7 Awesome Wrestling Matches (That The Critics Hated)
4. Bob Holly Vs. Al Snow - WWF St. Valentine's Day Massacre
"The guys worked hard but it was a really cartoonish brawl," wrote Dave Meltzer in the 22 February 1999 Observer. He also criticised the match because it "seemed to drag on way too long", which seems particularly disingenuous. The match went 10 minutes, and the variety of settings alone meant it whizzed by in a concussion-triggering breeze.
Where Meltzer saw a cartoon, Snow and Holly saw a platform to simulate a fight of quality tonal range. "Simulate" is a misnomer, really, and it helps if you rewatch the match through a 1999-sized lens. Snow rocked Holly with an unprotected chair shot immediately, and the range of weaponry added to the fun, too; Holly retaliated by dazing Snow with a fire extinguisher and demolishing him with a glass bottle. There was nothing cartoonish about the backstage brawl element; Snow took a wicked hip-first bump off assorted metal equipment, a necessary ugliness deployed to put this over as a fight. Snow did deliver a lame zinger when battering Holly with a telephone handset - "Reach out and call somebody!" - but it served his endearingly naff character, at least.
It was ironic; prior to the delightful riverside resolution, Holly smashed floor tiles over Snow's head. In reality, he was building the hardcore division as a fun and violent fixture of Attitude Era programming.
"If Holly wins this title tonight, King, he goes a long way to erasing the image of Sparky Plugg," said Michael Cole on commentary, in a rare decent insight by his non-entity '99 standards. The match did just that; Holly in its aftermath became completely synonymous with his latter-day gimmick, disassociating him from his cartoonish New Gen special.
If anything, by virtue of that, the match was the opposite of cartoonish.