IWTV Worth Watching: Space Pirates! Work Horsemen! Quack! Colony!

Space Pirates (Space Monkey/Shane Sabre) vs. Work Horsemen (JD Drake/Anthony Henry) Freelance Wrestling 6/14/19

ER: Fun tag that didn't get the ending it deserved, but had a real nice extended peril segment from Space Monkey, with some big fireworks happening once we dropped the tag structure. Work Horsemen get rid of Sabre fairly quickly, and I got really into the story of Space Monkey going alone, EXTREMELY disappointed in the commentary crew (one of whom sounded uncannily like me, no joke) not pointing out that - due to his NASA training - he was used to going it alone for long, lonely missions. We had nearly 10 minutes of Sabre being gone, leaving his boy in their alone, and nobody is talking about all the sensory deprivation training Space Monkey had gone through. I thought they did real interesting things with SM getting to the corner and finally noticing Sabre wasn't there, continuing to eat a beating, making it back to the corner, only to find Sabre still not there. Henry mocks Monkey, gets on the apron and reaches in the for tag, and then Space Monkey starts kicking at Henry, knocking him to the floor, then hitting a mean baseball slide. I loved how they handled Space Monkey getting back into the action, not just having him eat a 7-10 minute beating and then make a comeback, but instead finding a couple logical ways to have the action swing (har har) into his favor. Space Monkey is essentially El Generico, only I liked how SM peppered in his comebacks, dug those tornado DDTs that Drake and Henry took on the side of their respective heads. What I didn't love, was Sabre's eventual hot tag. I don't like a lot of his offense, and coming in after a 10 minute layoff and hitting a silly spinning facebuster isn't going to cut it.

But we do build to a nice and hot finish run with some real cool sequences strung together. My favorite was Space Monkey hitting the Molly go Round on Drake only to eat an immediate kick from Henry, who then eats an immediate spear from Sabre. That's a sequence that isn't played, and they executed it great. The nearfalls were good, genuinely thought Space Monkey was going to pull things out, and I liked the way they swung momentum throughout. They were good at not just having someone start hitting their offense until their turn was up, instead turning in situations like Drake catching a Monkey rana and powerbombing him onto Sabre. I really dug where they were taking this and was there for the full ride, but the match ended disappointingly on an unseen count out. Both teams brawled outside and cameras weren't able to follow, so we stare at fans' midsections for a couple minutes until the ref gets in the ring to call it off. Flat. Still, Space Monkey is someone who stood out over our long ass WrestleMania day, and I took a blind stab at this match, left even more impressed and fully into his face in peril tag work. With a proper finish this would have landed on our MOTY list, and he was the chief reason why.

Mike Quackenbush/Lance Lude/Rob Killjoy vs. The Colony (Fire Ant/Green Ant/Thief Ant) Flying V Fights 7/13/19

ER: Quack has been working more in 2019 than he worked the last 6 years combined, heading several trios and atomicos matches. A lot of the earlier sections were Quack working primarily Green Ant, sending him through cool holds and nice mat exchanges. I know people who don't love Quack think his stuff looks too exhibition-y, and I think it looks that way because it looks so odd, as it certainly doesn't look that way because he's having trouble applying moves or requiring a ton of time stand still moments. He has a singularly vision for wrestling and pulls it off. I love the foot stomps he uses to set up spots, and he doesn't skip steps in mat exchanges. I love his maestro style of matwork where you can see each step of the move but can't necessarily prevent it from happening, and some of the leverage spots he pulls guys into come off physically super impressive. I loved him twisting Green Ant's arm one way while maneuvering Ant's legs with his own legs, throwing distraction to one body part while always working towards another. He locks on a weird inverted bow and arrow and lifts GA upside down over his own knee in a way that comes off effortlessly, as if he knows the proper ways to lift someone while exerting the least amount of force.

Match gets derailed for awhile when we work a very long comedy routine with Coach Mikey accidentally catching an Ant, then wanting to get involved, then not being allowed, then pouting, the kind of several minute distraction that you expect to happen in Chikara and Chikara-related matches, but I certainly never look forward to it. The comedy chops improv stretch did at least divide the match into two main segments, before comedy halted everything it had been all mat based, and after the comedy wall was when we went into full spot sprint, which was great. Ducks are both guys with some nice spots, who take big bumps. Killjoy drops a really great sitout powerbomb, Lude comes into the ring with that cool Erin O'Grady rope flip rana and gets dropped with a disgusting neckbreaker/powerbomb combo, Launchpad McQuack hits hard and gets a good nearfall, Quack continues hitting cool little legsweeps and works a slick abdominal stretch/reversal/roll back into the stretch (like the action was rewound but came off perfect), Lude and Killjoy hit a cool moonsault combo, the Ant Hill is a pretty great triple team move, a weird Eiffel tower spot ending in a splash; basically there was lots of great stuff. Fire Ant clearly has the most polish out of the Ants (pretty sure he is an original Ant, so he's been doing this for awhile) and I wish we got a lot more Fire/Quack, but Quack seemed to mostly punish Green. I dig the way Quack sets up these trios matches, and it's a format I dig watching him in. 

Arik Royal vs. Isaiah Frazier CRAB 8/3/19

ER: This was shorter than I wanted, only 5 minutes, but made sense as Frazier had worked earlier in the evening. So considering he had already worked, I like how they approached this even though I was hoping for more of a match. Royal drops him right at the bell with a Face Jam, and I'm a big fan of Royal matches where he's working with an immediate head start. He's great at working as the cocky guy with an advantage, and great at showing ass when he's getting his comeuppance. I love Royal talking smack to ringside fans before turning around and hitting his sliding shoulderblock, and I dug Frazier's two big comeback topes. Royal is super skilled at taking big offense right next to fans, without putting fans in any danger. That's kind of a specific skill, but one of many for him. Royal bookends this nicely with another Face Jam to finish. This was a smart way to work the match to set up future Royal title defenses, so I can't really be critical of the ring work, which was good.