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Tokubetsu Jiai (Special Match): Lion Heart (Chris Jericho) vs. Lance Storm 12/8/95 Tokyo Ota-ku Taiikukan (4,200 sellout) From WAR One Night Tag Tournament Tenryu vs. Kandori Commercial Tape |
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Lion gave one of his best performances in carrying Storm to one of his best matches. All the time he had spent in Japan was starting to really pay off when it came to his wrestling ability. You could really see the difference between him and Storm because of this. Lion's execution was stiff and crisp, but Storm, who was used to wrestling in the US and Canada, worked light and seemed overly concerned about getting through the match without anyone getting hurt. Although these two hadn't been wrestling each other in Japan, they were very familiar with each other from their days of teaming up as The Thrillseekers. Having a good idea of what your opponent is going to do always helps a lot, but it's really important in a match like this that's basically all spots. This was kind of like Lion's match with Ultimo except that it wasn't really innovative. Instead, they did all kinds of spots that we've seen before, but enjoy seeing again. Even though Storm had no charisma, Jericho got the crowd into it by saying each big move was going to be it. The near falls were really dramatic because Lion would do one of his best moves after he said he was ending it, but Storm would kick out at the last fraction of a second. Outside of the spots, it was a really basic match, but Lion simply saying it was going to be over gave it enough of a story that the match worked for the fans. Storm did a cool no touch tope con hilo, which was even cooler than Lion's Silver King style plancha. Jericho did some hilarious screams when he was selling or working a move. I'm not sure if they were supposed to be funny or not, but they were just so ridiculous that you had to laugh. Unfortunately they cut half of the match out, but most of what they showed was Jericho running off one cool move after another to try to put Storm away. This would have been better if Storm knew how to put the moves over. He didn't seem to use any facials at all, but he overreacted to the impact of the blows like The ChinRock. To make things worse, he didn't sell the previous damage at all. The match was also a little sloppy, but they gave a really good effort and were doing state of the art moves, so we can be a little more lenient with the execution. The flash pin really didn't work here and kept the match down in my opinion. It was good that Storm won because it established him as a new star in the junior division, but after he got his ass kicked the whole time it would have come off better if the finish wasn't didn't look so incredibly flukish. Storm did make a little comeback in the closing minutes, but Jericho had already cut him off and nearly pinned him with his Lionsault. Suddenly Storm pulls this sloppy dobitski zenpo kaiten ebigatame (jumping one revolution forward forward double leg hold) and that's it. Lion was already frustrated by not being able to pin Storm all those times, so losing like this really adds to that frustration, but on the other hand Storm didn't really make a statement about his abilities other than that he can take a lot of punishment. 17:10 (8:07 shown) |
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