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Okay, we're back and it's...
Jeff Peterson Memorial Cup: Night Two - 11/21/09
We're in Crystal River, Florida for the second night of the tournament, and just to bring you all up to speed, the following people advanced to the quarterfinals: Louis Lyndon, Johnny Gargano, Jon Moxley, Silas Young, Shane Hollister, TJ Perkins, Egotistico Fantastico, and Davey Richards. In terms of the numbers, here is how many guys each promotion still has in the tournament: AAW is in the lead with 3, FIP and CZW are tied for second with 2 apiece, and Hybrid is looking like the punk of the tournament with only one guy left, a guy who, mind you, only advanced because he was against another Hybrid guy. If you're asking me, I wouldn't bet money on Lyndon winning the trophy. My two picks for the finalists are also still in the game! So let's go ahead and move on to...
Quarterfinals
Our first quarterfinal match features Davey Richards (FIP) taking on Egotistico Fantastico (CZW), and even though Fantastico did get some hope spots in toward the end of the match, this was basically Davey kicking the crap out of Fantastico en route to tapping Ego out to the Texas Cloverleaf. Ego seemed to have a bit of trouble physically applying some of his moves to Davey, and I can't tell if it was because he was off balance or if he just wasn't strong enough to get him in position properly, but it came off pretty badly and no amount of video editing could really cover it up.
Match #2 of the quarterfinals saw Shane Hollister (AAW) take on TJ Perkins (FIP), and again, not impressed with Hollister. It's just that nothing he does looks like it hurts, and he doesn't look at all like a tough guy, he actually looks like that kid from high school who would scream at the teacher because he got a 99 on a test instead of 100. Everything TJ did looked really crisp and, as usual, no wasted motion. Perkins tapped Hollister out with his modified Sharpshooter to advance to the semifinals.
The third quarterfinal match pitted Johnny Gargano (AAW) against Louis Lyndon (Hybrid), who is fighting to keep Hybrid Wrestling alive in the tournament. This was a more hard fought and even match than I would have thought, and it went back and forth until Gargano used a rollup with a handful of tights for the win, and Hybrid is offically out of the tournament. Honestly, this DVD set is the only place I had ever heard of them and frankly, given the guys they fielded for this tournament, I don't think I'm going to be rushing out to get DVDs of any of their shows. Louis Lyndon is at least an entertaining character, but nobody from Hybrid came off as even a passable wrestler in this tournament.
And now we arrive at the last quarterfinal match of the tournament, as Jon Moxley (CZW) took on Silas Young (AAW), and I think I finally hit on what it is exactly that I like about Jon Moxley. I grew up in the 90s, and even though Moxley was probably 14 or 15 when that decade ended, his whole character perfectly embodies the 90s spirit of disillusionment, shunning of everything you're "supposed" to want and "supposed" to do, not buying into the establishment and what they're selling us, and the jaded nature of a youth who looked past the phony smiles and false hopes of the 80s to see the world for what it really is. Plus, he even looks like a lot of the scuzzy, unkempt outcasts I knew when I was in high school. Not to get political here, but I think that the spirit of the 90s has purposely been pushed so far down, and all the free-thinking mentality of that decade has been supressed in favor of a society that tells you that you can't do this, you can't say that, you're a bad person if you even think these things we tell you that you can't think, which are all the things we rebelled AGAINST in the 90s, and Jon Moxley is one of the few examples of that spirit I grew up with shining through, and I just find it so refreshing considering when I came from that, like Jimmy Jacobs and the way his character developed in the wake of the whole Lacey thing, as well as the Age Of The Fall angle, I just can't help but get behind the guy. Plus, he's also a way better wrestler than you would think just by looking at him. But maybe that's just me. Anyway, solid enough match that saw Silas Young hit his headstand moonsault to pick up the win and advance to finish off the quarterfinals and completely eliminate CZW from the tournament.
Semifinals
So for those keeping score at home, we have 2 FIP guy and 2 AAW guys left in the tournament, and we're guaranteed an FIP vs AAW finals because of the way the brackets work out. I'm still pissed that Moxley lost. Okay, my new prediction is that Davey beats Silas Young in the finals.
With that in mind, we move on to the first semifinal, as Davey Richards (FIP) faces TJ Perkins (FIP), and as I type this before the match starts, I'm calling that this is going to be the best match of the entire tournament. Looking at the entire field, these two certainly are the two best pure wrestlers in the tournament, and the good thing about this match is that both work very similar styles, so when it started out with the mat wrestling, then moved on to the hard strikes, and then moved on to the heavy knockout/tapout moves, they stayed with one another every step of the way. It was really interesting to watch because Perkins even did a trademark Davey move where he went for a cover on Davey, Davey kicked out, and TJ went right into a Kimura Lock. They then traded a Davey Texas Cloverleaf for a TJ modified Sharpshooter, and kept it going until Davey finally tapped TJ out to a Kimura Lock. This was a terrific match and I can't decide right now if it beat Davey-Younger as it relates to being an entertaining match, but in terms of pure wrestling, this was easily the better match, and I would even go so far as to say that you could build an entire promotion around a feud between these two, and it's two bad that these are the two guys that Gabe Sapolsky absolutely refuses to work with ever again.
Seminfinal #2 sees Johnny Gargano (AAW) take on Silas Young (AAW), and at this point I feel like it doesn't really matter because neither of these guys is going to beat Davey Richards. Short match that really just served to decide Davey's victim in the finals, and it looks like I had the right idea: Silas made Gargano tap out to a full nelson stretch. I would personally have loved to see a third place match between Gargano and Perkins, but apparently they decided not to do that. They did, however, do an eight man elimination match featuring all the guys who lost in the first round of the tournament the night before, but for some reason they decided not to put that match on this DVD. They did, however, put it on the Dragon Gate USA Fearless DVD, and it was a really good match too, so if you're interested in seeing that and a whole hell of a lot of other great matches (take it from me, Fearless really was that good), go to www.dgusa.tv and order the DVD.
Finals
But all that aside, we now move on to the finals of the tournament, as Davey Richards (FIP) takes on Silas Young (AAW). I have to say, I never in a million years expected Silas to make it this far, and I may not be as big a fan of Midwest independent wrestling as I could be, considering how many major players come out of that region, but I have never seen Silas Young do as good at anything as I've seen him do in this tournament and I certainly didn't expect him to make it to the finals. Like I said earlier on, I think he's got a lot going for him other than the goofy stuff I don't like, and I think he has the potential to be a major player, but this is the closest I think I've ever seen to him having any kind of a breakthrough. This has to beat doing jobs on ROH TV, at the very least. I also just noticed that everyone who was in the tournament was at ringside for this one. The problem with this match is that Davey is a division killer, he's so obviously winning this tournament that you'd have to be a moron to bet on Silas, so no matter what Silas does, you know he's not winning. Silas gets the full nelson stretch, but Davey makes the ropes. Davey gets the handspring enziguiri, Silas kicks out. Silas gets his backbreaker/clothesline combo, but Davey kicks out. Silas goes for the headstand moonsault, Davey moves so Silas beats him up and tries again and hits it, and Davey kicks out. Davey gets the top rope German Suplex and DR Driver, Silas kicks out. This is a great match! Davey hits the Shooting Star Press, Silas kicks out. Davey gets the Texas Cloverleaf, Silas almost makes the ropes, but Davey drags him back out to the middle of the ring, and finally Silas taps and Davey wins the tournament to the surprise of absolutely nobody.
I do have to say, this was an excellent showing by Silas Young and easily the best match I've ever seen him in. I've never seen Silas look any better, and he deserves a ton of credit for the showing he had throughout this tournament. After the match, Davey puts over everyone in the tournament as the future of the business, and says that everyone will only continue...to EVOLVE. Ha. Everyone gets in the ring to a huge ovation from the crowd and Davey goes and shakes everyone's hand, and is then handed his trophy by Drake Younger.
The Bottom Line
This was a fabulous two night event, and easily some of the best action ever seen in an FIP ring. There was absolutely no surprise in terms of who won the tournament, but overall we saw a lot of great action, and an interesting cross section of nearly every wrestling style you can imagine. Everyone went out of their way to give their all and perform their best, and it made for a great two nights of action. In addition to that, a lot of these guys would go on to make waves in both Dragon Gate USA and EVOLVE, and this is a good opportunity to see everyone involved before they were "discovered". At the end of the day, you absolutely cannot go wrong by picking up this DVD set, which you can do at www.fullimpactpro.com or www.evolvewrestling.com.
