2004 Match of the Year

Necro Butcher v. Toby Klein IWA-MS 6/25/04

ER: Necro Butcher is an all time favorite of mine, and this may be my favorite performance of his. I can't really think of a Necro performance I dislike, but this is a match with just preposterous levels of violence. It's a Fans Bring the Weapons match from the 2004 IWA King of the Death Matches (and really the only criticism of the match is that they essentially worked a finals match in the 1st round, but that's more on the fed for booking these two against each other in the 1st round). Practically everything you see in this match, every spot, is one of the most violent occurrences of that spot you've seen. This is probably my favorite "through the crowd" brawl of all time, with neither guy feeling like they're just wandering around the building to kill time like a lot of those type of matches, but instead feeling like each guy was actually just punching each other around the building. It never felt like they were actively thinking about getting to a specific part of the building, they just fought with zero regard for where their fight would wind up, instead just focusing on hitting each other with everything not bolted down.

We start with one of many high points, as Necro throws a large, boxy, heavy computer monitor that hits Klein in the neck and shoulder, and from there we get some of my absolute favorite brawling. Necro has always been a great puncher and here he throws more unique combos than in any other match of his: straight rights, short uppercuts, right hooks, punches while kneeling, punches to catch a charging Klein. Necro came off like Finlay throughout this, not wanting there to be any down time or any time where both men were caught resting on their laurels, so if Klein took too long to set something up, he was getting punched somewhere. Necro throws tons of chairs at Klein and it's impossible to decide which shot is more nasty: a folded one hits Klein in the shoulder blade, an unfolded one bounces off his face, the edge of another gets bounced off his ribs, all of them looked mean. Both guys just lace into each other with punches. Necro has some of the all time greatest punches in wrestling, and Klein throws some impressive worked punches. You can tell he's holding back a little bit, but it's evened out when he doesn't hold back in the least with weapons shots later. The crowd brawling is so great, with both men spectacularly sprawling through chairs while shoving their way through fans wearing shitty clothing that doesn't fit them. Shit gets the realest when Klein powerbombs Necro off the bleachers onto the gym floor. Just a sick over the shoulder powerbomb with no good landing possible.

Once we get into the fan made weapons it's both insanely violent and almost cute. Violent, because Necro and Klein made sure to make all the weapon shots count, no matter what they were; and cute, because you can picture these deviants in attendance sitting at home carefully crafting these weapons, because some of them looked very carefully crafted. There was a rolling pin that had thumbtacks glued to it, and the thumbtacks were in such orderly rows. I am endlessly tickled by some sicko sitting at home carefully gluing these orderly tacks to a rolling pin. And a rolling pin just brings to mind - and it's easy to make the joke about fans in attendance living with their parents - but a rolling pin covered in thumbtacks just HAS to mean that a mom somewhere chewed the hell out of her asshole son for taking her rolling pin without permission. There's ZERO chance any guy in this crowd makes homemade pie crusts. Somebody stole a rolling pin from their mom and spent a LOT of time carefully gluing tacks to it. And then Klein rubbed that pin in a nasty way across Necro's scalp.

We get weird weapons like an empty 5 gal. water jug taped to a broomstick, which sounds silly, but then you see Klein just bashing the fuck out of Necro with this Alhambra (Sparklets? Sierra Springs?) jug and you know it hurts. I delivered water for a stretch after college, got in the best physical shape of my life lugging 40 lb. bottles of water around all day, and those empties are SOLID. Getting hit with one of those would be brutal, as they weight nothing so you can swing one really fast, and yet they hit like concrete. We also get a bunch of barbed wire wiffle bats which is smart (I mean, it's dumb, it's all dumb) because Klein and Necro can now just throw full force bat shots. No need to hold back like with a real bat, so just swing away Merrill! You also get cute moments of fans sliding their weapons in the workers' general direction. "Please use my barbed wire board Toby!" These guys roll through glass, hit each other HARD with tons of weapons, Necro does a wild somersault dive off the top and crashes hard to the gym floor, Necro takes a death valley driver through a set up chair, they work in a clever ref bump (and the ref himself is a lunatic out there wearing no gloves and taking bumps in light tube remnants) that leads us to a great school boy near fall. Them having the presence of mind to throw in a cute roll up as a convincing near fall is one of those things that set them apart from the typical geek show guys. And yeah, this is maybe the flat out most violent match I've ever seen. Their 2003 sprint seems to get talked about more, but this has the best through the crowd brawling of any match ever, more violent shots, and is twice as crazy. I hate that I love this, but I lovvvvve this.

PAS: One of the issues I always had with US tourney death match wrestling, is it often came across as too genial. These shows didn't have Magnum TA trying to poke out Tully's eye, or Greg Valentine pummeling Piper's ear, they were weird hobbyists enjoying their weird hobby, it sometimes feels more like LARPing or Ren Faire jousting then a nasty fight. Necro Butcher will have none of your respect knuckles and grins, he goes after Klein like Klein shot his dog and slapped his sister, and Klein is ready and willing to give as good as he gets. Eric covered a lot of the things about this which are great: Necro throwing punches from odd angles with unexpected force, crazy hurling of objects, the powerbomb off the bleachers, etc. I also loved the fight over the asiatic spike, such a cool finisher for a nut like Necro, and Klein smashing him with tubes to make him break the hold was awesome. I don't give a fuck about light tubes, normally, and some of the fan made weapon stuff got a little stunty. Also CM Punk and Prazak were awful on commentary, these two are out there killing each other and those two are doing shitty MST3K comedy, really detracted from the match.


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