Joseph and Colette Discuss Super Dragon vs. Kevin Steen
Is Kevin Steen an all-time great? Should t-shirts be worn outside of bunkhouse matches?
It's been a minute, and a lot of new folks signed up for BIG EGG at the recent FLUKE small press / comix / 'zine fest in Athens, GA, so allow me to say: welcome to the BIG EGG MASTERLIST. This is a recurring feature in which Joseph and myself, having written two reviews of a wrestling match, get together to talk it out further, in an attempt to forever codify its place in wrestling history by ranking it against every other match we've covered together.
This week, we covered our first Pro Wrestling Guerrilla match, from way back in 2005: a no disqualification Guerrilla Warfare match between Kevin Steen and Super Dragon. Joseph liked it more than I did, and the half star between his **** review and my *** & 1/2 one is, for BIG EGG, a pretty wide gulf. In teasing out my issues with the match, I at one point say that I consider Kevin Steen to be one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, which is something I've continued thinking about in the day that's passed between then and now, and how nostalgia for a time and place in your life make the figures central to it seem bigger or better than they really were.
A lot has happened since Steen signed with WWE in 2014, and, if I'm being honest, I haven't seen most of it. The first part of his NXT run, the Cena feud, the occasional big match (like his Last Man Standing match against Roman Reigns during the lockdown era), and the WrestleMania match against Steve Austin are what stand out in my mind, and I haven't revisited most of it since it happened — the first inkling that that work maybe hadn't grown in esteem over time was when I pitched one of the Cena/Owens matches for Cena Month and Joseph went for one of Big Match John's Cesaro matches to represent that era instead.
But I'm a vibes gal, and from 2010-2014 there wasn't a single wrestler on the indies I wanted to see more than Kevin Steen. He was vital to my burgeoning interest in the scene, someone I followed from promotion to promotion through comps, clips, and DVD and MP4 purchases, someone whose work was so clearly great that I couldn't understand what other people in the business with better minds than mine couldn't see in him. For me to fully account for whether or not I think Kevin Steen is an all-timer I'd have to go back and watch a lot of stuff from that slice of time and beyond, which does compel me somewhat: what would I make of not just Steen, but an era that's as close to my heart as the boom years of World Championship Wrestling?
I won't find that out here, unfortunately — 2005 is some time before I started spending my weekends in sweaty armories and VFW halls, and the remaining slate for Indie Month ends just as I'm starting to pay attention to the scene in earnest. I'll pick one for a bonus feature, but for now I'm gonna stick to my guns here and say that, yeah, Kevin Steen is an all-timer. This match, though? That's another story.
Colette Arrand
UP NEXT: A legendary indie beef comes to BIG EGG, as Eddie Kingston battles one of the maestros of the CHIKARA Wrestle Factory, Chris Hero, in a Last Man Standing Match from night two of IWA Mid-South's 2007 Ted Petty Invitational.
Joseph Montecillo
The vastness of pro wrestling means that even in an era that I greatly identify with (2000s super indies), there are still well-loved matches that I've yet to touch. This whole 2000s era of PWG is a complete blind spot for me, and more specifically, Super Dragon himself is someone I don't know very well despite his reputation and legacy. That's what made this match especially exciting to me for this particular month and the re-evaluation we've given it here today seems to somewhat buck the online consensus around it at least as far as I've seen. I'm sure someone, somewhere has been disappointed in this match too, but what do you take from us being somewhat lower on this than its reputation?
Joseph Montecillo
Colette Arrand
I mean, I suppose I should point out that 3.5 stars means that I thought the match was good, but yeah, I was let down a bit by this. I think the major reason was how loudly this match wears the influence of main event Mick Foley matches on its sleeve. Which is fine except that I found all of that stuff far less exciting than what Steen and Super Dragon were doing in the opening minutes. I think the match suffers for having too many ideas, which is, if I may hazard saying so, something a lot of folks maybe tend to be drawn towards given the stature and reputation of the wrestlers and promotion here. There’s literally a whole minute of footage of a doorway that could be cut from the match without the viewer losing anything, and it’s hard to see a match where that’s true as a masterpiece.
Colette Arrand