Found Footage Friday: DEAN~! 2 Special!!

In honor of DEAN 2~! tonight. Here are some found footage gems from DEAN 2~! stalwarts

Torneo Cibernetico: Felino/Mega/Rambo/Super Mega/Ultimo Vampiro vs. Blue Panther/Bombero Infernal/Dr. Cerebro/Negro Navarro/Scorpio Jr. (Torneo Cibernetico) IWRG 2/15/01

MD: Once this got going it was a lot of fun. You never expect too much out of the battle royale seeding part at the start and there wasn't a lot to see here either, save for everyone piling on Ultimo Vampiro in the corner at the end. The sheer talent in the match was such that once you got into the pairings, there was always someone amazing in the ring. Even though they were eliminated relatively early, Navarro and Cerebro got to stand out during those first few minutes, Navarro with his tricked out holds and understanding of how to project himself as a star and Cerebro by creating a lot of motion, taking a lot of stuff and contorting at least one person in unholy ways. Unfortunately, we only had one brief moment of Panther and Cerebro going at it, with Cerebro sitting up out of a Panther Tapatia.

They teased Mega vs Super Mega which the crowd wanted to see but if it happened, we didn't get to see it. There was a general excitement for rudo vs rudo pairings though. In general, I could have used a little more of both Dandy and Panther, but they both looked good in what they did do. Rambo got to shine with two rapid fire eliminations, first with this great double top arm wrench that someone should really steal and then with a seated campana. He fell almost immediately thereafter to a clever enough Scorpio foul only to get revenge at the end by sneaking one on him from the apron to let Panther win it. So fun stuff all around even if we only got the tiniest appetizer of Cerebro vs Panther.

PAS: This was fun rather then truly exceptional. We have some all timers on both sides, and we get glimpses of what made them great. A taste of Navarro, an appetizer of Cerebro, a sip of Dandy. Panther and Cerebro are the reasons we wrote up this match, and I did dig the little bit we got from them, 24 years later I am expecting more of a dish tonight. I really need to dig into this 01 IWRG Bihari is putting up, because I suspect their are some really hidden bangers (Panther vs. Felino on this show is closer to what we want) This wasn't one of them, but still well worth checking out.  

ER: Rob Bihari uploaded this lost gem not long after we announced the DEAN~! 2 Cibernetico, when I publicly said that we have no actual footage of Dr. Cerebro mixing it up with Blue Panther. The opportunity to prove me wrong led to us finally getting this Cibernetico out there for public consumption. When we found out who CMLL was letting us use for DEAN~! 2 we all immediately salivated at the idea of Cerebro getting minutes with Blue Panther and Virus, two compatriots that Cerebro hardly has any (taped) ring time against. There's an incredibly fun Cerebro/Virus singles from a decade ago (that Matt wrote up when he was just getting into lucha, which is funny to think in retrospect that it's only been a decade since Matt dove into lucha libre) and this Cibernetico that featured both Cerebro and Panther that was not in circulation. Once I publicly proclaimed that we had never seen Cerebro and Panther in the ring together, Rob swooped in minutes later proclaiming that we actually DO have that match in circulation now. Ask and ye shall receive, and we received a real gift. 

The DEAN~! 2 Cibernetico was one of the best Ciberneticos I have seen, and when I watched this match the morning of DEAN~! 2 my mind was in another place. I was somewhere else and watching this in a hotel room and pacing around my room until we left to go see the event space that morning and meet the crew. This match was on, and I was in theory watching it, but I knew I wanted to see it again. In the heat of the insanity that was the DEAN~! 2 live experience, every person backstage was buzzing during and after the Cibernetico. Blue Panther - at 64 - had one of the great performances of his life, young upstart Virus looked as good as ever, and really all 10 guys overdelivered in ways I don't think anyone expected. The DEAN~! 2 Cibernetico was, for me, the best case scenario for a match that looked like dynamite on paper. We got several to book several names that we never dreamed we'd have access to a year ago, and put them in a match with pairings we were dying to see. Then, it actually happened, and I was moved by how hard these men worked at our weird, exciting, outdoor Arizona mall show near a fountain display, lit by the neon signs of Universal Citywalk chain and axe throwing barcades. Nothing is going to compare to my memory of seeing this Cibernetico. Losing my mind with Phil, my good friend Will who I was meeting in person for the first time, wrestlers from DEAN~! and wrestlers who weren't on the show at all, is never going to be beat. Bryan Danielson coming out after your Cibernetico to give one of the greatest promos of his life, somehow convincing hundreds of people in the life affirming power of pro wrestling. 

I stated to at least a dozen people (probably more) over the rest of the night/weekend/next week, that I had watched a newly unearthed early 2000s IWRG Cibernetico and OUR Cibernetico, the one we all got to share, was better. I remember El Dandy suddenly being a top 25 guy on a DVDVR 500 and it made me want to get as much IWRG as possible. Trading for Negro Navarro matches, buying the Dr. Cerebro/El Hijo del Santo mask vs. mask match - and so many other shows - for $5 at Franks and Son Collectibles in some City of Industry warehouse whenever my friends and I would drive down to see wrestling. A 21 year old who now had opinions on Bombero Infernal and Rambo. Had this Cibernetico been available on VHS on any of the trips we made to Franks and Son lucha shows, I obviously would have bought it. Blue Panther, Cerebro, Dandy, Navarro, Felino, all guys I was buying tapes specifically to see. But I had never seen this match until Rob uploaded it, and it had the misfortune of being watched on the same day I witnessed live the most special Cibernetico of my life. 

So the competition was going to be stiff. The mindset was different, my brain was operating on other matters, I am no longer in a hotel room after binging on a breakfast buffet with the DEAN~! crew since we wouldn't be eating again for another 12-16 hours. Now, we're a couple weeks removed from DEAN~! 2, I've finally floated back to earth, I was finally ready, I can finally admit...this is a really great Cibernetico. I still don't think it's better than the one on DEAN~! but I don't think that matters because as with all Ciberneticos, this had things that no other one had. Maybe the only knock against this one is that it never felt like it built to a fever pitch and didn't have as much ongoing story threads, but at the same time it's filled with guys who I could watch wrestle in 2nd gear for hours. That is not to say that anyone dogged it, it just never built to any big bumps and dives, and I think that's incredibly cool in a different way. 

Also, all of these legendary names enter the ring collectively to Survivor's Burning Heart, which feels more like something you'd see at the beginning of a 90s Germany catch tournament show when everyone on that card has to come out and stand in the ring like an idiot. I don't think these Cibernetico teams were chosen based on their allegiances to Communism or Capitalism, but maybe this match is aligned deeper than I realized. 

I think everyone here had some legit moments. My favorites? Cerebro, Panther, Navarro, Bombero Infernal, Rambo. Maybe Rambo. I love Rambo. I love luchadors who move like Rambo. He looks like a poor kid in faded camouflage pajamas, just looking like total shit in there, but then he and Dandy are rolling and he dives into Dandy's leg with a takedown and Dandy is selling for him with that spirited 2001 energy he had and it's everything I want in lucha. Rambo's huracanrana roll up on Navarro is such a great surprise, smoother than even Dr. Cerebro's. Nobody bumps to the floor over the bottom rope like Rambo anymore. The old man luchador style of getting to the floor has been phasing out for a long time, and Rambo's exits are smooth and graceful and faster than you'd expect. "Faster than you'd expect" is one of the joys of older lucha statesmen. He hits two great butt butts into Dandy and the man shouldn't be this damn good with gear that bad. He's 15 years past losing his mask here and he's hitting his double wristlock and butt attacks like a 30 year old. 

The guys I fully expected to be standouts - Cerebro, Navarro, Panther, Dandy - were, and had a half dozen sequences each that any fan of theirs would want to see. Negro Navarro started the whole thing super hot with Super Mega, with the kind of llave and rolling I could watch for an entire match. Navarro had this drop toehold that seemed to work in reverse, body going one way, legs tripping Mega the other way, bending space and time for what could have been a simple single leg trip. Navarro has a snapmare strong enough that it could have been a piece of actual offense, and he kept gravitating to teaming with Panther to target Dandy in cool ways. Cerebro was incredibly vicious, a totally different approach than he's worked the last 15-20 years. He was real aggressive and rudo stiff. In the battle royal he was always running into frame swinging hard horizontal rights. He had great shtick to accompany mat bumps that were harder than everyone else's. His short run against Blue Panther was great fun, with a Cerebro huracanrana roll up and excellent Panther surfboard with awesome power. He also got all his limbs tied up by Bombero, who was holding the ropes so blatantly while laughing like a supervillain that nobody got in his way. Panther's crucifix on Dandy was maybe the most vicious submission of the entire affair, with Panther bending him back forceful, not smoothly, while Dandy screamed and crab walked slowly to a bottom rope.

Watch this Cibernetico. It's great. It's got as many special moments as the best Ciberneticos. They're all unique snowflakes. Can any nation truly stand alone? Maybe we'll answer David Bickler's question on DEAN~! 3. 

Rhyno vs. Low-Ki PWS 6/7/14 - GREAT

PAS: This was kind of a compact TV match, about seven minutes, pretty stiff, just a nice piece of business. Ki hits a couple of nasty kicks on Rhino a guy that square must seem like a perfect heavy bag for him. They each get a kick out of their big move, Ki liquifies his insides with a Warrior's Way for a two, and Ki gets a kick out of the Gore. Match ended with a bit of an awkward roll up, which kind of felt like two guys who couldn't agree on a finish. Give it another big move or two and it would really sing. 

JR: I'll always have a soft spot for Rhyno. I remember being right at the age where I could read magazines when he was coming up in ECW and finding out he had done time and being both mystified and terrified. I remember going to those Hardcore Homecoming shows less than 10 years later, and him working heel, cutting promos about how he was slumming it for a night before going back to TNA, and the guy behind me trying to get a "Bound for Glory" chant going.

What can be said about Low Ki that hasn't already been said? A captivating worker, an inscrutable person. If you hate Low Ki, you are anti-labor.

I had no idea what to make of most of this. I thought it funny that Rhyno is always notable for making his stuff look great while working pretty light, while Low Ki is notable for...the opposite of that. Here, I think they kind of don't know what to do with one another. In someways, it's a match between two guys who are good at working from underneath but primarily want to find ways to control pace, and I don't think either of them really found a way to get in a groove. I thought at the beginning, Rhyno was going to work kind of like a Stan Hansen brawl on the outside with Ki doing a Tommy Rich impression, and then when they didn't do that, I thought Ki would find a way to stick and move around the bigger man, but neither thing happens. Instead, we kind of get a house show match with a finish that feels like more generous on behalf of Rhyno, which I suppose is to be expected.

MD: I loved the look of this one, shot from underneath with those big windows up top. The crowd was more behind Rhino though he tried to turn them. Ki didn't care about them one way or the other. He just did his thing, full steam ahead. Rhino treated him like an absolute equal, like they were the exact same size. There was a small feeling early on that if Rhino just caught him that'd be enough, but it didn't last. He recoiled from Ki's chops. He focused on the back because size alone wouldn't cut it; it would open the door but it wouldn't even contain Ki, let alone defeat him. That led to a fairly long bearhug in a fairly short match but you didn't mind it much. I didn't mind the finish either, where Rhino kicked out of Warrior's Way and Ki kicked out of the Gore before Rhino got rolled up with a lumpy sunset flip as he went for the second one. I would have just liked those kickouts to register a little more emotionally. No one was expecting Ki to kick out but once he did, life just moved on. It's less the shocked face I'm looking for so much as the resolve that one gore simply wasn't enough and he had no choice but to charge back in, even though he was unknowingly charging towards defeat. I never got that feeling and to me that would have put the match just enough over the top.

ER: It looks like I'm the unexpected high voter on this match. It was everything I wanted out of a Ki/Rhino match and more. This was in the back half of a *13 Match Show*, some kind of damned spiritual successor to vintage post-midnight USA Pro shows of a decade prior, and it gets harder to harder to stand out in any way on a show like that. Well these too stood out. Low Ki hit Rhino hard enough multiple times to actually move him. I bet Rhino hasn't felt many chops harder than Ki's, and I know he felt that kick to the thigh later. I have now stood next to Rhino and realize that he is the same height as me, while being probably twice my width. He is a large freezer garage filled with 36 count packs of soft drinks but Low Ki's palm thrusts to the chest looked like something that actually would have tipped that fridge over. 

Rhino is one of out more uniquely shaped men and I love him working a bearhug down to one knee after press slamming Ki onto the buckles. Low Ki has excellent selling and this unmatched ability to recoil on bumps like no other wrestler has (maybe Lio Rush?), selling something huge like a bump to the apron or something less like a headbutt to the stomach or creating activity in a bear hugs. It makes him an ideal opponent for a man of any size, but a big couch of a man like Rhino can make him pinball and rebound in the best ways. And, as Rhino is the size of a couch, Low Ki treats him like me doing Macho Man elbowdrops onto my parent's couch, fucking up that couch with a Warriors Way, just messing up this living room set of a man.

Ki took the Gore so well that it makes the move feel new all over again. It was a great Gore anyway, and would have been great no matter who was taking it. What I loved most about it was how Rhino did not do his typical set up out of the corner but instead used it as a much cooler 180 surprise. He shot past Low Ki with a clothesline and turned on a dime to stop him cold as Ki was rebounding off the ropes. It looked fucking awesome and I don't remember seeing him use it as a momentum stopper. Rhino is always the one supplying the momentum behind it. I wasn't expecting Low Ki to kick out of that surprise Gore and I wasn't expecting Rhino to kick out of the Warriors Way so both popped me good. And I loved the finish, with Ki leaping over a  Gore that Rhino had set up at a charging distance, showing that Rhino should have kept trying to surprise the ninja and not give him any of time to quick react counter. When Low Ki is given actual time to react to an attack, he has too many ways to use that time against his opponent, and Rhino paid for that error. 

Mad Dog Connelly vs. Jordan Blade PPW 9/25/22

PAS: This was Connelly's first dog collar match, and outside of the Demus match I think it is my favorite. These were two staples of the PPW UWFI rules division, and this had the pace of a one round MMA brawl with a chain. All gas, no breaks stuff with both wrestlers trying to decapitate each other with huge chain shots from the break. I loved how nasty all of the wrestling moves felt with the chain in the mix, everything felt like it could go wrong and someone could land temple first on steel. The whole thing felt like a finishing run, sometimes you want to sip, sometimes you want to shoot straight whiskey. 

MD: There's such a Hansen-ian bent to Connelly and especially his chain matches. It's all implicit storytelling, the path of least resistance. They're not building a castle in the sky. They're not loading Chekhov's Gun. They're hitting you with a shotgun blast to the face. There's a cold hard logic to eternal forward motion. The train's coming. Either you can stop it or not.

And at times, Blade could. Connelly went for a choke with it almost from the get go and that put him at a disadvantage that allowed for a German Suplex. Less could be done when he hit the floor and simply pulled. That said, it wasn't until the chain came loose and the ref halted proceedings that he was finally able to start choking Blade with it, striking mercilessly by surprise. That was the opening for the gutwrenches, three in a row, with the chain dangerously dangling between them enhancing the image of each impact.

Blade was skilled, strong, and tenacious though and had an honest shot at it, but wrapping the chain around Connelly's face to further mangle him wasn't the way to go. Thus equipped, loaded, primed, he burst forth, that aforementioned shotgun blast in the form of a headbutt (because I can load Chekhov's Gun in this review, even if he won't). Maybe one last hopeful Blade Rear Naked Choke followed, but it was too little too late, for Connelly was able to roll through and end it with the selfsame sense of brutality that he tried to begin it with. There's no out-hating the Mad Dog in a dog collar match. The chain knows who it serves.

ER: I'm not sure this even goes 5 minutes and it clearly didn't need to go longer than that. I saw this match for the first time in 2024. Phil showed it to me in our motel room the night before the first DEAN~! show. I was sitting up in the bed that we would be sharing - there was some mistake because the in-over-his-head motel manager messed something up with our reservations, giving us a small room with one bed and Tom K the literal largest hotel room I have ever been in - and Phil was seated at the motel desk, laptop on desk. We were both exhausted after a very long travel day. I had a red eye flight and had hung out with friends in Philly all day, so I had not actually slept in over 36 hours. But we were both excited about the show the next day, and Phil asked if I had ever seen Mad Dog vs. Jordan Blade. I had not. 

Now we are in a post-DEAN~! 2 world and I saw more than one person disappointed that Mad Dog vs. Adam Priest "only" went 7 minutes, but I am of the mindset that Mad Dog Collar matches don't need to go that long at all. This is a wild man, unleashed, and most humans aren't going to be able to take a "normal" main event's worth of time enduring a chain beating and chain choking. This match against Blade is a complete match in its 5 minutes. There's no way to stop Mad Dog, only briefly slow him down, and I thought it was great how Blade didn't wrestle a bad match, she just got overwhelmed and couldn't find a way back in. It doesn't diminish her, doesn't mean her strategy was bad, she just got beat by a maniac. She tried to stop the boulder from rolling down the hill but those arms get tired real quick and before long you realize you can't even step aside, that boulder is going straight over the top of you. 

Hard to believe this was Mad Dog's first collar match and he already had full mastery of the chain. I lost my mind when Blade wrapped the chain all around his face and it only made Mad Dog want to use his face as a weapon. It was a good idea but she couldn't have predicted how Mad Dog would have reacted to having a face full of chain. If you've already taken balled up chained up fists to the head and barely weathered those, you just can't prepare for a chain wrapped maniac's face. I love how Mad Dog's violence does not just revolve around the chain. The chain is a weapon he will use but also a tool he will use to facilitate violence, in the same way the Gracie's used their gi to advance to the real violence. He knows how to use the chain to cut angles and change distance, but it is not his only method to bring violence. One of the more violent things in a match made of violence happened on the floor, when Mad Dog just charged into Blade's face with a back elbow. No chain needed, while the threat of the chain loomed always.

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Dustin vs. Claudio

 

37. Dustin Rhodes vs. Claudio Castagnoli AEW Rampage 8/24 (Aired 8/26/22)

ER: Matt already wrote this gem up at length when it originally aired, but I wanted to add a few perfunctory thoughts years later just to officially add it to our MOTY List. I have such fond memories of that brilliant but brief era in WWE where Cesaro and Goldust were among several of my favorite guys producing great weekly tag matches. I think of that window so fondly that it's hard to believe that was a full decade ago now. Cesaro and Goldust matched up a lot over a 6 month stretch from late 2013 to early 2014 and the matches were always given ample time to deliver. Most of them did. But were weren't getting Goldust singles matches during that era, just letting the best hot tag-slash-best face in peril in the world play to his strengths in perhaps the last best era of WWE tag team wrestling. 

So now, nearly a decade later, we finally get one of the singles matches that would have slotted perfectly into that era and excites me just as much today. Dustin is older and doesn't have that same gas tank, but the pairing is no less intriguing. I love a Veteran Who Has Lost a Step match story, and Dustin is great at playing that story. The way he misses his high crossbody and blogrolls all the way to the floor or hits his head on the bottom rope taking a shoulderblock, these are spots that mean more when done by Old Dustin than Young Spry Dustin. Falls are more serious to us old people. Claudio is the perfect guy to take advantage of Dustin's slower step, and Dustin is great at firing people up by regularly seeming he was about to go on a tear before Claudio could shut it down again as quickly as it began. 

Regal says on commentary that Claudio is the only person he's known who can throw an uppercut as hard as Dave Taylor, which is the coolest kind of compliment Regal can give someone. But more than that, Claudio is capable of working spots on Dustin that nobody else could do, while catching Dustin spots that nobody else could catch. He's arguably the perfect modern Dustin opponent. He catches the cannonball safer than anyone while making it looks like catching a 240 pound medicine ball, and I can't imagine Dustin trusts anyone on the roster enough to leap off the top rope with his rana. Claudio's giant swing is one of the great wrestling spots, but perhaps never better than performed on Dustin. Claudio is the guy who is actually capable of swinging the big man, and it looks so great because nobody has legs longer than Dustin's. AEW's top down angle of that swing and how much of the ring surface area they were covering was perfection. All of Claudio's displays of strength only imply that his crossface grip has the power of a trash compactor, like it's shifting Dustin's teeth in his gums. 

I really couldn't care less about the "Is this Dustin Rhodes' last attempt to win a World Championship?" story they kept trying to push on commentary, and seemingly only on commentary. Dustin's approach in this match, to me, didn't feel any different than it has in any other high profile singles matches. What does the ROH World Championship actually mean to anyone in 2022? This is a belt Matt Taven held for half a year, what is it really supposed to mean for Dustin Rhodes to hold this specific title? Would it really have been any different than giving him a nice Lifetime Achievement watch? I guess one difference is that the watch would actually mean something to Dustin. Dustin potentially winning the World Title of a company he never worked for in a company that is financing the company he never worked for doesn't really carry a lot of emotional weight for me. Of course Regal has to tell me that the ROH World Title is a Title that is "coveted by every single wrestler in the world"; they need to say those things, but none of it sounds convincing in any way. 

What I did buy into was Dustin's fatigue down the stretch: his red face swelling in Claudio's crossface, the way he almost bailed on a piledriver, tossing Claudio off to the side rather than sit back on it, the way it felt like he couldn't totally hold Claudio down on pinfalls. It led perfectly to the finish of an out of breath Dustin unable to duck Claudio's leapfrog, running face first into Claudio's balls, but also being tired enough to be incapable of capitalizing. Claudio momentarily compartmentalizes his ball pain and uppercuts Dustin's body out of the air, a final shot to the hull of an old ship. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby/Sting vs. House of Black

 

31. Darby Allin/Sting vs. Buddy Matthews/Brody King AEW Rampage 9/21 (Aired 9/23)

ER: So this probably isn't a Cool Guy thing to admit, but I was never a Sting Guy. Maybe it's because I didn't start watching WCW until 1997, and the only reason I knew Sting even existed before then was because of my friend Justin's wrestling buddy, which I thought was a knock off Ultimate Warrior wrestling buddy. To be clear, I was never anti-Sting, just due to era and timing he was never anyone I had any real connection to, and it is wild to me that the most connected I have ever felt to Sting is now that he's a 63 year old Terry Funk in faceprint. Old Man Sting has this crazy match formula that's like a one move Bray Wyatt match but not dogshit like those matches. He punches his way through his match until he takes a dangerous fall and spends most of the match he just works Vibes until his finisher, and it's fucking great. It just works so well and feels impossible it's happening, a Superstar Wrestling Legend boiling down Big Star wrestling to just vibes, while adding Serious Falls to your formula. It's insane and it's a direction I somehow didn't even see coming when he was working Deathmatch adjacent matches with fucking Abyss in TNA in his late 40s. 

Terry Funk added a moonsault in his late 50s and it's one of the coolest things a Legendary Wrestler has ever done. "But it always looked like shit" it literally doesn't matter you baby. If you went over to your grandparents one day and he called you into the backyard and said, "Eric, you're going to love this, I've been working on this trick..." and then my grandfather attempted to moonsault off a ladder or the roof or his truck, then I don't think it would have been possible to trust my grandfather ever again. If my grandfather fell off a ladder in front of his unsuspecting grandson I would be forever scared that my grandpa was going to suddenly swerve his truck into traffic for a thrill. Sting has children and now takes bigger falls than at any point of his career and he's doing it while living a life of full financial and personal responsibility. Adding a dangerous fall into your B-Show TV Match Formula is an insane thing for a financially stable man who has lived through 13 U.S. Presidents. Sting is a thrill seeker and an addict and it's made me fascinated and captivated by Sting. He punches, he falls, the he makes a lot of faces until the finish. Why do I hate Danhausen doing the exact same thing? I have no idea. I don't know why I chose this path.  

Buddy Matthews was a perfect Sting dance partner for this, so active at getting his ass kicked around by Sting, taking a break to take his own big bump and make a big catch, then back to the ring to pinball around for sexagenarian signature offense. It's a great performance to match Sting's vibe, the guy taking the important "small offense" bumps while every other person in the match took 1-3 dangerous stunt falls. Matthews gets RVD bounce taking the Death Drop and it's the perfect way to use athletic show-off bumping. Everyone else dies. Sting gets shoved off the top rope through a table and hits his head on a second table on his fall. It was incredible. Darby crashed like a sack of laundry on a blocked tope suicida, hit a high coffin drop, and fell off the stage with Brody King while getting choked. Julia Hart's bump might have been the most dangerous and unexpected of the match, with perfect placement after Great Muta finished his walk-on Carol Burnett Show appearance. It's a great spectacle, with Matthews whipping violently for a Muta dragons crew and staggering into mist, knocking Julia Hart too far off the apron, mostly beyond the table she was aiming for, a sicko landing that left the table partly broken in a silhouette of her body. Sting is indispensable.

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston/Akiyama Before Kingston/Akiyama

23. Eddie Kingston/Ortiz vs. Jun Akiyama/Konosuke Takeshita AEW Rampage 11/18/22  

ER: Ever since Dream Match Wrestling started in 2001 with King of the Indies, the most common way it's been naturally presented is as Matches Paying Customers and Internet Fans Want to See That Maybe Haven't Happened. It's much less commonly presented as Match Participant's Dream Opponent. Eddie Kingston's dream opponent is Jun Akiyama, and fighting a 53 year old Jun plays into every part of Eddie Kingston's 3 year + retirement tour. We never got any of Kings Road Eddie against the All Japan or NOAH rosters we all loved. We missed out on dozens of Eddie Kingston singles matches against Baba acolytes because Kingston only went to Japan for a week with Osaka Pro. Kingston's only singles match in Japan at the time of this match was against Kanjyouro Matsuyama, one of those Japanese wrestlers who has wrestled a couple thousand matches but is still obscure and only spoken about by real freaks. You have never brought up a wrestler as plain sightedly obscure as Kanjyouro Matsuyama, and we should instead all be talking about Eddie Kingston's fun but disappointing singles matches against Takeshi Rikio and Keith Walker. 

Well, now Eddie actually gets to fight Jun Akiyama in a singles match, and this match is the great teaser tag the night before that match. And what's great about it, is how they perfectly understand that it's a teaser to the singles match, and they work every little tease of Eddie and Jun going at it. What's even better is that Eddie and Jun don't even go at it until the end of the match, and I also think it's the weakest part of the match. More focus and dedication was placed on making the teases special than the actual brief squaring off: Kingston throwing a running elbow at Jun on the apron after tagging out, Akiyama kicking at Kingston on the apron after tagging in, Akiyama bailing on a pinfall attempt after a piledriver on Ortiz to not give Kingston the satisfaction of breaking up said pin, Kingston taunting Jun while giving Takeshita a nasty face lock and then not giving Jun that satisfaction by stopping his own pin. It was all hugely entertaining, and again, more so than their actual exploder trading at the match's conclusion. 

I thought Ortiz looked incredible. He looked great in peril, he looked perfectly in sync with Kingston during their runs - hitting a cool neckbreaker drop and throwing Takeshita into a neck-breaking Kingston DDT is the kind of spot that never looks natural but was smooth as silk here - and he fed for Akiyama brilliantly. I don't think Akiyama is washed. No, he seems to be working as smart as ever and seems to know the limitations that come with being a wrestler in his early 50s. But on Akiyama's hot tag Ortiz did an incredible job feeding for him, bringing all the speed and completely hiding the fact that he was moving all around Akiyama. Akiyama wasn't exactly Steven Seagal standing in place forcing everyone to run at him, but he wasn't not doing that, and I think Ortiz completely masked it. The match ending breakdown was a lot of fun, and for a guy I don't typically connect with I thought Takeshita's had an Actually Great Kawada sell off Kingston's wicked backdrop suplex, and I appreciated that his best elbow of the match was used to shut down Ortiz'a fire. It's a risk to run a Dream Match Teaser right before actually running the Dream Match, but this was an excellent tease.  

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Gunn Club vs. Jurassic Express

 

33. Austin Gunn/Colten Gunn vs. Jungle Boy/Luchasaurus AEW Rampage 2/11/22

ER: You would not believe the far-removed-from-relevant-discourse wrestling I have cluttering up my DVR. Sometimes I watch it, other times I don't. I've been mostly writing about 1997 WCW for my book over the past couple years, so haven't been watching much AEW or WWE. Happening across it, rarely making time for it, only vaguely aware of either promotions' storylines through my Twitter feed. Sometimes I'll have it on in the background, only passively paying attention, and that makes me automatically impressed by any match that ends up capturing my attention. This tag did, in a way that most Jurassic Express matches do not. I thought it showcased how good Jungle Boy can be as a face in peril, and showed how really good the Gunn Club are at cutting off a ring. It's a great heel team performance, a strong face in peril performance, and a great choice to keep Luchasaurus mostly on the apron. The structure does mean we build to an inevitable Luchasaurus hot tag, and that's the weakest part of the match, but things run so smoothly when he's not there that most of this match hums. 

Colten Gunn was getting really good at this point, two years ago. I don't know if he's made strides since, but he was getting real good then. I like how he doesn't go over for everything Jungle Boy does, stopping dead on a rope flip armdrag, and how it makes it mean more when Jungle Boy hits him with a bigger lariat to knock him down after; and how the next time he tags in the very first thing he does is turn Jungle Boy's ass upside down with his own bigger lariat, and later on scouts and avoids the same lariat that hit him the first time. It's a cool story in a face in peril tag match where they show that the babyface should have saved a couple of his tricks for when the match was winnable instead of early on as an overreaction. Colten has good timing - both Gunns do - and does things that really good wrestlers do, like throw punches from a standing position at an opponent who's on his knees. That's cool heel shit. Austin is a good guy to work the Picture in Picture stretch, because he's strong at holding Jungle Boy in place with convincing grounded headlocks that stay active, and I loved the stretch of him making a wild over-exaggerated tag out to his bro that makes him fly over the top to the floor, but then runs around the ring in time to pull Luchasaurus off the apron before he could tag in. Austin is very good at naturally blending planned theatricality into a match, and that's something that stands out in a promotion filled with guys trying to do that but doing it badly. 

I thought the hot tag was fine and liked the way they had Jungle Boy take out Luchasaurus with his tope, but I also am not sure I can name a larger wrestler with worse chops than Luchasaurus. The crowd is really really into the guy working a masked lizard TNA Lance Hoyt style. Hoyt was bad then, but imagine if he was doing standing moonsaults instead of learning how to throw a better chokeslam? The Gunns do a good job of feeding Luchasaurus but it's their chemistry with Jungle Boy and their timing that elevated this. But nobody in AEW actually listens to Fire of Love. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Hardy

19. Darby Allin vs. Matt Hardy AEW Rampage 9/14 (Aired 9/16)

ER: A lot gets written about how broken down and immobile and even irrelevant the Hardy Boyz currently are, but I can't think of ever not having love for two completely chaotic fucked up backyarders who publicly thrive and fail and endure in constantly entertaining ways. We would be so lucky if pro wrestling had more disorder. I don't want to watch a ring full of gamers, I want to watch guys who have a real chance of wrestling great and suddenly dying in an accident tantamount to Billy Joe Travis in a tanning bed. The Hardy Boyz occupy this amazing pro wrestler spot far above Billy Joe Travis doing blow, more akin to the wealthy but physically broken and addiction-prone Jackass boys. I love those boys in Jackass enough that I unexpectedly cried during a theater viewing of Jackass Forever, watching these old bump freaks no longer able to take the same amount of crazy bumps, supplementing their legacy of falls by battering the absolute hell out of their dicks. They were smart enough to know to pivot away from the legdrop finisher until their hip and back were fucked beyond repair, but also too stupid to not fuck up their hip and back beyond repair anyway. And I love them for it. 

I love the Hardy Boyz in the same way. I almost always love every broken wrestler that way. 1990s Andre is one of my favorite wrestlers of all time, an era of a man that fills me with passion every time I watch one of the 90s Andre matches I keep saved for rainy days. The Hardy Boyz are slower and broken and now Matt is getting publicly divorced and I saw someone compare their mobility to Rankin-Bass Christmas special characters. Brutal. But put modern broken Matt Hardy - who gets to his feet like Super Porky in his 50s - in a match with the greatest fusion of Jackass and Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 and it's everything I want in pro wrestling. 

Darby gets his spine worked over and does that think where he realistically horrifically injures his spine several different times. Hardy moves like a retired power forward but has a way of ending strings of broken movement with explosive impact. He takes a bump back of head first into the ring steps and seems to make it his mission to wreck Darby's spinal cartilage. Darby misses a coffin drop onto the apron and Hardy runs him into the ringpost with a powerbomb and the damage Hardy wreaks is righteous. Hardy playing his greatest hits louder and heavier plays so well to me. His splash mountain bomb, his side effect, pulling Darby out of the corner with a sitout powerbomb, it all hits heavy and negates any loss of speed. He really looks like he's destroying Darby and there's few wrestlers in history I have loved getting destroyed the way I love Darby. Matt Hardy's missed moonsault is a great piece of bravado, a too high risk by someone who can't be taking those kind of risks that he knows has never lead to a finish. Darby Allin is someone who knows how to utilize a successful backslide, and Matt Hardy is a tough guy who looks highly susceptible to backslides and leveraged pins. His Last Supper is a convincing pinfall hold against any wrestler, but against Matt Hardy I fully bought that it stretched his aged hamstrings tight enough that a kickout never crossed my, or his, mind. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Jericho vs. Danielson

 

2. Chris Jericho vs. Bryan Danielson AEW Dynamite 9/14

ER: I watched this match on January 6, 2024, the three year anniversary of the most important date in the Jericho household, and I think this match should be considered among the all time greatest Jericho matches in his very long career. Jericho is 51 years old, which is past the age where you automatically expect to see any athlete or performer's greatest work, and I was blown away how Jericho was able to work this great match without relying on his age for the match story. Jericho is a different wrestler now than he was younger, but this wasn't about an old guy showing he could still hang (even though it did), until his slower step and aging body leads to a painful loss. Jericho's act impressed me because of how effective it still played at his age, but this match would have been just as great if he worked it the same way at 31. 

He doesn't get any kind of break in this match and it's impressive as hell. The first 5 minutes is exclusively him getting chopped and kicked and thrown inside and outside the ring before finally ducking a kick and almost pulling Danielson to the mat with a German. Danielson welting and bruising and purpling Jericho's chest, and the pained way Jericho instinctively began flinching from these cruel shots, only got more intense the deeper the match went, hammering Jericho's chest and turning the chops into something that looked like they would physically wear any man down. You want to talk worn down? Jericho took so many brutal chops that it lead to his chest actually being completely sunken in and his pecs looking weirdly shaped before the match even started. From the chops. 

I almost always hate Fighting From Your Knees spots in modern wrestling, but Jericho does a great version of a spot I hate. I couldn't even tell you if I've seen anyone do this spot better, or who that person even was. Jericho alone owns it now. When they started taking turns punching each other in the head while kneeling directly in front of each other, it was easily the only part of the match I began to dislike, after thinking every other part had been excellent...until Jericho took over and started punching Danielson really hard in the side of the head and then started slamming the side of his addled and uncleared-by-some-doctors head into the mat. Jericho began a spot that he has to know was hack and overplayed and it felt like he was showing how to make that spot an actual successful real part of a match, a red-faced boat dealership owner's fantasy coming true as he beats an undercover Antifa member brainless on the Capitol steps. 

Pulling off the Lionsault in your early 50s is cool, sorry but that's the rule. Moonsaults of any kind past 50 are automatically cool. The moonsault is a crazy spot for a guy a decade older than me to still be doing, especially so because Jericho's success rate gets worse and more dangerous the older he gets, so the move feels like a Big Move than ever. Jericho has always had a great top rope huracanrana, and it is still a really impressive huracanrana. It doesn't have the leaping height it did 25 years ago, but it's been replaced with a lower trajectory and looks more powerful for it. That said, it's his punches while standing on the top rope before hitting his rana that looked even better, thrown right at Danielson's brow, Jericho balancing by holding Danielson's head and punching. I love a good missed ringpost charge spot and Jericho does a great fast miss and deflated fall through the ropes to the apron. 

Not only do Jericho's LionTamer and single leg crab look great, sitting heavily into both in a controlled way, but he is operating on such an entire new plane that his spinning toe hold looked like a fucking RINGS level submission weapon. Illusion made Danielson's leg look like it was getting bent around Jericho's calf, and I love how Chris Jericho is the technician finally able to show us the most painful version of a historically funny hold. Perhaps even more impressive is how his intentionally slow application of the figure 4 managed to breathe fresh life into a spot that has been done so many slightly different ways by the greats and also by the shittiest wrestlers ever, making me buy the move as a real honest to god finish in a way that I didn't think possible. 

Chris Jericho is clearly as effective as ever in the ring, and that's the story of the match. He will go on to lose this match, but he will not lose because of ineffectiveness or age. He was never ineffective. He lost because Bryan Danielson can beat any other wrestler on any given night. Chris Jericho - as wrestler and possibly only as a wrestler - is as relevant as ever. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Kingston vs. Garcia

 

21. Eddie Kingston vs. Daniel Garcia AEW Rampage 4/20 (Aired 4/22/22)

ER: I've spent most of my Wrestling Writing Time the past couple years writing about 1997 WCW, meaning there's a comical amount of wrestling from 22/23 that I've not seen. Meanwhile, my absolute favorite modern wrestlers have been racking up nothing but heralded matches in my viewing absence, and I get to experience them years after all my peers. This match was not "heralded" and some would say it is "baseline" Kingston, but something like this being completely under the radar is a testament to how much high end work there's been, and also a testament to just how good "baseline" Eddie really is. This is 10 minutes of Eddie attacking Garcia's body, and Garcia making big openings going after Eddie's ribs, and it rules. Eddie doesn't just chop at Garcia's chest and welt him up, he punches, palm thrusts and just hits this man's body, throws the back of his head into the ring steps, just beats him up. Kingston is wearing a brand new singlet that looks great, and he's keeps those palms open the entire match, making me long for several Kingston UWF runs where he mostly loses matches to shooters. 

Garcia is great at bringing a nice varied attack to King's ribs, and there are few things I love more in wrestling than Eddie Kingston selling a damaged skeleton and torso. Garcia is throwing knees to different parts of Kingston's upper body, running him into the steps, throwing front kicks, push kicks and knees, shoving him belly first into the ringpost and guardrail and apron, even breaking out a meaty senton I don't remember him using. My favorite bits were his two chestbreakers, putting quick stops to the danger of finding himself grabbed at arms length by a guy trying to twist his nose off. Kingston sells his body like a man having difficulty breathing. I've never broken a rib, but I remember those long epic workouts trying to do as many sit ups as possible, and how much breathing hurt the next day doing literally anything that would expand my abs. Kingston's faces and the way he held his body was the most accurate version of that feeling. King throws an enziguiri like a man with minimal core strength and his exploder hits like a wave crashing into jagged rocks. His call for the backfist perfectly baits Garcia into grabbing a single leg and gives him a freebie Saito suplex, making it too easy to hit the backfist. Both guys felt like they were each constantly going for their gameplan and there was no second where things weren't absolutely humming. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Real1 vs. Lince

 

30. Real1 vs. Lince Dorado MLW 5/13 (Aired 7/7/22)

ER: Look, it's been a long time since I've been accused of pretending to like - or dislike - a wrestler just to be a contrarian. Maybe it's the decline in message board usage, maybe it's that everyone now recognizes my honesty and ability to back up my opinions, or maybe it's because we all collectively give less of a shit about pro wrestling arguments than we used to. Why was Mark Henry such a lightning rod? What didn't people see in Comandante Pierroth? Who's to say. I have no interest in pretending to enjoy wrestlers who are actually bad at wrestling. My wrestling writing time is limited these days, so why would I spend time writing about bad wrestlers? I want to write about guys who surprise me, about guys who put in the work and got really good, who nobody else talks about because they - the wrestler - aren't cool in any way whatsoever. With that in mind, it brings me no joy whatsoever* to say that Enzo, the Real1, has gotten really good. 

Enzo and Lince Dorado had at least 30 WWE singles matches in 2017, including a 15 minute (!) lumberjack match on Raw. I'm not going to go back and watch those Enzo/Kalisto matches. Maybe I'll go back and watch the tag with Drew Gulak in it. But those 2017 matches would not be like this match, because these two were very different wrestlers then. I didn't care about Enzo in NXT, didn't care about his 205 Live run, didn't care when he got released, didn't watch anything he did on the indies. But, I am a big Reelz viewer. A Reelz Head. A Reelz1. You tell me where else I can watch Cops, On Patrol: Live, Cops Reloaded, On Patrol: First Shift, and maybe I'll leave my TV on another channel 24/7. One night a few weeks ago, turning on my TV expecting to see my little 4 hour block of Celebrity Autopsy, imagine my surprise when I saw Enzo Amore wrestling in MLW from like a year ago. And then, imagine my surprise when I realized that Enzo had gotten really good. 

Real1 looks like a freak. He's dressed like Ketamine Danny Davis with no tan and fried hair. He was always a big bumper in WWE, but he's evolved his big bumping into being actually good at taking offense. Big bumps are cool, but unique bumps catered to his opponent's offense and done like nobody else are much cooler. I never thought I would say that "I like how Enzo moves" but this is a real gotta hand it to ISIL moment. This match had cool matwork, a big dive, a couple of nasty bumps onto the concrete, and a scuzz bag from Hackensack who knew how to work with Dorado's inconsistent offense. The matwork opening was cool, and look at Real1 grind down a side headlock, or reverse one into a rolling ankle pick. He does some Finlay level violent shit, like yanking Dorado by the arm head and nick first into the top rope on a rope break, but knows that it plays different when he does it. When Finlay would do something like that, he'd come off as a guy leaving some guy's teeth in a pub. Real1 makes it look like something a dealer had to learn to keep his apartment from getting robbed. He fully stands his ground to catch a nice Lince tope suicida, really forcing the contact, generously leaning into everything. 

Dorado got shoved off the top FAR past the ringside mats, real dangerous looking leap to nowhere, but it probably wasn't as viscous as Real1 throwing him into a ringpost with a running splash mountain. He got a real head of steam and threw him accurate, and Dorado hit the concrete really hard. Disgusting. Real1's timing is really good. He knows how to move out of the way at the last step, or get his boot up into a charging Dorado at the last possible second. It makes sequences look more honest, not telegraphed. I loved his sell of Dorado's lethal injection, a move that I hate. He didn't bump to his knees. His soles stayed planted while he bent down into a squat, and snapped up into fast fall to his side, like a beaten rug. You remember Rashad Evans KO'd Sean Salmon, and Salmon's body slumped forward before whipping back like it was under his own control? Real1 did something like that selling the whip of this, the stupidest way anyone has ever hit a cutter. 

Maybe I am going to go back and watch the Enzo/Kalisto matches. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Darby vs. Hardy

9. Darby Allin vs. Jeff Hardy AEW Dynamite 5/11

ER: I love these guys. This was so good. The best kind of sicko wrestling, where two guys in face paint try to see who can break their skeleton faster. Time leaves Hardy as the safer bet to do so, but Darby has a fearlessness that makes me buy fully into his character, so this match is even money. Darby has done a couple hundred crazy good tope suicidas but his dive into Hardy was one of the fastest full contact dives I've ever seen. That was one of the fastest full contact topes of any kind I've seen from anyone. It's a No DQ match, and his cannonball of a tope annihilated Hardy so fully that it made sense for Darby to set up an elaborate folding chair death trap, and the match continued on as a great story of both guys choosing smart moments to set up complicated spots, so nothing ever felt like it had to be paused. Ring steps, chairs, and a damn tall ladder all added to the presentation and the build to their involvement felt natural. 

When the ring steps came in, it's Darby going teeth first into them because he took too long setting up the chairs. Hardy flew off the ring steps with a clothesline that he wanted to connect with good, and Darby flew into that clothesline neck first and really got hooked by it. My cousin Mikey broke both his arms when he was a kid, leaping off their doghouse in an attempt to fly. Because he jumped without noticing the clothesline in front of him, his flight went a bit longer than expected. That boy got flipped. 

This match wasn't just painful crashes though, it was little moments that built to those crashes. I liked when they were fighting over that big tall ladder in a tug of war, and how when they both yanked it out of the other's hands they just kind of ran at each other with no plan. They had an exchange that ended in a Darby Code Red, but it's easy to picture a lot of matches going right to a cleaner Code Red instead of two guys running toward each other on instinct with no sequence to run straight into.  

Hardy's seated jawbreaker couldn't have felt good on those steps-loosened teeth, and his corner dropkick was right into the side of Darby's neck. It's all a perfect mix of an old legend tightening up all the signature offense that he's looked so bored doing for the last 5 years. Hardy was capable of putting in occasional surprising effort during his last few years in WWF (see his 1/4/21 Raw match vs. Randy Orton), but maaaaan has he had some real dogs the last decade. I don't accuse guys of going through the motions that often, but brother brother brother. I just love seeing the man motivated and doing this thing that's wrecking him, all while wearing the worst face paint a first time Burning Man attendee ever wore. 

Hardy draws a ton of sympathy from me, doing his body breaking stunts. I'm a guy who cried during Jackass Forever, seeing these broken down men and their mangled dicks, and the feeling with Hardy isn't dissimilar. Jimmy Snuka was still on indy shows doing the Superfly Splash when he was 10 years older than Hardy and he wasn't pulling a single part of it. He was splashing people's guts out and telling them to puff up their chests for it. He was in no way taking any part of that in return. Hardy takes receipts gladly, but I guess that's probably not the only reason he's more sympathetic than Jimmy Snuka.  

That ladder was too high. Way too damn high. That could have been a man's death. Hardy hung in there and did his best to catch that Darby's death drop but he probably did his body a lot worse for it, as Darby came crashing through Hardy's arm and shoulder and sandwiched it hard into the chairs. I have no idea how either man walked away from that with nothing broken, but I'm assuming they just know something that I don't. I can only assume - I have to assume - they know something I don't, or that they have Wolverine's bones, because Darby's missed Coffin Drop on the apron and Hardy's missed swanton on the ring steps looked like two men flaunting their Adamantium skeletons. Jeff took all of Darby's in-ring Coffin Drop, too, and it's good to see that the guy who is no longer going to land on his tailbone to ease off the swanton, is also going to let you land as hard as you want on his torso. I usually hate that roll up pin after a guy takes a big finish, but fuck, Hardy took every finisher in this match. He's a guy I fully buy being able to take a finisher and then pull a high cradle. He takes it all. He just made it even better by pulling a cradle so high it actually looked like Darby couldn't kick out. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: AEW 8 Man Tornado

16. The Hardys/Sting/Darby Allin vs. Private Party/The Butcher and the Blade AEW Dynamite 3/23

ER: Man this rocked. Jeff Hardy debuted the previous week in a big way against Private Party, and I love how he kept the chaos going. At the same time, this continued the improbably, amazing run of Sting, somehow putting in his greatest work of the century in his early 60s. Tony Schiavone has been so good on commentary during Sting matches, and I loved the brotherhood in his voice when Sting flew too too far with an early match plancha onto everyone. Tony is totally beside himself, talking about how he told Sting to "not do crazy things like that anymore", but laughing to himself at the same time. 

The action splits up and goes all over the arena, and really the only bad thing about the entire match is that we couldn't possibly see everything happening. Every pairing looked like it was worth seeing, at least based off what we were able to see. Everybody played into their role and did it well. Jeff had this crazy clothesline over the barricade (silly me thinking that would be the most reckless thing Jeff would attempt), Blade bumps all over for him, Darby falls down stairs and gets ragdolled by Butcher, and the action flowed really well from ring to ringside to crowd to backstage. 

Jeff did a crazy swanton off a concourse window ledge, never denying his yarder's heart. Teenage backyarders have that skateboarder mentality of looking for things to do a move off of, and here's a broken Jeff still looking for ledges that would be cool to stunt dive from. A majorly underrated part of the spot was Sting holding Butcher and the Blade onto the tables during Jeff's climb and then bailing out at the last possible moment. That kind of attention to detail is the perfect encapsulation of Sting's veteran knowledge and how the smallest things can make a match great. Matt Hardy looked awesome during the finishing stretch, like he and Private Party had been feuding for years. Private Party have come a long way in the past couple years, and they're getting so much better at feeding for offense and moving into position. I thought the finish was spectacular, as at this point I fully believe that Sting is as crazy as Terry Funk ever was and would be foolishly willing to take a frankensteiner into a cutter. Sting hopping off the middle buckle and blocking the cutter, dropping into a dragon sleeper and fighting up to his feet for the Scorpion Death Drop was such an awesome moment, timed expertly with a Twist of Fate. This is the most hyped I've ever been for Sting, a man still gaining new fans into his AARP membership. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Arena Naucalpan Madness/Normalcy

27. Hijo del Fishman/Hijo del Pirata Morgan/Tonalli vs. Toxin/Relampago/Aster Boy IWRG 2/13

ER: Sometimes I'm just in the mood for a specific kind of Arena Naucalpan trios match. It's the kind of trios that surely happens several dozen times a year there, but they don't always have every element of what I'm seeking. I need: crazy dives, guys falling painfully into the crowd, guys getting brained by chairs that look like they came from a parent-teacher conference, blood, and at least one guy fucking up half the stuff he tries (without it slowing down any attempts at him doing and/or fucking up other stuff). This match had all of those things. 

Aster Boy bled so much (from too many edge chairshots from those rec center chairs) that he needed a full mask replacement 8 minutes in, and that didn't stop him from doing a crazy double rotation tornillo. Relampago fucked up like 3 spots in a row, including not hooking any part of his legs on a huracanrana off the apron that sent him crashing to the floor, triumphantly springing to his feet as if he stuck the landing. But he also hit a great flip dive and a crossbody off the 2nd tier, got bieled with only painful chairs to break his fall. Relampago spammed terrible looking superkicks whenever he wound up out of place, like this backyarder dude I used to know who would always panic in matches, forget what to do, and just hit DDTs. But, Relampago also hit a sick spin kick into a huracanrana that I rewound three times. Fishman and Tonalli hit a pair of crazy "don't let go" death valley drivers into the crowd, Toxin hit a sleek tornillo, Fishman - my stout king - was there to catch every dive and misplaced rana Relampago could through, and glued this all together by landing all his punches and elbows with real wallop. This is all standard Naucalpan business, but I was craving their kind of normalcy. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Cuernavaca Dandys

25. Los Dandys (Chamaco Galindo/Icaro/Dante Valaguez) vs. Arana Negra Jr./Mandibula Jr./Maulee Jr. Arena Juan Jaramillo Frikas 2/20

ER: I love checking out a lucha match on recommendation that has six guys I don't know. This was my exposure to the Dandys and all three tecnico fliers, one of those matches where you can just safely assume every town in Mexico has a trio of fliers and trio of great bases who are just doing this thing every week or two. Chamaco Galindo was the standout for me but the other Dandys had their own strengths. They're all great bases and each caught multiple ranas and headscissors and dives. All of them hung in there on some high landing ranas and tough to catch dives, but Chamaco had cool matwork and slicker positioning. He had a couple cool things around picking a leg and rolling into something unexpected, knows how to take the best bumps through and under the ropes to the floor. He also had a couple of big slams on what looked to be a disgustingly hard ring, and his slams had this way of whipping poor small skinny Maulee as hard as possible with no give. 

Mandibula was the coolest of the tecnicos. His mask has a big hinged jaw on it like the Iron Giant or Baron Von Underbite. He has a cool flipping tope suicida that bounces him off Chamaco's back, and he's the hit of the segunda as he runs misdirection around all three Dandys and sends them all sliding on their backs and stomachs to the floor with ranas and headscissors. Well, maybe the hit of the segunda is the older stocky ref doing a surprise forward roll bridging just to count a double pin. What a funny thing to see when up to that point he hadn't done a single thing other than stay out of the way and count pins like a normal man. Maulee was a fun skinny guy flier who made up for some hitches in his flow by taking some nice risks. He disappears from view on a great split-legged top con giro and leans into getting his chest kicked in during the tercera brawl, peaked by him getting rocket launched painfully into the apron and later alley-ooped over the top to the floor into a rana on Chamaco. It did feel like they peaked things a bit early, as the segunda got white hot and the tercera started with Los Dandys kicking the fliers around ringside, and then it felt like things settled down too much into a primera feel. I liked when they were peaking with cool catches and dives and slams, not forearm exchanges. Still, not much beats the uncommitted joy of a trios match with six strangers, especially ones like this that give you a few new guys to seek out. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Broken Hardys vs. Private Party

16. The Hardys vs. Private Party AEW Dynamite 3/16

ER: I thought this was a blast, a great TV comeback for the Hardys and the kind of high end role-working from Private Party that shows how they've really grown. Private Party knew the right balance of "Younger Version of Hardys" and "Lite Heel Showcasing Legends" and they hit it dead on, and the Hardys worked up to their legendary status. The Hardys are the biggest US wrestling tag team of the last two decades, and I am always a sucker for a wrestling match featuring aging veterans tapping into their spent youth. I thought Matt looked great here. His timing was awesome, and his offense lands heavier than ever. He still might have the best punch in pro wrestling, but every move he did landed hard. His Side Effect looks like a dangerous 90s joshi finisher, his Twist of Fate really yanked Kassidy's neck, and his downward strike elbows to the neck looked Misawa-level. Jeff moves like 48 year old Rusher Kimura now, and doesn't seem to be able to bend over and lift anyone to their feet any longer. But, now he just wrestles like old indy freelance Jimmy Snuka, landing full weight on every splash and elbowdrop, absolutely murdering rib cages with his Swanton. Jeff's Swanton has to feel worse than a Vader Bomb at this point, and Private Party hung in for every single heavy landing. 

Quen and Kassidy wrestled this with a smug confidence and it might have been the most I've ever been into them. Flashy babyface teams are okay, but Kassidy nailing a tope con giro and smiling at the camera comes off way better as a brag. Private Party were great at feeding for both Hardys while peppering in their own highlights, and both knew how to time kickouts for stronger effect. It was no guarantee that the Hardys were going to win this. AEW knows how to showcase veteran acts without crushing upcoming acts, and seems to recognize that some acts develop over longer arcs. When Dynamite debuted, Private Party were a featured tag act, and they weren't quite ready for prime time. Careers don't always arc as planned, and this was a great example of two careers at very different points of their arc, colliding nicely. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Doudrop vs. Becky

Doudrop vs. Becky Lynch WWE Royal Rumble 1/29

ER: I thought this was pretty great. It's my favorite Doudrop match, the closest we've gotten to her as a small Vader, or a large Dick Togo. Becky looks like a crazed version of Rose Byrne in Physical, wild curly hair and gold aerobics leotard only adding to her need to be in control of a match. I thought this did a lot of work towards making Doudrop look like a contender, as at the start of the match nobody in the house expected anything but a Lynch victory, and by the end they were reacting loud for Doudrop's Big Ending, thinking they might actually get an upset. I liked all of Doudrop's offense. She has, at times, the best current senton in wrestling, really making her feet banana peel out in front of her while landing flush with the senton, smooshing Becky with one on her back and a great one later that they showed in slow motion landing fully on Becky's rib cage. Doudrop keeps fully committing to her offense and it makes her misses even better, and her missing the cannonball into the ring steps was nasty enough that I actually thought we were going to get a count out or injury stoppage. 

Whenever Becky got too cocky or decided to run down Doudrop, she would always fire back harder, throwing Lynch with suplexes, hitting headbutts, even powering out of a sick cross armbreaker that I thought was going to be the finish (especially when Lynch started raining down boot heels to Doudrop's head. The powerbomb and running cannonball were when the fans started to believe in an upset, and I was there with them. As Doudrop kept powering out of offense and lasting longer than the arena thought possible, Becky started doing more Woody Allen nervous facials than I needed, but those reactions only made me want to see Doudrop headbutt her some more. The Rock Bottom off the middle rope looked good as a finish, landing Doudrop similarly to how she landed on that missed cannonball earlier. The Women's Rumble right before this was so brutally bad, impressively playing against the skills of almost 30 different women, that it was great to see two women craft a great match around their skills immediately after. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Villano IV vs. Pentagon Jr. MASK MATCH!

1. Villano IV vs. Pentagon Jr. AAA TripleMania XXX 10/15

ER: There's nothing else in wrestling like a big lucha show with a mask match main event. AAA has run some major mask matches over the last several years. I really loved LA Park vs. La Parka, and the Psycho Clown/Dr. Wagner match from a few years ago turned Psycho into maybe the biggest star in Mexico, while also revealing Dr. Wagner Jr. to be the most handsome man in Mexico. CMLL ran my favorite modern mask match, Villano V vs. Blue Panther, the perfect combination of two legends defending two of the most legendary masks in Mexico, fighting to keep two of the most legendary identities in lucha history. Villano IV had an awesome 2022, a 57 year old man who worked the entire year as if he knew this was his final year, and this match was the culmination of that. AAA running a year long Ruleta de la Muerte tournament all around Mexico was an awesome idea, leading to big matches at all of the Triplemanias. Villano IV had big matches against LA Park, Psycho Clown, and this final against Pentagon Jr. 

Pentagon is a guy who became a big star when all of the taped Lucha Underground matches started airing in 2015, an immediate standout on a show that blew everyone away with their first season. No wrestling show over the past 15 years has felt more fresh than that debut LU season, and Pentagon was a major part of that. Once the messiness of the LU contracts was sorted out, he and Fenix were the guys who really capitalized on their LU presence, and began showing up on indy cards all over the country. As his star grew, Pentagon quickly became a guy who stopped growing as a wrestler, because it's a whole helluva lot easier to get by on catchphrases and the Cero Miedo gesture. When huge crowds cheer for you just as loudly when you do your catchphrase as they do when you fall head first through a table, the choice is insanely easy. Pentagon quickly became a guy I went from loving, to one that I rarely go out of my way to watch, but there was no way I was missing him in a mask match main event against one of my favorite luchadors.

Any time a Villano has been in a mask match this decade - and it's actually shocking how many big Villano mask matches we've gotten in the past decade - my brain always compares it to Panther/V5. That's really become the benchmark mask match for me, maybe the benchmark lucha match, maybe the benchmark match period. I love it. Villano IV and V are such in-ring clones of each other (they are no longer visual clones, as V looks like a B-movie mafia villain or a Bam Margera uncle now) that I always wondered what Villano IV would have done if he had his own mask match against Panther. And now that he's 57 and has wrestled for 42 of those years - 75% of his life! - we're finally getting all of the big Villano IV mask matches. This started with Pentagon flying into a backdrop on the entrance ramp and ended with both men dripping blood while their ripped masks barely covered their faces. This was a fight, with none of that old man lucha grace. Pentagon is in awesome shape right now, lean and mean and excited to punch and be punched by an old man in the throat. Villano really puts the boots to the young punk (late 30s is young in lucha years), with some sick trash can shots and a bunch of punctuated left and right hooks. Villano takes time to savor the punches, even holding Pentagon up by the mask to punch him. When Pentagon tries to powerbomb him, Villano just punches him in the neck. 

Pentagon threw himself into a lot of bumps, and when he started throwing his body into Villano he went big. Villano threw such disrespectful punches to start this thing that you knew the old man was gonna get those paid back. Pentagon wiped out IV and V with a tope con giro, and I loved how we got a ton of Villano family reactions as Pentagon laid in a beating on the floor. Pentagon threw Villano across the floor like Pedro Martinez throwing Don Zimmer, a real fight on the floor. Wrestling has a lot of strike exchanges  that I hate now, but I loved these exchanges. The timing was off just enough and they really connected on these shots. These weren't mirror exchanges, this was Pentagon hitting a superkick under Villano's chin and Villano responding with the hardest chop he can throw, with all of it devolving into punches. Pentagon threw some really damaging looking leg kicks, like he was really trying to tire Villano out. When he threw a leg kick to set up a punch that set up a superkick, he executed it all so well that it looked like the best version of Pentagon. 

The big push to the finish has big stuff, like guys going through tables and a 57 year old man getting his guts stomped out by an all time great double stomp. But they balanced the big stuff with missed submission swerve finishes, and great timing on all of the nearfalls. I loved how loud the crowd got when Villano locked in the octopus hold, and the octopus hold cradle felt like the most dangerous finisher in the moment. I always get choked up when they show people crying in the crowd during unmaskings, a moment that hits me harder than any kind of sad fan playoff loss crowd shot. The Villano legacy really felt honored, even though moments before this little old bald man was getting his arm broken three different times. The post-match emotion was as good as the match itself. The emotions felt real, the hand shakes to every member of the family and all of the crew felt sincere, the ride around on shoulders felt earned and lovingly received. Villano said he would be retiring soon, and that he wanted Pentagon to be his last match. I cannot wait for that match. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: FTR vs. Young Bucks 2

7. FTR vs. Young Bucks AEW Dynamite 4/6

ER: These teams had a nearly 30 minute match several months before this one, that I imagine was the exact kind of match that every Revival fan wanted to see them have in AEW. I preferred this one, and not because I'm a joyless sack, but because this felt much tighter, less bloated, and felt much more like a wrestling tag than a This is Awesome performance. Now, it's not exactly profound for someone to state that a match 2/3 the length of another match is "tighter", but it's an easy observation. This is 20 minutes that felt like it hit a dry patch for awhile around 15 minutes in, but still felt like it hit the sweet spot. Keeping it shorter avoids unnecessary kickouts and cuts down on superkicks. 

I liked every guy in this, with Matt Jackson standing out especially, a grating ass who actually backs it up before getting shut up. FTR were a great team here and really seemed to be operating as one, with smart tags and awesome dedication to making the small stuff work. FTR is a team that makes sure their drop toeholds look good, and I think that's fantastic. The Bucks are great at making fun of FTR's Bret/Arn idolatry while also clearly doing it as heels. It's an easy target, and after the Bucks did the tandem sharpshooters, Matt hit a Hitman elbow off the middle buckle and stood up doing the douchiest Bret pose, I was laughing my ass off. The douchebag balance is very important: If the Bucks are too cool then FTR look like dweebs who once saw a gif of Arn doing a fake-out punch to set up a DDT and decided to do that every single week. The mockery keeps the Bucks heels and it keeps FTR honest, and I loved when Harwood did a fake-out to spike Matt with a piledriver. 

I thought they built to cut off spots well the entire match, like Nick stopping a powerplex with a big rana, FTR stopping the Meltzer Driver (surely it still doesn't have that stupid name?) with a Dax powerbomb, or the way FTR were always there at just the right time to blast into frame with a partner save. The Bucks leaned into cheating down the stretch and I dug that, and thought they came up with enough plausible ways for Wheeler to keep winding up near the ropes, hurt but not dead. My only real gripe with the match is that Nick came back into the action way too quickly after getting nailed with a Dax brainbuster on the floor. The sprint directly after was the only time the match felt like it was letting the moves dictate the match instead of the wrestlers. That said, I don't think the match ever went full overload, really loved how they all worked together, and thought FTR's selling was super strong throughout. We'll get a third match before long, and I assume that one will swing back the other way and be closer to 40 minutes, but man I'd love to see them go wild for 15. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: Rayo vs. Demon

13. Rayo del Jalisco Jr. vs. Blue Demon Jr. AAA TripleMania 4/30

ER: This show already had one great old man match at this point, so it felt like asking a bit much for two even older men to have one just 20 minutes later. And yet. 

This match was universally dumped on in every post-show comment I saw, but people have been bad mouthing Rayo de Jalisco matches on the internet for as long as I've been on the internet. Why would that change when the man is 62? I thought Rayo looked like an old guy out there having a great time, and while I can't say what everyone else is seeing, I saw a guy who can still take a match a long way with nostalgic charisma and a big loud overhand chop. They started with preening, posing, and flexing, which I thought was great old man lucha theater. After that theater, Rayo's big overhand chops and hard corner punches were an awesome escalator. His chops looked great and the punches were thrown like a man who knew he was getting punched in the face with a chain later. Rayo put a lot of good space between all of them, mugging to the crowd before each shot, impressively timing each one to bigger reactions. 

Rayo brings big hands and Demon brings weapons, ranging from a thin cookie sheet to his fucking hammer. Weapons are whatever, but a chain wrapped around a fist is pro wrestling perfection. Demon hits at least two great punches across Rayo's jaw with a chain-wrapped fist, and it's all right in front of a woman who must be somebody, sitting by herself looking like a soap star or the Tijuana Cartel version of Helen Mirren in Long Good Friday. Demon has a nice putaway right hand, and I liked how their punch exchanges aren't set to any kind of rhythm, just punching each other around the ringside. I thought both men sold the other's punches really well, and there was this awesome sequence where Demon fell backward into the middle rope after a big Rayo slap, offered up a weak-legged one on his rebound, only to get walloped with a Rayo return volley. The middle rope bump is something reserved exclusively for cool wrestlers like Bobby Eaton and Big Boss Man, so guess what this makes Demon, haters? 

Rayo dug his heels into Demon in little ways, like how he always pressed his full palm or forearm into Demon's face whenever pinning him, and how they kept punching and kicking each other in their old sagging balls so much that the ref finally just throw up his hands at it all. Referees in disbelief at the sight of two old guys kicking each other in the balls. Also, Rayo looks like he has some bad Mike Graham level ink down his right side, mostly covered by his singlet, and that only makes him even cooler, like he's a cool dumb dirtbag/local slap fighting competition champion

God, the fucking Cien Caras walk out, with his perfect style, like a dangerous uncle at a Quinceanera. He's 72 and still has an impeccable mustache, strong head of hair, and uses a cane with no uncertainty. Still looks exactly like Cien Caras. Mascara Ano Dos Mil meanwhile looks like he's on the same train tracks as Bill Dundee and they're going to meet at a plastic surgeon somewhere in the middle. Mascara Ano Dos Mil looks like Al Pacino playing John Gotti. Caras has the same kind of charisma here as mid 90s Rusher Kimura and man I loved it when he was putting the boots to Rayo. The old man who looks like the toughest version of the Bla-Blazo puppet is beating old rival's asses while getting his sons and nephews to do the same, and it made me yearn for more authentic family feuds in American wrestling. None of this was clean, but these old guys with terrible reputations as workers, representing a very different era of lucha stardom, still know how to take big lumps and milk deserved reactions. This match got downvoted to oblivion just like Caras and Rayo matches have been hated for 30 years, slow brawlers who don't have innovative smooth offense. But old men throwing stiff punches to a loud stadium crowd remains one of my favorite things in wrestling, and I fail to predict the circumstances where that will ever change. Don't believe the hate. 

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2022 Ongoing MOTY List: LA Park vs. Villano IV

4. LA Park vs. Villano IV AAA TripleMania XXX 4/30

ER: I've been buried up to my elbows watching and reviewing every single 1997 WCW match this past year for a book that is far and away the biggest project of my life. WCW had a big roster and a ton of TV time to fill, and I can probably count on one hand the other wrestlers in 1997 WCW I've loved more than Park and Villano IV. Looking at both men's matches and standout performances from that year, and there are only a handful of guys on that roster I could argue had comparable or better years in-ring. That was somehow 25 years ago. Now Park is 56, Villano is 57, and while neither are spry or anywhere near as graceful as their past WCW selves, they are still captivating in entirely different ways. I thought both men had some of the best offense in WCW. Villano had strong armdrags that could shift direction and impossibly smooth headscissors and hurricanranas. La Parka did more dives than anyone there and took bigger bumps than any luchador who wasn't Super Calo. The smoothness is gone, but the rough edges are what makes this match what it is. 

I think a lot of the actual, traditional "wrestling" in this match looked bad. Sometimes really bad. The moments where they're slowly walking past each other, the barely attempted missed clotheslines, inside cradles as slow as a 70 year old Mil Mascaras inside cradle. This was not a match made by move execution, it was a match made by dirty punches and headbutts and blood. Villano's headbutts and his punches to Park's face and body looked far more painful than his chair shots, and that was before the man bit into Park's head and sprayed blood mist into the night sky. Am I stupid for being shocked by something like that? We went through Covid! Now two old men who shouldn't need the money are spraying blood in a Monterey baseball stadium and I guess that's what makes all of this so great. I loved how Villano was saved from Park's chops and used that chance to punch Park in the face, and how it built to him trying it again and punching the ref even harder. Park is such a great comeback wrestler, you could feel the buzz as Park started firing back, then getting louder as Park traveled back to 1998 to bring back some chair shots from a time where we could pretend we didn't know better. 

The floor and crowd brawling was great. A girl gets kicked right in the face when Villano gets clotheslined into the crowd. She takes it completely in stride and only looks more hot and powerful for it, just getting up and moving over a bit as Park drips blood all over the front row while throwing headbutts two feet away, swinging a chair as hard as he can at the side of V4's face. Park hits a powerslam through some propped up flooring, and as his mask hangs off his face you can see that LA Park is the bloodiest, most violent Alfred Molina you've ever seen. I mentioned Park being the biggest bumper in WCW, well the old man can still take some doozies. He still takes the hardest landing banana peel bumps, here getting his leg knocked out from under him by a Villano chair shot; when he goes to the top rope he gets knocked off in real nasty fashion, dropping fast to his crotch and falling off onto the top rope. He takes several different DDT bumps and he always looks like he's bouncing off the back of his head, body landing just as hard after. The king takes big falls, but he's still dangerous on the ground, so maybe it was inevitable that they'd drag themselves into malicious low blows and a kneeling punch-out that was one of the best uses of that spot, Park's heavier blows landing more and more until he was able to just shove Villano over. I love the way big stage old man fights always seem to get to a point where both men are dragging each other over the finish line, collapsing into match's end in exhaustion. The consequences always seem bigger in this kind of spectacle. Two stars commanding a 13,000+ crowd, age showing while also being defied.

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Scenic City Invitational 2022 Night 1 8/5/22

Adam Priest vs. Cole Radrick

ER: This is probably worth seeing just for the woman in the front row who lunges hard at Priest as he casually walks to the ring, and Priest acts like he doesn't even see her, two feet in front of him, as she's being hauled away in a rear waistlock. Stunt Granny? Perhaps. I really liked Priest here. He acts like an asshole, and works like a modern Jamie Noble. He's really explosive when the move calls for it, putting a lot of snap on everything. I dug how he snuck in attacks around the ref's blindspot, sneaking in a punch past the ref's shoulder and a back elbow over his back, and I liked how he did bratty little things like lightly kicking a rolling trash can towards a kid after rolling to the floor. All of Priest's strikes looked good, he missed offense with intent, took all of Radrick's offense well, and made everyman moves like the DDT look like actual finishers. Radrick is a mix of some things that work and some that don't. I thought he had some really nice fired up babyface punches (with Priest doing an excellent job feeding into them), like  Robert Gibson coming in on a hot tag. He had a nice diving elbow to the back of Priest's head, and hit a cool Hitman elbow off the top rope. He really didn't do anything at all with the "bad knee" part of the match, but Dylan Hales on commentary did a good job covering for that, adding to an awkward botched cutter by pointing out the bad knee couldn't adjust to the loose bottom rope. 

Hoodfoot vs. Orion Bishop 

ER: I'm kind of surprised by how much I disliked this. Scanning the card, this was one of the SCI matches I was most excited for, but hardly anything about this worked. They started with some unnecessary quick rope running stuff and then both seemed to hit a gas tank wall 10 seconds in. Hoodfoot looked like he was on tranquilizers through a lot of it, like he could barely lift his arm to throw strikes. Now, I love in a hermetically sealed bubble and miss a ton of what is happening in pro wrestling, but I did hear that Hoodfoot lost an absurd amount of blood in a deathmatch against Slade. There's a chance he isn't fully recovered, and if that's the case then I'm impressed by the grind. Also, if that's the case, I would rather him fully recover. His missed standing swings to set up Bishop's offense were some of the most quarter assed swings I've seen, and every shot of his that landed was telegraphed a mile away and thrown at half speed. At one point they both trudged passed each other and ducked offense that neither man threw. Hoodfoot took a nasty suplex bump and hit a nice cannonball in the corner, but this felt like a match where no exchange came off properly. Even the finish looked bad, as Bishop hit a spear ("hit" doing a lot of work there) and Hoodfoot flinched on the 3 count, making it look like he was supposed to kick out but couldn't lift his limbs. The ref made the bizarre choice to not verbalize a single thing, merely holding up two fingers and a thumb that didn't clear anything up. Instead of just saying "ring the bell", she kept alternating between holding up an index finger those other three digits. Shockingly little about this worked. Did both guys put in a couple hours on the bike before this match? 

Myron Reed vs. Eli Knight

ER: Now this, I liked, even though it had a finish that I sincerely did not understand. The ideas and some of the execution dipped in the latter half, but there was more than enough to make this a really good 8 minute match. I'm not super familiar with Eli Knight but came away a fan. The man has springs in his legs and has amazing form on his moonsault, and I loved how he jumped Reed before the bell with a super high and impactful running dropkick and then a gorgeous moonsault press to the floor. Reed is a clever wrestler who is good at setting up some complicated sequences, and Knight is a guy who can execute some complicated stuff and make it look effortless. Knight had a really cool dropkick from the top rope to the apron, and then kipped up on the apron and grinned right into the hard cam. Both guys hit strikes with some nice jolt, and on the couple occasions where something didn't quite work they just quickly moved along into something more spectacular. Reed had a big flip dive over the ringpost, and I liked how Knight was able to use his moonsault as both a feint and as a strong nearfall. The finish might have sounded better on paper, but I don't think it worked in reality at all. Knight hit a moonsault, but Reed slightly lifted his head and neck off the mat as it hit, and apparently this meant that Reed hit a kind of grounded cutter on Knight? It just looked like Reed was sitting up to take some of the impact and I don't think anyone would have thought it was supposed to be Reed catching Knight with a reversal. Nonetheless, even with the dodgy finish this was probably my favorite match of the first three. 

11. Daniel Makabe vs. Damyan Tangra 

MD: I've bumped my head against this review a couple of times, but it was my favorite match from SCI this year and it's worth writing about so I'm going to power through. Phil talked about the great Makabe vs Garrini matched from Night 2 on the Ringer, but this was pure, unbridled move chaining and gamesmanship, build and payoff, total engagement.

How about some examples? Makabe previously beat Tangra with a seated triangle. One of Tangra's big moves is a swing into a gutbuster from a Saito Suplex position. Early on, Tangra went for it, Makabe turned it into the triangle, Tangra had an answer and could escape. When Tangra finally hit it, it was out of Makabe escaping a Fujiwara Armbar, which Tangra had put on through cleverly countering something else. The match had high points that were built to like that, that were teased earlier, countered, worked for later, but they're more a microcosm of the endless struggle. Makabe laid traps, Tangra was ready for them, and it became about which wrestler could take advantage of where they ended up after the counter to the counter.

It should have been exhausting, a endless cacophony of noise and counters of counters of counters of counters, of limbs provided and capitalizing technique, but it wasn't. These weren't two wrestling robots, two drilled out shooters driving forward at each other. They are human beings, characters, wrestlers, entities with emotional stakes written on their sleeves (or in Makabe's case, underneath his wrapped up fist). When Tangra got an especially impressive counter, you could see it on Makabe's face. Not overwrought, not over the top, but human and appreciative and consummate to the moment. Tangra, sympathetic, with an ever-growing connection to the crowd, expressed a real sense of desperation in escaping Makabe's holds, escaping late hammer and anvil shots, in avoiding Makabe's punch at all costs (right up until the point he couldn't, of course). When the wrestlers care, when they let things sink in, when they let them matter, those things matter to everyone watching as well.

The turning point of the match was Tangra making the most of a cleverly captured leglock, both legs viced together in a way that wasn't sustainable, that wouldn't draw a submission, that led to a quick ropebreak, but that did lasting damage to one knee. By no means was this the singular story of the match. It gave it color, like any of the other elements. It enhanced instead of dominating. In key moments, Makabe couldn't capitalize due to the leg. In key moments, it provided Tangra a target. It gave him an edge, but against Makabe, you need dozens of them. On this night, he had just enough to survive and to score a believable, well-deserved, still shocking upset.

In watching this on Night 1, we (or at least I) didn't know what we'd learn about Makabe's physical condition on Night 2, that there's a possibility that his in-ring career is winding down. Looking back, that makes this feel like a potential changing of the guard, one that embraced and highlighted so much of what makes Makabe special and unforgettable, while letting Tangra not just hang with the master (no small thing), but also show his own worth and uniqueness and reinforcing the notion that he might carry the torch forward in years to come.

ER: This was so good, easily the match of Night 1. Matt covered this about as thoroughly as I've come to expect from Matt, so I'm not sure how much I have to add. I dug how this was a real Makabe showcase in the front half until he got slowed by his leg, and then those same tangled holds he was breaking out in the first half were given a sense of desperation down the back half. Makabe is so good at taking a sequence that you think you've seen before, and then suddenly taking it in a direction you've never seen. Early on they went into a series of inside cradle reversals that ends with Makabe reversing into a nasty head and arm choke. I swear, there are always at least three moments in a Makabe match that look like something that could plausibly finish the match, and this would have been a cool way to do a sudden surprise finish. This wasn't the venue for that, but the point stands. Dan really glued himself to Tangra like a spider monkey here, keeping himself close for several minutes, constantly tying Tangra up, climbing around his body before rolling into one of the cleanest triangles I've seen. I thought Tangra's body scissors takedown into a heel hook was a really cool way to counteract Makabe's clinginess. 

Makabe getting his leg worked over changed the pace and the strategy, and I really liked how Tangra threw kicks at every angle to Makabe's knee. Some guys get locked into throwing the exact same kind of leg kicks, but Tangra was kicking it from the inside, outside, upper patella, lower hamstring, just throwing them all over the target. Makabe is one of the best at selling a limb, dragging himself up by the ropes while favoring his good leg, trying to hold a bridge with one leg and then getting instantly reversed when he flattens the bum wheel, slowing his reaction time during standing exchanges. He still had several answers to whatever Tangra tried throwing, and I especially liked him wriggling out of a fireman's carry by quickly getting a crucifix on Tangra's arm. Once Tangra made this into more of a strike battle, Makabe kept trying to unload that Logan Gilbert right hand, mostly getting countered due to his slowed down wind up. Makabe getting slowed face Tangra openings to show off on the mat, and he had an awesome STF where he choked Makabe out with his own arm, while also hammer fisting his bandaged hand. That didn't finish things, but it could have, and having multiple ways to finish and be finished is one of the things that makes this pairing so engaging. 

Dominic Garrini vs. Kevin Ku

ER: I didn't really like this. I don't think I really like them against each other. This started at one level, and basically stayed at that level nearly the entire match, and never really let the crowd in on where they were going. They came out and took turns throwing chops, then took turns throwing kicks, and I'm not sure they even looked beyond the ring during any of it. These matches feel like they're done for the weird enjoyment of the two guys in the ring, as I never got the sense they would have done anything differently regardless of the crowd reaction. Obviously this crowd did not hate the match, and I was amused by a couple of girls chirping in reaction to several of the chops, but I think this needed just an ounce of direction or purpose. I think I would have liked it more had Dom's scoop spinning tombstone ended things. Up until then it had been mostly perfunctory strike exchanges with neither really acknowledging that they had been struck, but that tombstone was nasty and would have made a fun "fuck it I'm tried of being hit" finish. Not for me, but no problem if it works for thee. 

Jaden Newman vs. Ashton Starr

ER: This kind of odd pantomime wrestling just does not appeal to me. Why are some guys so silent in the ring? It always comes off so bizarre. The Soddy-Daisy fans have a real connection to every wrestler on these SCI cards. It's a good crowd to work in front of, positive and eager to support. But this silent play acting wrestling just doesn't connect. At one point Newman hit a complicated but slick swinging DDT from the apron for a two count, and just sat there doing silent mouthing and hand signing. Every time either man appealed to the crowd it was done silently, going out of their way to not use any kind of words. This is a crowd where you can hear individual reactions of everyone in the crowd, so it plays even weirder when both guys are trying to stay so silent. It was so jarring when Jaden let out a grunt after being hit, as I had assumed neither could make sounds, but it's possible they just can't turn those sounds into words. I liked Starr's high extension kick while Newman was on the top rope, and liked how Starr whipped his head into the mat on Newman's swinging DDT, but mute reaction wrestling is so weird. 

17. Manders vs. Masha Slamovich

ER: Manders was the replacement for Trish Adora, which is a cool swap. I thought this was really good, playing to both strengths. Masha often goes really big in her matches, starting them with some big spots that can leave the endings of those matches underwhelming. Here, that made a lot more sense, as she actually felt like the underdog against Manders. Manders can absorb a lot of punishment and wasn't going to work this 50-50, so Masha breaking out all her big stunts felt like the only way she was going to pull off a win. She's such a fighter, but I liked how Manders overwhelmed her at times, starting the match by wasting her with a clothesline, throwing her through chairs, throwing hard targeted headlock punches. Her openings are all from fighting dirty, and I love it, like how she went after his nose and eyes to break out of a headlock. Her strikes all looked good, and Manders didn't sell them 1:1, instead he treated them more 3:1, making her land several hard elbows or a couple kicks before being moved. Once she started stacking strikes, it gave her more openings to hit big stunts. 

She dropped Manders with some big things, like an electric chair that bounced him off a couple of chairs, and it turned into Manders having to brute force his way out of things. He was taking real damage from Masha, but was always able smash when things got bad. I dug Masha throwing several elbows and kicking him across the chin, and it wasn't like he wasn't selling them, they just needed to come in bunches to keep him down. He was still able to dump her with a big powerbomb or flatten her with a lariat, but they were smart about adding that extra time or breath so this never felt equal. Manders really hammered her with a lariat that looked like it would be the finish, but had such a head of steam that he went right through the ropes to the floor. He still almost got the win (with a great pin leaning his weight way back over her shoulders) but that extra time gave Masha the breathing room she needed. The finish looked botched but in a way that I think benefitted the match. Masha piledriving Manders off the turnbuckles into a pair of set up chairs was pretty crazy, with both landing hard, and Masha basically just landed on Manders for the three. Whatever the spot was supposed to look like, I don't know. I didn't look totally clean, but I came away thinking that whomever was lucky enough to end up on top after the crash landing was the one who was going to win. A crash landing doesn't have to look clean, it's supposed to look like an ugly pile-up, so Masha being the one who got lucky on the landing works well as a finish for me. 

Robert Martyr vs. Billie Starkz

ER: I really liked a lot of this, but the Starkz win really didn't work for me. Maybe there was a way to set it up that would have worked, but I don't think this was it. Pretty much everything up until the finish worked. I loved how they started things, with Martyr being a little prick and then getting his circuits scrambled with a hook kick, actually doing one of the only good "stiffened legs while my lights went out" sells that I've seen in wrestling (I always hold up Jimmy Yang's silly "4 limbs in the air" off a Tank Abbott punch as the worst example of this). Starkz getting a flash KO pin would have been awesome, but as I said earlier in this review, this wasn't the venue for that. But I dug Billie getting that quick advantage and then having it erased when Martyr blocked a tope and ran her into the post, then hit a gross powerbomb on the apron. Martyr seethes into the camera "I'm gonna kill this girl!" and he kinda backs that up. He had some really disrespectful boot scrapes, punishing corner lariats, and a big layout powerbomb. All of his stuff looked pretty killer. 

I didn't love the forearm exchange, but only because Starkz has bad looking forearms that wouldn't look like they'd move even a small guy like Martyr. However, everyone probably knows the moment this match was building towards, and that was one of the greatest splats I have ever seen in wrestling. Billie splats across the floor of Soddy-Daisy with an insane swanton off the top, Martyr slipping out of his seat at the last second, chair absorbing none of Billie's weight. The chair might have slightly slowed her down but not much. This girl just leapt off a one story building to her concrete death. As everyone checks on her, Martyr is the one in the ring yelling at the ref to get the hell in and start counting her out, and I love that look on him. When she barely beats the count and crawls right into a brainbuster, I thought that was it. If that was it, this match would be going on the list. But the finish didn't work for me. I thought the electric chair set up was frankly stupid for someone who was holding the back of her hand to her lower back ever since the apron powerbomb, and I just didn't buy the set up or the win, no matter how sick a Rubik's Cube can look. Criticism of the finish aside, this was still probably my third favorite match of Night 1.

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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