Matches from ACTION Wrestling 12/7/18

Michael Marshall vs. Chad Skywalker

ER: I really really dug this. Marshall is super fun and feels like a guy I should seek out more often. His wrestling style feels like Drew Gulak working as The Gambler, and anybody who finds themselves reading this page knows that's a pretty high compliment. I'm watching this in a crowded airport so couldn't hear very well (although I heard Dylan drop a Gus Sonnenberg reference after a nice Marshall shoulderblock) so I'm unsure of the rules, but there appears to be some Watts WCW at play: no top rope offense, over the top is a DQ, no closed fists, and it's a style that was derided at the time but is pretty refreshing now. Marshall hits all the basics really well, and he hits the stooge misses even better. There's a great bit of business where he climbs slowly up the buckles, facing the ring, lingering on the middle rope knowing the top is illegal, and by the time he jumps down to go for an elbowdrop Skywalker moves, then moves again when Marshall goes for a kneedrop. A good missed elbow or knee can be just as important as one that's supposed to hit. Both guys work real well as dance partners. I'd never seen Skywalker before but he added some nice flash within the match rule constraints, still showing off some athleticism without breaking the concept. There's a cool moment where Marshall upends him and Skywalker lands stomach first on the top rope, and later Skywalker goes inside out on a nice diving lariat from Marshall. Marshall moves really quick and hits offense real slick, but as I said it doesn't come off like a rehearsed step routine. It's not easy to hit a uranage backbreaker into a reverse STO, but he makes it come off like a violent act that Skywalker couldn't stop if he tried. The piledriver finish was an excellent exclamation point to end on, and I officially want to get Marshall on a MOTY list.

Fred Yehi vs. Arik Royal

PAS: This is a rematch of an earlier ACTION match, and comes after Royal cost Yehi a spot in the title match. Really fun structure with Yehi coming out really fast and dominating the first 5 or so minutes beating Royal all around the ring, stomps and chops and even chucking him off of the stage. It felt like an old fashioned walking tall babyface getting revenge. When the ref pulled Yehi out of the corner to check on Royal, Arik burst out of the corner with a huge tackle which upended Yehi, and a second low tackle which sent him to the floor. Then Royal dominated the next three or four minutes, with Yehi having a moment or two. Finish was super nasty, with Yehi missing a top and landing chest first right into the lip of the stage. That led to an injury stoppage, and Royal cementing his evilness by attacking the injured Yehi and powerbombing him through a table (a plastic table, which doesn't look great, if you are going to do a table spot, buy a wood table). Another fun match between these guys, who match up great, I imagine a gimmick blow off is coming and it should be killer.

ER: Love how these two match up against each other, and love how different this match felt from their previous ACTION match. Yehi jumps him to start and it’s fun seeing brawling Yehi. We get a lot of technical Yehi to start matches, him grabbing limbs and stomping feet and working waistlocks, here he’s all over Royal and Royal is always great as a guy who is unexpectedly overwhelmed. Yehi works a fast full body attack and tosses Royal with several low Germans. I like that the Germans weren’t high arcing, Royal wasn’t leaping up and back into these; they were a little messy, Yehi looking like he was struggling to get Royal over, as he should have looked. I love when wrestlers find clever ways to work within their surroundings, like when Darby Allin got chucked into the side of a balcony, or at an old Rev Pro show I was at (the SoCal one, not the British one) where Super Dragon would take his bump past the ringpost and fly into the wall right next to the ring. Here we get two fantastic uses of the venue’s stage, the first with Yehi and Royal brawling on it before Royal gets tossed off into the ring apron (and the camera was filming behind him so it looked like he got tossed 10 feet), and a major moment to end the match. Royal taking over is fun, as usually you see Royal still cockily cracking jokes during a beatdown, and here he is just no funny business, punishing Yehi for getting the drop on him. The tackle that allowed him to take over was an all-timer, just totally blindsiding Yehi and sending him flying in a wild direction, like some dumb teens filming themselves jumping over a moving car stunt gone wrong. Yehi looked like a skinny kid getting double jumped by a couple of fat kids on a trampoline. Royal’s diving shoulder tackle a moment later was sweet icing, just unceremoniously shoving Yehi to the floor with a thud. Royal controlled with a bunch of boot chokes, nasty stomps to the jaw, some moments where Yehi looked well rocked. And that finish! If you’re going to do a contour or stoppage finish, do something like this. Yehi starts making his comeback and goes for a dive, only Royal steps aside and Yehi topes chest first right into the stage. I watched this match on a plane on my way to see Yehi/Makabe and some guy sitting next to me (whom I didn’t realize was watching) let out a loud “OH!” I liked the postmatch, didn’t have the same problem with the table that Phil did. I kind of liked the visual of the hard plastic table collapsing under the force of the powerbomb. ACTION could really stretch this feud out over a couple different stip matches, and I’ll be totally cool with it.

Billy Buck vs. Cam Carter

ER: This looked like a match that would deliver on paper, and it totally did. This thing is only 10 minutes but the pace is so constant that they squeezed an absurd amount of action into the run time. There really wasn't much selling to speak of, and it threatened to devolve into move trading but I don'y think it ever got there, instead it just felt like two guys with good chemistry doing cool shit. I wish they had treated some things with a bit more weight (there was a nice running knee to the chin by Buck that everyone immediately moved on from, and an even better running knee from Carter that got moved past pretty quickly), but the action was cool. Carter (with Sky Walker confusingly on his tights, on a show that has a guy named Skywalker) hits a big dive into the crowd and is super quick (in a way that a LOT of these ACTION guys are really quick, they're like Dragons Gate guys but with nice strikes) and a grounded deceptively quick striker like Buck plays off Carter's style really well. I always think of Buck as a hard hitting ground guy, but then he always surprises me with cool agility stuff, like here he had a really slick rana that wasn't *quite* as impressive as that time we all saw Gran Markus Jr. hit a rana, but looked nice nevertheless. In a world where superkicks have been rendered meaningless, Buck knows how to throw a superkick with some punch, and his is good enough that you buy it as a finish (which got us a nice nearfall). Fans flipped out when Buck kicked out of a killer Carter powerbomb, and like I said by the time this was over I couldn't believe only 10 minutes had passed due to how much stuff I had just seen. Total hot sprint, great chemistry.

Slim J vs. Alan Angels vs. AC Mack vs. Ike Cross

PAS: This was a four way elimination match to crown an ACTION champion. It had some of the flaws inherent in four way, lots of guys having to disappear for a while, some contrived spots, but it had a lot of strong moments too. The match had a lot of very cool cut off spots, lots of guys running into huge spots, Angels flies into a Cross spinebuster, Cross cuts several folks off with big spears and there was an awesome spot near the finish where Mack cuts off a spear with a leaping pedigree. Slim J went out first which was a bit of a disappointment, he had some cool moments though including a great Hector Garza style corkscrew plancha. Angels looked good too as a cheapshot artist. The story of the match was Mack vs. Cross, they had a long singles section against each other to end the match, and I think that will be a great rivalry to build the main event around.

ER: I thought this was fantastic, a well oiled modern extension of a classic M-Pro multiman, though I actually liked the multiman portion more than the singles match ending. They were doing this great crazy M-Pro match but with little cool southern wrestling touches, moments like AC Mack yelling from the floor (out of eyesight from Cross) "Don't worry buddy, I got your back!" while Cross is locked in a sub. M-Pro with southern character building is a cool niche to exploit and I was in.to.it. Slim J is an absolute great, he's the greatest successor to Rey Mysterio, but there are times when he seems even better than Mysterio. Here he's whipping off loony flying - that Garza corkscrew plancha had such a straight line and target that looked more like Dhalsim's drill attack than anything a human should be able to do - but also throwing the hardest strikes in the match. Slim was throwing full arm attacks at the head, like a smaller faster Vader bear attack strike, but also throwing these insanely powerful lariats with both arms. He's a total powerhouse who can lift guys and hit hard, all while moving like Baryshnikov. So, yes, the match suffers a bit when Slim is the first guy out. But the energy was there and we got some nice shows of Mack's timing, a little comedy when Cross no sells an Angels lariat (with Cecil Scott breaking out a well placed "Oh baby what is you doing?"), a couple crowd dives from Angels, Cross spearing Angels hard after Mack dodges, and a killer finish of Mack dodging spears from Cross until he perfectly times the combo breaker and hits the Mack 10 off a spear attempt. Mack worked a little more deliberate when it was down to he and Cross, and it felt like a bit too much of a comedown from the pace we'd been at, but the work was real good.

ER: ACTION is a great show every time out, I've never regretted watching a single one. Feds like them and AIW are some of the most exciting wrestling going these days. No shocker, we're throwing Yehi/Royal and the main event on our 2018 Ongoing MOTY List. This is a great wrestling product, and we'll continue supporting it.