Charlie Haas, Rico vs. Paul London, Billy Kidman (05/08/04)
Lordy, lordy was the Rico/Charlie Haas vs. Paul London/Billy Kidman match a nice throw back to the Saturday Night “Here are a couple of random tag teams having a good match” days. This is a perfect example of how you can have a match based around the goofy and yet still bring the wrestling. Y’all used to love the Michinoku Pro 6 man’s when Gran Naniwa would do the crab walk, arm rack his own partner and then do the spinny dance jump thingy. This is the same thing just with Rico trying to stick his tongue down people’s throat. Charlie Haas is great as guy who loves the title so much that his is willing to battle his own sexual confusion to keep the titles. Haas has super facials (no pun intended) selling the disgust with Rico’s fun-loving actions, right down to the 6th grade catching the blown kiss in his hand and throwing it away in disgust spot. What makes this perfect though is that as the match progress, Haas starts to realize that tapping into the freakdom that is Rico will actually help as he is not disgusted when Rico kisses London (Earlier in the match, he was just as disapproving of Rico trying to work French with London as London and Kidman were) because it helped gain the pin (on a real swanky suplex). His love of the gold even allows him to accept the hug from Rico in celebrating the win, as he is able to embrace what is non-traditional to him because it allowed him to achieve his ultimate goal. Haas as receiver.... of the hot tag.... was outstanding as Haas took the tag, channeled all the pent up energy and came with the errr.... thunder. The umm... Exploder... suplex was great. (Sometimes, you don’t need any help when writing these things.) London and Kidman were real fine in playing their roles of subtle heels not really wanting to deal with the flamboyant guy but trying to impress his beard. London did one of the better blocks of a kiss spot that I have seen. He really should talk to Fit Finlay who can then pass it on to the Divas of the fed. My favorite spot of the match was Kidman having the presence of mind to absorb the dog and pony ride thingy that Rico was doing and lead Rico over to get his teeth kicked in by London. It was like “Okay, I can tolerate the back door loving a little longer because soon you are going to be the submissive one”. Or something. My only problem with the match is that for a lot of the booking to work you have to accept that Jackie is really the object of affection for many a man. Yeah – that ain’t going to happen. There are like a million people who would work some much better doing this. What does Malia Hosaka have to do get some work? Someone throw her a bone.... hmmm... that might have been an unfortunate choice of words.
