If you’re into Fat Heels vs. Spectacular Muscle Faces, you’ll enjoy this Tag Team match from 2005 recently posted to YouTube. The big bald beasts are the U.K. Pitbulls and I’m guessing they are the Heels judging from their matching bodysuits stretched over their bulky frames.
Their opponents are two eye catching pretty-boys in green — the Irish Dragons. You may recognize the swole, pale Dragon with the bulging trunks — it’s Sheamus before he was inked, mohawked, and nose pierced. This will be fun to watch him play the Heroic Good Guy role instead of the ass-kicking, heartless brute.
As the less swole (and perhaps cuter) Dragon, this young Eamon O’Neill portrays the Face-in-Peril.
The Pitbulls unleash Fat Man’s Offense as they step on his ribcage, belly-buck him in the corner, and drop these ring-shaking 400 pound Elbow Smashes onto his exposed torso. I don’t know how they avoided killing this kid!
Here is a stunning Elbow Smash to the back of the skull for example. This is just the sort of unfair, one-sided demolition that seems to really excite British fans (and me too!)
Across the pond, the cute young grapplers in their tight little trunks are always pitted against monsters and made to take a beating for the audience’s viewing pleasure. Maybe because England was the little country that could, they all relate to this scenario.
To further emphasize Eamon’s helpless situation, the Bulls (which seems a more fitting name for these big beasts) work together. It’s so unfair (and therefore so exciting) because the Heels are so damn huge.
Here the young man’s shirtless body is stretched out by one Bull like a side of beef ready to be carved as the second Bull slugs him in the gut. OOOFFF!
The theme of the match is teamwork, where the Dragons are shown to be effective ONLY when they work together against just one of the Bulls.
For example, the Dragons try to Clothesline the Bulls off their feet, but the big Bulls are impervious and the smaller men just bounce off like swatted flies. But then BOTH Irish Dragons attack just one of the Bulls and then they succeed. So if the ref would just let Sheamus go, the Good Guys would win!
And Sheamus (on his way to worldwide fame in the squared circle) gets to play the powerful but restrained Superhero. Here we see a classic gimmick that still fucks with my head, where one villain strangles the Face-in-Peril in the far corner, but the ref’s only concern is getting the rescuer out of the ring and hopelessly out of reach.
Eventually Sheamus makes the hot tag and storms into the ring. To my surprise, he doesn’t dominate the Bulls and win the match per usual. No — he gets HIS ass manhandled and crushed as well. And he looks great suffering in his little green briefs — we see that he had a thing for too-small trunks even back then.
Clearly they didn’t know at this time that Sheamus is a top superstar and should never be seen getting his ass handed to him by a pair of fat Heels.
Here is a fun and humiliating moment that the Irish Dragons endured late in the match. They are Irish Whipped together, and instead of bouncing off and falling down which happens 100% of the time this move is used, they instead embrace for a moment– just holding onto each other like a pair of sitting ducks.
Then the two fatties crush them, driving in with their big bellies like two snowplows slamming head-on. This sure makes Sheamus and his partner look like a couple of jerk-offs.
The match ends with a portrayal of the breakdown of the successful Male-Male partnership.
Sheamus is suddenly unable or unwilling to work with his partner in tandem. This results in a crushing defeat for the defenseless Eamon O’Neill.
This match was a nice portrayal of Fat > Muscle — you will enjoy this one if you get off on that scenario. And it was entertaining to see Sheamus from his Starving Artist days, being used in a very different role than we see him in now and having a much more humble attitude.