2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Makabe vs. Sabre

 

Tangled Up in You

1. Daniel Makabe vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Prestige Wrestling 4/14

ER: I didn't plan on following Dan around on tour like I was following late era Dead, but after he worked the main event of our DEAN~!!! show last week and I saw he was working Zack Sabre in Portland the next weekend, I checked plane tickets just to see how feasible it would be. You know those plane ticket deals you hear about but never actually experience? The kind where someone you know makes it sound like an airline paid them $1,500 and gave them free flight vouchers to anywhere in the world just for moving to an empty seat to accommodate a mom and her child? And then a similar deal is offered to you on a future flight and there is no cash offer, no flight vouchers, only the knowledge of letting a mother sit with her child, and you feel like a sucker? Well, whatever happened, I looked up flights and there was the kind of screaming deal that I have never benefitted from, some kooky mileage plan perk that was giving me 5x the usual value on points, meaning I booked a trip to see Wrestling Genius Daniel Makabe wrestling Zack Sabre Jr. for what came out to $22.40. That is a deal I could not pass up, so after seeing Dan in Philly and New Jersey one week, I jetted off to see him in Portland the next, and this summer I plan on seeing him in Deer Creek, IN, the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin, and possibly out to the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia for a two-nighter. 

It was totally worth it. Makabe and Sabre worked a long, nearly 25 minute match, that did not in any way feel like a 20+ minute match. It was heavy on grappling and leverage and the crowd ate it up. That's not an easy feat on a 4 hour show that already had several 15-20 minute matches, but this packed 1,000+ strong house at the Roseland wanted to see some fucking grappling, and these are two of the finest to do it. Seeing a match like this up close (standing behind the 3rd row on camera side) only makes this style of wrestling sing, but I also feel the match would play no matter how you watched it. You can watch it on 240p on your phone to save battery, or you can stand and watch it next to some gal who is going to be married to Makabe, both of you reacting with disgust and glee as Sabre leaves a literal boot print on Dan's neck with a kick. There's no wrong way. They could have gone on grappling forever and tricked the crowd into watching a 60 minute Broadway until midnight on a work night. That's how strong a command they had. 

They stayed close and tangled through much of it. The gamesmanship was great. Sabre is the perfect kind of cock who can back it up, Dan is a guy who can be goaded into things but also loves letting opponents get comfortable thinking they can ace him. Both have tricks, both wrestle with the confidence of someone who knows their tricks are craftier than the other. My favorite thing to see Makabe do up close is dig his palm or elbow into flesh to procure a method of advancement, Digging a quick elbow into Sabre's ribs and being right there to catch his arm when he flinches. There are no seams, nobody is moving their arm or leg into place for the other, you can watch Makabe force an error and be waiting to catch the forced error, like a guy bouncing a ball off a wall and anticipating how to play it before the bounce. Dan digs elbow points into thighs, throws a stiff palm underneath the ribs, seemingly knows many pressure points to strike on every limb that allow him split second distractions on his way to advancing up or down that limb. It's a joy to watch up close, like Ricky Jay is showing you a card trick repeatedly, until you can process what he's doing. 

A kid standing on his seat not far from me kept screaming out for Zack Sabre to twist or injure a part of Makabe. This kid was a real sicko, screaming for Sabre to twist Makabe's neck, leg, feet, fingers, just screaming out his childlike voodoo doll requests with every Twisting Dream sounding like a worse and worse existence for Dan. I loved little ways Dan would play possum, lying in wait for Sabre to throw a kick just so he could catch him with a sick abbreviated dragon screw, or luring Sabre into a stomach kick just to pivot instantly into a trap leg suplex (the only throw of the match). The possum moments were great, because they also led to possum moments that worked out terribly: laying in wait for a kick he knew was coming only to not be quick enough and instead take a full kick to the chest, or later when he gets a little too married to a kneebar while legs are tangled, he's left prone for a swinging kick right in the neck that sounded louder than anything else in the match (and left an even louder welt). Sabre was of course the first one to go for strikes, but this is a match that didn't need any kind of strikes (and didn't have many). Sabre is always the first one to pull shit like that, but I loved the ways Dan forced him back into a Frye/Shamrock stubborn kneebar battle. Watching ol' slippery Daniel Makabe slip his way in and out of an octopus, or squirm through shifting Sabre's foot a couple inches to allow him to get his own trailer hitch while Sabre was also pushing on Makabe's foot to do the same, locked in a ligament twisting ouroboros that managed to always build while still feeling like they left hours of material on the table. 

Sabre worked over and welted up Dan's arm whenever the leg twisting didn't go well for him, and there were multiple times where Makabe couldn't capitalize on something because of the ways it was now harder to utilize his left arm. Posting up on the arm was now out of the question, but using it bluntly for twisting now became more focused, and no matter how many times Sabre kicked at Makabe's left arm, he couldn't slow down Dan's Luis Castillo-like right hand (one of which landed hard and clean, one which landed on Sabre's jaw just as a flat boot kick landed right in Makabe's gut). Both men had a couple of rope breaks during some long engagements with tangled legs, including Sabre having to scramble so quickly that he ended up grabbing the bottom rope on either side of ref Aubrey Edwards like he was Eddie Guerrero hugging the referee for protection. Every twist felt like a possible finish, a thing that could catch the other on a bad day, but when Sabre locked his leg around Dan's left arm and trapped them both behind his back in a sick attempt to make Makabe's elbows touch, the could started feeling like a certain would. 

I don't think it's easy to main event a long show and keep a tired Sunday night crowd hot for wrist bending and elbows dug into hip points, but it's business as usual for a wrestling genius and the evergreen Gotta Hand it To Sabre. These people, me included, got louder and louder for all of it, and I think we all would have been right there in minute 45. Two wrestlers so good they make you lose track of time, when everything we do every day revolves exclusively around time. I like the way they twisted. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST