Beyond Wrestling- Developmental Hell Disc 1

ER: So I've watched a boatload of wrestling the last couple weeks. I had over 100 Texas matches to watch and rank over 10 days, so I've watched a lot of wrestling. A lot of us have watched a lot of wrestling. But how many of us have gone...BEYOND wrestling!? Well Phil and I have.

PAS: I have a strange soft spot for Beyond Wrestling. Certainly this kind of indy wrestling innovative offensithon is not my normal cup of tea, but there is sort of a DIY vibe that the DC Punk Rock fan in me kind of digs. Basically Beyond Wrestling rents out a gym in the middle of nowhere and puts on shows for other wrestlers where guys just kill each other with every crazy spot they can think of. They put up lots of matches on youtube, but this is the first time I am going to try to watch a whole DVD.

1. Team Beyond v. Aeroform

PAS: Pretty close to the perfect Beyond Wrestling match, it is going to be very tough for anything else on this show to live up to this. Exactly what you would want a match between these four guys to be. I have decided that to enjoy these shows I have to be willing to except a 70/30 split of cool spots to stupid or blown spots, this match was 90/10 or even 95/5. There was one "make a guy DDT his own partner spot" which I thought was dumb, but otherwise everything was crazy and hit well. Chase Burnett of Team Beyond is probably my favorite guy in this promotion, he is 5 foot nothing 100 and nothing, but has a bunch of nusto spots and takes lunatic bumps, including the Hamerick/Fuerza bump which is one of my favorite in wrestling. Here he teases that bump, but lands on the apron and ends up taking a flip bump from the apron to the concrete which may have been crazier. I have been more hit and miss on his partner Zane Silver in the past, but here most of his karate kicks landed nastily, and I really enjoyed all of his kung fu stand offs with Louis Lyndon. Flip Kendrick is a guy with crazy dives and Flips, but I thought he looked better in the non-Flippy stuff then I had seen him, his early lucha exchanges with Chase were pretty great. Finish run teased me with overkill, but I ended up having little problem with where it ended. Hell of a start to a show, and I see no reason why EVOLVE isn't opening all of their shows with this matchup.

ER: On paper this match looks really fun, as all the guys here have some really fun spots. Burnett and Flip star with a bunch of silly and fun armdrag combos, and Chase gets into position for armdrags in really funny, spazzy ways. For a guy who nobody talks about, Lyndon has way better kicks and way better triangle transitions than Kyle O'Reilly. Kendrick does an impressive standing moonsault that started from sitting Indian style on the mat. Lyndon and Burnett work really nicely together and Lyndon WILL knee you in the face, and Burnett WILL have zero problem leaning way into a knee to the face. Zane Silver does a lot of moves that seem based around stuff landing on his own knee. Clothesline -> opponent lands on Zane's knee. Reverse DDT -> opponent lands on Zane's knee. Chase has a crazy sequence where he hits Evan Bourne's double knees to the shoulders thingy to a guy on the apron, then in one motion does a corkscrew asai moonsault to the floor. I was hoping for a double backdrop driver, and my prayers were answered. Lyndon does a reverse rana that dumps Silver on his dome and this is just too much fun to criticize.

This match is basically critic-proof. Like Ratt albums. You know exactly what the fuck you're diving into, because the title to every Ratt song describes it. No fruity embellished Mars Volta song titles, just shit like "She Wants Money" (bitch clearly is a goldigger), "I Want a Woman" (to have sex with, naturally), "Wanted Man" (either for his sexual prowess, or because he's runnin from the law), "Nobody Rides for Free" (shit you do takes its toll), etc. It's pointless to even try and make fun of Ratt, because they're in on the joke and their songs are fucking catchy as hell anyway, so why the hell would you want to make fun of them? You can't really criticize this type of Beyond match, because there's no time to. It's too fun. Burnett takes Hamrick's crazier bump, flipping right onto the concrete from the apron. This match goes over 17 minutes, and it flies by in a blur of flipping and thigh slapping and bumping and awesomeness. Are some of the spots contrived? Fuck yeah, the good ones, anyway. This was awesome fun.

2. Johnny Cockstrong v. Jeff Yager v. Jarek 1:20 v. Jack Verville

PAS: This is the flipside of Beyond Wrestling, this was a match where they really didn't pull off what they were trying for. Johnny Cockstrong is another of my favorite guys in this fed. His gimmick is that he has a steel dick and has a ton of amusing spots built around his indestructible hog leg. Unfortunately for this match the other three guys all had shtick they were trying to get over too, and it was just overkill. Jarek 1:20 does magic, Jeff Yager wears bowling shoes, Jack Verville does a wacky dance, the whole thing was too much. Verville especially was hell bent on getting that wacky dance over. The meat of the match consisted of guys dumping each other on their heads in awkward looking ways. Yager especially took multiple spots which had a concussionary feel to them. The ratio here was closer to 50/50 or 40/60 and the stuff which looked bad, looked really bad. You are going to get this kind of thing too in this fed. It had enough of a nasty trainwreck feel that I didn't hate watching it, but this wasn't good.

ER: I love Johnny Cockstrong matter-of-factly letting everybody know that it is totally fine to hit him in the dick. "Totally legal, just on me." I loved Yager yielding Cockstrong's cock as his own personal weapon, wielding Johnny like a chair to hit opponents with, and then dropping opponents with a snake eyes over Johnny's steel dong. I kinda like Verville's dance, too. It's like he made a mixtape of all his favorite songs, and they may not be crate digger selections, but he doesn't give a shit who's watching him in his car at the traffic light. This match is working for me. I think they established all their schtick before the bell, and then I just sat back and watched them do awesome shit like sunset flip powerbombs that bounced the recipient off the bottom rope. Good lord that was nasty. Yager has no problem being dumped on his head in gross ways. And it may be the only match I've seen with 4 participants whose names all start with "J". Yager is really great at making it look painful when he breaks up a pinfall. Just putting the heel of his shoe to the back of their heads. Match falls apart in the final few minutes, kinda hurt by 4 guys being in the ring the whole time. For a match that went about as long as the first, it wasn't as good, and it was really cluttered with everybody in the ring at once. But it had its moments. And for the record, Verville only did his little dance twice.

3. Anthony Stone v. Nick Talent

PAS: They start with a vignette where Stone, who is kind of a amiable New England meathead (the kind of guy who throws a Patriots themed wedding), talks about all the young up and coming stars in Beyond Wrestling. He approached and complimented Nick Talent, who responds by calling him irrelevant and worthless basically being a huge uncalled for dick to him. Then Stone says something along the lines of "Well we are wrestling tonight, and I will prove to you I am worthy and then we can tag up." Why would anyone want to have anything to do with Nick Talent after that? I don't know if girlfriend with low self esteem is really a gimmick you can work in wrestling. The match was pretty choppy, Talent does have a natural hateable charisma, kind of like Tully or Mike Booth, he really makes you want Stone to crack him in his smirking mouth. He also bumps pretty well. Still Stone wrestles this more like "guy trying to earn respect" rather then "guy trying to beat this fratty douche into a blood puddle." Meanwhile Talent is cursing him out, and spitting on him. When Stone gets the win (with double knees, which is probably the first time a Beyond Wrestling match could have used more near falls) he asks for a handshake which Talent obliges. Baffling storyline, and pretty subdued match.

ER: Talent really does have a hateable face. He's like a douchey Adam Scott, with bushy shitty sideburns. The vignette setting this up WAS odd, since they don't work that dynamic in the match, but I think the match works really well if you just pretend that vignette hadn't taken place. As Phil said, they worked "guy trying to earn respect", and in that regard it worked. Stone finds a few ways to bump awkwardly onto his head (landing all sideways on it off a DDT). One problem of starting a show with two 18 minute matches that have constant spots, is a few of them were repeated here. The double knees that ended this match were both done more spectacularly in the previous matches, and used as more of a transition spot in those matches. Still, this match had plenty of nice moments, it was just a major cooldown after the first two matches.

4. Johnny Mangue/Chris Dickenson v. Darius Carter/T.J. Marconi

PAS: Dickenson kind of works an indy Davey Richards gimmick, which isn't going to endear you to me, I have seen a fair amount of him in JAPW and EVOLVE before and he irritated me less here then usual. Marconi seems to be working some version of the Chuck Taylor/Kenny Omega "Isn't wrestling kooky" gimmick which is about my least favorite thing in current wrestling. Still I enjoyed this more then I would expect to enjoy a tag match with indy Davey Richards v. indy Chuck Taylor (or regular Davey Richards v. Chuck Taylor.) Doom Patrol (Dickenson and Mangue) are working heel and this is a pretty spirited brawl, I liked Carter and Mangue a fair amount and their exchanges with each other were good stuff. There was also a couple of fun bumps including Dickenson getting powerbombed into a wall. I also think they did a nice job setting up the hierarchies, these aren't teams I was familiar with, but it was clear that Doom Patrol were the higher ranked team with Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous being the upstarts.

ER: It's really impressive how Beyond seems to narrowly avoid the "wink into the camera" Chuck Taylor style of wrestling, since the whole thing comes off at times like a big inside joke. It's a fine line to walk, but they usually get away with it. I actually get a kick out of the chants, since instead of trying to be clever, they just state things that are happening. Like "4 Way Dance" during the 4 way, or "2 Way Dance" during the singles match. It's clearly self-aware, but it works for me far more than people just trying to get themselves over for 8 seconds of glory. Carter looks like an indy superstar in this match and takes some nutso bumps. Huge bumps off suplexes, and flies into the gym's garage door from the apron, showing Generico how you throw a yakuza kick in the corner, breaking up a pin with a sweet somersault senton. I agree with Phil that Beyond does a good job setting up wrestler hierarchy, even giving guys points totals as the come to the ring. Since a lot of indie workers look the same these days, it's not like the 80s when it was clear who the star was and who the underdog was.

5. Matt Cross v. Zach Novak

PAS: Cross is also known as MDOGG20 and Tough Enough's Matt Capiccioni, Novak is 18 years old and a rookie who kind of looks like Andy Samberg. The idea behind the match is that this match is Novak's chance to get in there with a veteran and a star and he needs to impress, while Cross isn't taking the match seriously. It is a fine story, and executed solidly, but Cross was less "I don't take this kid seriously" and more "I don't take wrestling in this fed seriously." There were parts of this match which veered into inside joke territory which is where Beyond Wrestling can get insufferable I liked the last couple of minutes and they brought me back into the match

Post match Doom Patrol beat and fork a fat guy in a hockey jersey (promoter? the personification of all indy wrestling fans?) not sure if something like this works when the ring is surrounded entirely by wrestlers not doing anything, but it was violent.

ER: This match didn't really work for me. Novak wasn't that good. He took some really great bumps, like from the garage door onto the ropes below. But then he would have really crummy use of thigh slaps. Cross didn't really appear to be taking the match as any kind of a big deal, which worked for the story they were working, but didn't do the match any favors.

This show was good times overall, but it was going to be REALLY hard to follow that first match, which might have been the best, most fun Beyond match I've ever seen. There were a million more spots that happened that I couldn't even begin to describe. Every match had at least some worthwhile stuff in it, and the atmosphere for a Beyond show is way easier than your common ROH, WxW or DGUSA show. This was just the first disc of 3 Developmental Hell discs, so we'll hopefully be reviewing those within the next week or so.