IWA Mid-South Top 18 Matches, #12: Mean Mitch Page v. Corporal Robinson 10/27/01

 #12 Mean Mitch Page v. Corporal Robinson 10/27/01



PAS: This is a house of horrors match with light tubes hanging like wind chimes from the ceiling, and multiple tables stacked with light tubes. Parts of this I liked but it just went too long for something this brutal. The Klein v. Necro match was great because it was a violent sprint. Something like this had a lot of moments of both guys lying around covered in glass and bleeding. Robinson has great punches and that made the parts between bumps look good, and the bumps were cool, but the whole thing needed to be compressed, and the they needed to end on the biggest bump, instead of both guys just sort of collapsing from fatigue and blood loss. It was a spectacle for sure, but I don't think it was a great match.

ER: I liked this a lot more than Phil. Necro/Klein is a violent ugly masterpiece and it's tough to compare other matches to it. This match set out to do something different and I thought it accomplished it well. It was long, it was violent, it was not compressed, it dragged it spots, and the finish was two broken men. And that's kind of what I loved about it. Klein/Necro was the fast violent sprint, this was the "every tool in your belt" shitshow. I liked that it didn't necessarily peak, but more maintained violence until neither man could really do any more violence. And it did go too long for something this brutal...but the thing is, those brutal things were ACTUALLY happening to these two, and they actually DID last this long. This was your endurance death match and they endured some ungodly punishment, some of it - unfortunately for them - some of it far more painful to them than it looks to the viewer. I'm not sure the best salesman in wrestling could accurately get over how much it must hurt to have your cut up body rolled through fiberglass insulation, or dumped in rubbing alcohol (although for general hygiene concerns, dunking these two in rubbing alcohol probably prevented some infections).
This match was billed as a House of Horrors match and yeah, lived up to that; light tubes, barbed wire, a wiffle bat with thumbtacks taped to it, the aforementioned kiddie pool of alcohol and roll of glass wool, plus a couple of tables covered in light tubes for good measure. The hanging tubes provide an awesome visual, but truthfully are completely ineffective while hung wind chime style, as they don't break while running through them, so they just clack around into each other. It must have taken ages to hang those things up, when all they ended up doing was clacking around and getting awkwardly yanked down by Page/Corp. So, we got weapons, and we got two guys who are each really good at brawling. Phil mentions Robinson's punches but I liked Page's brawling even more in this. His punches looked tighter and when he shook his fist out, I believed it. Their "through crowd" brawling was far better than most, with Page taking a sick bump into some splintery bleachers, and Corp giving him a couple guillotine legdrops on the bleachers. Both men take countless awful and nasty shots to the face and head with light tubes, which make me regularly cringe as you can just imagine dust and glass getting into eyeballs and cuts forming on top of cuts. Before long the ring is littered with thumbtacks and broken glass and just rolling into and out of the ring looks painful. By the end we've seen it all, Corp's face is covered in the darkest blood you've seen, Page has thumbtacks visibly stuck into his scalp, Corp has a giant cut lengthwise across his back, Page has taken a backdrop onto glass wool...and then we start blasting our way through light tube tables. The finish was unexpected, with both men not able to answer the bell, but it felt totally fine to me. Those shots were all real, and here were the two causes of that destruction, lying passed out in the rubble.