Tag Team Turmoil
Hurricane & Rosey def. La Resistance (Robert Conway & Sylvain Grenier), Maven & Simon Dean, Tajiri & William Regal © and The Heart Throbs (Antonio & Romeo)
May 1, 2005
WWE Backlash

I had stopped watching WWE sometime in late 2004 so I had no clue who The Heart Throbs were. Turns out one of them was Antonio Thomas, who I do know because he worked All Japan in 2008 and 2010. He wasn’t very good.

I will take this time to say I like William Regal. I like his in-ring work. I don’t like this revisionist history that claims he wasn’t very good because people are angry he’s Paul Levesque’s lapdog now or ruined BritWrest or whatever. I just care about good matches, man. I liked his work on WCW B-shows and I liked his run in New Japan in the mid-90s.

Oh and Tajiri. Well I certainly liked him a lot back then! As I write this I just read Joe Lanza’s incredible reporting on All Japan’s recent departures on the Flagship Patreon. And I am laughing that I am watching a WWE match with Tajiri in it that much more.

The Heart Throbs and Regal and Tajiri started this off and as much as I rag on Tajiri these days, boy did he stand out even in a mediocre match like this.

Another thing I missed from this era was that Simon Dean and Maven were a tag team. Uh okay, I guess. I do remember the Rene Dupree-less version of La Resistance though. Always liked that Rob Conway guy.

JR making fun of the crowd chanting USA when La Resistance was in there against Regal and Tajiri was a great moment. La Resistance cheated to beat Regal and Tajiri which got the first sustained heat in this match.

Hurricane and Rosey were legitimately over and the crowd loved the fact they won this. However, this was a boring watch. The finishes were quick and contrived. And while La Resistance sort of knew how to get heel heat, their offense was very basic bad guy team stuff.

Voices of Wrestling’s Secret Santa should be about giving someone a great match they’ve never seen or subjecting them to something truly awful that it must be watched at least once for the perversity of it all. This wasn’t even fun bad. I would have rather watched a Beau James match. At least the King of Kingsport is like watching an Ed Wood movie. This was just a reminder of why I stopped watching WWE the previous year. The match was like **

I don’t have a great feel for who gifted me this one. It would have to be someone that was watching WWE at this time. I’ll take a stab and say it was Steve Case.