Rey Mysterio Vs Tajiri - No Mercy 10/19/2003
Love their SD match, but will have to watch it again just because I don't remember as much about it as I would like. This is good too. They mention this is their 3rd match together in a series or whatever, so I wonder what the other match is. Anyways, Tajiri works the arm with reversals of Rey's stuff that end up hurting it, then using his kicks to fuck it up even more. Rey sells it well, and can still hit a lot of his offence because his legs are fine, but is still playing it safe some of the time and still sells the arm depending on how he lands. West Coast Pop into a powerbomb was awesome btw. Mysterio balancing on the ropes after being thrown by Tajiri, and hitting a moonsault was fucking perfect. Didn't put his hands down to help with his balance or anything. No slips. Nowt. Can imagine someone like Jeff Hardy or RVD trying the exact same thing and just fucking it up lol
. Finish sees the debut of Tajiri's yakuza followers or whatever and they help him out. No vote for it, definitely remember the SD match being better, just not sure how much
. Still worth a watch.
Continuing with No Mercy 03, Benoit Vs A-Train is a really enjoyable match. Benoit is just gritty and nasty as usual, and A-Train is great at beating the fuck out of him. Great story of A-Train being able to counter the Crossface and German Suplexes of Benoit, and he even hits a German of his own. Holy FUCK, and I really mean HOLY FUCK at the spot where A-Train goes for a body press drop on Benoit onto a chair, but slips on the chair and drops Benoit HEAD FIRST into the chair. Don't think I've seen a referee move as fast as the one in this match did to check on him. Finish was great with the chair coming back to haunt A-Train, and Benoit using the Sharpshooter for the win since A-Train kept escaping the Crossface. Another match everyone here would like, but its not something I can see anyone nominating.
Just watched Angle/Cena from No Mercy 03. Great fucking match. Might even throw a nomination at it. Cena looked... probably the best he's ever looked while actually controlling a match. Sure, its not that often he's been able to do it pretty much since he face turn just a few weeks after this match (pretty strong Cena chants during this match btw), but still. He's still shit at working rest holds lol, but luckily I think he only actually does one here. He gets a ton more offence in on Angle than he did against Undertaker at Vengeance, and I think that's why I like this match more. He really shows what he's capable of, which is kind of a shame because he hasn't looked like that in fuck knows how long. Yeah, he pulls out some great performances in big matches most of the time, but again, those are different because he's not controlling the match. Does some nice mid section work on Angle first, which makes sense to set up to the F-U, then when Angle tries to German Suplex him from the arpon to the announcers table, the quickest reversal Cena could do was a DDT onto the apron (which looked sick), and that opened up the opportunity to work over Angle's neck which is always a smart thing to do because its fucked lol. Awesome powerbomb into the turnbuckle. Angle took that one like a champ. And Angle was fucking good in this too. No "Angle-isms" or whatever. He did do his "jump to the ropes for a suplex" spot, but not after a finisher, and he wasn't able to hit it anyway so it didn't bother me in the slightest. They each kicked out of the other's finisher, but not in an annoying kinda way or anything, just your typical WWE Main Event style match. The way Angle goes into the Ankle Lock for the finish is pretty cool, and Cena looked strong as fuck in defeat. Probably around ****1/4 for it, good chance of making my bottom 20. Would have probably been top 50 on my WWF/E List too, not sure if I actually even watched it back then. If I did I obviously didn't think as highly of it.