Eye on the Indies: CZW Déjà Vu 9/27/14

Wanted to see this show for the Busick/Gulak match, figured I would watch the whole thing since I don't know most of the other guys; Get my brain caught up on some current indy guys.

1. Mason Price vs. The Preacher

I kinda dig the Preacher's vibe. He's a small guy with an old face, like an emaciated MC Gainey, with a big scar across the back of his shaved head. Actually he looks like a really skinny Christian, but with mixologist facial hair. Price looks like Jim Norton working an army gimmick, but an army guy who des a lot of thigh slaps. Match itself wasn't bad, but Price was very much not good. He had zero follow through on any of his strikes or moves. He'd throw a back elbow or pump kick and just kind of stop right where the point of contact would have been. It made all his stuff look like guys going over their moves in the ring before a show. He'd even do it on bigger moves like a Blockbuster, just kind of go through the motions of the move. Preacher had a Jimmy Jacobs vibe, some weird strikes, nice bumps (including flying wildly into a release German), good elbow drop. I'd like to see more of him.

2. Alex Colon vs. Latin Dragon

Lousy video game wrestling filled with reversals that weren't and big moves that didn't matter. Colon wanted to have his cake and eat it too, not really deciding on what kind of character he wants to be. He wanted to be eye raking cheap shotting point at my head heel, but also wanted to do some This is Awesome spots. Some of the reversals were mind numbing. Dragon did a tope, and Colon just didn't sell the tope and gave him a suplex on the floor. Dragon did a nasty reverse rana, then turned around and Colon just small packaged him. A lot of those reversals where you go "oh, so that move just had zero impact I guess." That nasty suplex on the floor I mentioned, which also saw Dragon partially getting slammed into a support pole, and the announce crew talking about a possible broken foot….well Dragon was rope running mere moments later. Yuck.

3. Joe Gacy vs. Aaron Williams

This one had me until it totally lost me. The match gets about 15 minutes to do its thing, and the first half was mostly based around headlock exchanges, some strikes, and then Williams working over Gacy's knee in cool ways. I really dug Williams twisting the knee and ankle and dropping knees on Gacy's knee, and also digging into it with his elbow. Gacy was really good about selling it, really showing how it was slowing him down as every time he would try and transition back to offense Williams could see it coming a mile away. And then suddenly a switch got flipped and Gacy just had to do a whole shit ton of moves with most of the knee stuff a distant memory. It was really like two different matches, and once it turned into "workrate sprint" it turned into a much weaker match.

4. Sozio vs. Caleb Konley

I'm…starting to remember why I don't do more reviews of full indy shows, and why I stay unfamiliar with a lot of indy talent. This one had a couple compelling moments, I liked a lot of Sozio's arm work, and Konley did a fine job of selling the arm damage done, but it didn't save me from a really bad elbow exchange showdown with super slow roaring elbows. Sozio was one of those guys who I couldn't tell if he was a comedy guy or if he was super serious. Sometimes he seemed serious, but then would throw these goofy sweeping crescent kicks and wrestled the first exchanges of the match still in his overcoat. His mafia kick that ended the match looked good at least.

5. Kimber Lee vs. Nevaeh

This was fine although a lot of the stuff seemed overly rehearsed, especially the opening "they know each other so well!" stuff. In fact the more I think about it the more I realize this whole match was practically built around "Kimber goes for this move and misses! Nevaeh follows up with this move and that misses!" kinda stuff. You get your German suplex tradeoffs, your forearm exchanges, you know the drill. I liked one of Kimber's submissions here and both girls seemed willing to lean into things. So that counts for something.

I talked with Phil and it came up that I was reviewing a full CZW show. Phil's response: "Yeah that was a weird thing for you to do."

6. 4 Corners of Ultraviolence: Ron Mathis vs. "The Wrench" Conor Claxton

I really dug this. This was a pretty classic brawl that wouldn't look out of place on older IWA-MS shows. I had never heard of either guy before. Mathis just looks like an athletic kick pads guy, Claxton looks like Dean Ambrose, and they both took and dished out some nasty shots in this. This was constructed really nicely as there aren't just weapons shots for the sake of weapons shots, the early non-weapons work was tight, and once we devolved into weapons the order went pretty logically. Mathis controls most of the early stuff, beating Claxton around the ring and then grossly stapling a dollar to his forehead (which awesomely stays on the rest of the match) and eventually Claxton gets ahold of a chair wrapped in barbed wire (which is a pretty good way to get the advantage to swing back to you). The chair shots were really nasty as they weren't held back much and Mathis took a bunch of shots to his back and sides, the first shot off his arm instantly left a dozen cuts. Claxton went for a light tube and aimed to superplex Mathis into it but took too long, allowing Mathis to reverse into a tornado DDT through broken glass. Gross. Eventually we got tacks in the mix too and they did a few fun tacks tease spots with one of them coming close to falling into them, steadying himself, reversing a move out of them, until both of course take the plunge. Also get the excellent spot of Mathis putting tacks into Claxton's mouth and punching him in the face, with Claxton doing a classic Danny Thomas spit take with tons of tacks. I thought this whole thing was awesome. Their work in between weapons shots was snug, weapons stuff built logically and looked great, didn't go into overkill. This is pretty much what you would want out of this kind of match. Very pleasant surprise.

DJ Hyde comes out but gets interrupted by LuFisto beating him with a stick and they brawl around for awhile. Great spot where Hyde catches her off a dive and launches her at a rough angle through a bunch of chairs. And then that spot is immediately ruined by an announcer saying "We have our Ray Rice moment here in CZW." Eventually LuFisto pulls a knife on him which is just…yeah.

7. Shane Strickland vs. Flip Kendrick

Well this was awful. This match was one 15 minute mirror sequence worked in 3/4 time with most shots missing. Oof. Kendrick is a guy I've liked in almost all the stuff I've seen him in. Strickland is a guy I've never seen before. This was the worst Kendrick performance I've seen, and I never want to see Strickland again. Strickland works the same way Chris Hero did when he was doing his 2001 JAPW extra flips gimmick, except Strickland doesn't seem to do it with a wink. At one point he hit a dropkick, but only after doing a 619 to get to the apron, then somersaulting over the ropes back into the ring. Every move he did had an extra spin leading into it, except he moved so cautiously and slow that it looked strange, like he would get dizzy if he spun around too fast, so he would slooooowly rotate and then just hit an enziguiri or something. The match started with both men slowly running through a bad super choreographed mirror exchange, filled with ducked kicks and dropkicks performed at the same time and stereo kip ups. It was done so slowly and poorly that it looked like clever satire of indy wrestling. Kendrick was moving slowly through his stuff the whole match, a lot of his strikes looked bad, and a lot of the move execution was bad or awkward. A Code Red that was supposed to fling Strickland into a turnbuckle ended with both men slowly tumbling into the corner. Match ended with Strickland hitting a double stomp off the rope, in theory. He really just jumped and landed with his feet on either side of Kendrick, with the camera zooming right in on it. It must have looked as bad live because it was pretty silent when it got the 3 count. Not sure if this poor performance is the norm for Strickland, but if this was the only thing I'd seen of Flip I'd assume he was an awful worker. Yuck.

8. Biff Busick vs. Drew Gulak

PAS: This was the rematch of their CZW title match in May. I haven't really been following the booking but here we have the heel/face dynamic reversed with Gulak coming in as the face and Busick as the bruising heel. This started out with some of the great grappling that these guys bring to the table, with cool armbars and short arm scissors and knuckle locks. Both guys are really great at forceful looking matwork, all of the counters looked like the guy countering was using every ounce of his strength to reverse the hold. Match switches gears when Gulak takes a pair of huge bumps, he gets thrown off the top rope to the floor and cracking the small of his back on the apron (leading to a nasty bruise over his kidneys, he was pissing raspberry tea on the 28th) and getting backdropped into the second row wiping out a fan. Then Busick is controlling, beating on Gulak, with Drew having his moments. This was well on it's way to surpassing their best match up, when sort of out of nowhere Busick counters a suplex into a roll up for a pin. I can't believe I am criticizing a US Indy match up for underkill on its finish run, but I was expecting it to really kick into gear and it just ended. Still much to love and this is a match up that consistently delivers.

ER: Man I love what these guys do, and I love how things have a sense of ending at any time due to both mens' knowledge of reversals and leverage. I agree with Phil that this could leave matches ending without as much drama as they could have built to. But at the same time it keeps me glued to the whole match in the same way I was glued to RINGS matches. Gulak is an ideal wrestler for me. I'm fascinated by all his movements and his combo of skills, maybe the most exciting "new" guy for me this decade. He always breaks out cool unexpected things that make me flip out as a wrestling fan, like his cool roll-up reversal of a Busick leapfrog here. I wasn't even expecting anything to happen there because it just seemed like any other wrestling rope run segment, until Busick leapfrogs and Gulak slides under with the great flash false finish. These two are so good they really make meaningless moments of wrestling mean something. The struggle between them is always so satisfying, I loved moments like Gulak dishing out cupped slaps to Busicks back and head, slowly gaining him access to the arms, moving into a bodylock, into a nasty variation on the Gu-Lock…and I like that he can go through all that but Busick gets a near immediate rope break. Other times they can get a reversal neither were expecting that leaves them in far greater dominant position. I like that ebb and flow of their stuff. The Gulak bumps Phil mentioned were sick and took the match in a welcome and different direction than I expected. Both guys lend an authenticity to their matches; I never feel like they're moving through one spot mechanically to get to the next part of the match. At one point Gulak really wrenches in a hammerlock that is ultimately inconsequential to the larger segment they were working, but that hammerlock looked like a real terror, a real nasty twist, and I could easily see capable but lesser mat workers just going through the motions and not wrenching in a transitional move like that, too busy focusing on what was "supposed to" happen next. These guys might not be for everybody, but for me they're right up their with my favorite all time wrestling. I hope we get to see these guys do their thing for years.

***Note: The Busick/Gulak match was easily good enough for Phil and I to add it to our 2014 Ongoing MOTY list, nestled cozily into spot #37. Instead of doing a whole separate post with my review copied over, I just added Phil's thoughts from the match here. Our full MOTY list linked at the bottom***

9. Ohio is 4 Killers (Jake & Dave Crist) vs. The Juicy Product (JT Dunn & David Starr)

ER: Well, this match was kind of difficult. Stuff I liked, stuff I hated, and then a fair portion of the match completely invisible! Match starts with the Crist brothers diving out of the ring, and they brawl out through the crowd, and outside. The problem is that the crowd was really dark, and the cameras weren't really equipped to follow the action around. What's worse, is when they brawled outside the cameras couldn't follow them. So I just had to fast forward until everybody made it back inside. Jake had a lot of color happening, not sure how it happened. The announcers didn't know either as they stayed at the table and kind of guessed what could possibly be happening outside. I'm sure it was cool for the live crowd, but a weird thing to do on a IPPV where workers should know your filming limitations. Even back inside the building doesn't do much as things are super dark so you can't really see what's happening. Juicy lawn darts Dave Crist into the concession stand. Minutes later Dave appears on top of the concession stand and does a wild Thesz press off the top of it (at least 9-10 feet up). After many, many, many minutes we finally end up in the ring for the match to officially start. There was actually a pretty good FIP story going on with Jake beaten bloody and Dave also gassed from the beatdown, and both Crist guys had some good comebacks and hope spots. But then the match hit the spot where it should have ended, and kept going…and going…and then kept going. They peaked the drama well, and it's just too hard to keep peaking that numerous times in a match. All the guys had some stuff that looked good. There were a couple double team tombstone variations that were nasty, one with Jake hitting a tombstone while Dave hit a double stomp off the top to drive it down. Dave also had an epic double knee drop off the top, and actually threw a really great looking mule kick (it's really hard to throw a nice spinning mule kick). Starr had a couple of neat power spots, and Dunn took some big bumps off clotheslines and other moves. Also, everybody apparently had a bet going to see who could throw more superkicks. At one point we had six consecutive superkicks from everybody. And there were so many more. So yeah, the match had tons of overkill but a lot of the stuff in the overkill looked good. I think the match could have been really great if laid out a little tighter, but as a spot spectacle it was plenty fun.

OVERALL: This was a good enough show, with some nice peaks but also some subterranean lows. The Gulak/Busick match was great, and I also really loved that weapons match. Kendrick/Strickland was one of the absolute worst matches I've seen this decade, but The Preacher was a cool guy I had never heard of that I'd like to see more of, same with Mathis and Claxton. The Crists were also better than I remembered (though had the same faults I remembered).


2014 MASTER MOTY LIST