2016 Ongoing MOTY List: Terry v. Wotan

1. Black Terry v. Wotan Chilanga Mask 8/21

PAS: Necro Butcher has pretty much disappeared over the last couple of years, and with Nick Gage back in jail there really hasn't been that kind of unhinged bloody slightly dangerous brawler around anymore. Enter in the sixty-three year old Black Terry who is the Necro we have been looking for. Terry has been having a hell of a year bleeding and brawling through a bunch of tiny gyms across Mexico, this weekend he even no showed an Arena Mexico event so he could bleed all over the rocks and dirt at Coliseo Coacalco. Wotan is a DTU guy and is perfectly willing to smash his forehead violently into Terry's he also had a pretty nice tope, and took a hard backdrop on the ground. Terry was a machine in this, hitting backfists, right hands, coconut headbuts. There was one hinky spot where Terry had to hold a chair on top of himself so Wotan could dropkick him, but otherwise everything was pretty flawless. By the end of the match both guys are rolling around in gravel and chairs punching each other in their bloody heads. Gritty violent and awesome.

ER: Ummmm. What. The hell. I have no idea who Wotan is, and I have no idea why he hates Terry but brother did I buy it. What the hell. This is easily one of the most violent wrestling matches I have ever seen. And the violence just keeps ramping up until I was just kind of staring at my computer screen with my jaw slack. It starts like a normal, expectedly violent Black Terry match. You've seen this backyard flea market before, you've seen these nasty headbutts, and then Wotan starts bringing out the nasty chairshots. He blasts Terry with a couple awful ones, really wings a chair at Terry's face.  This whole time the chops from both men are landing harder, super loud, the short punches are getting meaner, the simple kicks to the stomach are landing with a crack, Terry is throwing pointed knees right at Wotan's face, and then more chairs. Nasty shots. Terry holding a chair may be somewhat suspect, but that dropkick Wotan lands through the chair makes you start wondering if Terry is going to come up headless. And that's when Wotan just holds a chair in front of a kneeling Terry's head and punts it. HARD. Holy shit. If I didn't see on the match timer how long it was, I would have thought it was over right then, because god damn that kick. But Terry is crazy (seriously, Terry must be crazy) and he fights and he comes back mean and soon things spill out to the floor, back to where they started, and that's when things jump up to a level I couldn't believe. Wotan appears to be running fast away from Terry, Terry chasing, and then Terry comes around a corner just in time for Wotan to throw a chair HARD right into his face. Wotan hits a great tope and Terry goes sprawling into dirt and chairs and people. Both men are bleeding and dirty and bruised and cut. Wotan takes an insane backdrop bump into dirt and rocks. And then these men beat each other more violently than almost anything you've seen in wrestling. Literally fighting on the sharpest most annoying rocks, rolling through chairs, cutting up their bodies, punching each other over and over and over while women yell and people look on almost horrified. Terry grabs a beer bottle and bashes Wotan in the face with it a couple times. As Terry sat their beating Wotan's face - blocked by the camera - I was thinking that this video might become Exhibit A soon after. Match gets thrown out, both men stagger back up and fall around, fans want more, and yeah, this was insane. I genuinely don't know what it would take for another match to "out-violent" this one.


2016 ONGOING MOTY LIST

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WWE Cruiserweight Classic 8/24/16

1. Rich Swann vs. Lince Dorado

ER: Hey! This was awful! This felt like 8 minutes of two guys doing wind sprints. I hardly remembered any of the moves that happened, just felt like two guys running around, back and forth, occasionally slapping a leg and doing something that approximated hitting the other. Lince pulls out of every strike and every impact, like he's almost afraid of touching Swann. Their punchy slappy exchange was just so...so bad. It looked like the body movements of a competitive Olympic table tennis match. It did not look like two men HAVING A WAR or whatever hack spot they were going for. "This is their version of Frye/Takayama" screamed Mauro. Yes. Their version is the shittiest possible version. Very little of this landed with me. I couldn't wait for it to stop.

PAS: I thought this was fineish. Nothing amazing, but I didn't have the vitriol that Eric had for this match. It was an indy juniors spotfest, and didn't last forever, which is the normal sin for this kind of match. Some stuff looked awful, like their Frye tribute, but the double jump kick was really stigg and I liked the reverse rana by Dorado. Swann's phoenix splash was nasty looking, usually dives with that many rotations land soft, Swann landed hard.

2. Drew Gulak vs. Zack Sabre Jr.

ER: I liked this much much more. I was bummed that Gulak didn't advance but didn't think he had much chance to. I am happy that he didn't get dominated, and was satisfied that the ending was Sabre catching him with an almost flash bridging pin. The opening standing grapple stuff was some of my favorite stuff in the whole tournament so far, the way they would work around each other grabbing at arms and wrists and bending until their leverage point was up, allowing the other to flip the switch. I loved Gulak's aggression, slamming him into ropes, jumping off the bottom rope with stomps, and I loved Sabre working from more of a counter point of view. A lot of people have problems when he just requires people to stand still and take a move, and I agree his stuff works best when he uses someone's momentum against them, like when Gulak went for his awesome flying clothesline and Sabre reversed it into a Fujiwara. And I love when Gulak counters counters, like when Sabre blocked a sunset flip so Gulak shifted his momentum back to catch him. The slap and kick exchange is getting weird and bitter criticism but I liked it. I liked that the timing was off and a third of the strikes didn't land, because the shit that landed landed with a crack, with both guys thrown off and letting limbs fly. I'll take that any day of the week over your elbow-my elbow double jack off fist pump exchanges.

PAS: This was really good, it was very counter wrestling based but all of the counters were very aggressive and it never felt like a do si do. The early mat scrambling was awesome, and I loved the structure of the match with Gulak always moving forward and Sabre looking for openings in his aggression. It is exactly the way the match should be worked, ZSJ looked silly bulldozing his opponent in round one, he is pretty great however as an overmatched guy who can capitalize on mistakes. I also liked the slap exchange, of course Sabre's slaps aren't great, he is supposed to be a guy outmatched in a slugfest, and when he got suckered into one he got cracked, certainly that last Gulak slap was very nasty. Honestly one of my favorite Sabre matches ever, this is a good match structure for him, and it works way better in a 10 minute match then a 25 minute EVOLVE main event where he has to take a long beating and kick out of a bunch.

3. TJ Perkins vs. Johnny Gargano

ER: For two quick counter indy moves matches on one show, I at least enjoyed most of this one, but these two are better at what they do than Dorado and Swann. TJP winning was a legit surprise for me, as rightly or wrongly I had Gargano pegged as a finalist. Gargano came in selling the leg and did a mostly admirable job with it, allowing for a few moments of convenient healing, and there were a couple of moments where either man's crack timing was off a hair, leaving one man standing still waiting to take something; but for fast paced your signature moves counter my signature moves wrestling, this was fun junk food. TJP is super slippery and watching him fire on all cylinders, slipping in and out of ropes, is fun. The pins were locked on tight and looked incredibly tough to kick out of, the lawn dart spot is just freaking crazy (and really would have made sense as a finish), Gargano overshooting the senton into the barricade was nuts, and loved that TJP's already established heel hook was successful.

PAS: The CWC has done a really good job about making me care about guys I haven't given a shit about before. The Gargano v. Ciampa match is the most I have cared about either guy and I got invested in Cedric Alexander in the Ibushi match, and couldn't care less about him before or after. This match tried something similar with Gargano fighting through his knee injury from the future, but most of this match was the kind of disposable juniors stuff EVOLVE keeps running as CWC showcases. TJP had some cool spots, and the lawndart bump was especially nutso, but this was near falls for the sake of near falls. Didn't hate it, but it didn't engage me.

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