[2001-02-10-CZW-Crushing the Competition] Justice Pain vs Yoshihiro Tajiri

[GSR]

Justice’s CZW Heavyweight title isn’t on the line in this non-title affair, although he still runs to the ring, clearly in a hurry to get his hands on Tajiri. Tajiri ducks a clothesline, spits the green mist in his face and then tosses him over the top rope to the outside. He whips him into the steel mesh fence, a member of the audience and finally a row of chairs as these CZW matches are all starting to morph into one. Pain picks Tajiri up, driving him backwards into the fence, but walks into a thrust kick. Kick to the balls. A ‘hot shot’ followed by a basement dropkick and this has been all Tajiri so far. Justice lands on the apron after being backdropped over the top rope and grabs Tajiri by the hair pulling him to the mat. He heads upstairs and hits a pretty shitty looking ‘blockbuster’ for a two. Spinning neckbreaker but he overshoots on the Lionsault. Even though he lands on his feet he gets caught by a superkick and then planted with a reverse DDT. Pain blocks the German with a back kick low blow and a ‘not so’ superkick sends Tajiri tumbling through the ropes to the outside. He backs up that crappy superkick with a crappy dive to the floor, coming up a tad short and landing hip first on the concrete. John House describes Justice Pain as ‘the Ultraviolent All-Star’; I’ll have to remember that one! They walk amongst the fans and Tajiri surprises Pain, bashing him over the head with a metal tray. Handspring elbow is thwarted as Justice grabs Tajiri around the waist and lands a German suplex for a two. Our ‘All-Star’ wasn’t close enough to Tajiri on that spot so it looked suspect, like most of his offense to be fair. Tajiri blocks the hip toss and clocks Justice with a couple of stiff kicks to the head. ‘Brain buster’ before hopping out to collect a table from ringside. Pain slides off the table as it tips over and Tajiri does a good job making light of the situation. He puts him back on it and climbs to the top for the double foot stomp, when out comes Wifebeater who attacks him from behind. Justice and Wifebeater struggle with that table and are about to put Tajiri through it when Mikey Whipwreck makes the save. Dropkick to Wifebeater and a huracanrana on Pain that sees him (not really) go through the table. It looks like the match has just ended, no ringing of the bell, no official announcement etc. Justice challenges the two of them to a tag match next week, before remembering that this is Tajiri’s last show so Mikey won’t anyone to partner up with. At this point a video message from Zandig, who isn’t there, is projected onto the wall at the back of the arena and he’s got a surprise. Mikey Whipwreck will have a partner on 2/17, and that partner is Balls Mahoney.

 

Boy does Justice Pain suck. We’ve had a right old rag bag of finishes to the matches on this show, and this was our second non-finish out of the five watched. Tajiri more and more feels like a guy phoning it in until he joins up with the WWF, not that he had much to work with here mind. I thought it after Acid/Berk, but a lot of this CZW stuff blurs together with how similar that the matches are, thankfully you’ve something like the Briscoes/SATs which deviates from the norm. Mikey and Balls got sizeable pops showing that at the moment there is a definite market for fans wanting to see the old ECW guard.