Ian Rotten Was Pushed With His Sorrow Well Rehearsed

JR: If you've enjoyed these Ian Rotten reviews, Phil and I have decided to collect them and print up zines. It will contain all we have written thus far plus I think three matches we haven't written up for the blog. Each match has art accompanying it and I think the overall idea of it all is going to come out pretty good. The layout is almost complete, so I have put up preorders on my itch page:



https://jrgoldb.itch.io/methlab-battlarts-the-pre-order

Ian Rotten vs. Tarek the Great 10/21/06 - EPIC

PAS: This is presented like a throwback to a legendary match of the past, Lawler vs. Dundee in SAW is great, but it isn’t Lawler vs. Dundee in Mid-South Coliseum, this however was actually better and nastier then their 2002 match. Tarek has filled out in the four years since their first match, he looks less like a junkie and more like a junkie who cleaned himself up and got a construction job. As one would expect from this series this is all about hitting people hard in places they shouldn’t be hit. Ian is merciless here, he throws these thudding palm strikes that land like he is aiming six inches past Tarek. He seems to be trying to strike through him and land on some guy behind him. At one point Ian takes the palm of his hand and drives in into the back of Tarek's head where his spine meets his skull, it felt like he was doing some Kung Fu movie strike which gives his enemy permanent paralysis. To his credit Tarek attacked like he was in the fight he was in, he kicks Ian right in the top of his skull and unloads with some big palm strikes of his own. Also, Tarek wasn’t putting on a ton of holds, but what he did put on was really tight, his choke sleeper popped Ian’s eyes out. I didn’t love the finish, they tried for the Hart vs. Piper sleeper roll up and it didn’t land, but everything else was incredible violent stuff.


JR: One of the things we have been so enamored with throughout this project has been Ian’s ability to work in ways and from angles that make wrestling seem like something just beyond comprehension. The movements and strikes seem to force an opponent “out of book”, creating a world in which to maintain the illusions that professional wrestling survives upon, a worker must react differently and organically.

While Hero almost certainly has the single most compelling match of the style, I am beginning to think that Tarek might be the opponent that gains the most from what Ian brings to a match like this. His selling is sympathetic and organic without making the match one sided. He struggles and feeds off of Rotten in ways that allow Ian to seek variations on themes and work them to natural conclusions.

Rotten is probably best remembered for truly gross headbutt spots in his matches, but the strikes he throws that feel the most sudden and violent are his palm strikes. He uses them so well to mark transitions and momentum shifts. Here, after a longer feeling out process, his first true strikes are open palms to the base of Tarek’s neck. It feels violent, it feels wrong. It feels like it could injure, rather than hurt. The palm strikes continue to be the theme, even as Ian works from underneath. The only thing he can hit is Tarek’s thigh, which he does repeatedly and with abandon.

There is a closeness to this match that makes it stand out. Against some other opponents (Joe comes to mind, but he’s far from the only one), Ian mines drama and tension from distance. There are moments in those matches that feel like two rams backing up slowly to collide until superiority is established. Here Tarek works like a boxer who knows he doesn’t have the length advantage. He must stay inside of Ian. He must take the punishment he knows is coming because the alternative is punishment that he can’t.

The finish, an obvious homage to Piper/Hart, falls flat and is poorly executed, which is shockingly almost a theme at this point. The finishes often seem so overbooked and “rasslin” that they feel jarring. Earlier, for the match against Claudio, I wrote about trusting the audience. Or lack thereof. The matches themselves establish a world in which both men must work outside normalcy to simply survive. The prior work is undermined by the tropes of wrestling.