Iron Sharpening Iron. Steel Testing Steel. Stevens vs. Strong.

Erick Stevens vs. Roderick Strong DPW 10/19/25

Oh, the stories pro wrestling can tell.

Erick Stevens was done. He was out. He'd moved on. He was living his life. He was happy. 

But maybe wrestling wasn't done with him. He saw the state of things. Saw everything going right and everything going wrong. 

He saw a hole in the scene, something missing, maybe even a wound that needed healing. Not in himself, but in wrestling itself. 

Which didn't mean there wasn't something in him too. He didn't want a contract. He didn't want fame, fortune, or glory. He knew how it all worked by now. He had his life.

But he had his pride too.

Now, you may stop and say to me that pride is a sin, but there's no sin in this world that can't drive a pro wrestler to greatness (Gluttony? Sloth? We live in a world full of great Super Porky and Orange Cassidy battles).

So he trained, he planned, he picked his moment. 

Deadlock Pro was full of old friends and new foes, a perfect place to test himself. There was no better way to start than with Violence is Forever against Tankman, Kozone and Lo. It wasn't a hero's welcome but it was a warrior's return and that suited him fine. It was a victory. 

He leveraged that victory into a first round match against Kozone at the Carolina Classic, title opportunities on the line, but maybe that was flying too close to the sun for he came up short.

Stevens, a grizzled vet, a journeyman, had a sailor's attitude. He manned the cannons, sent out volleys. Only by shooting his shot would he know where he stood, know what alterations were needed to hit true. 

He needed iron to sharpen iron, steel to test himself against. Like the protagonist of a tall tale, he needed to run against a train to prove himself, to better himself, to prepare himself for whatever would come next, and there's no train that's been running this whole time quite like his old partner Roderick Strong.

Strong never stopped. Strong never looked back. Strong thundered forward. Strong was as good as he ever was and that meant he was as good as anyone. 

As favors went, this promised to be a violent, painful, brutal one. 

And thankfully for us, it was.

They hit the mat hard to start, gritty, intense chain wrestling, counters for counters, neither getting an early advantage. When Strong pressed him into the corner and hit a chop, Stevens fired right back out. Stevens may have knocked Strong down first with a shoulder tackle but Roddy scored the first real points, shifting gears and hitting a leg lariat in return. Stevens answered back quickly, propelling Strong up and over to the apron, knocking him off, and then following it all with an explosive early dive.

That seemed to awaken something in Strong though. He had landed on the apron awkwardly, and in recovery showed a little sign of a limp. Strong spends his weeks up against the best in the world. He's married to a member of the Death Riders. The only instinct he has is that of a killer. His life's work is the dismantling of spines, the world's worst chiropractor and one of its best wrestlers.

At even the first sign of vulnerability, those instincts took over. He stunned Stevens with a diving kick to the outside and got in behind him. He nestled his head under the arm, lifted him up in belly-to-back position and dropped him into a Billy Robinson backbreaker right onto the steel guardrail. 

The Messiah of the Backbreaker had delivered his message to the world once again, and on this night it was even more gruesome and apocalyptic than usual.

And it was everything Stevens had asked for. He was prepared for this, though maybe not for its exact manifestation. Maybe that hadn't been the exact literal sort of steel he'd requested, but it had been close enough.

So as Strong ground him down with holds, Stevens started to inch his way back. He chopped out of the corner. He hit a stunner counter. He fired up with jabs as the fans clapped him up. He rose up out of a chinlock and slammed Strong back into the corner. He fought his way out of the best headlock you'll see all year. Each and every time, Strong cut him off and dragged him back down into pain and darkness, but Stevens kept inching his way back towards the light.

All that inching? It bought him space. It wasn't enough for Strong to grind him down anymore. He had to punish him for his hubris, for his transgressions, for his pride, for the fact he just wouldn't stay down, and therefore Strong started to throw strikes as well. With striking came recoiling. With recoiling came space. With space came opportunity and with one dodge and one spin, Stevens dropped Strong with a jawjacking forearm of his own.

At the nine and a half minute mark, Stevens was fighting even, and by the ten minute mark, he'd seized the first real advantage of the match, careening into Strong in the corner, having become his own version of a runaway train. Stevens pressed that advantage for a minute or two, but when he couldn't put Strong away quickly, he stepped back and beckoned him up. Strong had tried to grind Stevens down but Stevens needed to beat Strong on his feet if he was going to beat him at all. On commentary, Caprice Coleman called it a mistake, but it wasn't a mistake at all. It was the whole point. Stevens needed all the steel he could get; he wasn't done hammering himself up against it yet.

Strong took back over almost immediately. Of course he did. He hefted Stevens up for a superplex. And that? That was just what Stevens needed. Something snapped inside of him, not breaking like so many of Strong's opponents before him, but snapping right into place instead. He found the strength inside himself to burst up, to rush forward, to hit a flurry of offense at a different level than anything else we'd seen out of him during this comeback run. 

It was exactly what he needed. While it didn't put Strong away, it made Strong force things to as immediate an end as possible, an End of Heartache hit almost out of nowhere. 

Stevens had lost the match, but he had gained everything he had been looking for in summoning so dangerous an opponent. 

And what a pro wrestling story these fifteen minutes were to get us to so fascinating and unusual a place. 

Deadlock was maybe the only place such a story could have been told and as I write this, it's going on indefinite hiatus soon. 

But the story was told, and in its telling, Stevens showed everyone that this chapter of his story was just beginning. I'm not sure where the next page is going to take him, but wherever it is I'm excited to see what's next.