2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

8. Biff Busick v. Drew Gulak CZW 4/27

PAS: Man there is some weird stuff going on in CZW. The land of Wifebeater and Nick Mondo is apparently putting on almost Jack Briscoeish long mat based title matches. These guys hit the mat hard for 10 or so minutes and it is really great. Gulak can make simple things like go behinds and headlocks look really good, and Busick is a strong looking guy who has some nice powering out counters. Gulak has some nice douchey cheapshots too, kicks to the temple, biting the fingers, twisting the ankle and knees. He controls the match, and Busick does a nice job working from underneath, making some big comebacks and near falls, but Gulak always finds away to take over. Happy to see some indy wrestling I can get behind and get excited about.

ER: Wow. Sometimes when you're not paying attention, two guys you've never watched before go and get really damn great. Suddenly CZW has a whole crew of Billy Robinsons, with Timothy Thatcher, Drew Gulak and Biff Busick. This match is 30 minutes of pure greatness. I think the word "solid" gets both overused and misused a lot when talking about wrestlers, in the same way people often use "average" or "mediocre" to mean "awful". But these are two solid motherfuckers right here. Everything they do is snug, and not just mindless stiffness, just tight solid ringwork with no light showing between contact. The shoulderblocks thud, the back elbows land, the kneebars wrench, everything just works and looks great. It's like two Cesaro's spending 30 minutes just wearing the other down. The first 10 minutes of grappling is great, and really the whole thing is a war which had me wondering which guy was gonna break first. Truthfully I tend to get a little distracted during longer matches, but I think that's mostly due to most matches not actually needing to go very long to effectively convey the story they're trying to tell. I think it's a testament to how engaging this long match was that Phil told me it went around 19 minutes, and it really went 30. By the time I realized the match had overshot the 19 minute mark it was almost over. Everything in it is just so damn good. Gulak's middle rope elbow drop, Busick's body shots, Gulak's rolling wristlock, the tangled leg lock they end up in, a couple nasty suplexes, a dangerous top rope tease that ends with Gulak throwing back headbutts and his elbow point to Busick's face. If this is the new direction indy wrestling is trending, sign me the hell up.


2014 MASTER LIST

Read more!

MLJ: Atlantida Rising 2: Dos Caras Jr., Negro Casas, Último Dragón vs Olímpico, Rey Bucanero, Tarzan Boy

Aired 2006-04-08
Taped 2006-04-02
Dos Caras Jr., Negro Casas, Último Dragón vs Olímpico, Rey Bucanero, Tarzan Boy

Jumping into 2006 proper, I don't see a steady amount of matches easily available before April. One problem in watching these as opposed to Rush vs Shocker or even something like Marco vs Universo, is that I have no real sense what these matches are heading towards. I know there's a title match or two in here, but in general, I'm looking at these in a vacuum. Hopefully, just in the act of watching, I'll have some sense of where, if anywhere, everything is going. Certainly the matches in Fall 2005 around Leyenda de Plata, didn't feel like an endpoint but instead like another step on some larger road.

This was a fun match. It let me see some more tecnico Casas, some broken down Ultimo Dragon in Mexico and my first real look at Dos Caras, Jr. Just looking at the matches I have on tap for this, I have a lot of Rey Bucanero. I know a few years earlier, he was ranked very highly on DVDVR 500s and what not, though I don't really see him on later WKOs. So far, I have no feel for him at all, but i'm hoping to pick one up as I go. He turned tecnico fairly early into the matches T'm watching, so it should be interesting. Tarzan Boy is another guy I don't have a great sense of. Olimpico I've seen once or twice and his shtick is based on his size (I think Niebla Roja sort of plays his role in the group now), but he made a great foil for Casas in this match.

In general, this was the Casas show, which was actually quite nice to see as I'd been slightly underwhelmed by what I saw of him as a tecnico during this era. Some of that was just him being the third guy on a tecnico side and not given as much to do. Here though, he shined. Past an early, fairly engaging bit of matwork with Tarzan Boy, he was paired off with Olimpico throughout the match and it was all a ton of fun, with the best stuff found in the tercera caida, both in the form of comedy (for example, Dos Caras lifted Casas back into the ring when he seemed reluctant to face off against Olimpico and it was all pretty funny) and through character work in the face of a much larger foe. Multiple times Casas tried to rapid fire chop Olimpico only to have it no-sold, followed by him being swatted around the ring, until he gave up and hit a well-placed ddt. Right towards the end, Olimpico had him in the corner and I swear Casas did the most hard-boiled, dickish thing in the world. While getting pummeled (and selling it big), he managed this little flexing motion to taunt the guy beating the hell out of him like he was some 1940s gumshoe taking a beating by the mobster's goons and mouthing off to them to show that they couldn't get to him no matter what they did. In 2014, I swear sometimes he even directs the camera people from inside the ring before a spot. Negro Casas is an endless bounty of little moments. It paid off well too within the narrative as he ultimately overcame goliath and took the last fall of the match by submitting Olimpico.

This was sort of Los Guerreros Del Atlantida B-Team but they still worked well together for the most part. They stared things off with the huddle and after a fairly back and forth opening stretch with some good moments of fighting back out of adversity by Casas and Dragon, they took over by tossing Dragon and Casas so they could focus on Caras. There was a sort of silly flub where Olimpico picked up Dragon in a bearhug so he could get chopped by Tarzan Boy, but Tarzan Boy was way out of position. In general, though, Tarzan Boy did fine with his exchanges with Caras and played to the crowd fairly well, but he still sort of felt like the Paul Roma of the group. I need to see more of him before making any real judgment. Their biggest move was probably to end the primera caida, a nice looking double team set up for the Rey's Castigo.

On the tecnicos side, Dragon could still do some of his trademark spots/strikes, and there's just something special about the Asai Moonsault in this setting in 2006. It felt both important and iconic. It probably didn't hurt that it followed a crazy monkey flip bump by Rey over the top. I have a feeling that it was things like that which made him so highly rated earlier in the decade. Caras, on the other hand, didn't show me a heck of a lot. He had something in the way of size, and had one sort of nice kick to the throat that was set up by a Casas anklelock and in itself set up a beautiful La Casita to end the segunda caida. The tercera caida ended pretty soundly after said bump/moonsault, with the tecnicos making short work of the rudos in a 2 on 2 setting. This would fall more on the fun side of things, but it was great to see Casas in such a featured role instead of just filling out a side. Just as important, the Guerreros definitely kept a sense of identity even without Atlantis or UG there.

Read more!