IWA Mid-South Top 18 Matches, #7: Jimmy Jacobs v. BJ Whitmer No Rope Barbed Wire 4/12/08

Jimmy Jacobs v. BJ Whitmer No Rope Barbed Wire 4/12/08

ER: Well, this was a total geek show. A long geek show. Too long. Not very enjoyable. I love a stiff brawl. Love a wild fight. Love some blood in a wild fight. But 33 minutes of guys cutting each other in different ways is just too damn much. This felt like something that hurt and maimed the two guys in the ring far more than it entertained anybody watching. It was filled with those kinds of spots that don't look very good, but you know had to take a couple months off their respective lives. Jacobs/Whitmer had some of my favorite brawls of 2007. Jacobs was one of my absolute favorite guys around that time. And here there are sparks of good, but it just goes so damn long. Compare to the insanely violent Necro/Klein match that goes about 7 minutes and is just the craziest violent spectacle possible. Here we get 33 minutes of geek show spot set up with some okay payoffs. The thing is, when you go into a geek tent, the atrocities are all ready for you. You pass through, you get grossed out, you walk out the other side changed for the worse. Here you have to stand there silently while the geek spots are set up, and it's grosser and less fun. The opening moments are probably the best as they brawl to the floor, and Jacobs is a guy who is great at brawling around buildings, like a tinier, better Eddie Gilbert. Jimmy is chucking chairs and missing dropkicks and hitting elbow drops off chairs and the stage, screaming about his leg after nasty falls, and the whole time I'm loving it, but also knowing at some point we have to go back and roll around in barbed wire.

And once we do, things get way less fun. Getting cut in a bunch of tiny places hurts like hell, but doesn't always "show up". So you fly into wire and you get a bunch of tiny cuts that nobody can actually see, and they're killing you, but they don't read. It's like Jacobs recognizes the wire isn't reading and hits a gusher. Jacobs' blade jobs were the actual best in wrestling and he really starts bleeding some deep red blood, going nuts, wiping blood from his eyes, and it gets momentarily awesome. But once we get into BJ's endless spot set up my interest waned. You get wire cutters and cut some wire, you bring in tables, you kick out of some absurd stuff (a piledriver from the apron through a barbed wire table on the floor!?), both guys wear wire halos, the spikes come into play, BJ drives Jimmy through a table on a kamikaze mission after Jimmy traps him in a guillotine...but the move set up was just too much. This whole thing needed an unemotional editor. At one point a kid literally screams "Just quit, you emo!" and, I got where he was coming from. They put themselves through some ungodly punishment, and that takes a weird kind of human. But I've also seen several way better matches between these two where their bodies probably felt much better the next day. Even the "This is awesome" is the most bored, forced sounding "This is awesome" chant I've ever heard. I burst out laughing when I heard it. It sounded like a deadbeat dad was forcing his kids to chant it from the back seat as he drove to see his buddy at the model train store. "This is the only weekend I get to see you kids. We're gonna have FUN!!! Okay??"

PAS: I liked this a fair bit more then Eric. I agree that it went too long, especially for a show which already had gone 4 hours (those IWA shows could be Baatan Death Marches for the audience.)  Still I thought there was enough good stuff in this that it outweighed the bloat. My major problem with most IWA death matches is that they feel like exhibitions. Like a pair of good natured goofs doing especially nasty versions of frat hazing. This felt like a fight between two guys who hated each other, loved all of the out of the ring brawling, thought the guillotine counter into the barbed wire board was clever and really nasty as was the hockey fight with spikes. Could have used some trimming, but overall I thought this was a pretty good match, makes me want to rewatch their better ones against each other.