ACTION Wrestling 6/29/18

AC Mack/Ike Cross vs. Lynch Mob

ER: I really like the team of Mack and Cross. I like them so much that I'd rather see them not team, as having them in singles matches would mean they'd be spread out across the show more. Burning both of them in one match is too much of a waste! Plus, I'd rather see them against many other people than against the modern indy Nova stylings of the Lynch Mob. Ike Cross is super talented, but I'd rather not see those talents impressively utilized selling doofus "I make you get DDT'd by your partner" double teams. Cross can take a mean DDT bump, and he takes two of them here, under the dumbest of circumstances. Cross and Mack looked great here, both are super smooth and great at feeding lame offense, and I loved how they worked Cross' spear into the match, surprising Joey with Mack leapfrogging Cross right into Lynch. Cross' forearm to the back of the head is genuinely finisher worthy, so it's annoying to see it used and then brushed off. I dunno, I guess the Lynch Mob are a thing, and their finish looked fine, but their hyper-rehearsed superkick style does very little for me.

PAS: I thought the Cross/Mack team was great, really feels like if tag wrestling was a bigger thing, they could be big stars somewhere. Cross continues to blow me away with his potential that inverted standing senton was nuts, and I loved his bump to the floor, and Mack really held things together nicely, I am a big fan of the heel pulls down the guy on the apron to break up the hot tag, and Mack timed it really nicely. I thought some individual stuff the Lynch Mob did looked OK, their finisher combo was nice looking, but they are basically the Cracker Barrel Young Bucks, and that is very much not my thing. Joey Lynch doing two separate versions of the DDT your own partner stuff, the state of the world is traumatic enough, I don't need to see that too.

James Ryan vs. James Bandy

ER: This was fun, two tall guys having their Velocity match, keeping things to 5 minutes or so. Ryan is a great tall and lanky ragdoll, with those long limbs like Alicia Fox that flop all over when he bumps. Bandy has some fun stylish offense, a nice jumping kick, a couple of really cool axe kicks (not quite an axe kick, but more of a yakuza kick with a slightly downward trajectory, if that makes any sense), nice right hand, big sliding kick on the floor diagonally past the ringpost (through the ropes), I liked it all. This felt like more of a Bandy showcase, but Ryan got in a couple nice cut off spots, had a good nearfall, and the whole thing was enough to make me want to see both guys more.

Tragedy Ann vs. Aja Perera

ER: I liked the vibe of both of them, Ann has dead eyed doll makeup and comes out with a strand of doll heads, Perera has a good look and comes out to music that makes me want to break out Zombies Ate My Neighbors! (it's been too long), but a lot of this felt pretty rough. We had a couple odd falls, some moves that didn't really work, nothing quite BAD but nothing really clicking either. We had a couple of moments where I wasn't actually sure what move had been done, and who was supposed to have taken it. There were things I liked, especially Perera's log roll to trip Ann, with a nice follow up low cutter, but overall too much clunk. Still, Perera had a lot of charisma and feels like will get better, and Ann looked pretty new. They kept it short, minimal harm.

Cain Justice vs. Anthony Henry

ER: Nice pairing, with Henry bringing stiff shots and Cain bringing a bunch of good crowd work and stooging. All of their grappling and rolling was really good, really quick, Henry hanging on more than maybe Cain expected, and Cain going for a Twist Ending way too early, leaving him open. Flustered Cain is one of my favorite iterations of Cain. I love him rolling to the floor, his surprised faces when the crowd cheers the other guy more, it's all really fun. Henry brought a bunch of nice overhand chops that gave Cain's chest some good color and looked to be outclassing Cain, even amped things up (too much) by dumping Cain hard with an exploder across the front row of chairs, moving the Hales clan in the process. Back in and Cain blocks a suplex off the top, and - this being an ACTION ring - Cain jams Henry's hand into one of those ring hooks. I thought Henry sold his hand really nicely, and Cain was awesome still opting to sink in a cheap low blow even when he already had the advantage with Henry's bum wing. There was one major part of the match I didn't like, that felt totally different than the rest of the match, and felt really below each guy: Cain shot Henry into the corner and then just ducked down for a backdrop...and there was way too long of a pause before Henry came back out of the corner. So after Cain is just sitting there bent at the waist for a few seconds, Henry sunset flips him and we get a silly seesaw Malenko/Guerrero 2 count sequence that just felt incorrect. Every part of the sequence felt like it belonged in a lesser match, with lesser guys. Oddly distracting. But I liked Cain's low blow to Twist Ending win, and love that he still won't shake a hand after a match.

PAS: I thought this was rolling along to be one of the best matches of Cain's career. I loved the early rolling on the match, the takedowns were super explosive and the reversals looked great. I really would love to see these guys work a straight shootstyle match, I really dug the chops and Cain's stooging later in the match, but it felt like they could really do something special in a more pared down format. I am a fan of a guy getting his chest worked over, and Cain is great at cringing as the blood vessels get popped. As a Finlay superfan, I am always going to love a spot where a guy uses the ring in a cool way, and Cain fucking up Henry's arm in the ring hook was dope. Finish was great too, with Cain escaping the ankle lock by grabbing the ref's shirt and hitting a low blow and the twist ending. I have to agree with Eric about that sunset flip/Malenko Guerrero section, it was a bad idea, badly executed, if I could edit it out Lucha Underground style we would have a real high end MOTY contender. It's list without it, but man was that a stinker.

Michael Spencer/Chance Rizer vs. Team TAG (Chris Spectra/Kevin Blue)

ER: I dug this, and it kinda snuck up on me. It looked like it was going to be an extended TAG squash - and it was, technically, but it had enough extra moments to it that with another save or brief hope spot from Spencer/Rizer would have been enough for me to nominate it for our MOTY list. TAG cut off the ring and kept knocking Spencer off the apron, taking apart Rizer with classic 90s double teams, like a powerbomb/neckbreaker (loved Dylan bringing up Kanyon/Raven breaking Villano IV's neck with that move on Nitro, which is a great reference point. I remember watching that live with my buddy James and we both exclaimed right when it happened), and Spectra bullying him around with avalanches and clubbing shots. The fun comes when Spencer, knocked off the apron one time too many, comes in for a save and hits an awesome knee to Blue's face. Rizer gets a believable visual pin, and Spectra shoves Spencer back over the pin to break it up. The whole thing was a really great sequence. TAG end it shortly after, Rizer took a couple nasty bumps, and even though I was really hoping that last pin would be broken up, one last ray of hope, I still really liked what we got.

Billy Buck vs. Cabana Man Dan

ER: I'd seen Cabana Man Dan's name pop up on indy cards and results for years, but I hadn't actually seen him. I was picturing more of a Colt Cabana goofball crossed with the easy misogyny of Straw Hat Guy. Or a Chris Hero bod with an orange sunset Hawaiian shirt but without much wrestling ability. Or a chubby version of Bill Paxton in Club Dread. Cabana Man Dan is not those things. He is short and packs a nice wallop on kicks. This had some sloppy moments, but they kind of added to things, like Dan trying a Gedo clutch but not really doing it right, so instead repeatedly slamming Buck's face into the mat. I liked a lot of Dan's dropkicks and thought he had good babyface charisma, though flip flop shtick doesn't interest me a lot (and it seems like Dan might come with a fair amount of flip flop attack shtick), but there was enough to like. Buck has one of the best superkicks in the game, a guy like CW Anderson who could believably use his as a finish, and I liked Buck roughing up the smaller Dan.

Slim J vs. Cam Carter

ER: Damn J is some kind of marvel. This is a match style I typically don't love, that big kickout, mirror move, pop up off the mat after a big spot kind of modern indy match, but damn Slim is just so good that I still got sucked right in. Slim throws arguably the best forearms in wrestling today, just snaps them off and really makes exchanges feel life or death. He is super athletic and always does something in a match that I really don't see coming, always dipping into that bad of tricks. This match had a bunch of "athletic guys doing athletic things", but Slim is so great at all of it that it's easy to look past some annoying things. You know, like dueling reverse piledrivers. It's a silly spot, one guy takes one, pops up and delivers his own, but they at least put some style into a burnt spot, with Slim taking his whipped around hard on his belly and Carter taking his more vertically and then sliding on his knees like at the end of a break routine. Slim can go through complicated sequences without ever getting that distant stare in his eyes, never looking like a guy going through mapped sequences, always keeping that unpredictable feel to things. When he catches a wild leaping DDT off the ropes or leaps backwards with a flipping kick or a diving elbow, it feels like he can go anywhere once he leaves his feet. He's also a master of taking offense, making offense look great, getting his body to respond in ways that seem impossible. The match ends with an absolutely vicious cradle brainbuster, and Slim comes crashing down like he was the cartoon on the side of a diving board, warning against diving into an empty pool, and it's more than just his landing, it's how he stiffens his body after, how he keeps his arms believably rigid as if he'd been KO'd. I didn't love the finish, with Slim hitting a big superplex and rolling into a guillotine, and then Carter basically just powering out of the guillotine after a (long) while and hitting the brainbuster. But there was a lot of this match to love, just on execution alone. Slim also leans expertly into a couple Carter spin kicks, and throws the most violent missed clotheslines I've seen. He cuts so low and whips his arm impossibly fast. If I attempted to whip my arm as fast as Slim on a missed clothesline I'd at best end up with a sore triceps for a few days. He throws these great stiff arm ambidextrous lariats, hitting with a thump on Carter's chest, really some of the meanest things tossed out in the match, and it was a match with Slim taking fast suplex bumps high on his shoulders. Carter is really fun, and this is among the very best I've seen him look...and I don't think it's a coincidence that it happened against Slim J.

PAS: I also don't love this match type, but both guys put a ton more violence into their fancy stuff then this kind of match usually has. Carter busts J mouth up with a hook kick, J throws these thumping lariats like he is Stan Hansen's mini, and really adjusts Carter's jaw with elbow smashes. Eric is right about how great J takes moves, he really spikes himself on all of drivers, taking everything like Wiley E. Coyote falling off a cliff. I didn't love the trading poison rana's, and a couple of other things weren't sold as long as they should have been, but man for a juniors match between amazing athletes this was top notch stuff.

Arik Royal vs. Tracy Williams

ER: Big main event that may have went a little long, but I liked all the places they went so I didn't really mind. Williams works this as a tough Nishimura, peppering him with hard elbow strikes and working him over with quiet arm work, a deeply sunk in octopus, heavy flat foot clotheslines, great flat back missile dropkick, and holding on for life to absorb a Royal beating. Royal was great, attacking with shots to the body (I liked an early exchange where Royal swatted a Hot Sauce elbow out of the air, and Sauce immediately got the forearms up on a chop, and from there Royal didn't even bother with chops, just went body), palm strikes to either side. Williams yanked on Royal's arm a bit, and Royal spent the rest of the match shaking that thing out, and didn't really get ahead on Williams until a vicious hotshot, one of those really great hotshots that looks like a guy gets snapped over the top rope and hits every rope on the way down, like a cartoon character falling out of a tree. Royal is mindful of the arm but uses it as he needs, breaking out a few Face Jam variations. Williams is nice and crafty, pulling out neat things like a DDT while placed on the top turnbuckle. It wasn't a flashy DDT, but a whip smart logical one, just dropping straight down and letting gravity and physics work. I think we got maybe a couple too many kickouts on some pretty big moves, like an absolutely disgusting stuff piledriver on Royal, or Royal literally upending Sauce with his chop block (Williams flew like a kid getting bounced off a lake blob). Both of those spots looked so match ending that I wish they didn't have to get kicked out of, maybe take advantage of being close to the ropes in both instances. The match finishing Fujiwara was satisfying, and Royal's consistent selling of it always kept it there as a potential finish, so when he was going up for a dodgy springboard Face Jam it was there in my brain that Williams could catch him. Good overall match, on a good overall show.

PAS: I thought this was amazing, easily my favorite match I have seen from either guy (and these are both guys I like a fair amount), it felt like a big time title match. I didn't think it went too long, because it was worked at a deliberate pace, much more like an NWA title match then a indy overlong kick out fest. Both guys landed huge nasty shot early, everything either guy landed just thudded with impact, not the sharp snap of a thigh slap, but much more bass in every sound. Both guys have some unique blows, body shots, shots to the side of the neck, the shoulder blade, it really felt like both guys were putting damage in the bank saving up for the end. Willams was landing these thudding clotheslines, all impact, no bump. I loved how both guys sold the moves while applying offense, Royal couldn't get Williams all the way up with a press slam so he reckless hurls him into the ropes, Williams bad back didn't allow for a full piledriver lift so he spikes Royal with a short piledriver, their injuries made the moves worse for their opponents. I have seen a bunch of Royal and Williams did an incredible job selling his offense, the Space Jam looked like an Ogawa STO, and the Royal chop block felt like something which would be in the Wide World of Sports agony of defeat montage. I really liked the ref bump, too, the ref Daryl Hall (no relation) didn't lay down forever so we could get a table or have a run in, it just slowed him down enough for Williams to get a desperate kick out, great job of keeping Royal strong.

PAS: Three matches on a MOTY list is pretty class for a start up indy. ACTION has been a hell of start up, and I love their talent pool. Would like to see them really run some angles and build up some feuds.