Matt Riddle Spent His Last Dollar to Buy a Sabrett

Matt Riddle v. QT Marshall MFPW 3/28/15 - GREAT

PAS: According to cagematch, this is Riddle's third match ever, and while he hasn't really developed his own style yet, he is already pretty great as a white meat babyface. I really enjoyed Marshall who was a fun CW Andersonish southern heel, nice back elbow, good looking bumping, solid bald spot, everything you would want out of a guy like that. Riddle was very arm draggy and dropkicky but everything he did looked solid and he had a great spinebuster. Really loved the finish with Riddle countering a double axe handle with a jumping knee to the face and another jumping knee for the end.

ER: We thought this project would be fun because it would give us a chance to follow along with an active career almost right from the beginning, but also really pinpoint when Riddle got good. And well, that part of the project wasn't that interesting because here we are in his third match ever, and he was already doing things that I don't see from 10 year vets. Look at the expert poise when he locks up around the 2 minute mark on the video, watch how hard he bumps a vertical suplex and then lifts up on his heels to hold his back after, watch him run into corner boots and go down like a shot, as if he expected boots to not be there. There are certain things that you just get, and boy does he seem to get them. Also I only saw one armdrag and dropkick. That's not very armdraggy or dropkicky. I'd never seen Marshall before, missed his ROH run, but I certainly would like to see more of him. I really liked his back to basics approach, loved his bumping (man did he go down for a lariat on the floor), loved his strikes, loved the way he tried to take apart Riddle's knee with those sick drop downs. I don't even know what to call them. He would catch Riddle's leg and then just drop down, snapping Riddle's shin or knee down across his own shoulder or chest. It looked awesome. I also really loved the strike exchange, and strike exchanges in indy wrestling are one of the most overdone things out there. Here Marshall throws a shot and Riddle surprises him by charging back with a rough forearm, and Riddle's knees looked great throughout, the ones from a Thai clinch, the jumping ones, really nice piece of offense.

So this was really good, and now we have to figure out what wrestler has had a better match by match #3. I don't think Mayweather is an option as Riddle didn't have the same amount of build, nor smoke and mirrors. Mayweather working Mania sure was a weird and awesome and unique situation. Okay, I looked it up and Victor Zangiev's third match was the Hashimoto match. Soooooo, okay, it's probably Zangiev. If we assume all of the Pancrase stuff was definitely shoot, then Bas Rutten's first match was the Carl Malenko one. Hiroyuki Ito debuted on the first U-Style show, had a great match and then by his third match was part of that killer Sakata match. So......okay, there are guys. But man those are some pretty impressive names to be mentioned with, this early. There also appears to be a trend with those names...

(also, this whole time I thought the Beastie Boys were saying "buy her some bread". Sabrett really isn't a product us West Coasters know much about, but man is their actual lyric much better)


COMPLETE & ACCURATE MATT RIDDLE