Found Footage Friday: TAKA~! ISHIKAWA~! WARGAMES 2x2~?! SLIM J~! SHADOW JACKSON~! CONCRETE GORILLAS~! NWA ELITE~! DEVIL'S REJECTS~!

Yuki Ishikawa/Kurashima vs. George King/TAKA Michinoku BATTLARTS 2003

MD: If George King wants to post BATTLARTS matches on Instagram, we're going to watch them. King was the odd man out in some ways, but you can't say he wasn't game. Whenever TAKA was in, he was shouting encouragement from the corner. He wasn't afraid to slap and chop hard and he had a lot of feats of strength that felt labored in a way that added to the struggle. Occasionally, you questioned the timing or positioning maybe, but Ishikawa was going to be able to work him into holds and make things look great with just a bit of feeding. That's all he needed anyway. It was a lot of fun to see Ishikawa and TAKA square off, as TAKA threw some nasty kicks but spent a lot of his time twisted and contorted in a crossface chicken wing or outright getting dropped on his head by Ishikawa. Kurashima was in there to take suplexes and throw them, but it was mostly Ishikawa's show. King and TAKA layered in just enough cheating to keep things interesting and help rationalize the finish. 

Slim J/Shadow Jackson vs. Jay Fury/Nemesis 2x2 War Games NWA Anarchy 7/19/08 

PAS: Slim J has seemingly gotten a spot in AEW/ROH which is awesome, he is one of the most underseen and underrated wrestlers of the 21st century, and it is great he is getting a bit of shine. Most people remember him as a high flyer workrate guy, and he is very good at that style, but he truly excels in a bloody ugly brawl like this.

This was a four person War Games match, which conceptually seems a bit silly, but worked fine. It just ended up as a quick tag team I quit match. Nemisis and Shadow Jackson together were the Urban Assault Squad, a long time Cornelia tag team, and this was the apex of their post break up feud. There was a trophy involved in the break up, and the sharp trophy was used as a stabbing implement to open up all four guys. Slim J started the match and took a nasty beating throughout, including getting German Suplexed while both he and his opponent were standing on the top rope, and getting hung with a noose from the cage. There was a lot of battling on the top rope, and at one point the fence started peeling away from the cage, which gave the whole match this chaotic, razor's edge feel. Like any minute this whole thing is going to collapse. Jackson had a real connection to the crowd, but I didn't think his offense looked that great, the heel team was fine, if a little unmemorable, but this was another great example of what an all time deranged psycho Slim J is and was.  

MD: I loved the layout on this. It was like a War Games Lite or a Sprint War Games. Slim J started with Fury for the first five minutes, wrestling from underneath to really dominate towards the end. Nemesis came in and they began to just demolish him. Jackson came in three minutes later to even the odds and they had a big comeback. It was particularly interesting though as Slim J had to earn his part of it like he would have to in order to set up a hot tag. Nemesis had been holding the cage to keep Jackson out and it was only when Slim J was able to fight away from the noose and take over on Fury that Nemesis had to help his partner and Jackson was able to come in. The faces then slipped on a banana peel and we got a really brutal beatdown, tons of shots into the cage, and the insane visual of Slim J eating that German from the top of the cage all the way across the ring. It was an amazing distance to travel on it. Anarchy is so good at booking big moments in these matches and here it was Slim J coming back again as he was about to be hung and Jackson rising up to get his revenge as the crowd lived and breathed with his every movement and the triumphant victory. It was real folk hero stuff which is what you want in a War Games. I agree that specific things could have looked a little better in practice at times and that probably would have put it further over the top, but I'm completely behind the theory of this one.

Devil's Rejects (Azrael/Shaun Tempers/Iceberg) vs. NWA Elite (Abomination/Phil Shatter/KIMO) NWA Anarchy 7/19/08

MD: There was a moment right at the midway mark of the match, even as the announcers were laying out the stakes again, where I thought to myself "This is actually a pretty conventional tag." Of course in that moment Iceberg decided to take a bite out of Shatter's skull, so obviously it's all relative, but this was a different sort of match for these groups. It was titles vs the chance to ever challenge again, where the Elite were trying desperately to wrest some gold, at all costs, from the Rejects after a six month reign from Azrael/Tempers. What you got on one side was a fairly oddball group with KIMO's unconventional strikes and Abomination's size, but with Shatter doing the brunt of the work from underneath as the Rejects worked like a well oiled machine. Shatter had a lot of time working with these guys and taking their stuff and, to some degree, to be able to get Iceberg up when needed, including to set up the hot tag. Unexpectedly, Iceberg took huge bumps in the process. They had a great moment at the end where the managers were taken out on the apron and everyone crashed into each other to set up the finish. Ultimately everyone worked to put over KIMO which was a choice in time, I guess. The Elite's team never really seemed to gel here (Abomination was really just there, an absence in your vision in his all black gear), but Shatter held up things well considering he had the Rejects to work against.