13:57 of Pro Wrestling Noir: Robert Martyr vs. Liiza Hall

Robert Martyr vs Liiza Hall DUSK Pro: Eternal 11/2/25

13:57. That's how long this match is, including entrances and post-match. 13:57. That's how long it takes, even in 2025, to create something real and tangible, something uncomfortable that makes you feel, something full of pride and hubris, tragic cruelty, heart, grit, determination. That's how long it takes to make you wince, to fume, to sigh in relief. 

And that's how long it's going to take for you to go and watch Robert Martyr vs. Liiza Hall from DUSK Pro: Eternal 11/2/25. It's on YouTube. It's free. I linked it above. Here's the link again. Go watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxevgDZ9SjA

Back? Alright, let's talk through it.

I'm not super familiar with Hall. I am fairly familiar with Martyr. What you need to know for this is that he's got a chip on his shoulder. He's got something to prove, and why? Because he feels like he's already proved it. He's been to Japan! Did you know he's been to Japan? He's more than happy to tell you. He came back from Japan and he's here, facing Hall, in front of this crowd, like she's his equal? 

He stormed to the ring as if this was all beneath him. That was a man that's trying to prove he has nothing to prove. 

The problem was, he wanted it too badly, he needed it too badly. Maybe he and Hall were equally matched, equally skilled, but she was able to keep her head better, and exchange after exchange, she outwrestled him.

But hey, no problem, right? Martyr's a shit stirrer. He's a disrupter. He'd get to her, get under her skin. He'd complain to the ref, would pull her hair, would ruffle it, would take her off her game. He'd beat her at the technical game by beating her at the mental game, proving to everyone, her most at all, that he had nothing to prove.

That means you can only imagine what was going through his head as her slap went crashing across his face, as she took him over with a flying mare, as she lightly paintbrushed the back of his head with her foot.

Let's take a beat here. Look, I don't watch a ton of intergender matches. I'm off watching 91 Puerto Rico or 80 AJW or French Catch or whatever. But, my feeling on it is that it's just like any other sort of wrestling. You never want wrestlers to feel exactly the same as they face each other. Contrast makes the world go round. It's in the differences between the wrestlers, physically, personality-wise, stylistically, that the inherent storytelling in pro wrestling shines through. 

What I'm trying to say is that intergender matches shouldn't shy from the fact the wrestlers are different. That doesn't mean the woman involved can't be bigger, stronger, more technically sound, faster, whatever. That's all part of the contrast at play. There just has to be contrast and it has to be acknowledged and made the most of. It's a strength, not something to brush under the table.

Okay, where were we?

Martyr had gotten paintbrushed on the back of the head. He had gotten outwrestled. Moreover, he got psyched out. They were playing chicken and he blinked first. 

In the face of this, with his esteem bruised, his self of identity dangling on a thread, he cracked, he snapped, he crossed a line. He exploded across the ring with a shotgun dropkick causing Hall to crumble into the corner, following it up with stomps until the ref was able to pull him back, leaving him scrambling back to his feet seething.

It, and the brutality that would follow, was a two-fold affront. First it went against the unspoken code they were wrestling by. Up until this point, this was about who was better, who could hang best. It was about technical skill and mental acumen. This broke all codes and convention. 

But yeah, more than that, and the elephant in the room, it was horrific. It was violent. It was striking. This wasn't some idle, measured limbwork. This was a man out of control, digging a hole deeper and deeper, tearing apart his competitor, who happened to be a woman. 

There was nothing entertaining here. This wasn't that sort of match. This wasn't the story they were trying to tell. This was a man brought down to his lowest point in the face of a humiliation that was worse in his mind than in reality itself. He stared at his own reflection and knew the man looking back at him didn't live up to his own sense of self. It was a man lashing out at everything in sight, lashing out at the world. It was made all the worse because of all of the human frustration and grief that Martyr was able to draw upon.

But that's only half the story. This is pro wrestling. This is fiction. And there were two competitors here. Hall was left stricken, battered, shocked. Martyr came back again and again to berate her, blame her, continue the punishment. By hitting bottom, he was dragging her to a sort of bottom as well.

So, pain and despair in her eyes, she looked out to the crowd and seemed to ask them if it was worth it, if there was any point to it all, if she shouldn't just quit.

Driven by their response, she found the strength in herself to carry on, to drag herself back, to force Martyr to face his own actions and his own responsibility for them. She forced him to look her in the eye.

And she started to fight back, flimsy kicks at first, but more and more, his own resolve bending in the face of what he'd done, in the fact she refused to quit despite it all, those cracks within him grew all the deeper. 

It built and it built until she caught a foot, twisted an ankle, and climbed the rest of her way to equal footing. 

As she regained her strength, Martyr came more and more undone, literally, symbolically, tearing off his wrist tape as if he was left naked to the world. 

And Hall, not sinking to his level but instead rising far above him, defeated him not through matching his brutality, but by taking everything full circle and forcing him back to the mat, outwrestling him one last time.

It was deeply unpleasant pro wrestling, a nasty look at the dark underbelly of humanity, a sort of wrestling noir, but it was one that paved a path to overcoming adversity, to finding inner strength in darkness, taking fate into one's own hands, securing one's own agency. It was wrestling that tried to say something, that tried to be something more than just a series of spots and holds, that tried to create a feeling. 

And in my mind it succeeded.

13:57 to make you feel something, where the excess was not found in headdrops or dives, not in elaborate counter sequences, but instead in a gut punch to the heart and a driven, valiant comeback. I wouldn't want other wrestling matches to try to repeat this exact same story; that would be wrong lesson to take from it. But I would like to see other matches try to do something as challenging in a package so compact. Wrestling can use a whole lot more of that.