2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Gladiator v. Gunner

38. Gladiator Jeremiah v. Gunner Miller Anarchy Wrestling 6/10

PAS: This was also very good stuff. This was a Captain's match for the WarGames match, with the winner's team getting the advantage. Jeremiah (aka Slim J) is one of the most underrated great wrestlers of this century. Outside of a brief ROH run, he has worked pretty exclusively in the South and is always well worth watching. He seems to be a bit more ground based with the Jeremiah gimmick, but he has great bumping and a ton of intensity. He takes over early on Miller really pounding on him, until Miller is able to grab a big boot and hyperextend Jeremiah's knee. Then Miller really rips at the knee and the match is built around Jeremiah fighting back with a bad wheel. Finish run was really great with Jeremiah's bumping making Miller's football tackle and diving headbutt spear look brutal. This was the first time these two had wrestled each other in a singles and their chemistry was great, I hope Anarchy runs this match back, and I am suitably pumped for War Games.

ER: Man I really missed out on tons of Slim J. I wrote him off pretty much immediately. I saw him on an early TNA weekly PPV in a throwaway trios where he was pretty much positioned to be the least impressive guy in the match, and sure enough, I wasn't impressed. He was probably a teenager, and I was barely not a teenager. Now 15 years later I think he's consistently the best guy in his matches and I just kinda want to find the point where he got really great. Because he's really great. And it still seems like people are writing him off (his 2.69 rating on Cagematch is a cruel kick to the dick. The fucking Boogeyman is at 4.25!). The guy moves like a star and makes offense look deadly. Right from the start the two of them tease a lock up and after a few moments Jeremiah just cracks Gunner in the jaw in the meanest fashion, and all his shots look great and he comes up with some neat ways of catching Miller off guard (loved his little headscissor feint in the ropes). Miller eventually starts ripping into his knee, including some nasty stuff around a ring post, and all the knee stuff was real good. They kind of abandon it to go into a hot finishing sequence, but the moves in the finishing sequence hit big enough to make me forget a knee ever got worked over. Jeremiah gets a wild tornado DDT, and Miller has a few moves that pretty much involve him flinging his larger body into Jeremiah, and Jeremiah bumps like mad for it. Really both guys just make each other's stuff look like kill shots. Finish is good as Bailey distracts Jeremiah, and shows he's STILL the best sneak shot leg hooker in the game, swiping hard and fast at J's leg, leading to Miller absolutely knocking his block off with a flying forearm. Yeah, these two need to fight again.


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST