Delirious has not had a series of matches like Sydal had with Styles that got pimped really.

NWA INDIANA STATE TITLE TOURNAMENT QUALIFYING MATCH
ALEX SHELLEY (with Petey Williams) v. B-BOY

I'm having a really hard time getting interested in a match where one guy hits hard and the other guy stumbles around listening to Baby Bear chants and trying with all he's got to find a personality. I think part of my problem with Shelley in 2004, at least in IWA as I didn't see most of his ROH stuff, is that he totally stagnated and let himself get boring. Any natural charisma he had seemed to get sucked away without Jimmy Jacobs around to make him interesting, which is funky because when Shelley/Jacobs finally ended it was such a relief and a big THANK GOD as they had exhausted their matchup and it concluded with a really nice cage match. But Shelley seems to have lost himself for whatever reason. He did absolutely nothing except he had one really shitty IWA title match with Petey Williams in June (which to their credit they made up for with a better match in July). Shelley's best IWA match, easily, was a little meaningless wrestling matchup with Claudio Castagnoli in September. And after that it was probably his match with AmDrag two days later. So that's a hell of a thing, right? I like Shelley, to make that clear. I just like Shelley better when he's DOING SOMETHING instead of doing a bunch of nothing with this halfass manner of making it look like something is going on, which it never is. And I love B-Boy but this match is just going nowhere, something like his match with Punk or his match with Whitmer where the matchup seemed decent enough or even really good but in practice it's just kind of weak. The wrestling here is fine and maybe you'd like this more than me, I don't know.

To be fair, Petey Williams' lame ass at ringside isn't helping any and I'm really happy when he gets tossed out for interfering because I've seen way more than enough of him on this show. This match actually has pretty good heat all the way through but something just isn't working for me. Shelley goes all 1998 cruiser with a Michinoku Driver and frog splash. This has too many near-falls on big moves for a match that isn't the culmination of a feud or anything. And if you're going to paint this as such an even matchup where Shelley is hanging with B-Boy just fine, why bother having Petey Williams out there to run interference? If you just wanted a back-and-forth wrestling match then I don't see what the point of Petey Williams is, unless he's going to interfere, and then that just makes it even worse. Oh wow they are running through every single move they can think of. B-Boy taps to the Border City Stretch. So what the fuck was the point of Petey Williams at all? Ian sets up Shelley v. Petey for the first round of the NWA Indiana title tournament and if either of them decide to lay down, they're both fired. Shelley is finally great here saying he'll call Coach D'Amore and Dutch and Jeff and Jerry and Dixie and Shark Boy, and then makes it clear that he plans to beat Petey. "I'M SORRY PETEY!" Nice post-match but the present-match was a bit *much* for me.

2/3 FALLS
BRANDON THOMASELLI v. JIMMY JACOBS

This is a rematch from their 11/26 meeting in Valparaiso, which Jacobs won after 27 hard-fought minutes. Jacobs starts the match by taking some girl's hoodie and wrestling in it because it's cold. Thomaselli roughs up the hoodie and Jacobs gives it back to the girl, then gets another one from someone else. Thomaselli gets a leather jacket from someone in the audience and does the Bret Hart taunt after puttig it on. Keys and wallets go flying as they lock up. OK, now they're starting proper. Basic wrestling to start and Jacobs is getting annoyed with Thomaselli hanging with him. Ooh this gets shit-talky with Jacobs throwing some verbal bombs and smacking Thomaselli in the face after Thomaselli shoves him a little. Jacobs is looking at Ian at the commentary table: "This is your boy?" Jacobs is wrestling like he's trying to injure Thomaselli, this is great. Jacobs is awesome talking shit to anyone that catches his eye. Jacobs is assaulting him and goes for his inverted reverse modified pedigree, but Thomaselli chickenwings both arms and scores the pin to go up 1-0.

OK second fall. Jacobs hits a hell of a suicide dive to the first row of the chairs and leaves Thomaselli on the floor to try for a countout fall, but Thomaselli is back at 19. Back in and Jacobs just assaults him, repeatedly failing to get a pin. Thomaselli gets his first offense in quite a while with a leg lariat and takes the advantage. Fight over a big move from the top ends up with Jacobs being shoved off, Thomaselli missing and rolling through a 450 attempt, and Jacobs hitting a big running lariat to put both down. Flying back senton is just VICIOUS, but Thomaselli kicks out. Lots of fighting over moves, counters and a couple of flash pin attempts that fail. Right after, Thomaselli hits the Air Raid Crash to win 2-0. Very good match that told a story and was carried in that department big-time by Jacobs, who is a fucking great worker right now in every sense.

Jacobs cuts a promo afterward that leads to a feigned handshake and a wicked slap to the face with him telling Thomaselli to stay in his spot. Jacobs comes back and is talking mad stuff all over the place, yelling at Ian Rotten about having to wrestle Thomaselli and getting screwed out of the LHW title the week before. He's yelling about getting shit opponents and this is really quite good. Jacobs says Ian is holding him down and Ian takes great offense since he gave Jacobs his shot. They'll wrestle again in Rensselaer and the loser has to say he respects the other one. This is a good ass little program.

IWA MID-SOUTH TITLE MATCH
NIGEL MCGUINNESS v. CM PUNK (champion)

Really neat spot where they do the artful dodger countered into the Gedo clutch that Punk beat Hero with in Valpo the month before. This is a lot more strike-oriented than I was expecting and I'm appreciating it as truthfully I was expecting a decent match with lots of hold-for-hold stuff that would've just been what it was and easy to look past, but instead I'm getting into the match big time as both guys are selling the fuck out of submission holds and hitting with ferocity. Match ends on a "huh??" moment when Punk counters an armbar with a rollup and it just... ends. Huh?? Different than I was expecting and I don't know if that made it better, but I had more fun watching it than I thought I was going to.

CAGE MATCH
BJ WHITMER & STEVE STONE (with Jim Fannin) v. IAN ROTTEN & DANNY DANIELS

Whitmer/Stone use the Manson cover of "Personal Jesus" here which precedes Aries using it in ROH by eight days but comes after 32,000 other people using it. I really think the better wrestling entrance music is the Depeche Mode version, but then I tend to like anyone who ever puts more thought into their music than, "Hmm, how 'bout some metal?" Ian promised at the 12/12 Highland show to maim Whitmer so I'm hoping there's some wicked maiming going on. Everyone bleeds and it's nothing but brawling, most of it rather unremarkable but interesting enough with the feud more than the match standing alone. Ian and Daniels win after some chairshots and shit, then Rotten slams the door on Whitmer's arm twice and attacks it with a chair and the crowd goes crazy nuts. Actually this was a really good crowd for not being very big. Ian promises that Stone is next to get taken out.

The big standout match that makes this show worth buying is Jacobs/Thomaselli and Delirious/Sydal is a fine match too. The rest is pretty take it or leave it but I enjoyed those two matches so much that this show was a good watch for me.

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