2025 Ongoing MOTY List: Maclin vs. Young Dog Collar

 

Steve Maclin vs. Eric Young TNA Impact 5/8/25

ER: After seeing DEAN~! Megastar Mad Dog Connelly work his modern day Cactus Jack magic live for the real sickos-slash-the Glendale, AZ outdoor mall Saturday night date crowds, I went seeking Dog Collar nirvana. Mad Dog has taken the dog collar art form to new levels, finding new ways to surprise despite cornering the market on the stipulation. TNA dared to run a dog collar match on TV (is TNA even on TV? Are they on Mark Cuban's cable internet?) the same month Mad Dog Connelly continues reinventing the genre, and I respect the endeavor. I especially respect that Maclin nor Young have ever worked a dog collar match before, anywhere. I think it's only fair to view this match with that in mind. It's two guys deciding to work the collar for the first time in their lives while simultaneously being about the same age as me. Stupidity, some would say. Great Pro Wrestling, the more cultured would say. 

Maclin, with Wesley Blake, was an NXT house show act that I loved watching. Wesley Blake was actually the name of a wrestler I used to enjoy watching! That's right, according to things I wrote in a blurry pre-pandemic world, I was a fan of Wesley Blake. I was writing glowing things about Jaxson Ryker (his politics, not his wrestling) and the Forgotten Sons and Steve Cutler/Maclin made an act I enjoyed even better. He was not as important to the group as Ryker or Blake - men whose 2018 work I would defend based on words I wrote in 2018 and have never revisited until now - but being a good Buddy Roberts to a weird MAGA coded NXT Freebirds stable that feels like it existed another lifetime ago is an odd cool role to have occupied. 

This very good dog collar match was entirely made by the buckets of blood bled by Steve Maclin. Maclin gets real good color early, that red paint The Harder They Come blood brushed across his face and arms and chest, covering a shocking amount of his body and a more shocking amount of the ringside mat surface in a short amount of time, dripping all over the place and pooling up in the lowland territories. You expect blood to dry up during a match like this, but Maclin keeps managing to look bloodier, redder, wetter, and the blood keeps looking fresher as it mats into his hair and runs down over every part of his body. It's dried and dispersed by the end of the match, but we get an excellent run of his blood painting his body and every surface he comes into contact with. Those surfaces include DEAN~! alums Sinner and Saint, who rub Maclin's blood all over themselves as Young's seconds, no shortage of Maclin's blood to disperse to anyone who wants color. Nobody else bleeds in this match, but everyone wears Maclin's blood. 

Eric Young, looking like Pitbull Anthony Durante's father, was good about wrapping the chain around Maclin's mouth and face and pulling it tight. He does a dragon sleeper with the chain tight around Maclin's throat, and he uses his corner rope flip as effectively as he's ever deployed it: flipping to the apron and dropping to the floor to pull the chain taut, yanking Maclin fast face first into the top rope. They both take hard bumps on the floor, Maclin spreading his blood as far and wide as possible, and the thuds add to the chain violence. Maclin's Thesz Press is great not because of the impact, but because he uses it like a man fully covered in blood flinging his body onto Young and banking on Young not wanting to catch him in his current messy state.

I was not as interested in the parts of the match where they wrestled a normal singles match, as if the chain was tied to their necks in theory and not actuality. Travis Williams is the idiot doing a handspring cutter during dog collar match interference, and I wish Maclin would have messed him up for even thinking of doing that. Maclin does hit a great Tree of Woe spear on Sinner and Saint that I'm not sure justified the set up time or lack of focus on beating someone with a chain, but was a good way to dispose of Young's seconds. Young is great at taking bumps on the chain, making the neck compression impact of the match finishing DDT look even more disgusting on a pile of chain. If this trend continues and it is revealed that Mad Dog Connelly set off a domino effect of more and more guys dipping their toe into the Collar, organically building up more and more challengers to the One True King, then wrestling will only get better.