2023 Ongoing MOTY List: MLW War Chamber!

 

AKIRA/Rickey Shane Page/Dr. Cornwallis/Delirious vs. Matthew Justice/Manders/Mance Warner/Alexander Hammerstone MLW 4/6/23 (Aired 4/18/23)

ER: MLW's Reelz run was short and fairly inconsequential in the pantheon of 20 episode wrestling television runs of our lifetime, but I will always love when pro wrestling is on television, especially when it's on a channel that runs no other pro wrestling programming of any kind. Somebody somewhere fell asleep during their daily COPS marathon and maybe they woke up during a cool Lio Rush match, saw Alex Kane suplex somebody on their head, or saw a match like this featuring several tough guys getting the edges of chairs thrown at their heads and faces while bleeding out, then falling asleep again and waking up during a daily marathon of JAIL. The War Chamber is basically just an open cage War Games with one ring, and it's an overall satisfying 30 minutes of fighting because it never forgets that the fighting and punching and bleeding is the most important part of a match like this. The worst of the indulgent NXT WarGames are a nightmare of time spent lying around or reacting to Big Moments. War Chamber has flaws and had some drag, but it knows exactly what it is and delivers more of a classic War Games feel than WWE has been giving us. 

If you thought wrote out a list of the 10 modern guys you think would be great in a classic WarGames, three of them are in this match: AKIRA, Matt Justice, and Rickey Shane Page. AKIRA spends the entire match kicking people hard in the face and chest, and then getting hit with chairs. Justice is a great guy to enter a WarGames early, and he's the one who brings in and starts throwing chairs, takes a great cage beating, and uses his body as a weapon (like letting Manders powerslam into RSP and AKIRA). Page is the guy they had start this thing, the first guy bleeding, the guy taking the disgusting suplex through chairs on a table, and the guy who had to have taken the most head trauma, while also being the guy stabbing people in the mouth and head with a fork. 

Beyond blood and punching, you know it's a good WarGames when a the most muscled up guy in the match gets a legit leg injury, and there's a big fat freak in a mask and bloody apron. I have no clue who Dr. Cornwallis is, but he looks more like Leatherface than Corporal Kirchner did, is fatter, and would have been incredible in W*ing. Kirchner could have kept Leatherface and just teamed with this guy's Buddy Bacon from Slaughterhouse. He moves well for a fat guy, and he fits well in the middle of all the chair throwing. Goons in cloaks and gas masks introducing a table into the ring feels like something you'd see in NWA Anarchy, a fed who knew how to do the best WarGames, and the big bumps and splashes that happened back to back to back at the finish was a great sudden escalation. Blood, fat guys, more thrown chairs than a Necro Butcher comp tape. Also, the team with the obese butcher is another Raven vague and undefined religious cult thing, so Raven stands at the top of the ramp the entire time looking like an old bloated Malcolm McDowell and their intro video heavily features that one photo of the Heaven's Gate cult leader, and I love that Raven's cult references are just so firmly rooted in 1997. 

This was MLW's crowning achievement on Reelz, the best thing they put on television over 20 episodes, and it looked like a promotion that belonged on television.