[2000-01-01-TWA-Total Impact TV] American Dragon vs Spanky

[bucky]

Spanky's promo is amazing for two reasons. First, he says "South Central Texas" which is not something anyone says, ever. Second, he says "booiiiiii." God bless Brian Kendrick. I hope he's all over the project, I need to rewatch his entire early ROH run and every bit of him I can find.

 

TEXAS DISCOUNT FURNITURE!! That's maybe the best ring canvas sponsor I've ever seen. It's either that or the blood-stained Tecate canvas from Monterrey. I think this beats it, but that might be my Texas nostalgia talking. Man, HBK is so bad on commentary. Whoa, crazy top-rope headscissor by Spanky, looked dangerous as hell. These guys had been wrestling what, six months at this point, and it definitely shows. Dragon catches Spanky in a nice submission that Shawn says is called "some kind of tarantula, Japanese tarantula" and I'm sitting here wondering how many mg of hydromorphone he's taken since lunch.

 

Spanky definitely is a more complete package here, charismatic, has a better sense of what he wants to accomplish. That said, the raw talent of Danielson is clearly on display here. He destroys Spanky with a back elbow at one point that was way meaner than it should have been, and takes a really good long distance bump from the apron. This crowd, which I can only assume is watching a match in a Fredericksville flea market, is digging the hell out of this, and you can see why. Spanky is flying all around, Dragon is murdering him with strikes. There's a hell of a clothesline towards the end, followed by a nice dragon suplex before the Shooter Schultz run-in.

 

This was fun stuff, very much worth watching. Looking forward to seeing more TWA. I want to watch some God Damn Rudy Boy Gonzalez.

[Kronos]

Nothing much I can add after two pages of excellent discussion.

 

As entrance music goes, Final Countdown > Born in the USA.

 

Kendrick doesn't look old enough to walk to the school bus stop without his mom.

[TravJ1979]

For each guy being less than three months in the business, you couldn't be upset at what was delivered here. I think Spanky/Kendrick is underrated and even though I don't know where he finished in the GWE, it probably should have been higher. You could see Dragon's poise here. The fundamentals were strong from the start.

[DeanColes1987]

For two guys 3 months in to their careers this is really fun stuff, Spanky shows much personality here and Dragon has such a nice crispness to all his moves.

[AlmostNinjaLike]

Cool to see these guys so early into their careers, but I don't have much use for this otherwise.

[Seabs]

Boiiiiiiiiii. This was super fun. It's like they let them go out there and do whatever they wanted including Spanky coming out to Britney which is absolutely everything. Spanky looks like the greatest backyard wrestler ever. Which I mean as a positive but at the same time some of his spots are sloppy. But he also does work like someone his size would work if this was a shoot. Dragon is far crisper and snugger in everything he does and even this early into his career looks really good. Bonus points to Spanky for celebrating the run in finish like he'd he just ran a 30 minute gauntlet.

[Stiva]

Kind of feels like the two best trainees in school having a showcase match which, I guess, it sort of was. Spanky's entrance is fantastic and I thought he was the stand-out here. Dragon's strikes look good but Spanky is leaning into them all and making them look like killer blows. He's bumping around like he's getting launched around a wind tunnel and I loved his dive where he just throws himself at Dragon at high speed. A decent little match that, maybe with hindsight, shows that these two are going to become fantastic workers.

[Zero]

Spanky's dive was super nice. I thought the strikes in this was really good for their level of training. Some things were clearly still sloppy, but overall a fun tv match.

[drew wardlaw]

The attitude of these two, and it was put over on commentary, of just going out and going all out for 9 minutes. Unfortunately I think this mindset becomes very pervasive over the next decade and is detrimental, but well see how it goes, Im trying to keep an open mind going forward.

[Edwin]

Yikes... These guys grew a ton from these.

 

Flimsy Spanky vs. masked young American Dragon. Its amazing seeing how much Dragon namely grew from these days. Now he has a ton of personality, back then not so much. Spanky looked frail physically, but he showed more personality here. The big dive to the outside, Dragons stiff forearms to the side of Spankys head on the top and the counter wheel barrel with to Dragon Suplex were the highlights for me. Definitely benefited keeping this short. Far from being a great match, but far from being horrendous.

[jiraffejustin]

Both guys will go on to do great things, but this is like a great director's first foray into shooting stuff on Super 8. Spanky has personality and flies around nicely already (that dive and the elbow off the steps were both pretty nice), but both guys seem to be moving in slow motion most of the time. It's clearly quite sloppy and maybe lacking in confidence from both performers, but considering what's to come, I think they can be forgiven for this less than stellar outing.

[DR Ackermann]

Honestly, Danielson and Kendrick looked like they had a better grasp on basic wrestling mechanics in 2000 than TM61/TMDK do in 2018.

[DR Ackermann]

I didn't see anyone else mention it here but to me it felt like the commentator was doing a bootleg Joey Styles gimmick and trying to copy his cadence. This was a pretty fun match between two guys who clearly had big ideas for how they wanted to wrestle but weren't totally polished yet so some of the stuff they did didn't look that good. Spanky's dive was pretty cool that as it had that reckless "I'm willing to die" quality that I like to see in a dive. I have no idea who Shooter Shultz is outside of a name I used to see playing EWR back in the early 2000s.

A hundred percent. Does anyone know who he is? He was definitely calmer than Styles, which I liked.

[Viking Hall]

So glad to see this, like some others I've never seen anything from TWA and it makes a great starting point for both of these two. Already easy to see how Spanky would end up on WWE television just a couple of years later as he just oozes the kind of natural charisma that very few ever manage to learn and despite looking dangerously skinny and being minus decent gear, already looks like a TV star. Glad that American Dragon lost the mask early on, I'm not adverse to masked wrestlers by any stretch but it just doesn't work for him and he comes off looking like a generic Create a Wrestler from a video game in terms of looks.

 

Match wise this is certainly an early demo so to speak, the basic elements are there but they were still waiting on some studio magic to make them the finished article. Unlike others I don't think there's much to choose between the two of them, Spanky is certainly the flashier of the two and is certainly not adverse to bumping but Dragon is clearly already looking to become a more well rounded and technically astute wrestler. Both have their bright moments in the match and while some things don't come off quite well enough, it's hard to imagine many others having such an ambitious match so early out of the blocks. Crowd are really into it too which helps I think, not sure if this is because they're showing encouragement for academy graduates or because these two were already over but it was great to see either way. Final shenanigans were sloppy at best, but served their purpose and all in all this was a fun little slice of history. **1/2

[klhare]

This is a solid tv match. Spanky definitely looks like he'll be the star here, but Dragon is also a solid guy to play off of and has some hard hitting offense, especially towards the end. As everyone else has said, this is definitely very cool as a reference point.

[RazorbladeKiss87]

If I had watched this when it happened, I'd have been hyped on it. Teen me loved spot fests (and honestly adult me has a soft spot for them too). Both guys go all out and you can tell they are green but not in an embarrassing way. Forgot how apt the Spanky Leonardo name was in his early years. Very glad Dragon dropped the mask. I enjoyed the play by play guy even though he was mimicking Styles. Overall, fun way to spend ten minutes.

[Pterois]

I find Spanky entertaining and agree he looks like a star. I prefer American Dragon in the ring because I feel he's more interested in winning the match than doing cool moves. Spanky, it's the opposite. I like the general atmosphere.