Worst: WWE Cruiserweight Wrestling
You’ll hear a lot of people complain about how WWE handles cruiserweights, and how they should renew their focus on smaller, more athletic wrestling to appease the huge sect of wrestling fans who love high flyers like Rey Mysterio. They should, yes, on paper. But no, they really shouldn’t.
Why? Because THIS is what it looks like when WWE runs a cruiserweight division. Similarly to what happens when they tell you they’re gonna focus on the women or tag teams and don’t because they don’t have the attention span to do two things at once, WWE’s interpretation of the style WCW made popular in the United States (truefax) is “smaller guys wrestling like the bigger guys plus dropkicks”. How else can you explain a “Cruiserweight Open” with Scotty 2 Hotty, Jamie Noble and Shannon Christ On A God Damned Cracker Moore as the participants?
They were just as sad in the 90s. When WCW was bringing in guys like Mysterio and Jushin Thunder Liger, WWE was bringing in Great Sasuke and immediately ditching him for a TAKA Michinoku push with good intentions that ended with culturephobic lip-synching and Val Venis almost getting his pee-pee choppy-choppy. Essa Rios was fine and all but I can’t fap it to Los Super Astros if I know it’s gonna culminate with a leprechaun retiring as champ.
This blows, is what I’m saying.
Best: OH SH*T MUHAMMAD HASSAN IS HERE
Worst: Wait, It’s Just F**king Daivari
I love Muhammad Hassan’s entrance music for its lasting connotation of UH OH SOMEBODY’S INTERRUPTING US WE GOTTA BOO THE SH*T OUT OF WHOEVER THIS IS and do not appreciate it getting handed-me-down to the guy whose only contribution to wrestling was a splash with a carpet who stopped splashing people with his carpet.
That was my ringtone for almost two years. I’d hit “play” on it when I snuck up on people, or in the middle of conversations I didn’t want to be a part of. “Voices” is currently the only theme that comes close to being as good for this.
Worst: Post-Hurricane Shane Helms
I can only think of one wrestler I’d like to see less in 2007 than the post-Hurricane, pre-drunk driving into somebody’s YouTube channel “Shining Wizard means jumping and kicking a guy” sunglasses TitanTron and do-rag-ass shorts Gregory Helms.
Unfortunately that person is also in this match.
Worst: Post-Birth Shannon Moore
The first chapter of the Book Of DILLIGAF is just pictures of the crowd when Shannon Moore is wrestling. I don’t think there’s a wrestler who doesn’t wear a puff-painted tank top with NASTY across the front who’s gotten more mileage out of being friends with popular wrestlers than Shannon Moore. Think about the best Shannon Moore match you’ve ever seen. Now imagine Moore being replaced by anyone in that match. Would that’ve made it worse?
The only moment I can think of where Moore was indispensable was when CM Punk called him a poser and smacked him in the face for whimpering through a Justin Timberlake lyric on ECW. Shannon Moore The Wrestler is asshole on a plate.
Worst: The Most Compelling Person In This Match Is A Joke About Asians
Maybe I should’ve picked a show that didn’t happen in 2007.
Anyway, can you think of a decent, high-flying wrestler of Asian heritage? The only two in this match are
1. Funaki, doing his gimmick where he’s a backstage interviewer who can barely speak English
2. Jimmy Yang neé Wang, who is Smackdown’s “resident redneck”
If you don’t remember the career trajectory of Jimmy Yang, it went roughly like this: Asian stereotype –> Elvis –> Asian stereotype –> redneck stereotype –> teaming with a white guy doing a black stereotype –> release –> Japan, for like a minute –> TNA nostalgia matches. He’s okay, in the way that a lot of these guys are “okay”, but he never learned how stupid that kick he does where he kicks you in the back of the leg to drop you to a kneel and then jumps over you and slaps the sh*t out of his thighs as he flips looks.
He almost wins the match, but loses when Chavo Guerrero does a frog splash that Michael Cole calls “disrespectful” because Eddie Guerrero “invented it”. Somewhere in Hell, Art Barr stops putting powder in his hair for a second, squints his eyes and asks “wait, what”.