IWA Mid-South Top 18 Matches, #10: Low-Ki v. Necro Butcher 4/1/06

#10 Low-Ki v. Necro Butcher 4/1/06



PAS: Wow, what an absolute war. Necro was at his height in 2006, and was probably the best indy dream match worker in history. Whenever you would match Necro up with another Indy star it would deliver in spades. Ki comes around and back jumps Necro, and starts pounding on him as they were wrapped up in streamers. Ki just unloads full force with chops and face kicks, including this lightning fast combo ending in a backfist which looked like something out a Kung Fu movies. Necro meanwhile would have these great counters, where he would throw a desperation KO blow, or snatch Ki out of the air with a kick or clotheslines. Finish was awesome as Ki lands this crazy double stomp through a table, which Necro barely kicks out of, but instead of Necro going back on offense, he just succumbs to a Ki clutch immediately. Man I miss when stuff like this would show up once a month or so, I remember liking their December 2006 rematch even more then this, and this might have been my MOTY if it had happened in 2015.

ER: Well this was an ultimate treat, a match between two of my all time favorites that I thought I had seen...but turns out I have *never* seen! That right there is a beautiful thing. I must have seen their match from later in the year and not realized they had another match. And this match is glorious, just a brutal war with some of the stiffest shots you've seen. They come out throwing but Ki takes over pretty early, and from there we get tons of Ki throwing some nasty kicks at every single part of Necro. Out on the floor they do a bunch of close-up magic, making realllll sure that every chubby ginger fan at ringside knows just how hard they're hitting each other. It's tremendous fun to look at the faces of these grown men and then see the actual speechless shock as Necro and Ki beat the hell out of each other inches away from their face. Ki stomps face, dropkicks a hole through Necro's chest while Necro is in a chair, both guys do some vicious backfists, and at a certain point I gotta wonder how much pain each guy is in. Necro makes some great comebacks, specifically off a brutal lariat with Ki springing off the ropes directly into it. It was truly an all time great lariat, the kind that make you rewind Stan Hansen matches. The Warriors Way throw a table was spectacular, and the way Necro ends up mangled in the wreckage it literally looks like his head is disconnected from his body. He looks completely broken in 4 spots. These two are just the best. This is the kind of match I can revisit every couple years and keep finding new favorite things.

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MLJ: Atsushi Onita, Tarzan Goto & El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas, Horace Boulder & Tim Patterson

Atsushi Onita, Tarzan Goto & El Hijo del Santo vs. Negro Casas, Horace Boulder & Tim Patterson
05/16/92 Los Angeles, CSLA Gym

What the hell guys? Why didn't any of you tell me that this existed? It was from some FMW USA tour or something but it was in a gym (Cal State?) with a hot crowd, lots of Japanese people there to see Onita, lots of people there to be Santo.

And this was a blast. It's exactly what you'd expect, really. The only shame is that for the most part, Santo and Casas work each other and Goto and Onita work Patterson and Boulder (one of which you barely even see in the match, really).

I mean, it's really exactly what you'd expect, like a greatest hits of this sort of thing. Goto was awesome bouncing off the ropes and headbutting people and clotheslining them left and right. Onita brawled around the crowd, had dueling chair wars and the world's most charismatic DDT. Santo and Casas worked some of their super fast, super smooth, 1992 exchanges. Santo hit his senton/tope into the corner, and this was a crowd that knew him well enough to expect it, so time seemed to absolutely freeze in the moment.

We get spattering of Casas shtick too. He wants nothing to do with Onita after stealing the second fall with La Casita. Earlier on when Goto threatened to come in after all of the outside the ring extracurricular, he actually used Santo as a human shield for a few seconds, which is, again, awesome. Patterson and Boulder were just there, neither helping nor harming the match, really, but playing their role so that Goto and Onita could play theirs. It was a whole lot of nothing but man is it ever glorious nothing. This must have been so great to be at live.

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