BRM Reviews FIP Sold Out (very bad)

[Big Red Machine]

FIP Sold Out (6/24/2005)- St. Petersburg, FL

STEVE MADISON vs. RAINMAN- 4.5/10
Madison cut a brief promo before the match to remind us of his feud with James Gibson.

BIG, IMPORTANT, NEWSWORTHY SEGMENT- good
Apparently tonight’s main event was supposed to be the New Dawn’s CM Punk & Azrieal challenging DP Associates’ Fast Eddie Vegas & Jimmy Rave for the FIP Tag Team Titles… but since this was Punk’s last weekend he decided that there was more money in it for him to sell his stable to Dave Prazak. Azrieal was unhappy about this, saying that he had believed in the New Dawn’s message but Punk had sold out. Punk was quite proud of this. Joe jumped Azrieal from behind and the newly-expanded DP Associates all beat Azrieal down until Spanky, Cabana, & Rinauro made the save. Azrieal demands a one-on-one match with either Punk or Joe.

JARED STEELE vs. MARCOS- 5.25/10

TONY KOZINA vs. DUNN- 5.75/10
They had a great little match here with Kozina working the knee. That whole little “fighting off the figure four” spot they did was awesome.

HEARTBREAK EXPRESS PROMO- these guys are SOOOO boring. Their promos are all the same, their matches are all the same, and neither their promos nor their matches are even any good. Antonio Banks comes out and challenges them to a match. He looks like a pro talking to two guys who are just playing wrestler. Don Juan came out to be Banks’ tag partner, so we got…

DON JUAN & ANTONIO BANKS vs. THE HEARTBREAK EXPRESS- 2.75/10
It’s a Heartbreak Express match. It turns out the whole Heartbreak Express/Don Juan break up was a ruse and, after wasting ten minutes of my life, Don Juan turned on Banks and the heels beat Banks down… but then he just made his own comeback and beat them all up, so there goes the heat.

RODERICK STRONG vs. TONY MAMALUKE- 6.5/10
Better than last time, but still well-short of what I was hoping for. These damn extra-short FIP matches are always disappointing.

JAY FURY vs. JERRELLE CLARK- 6.75/10
A very good match with one hell of a finish.

AZRIEAL vs. CM PUNK (w/Mr. Milo Beasley)- 5/10
This match was really just an excuse for a bunch of other people to come out and get involved to set up the next match, so as a result, we got a long, slow, boring heat segment that felt like it dragged on forever without anything really happening before the we got the ref bump and the real run-ins. This did not need to go eighteen minutes. Hell… ten minutes might have even been too long.
We didn’t get any sort of real finish to this match. Instead we got Sal Rinauro cutting a barely audible promo making a challenge for an eight man tag team match, so we got…

AZRIEAL, COLT CABANA, SAL RINAURO, & SPANKY vs. DP ASSOCIATES (CM Punk, Samoa Joe, Jimmy Rave, & “Fast” Eddie Vegas) (w/Dave Prazak & Mr. Milo Beasley)- DUD!
Do you remember ROH Generation Next where Gabe did a big shake-up of the promotion and used an epic eight-man tag team match to drive home the new status quo and give the guys who were going to become the future of the company the chance to shine?
Well this was opposite of that.
Just like last show, they are wasting a bunch of time with comedy in a grudge match, and it is getting quite annoying. They spent the first TWENTY MINUTES of this match doing bad comedy with some occasional first gear, opening minutes of the match spots mixed in. It was SOOOO boring and SOOOO terrible and SOOOO unfunny that it just made me wish the match was over. They spent about the final six minutes of the match trying to have a real wrestling match, but at that point I’d seen so much bad comedy crap that everything they did felt fake. The fact that the last match was entirely about setting this match up and this match was such sh*t makes me feel like they tricked me out of fifty minutes of my life. After the match, the babyfaces celebrated like they had just been for a walk in the park instead of a long wrestling match, dancing all over- aside from Azrieal, who was smart enough to ACTUALLY F*CKING SELL.
This should have been the match where they drove home how dangerous DP Associates were now that they had Samoa Joe on their side and established Azrieal as a new top guy with a big win over CM Punk. Instead they put on a match that made me never want to watch FIP again (these f*ckers are lucky they have James Gibson vs. Tony Mamaluke on the next show). Another crappy show from FIP.