Terry's Calling, Terry's Crying, Some Are Born Some Are Dying

Black Terry vs. Arez Lucha Memes 11/1/20 - GREAT

PAS: This was worked sort of like Arez was excited to work a Black Terry dream match, the way someone might work 2 Cold Scorpio on a Mania week show. They ran through all of the cool things Terry brings to a match, starting with Terry doing the Maestro catch and release submissions, where Arez would shoot in and get tied up with something cool, Terry would let him go, only to tie him up again. Then it spills to the floor and we get a great Terry punch out, with Arez hitting him harder then you would expect someone this old to get hit, and Terry firing back with great looking jabs and rights. Then there is a nifty finishing run with a great looking top rope back cracker. Everything looked great, it felt a bit exhibition-y which keeps it from EPIC, but Terry exhibitions are pretty great exhibitions. 

ER: I thought this was a really smartly worked almost meta Hero match, with Arez acting almost awed as Black Terry showed him close up magic llave as a crash course fantasy camp, until Arez gets tired of the maestro shit and starts kicking him. Es es unable llave, clap, nothing up my sleeves, veteran psych out. I thought Terry's snares were pretty incredible. There was no slowly applied submissions, this was all slick ankle pick sleight of hand knot tying as good as he was doing 15 years ago. It's pretty amazing really. People love his maestro submission artistry, enough that there's a loudly protesting chinga tu madre whistle over Arez's ropes course escape, protesting The New Ways. 

The fighting escalation in Black Terry Coacalco matches always manages to catch me off guard, always manages to surprise me with some of the violence. Arez can land some really forceful kicks to the stomach and Terry was taking some real shots to the torso. There was a great spot where Arez knew it was his turn to take his medicine and Terry went off with body kicks as crisp as Regal working Dave Taylor. Terry takes a backcracker down the home stretch that literally bounces him off Arez's knees, and all it does is make him want to drive his own knees into Arez. Jumping off the middle buckle to drag a man down onto your knees is crazy behavior for a man in his late 60s. In other words, a Black Terry Coacalco match. 

TKG: I really like the way this match is structured, it is almost like a backwards veteran Ric Flair underestimating upstart young Sam Houston. Arez as upstart youth puts on the first submission and makes a big production out of announcing ‘Now , that is a hold’ and then Terry just dominates on ground, putting Arez in holds at will as Arez super sells getting worked over. Eventually Arez can’t take any more and throws the first cheap shot strike only to find that Terry again can go on floor, with Arez getting in bits of desperate flurries. This isn’t an even match at all . This is about long sections of Terry control and desperate young Arez dealing with the beast.

There is a spot where Terry sidesteps a leg takedown to set up a submission that I watched multiple times. And favorite moment from the brawling was when he’s beating up Arez in chair but won’t allow the chair to tip over. Grabs Arez’ foot and goes , no I’m hitting you some more.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE BLACK TERRY

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: WALTER vs. SAXON

36. Saxon Huxley vs. WALTER NXT UK 9/24

ER: I've slowed down on the project, but it still amazes me how far I've made it into my NXT UK Guide. Before starting this pointless endeavor, I never would have thought of writing a sentence like "This was the best Saxon Huxley match I've ever seen", but this was the best Saxon Huxley match we've seen (so far?). Huxley, Jinny, and Tyson T-Bone are the three NXT UK workers who I think could have really good matches but are rarely put in a position to have really good matches. They're the best, most underutilized wrestlers in the fed, and this felt like the first time in ages that any of them had been used for something cool. They've made mistakes in the past comparing Huxley to Bruiser Brody, but his whole thing works a lot better if you just think of him as the drummer from the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. Here he's a madman who starts stiffing WALTER before WALTER even has a chance to start in, actually makes it work for far longer than you'd think, before WALTER takes over and punishes him far longer and with way more pettiness than you'd normally see in a show opening Non-Title Match.

 

I didn't know the match would evolve into what it did, but I really started paying attention when Huxley started throwing elbowdrops that were essentially him jumping onto WALTER as hard as he could, like Dennis Rodman's elbows to The Giant, where Rodman was just jumping onto top of him full weight. He was really good at flustering WALTER, sticking and moving with his running kicks, eating a shot if it meant he could land a couple, and when they fought to the floor I thought it was cool that he opted to break the count when it was possible he could have won by count out. He would live to regret that decision, as it pretty much leads directly to his murder. He misses one of those running kicks over the barricade, and it's all over for him. WALTER goes into kill mode and it's the best, slamming Huxley as hard as possible on the floor and kicking him wickedly across the back, which was already welting as he's tossed back first lengthwise across the barricade and then powerbombed off the hardest edge of the apron. WALTER just lined him up with the full edge of the apron and powerbomb him off the peak. 

The match is over for Huxley after that apron powerbomb, but I loved how the match itself wasn't actually over. Huxley made it back in on the 8 count, and we got to see that WALTER was totally fine winning the match in the way that Huxley had foolishly guilted into not wanting, perfectly content to take the count out that Huxley that beneath him. The rest of this match is WALTER having a loud empty arena fireworks match, teeing off on a too weak opponent and making loud echoing sound with every string. Huge chops thrown as hard as possible, Huxley trying to respond by cupping WALTER's ears on slaps, but no match for a big man hitting him as hard as possible. WALTER's top rope butterfly suplex sends Huxley past the middle of the ring, and before taking the win WALTER is doing mean shit like just slapping Huxley on the back as hard as he can and falling on him. It's great. This was WALTER's return to TV after tapings resumed during the pandemic, and he played this like a true Diva taking advantage of some perfect bathroom acoustics. 

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Five Years of Found Footage Friday: EARLIEST KOBASHI~! KAWADA~! A SAWYER~! A MICHAELS~! ARAI~! SATO~!

MD: We started this on May 25, 2018 given the weekly footage we were getting from the WWE Network and the wellspring of handhelds that were popping up from Japan ebay. Somehow, amazingly, we've kept it up for five whole years, at least three matches a week. It went from being New to being Found, but that's more for the alliteration than to smooth the possibility that some of this stuff had been out there before. While yes, some had, there's no downplaying just how amazing it is that we have been able to find three new matches a week, without fail, for five years. And that's with us first consolidating French Catch and now the Panamanian Lucha to Tuesdays. Let's face it, we live in remarkable times. In some ways, while getting all the way through the French footage was an accomplishment, us being able to find things to watch that have been outside of our broader community week in and week out for five whole years is more of a challenge. It's not all in one place. Someone posts it. We find it. We vet it. We expand the  knowledge of what's been out there. It represents the ethos of the blog as much as anything; digging in the crates, leaving no stone unturned, watching matches that might not pass some sort of old conventional wisdom test to ascertain their quality, spreading the news far and wide. The master list is mostly updated. We plan on foraging on so long as there is still footage to be found. Hopefully people have enjoyed this. Hopefully people find it useful and interesting. 

Toshiaki Kawada vs. Kenta Kobashi AJPW 8/30/88

MD:  It's just the first encounter between Kobashi and Kawada. It's just the earliest full match on tape of Kobashi. Totally outside our circle until the last year or two. No big deal right? And hey, it's good. Or at least, it's good for the experience level at play. There's a certain pluckiness to Kobashi here, a certain creativity towards the finishing stretch, certainly a willingness to lean into Kawada's kicks. Most of his offense is the sort of inexperienced technical stuff you'd expect: dropkicks, cross-bodies, a very fun short arm scissors. Kawada, meanwhile, was more fully developed, quick to throw kicks or just take Kobashi's head off with a back elbow or the clothesline that ended it. They played with the spin kicks, with Kawada missing as many as he hit. They worked in a missed body press and senton. Kobashi tried to contain Kawada by working his arm but it didn't help him against the kicks. Raw talent but full of potential. You get the sense watching this that these two were outright refusing to work the typical undercard match and that, as time would go on, they would absolutely refuse to be constrained. Kobashi had been a fan who refused to take no for an answer and in Kawada he had a game partner to stretch the rules. Even this early, there was an inkling of what was to come. 

ER: Nothing like a Kobashi vs. Kawada match as we all remember them: Kobashi in his classic blue trunks, Kawada in his classic red tights, just the classic Kobashi Blue vs. Kawada Red. As Matt said, this is the earliest Kobashi match we have in full on tape. And I love these early matches of favorites, because we get to see them working completely different from any era where people know them. Kobashi works like a full on young boy, with painful arm work and a snug short arm scissors, some crossbody blocks, and a super impactful back bump missile dropkick. Kawada was my favorite worker in the world for a stretch, but I do not and have not ever liked Footloose Kawada. Here, Kawada works literally exactly like young Misawa, like they were just trying to make a Misawa clone and Kawada was like 0.7 Misawa. Kawada threw sidekicks and a leaping solebutt almost exactly like Tiger Mask Misawa, hit a full weight senton exactly like him (which lead to a great moment later when he ducks a middle buckle Kobashi crossbody and then barely misses him with a senton which he had hit earlier). 

Kobashi works over Kawada's arm for 2/3 of the runtime - you know, all those matches where guys target Kawada's infamously lethal left arm and not his legs - and the arm work is painful enough that I don't really care that it has nothing whatsoever to do with the finishing "moves" stretch. Kobashi is someone I think had kind of middling stomach kicks, so it was cool seeing an 80-matches-in Kobashi just haul off on Kawada's arms with kicks thrown exactly like his stomach kicks, only really good. Kobashi's crossbodies land heavy and he leans into and bumps for offense differently than he would just a few years later. His bumping is faster and more upended, exciting. When Kawada lands a couple of his spinkicks (the ones thrown like Misawa spinkicks, not Kawada spinkicks) Kobashi gets just rocked with them, flying out with his heels in the air. Kawada's back elbow kind of whiffs (which could have been due to Kobashi bumping big and slightly early for it) but his clothesline is a 100% finisher level clothesline. Kobashi worked that left arm all match, forgetting that Kawada can hook that man's neck with impressive force with the right. What a clothesline. 

Bart Sawyer vs. Chris Michaels (Dog Collar) USA Pro 2001

MD:  So much of this worked for what I was looking for that I'm going to lead with what didn't work: 1.) While Sawyer bled plenty, Michaels didn't bleed despite the violence probably warranting it. There was a spot towards the middle where he went soaring into the ringpost. While I would have preferred the chain to open him up, I would have gladly accepted that doing it and then the chain serving as a focal point to woundwork. We got neither. 2.) The chain was too long. That had its pros and cons. It allowed for a few nice spots, including Sawyer pulling Michaels off the top to the floor into a dive. It meant that there was a ton of slack for hanging attempts or wrapping it around the fist or elbow and it allowed for crotchings in key moments. On the other hand, it took away from that intimate sense of desperation where the two parties just can't get away from one another that you expect in a dog collar match. This lacked that sort of close-quarters atmosphere. 3.) There was no finish; the New South came out to hang both wrestlers instead. But that's TN wrestling for you. It had to lead to the next thing. Between this and the Wildside channel we get bits and pieces of the Sawyer/Michaels feud and never all at once, so I'm not entirely sure what led up to this and where it was going, but this definitely would have made me want to buy a ticket to see what happened next. It just didn't make for the most compelling ending twenty years later.

As for what absolutely worked, the transitions were all great. Whenever there was a shift in momentum, it stemmed from either a mistake, an opportunistic moment, or just Michaels powering through and fighting back. They were varied and creative and used the chain well. They kept it moving. They kept it violent. The chain added to the match but it wasn't the entirety of it and sometimes, trying to utilize it too much backfired. It was a living, existent entity within the match just like you'd want it to be, and the hate and disdain between Michaels and Sawyer bled through, and not just through Sawyer's lacerated forehead. So not a perfect dog collar match, but certainly one with a lot going for it.

Kenichiro Arai vs. Yasushi Sato Mutoha Wrestling 11/3/20

MD: Grappling worked about as hard as grappling can be worked interspersed with larger than life yet entirely stoic character flourishes out of Arai. Sato had the intensity advantage, the striking advantage, probably the grappling advantage, but Arai's developed into a tricky bastard. Early on that'd just be a refusal to engage. By the middle, he'd be missing knee drops off the top and selling his knee to lure Sato into a figure-four so he could immediately turn it over and gloat. And then, towards the end, he'd just outright go for a eye. For most of it, though, he was cool, calm, and collected, biding his time, patiently waiting for a mistake or an opening, while goading Sato forward into either. Despite that, by the end of this, he was a sweaty mess, just a testament to how hard they were going and how much work, torque, and struggle was put into each and every hold. This was a Sebastian special but it was a great middle ground between pure technique and pure shtick.

ER: Kenichiro Arai is one of many criminally underwritten-about wrestlers in Segunda Caida's history. For a guy I've liked throughout his whole career, you wouldn't really know that by reading us. But he's great, and he's wrestled constantly with no kind of break since my teens, and no matter what fed he's spent time in he has always come across as someone wrestling and moving completely unlike anyone else in that fed. From his beginnings as weird headbutt offense guy in Toryumon, to his current vibe of grease monkey who moonlights as a carnival wrestler, he's stood out in unique ways the whole time. He moves and reacts differently. Moving differently is cool. Remember when all of us saw Johnny Saint for the first time and instantly knew that the reactions and timing was different? Kenichiro Arai moves different, and so, does offense differently than anyone. He works a busy yet simple style, acting calm while pushing the match in his direction; stylish, without style. He can grab a wrist or foot and not necessarily work a hold like Fujiwara, but just kind of twist and grip without letting up. Strong Grip based wrestling. 

The feeling out process is cool and has cool little things that you don't see, like Arai catching a dropkick to the ribs while sliding into a dropdown, or the way he just kind of knocks Sato down with a close shove and trip, like messy shootstyle. In fact, a lot of this match is pro wrestling style as theatrical shootstyle. They never treat it like shootstyle, but there's a sincerity in selling the pro wrestling holds that makes this come off as important. Sato is Mutoha's ace and in Arai he's up against a guy who's blowing into town for the first time and already working as the established ace. That gives things a cool energy. There are a lot of convincing cradled pins, and things jump up a level when Arai misses - intentionally or not - a kneedrop off the top. His missed kneedrop leads to an actual dramatic and painful looking figure 4 exchange, where he suckers Sato into doing one that he instantly reverses (complete with finger pointed to temple), before Sato reverses it back and it leads to a series of painful submissions. Grapevined legs, rolling heel hooks, a nicely leveraged trailer hitch, all of them looking like straight pro wrestling but with a BattlArts sensibility. Also, an excellent standing sub into a fought-for back suplex plainly shows that there is absolutely NO give in this ring, as Arai drops Sato in a way that makes it look like he was suplexed in a parking lot. How was this the first Arai match we've written about? Guess we need to keep watching wrestling. 

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Dar vs. Dragunov

25. Noam Dar vs. Ilja Dragunov NXT UK 9/17/20

ER: This was the first new episode of NXT UK after the pandemic hiatus, and they gave us a cool main event match that had never happened anywhere else before. This comeback episode gave us a little bit of insight into how members of the UK roster spent their time during the pandemic: Amir Jordan somehow fixed his entire hairline (I've seen those NXT UK contracts and I have no idea where this guy got the money to do so), Aoife Valkyrie suddenly works stiff, and Noam Dar just came up with more ways to hit hard while continuing to put his head directly into the path of every dangerous strike. This was a great reintroduction of all the cool things Noam Dar is capable of, and a great look at just how much spittle Ilja can blow out of his mouth. 

Dar is outsized by Dragunov but hits so hard and with such precision that his offense actually makes Ilja's selling and overacting look like a perfectly normal reaction. Dar kicks at Ilja's hamstring, stomps his foot, kicks him as hard as possible in the shin, kicks him as hard as possible in the chest, stomps the hell out of his wrists and ankles, snapmares the backs of his knees into the ropes, and rubs his wrist tape across Ilja's stupid contacts. Dar is such a profoundly annoying little man and those annoyances only glow hotter when he is backing up all of his snotty behavior with real damage. Noam Dar feels like a spoiled coach's son who actually deserves all the playing time he gets, possibly the only coach's son since Cal Ripken to actually deserve his playing time. 

Dar learned the downward strike elbow over the pandemic and integrates it all through the match: as a standing strike, as a grounded strike, as a strike while working a hold, and as a way to advance a hold. He's relentless, which is the best kind of Ilja opponent, as Ilja will never quit and never stop making stupid faces. The more people stand outside of Ilja's house yelling at him to stop making stupid faces, the stupider the faces will get, and the stupider the faces get the more we get to see Dar get socked. Dar staggers into position so well for all of Ilja's elbows and leaping kicks and clotheslines, just putting his head in harms way for all of them. The man leans his head into every attack and it is insane. 

Dar is so good at getting into position for offense, that it's so much more gratifying when he shuts down bullshit. He gets plastered with Dragunov's rope spin lariat, but the next time Ilja tries it he takes a running boot right underneath the sternum, and a follow-up running kick that sends him flying 6 feet off the apron. The run to the finish blew up with a great strike exchange, each with one hand tied up in a knucklelock, sick elbows and kicks thrown from zero distance. Neither man was leaning away or holding back and it came off hard. This needed a finish better than Alexander Wolfe coming out and just kind of getting in the way, but that was the only thing holding this back. 

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: A-Kid vs. Dragunov

31. A-Kid vs. Ilja Dragunov NXT UK 3/6 (Aired 4/30/20)

ER: This was a tale of two matches, and I liked the first part of the match more than the second part, but still thought the second part had some high peaks and real strengths, including a really hot finish. It's crazy that this was a match that was only shown due to a worldwide pandemic that temporarily halted NXT UK tapings. Imagine not finding room for this match on literally any episode NXT UK. This match is better than 90% of the NXT UK matches we've gotten, and it took a pandemic to get it. 

The matwork was all snug and went in cool directions, fighting out of headscissors and then finding cool ways to get back in those headscissors. Dragunov holds his tight and made a couple of Kid's escapes look even greater, Kid wriggling out and smoothly slipping into a leg grapevine, into a bow and arrow. My favorite part of the match was Kid rolling through a wristlock into a handstand and swinging his legs back around to lock Dragunov into another headscissors. It was the kind of mat trick that could have looked clunky and ridiculous, but the way Kid pulled it off it made it look plausible. Other favorite moments? Every Dragunov clothesline, all thrown with massive impact and follow through. 

Dragunov is a guy who can and does hit insanely hard, while also looking like a first class goof through every step of those ungodly hits. He has offense I don't like - there was a cartwheel crossbody here that not only looked bad, but felt entirely out of place in the match - but he always balances it out with some deadly stuff. I liked his standing elbow from the top to the floor, a nice German suplex, and that pair of hard lariats any wrestler would be lucky to call their finisher. The second lariat especially, right down the final stretch, with Ilja recoiling off the ropes and spinning into a perfectly timed smash, could have believably sent A-Kid to another territory for 6 months. I liked how Kid tried to get things back to the mat once Dragunov started throwing bombs, viewing it as his best path to the win and finding that it's tough to put the Dragunov genie back in the bottle. 

I didn't love some of the sections that turned into "I kick your face, you spin around and hit a jumping kick to my face, which bounces me back into a..." sequences, but I will always like Dragunov kicking guys in the chin, throwing the stiffest possible downward elbow smashes, and trying to take a man's head off with a lariat. Dragunov flew in so hot with Torpedo Moscow that he could have knocked himself out. I thought this was A-Kid's best match in NXT UK, and at the same time you had another Dragunov match where he shows that he's willing to kill himself to win. 

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Imperium vs. Carter/Smith

67. Marcel Barthel/Fabian Aichner vs. Oliver Carter/Ashton Smith NXT UK 3/7 (Aired 3/26/20)

ER: Marcel Barthel is someone I wished showed up on TV far more often, and if more people saw performances like this it would certainly get others to agree. This was a good tag that built to some nice near falls and close calls, gave us a couple different unexpected outcomes on familiar moments, and played as a great showcase for Martel in particular. but also the impeccable timing of Aichner. It starts with Barthel grounding Carter and crossing his ankles in an Indian deathlock, and I loved how Barthel kept finding ways to keep a lock on Carter's ankles while Carter kept trying to shake him. Carter is a flier and I liked how Imperium kept trying to prevent him from leaving his feet, making it mean a little bit more when he was able to pull off stuff like his backdrop splash (with Carter rolling onto Smith's back on the apron and then getting a boost flipping back from the apron into the ring). 

Barthel took three big bumps to the floor during the match, taking a fast flipping bump after getting juked by Carter, and later getting shoved off the top rope by Smith while setting up a European Bomb. Barthel brought speed and meanness and Aichner was more of a cudgel, and they show how fun simply cutting Carter off from Smith can be. I really like Imperium's double corner dropkick, with Aichner tying up Carter in the ropes and flipping him upside down, both of Imperium flying in from opposite corners. We knew it was all building to Smith coming in and wrecking them, and I liked little twists on the familiar, like when Aichner was working over Carter and turned to cheapshot Smith on the apron, except Smith saw it coming and socked Aichner first. That's a cool way to set up a hot tag, much more unique than two guys slow crawling to their corners at the same time while one looks over their shoulder. Carter's rana reversal as Aichner was setting up the European Bomb was done really well, an excellent nearfall. With Barthel getting shoved to the floor and the way Carter hooked that pin deep made me certain that was the upset finish. Carter was really good at making the most out of those spots, and that kind of thing sets a TV tag like this apart, even when he got planted by that European Bomb just a few moments later.

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Kassius Ohno vs. Kenny Williams

Kassius Ohno vs. Kenny Williams NXT UK 3/6 (Aired 3/19/20)

ER: I wish we were still getting one match every couple weeks that is just Kassius Ohno working as territory champ Flair, making every local 160 pounder look like they have a shot at beating him. And sometimes they beat him! Not only does Ohno break out a new trick in every single one of his NXT UK matches, he does it  with such confidence and logic that it really makes for a perfect 7 minute match. Ohno has an honest approach to a match - very much like Finlay in WCW or WWE - where he sells and bumps appropriately for the offense actually being performed, and seems to have fun coming up with opponent-specific counters. If an opponent's move doesn't hit flush, he doesn't sell the move as if it landed the way it was supposed to land. It forces his opponent to work honest knowing that Ohno will be giving no quarter. It cannot be an accident that Ohno was the guy in the ring when several very different NXT UK wrestlers had their best match. 

Kenny Williams is a hit or miss NXT UK guy, who has been at his best when against NXT UK's best. He's had several really good matches, but all of them have come against Ohno, Noam Dar, and Jordan Devlin, the literal three best wrestlers in NXT UK. Still, there are plenty of guys on the roster who haven't had matches this good against those three, so some of the credit has to be given to Williams. This match has a lot of ideas that get taken interesting directions. I expected it to be Williams relying on quickness to stay a step ahead of Ohno, but instead it was Ohno pushing pace and Williams struggling to catch up. Williams would get away with a rolling prawn or a headscissors but Ohno was catching him easily. I think Williams did a good job of upping his strikes just to survive. He had a couple elbows that landed hard, and Ohno reacted appropriately.  

Ohno was smart about creating plausible openings, like when he catches a springboard crossbody, tosses Williams up into a fireman's carry, and then nearly loses the match when Williams rolls through into a tight crucifix pin. Ohno breaks out a neat trick to block a second Williams springboard, as instead of trying to knock Williams off the apron he just waits until Williams grabs the ropes to spring, and grinds his boot squarely into Williams' hand to hold him in place. I mentioned appropriate-to-the-offense selling, and I thought Ohno did a great job with that as Williams started hitting big flying offense. There's a tope that's enough to knock Ohno into the barricade, a tope that lands a bit more flush into the aisle, a great Coffin Drop off the middle buckle to the floor, and a missile dropkick back in the ring. Ohno goes down for the Coffin Drop, but doesn't go down for the missile dropkick because it doesn't hit as hard as a man's weight crashing into you from the buckles to the floor. I love that Finlay mindset of "If you knock me down with a dropkick, then I'll get knocked down by a dropkick", and it makes the shotgun dropkick that *does* knock Ohno down mean a lot more. Ohno, however, breaks out another trick, catching a headscissors before it starts and kicking out Williams' plant arm, then just levels him with a roaring elbow. Ohno clearly could have won after that elbow, but throws on a spiteful Kassius Clutch to presumably punish insolence. What a run. 

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Wolfe vs. Banks

29. Alexander Wolfe vs. Travis Banks NXT UK 1/18 (Aired 3/5/20)

ER: Alexander Wolfe is a real beast who is incredibly good at selling and perhaps even better at setting up his opponents' offense. This guy's entire WWE run was as the bottom tier man in two different stables, but goddamn is this guy good. Banks is at his best when he's pushing pace and not slowing things down with strike trading, and he starts this off hot by knocking Wolfe to the floor and then nailing him with a smothering bullet tope, then sticks his boot heels into Wolfe's back with a double stomp (and I dug how Banks went back to that double stomp later in the match). Any match that starts with Wolfe unable to remove his track jacket almost always means you're getting something good, and this is no different. When Wolfe takes over he's really unforgiving, getting Banks to the mat and really pounding on him and roughing him up with headlocks. 

Wolfe is super intense in control, but also great at giving Banks openings and appropriately selling Banks' offense. I don't love some of Banks' strikes, but Wolfe's selling always fits the strike. There is no stupid trading, and Wolfe doesn't automatically do a back bump for each hit. Instead, he staggers and stumbles and falls into place and I'm not sure who else in WWE is this good at filling time waiting to take offense. I've seen so many wrestlers slumped in the corner waiting for a dropkick, and seeing the way Wolfe sets up Banks' corner dropkick should be an eye opener to all of them. Wolfe is good at using Banks' regular offense to set up unique situations, and breaks out some unexpected counters. I loved him hacking at Bank's shins to block a penalty kick, then sweeping those legs to force a Banks faceplant. Wolfe always approaches offense honestly, never waiting for his opponent to do some of the positional work for him. If a guy isn't where he needs him to be, Wolfe will yank them into proper position. The twisting suplex off the apron to the floor looked really nasty, and the in-ring version getting only a two count was a nearfall I really bit on. Wolfe's sitout powerbomb is one of my favorite finishers in wrestling, as it's always so perfectly executed that it hardly seems real. His form, the force he uses, the way he shifts his body to control the pin and leverage, just a perfect understanding of one's offense. A dive into Wolfe's German work is probably long overdue at this point. 

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NXT UK Worth Watching: Brian Kendrick vs. A-Kid!

Brian Kendrick vs. A-Kid NXT UK 1/18 (Aired 2/27/20) (#81)

ER: I have a feeling that whenever I get all caught up on NXT UK (which will likely only happen when the program ceases to exist, giving me an actual finite endpoint), I'm going to look back on the days of Ohno and Kendrick's tours as the true salad days of the brand. I don't think that's a contentious statement, and through the first 80 episodes (and a few TakeOvers) there are several regular UK roster members that have become real favorites of mine, far more than I assumed there would be when starting this project. Ohno and Kendrick really felt like they took a lot of the UK regulars out of their comfort zones, but they also have the skills to not just make the UK guys do new styles of match, but a different kind of match really suited to their abilities. 

Kendrick and A-Kid were a cool pairing that I wouldn't have thought to ask for, but I'm glad we got. A-Kid's biggest strength is his fast matwork and quick attacks, and Kendrick is a guy who knows how to do cool things against that and with that. Their fast early exchanges were really good, starting with a hard Kendrick shoulderblock and going through some quick but snug work, A-Kid working Kendrick's arm and Kendrick always finding crafty reversals, and A-Kid surprising him with a slick armdrag and dropkick. Things really pick up when Kendrick starts working a disgusting cravat, locking his knuckles around Kid's windpipe. Kendrick is really great at keeping a thread going through a match, and great at making opponent's offense look meaningful. 

It's always tough to say what my favorite part of any given Kendrick match is, because he's so good at taking familiar spots and making them work slightly different. A great example in this match was when A-Kid grazed Kendrick on a fast tope and spilled deep into the entranceway. It was really light contact and shouldn't have been sold as offense, and Kendrick instinctively notices that. Instead of selling the tope, Kendrick sold the bump he took from the tope and sold pain in his arm and shoulder from earlier. Not many wrestlers have the ability to think on their feet like that, and it's just one thing that makes Kendrick stand above. Kid hits a nice heavy high crossbody, and Kendrick faceplants hard on Kid's La Mistica, really making it look like Kid could come away with his arm. Kendrick is probably the best rope worker on the roster, as he's so great at working submissions around ropes and making distance to the ropes part of the drama in smart ways, and his escapes and struggles to get to the ropes really validate opponent's submissions. The home stretch is hot (but the whole match was worked at this pace, so it was really more a culmination of everything), with Kendrick cruelly leaping from the floor to grab the top rope, knocking Kid crotch first on the top and then hitting a great butterfly suplex. When Kendrick locked in the Captain's Hook (my favorite submission in wrestling) right after, I thought Kid was sunk. Instead, Kid somehow works in a springboard DDT and Kendrick absolutely spikes himself on it. NXT UK improbably became my favorite weekly wrestling show, and it was never better than when Ohno and Kendrick were there.  

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Coffey vs. Dragunov

15. Joe Coffey vs. Ilja Dragunov NXT UK 1/18 (Aired 2/19/20) 

ER: This has to be my favorite Joe Coffey singles match, and it's got to be because he has a punching bag like Dragunov to pummel. Coffey has a lot of thudding strikes and Dragunov is someone you can just thud and thud and thud. Coffey is a fast bumper too, so when he gets knocked around by Dragunov he really gets knocked around. I like how they tangle, like how they ground each other, and I always like how Ilja fights to his feet and how hard Coffey runs into him to put him back down. Coffey had a couple really big bumps during Ilja's initial onslaught, including a really fast painful tumble over the top off the apron to the floor. He crashes into Ilja with the Glasgow Send Off just as hard as he crashes on all of his misses, and I liked how the Send Off kept coming up throughout the match. Coffey's body shots and chops looked really hard, and Dragunov's body always reads damage really well. I liked how Coffey pivoted things to going after Dragunov's knee with a crazy avalanche style knee breaker, then tenaciously kept on the leg even while Ilja is kicking him in the face from his back. It all built to some really big stuff, some hard lariats, a big delayed German and a huge impact top rope senton from Ilja, and Coffey getting a big superplex when Dragunov gets slowed by his knee. Ilja is the guy who just keeps fighting through any beating, and Coffey started to desperately spam the Send Off, trying to take out Ilja's knee, but kept showing his hand and instead running straight into brutal knees or the ringpost. The finish looked really good, with Ilja flying into Coffey's face with the Torpedo Moscow headbutt just as Coffey was turning to throw his lariat, just a great escalating battle. 

PAS: Dragunov has gone from being a guy I thought was goofy, into one of my favorite wrestlers in the world to watch. I really need to revisit his WXW stuff to see if I would like that, too. I thought this was great. Coffey may be the best puncher in the WWE, and he really unloads with hard body shots and big hooks. I liked him trying to take the starch out of Ilja while Ilja was just throwing his body around back into him. The Russian suplex by Dragunov looked great, and that Gotch lift really should be a set up used more often in wrestling. I also loved how Dragunov used his speed and awareness to stay ahead of the game, as Coffey kept missing violently. He landed hard into the turnbuckles, into Ilja's knee, and finally his head. You have to love a guy willing to throw himself so recklessly into harms way.

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Gallus vs. Burch/Lorcan

54. Wolfgang/Mark Coffey vs. Danny Burch/Oney Lorcan NXT UK 1/18 (Aired 2/13/20) (Ep. #79)

ER: It's been fun going through all of NXT UK, and I'm not at the point where I'm starting to see the very first matches I saw of them. NXT UK bringing in Lorcan, Ohno, Kendrick, etc. was what originally got me to watch, and this match was my first time seeing Coffey and Wolfgang, who have turned into two of my five favorite NXT UK wrestlers. I watched this a couple years ago, and I loved it even more two years later. 78 episodes have already shown Wolfgang to be easily one of the best in the fed, but this match might be his greatest showcase yet. It's also a real fine showcase for Danny Burch, meaning his two greatest WWE performances just might have been this tag match and an NXT UK tag match vs. The Hunt shown two weeks prior but taped just the day before this tag. I'm not sure what Danny Burch was on that weekend in January, but I'm here for it. 

This was a hot 10 minutes that peaked with a heat section on Lorcan that built to a fiery Burch hot tag, but the whole thing had a nice back and forth energy. The Gallus takeover was so well done, executed in a way I haven't seen: Lorcan was going off battering Coffey and Wolfgang, running attacks on them in opposite corners, until Coffey grabs Lorcan with a rear waistlock after getting nailed, pulls Lorcan backwards into the corner, allowing Wolfgang to come flying across the ring with a high crossbody into Lorcan's upper chest. Wolfgang is great at using his body as a weapon, as he flies out of the ring hitting that crossbody and comes roaring back in with a divebomb elbowdrop to a sitting up Lorcan, and later dives into a seated Lorcan with a senton. 

Wolfgang is great at creating space, a great guy to work with Lorcan. I loved how it looked when Lorcan leapt for a tag and Wolfgang caught him over his shoulder to drag him back over to the Gallus corner. The visual was a nice preview of Wolfgang scooping Burch over his shoulder for the match ending powerslam later on. When Burch does tag in it's awesome, knocking Wolfgang off the apron (with a nasty bump to the floor by Wolfie), muscling Coffey over with a German and holding onto the waistlock, then pulling Coffey into a headbutt. There were some real fine pinfall saves by both teams, those fun pinfall dogpiles that get one guy shoved painfully on top of a pin, and I'm kind of a sucker for when the camera shows the pinfall and leaves an obstructed view of the man about to break up that pin. Wolfgang takes Lorcan out of the match with a wild spear through the ropes and too the floor and gets back in to scoop Burch into that powerslam. A week before this match Wolfgang/Coffey worked one match in the NXT Dusty Tag Classic, and then this match against the future NXT tag champs. This was a killer glimpse at what it would have been like to see Gallus working with other WWE and NXT teams instead of being kept in the UK bubble, and it's a shame we never saw more of it. 

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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NXT UK Worth Watching: Brian Kendrick IS Brian Kendrick

Brian Kendrick vs. Travis Banks NXT UK 1/17 (Aired 1/23/20) (Ep. #76)

ER: This was one of the earliest NXT UK matches I checked out, not long after it aired. Before this I had sought out a handful of the Ohno appearances and one of Oney Lorcan's UK matches, but once Brian Kendrick worked a few UK dates the brand was officially on my radar. I don't think I'm making up history here, but the Kendrick UK matches were probably the straw that broke me down into starting all of NXT UK from the beginning in the first place. Once I saw the excellent matches Ohno and Kendrick were having with all the NXT UK guys, I got more interested in seeing how they worked with each other, and 76 episodes and three TakeOvers later here we are. Kendrick's WWE return was incredible. He worked like an absolute ace, and he and Ohno reminded me more of Finlay than anyone else on the roster in all of the best ways: ring positioning, creativity, working with a moment, logical attacks, crafting a match around a unique opponent. Every Kendrick match had a few things that expose what other wrestlers *aren't* doing, and Kendrick makes those things obvious. 

Here Kendrick worked over Banks' hand to attempt to distract him enough to hit bigger offense. We get 10 minutes of Kendrick slamming that hand into the ring steps, into the barricade, stomping on it, bending it around the ropes, kneeling on it, using it as an entry point to bigger things. He's not constantly working the hand over that 10 minuets, he just goes back to it enough that we're always thinking about it; and if we're thinking about it, then Banks is definitely thinking about it. Banks' hurt hand informed a lot of what he did and he was always mindful of it, all through the finish. Kendrick dominated once he took out that hand, so Banks offense came in bursts: a fast tope that crashed his whole body over Kendrick, big missile dropkick, and a couple Kiwi Crushers that looked like they dumped Kendrick on the back of his neck (one for a close nearfall, the other to win). 

I love the way Kendrick bumps, and thought his bumps made Banks look strong. They aren't always clean bumps, but once you see a guy who doesn't fill his matches with fast flat back bumps you realize how silly they are. Kendrick falls the way a move's momentum takes him, sometimes tumbling wildly to the floor while reaching out for ropes or ring skirt to stop him, sometimes falling on his side, always looking like the right bump for the move he just took. Kendrick's faceplant bumps are some of the greatest I've seen, whipping his face fast into the mat and holding it like he just loosened two teeth. Oh, and then during the home stretch Kendrick also showed he has the best yakuza kicks in wrestling. What a killer. The Captains Hooks has been my favorite sub in wrestling since Kendrick debuted it, and he had some nasty set-ups for it in this match, including a sick crossface with a great headlock takeover, and I liked how it kept coming back. Banks' win feels even worse in retrospect, for a variety of reasons. Brian Kendrick and Kassius Ohno were the guys who made me go and check out all of the NXT UK, but now I'm just bummed realizing that these matches were basically the last matches I would get to see from these two wrestling gods. 

This match was deservedly placed on our 2020 MOTY List in 2020, but this review is updated to reflect its place within my current NXT UK project. 

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NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool II 1/12/20

Trent Seven vs. Eddie Dennis

ER: Eddie Dennis has a wild set of reptile gear, full boots and toxic slime green snakeskin like he's some kind of early 90s straight to video punk. It's glorious. I like him and Seven as a match up, and there's some explosive stuff. The match starts with a wicked one armed powerbomb by Seven, planting Dennis after catching him charging in. Dennis takes Seven's offense really well, bouncing right off his head on a DDT, getting dumped to the floor with a snap German. But Seven's punishment gets even better with a fast tope and and a snapdragon suplex on the floor. Their pace is really impressive for the level of big moves they're piling up. It's like a weird crazy WCW Power Plant match if they only studied NOAH tapes, with some forearms and big flipping slightly complicated slams, threats of Burning Hammers and Emerald Flowsions, and Seven hitting a right forearm in the corner as hard as Misawa's best. There are a bunch of big complicated slams, and the absolute craziness peaks when Dennis launches Seven with a Razor's Edge to the floor like he was Mike Awesome. Totally crazy spot to lead to a finish, not like any other finish I've seen on NXT UK. This was a cool ass 8 minute gem, really scrappy and portent, filled with big slams and cool bumps. Hot as hell start to a TakeOver. 

Toni Storm vs. Piper Niven vs. Kay Lee Ray

ER: I really hated how they turned this match into a 3 way. I love Toni, but she felt like a real third wheel in the build to this match, and in the match itself. Niven won the title shot, and then the week before TakeOver Storm just demands Niven let her have the match, and then they put her in the match just because she said she should be in the match! It's awful wrestling storytelling, but she's also a kind of necessary distraction in the match, and allowed them to do some big things that would have felt silly to kick out of. I hate 3 ways as a rule, but they actually kept things at a great pace to start. Niven works really well in a 3 way, as one of her issues is insisting on working fast paced singles without always keeping pace. Here she's able to pace things out and is a great wrecking ball. Niven flattens Ray with a tope and misses a fast cannonball into the barricade, but is back to flattening when she breaks up a pin with a senton. The match gets pretty bad the more melodramatic they got, with dumb stuff like Ray finding a chair under the ring and choking Storm while showing tons of light on the choke, or a big dumb face off between Storm and Niven where the camera framed them. The "making movies" thing can be real painful, but when they went back to being dangerous things got good again. Nigel on commentary calls Kay Lee Ray the "Glaswegian Sabu" at one point, which sounds near blasphemous, but when she hits a somersault plancha to the floor and bounces her legs off the barricade and head off the floor, then breaks up a pin by spiking herself with a somersault senton, this could be an Actual Thing. She looked like she under-rotated on a crazy senton, and then took a powerbomb right after. That's nuts. Storm gets to visually beat Niven before Ray superkicks her off, and I guess now that sets up Storm/Niven which feels reductive, since Storm just shoehorned herself in to begin with. There was some really good stuff here though, a lot of it. This was actually my favorite match of either Niven or Ray in NXT UK, and Storm facilitated some of that. 

Tyler Bate vs. Jordan Devlin

ER: This was a big match with a big payoff and big in-match build, a singles match that actually felt mostly worthy of the long TakeOver match lengths. I think Devlin put his time in well, liked how a lot of the offense built, I mainly just didn't like the ways Bate would just pop up to start his own sequences. Now, Devlin works around most of that really well, finding fun ways to set up Bate's comebacks. Devlin kept using the ropes in fun ways, like cutting off a Bate dive and nailing a nice rope flip moonsault, choking him in the ropes, also getting caught in a torture rack-type fireman's carry when he went to slingshot in with a cutter. Devlin, unsurprisingly, was a real asshole here. He mocked Bate and added some extra sauce to holds and strikes, the best being Devlin dragging Bate down into a Romero surfboard, then bending back on Bate's chin until they were staring eye to eye, sicko stuff.  

Devlin is good at working enough actual offense that reversals of that offense actually make sense, and Bate is good at stepping up with someone like that. I do think it veered into move trading, with Bate constantly need to shrug off whatever had just happened to him to hop up and do something impressive, but luckily Devlin is good at facilitating those hop-ups and Bate can break out something impressive. Bate does an airplane spin that starts slow and ugly and looks like it will be a dud, but keeps going and going and by the end I loved how Bate started with a bit of struggle and then kept building speed. By the time he dropped Devlin I was dizzy on my couch, which sounds stupid, but I'm not sure I've seen someone do an airplane spin this fast. Devlin had smart counters to expected Bate offense, dropping him with a cutter to the apron that almost leads to a count out win (with Devlin amusingly kicking him around 8 to keep Bate out longer), and nailing him with a Spanish Fly to counter a Bate charge. Devlin incorporated a lot of learned behavior into reversals, but Bate mostly just took big moves and then decided to do his own moves. This was the match with the somewhat infamous "punch out" spot, which I actually think is "not actually as shitty as it was made out to be". It's kind of hilarious to me that of all spots, Bate and Devlin doing stand and trade got GIF'd and laughed at, because most feds run shows with worse standing exchanges up and down the card. Do Tyler Bate's arms look short and silly when he swings them? Short? Always. Silly? Sometimes. Give me a punch exchange like this every single time over turn taking elbows and forearms. I liked how some of their punches whiffed completely, because it's frankly silly when every strike in an exchange hits perfectly. Bate needed a big finish to firmly put away Devlin, and Devlin is always great at getting spiked on DDTs and flattened by powerbombs, and the crowd was along for every second of Devlin taking it. Perhaps this went too long

Mark Coffey/Wolfgang vs. Fabian Aichner/Marcel Barthel vs. James Drake/Zack Gibson vs. Flash Morgan Webster/Mark Andrews

ER: So, this match was insane. This was easily one of the greatest highspot ladder matches in history, not just WWE history. This was 25 minutes - normally a match length that I would argue is completely unnecessary for *most* matches - but due to the furious pace that this things was worked, I was shocked at how "long" the match was when it was over. This does not feel like a 25 minute match, because from minute one every single person is flying around the ring at breakneck speed taking bumps that surely shaved months/years off their careers/lives, and I don't think that pace even took a slight break until the 18 minute mark. Not only did they work wall to wall crazy spots and dangerous moments, but they did a great job of making every team seem like they could walk away with the belts. I thought they did so well without the ladders, chaining offense together faster and faster, utilizing all 8 guys to give proper rest and generally avoiding guys ignoring damage to get to the next spot in time, that I was kind of dreading this becoming a climbing contest when it settled down. So, they opted to never settle the match down, using the ladders at first in familiar ways, but then doing twists on familiar ladder match spots before exploding with some things I've never seen before. 

It is completely pointless to detail all of the spots that happened in this match, because it would take me twice as long to type everything than it would take you to find and watch the match. One of the cooler aspects was that every team in the match, worked like a team. They all had tandem offense that was not always their typical tandem offense, remixing some spots and adding in ladders to others, and all the teams actually felt like they had individual strategies. They kept the spot set-up time to a minimum, and when they did one gigantic crash spot that had everyone fall like dominoes, prolonging the punishment instead of everybody just landing like shit from one giant tower powerbomb. It's tough to pick a standout, but I really liked Wolfgang a ton. He's the guy doing crazy spots while also shaking his arm out after punches. Yeah, he'll throw big ass Mark Coffey over the top rope onto everyone and then vault out himself to powerslam Drake on the entrance ramp. But, while men lay dying on the battlefield around him, he's still remembering to sell that his fist hurts, and I love it. So Wolfgang was probably my favorite, but this was a team effort. Every guy got at least one big moment (at LEAST). Mark Andrews hit a perfect shooting star press off the ladder onto Coffey, he and Webster hit a wild tandem somersault senton off a very high ladder, and Grizzled Young Vets seemed to be on the end of all the worst punishments, especially poor James Drake. Drake got smashed with ladders and under ladders and under bodies so many times, poor guy spent most of the match kicking his legs and holding his insides. Imperium looked like real beasts, squeezing their double teams into a ladder landscape even better than the others, Barthel tossing smaller guys off the ladders into waiting arms of Aichner so they could be dropped on their heads. 

It's a match with nothing but great spots, but my favorite had to be Imperium punishing Webster. With Webster laid on a ladder, which had been propped up on the ropes, Barthel holds Webster down so Aichner can hit a springboard moonsault, with Barthel rolling OVER Webster at the last minute TOWARDS Aichner's moonsault, so he wouldn't be standing where Aichner's boots were going to whip. I mentioned the car crash spot, and it really was great. They brought 5 or 6 ladders into the ring, everyone was climbing on them and climbing over each other like World War Z, one guy getting knocked to the mat here, Barthel getting knocked all the way to the floor there, Webster amusingly setting up his ladder so it smashes Gibson in between his own ladder, total madness. Wolfgang goes bet mode down the stretch and spears Aichner so hard into a ladder that the ladder breaks into 4 pieces. I don't think I've ever seen a ladder snap right in half during one of these matches, even when someone falls onto one from a great height. I thought I was pretty burnt out on stunt ladder matches, but this one had me from go and was absolutely relentless. 

WALTER vs. Joe Coffey

ER: I thought this was a pretty great 17 minute main event that made the decision to be a 27 minute main event, and treated that extra 10 minutes as if the previous 17 were just a dream. It was admittedly a bit odd how the match seemed to position Joe Coffey as the babyface and WALTER as kind of a generic heel , but I liked the actual ring work a lot. WALTER worked this mostly as a big chopping monster, and Coffey was the smaller "babyface" who kept trying and throwing WALTER with suplexes. WALTER is great at a big man getting knocked off his feet, and I loved how all of Coffey's suplexes looked like he was having trouble lifting WALTER, because he *should* be having a lot of trouble suplexing WALTER. WALTER wasn't hopping into any suplex and it ruled. If Coffey was going to hit a Saito suplex, it was going to be low to the ground with a heavy landing for both, making the suplexes look more like something you'd see in a Hashimoto/Red Bull Army match. There were a couple odd miscues every time WALTER threw a big boot (one that was supposed to hit did not at all; one that was supposed to miss, hit, and was treated as a miss anyway), but mostly it was WALTER throwing heavy chops while Coffey kept deadlifting WALTER on suplexes. WALTER threw hard elbows, cranked Coffey's neck, and worked a nice STF, Coffey hit a boss shoulderblock off the apron (flying at WALTER like a torpedo), fought for a big German suplex, and hit a surprising moonsault. 

When WALTER accidentally hit the ref with a John Woo dropkick (and the ref sold it like a drama queen rolling down a very soft incline), things mostly fell apart. Coffey gets an immediate visual pin off a powerbomb, Alexander Wolfe and Ilja Dragunov run down and get involved, Dragunov knocks Wolfe into Coffey and they basically do a full match restart for the remaining 10. Nothing felt like it mattered down the home stretch, and WALTER - who had just been "pinned" by a powerbomb moments before - now has several winds and the two trade moves until one of those moves wins the match. Every big move (WALTER powerbomb, Coffey avalanche belly to belly) was used as a way for the guy taking the move to transition back to offense, and there were more miscues like Coffey mostly missing a big clothesline and them just repeating the spot right after. After WALTER chokes out Coffey he had to give the biggest acting performance of his life, acting vaguely threatened by Adam Cole. Cole looked tinier than both referees and the camera angles made it looked like a small child ran into the ring after WALTER's win. 

This was a top to bottom great show, with the only bad 10 minutes being the last 10 minutes of the main event. Every other match was a total over-delivery, making this easily one of the best TakeOver events. WALTER/Coffey was probably the weakest overall match, and that was a match I really loved until it went crazy with the booking. Highly recommend this show. 

Best Matches: 

1. Tag Team Ladder Match

2. Jordan Devlin vs. Tyler Bate

3. Eddie Dennis vs. Trent Seven

COMPLETE GUIDE TO NXT UK

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ICW No Holds Barred Vol 3 - Deathmatch Drive-In 7/4/20

Big Twan Tucker vs. Dominic Garrini

PAS: These two were scheduled to match up on AIW show Mania weekend and was one of my most anticipated matches. I believe these two have a great match in them, although this wasn't it. Being in an opener deathmatch in front of an unfamiliar crowd hurt this match a bit. We had some great moments, Twan is awesome at hot brawling openings to matches and they just went after each other to start with Dom killing him with Kawada kicks to the face. The first big lighttube shot was great with Garrini charging in only to get wasted by a lighttube. The match was hurt with a long set up section where Twan just kind of wandered around setting up tubes and boards while Garrini laid there, these matches really need corner men to do all of the construction. They never really brought the match back under control after that, and it was a lot of big spots with long set ups, so this ended up being a bit of a disappointment with some great individual pieces. 

ER: I actually thought this was pretty great. This had great 90s backyard aesthetics, and Dom had the perfect look of a midwest backyard meathead. He's the friend who works overly stiff and wears shorts to school during cold weather months. Dom kicks the hell out of Twan, really hard kicks to the hamstrings and body, and both guys collect sick downward chops to the side of the neck. Twan took a bunch of real painful big man bumps, like crashing through a table with a sick flapjack, or getting tossed with a couple of strong Dom suplexes. The lighttube shots came off cool and gritty to me, adding that grit for the home stretch and elevating the match for me. Garrini ran headlong into a hard swung lighttube, just one of SO MANY examples we've seen of Garrini being a fearless talented meathead jock; the heavy boy's Darby Allin. The lighttube fight added to the grit and gave Garrini the aura of a cool Canon Group action star. Dom headbutting a lighttube into Twan's head is one of those great deathmatch comp moments. Garrini knows how to come off like a true backyard legend, as you suddenly get no sense whatsoever of his grappling accomplishments. Suddenly Garrini is a Cactus Jack acolyte and you see that in his cocked head as he's taking strikes, or Twan flattening him through a door with Dom as a backpack. It was under 10 minutes and always felt like a kickass yard fight. 

56. Eddie Kingston vs. Bret Ison

PAS: This was Eddie's only pandemic indy match, and was an absolute masterclass at what makes him so special. His pandemic hair and beard looked totally badass and this was a standard match, no chairs or tubes just knuckles and knees. I loved the start of this as they began to exchange shots but Kingston gets popped with an elbow and before he could fire back just crumples to the ground, and the match went like that. Kingston was trying to use his hand speed and guile to stay in the pocket with a heavy hitter, landing these peppering palm strike combos to the head and body,  but he kept getting caught with powerful one shot elbows and punches. Kingston is one of the great strikers in wrestling, but is even better at selling strikes and he does a great job making Ison look like he is beating Eddie to death. I wish Ison was 20% better in this match, he is pretty hit and miss with the force on his shots, sometimes he really nails Kingston, and sometimes the forearms come with a big foot stomp and not much force, also don't think the spinning backfist landed as cleanly as it needed to for it to be the finish. Still this was a heck of Kingston performance, glad to see he has got

ER: Quarantine Kingston with shaggy hair and bed beard is fantastic, the Unabomber Kingston era staggering his way into a fight. How did none of us realize that Kingston would make the greatest Bruiser Brody? Are we so visual that we need to see that shag? Kingston looks like a Puerto Rican Tex Cobb and it's tough to go back to smooth line Kingston after seeing this. It added a mountain man side to his character that has been absent before, made him come off like even more of a regional folk hero. Ison is a big goony Baron Corbin, and he's the kind of guy Kingston can make look like a threat just by selling his chops. Kingston's strike game was so great throughout, pivoting through different muscle memories and strategies, never looking out of his element or desperate, just someone looking to advance any way he can. He makes Ison's strikes look like they matter and lays in his rolling elbow. Kingston leaned into everything and made this feel like a genuine war, and while I wish Ison used his size much more than he does, he's someone that has no problem bashing limbs with wild men like Kingston. It's a pairing with a high floor, with a fired up Kingston performance keeping that floor high as hell. He even works blue afterwards in his folksy Lenny Bruce fireside 4th of July chat. 

Eddy Only vs. Tim Donst

ER: I really liked how this started, with Only cementing himself as the heel by running the crowd down hard, and then getting wrecked by Donst, to the point where I was feeling sympathy for Only and the beating he was taking. Donst didn't really hold back on anything, and there was this stunned look on Only's face when Donst hit him as hard as he could with a plastic fat bat covered in tacks. Getting hit in the side of the head with one of those bats at full strength would hurt enough, but when it leaves dozens of tacks stuck into your head? Only looks at Donst like he can't believe Donst hit him as hard as he possibly could have, and then Donst does it again. Only is getting really battered, suplexed onto the grass, and it's this cool heel in peril with a cold babyface just punishing him. But at some point I am reminded why whatever Tim Donst is supposed to be doing does not work for me. He is so emotionless in the ring that he takes things beyond no selling, as not selling offense tends to at least bring some kind of character. He just acts like a man who is numb to all kind of pain, which could be cool...but if I was every other dude on a deathmatch card with him it would sure as hell he annoying to watch a guy get suplexed multiple times into tacks, crawl hands and knees through tacks, take a back bump off the apron through a board with cut up beer cans, get lighttubes kicked into his face, and sell it all by making a frowny face as if he were being admonished by his parents for missing curfew. I liked what Only brought to this, came off like a guy who was in actual pain while taking some gnarly shots, including getting a barbed wire board avalanched into him. I liked Donst's willingness to be crazy, loved his wild tope, but you have to make these weapons mean something. He is adamantly trying to make them mean less than anyone. 

Eric Ryan vs. Alex Ocean

ER: I'll always go out of my way to watch Eric Ryan matches. He's one of my favorite brawlers and he's one of the greatest bleeders in wrestling history, no hyperbole. This match did not work for me at all, went way too long, and was pretty artless about how they got from A to B to C. However, Ryan bled great. He bled immediately, and it was some great blood. He headbutted a couple of lighttubes into Ocean's head, got color on his own head, and somehow wound up immediately cutting open his entire back. He had this gorgeous collection of streams running down his back that made him look like he was a see through human body vein diagram. There are a lot of painful moments here, but they all run together pretty quickly. It's crazy to me when someone is dragged across the mat through a bunch of broken glass, but there's such a weird focus on selling every single thing the same in a deathmatch. There really needs to be some expressive selling to get across some of this damage. Give me a guy screaming as he's being dragged across broken glass man. The kind of stuff that is more interesting to me is Ryan starting the match with a fork and quickly stabbing Ocean's arm when Ocean goes for a lock up. Ocean snatched the fork away, and Ryan simply grabbed another one out of his pocket. That moment had so much more creativity than just setting up props. The finish of the match sees Ryan attempt to mule kick a couple lighttubes over Ocean's face while holding a single crab, but he keeps missing and just heel kicking Ocean in the face. And guess what? Ocean getting kicked in the face looked more violent than any of the weapon shots. A death match with the brawling as the focus is just going to be better, and this felt like 18 minutes of them picking up and just moving onto the next prop. 

Matthew Justice vs. Casanova Valentine

ER: I dug this match on paper and liked a lot of what they did, I just wish they didn't take 20 minutes to do it. Valentine has maybe my favorite look in deathmatch wrestling, like a gastric bypass Pig Champion, and I love blown out Justice epics. I thought they did a good job at working the deathmatch elements and not just arbitrarily rolling around in wire and glass. There was some build to this, and I liked how Justice hit Casanova's garden weasel out of his hands with a chair to start, instead of jumping right into some weaseling. They took those steps to ramp up their damage and make the eventual weaseling mean a bit more. If you start with Valentine breaking lighttubes over Justice's balls, then where can you go from there? The match is plagued by length and some unnecessary overbooking, with things like Riley Madison and Manders interference not really leading to anything that we couldn't have done without. People want to see Justice jump off high places, and he does that, and it rules. He hits a wild superfly splash off an SUV through a table, and we get to see Valentine really smoosh Justice later with his own big splash. A lot of the weapon stuff comes off kinda weak, as they were following a match that saw every possible weapon and attack you could need from a match, and this was just going to be repeating that. And it didn't help that the finish was a verrrry long time stand still moment of Mancer trying to light some fireworks that were attached to skewers, and the fireworks would not light. So you had poor Valentine kneeling there holding skewers into his own head, eyes fixed on Manders the entire time trying to light the damn things, Justice standing around waiting, and finally Justice calls an audible and just hits Valentine with a chair. I think they could have done what they did in half the time, and a 20 minute match ending with the flattest finish possible is always going to seem more disappointing. 

Matt Tremont vs. Akira

ER: I really didn't like the start of this, as they sat down in chairs right at the bell and did the "barroom punch" spot and threw worked punches at each other. The crowd was the quietest during this than they were all night, so I can't say that it was working for them either. I don't like that spot anyway (although Akira and Mickie Knuckles made it obsolete with their take on it earlier this year), but starting off a match with it, with no build and nowhere to go, makes no sense to me. Tremont throws nice worked punches, but this crowd has seen some uggggly shots on this show, and they are not going to be moved by worked punches. And when Akira puts his hands behind his back and demands Tremont hit him, there isn't any drama in that either, as Tremont had already punched him 10 times without Akira bothering to defend. Some things work, and "some things work" is probably the thing I will find myself writing the most whenever I watch deathmatches. Akira gets that same cool blood streaming down his back that Eric Ryan got earlier, there's a cool battle over Akira trying to get Tremont up for a death valley driver, and Tremont really brains Akira with lighttubes when Akira was attempting a plancha. Akira gets a fairly deep slice under his breastbone from it, could have been a cool thing to build off. But, as with a lot of this, the build just seems scattered at best. 

John Wayne Murdoch vs. Jeff King

ER: I thought this was a fantastic Jeff King performance, one of my favorite individual performances on the show. I am always going to love any wrestler who is referred to as an old timer (unless it's some cutesy fake old man gimmick) and King has had an interesting career. I knew him as a guy who would show up on IWA-MS shows in the 2000s, and then he disappeared for several years, coming back earlier this decade and slowly working himself into the deathmatch scene. He's probably younger than I am, but I love an old timer who is perhaps a fish out of water. Here he takes a furious beating from Murdoch, and every second of the match King felt like a man trying to prove himself to a scene. And at minimum, he certainly proved himself to me. He took a lot of punishment, and I think what makes a deathmatch worker appeal most to me is what their foundation is. I relate far more to the IWA-MS deathmatches because the core IWA style was rooted in southern wrestling. East coast DM style is much more big prop spots with less glue to get to those big moments, but King is a guy who feels more like a Memphis guy and that really works within a deathmatch. He takes big bumps and fills in downtime with nice punches, so there is less building structures and seeking weapons and more of a southern structure in its place. He gets really scared up here and I bought into his horror at the violence, like getting a gusset plate smashed onto his arm and punched into his head. He does a wild tope con giro through a table (Murdoch moved) and there were several moments of him taking an insane bump on missed offense. He hits a disgusting senton through several set up chairs, crushes Murdoch through barbed wire table with a backpack cannonball, and gets dropped through a chair by a Murdoch brainbuster. The finish is basically a botch but far more insane for it, as it's supposed to be a Murdoch superplex through a tubes covered table, but they set the table up WAY too close to the buckles. So, the superplex happens, but King flies PAST the table and Murdoch takes a back bump onto the table and spills off, both guys ending up worse off than if they had both gone through the table. Ugly fight, awesome King performance, and that's exciting for me as I hadn't seen the guy work in probably well over a decade. 

John Wayne Murdoch vs. Nick Gage

ER: It's cool Gage made it out as a way to cap off the show, but I think his power is minimized a lot by showing up at the end of a show where every single match had one of the guys essentially "doing" Nick Gage. These are all going to be bloody fights, and by the time we get to the main event of these shows we have seen EVERYTHING. So even though Gage and Murdoch have the best "sitting in chairs while punching face" sequence on the show, it is also the third time we have seen that routine. Gage has charisma that brings a higher floor into his matches, and the energy he brings to a crowd is undeniable. He and Murdoch punch each other in the face, and I loved how Gage geared up, took a lot of shots, kicked his chair away and flew into Murdoch with a diving elbow. Both guys took some disgusting shots, like Gage getting thrown through a sliced cans board, and plenty of ugly bumps through chairs. Murdoch wins with a brainbuster on a bent to hell chair, which was sick and looked like something that should definitely finish a match. And, it did finish a match, literally right before this match. And that's kind the problem with shows like this. Even with an appropriate number of matches, it is incredibly hard to still WOW a viewer at the end of a show like this. We all learned that a long time ago, the best matches of a deathmatch tournament are almost always 1st round matches, and on a show like this where everyone is using mostly the same props you're going to see even more of the ideas being used up halfway through. A match like this would have played far better as the main event of a normal wrestling show, but this is the kind of match that drew a nice crowd so more power to these lunatics. 

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2020 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston vs. Coyle

Eddie Kingston vs. Rory Coyle North Wrestling 2/1

PAS: This was part of Eddie's UK tour, which was his last run as an indy wrestler before signing with AEW. Coyle is kind of a Newcastle Kingston, a brawler with good mic work, who clearly idolizes Eddie. This was a fun weapons brawl with Kingston pounding on Coyle with punches, choking him with a plastic bag and hanging him with booster cables. Coyle breaks out a VCR and videotapes, and gets a videotape smashed on his head before eating two backfists. But he stumbles to his feet and hits an air raid crash on a VCR, which is a sick bump for Kingston to take in this kind of special appearance. Fun example of the big name coming in to take on the local barstool legend.

ER: This really is Kingston going to the UK and fighting an acolyte, and it is exactly what you want. Eddie Kingston playing UK rock clubs feels like a natural fit, no doubt has better crowd mic work than a guy making small talk while tuning his guitar. The match gets changed to No DQ as soon as it starts, and something tells me the match would have been worked exactly the same way if it hadn't. I liked the crowd brawl, always fun to see how tightly Kingston throws strikes in the middle of a packed in crowd, and - while this might sound blasphemous to some - I think Kingston is a more consistently high end crowd brawler than LA Park. Kingston is more consistently engaging and his brawls are more relatable, whereas Park is more like being in awe of a celebrity walking past you in the supermarket. Kingston wraps a plastic bag around Coyle's face, clamps a jumper cable on Coyle's tongue and cheek, and we get some gnarly spots around a bunch of VHS tapes and a VCR that Coyle brought out with him. Getting a VHS tape smashed into your face would hurt like hell, and that pain comes through. Coyle takes a couple bumps on the tapes and you can see his body bouncing off awkward tape corners, it's great. King's backfists have never looked better, both looked like real KO shots. That's my only real problem with the match, as Kingston has established one backfist as something that almost always wins, TWO backfists definitely shouldn't see a man getting back to his feet. But I think Coyle selling the backfists and his struggle back to standing were good, so it was handled as well as possible. King's post-match promo is unsurprisingly great, man knows how to sell injuries during promos so well, and he knows exactly what tone to take with the crowd after a loss. The man knows how to connect with people out in the Moors as well as he connects with people in Queens. 

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Matches from NOAH Mohammed Yone 25th Anniversary 10/18/20

 

Alexander Otsuka/Mohammed Yone vs. Akitoshi Saito/Masao Inoue

ER: It's 2020 and these boys have all beefed up to the degree that Akitoshi Saito might be the smallest man in the match. Otsuka especially needs to just sport Butcher singlets at this point. He looks like best possible Dana White. Inoue brings his failson charisma to this early, attacking Yone at the bell and having it immediately blow up in his face when Saito ducks out of the way of a clothesline that Inoue doesn't. So Inoue spends the next several moments taking legdrops and axe handles all while holding his stomach as if he just won a hot dog eating contest and his friends keep trying to hit his belly. The tone changes noticeably when Saito finally tags in, as Yone starts throwing big impact lariats to counter the heavy leather Saito comes in swinging. Saito/Otsuka is a dream pairing that's hardly happened, and we get only a taste here (ending with a great Otsuka German suplex). There's funny Inoue stuff, like Saito dropping Yone before tagging out and Inoue getting into the ring and stretching his back before just running and covering Yone. Inoue does some eye rakes, he and Saito run at Yone with some slow back elbows and lariats, and Inoue does more selling where it looks like he accidentally walked into a screen door. I was shocked to see Otsuka break out the giant swing on Inoue, but happy to see it. Everyone is a little sluggish here (they're old and meatier, it happens), but I laughed all throughout Inoue shaky legs falling to the mat every time Yone tried running at him. This is the kind of match that would have been a 2004 list match, but still makes me smile in 2020. 

PAS: This is more an Eric thing then a Phil thing. I am here to see Otsuka and we don't get enough of him to make it worth my time. I appreciate Inoue comedy, although conversely it works better in a more serious atmosphere then in a match with other people up for the yuks.  I thought Yone unable to hit a move on Inoue because Inoue is too old, but he is also too old to successfully execute a roll up, so it goes both ways.  

Daisuke Ikeda/Ikuto Hidaka/Mohammed Yone vs. Yuki Ishikawa/Naomichi Marufuji/Junji Tanaka

ER: This was great, and could have been even greater had it been worked more like a WAR or Kings Road or Futen trios. The ingredients were there but it doesn't take advantage of some of the built up drama and instead pays it off in more of a feelgood anniversary show finish than heat, but the highs are way way up there. We get this awesome surprising big babyface performance from Junji Tanaka all throughout this tag that really plays as the unexpected highlight, but the people you went in hoping to see perform, all performed. The Yone/Ishikawa opening was cool, with Yone coming in like an aggressive Batt guy and popping Ishikawa, leading to Ishikawa doing a cool sweep to cause Yone to miss a punt and slip, with Ishikawa going in for the kill with a Fujiwara. But once we get into Ikeda/Junji stretch the match really opens up into something special. Ikeda dishes out one of those cruel beatings he's known for, instantly turning Junji into a huge fighting babyface. It's a sadistic old dude punishing a tough but weaker old dude, and it came off like Kurisu kicking Mitsuo Momota's ass. Junji is out here in his mawashi, trying to put both cheeks into everything, and Ikeda would just punch, kick and lariat him back to the mat. It was feeling like the same kind of Kantaro Hoshino performance we'd see in those 80s New Japan elimination tags, all clearly building to Ishikawa and Marufuji absolutely wasting the guys across the ring from them. Ikeda's beat down on Junji goes on long enough that it gets uncomfortable, like those old AJPW beatings of Kikuchi, but I loved how Ikeda sold for all of Junji's little comebacks, including a nice headbutt and an elbow that puts Ikeda down on his butt, holding his eye. Finally Junji makes the hot tag, leading to a crowd wildly on his side as Marufuji charges in and Hidaka, Ikeda, and Yone all trip over themselves to bump wildly for this molten lava tag.

I'm just kidding, Marufuji completely tanks any of the actual built up heat, stood idly by watching his teammate get his body and limbs kicked in, and actively decides to turn this into a more standard Anniversary show main event. He just somberly strolls in, then proceeds to chop Hidaka in the corner for the next 4 minutes. Yeah, yeah, Hidaka's chest is raw and bright red when it's over, but it was literally Hidaka with his arms hooked over the top rope and Marufuji just throwing chops, slowly. It felt like more of a gym hazing than anything that would make an actual match interesting, and lo! When it comes to actual sequences, Marufuji isn't very interesting in those either. Hidaka has this evergreen goodwill with me just from showing up as a then unknown (to me) in ECW over 20 years ago. I always like when he shows up in something I'm watching, even though I wished he had worked more Batt and less juniors wrestling here.

The Ikeda/Ishikawa sequence is worth the price of admission. If you weren't as captivated by the Junji performance as I was, you're still guaranteed to love Ishikawa sharp elbows and hooking punches to the curve of Ikeda's jaw, and of course Ikeda's straight fully body right hands to Ishikawa's ailing face. A low key best moment of the match happens right after Ikeda decks Ishikawa: the camera cuts to Yone, standing on the apron with a huge grin on his face. It did not seem like the kind of grin Ikeda's partner would be flashing, instead it looked like the grin of a big fan. In that moment you really got the sense that Yone wanted Ishikawa and Ikeda in this match because he's a tremendous fan of their specific thing, and wanted the best seat in the house to view that thing. I can't blame him, as their exchanges here were as good as any of the dozens of great Ikeda/Ishikawa exchanges we've seen for decades. What amazes me most about their pairing is that there is no "home base". There isn't a comfortable set of spots that they can hit every time, branching off from those spots depending on how long they each want to solo. This is a new song every time, played in the same key, but totally different arrangement. You're going to get punches to the face, but there are never any sequences that are repeated in the same way. The greatest pairings in wrestling history (Santo vs. Casas, Rey vs. Psicosis, Flair vs. Steamboat) all have spots and elements in common with their prior matches. Ikeda and Ishikawa just go out there and play free jazz with it, every time, and I've never seen them sound like they're using different different Fake Books. 

PAS: This is a hard match to rank, as there is nothing in any of the matches on our MOTY list as bad as that Marufuji hot tag, not only the endless comedy spot chops but then the interpretive dance step superkick misses with Hidaka. Just dreadful. But there are also few things on our list as sublime as another redux of the horrific dance between Ikeda and Ishikawa. As disgusting and gorgeous as it always is, the punches and headbutts landing with that hollow sound you really only get with these guys. Yone and Ishikawa had a killer opening section, Tanaka gets massacred by Ikeda in a very Ikeda way, but we also had a finish based around a Junji Tanaka comedy spot. I dunno, color me confused.  Ikeda vs. Ishikawa is the best wrestling gets, and I think the highs are higher then the lows are lower. 

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Paradigm Pro Wrestling 2020 Fighting Spirit Grand Prix 11/6/20

After really enjoying their UWFI contender series, I wanted to go back and check out some of the other PPW UWFI rules shows. This was their second Fighting Spirit Grand Prix and had a fun line up:

Cole Radrick vs. Derek Neal

PAS: This was really good, with some more pro-wrestling tropes then most of Contender series matches, but in a way that worked. Radrick had some real slickness on the mat including a great calf slicer counter. Neal was a heavier hitter, and landed a big elbow for a knockdown. Finish was really cool with Radrick landing a big double leg spinebustery takedown, and throwing from the top. Neal is able to squirm out and cancel Radrick with a gross elbow to his brain stem. Felt like it should have been a stoppage, but Radrick gets to his feet hits a desperate spin kick and a running knee to knock Neal to the floor and out. I would like to see both guys again in this style, really entertaining sprint with some big moments.

ER: Very cool short match that kept building to bigger, more exciting peaks. Radrick threw a bunch of cool spin kicks that really made this feel like something out of Bloodsport: The Movie. They were always great whether they landed or missed, because the landings looked like KO blows and the misses lead to him getting worked over. Neal laid into him after several misses, and it kept looking like Radrick wouldn't beat the count. They managed to make this feel like it could go both ways despite Neal connecting more. The way Radrick kept pulling things out were really exciting, great way to open a show. 

Dominic Garrini vs. Dustin Leonard

PAS: Leonard is relatively new to pro wrestling, but has a Jujitsu black belt and a ton of combat grappling experience. As expected this was mostly on the mat, and while it didn't have the flash you might see out of Volk Han or Navarro, there was some pretty cool technical stuff fighting in and out of guard, and a great looking judo throw by Leonard. On their feet Leonard looked a lot more tentative and got caught with a big jumping knee, he shoots into Garrini after getting stunned which allows Dom to crucifix him and elbow him out of there. Cool idea and neat to see a promotion just let two guys go out there and grapple. 

ER: I was really into this, great grappling throughout that felt like it had real consequences the whole fight. This was my first time seeing Leonard, and I will always like a bigger guy in a gi. He threw these straight front kicks that I really liked, and I liked how Dom struggled to contain him. Leonard was big on the mat, a great neutralizer against Dom. We've been watching a lot of UWFI rules stuff lately, and a lot of it is with guys who aren't as experienced on the mat, so seeing several minutes of two jujitsu guys doing their thing was a treat. Leonard even gets a strap down moment when he ditches his gi. I wonder if Gary Goodridge knows how important his UFC 8 finish is to pro wrestling. 

Max the Impaler vs. Lee Moriarty

PAS: Max has a great look, a mix of Mad Max and Furiosa. They are really powerful looking, and for most of the match overwhelm Moriarty. I am a Moriarty low voter, but enjoy him in this style a fair amount. He has nice flashy kickboxing and knows how to time shootstyle near falls. Max had some nice Vader smashes and power throws.  Moriarty uses the bottom turnbuckle as a Anthony Pettis style springboard into a forearm which turns the tide, before another elbow finish. Fun stuff and I am interested in tracking down some more Impaler. 

ER: I think this is my first time actually seeing Max the Impaler outside of GIFs, but I agree they have a great wrestling look, maybe the most authentic of all the Mad Max cosplay gimmicks we've got over the years. The Fury Road aesthetic is strong but could be tough to convincingly pull off, but they pull it off well. Moriarty was like a CAW dummy here, I barely even noticed him until there was an annoying and out of place German suplex fighting spirit sell. This was all Impaler, clubbing away at Moriarty's back and executing big throws while stomping around. The Moriarty elbows at the finish looked good, and my favorite thing about all this may have been how Impaler sold their jaw after the finish. Very cool. 

Thomas Shire vs. Josh Crane

PAS: This was the least of the first round matches, but had a pretty cool finish. Crane is a Big Japan gaijin but didn't seem to have the hang of throwing UWFI style strikes, and most of his offense was strikes. Shire is on defense for most of it, until he throws a nice looking side suplex and then just wrecks Crane with European uppercuts out of a Muay Thai plum, which was exactly how you want a Dory trained guy to finish a shoot fight.

ER: I wasn't really feeling the stand up as Crane's open hand strikes didn't look good, although I thought Shire sold them well, especially a hard slap. Crane's offense was seeming to come alive (big knee lift that looked like it knocked the wind out of Shire) before Shire decided enough was enough. Shire hits an awesome back suplex and makes the decision to not take the suplex point so he could instead kick away at Crane. His European uppercuts landed deep and the stoppage finish was well utilized and timed. 

Alex Kane vs. Levi Everett

PAS: This is how you make a debut, holy moly. Kane has one of the fastest shoots I have seen in pro-wrestling. He looks like he is moving in 1.5 speed while doing two nasty gator rolls and a lightning taking of Everett's back. Levi only gets in two moves, but they both look great: a big bar fight headbutt for a knockdown, and a SUWA dropkick which actually works in this style. Kane finished him off with a head and arm cradle suplex which was like prime Taz level nasty. Two minutes but Kane is on my radar for sure!

ER: If you come in with the nickname Suplex Assassin, you have to murder someone to get that name over. Luckily for us the Amish love taking suplexes, because the match ended here was a doozy. Kane hits like an inverted fisherman's buster on Everett, a suplex that can be called the No Good Landing, and then we have to deal with Everett's lifeless corpse after. Everything up to that was great, a missed overhand by Everett lead to a great double leg takedown, Everett had a big knockdown off a headbutt, and there's some great timing on an Everett dropkick that hits heels first into Kane's chest. That suplex was a real finish though, on a show with all good finishes, that suplex is the thing you're talking about on the ride home. 

Bobby Beverly vs. Cole Radrick

PAS: They start out just throwing hands back and forth, finishing with a nasty open hand shot to the neck by Beverly. Rest of the match is Beverly establishing himself as the heel landing two low blows before his Saito suplex and a running knee for the KO. I really liked Radrick in the first round and would have liked to see him get a chance to do more here.

ER: Yeah, Radrick had a cool opening round performance and it felt like he was a bit wasted here establishing Beverly as the dirty fighter of the tournament. There's a fine line between these windmill arm open slaps looking painful and looking like clueless 3rd graders fighting, but I liked these, and liked how the opening flurry ended with Beverly chopping right at Radrick's neck tendons. Once Radrick composed himself he landed some nice stick and move shots, but had no chance in a format that apparently allows low blows. It's tough to do that "the pro wrestling ref keeps missing these low blows" when you're going for realism, as the low blows would work better if the match was actually stopped as if they were accidental. Beverly would still get the heel advantage and we wouldn't have to put up with wrestling tropes in our shootstyle. Beverly's Saito suplex and running knee make for a nasty finish, but we could have gotten there with different shenanigans. 

Dominic Garrini vs. Calvin Tankman

PAS: I dig Tankman on these shows working like Emmanuel Yarbrough. Garrini keeps trying to get Tankman on the ground, only to get stymied by his size, and it is hard to put on a hold with a giant dude smushing you. Garrini has been really clever with finishes and this was a killer, with Tankman rocking Garrini with big shots, knocking him down with a great spinning elbow, only to get suckered in to side choke for the tap. Love the Fujiwaraish way that Garrini is always moments away from tapping you out. 

ER: This started out slow and was clearly Dom trying to sucker Tankman into going to the mat, while Tankman was fine to stand. The stand-up from both was tentative, and that makes sense because who would not be tentative opposite Tankman? The finish was really fun, with Tankman finally hauling off on Garrini, throwing heavy elbows and a big chop, then nailing a big spinning back elbow that sent Dom spiraling into the mat. Alas, Tankman gets excited and pounces on Dom, with Dom getting his back and digging in his heels to get the tap. It doesn't seem too sustainable to lean into spinning back elbows just for the shot at getting a choke on the mat, but it worked here. 

59. Thomas Shire vs. Mike Braddock

PAS: Braddock is a OVW wrestler with a ju-jitsu and boxing background who has a prosthetic leg. He has really good balance on the leg, and it was easy not to even notice for most of the match. The only moment it comes into play is when Shire backs him into the corner mixing up kicks and palm strikes and accidentally leg kicks the metal leg which allows Braddock to take over. They had some good grappling exchanges, and I liked how Shire threw forearms to the ribs to weaken the body. Braddock is able to get a sneak head and arm choke during a mat scramble which worked really well to end a very even match. Shire is really fun in this style, and I hope we get to see more. 

ER: I thought this ruled, count me as an immediate Braddock fan. Braddock is like Catch Point Vachon, and his mat movement with a full prosthetic left leg were so natural that he comes off like an AI effect from Ex Machina. He moved like Buzz Sawyer, which will always put me in your corner, and it was easy to completely forget that he in on an artificial leg. It brings up cool psychology moments here, gives total new implications to a Shire kneebar. Is it an advantage that he has one less leg that Shire can work over for a submission? Or is it a disadvantage to have just one leg for every attack to be focused on? And that lead to a great moment where Shire was backing Braddock into a corner with strikes, and threw a leg kick and hit titanium. The grappling here was really great, both really tenacious and fighting for their spot in the semis. And the striking was really active, leading to a big Braddock slap, and Shire went after Braddock with brutal knees from side mount. The finish was awesome, with Shire pouncing into a rear naked choke after landing a heavy knee, trying to sink in hooks and looking like he had it, only for Braddock to turn himself and lock a head and arm choke onto Shire for a quick tap. I loved this, was hooked through every second, and I think I'm going to start obsessing over Mike Braddock matches the way Phil is going to obsess over Alex Kane matches. 

Hoodfoot Mo Atlas vs. Lee Moriarty

PAS: Hoodfoot is the breakout star of this promotion. I am not sure I can remember a wrestler who carries that 1985 Mike Tyson one punch eraser aura. Moriarty is much faster and was able to use that speed to flummox Atlas early, staying inside on his looping strikes and peppering him, even getting a knockdown on a jumping knee. Atlas hurls Moriarty but gets caught in a triangle armbar and needs to go to the ropes. You can only play patty cake with a panther for so long, and Atlas gets another takedown and taps Moriarty with a vicious neck crank that looked like he was trying to rip his jaw off. 

ER: I really do get excited for Hoodfoot matches, the kind of guy I can watch on a show and have a good feeling that I'm not going to have to skip through a match that goes too long. I loved watching Hoodfoot stalk Moriarty, and it all paid off just the way I wanted. Moriarty lands a straight kick to the chest, but gets cute and tries a kind of Superman punch off the ropes, and Atlas catches him with a video game violent suplex. The neck crank he finishes the match with was awesome, big arm pressed hard and flat across Moriarty's jaw, just brutal. 

Chase Holliday vs. Lord Crewe

PAS: A spirited little slap fight. Crewe has a ton of activity in all of his UWFI fights, he is like Max Holloway, overwhelming his opponent with activity. Holliday has more power and also throws a couple of nice deadweight suplexes, before getting the KO with a spinning backfist, which didn't land as clean as one would hope for a KO finish. Still this was entertaining and compact which is what you want from a non-tourney fight. 

ER: I love Chase Holliday in these things, makes it easy to picture Daveed Diggs doing a cool version of The Wrestler. The arm swinging looked good here, neither guy fighting like they were afraid of getting hit.  It's not easy to work extended open hand stand-up without it occasionally coming off silly, but this looked tough a bruising. 

Lexus Montez vs. Flash Thompson

PAS: I have written up three Flash Thompson matches now, and in everyone I primarily talk about how he has really good head movement and positioning. I want there to be more, but so far it's mostly head movement. I did like a couple of the open hand hooks, and the back elbow he used to set up the heel hook was nasty. Still most of this didn't totally work. Montez has a Muay Thai gimmick, but the knees didn't have the pop they need. This wasn't bad, but this tourney has set a pretty high bar.

ER: I liked this a little more than Phil, but I give it credit for the final minute being stronger than the first minute. That's been a nice floor for several of these Paradigm UWFI matches, and it's a plus that's built into the format. It makes sense that the guys would save up their most explosive stuff for the finish, especially if they're going less than 3 minutes. So guys sometimes save themselves for the final burst and it ends matches on a high note. Here I thought the Montez shotgun knee knockdown looked great and I liked how Flash sold the 8 count. The Flash rolling kneebar finish was really slick and I liked how it got the instant tap. 

Hoodfoot vs. Mike Braddock

PAS: Another great Hoodfoot slugfest, Braddock catches Hoodfoot with multiple short counter hooks for knockdowns, throwing shorter to get inside of the more looping shots. Hoodfoot gets a big knockdown on one of his big swinging shots, which actually bends Braddock's head to the side. Braddock gets up, catches Hoodfoot again, but while going for the submission scramble, ends up on his back, and Hoodfoot stomps him on the head for the KO. Really enjoyable scrap, and Braddock fits really well in this style. 

ER: Here's an indy dream match featuring a guy I didn't know existed an hour earlier. Mike Braddock had just popped up on my radar and made me want to see more, and near instantly he is matched up with one of the true breakout names from this UWFI trend. This had a few neat surprises in its short runtime, with Braddock catching Atlas at just the right moment to stun him with a slap, then following up to the exact same spot. Braddock wound up with two knockdowns before this was over, and I love how Atlas folded on the first one, taking open hand shots and dropping down to a knee before going over, and the second time he just spun down a bit, selling almost more surprise than damage. Hoodfoot had a big, effortless looking throw early, looking like all arms, and he finishes this with a damn chest stomp stoppage! Hoodfoot is out here just stomping a man's chest until the ref gets involved, and that rules. Atlas has basically been doing the coolest version of the Rodney Mack White Boy Challenge and we are here for it. 

Bobby Beverly vs. Dominic Garrini

PAS: Pretty damn exciting 45 seconds, with Beverly charging at Garinni only to get caught in a leaping triangle for the tap. Came off in the crowd like a wild UFC finish which would get GIFed and Sportcentered, and is a hell of a way to set up a Hoodfoot vs. Garrini final.

ER: It's tough to fit too much more angle into under a minute, but this was really impressive. Beverly has been almost openly flaunting the rules of UWFI, more concerned with his Heavy Hitters title and getting some actual heat by doing so. The excitement in the crowd is palpable as Beverly charges directly into a leaping triangle and has to tap, that kind of excitement where the crowd is jumping out of their chairs at a fixed pro wrestling result. Garrini's title win felt really exciting, and I loved the idea of the title being on the line during the tournament, guaranteeing the title will be also defended in the finals. I'd love a Garrini/Beverly rematch, loved all of this. 

32. Dan Severn vs. Matthew Justice

PAS: Holy hell was this awesome. Even though we are big time Severn fans on SC, I wasn't expecting much from a match from a 62 year old Severn, but he looked great. He has such natural strength, that when he got a grip on Justice he would just muscle him down. He was also great at transitions on the ground, having a long struggle on the mat for an armbar, or transitioning into a side choke. Justice hits a great looking spear when he got some distance, which was a nasty shot for an old guy to take. Severn snaps after a slap in the corner which looked like it welted his eye, and he just yanks Justice down, with Justice nearly getting his arm ripped off in the ropes. Severn locks on a sick choke and drags Justice to the floor and strangles him out. 

ER: What a tough fight, probably the best Severn performance we've seen in his increased indy usage of the past 5 years or so. I've been really into Justice's MMA legend killer gimmick, and you knew it was going to come down to something crazy with the Beast. The grappling here was really good, and Severn was moving more fluidly than during his 1998 WWF run, no way he was moving like a 62 year old once that bell rang. He stuck to Justice and squeezed like an anaconda, not so much throwing him to the mat as he did drag him to the mat, just a concrete block dragging someone under water. Sure there were a couple throws, but I loved the dragging, loved how he fought for an armbar or choke and broke Justice's grip by throwing glancing chops at Justice's eyes. Matthew Justice has a great spear and he really drove that shoulder into Severn's midsection, really looking like it took his wind. The shot of Justice's face while he was desperately hanging onto the ropes and Severn was dragging him under was so classic, with Justice's hand tied inadvertently between top and middle rope, he looked like a guy willing to rip his hand out of a trap to escape the approaching wolf. Nothing was going to prevent Severn from choking the life out of Justice, rules be damned, and the finish of Severn sinking in those hooks on the floor was really cool. Let's run this match back, maybe do a best of 3. 

50. Hoodfoot vs. Dominic Garrini

PAS: This really felt like a main event, with the two top guys at this style in this territory meeting at the end of a tourney. Almost felt like a 2020 version of Nogueira vs. Sapp, with Garrini being ultra dangerous with submissions and Hoodfoot being hyper powerful. Garrini is able to catch Hoodfoot in multiple submission attempts early, with Hoodfoot using his strength to throw him several times. Eventually Garrini makes the mistake of trying to throw with Hoodfoot, only to get stunned and knocked down by one of those huge bear swipes. Garrini suckers Hoodfoot into a triangle though, and it looks like the finish, until a sick looking Rampage powerbomb and ground and pound forearm for the tap. Great styles clash and I want to see a rematch bad.

ER: Hoodfoot with the gear change throughout the tournament is a real highlight, and the white trunks with royal blue accent is a championship look. This was a great looking tournament on paper, with cool alternate bouts and plenty of great pairings, and on paper this was definitely one of those matches you wanted to see. The fact that it was in the finals, and also for the Heavy Hitters belt, only made this more cool. Garrini is good at getting Atlas to the mat, and I kept thinking he was going to tap him within the first 2 minutes, but was also rooting for him to not do that. There's one thing Dom does that I don't really love, and it shows up in a lot of his matches, and it's that he's not great at selling during strike exchanges. There are always these moments where he just kind of stands still and waits to get hit, and it kind of seems like he's just someone with no rhythm? I'm curious to know if Dom is a decent dancer or not, as there always seems to be one of those moments in his matches where he's motionless, neck craned forward waiting for a strike. It's distracting and kind of gives away what is about to happen. So he trades with Atlas and then kind of waits to be struck, and Atlas delivers on that. The triangle catch is really great and I thought once again Hoodfoot was done, but the powerbomb was sick and that diving finish forearm is classic. 

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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