Matches from Beyond All Hands on Deck 9/22/19

KTB vs. Erick Stevens

ER: Real nice 7 minute sprint, both guys felt like they were really pushing pace. It's like when a starting pitcher throws one inning in the All Star game, and suddenly he's added 4 MPH to his fastball because he knows he's not going to be throwing 110 pitches. This was a great showing for KTB, with Stevens taking plenty of tough bumps of his own, but really shining a light on KTB. I didn't realize this would be worked so quickly, but they started fast with hard shoulderblocks and never really slowed down. KTB had a couple of big slams but also wound up in the sand, and Stevens took zero seconds of hesitation to nail him with a great bullet tope. I'm sure the guys and gals on this show will be finding sand in their gear for the next several gigs, but I bet doing a crazy tope is made that much easier knowing that sand is there to catch you if your opponent doesn't. We even get some sand thrown in the eyes, which feels like something Finlay would have done had he worked any of the early Bash at the Beach shows. And one of the commentators makes me laugh with an Actual Good "shades of", as he drops a "Shades of Paul Orndorff vs. The Renegade from Bash at the Beach '95. I was there, you were there," to which the other commentator replies, "...I wasn't there." Loved it. KTB hits a picture perfect Asai moonsault, Stevens hits a German when KTB goes up top for another (I like when guys establish offense early, leading to openings for their opponents later when they go back to the well), and I kept digging all of KTB's running attacks. It felt like he would run into the ropes and feel like he wouldn't necessarily know what he was going to do when he hit Stevens, but in a good way. I loved the way he caught Stevens on the top rope, hit a running elbow into him, and then just shrugged him over his shoulders. Stevens' comeback was fiery, really I dug all of this.

Team Tremendous (Dan Barry/Bill Carr) vs. Bear Country (Bear Bronson/Bear Beefcake)

ER: This show appears to be full of hot sprints, and I am always going to be cool with that. This is tornado rules, so the ring was constantly filled with big dudes crashing into each other. I really like Dan Barry, he's the smallest guy here but hits harder than the others, his offense always focuses on results rather than style (look at his nice impactful dropkick through the ropes), and he's the guy who typically ties things like this together. This had a ton of fun action, with Bronson hitting a tope early and Barry following that up with a slingshot senton to the sand. We get plenty of lariats and avalanches from the real big men, Carr and Beefcake, nice big boy sentons, big ass Bossman Slam from Carr, and cool power spots like Barry getting powerbombed into Carr (with Beefcake impressively deadlifting Barry off the mat), or Bear Country setting up a tandem electric chair spot only for Barry to do a simple inside cradle and topple their bear stack. It would have been easy to see everyone getting in each other's way due to the tornado format, but they did a great job at looking reckless while nicely building things. I'm not sure why I slept so long on Team Tremendous. They have several years of stuff that I skipped past on Evolve shows (I think the whole cop thing came off too Chikara for me and I never gave it a full chance) but I have dug Barry in everything I've seen him in the past couple years. I ain't missing any more.

Chris Dickinson vs. Kenn Doane

ER: Dickinson is an established property at this point, and it's cool seeing a former WWE come in and not be treated as a holy entity because they were on TV a decade prior. So many times a former TV guy will be brought in as a special attraction on indies, and the local guy he's fighting will treat it like the fight of his life and it plays as a showcase to the former TV guy with the local guy narrowly getting a win. Now, Doane is obviously different from someone like D'Lo Brown, he's still a premier athlete and can provide something other than nostalgia, but it's cool that he would come in and work a show like this and Dickinson is the one rightly booked to look like the big deal. Doane is good at wrestling, but also doesn't seem to want to do it full time, and he's a cool opponent for Dickinson. We also get the addition of Christian Casanova and Cam Zagani running interference for Doane, so Dickinson is in there against essentially three guys and comes off even cooler for it. Doane has some nice athletic stuff, real nice dropkick and crazy vertical leap on his flying back elbow, but also throws a mean right hand, and I love his cocky athletic guy persona. If he wants it, he feels like someone who could be a major name on the indies. And it was great that he came in knowing that the best thing for him to do would be to highlight Dickinson's star. And Dickinson looked great. He hit hard and missed big, everything he did looked like he was 100% committed to wrecking Doane. But he really came off like a big deal when he was finally wrecking Doane's lackeys. Hitting a running Pazuzu bomb on Zagani to the floor is a great holy shit spot, as it's not a move that's easy to hit clean, plenty of bad landings possible. But the visual of Dickinson running across the ring with him, wearing the captains hat, tossing him to the masses, was awesome. I loved how Doane put over the finishing leg lock, really reaching desperately for the ropes, getting pulled deeper into the ring with each desperate grasp, before finally tapping. I'm curious to see more of Doane outside of Beyond, and Dickinson just looks like a star at this point.