Chris Sabin vs Rainman (IWA MS, 9-17-2004)

IWA Mid-South Ted Petty Invitational, Highland, IN

And now to continue on with the 2004 Ted Petty Invitational. We’ve got Rainman from NWA Wildside against NWA-TNA superstar Chris Sabin in an opening round contest. (Rainman would longer be known in his career as Kory Chavis.)

Bryan Danielson on commentary and he suspects if the match goes long, it favors Sabin. Whenever non-shirt wrestlers got on IWA commentary during a shirt wrestler vs non-shirt wrestler match they’d throw something like that in.

Sabin is a step ahead of underdog Rainman early, so Rainman looks to turn it into a striking match, which doesn’t go as well as he had hoped at first, but he sticks with it and his superior height and leverage help him out in the slugfest moments.

This is a fine match if VERY “2004 indie wrestling.” Rainman didn’t yet have the polish some of the guys in the tournament did, and they didn’t have the polish we thought they did in all honesty. Sabin has that TV experience and has worked at a higher level routinely, so he’s the better guy here, and he gets some nice stuff in, but mostly what makes this — and the eventual upset win for Rainman — work as well as it does is that Sabin takes all of Rainman’s Power Plant offense (your sit-out powerslams, sit-out spinebusters, the pumphandle sit-out power bomb that finishes) really well.

The upset was a legit upset on paper, Sabin was the more experienced guy, both in IWA Mid-South and in general, had the TV exposure, was the much bigger name. Everyone was pretty surprised when Rainman won, but we mostly just thought, “Well, damn, here’s a darkhorse contender then.” Sabin loses nothing in IWA by dropping a match to Rainman; he could come back any time and he was still established as someone people wanted to see. But Rainman was new on the scene and this gives him a big win.

Rating: 3/5