Super Dragon vs. Kevin Steen is Shaped Like a Better Match Than it Is

Super Dragon just hasn't had much luck against Kevin Steen. In 2005, he starts off strong by defeating Kevin Steen in a PWG Title match in March--but there's the fact that Steen wrestled earlier in the night leaving an asterisk on the victory. Then, Steen taunts Dragon by donning his mask and costing him the belt, and then stealing away Dragon's former allies in SBS. Adding on to the bad luck, in the second half of the year, Dragon just can't beat the guy. He's outgunned in July in a #1 contender's match, and then drops the ball when Steen sneaks a win in the first round of BOLA.

All of which is to say that Steen's mostly evaded a hellacious ass-beating that he's earned throughout the year. And so all bets are off when it's finally down to Guerilla Warfare to close out PWG's year.

Guerilla Warfare gets brought up here not as a PWG staple, but rather a Super Dragon signature. It's his match of choice when it comes to doling out his particular brand of violent justice. This also distinguishes itself from the Steen/Dragon series so far, which had primarily been built on singles matches that shift and escalate based on what came before. Here, all that patience is meant to be rewarded with an explosive, all-out war between the two rivals.

For the most part, it works.

Steen and Dragon come out of the gates swinging, and they have a hell of a brawl to open up the bout. This is an indie gimmick match in the pre-Benoit landscape, which means that Steen, but mostly Super Dragon, throw some truly disgusting chair shots at each other. And I mean, Jesus. Even without the chair shots though, there's a reckless atmosphere here with the two just flinging each other into rows of seats and fans without a single care in the world. It feels uncooperative and violent in all the best ways with fans swarming to dodge the action lest they be bowled over by either of the big bodies coming at them at full speed.

And what's great about the series as a whole finds its way into the early sections of the match too. Steen does have Dragon's number, and is able to hold his own against the violence, and enact some of his own. There's an especially gross suplex to a table on the floor here by Steen that looks like it damages both men. Dragon comes at it such an awkward angle and Steen's not immune from dropping to the hardwood as well. But the match really sings when it feels like Dragon's finally found his footing against this younger rival. You get the sheer catharsis of "Get his fucking ass" in moments like him eating a face chop from Steen only to throw one back ten times harder of even Steen thinking he's dodged a dive through a table only for Dragon to catch him with a leg lariat off the apron.

Where this match suffers though is in the almost cliche 2000s indie way of being just too goddamn much.

One sees this problem throughout their series. There's a few reasons for this though. The first is just the overall stylistic trend of the time and place. Even as a noted admirer of this era of pro wrestling, it's clear that the idea of More is More takes root among this crop of wrestlers to varying degrees. But beyond that, there's more specific choices at work here too. Dragon's continued losses to Steen demonstrate a concerted effort to "make" the latter as a key top name within PWG. That effort proves successful, but the means to that end can get excessive to say the least. Where Dragon often can run through much lesser opponents, Steen survives a lot of Dragon's arsenal through the year, and even overcomes him at multiple points.

What that translates to in this match though are a few moments that feel wonderful as they happen and whose effects dissipate before the final bell has even rung. Most notably, there's an almost dismissive nature around the Curb Stomp here that I don't care for. I raise my hands up here that I'm not familiar with Dragon's 2000s work at all, but the use of the Curb Stomp here as something of a more transitional move here--perhaps akin to a big Lawler wind up punch--rubs me the wrong way. Steen puts on a Super Dragon mask from the merch table and hits one on Dragon, which the latter promptly no sells to deliver his own. A good spot on its own, but one watered down by Dragon returning to that well twice in the match, the final time only as a set up to a big double stomp into a chair, and all to seemingly diminishing returns.

The structure of the final act also leaves one scratching their head a bit. Steen seems to have the upper hand, only to get frustrated by Super Dragon kicking out of a Package Piledriver into several steel chairs. Steen walks off here--a heel deciding to take the coward's way out rather than finish what he started--and we're treated to an interminable shot of the staircase to The Sweatbox's exercise room until Steen returns to bring a barbed wire board into play. Worth noting here that the barbed wire board wasn't in the exercise room, so Steen wasn't spending that time trying to grab the damn thing. And the DVD edit's choice to linger on that staircase can't help but conjure up hopes that perhaps a babyface brawls him back into the fray or just something--fucking anything!--else than the man just leisurely walking back.

That said, Steen pays for it in the end. The time away offers Dragon the opportunity to recover and once he comes back, it's all punishment until the final bell. Dragon runs Steen through the ringer--a suplex into the barbed wire, a Psycho Driver off the apron through a table, handcuffs and a chair shot--and adds insult to injury by breaking up multiple three counts before getting the win. And yet even here, there's a certain awkwardness of pace that interrupts what should be a relentless feeling of righteous overkill. For one, Steen only runs the blade--or just actually gets cut?--at the table Psycho Driver, and it's a meager bladejob at that. For another, there's just a little too much prop work at play here between the handcuffs and chairs and all that, all of which serve to undercut the vicious urgency they come into the match with.

The final third of this match features several disparate elements that should work--a coward running for higher ground, our hero getting decisive and destructive vengeance--but never quite gel as well as they should. If anything, Dragon and Steen's attempts to overwhelm and shock lead to them letting the steam out of what could have been a truly wild brawl.

Inventive and mean at its best, bloated and excessive at its worst, this still lands on the right side of "great" though it could have been a hell of a lot more.

Rating: ****