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KELLER 5 YRS. AGO: Five Stars: Brock Lesnar vs. Kurt Angle Iron Man Smackdown match Sep 12, 2008 - 1:02:34 PM
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON PWTORCH.COM FIVE YEARS AGO THIS WEEK...
The Brock Lesnar vs. Kurt Angle 60 minute match isn't the type of match I'd like to see every week. Or even once a month. It's a "special occasion" match that would wear out its welcome if done too often (similar to how TNA ran the ladder match gimmick into the ground over the past year-plus). The type of matches I'd like to see once a week are A.J. Styles vs. Low Ki and last year's match of the year tag with Angle & Benoit vs. Edge & Mysteiro or a shorter Lesnar vs. Angle match. That said, this was a masterpiece for a 60 minute match, a notch better than Triple H vs. Rock in 2000.
The commercial breaks and it being taped instead of live (and having heard the result, although not the details of how they got there) ahead of time took away from the match, but only slightly, and I took that into account in grading it five stars in my Keller's Smackdown Report earlier, sent out to VIP Email Express subscribers and posted at the Torch VIP website (PWTorch.com/members)
Torch assistant editor Jason Powell liked the match a lot. Torch columnist Bruce Mitchell thought it was good, but not great. Pat McNeill, who saw the match, but is preoccupied with the hurricane going through his neighborhood at this moment and won't be filing a VIP Roundtable review until tomorrow morning, really liked the match, but didn't like the first half as much as the second half.
One of the criticisms of the first half is that there were too many falls early on. I thought it wouldn't have been believable if there weren't as many. After all, usually matches end after a chairshot and a pin, but if they were to go on longer, it's logical that it would be easy to score another pin quickly. So Lesnar taking the early lead after his chairshots made total sense.
The pacing of the match was different - not better, not worse, but different - than an A.J. Styles vs. Low Ki type of match. Angle and Lesnar are great athletes, but they're not sudden or graceful. But their match seemed real. There wasn't ever a sense that they were stalling to fill time. Lesnar's "stalling" early fit perfectly with a strategy of a heel who is bigger and thus more likely to become winded wanting to expire some of the 60 minute time limit, so that didn't bother me at all.
We missed out on a few transitions and key moves in the match because of the commercial breaks, but live reports indicate there weren't any major snafus that were edited out. Given the overwhelming evidence we did see in its entirety, there's no indication the few minutes missed would have dragged down the match.
The Angle comeback from being behind in falls played out well. The attempt to tie at the end, with Cole stressing twice during the match that overtime was a possibility and they had permission from UPN to run long, made it seem as if a tie was almost a given. It was practically a swerve that it didn't end up in a tie.
The show would have benefited from a music video or vignettes on the previous two modern era 60 minute WWE matches (which are chronicled on PWTorch.com right now in the Torch Flashback section). It would have added a sense of historical perspective. However, the final hour was great television for a fan of wrestling who is into more than soundbites. It's the official opposite of the Crash TV era, and how nice that is.
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