Signature Moves

Jerry Lynn vs Lightning Kid, GWF Major League Wrestling, 27 December 1991 (Global Wrestling Federation)

I was never a big fan, but I always got a kick out of the Lightning Kid (19, 6'2", 201#), more for his scenarios than for anything else. Lightning was a comic heel character who fomented situations prompting more seasoned wrestlers to give him a good spanking. I'm not saying he couldn't get the job done, but he had to rely on crooked and unscientific means to do so.

He's the defending champion in this superb two-out-of-three-fall title match against Jerry Lynn (28, 5'10", 202#). The match, at around the 33-minute mark on the video linked above, has the added stipulation that the falls must result from the winner's trademark finisher (the Lightning Strike, Lightning's take on the piledriver, or Lynn's sleeper hold). The fight goes for the full three falls.  The wily champion takes advantage of his opponent's integrity, at one point tricking him into assuming the referee position and then kicking him in the ribs.

Lynn snuffs Lightning out for a thrilling first fall, but the gangly heel does not go down easily. Lightning wins the second fall, putting the pressure on both wrestlers for the third and final fall. From start to finish, the match is a best of its kind, with GIF-worthy moments I do not have room for here. The final five minutes are the most intense, with Lynn, at last pushed to his limits, going into berserker mode and delivering a furious corner clobbering, seen in the last GIF above. Seconds later, Lynn accidently cold-cocks the ref, and, as any wrestling fan knows, a knocked-out ref paves the way for all kinds of new hell to break loose.