D3AN~!!! Day 6: MORIARTY~! WOODS~! TAYLOR~! FOX~! GYPSY JOE~?

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Lee Moriarty vs. Josh Woods

MD: Look, this is the D3AN review and I really enjoyed the match, especially on the rewatch, so I'll promise to only spend one paragraph on the rope breaks.

Let me talk about Pure Rules matches in general first. It's a singular gimmick. There's nothing else like it. Every other gimmick match relaxes one rule or another. For Pure Rules, though, the gimmick is that the conventional norms and rules of pro wrestling matter more and not less. You get one punch. You get three rope breaks. Interference is nullified. There is a time limit and judging as opposed to just draws. Etc. It leans into the rules and puts more weight on them. It enhances certain aspects of pro wrestling and creates a more vivid and distinct box. In doing so, different stories can be told and the limitations can actually create narrative possibilities and inspire creativity. I've seen people say that Lee Moriarty isn't as technical as they might want and while I don't necessarily see that, I'd argue that he's strategic instead and that in strategy, more than just technique in and of itself, you find more explicit storytelling. His Pure Rules matches are full of those.

Which brings us to the rope breaks. Shortly after Woods opened up the match by targeting Moriarty's midsection, he trapped him in the ropes, and yanked on multiple limbs at once. Mike Posey, the ref often noted on commentary as a "Pure Rules" expert, called this a legitimate rope break. Later on, Moriarty, who had started to target the arm, did something similar by bringing Woods to the ropes and yanking on the arm. Dylan and Mose did a good job covering on commentary, but I'm going to cry foul. Again, it's about the rules meaning more. Sure, that means that if someone can sneak in a punch without the ref seeing, they can get big heat from that. Likewise if a rope break is somehow missed by the ref, but this was blatant and obvious. You can't get charged a rope break on a hold that is intrinsically illegal. It's on the ref to break it. If you were to outright choke someone and they went to the rope on the five count, there's no way that would count on a rope break because it's an illegal hold. I have no problem with Moriarty trying to make use of the approach after losing one break, because then the ref had already weighed in on it, but it has to be nipped in the bud now or else it'll become a slippery slope that will destroy the strategic elements of Pure Rules matches moving forward. And that's all I'll say about that.

That said, the match was a lot of fun. Woods brought a certain level of Steve Williams-esque intensity and bestial strength to go along with his technique, hefting Lee this way or that. Lee, on the other hand, had a lot of slickness and precision, kicking limbs away, getting in a counter that snap targeted the arm, etc. That's not to say Woods couldn't bring that to the table too, like when he locked in a lightning fast Navarro-style lock out of nowhere. 

When the match did open up, the duel "limb"work was interesting because Woods was working with one arm and Moriarty's midsection was what was targeted, leading to some unique and consistent selling. Between his strength and skill, Woods came off as a unique challenge, losing only because of Moriarty's superior experience with the rules. In this, you can argue from a story perspective that Woods himself was thrown by the rule disruption. He got his third ropebreak, but instead of honing in on the body, he went to the ankle, and instead of letting Moriarty crawl to the ropes and maybe even make use of them himself, he chose to drag Moriarty back to the center of the ring, setting up the roll up reversals. Muscle memory and an inability to think on the fly and maximize his advantages cost him the match, which is a very solid and compelling sort of story for a Pure Rules match. 

But yeah, I have some heat with Posey here.

AR Fox vs. Shane Taylor

MD: To me, the comparison point to Fox is RVD. It's not a one to one, but stylistically, he should be so different from everyone else in wrestling just as RVD was. The way he moves, the creativity, the dubious physics, the effort. The problem is we're in a world where a lot of wrestling actually looks like what Fox does. Imagine if everyone moved like RVD in the late 90s-early 00s. Even if he was the absolute most of what he was, he wouldn't stand out nearly as much. Things that you'd accept and laud in him would frustrated instead because familiarity would breed a level of contempt. That said, I tend to forgive some of the more ridiculous stuff and see it more as a feature than a bug or at least as an exception. 

It helps when he's working real contrast instead of something similar, and he had that here with Taylor. I liked how impromptu and free flowing this felt. Yes, it was a DEAN show, but it was also at the 2300. Taylor was a brick wall and Fox had to use every trick to chip away at him. Some of Taylor's matter-of-fact blocks as shots were coming at him from every angle were great. 

And Fox had to defy gravity, shoved off the apron and landing on the guardrail to finally hit the flurry that managed to get Taylor off his feet, a true moral victory. Unfortunately, he had to continue to escalate the risks to try to put him down for good and all it took was one miss for Taylor to throw the punch that ended it. This was a great way to feature two very different wrestlers in a short sprinty impromptu match.

Gypsy Joe Invitational

MD: Little disclaimer here once again. What I'm about to say is just me talking. I've got nothing to do with the running of this show. I write on the blog. I love writing on the blog. Phil and Eric are friends and creative collaborators, but this is their baby with the other Matt and TK and the coaches and wrestlers involved with the show. This is just me talking as me. 

We're not getting this thing. It's lost media. I don't even know who won it. I don't know who was in it. I've seen one photo of Slade and one photo of a flying VCR.

So obviously, something went wrong or it went off the rails or who knows, right?

But that's the DVDVR spirit, isn't it? Read the road reports. Read the DVDVR reviews. Look at what's been archived from the old board. Sometimes wrestling is messy. Sometimes indie wrestling is especially messy. That's part of the beauty of it. It's live and raw and real and passionate.

There's a perfectly polished company with glossy, pre-planned everything, which has sacrificed creative freedom for total control. 

And then there's a competitor brand. And sometimes that brand is going to be a little rough around the edges, and that doesn't mean it's not professional. It means it's professional wrestling. Sometimes you go to a wrestling show to see someone hit their head on a ceiling that's too low. 

DEAN is all about diversity, about finding love in all sorts of wrestling, about just how weird and outlandish and messy pro wrestling can be. Sometimes it's going to be the absolute serene. Sometimes it's going to be the Anticristo promo. And sometimes it's going to be Survival Tobita vs Ken the Box. 

I have no idea what happened here. I have no idea what I would have found good and what I would have found bad in this.

But I sure as hell know that Dean Rasmussen would have squeezed every bit of joy out of it and created his own where it was missing. He would have called out the mess but he would have embraced it too. 

So yeah, look, I don't think we're getting this. And that's fine. I'm so glad we got to see any of this show, that it existed at all. We're in a world where the maestro match happened at the 2300 and was up for us to see. That's a beautiful world. That's a world that wouldn't exist without people that care so much about pro wrestling. 

But...

Some of you were there. Some of you witnessed this. 

Come on over to the Board. It's there. It's working better than it's been working in a couple of years. You can actually scroll between pages now. Modern technology at its best. Hit the thread. Do a mini road report. Write about the match. Document the thing. The good, the bad, especially the ugly. Throw in some ~'s. Have fun with it. It'll be off in a corner of the internet not too many people will see, somewhere that won't cause any trouble for anyone. but it'll be where some of the people that care the most will be able to see it.

This show is an amazing, mind blowing, almost impossible to imagine way to honor the spirit of the DVDVR and the big guy at the heart of it, but so is writing about what you saw and what you feel.  

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 5/26 - 6/1

AEW Collision 5/25/25

Top Flight/AR Fox vs RUSH/Beast Mortos/Dralistico

MD: One of my favorite lines is that wrestling isn't math except for maybe when it comes to tag team structure. The idea there is that tags work best when the heat is longer than the shine or everything breaking down in the finishing stretch. That way you build up the drama, bring the crowd up for hope spots, take them down for cutoffs, and squeeze as much pressure out of things as possible before the hot tag. But so much of what I believe in is to set up baselines. Baselines are useful to ensure that the crowd has a certain expectation and reacts accordingly, but they're also useful because once in a blue moon you can subvert them to high effect. If you don't have baselines or if you subvert them too often, then you may create sensation in the moment, but it tends to lack substance and staying power.

If there was a set baseline for tag team wrestling in AEW (and I'd argue that it's iffy at best) this match would have done a great job subverting. It had everything break down right from the get go and only settle down into a sort of heat midway through before everything went wild again. LFI create a special sort of chaos that allows for this, the same way that Abby or Brody might in years past. Here, they ambushed right from the get go, tossing Top Flight to the floor and focusing on Fox. Rush pulled off the pad and they immediately made the exposed buckle dangerously important by having Fox do everything in his power to avoid being slammed into it. Because of their cruelty and hubris in not settling on violence but instead wanting to escalate things, Fox was able to get some space and set up a huge dive train (with Rush plastering Fox on the floor after he crashed into Dralistico and Dante hitting an absolutely crazy dive on Mortos before hyping up the crowd).

The heat then only started when they managed to finally toss Fox into that exposed buckle to cut off the early comeback. Chekhov's Gun loaded and fired to high effect. I would have liked to see the buckle play into things a little more afterwards but it was absolutely necessarily. After the break, Darius took the hot tag and hit his usual hot comeback sequence and everything broke down again, before LFI finally swept them under for a definitive win. So yes, way too much chaos and mayhem instead of building up pressure but by starting with the heels in charge and basically trading in the shine for that extra bit of heat and two comebacks, it all still worked out okay. Still, the more they stick to establishing that baseline, the more an exception like this will feel extraordinary and not just commonplace. 

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AEW Five Fingers of Death 4/21 - 4/27

AEW Collision 4/26/25

RUSH vs AR Fox

MD: I liked this because it was so different than almost every other AEW match. It didn't go two segments. There wasn't a commercial break in the middle. Yet Fox is a guy who has gotten both focus and competitive matches as of late. You need baselines and certain things are timed for ratings, but now and again you need exceptions, for things to feel different, to be weighed by hierarchy. I actually think the company's been doing a pretty good job of that at late, whether it be the use of Blake Christian or Max Caster's challenges or what. It keeps things moving, gives an air of unpredictability and makes stars feel like stars.

Fox is very good at what he does and while not all of those things are always the things I value the most, he does enough of what I value extremely well that I'm certainly happy to give him credit. Here, right from the get go, as Rush charged in with a forearm, he bumped and sold all around ringside, not just throwing his body into it, but being vocal and expressive. This wasn't going to go long but Fox went out of his way to make every moment jump off the screen. While that's not necessarily hard when you're up against rush, this was not a one man show and the sum of these two together was more than if Rush was up against someone without Fox's talent.

Then, after Rush took him just a little too lightly (tranquilo) and Fox came back. With just two or three moves, Fox left an indelible mark in the people watching live that night. It was a packed show, to the extent that the crowd couldn't quite get up for a really good main event (Kyle needed to be bleeding as he was fighting back defiantly, sorry; that's probably what the match needed). But they're not going to forget just how far Fox sailed across the ring from the top with his swanton (after he ran around the ring to get Rush from a surprise angle on it which was a clever but you don't usually ever see). Rush shut him down almost immediately thereafter but it did hit all the marks. Not everything has to shoot for all the stars. This was efficient and effective and I wouldn't mind seeing them run it back with Fox getting just a little closer.

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2023 Ongoing MOTY List: The Elite vs. Top Flight Fox

 

Kenny Omega/The Young Bucks vs. AR Fox/Dante & Darius Martin AEW Rampage 2/15 (Aired 2/17/23)

ER: On paper the idea of The Elite working a 10 minute long NBA on TNT match filled with amateur Harlem Globetrotter routines sounds fucking terrible. I mean just awful. They're wearing jerseys and yucking it up real chuffed with themselves, throwing the rock around. It sounds so fucking bad man. But I guess my brain is just wrecked on gas station Stay Hard pills because I enjoyed all of it and actually wish it had way more basketball spots. How were the basketball spots in this actually good? Everybody in the match handled a ball much better than I would have guessed and what should have played as Bad Chikara Shit played out as Good Chikara Shit: Jump balls leading to atomic drops or superkicks, Kenny catching a ball to the nuts running in to interfere, Nick getting a ball thrown at the bridge of his nose two different times! Who could have possibly guessed that everyone but AR Fox had Necro Butcher Throwing Chair precision with a basketball. 

Fox didn't really contribute to any of the good pass drill clown hijinks, but he at least spammed a hall dozen high hang time dives. AR Fox dives look impressive in air but make very light contact, so spamming them as a swarming attack instead of impact attack works better. They made the smart choice and made all of the basketball spots end with actual impact. The Comedy lead to The Violence. A basketball to the face hurts, and the ball was flying around the ring while guys were busy doing other spots. Darius Martin looks cool backflipping with a basketball. Really cool. Like the Phoenix Suns Gorilla cool. The Goon worked excellently as a violent hockey player gimmick because it's cool seeing big Bill Irwin checking guys into boards and going low on shoulderblocks. We've never gotten a Bill Laimbeer/Draymond Green violent basketball player gimmick. We're not there yet. The technology isn't ready. But the basketball spots in this match transcended Human Tornado dunking on a huracanrana and I was not expecting that. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Matches from EVOLVE 127 5/10/19

Josh Briggs vs. Adrian Jaoude

ER: This was fun, as it felt like a modern version of a good Sunday Night Heat Test/Steve Blackman match. It's a brisk 5 minutes, and even 2 minutes in it felt like they had done a ton. Jaoude (later Arturo Ruas) is a guy I like who might not have been good at this point, plus I don't think capoeira ever works very well in a wrestling setting. The timing of the strikes almost always makes opponents look kind of silly while waiting to be hit. But I think this might have been the match where his strikes started looking good, and there was an awesome sequence where he blocked two big Briggs strikes and countered with two of the best strikes I've seen from him. What helped is that it all looked way less sequenced than normal - even though it was - with Briggs throwing to hit instead of throwing to be blocked. That's a super important difference between modern wrestling done effectively and modern wrestling looking terrible. Jaoude was fun going after Briggs' hip, arm, hand, grabbing a choke, and Briggs had some nice quick power stuff to counter. I'm not sure I remember the last time someone got a reaction from me just grabbing for a chokeslam, but Briggs violently reaching out for that choke ruled.

Babatunde vs. Adrian Alanis

ER: Babatunde is the current Commander Azeez in WWE, getting actual ring time in Evolve. I liked Babatunde as a green Evolve giant because it's cool seeing huge guys wrestle, no matter their development level. I don't need to see him as a fake underground fighter, don't need to see him as a non-wrestling military dictator, just let me see a wrestling giant. Here he is wearing preposterous checkered tights (one leg black, one leg checkered) and he looks like the world's largest tallest ska saxophonist. Throw him together with prime pork pie hat Mr. Hughes and call them Skankin Muscle. This is only about 3 minutes, a Babatunde showcase. Alanis hits three hard rolling lariats that barely budge Babatunde, then Babatunde gets to show off his big man speed. He doesn't have a lot of stuff that looks great at this point, but it's fine because he's near 7' tall so just making connection with a guy is going to have something behind it. But I like his sloppy standing splashes and the way he catches Alanis with a choke. On commentary we learn that apparently the WWE trainers think Babatunde is the most explosive and powerful guy in developmental, so that explains why we've gotten to see him wrestle on TV twice since this show 28 months ago. 

Anthony Henry vs. Juntai

ER: This was only a couple years ago and I gotta say, Juntai is pretty far under my radar. I did not remember a Juntai wrestling on three Evolve shows in 2019, and it feels like Evolve was one of the indies I watched most. This was his only Evolve singles match and I liked it quite a bit. It was a mostly vicious Henry match with Juntai able to show a lot of cool tricks. The match had probably a couple too many tricks, but much more good than bad. Part of the problem is the layout, as Henry knocks Juntai out of the match a couple minutes in, and it's always kind of annoying when a guy is nearly taken out of a match and commentary is yelling about how the match may not even continue, but Juntai still had to get all of his cool offense in. I think you can shift the events of the match around into a much more palatable order and get to a great match, but we're still left with a cool match as is. 

Henry was working really mean with Juntai, and the match almost needing to be stopped came when Henry double stomped Juntai in the chest while the latter was bent back over the apron. Henry followed it up with a double stomp to the chest off the apron, then hit a brutal running kick all the way from the entrance. It was a believable enough series of moves to take a guy out of a match. But I'm glad we got to see Juntai get some shine. We don't get a ton of martial arts monk gimmicks. Low Ki and Jinsei Shinzaki kind of bullseyed the vibe of that gimmick for the past 30 years ago and nobody else gave it a shot. But Juntai does it really well. He has a ton of super slick movement, hits a cool spinning heel kick with his hands clasped behind his back, pays Henry back with his own flying kick to the jaw, and finds a ton of cool ways to roll and flip into position, and has some real precise kicks. Henry dished out a stiff beating and Juntai leaned into all of it, and was a strong salesman. Things eventually veered into some trading that I didn't love, but this was a cool presentation. 

Kassius Ohno/Harlem Bravado vs. AR Fox/Leon Ruff 

ER: I'm going to watch any Ohno match I've never seen before, but this tag match was inexplicably 30 minutes long and I have absolutely zero idea why. Ohno teaming with Bravado is like that one show every All Japan tour where Stan Hansen would team with the weakest gaijin on that tour on a gymnasium show, a man who everyone in the building knows is getting pinned. And because this thing is a half hour long, we get far too much Harlem Bravado, a man with almost exclusively terrible strikes teaming with a man with among the best strikes in wrestling. I suppose that makes them complementary partners? AR Fox doesn't have good strikes either, and 30 minutes allows for a TON of time for Bravado and Fox to get several sections of terrible strikes. Ohno mocking Ruff and cutting him off any time the kid made headway was what kept this match bearable, and after seeing Bravado and Fox make timing mistakes for a half hour, seeing Ohno always exactly where the match needs him to be is a marvel. Ruff getting cut off from Fox was satisfying but Fox can't deliver the payoff the hot tag needs. There were great big moments, because any single Ohno/Hero match in existence is capable of having some great big moments. I loved him hitting a tope con giro onto AR Fox and the rest of the Skulk, Ruff hitting a rolling plancha off Bravado's shoulder and right into an Ohno crane kick, or just the sheer that comes with a series of fat Ohno sentons. This could have easily been a compelling 15 minute match with Ruff separated from Fox and showing on his own, but dragging this all the way out to 30 was completely unnecessary and did favors for nobody. Sometimes you accidentally watch a 30 minute Harlem Bravado match and at the end are left only with memories of the person you were before you knew such a thing existed. 

Eddie Kingston vs. Curt Stallion

ER: Stallion really didn't work for me in this match, and I hated his lack of transitions when going on offense. The match really felt like Kingston trying to gamely fill time (and occupying time with some cool stuff), Stallion nearly being put away several times, and then merely deciding to go back on offense when it suited him. Stallion's big plus in this match was having skin that gets nice shades of red and purple in response to Kingston chopping his chest, throwing palms at his back, or slapping Stallion in the stomach. Stallion jumped Kingston the second he got into the ring, and I like how Kingston kept rolling out to compose himself whenever he was disadvantaged, knowing Stallion would take the bait and roll out, giving Kingston the advantage. Kingston's brawling looked good, but it was like he kept trying to play off an energy that Stallion kept refusing to give. For a guy who came rushing into the match, Stallion gave this whole match a pretty sleepy vibe. He wasn't putting anything into kickouts and again, kept lazily going back to offense after close kickouts, and I don't buy a lot of his signature offense against Kingston. A good wrestler should be able to switch up his moveset depending on opponent, and the foot stomp/pull opponent into suplex doesn't work as well with a larger guy like King. I liked the way Kingston would annoyingly nudge Stallion into position with his knees, loved his heavy throws and big chops, but I could not get into Stallion's approach to this match. 

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Matches from EVOLVE 139 11/9/19

Colby Corino vs. AR Fox

ER: This had some problems, but it also had some things that made it very much worth my time. A lot of the problems I had were with Fox, because he's one of the flat out most uninteresting salesman in Evolve. He sells almost every move he takes the same way he sells moves that he delivers, and it makes his matches look like we're all just waiting around for something serious to happen. Delivers a cutter, stands up and does a little hyphy dance; takes a cutter, stands up and sells like a later step in that same hyphy dance. He sells "about to deliver a move" and "just got kicked" like a guy who is just figuring out he ate some bad whitefish. Oh, until the end, where instead of selling indifference, he sold being knocked out cold on a kick that looked like it missed. So he either sells a couple of kicks to the face by doing handstands a moment later, or he sells a kick near his face like Kurisu was his debut match opponent. But that's cool, because after that KO and great false finish he managed to get up and hit a 450 just fine. So Fox worked a match where Corino was competitive the whole time and genuinely looked like he might pull off an upset, and the way he shrugged through every part of the match really lessened the impact of Corino's performance. Corino had a couple off moments, but way more strong as hell moments. He looked like he flinched on that missed kick at the end, and I get it because he probably didn't want to cave in Fox's face (spot was Fox leaping off the top by Corino sidestepping and upkicking like he was Kawada). But he does so many little things well, like not skimping on less severe kicks (his kicks to the stomach are straight thrusts, and his super kicks have great full extension and actually look like he slides into it to increase impact), and he starts the match with my favorite lock up I've seen in months. He really goes in hard on the lock up, keeping low to shore up his gravity, and believably bulls the larger Fox across the ring. He has a couple of great logical reversals out of sequences, like a really nice ace crusher that came out of a fine battle over a vertical suplex, or the way he just starts punching Fox in the back of the head immediately after a Fox kickout, or how he snapmares Fox into a turnbuckle. This didn't need a ton to be a really good match, really all it would have taken was some extra effort from Fox, but this is just more proof of how good Corino is getting.


97. Sean Maluta/Joe Gacy vs. Anthony Gutierrez/Arturo Ruas

ER: Great way to work a match like this, just have the two different fight guys come in and do their tricks, have the heel team cheat like assholes, have both teams work funky double teams with a couple of stiff pinfall saves, and get the hell out of there before it all blows up. Gutierrez is great in matches like these, all fast kicks that land heel to gallbladder, a willingness to take some nasty spills, and a surprise tope con hilo onto both The Unwanted. Non-pro wrestler athletes are a glorious goldmine early on in their wrestling career, and if Gutierrez sticks to this I seriously doubt we'll see him trying loose but effective (and dangerous) stuff like that tope. It doesn't have any of the slickness that someone like Ricochet brings to the move, and it benefits from that, as it just looks like a guy winging his body best he can into two men larger than him. Maluta has great chops and a nice right, and uses both of those effectively here. Gacy cuts out BS handspring offense and instead sticks to lariating Ruas in the back of the head (to set up a Maluta chestbreaker), and his 360 lariat is perfectly used as the final killshot after Maluta punts Gutierrez in the balls FROM BEHIND! Everyone moved quick and didn't linger on anything, Gacy and Maluta constantly either getting overwhelmed by weird fighting styles while also finding fun ways to stay ahead of those fighting styles. Not everything is going to land (I still don't love Gutierrez's corkscrew shooting star that never quite lands, and some of Ruas's strikes can look silly), but this was a kick ass style clash.

PAS: This was fun stuff. Maluta and Gacy are a really good hard hitting team, and they make the beat down look good and really let the face team shine. I liked all of the double teams in this match, they all made sense, and looked good. I am all in on Gacy if he is going to limit his offense to hard clubs and nasty lariats. The announcers said that "Joe Gacy can do anything" but I really want him to just do one thing. Gutierrez is two steps forward, one step back, but the steps forward are fun steps, and I love wrestlers going to the body. Unwanted versus the Performance Center is a fun feud, and pretty much always delivers.


32. Eddie Kingston vs. Babatunde

ER: We wanted to watch Kingston against green Performance Center guys, and we are getting just that. Kingston vs. Giant isn't a match we get a lot, and there's a ton of joy to be had watching Kingston get ragdolled around while trying to rip a man's ear off. There's a Burt Reynolds movie I really love called Heat, and in it he gets hired to teach self defense to Peter MacNicol. Burt immediately takes things up to 10 and suggests in his first lesson that his go to move is ripping a man's ear off. "It's surprisingly easy to do, only held on by a little cartilage. Showing a man his own ear is a good way to get his attention." Kingston as down and out Las Vegas degenerate bouncer going after the ears of tough guys is my kind of Kingston. We're starting to get a real glut of "Big Man Launching Tiny Man" matches, what with AEW running at least two per week, so watching a big man try and throw someone who can land with actual size and sell those throws in unique ways, gives us a welcome twist. We get the old Vader/Cactus Jack spot where Kingston is hanging off Babatunde like a backpack, and Babatunde just takes a back bump to crush Kingston. Kingston's outstretched, frozen arm is a great sell for someone afraid to move because of damage incurred. Kingston keeps going to the ear, even after eating a big vertical suplex he rolls over and just grabs that damn ear. I like how Kingston takes big power offense, like the torture rack neckbreaker, or the pop up chop, but I like even more when Kingston just kicks Babatunde right in the balls. The match was "Relaxed Rules" and really outside of that ball shot and Kingston stealing and attempting to use the ref's belt, there wasn't much done that wouldn't have been allowed under Agitated Rules. But Kingston brought a ton of color to a big man battle, and scanning the Evolve roster I don't see anyone who could have given him a more fun match than the King.

PAS: I thought this was totally awesome, loved every second of it. Babatunde is aways away, but Eddie made all of his offense look great and really went after him with unhinged viciousness. There are so many great flavors of Eddie Kingston, nasty unprofessional asshole is one of them, this felt like him beating on Shane Storm. All of the ear attacks looked great, were really simple and made a ton of sense fighting a huge guy like Babatunde. Eric made a good point about how great Eddie is at taking huge power throws. He doesn't bounce, he thuds. I also loved his big German suplex, you could really see him using all of his leverage and strength to get Babatunde over. I can't imagine this match being worked better, what a performance by the King.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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EVOLVE 131: 10th Anniversary Special 7/13/19 Live Blog!

This is weird! But I'm home alone on a Saturday night, and there's no way I'm going to miss Eddie Damn Kingston's debut on the WWE Network.

Josh Briggs vs. Anthony Greene

ER: I've gone out of my way a couple times to watch Greene, because he's been getting talked up a lot lately, but I watched him have a lame match with Stevie Richards and I pretty much wrote him off at that point. I dug Briggs/Chris Dickinson from earlier this year, but even in that match Briggs came off like "Test on an above average night". And this match started off plenty fun, but it was really same-y and started to feel like 2 minutes for every 1 minute that passed. Greene has a nice straight right hand that he used several times (and even a nice straight left that he used once), and I think his offense looks good but a lot of it is tied together with combos, which I kind of hate. I liked the stuff worked on the apron, thought it was cool when Briggs got knocked down to a knee and to the floor, dug Briggs catching a tope and chokeslamming Greene on the apron. They work some fun stuff out of the corner, with Briggs getting caught with a kick charging in, but kicking Greene in the chest anyway and then hitting a follow up yakuza, and plenty of things looked cool (Briggs' chokeslam into a powerbomb was killer, his release suplex looked dangerous but was safe), but around the 7 minute mark they started going into the "He can't believe it!" shocked pinfall faces and more learned behavior stuff, and then I just wanted it to stop. This wasn't bad, though with the tools each guy brings they could have laid this out in a more interesting way.


We get an Eddie Kingston promo on the Network, and I'm a happy man. There is nobody in modern wrestling close to Kingston when it comes to promos, no clear second place.

Sean Maluta vs. Curt Stallion vs. Stephen Wolf vs. Harlem Bravado

ER: Harlem Bravado is such a goofy dude, like if Adam Driver lost 30 pounds and got a tech job. And I thought this mostly stunk. We got a dive train spot where Wolf shot a couple feet past everyone on a tope con giro, then Maluta shot only one foot past everyone with his tope con giro, then Stallion at least hit a decent Fosbury Flop. Bravado is bad at setting up offense, doing some silly bad missed clotheslines; Maluta threw a bunch of superkicks, and some of them looked good; Stallion would throw a nice big boot and then do a blatant thigh slap knee. It boiled down to a fairly dumb strike exchange between Wolf and Stallion that had a total of one nice strike (a cool rolling elbow by Wolf). The brief finishing run was hot and had a couple finishers chained together nicely, but I couldn't wait for this one to end.

Arturo Ruas vs. Anthony Henry

ER: I've never actually seen Ruas before, and this is kind of exciting! I don't actually know if his amateur credentials are a work or not, but he's a guy my age doing cool body scissor takedowns on WWE TV so I'm ready to buy in. And this match was a really great change of pace after that last clunker. It comes out of the gates looking like it's going to be a 4 minute match, worked like something off that awesome Tetsujin Shoot Style show from 2015. And I think this would have benefitted from being 4 minutes. It was a good 10 minute match, but it felt like it could have been a classic 4 minute match. Ruas brings some unique takedowns and strikes, coming off like a capoeira guy trying jiu jitsu, going for scissor takedowns and armbars, throwing kicks at ankles and chest, a fun replacement for my boy Jaka (who disappeared in January). I'll typically be into any Evolve guy who would fit into Check Point. Henry is a pro, and I liked how these guys scrambled, though again I do wish we cut the time and kept some of the mystery. Once it crept past 6 minutes or so it got a lot more pro style, which I didn't find as interesting. But that still had some gold, like Henry trying to burst Ruas's gallbladder with a gross stomp off the top, and the finish was great with Ruas surprising Henry with a gorgeous sweeping high kick. I dug this and would love to see more Ruas. Hell, tell Ruas to cut a few pounds so I can see Gallagher/Ruas, or bring back Gulak as a special challenge opponent.

No DQ: Brandi Lauren vs. Shotzi Blackheart

ER: Really it didn't matter what happened in this one, as Shotzi wound up hitting one of the nastier crazier bumps we've seen, and this alone is going to be GIFed to eternity. She had several crazy moments, but this was another match that felt too long at 10 minutes. Since this was No DQ Lauren had Natalia Markova work this like a handicap match, but Shotzi did away with her in barely 2 minutes, which is odd as I'm not sure why Markova bailed. Shotzi appeared to bust open her nose delivering a missile dropkick, and she comes off as a kind of unathletic Darby Allin, willing to take some absolutely dumb reckless bumps, but without Allin's landing ability. Lauren hits a killer baseball slide dropkick to the floor, sending a hard chairshot into Shotzi's face, and you'd think that would end up being the most violent spot in the match. Ha. Shotzi sets up a bunch of chairs, Lauren and Greene wind up in them, but by the time Shotzi's tope gets to them nobody is home. Shotzi crashed so damn ugly through several set up chairs, looking like 6 different chair backs hit her in 6 painful spots before she hit the ground. Absolutely nutso spot, in a match where she had already fallen onto the apron and floor. I liked Lauren beating her senseless with a kendo stick for the finish, but this felt like it would be more effective as a short wild violent brawl.

Colby Corino vs. Babatunde

ER: Hell yes. Gimme that absolute Reis/Juventud energy baby. I've not seen Babatunde (probably not going back to check out the Greatest Royal Rumble), but I'm down for any new 350 pounder. Colby at least actually looks like a wrestler now and not like a little kid (which he did as of like 2 years ago), and really he just looks the same as his dad in the late 90s. Babatunde doesn't have tons to offer yet besides size and presence, but that's fine. We get a couple great spots in this one, the best being Corino hitting a springboard swanton right onto the back of the kneeling Babatunde, but close second was Corino getting caught off the top with a huge chokeslam. This was only a couple minutes, but a welcome breather.

Eddie Kingston/Joe Gacy vs. AR Fox/Leon Ruff

ER: This was a ton of fun, starting with a ton of dives and not really letting up. Fox and Ruff hit dives to start (Fox flying into the front row) and then do it again on different sides of the ring, Gacy accidentally hits Kingston with a dive, letting Ruff hit another. Good god guys. Fox does his wild inverted cannonball to the floor and basically crashes right through everyone to pavement. And I think this got pretty great once we moved into Kingston and Gacy's double teams, as they have a bunch of mean stuff. Gacy hits a hard elbow while Kingston dumps Fox on his head with a back suplex, Kingston hits a superplex into a Gacy powerbomb on Ruff, a big damn time Gacy lariat into Kingston german suplexing Ruff across the ring, Kingston hits a great powerslam off the middle rope, they both throw big chops, they're a team I'd love to see do more of their thing. They really packed some cool stuff into the run time, thought Ruff hitting a tope con giro over the turnbuckles to put Gacy threw a table looked spectacular, thought Fox's pop up Spanish Fly on Kingston was suitably crazy. I obviously didn't want to see Kingston lose, and it felt like Ruff took too much of a beating to instantly come back from, but these guys were fun opposite each other.

PAS: I didn’t like this as much as Eric. I am a Kingston super fan, and this kind of spotfest isn’t really going to use him to his best. This felt like a 12 minute match jammed into 5, and we never got to see Kingston and Gacy really take it to anyone outside of some work on Ruff which he kind of shrugged off. Gacy also had some of the worst “ONLY TWOOOOOOO” faces I have seen in a long while. Fox and Ruff really looked dancey when they were stringing spots together, I have been watching a lot of AIW tag spotfests and that set a bar Fox and Ruff couldn’t live up to. There were some cool dives, and I did like some of the Unwanted’s double teams, but I was hoping for more from the Mad King on the Network.

Matt Riddle vs. Drew Gulak

ER: Gulak gets Catch Point druids!!! As a match I think this underperformed and never felt like anything new. This felt like kind of a greatest hits collection from both guys without some of the drama that their best matches have. It felt like a slightly sanitized version of a match they would have had a couple years ago. The good news is that I happen to love the greatest hits from these two. We get a pair of cool belly to belly superplexes (Riddle getting the worst of it), both guys throw hard shots to the body (which were weirdly maybe my favorite thing about this), big Riddle senton, both throw hard uppercuts, Gulak always cutting in for single legs, it's them doing things that I like to watch them do. But this kind of felt like the recent run of 205 Live main events, where good workers are given 20 minutes to do their thing and it doesn't totally live up to the time. There were obviously hot stretches of this, and the Riddle corkscrew senton into Gulak's rear naked choke felt like a cool spot to end things. They didn't end it there, with Riddle simply picking Gulak up and hitting Bro Derek that didn't look finisher worthy. It really just looked like Gulak taking a heavier than normal slam, didn't read as a piledriver at all. This match was going to have a high floor - both guys are great - but it felt like we only bumped our head against their ceiling a couple times.


So I'm pretty in the dark on large patches of Evolve, but Leonard says that Bryan Idol was involved in "maybe the most important match in Evolve history"? Did I mishear that? Is that correct? Was there a really important Earl Cooter match that I need to see?

Austin Theory vs. JD Drake

ER: Well hey, this had some good moments in the first half and hit nothing but "this isn't wrestling I enjoy" down the back stretch. They would do cool things and not go back to them at all, like Theory cracking his elbow on the ringpost really early on, then never once hesitating to throw elbows the entire match. I hate when they burn a cool spot like that when the match would otherwise be the same. Theory is a guy who works like a dickhead Finn Balor, and that's not something I wanted. He has stuff I like: his elbows in the corner to Drake looked really good, and that running elbow to Drake's kidneys was really great. I need more of that guy. That guy rules. The guy doing a doofy pose before hitting a very normal standing moonsault? I don't want that guy. Drake is super hard for me to pin down. Half the time he's a fat guy doing things I enjoy fat guys doing, the other half he's working like a 50 year old never was doing recognizable spots on a minor league baseball show. And to be clear, written out that probably sounds something that I would actually write a couple themed posts about, but Drake would be the bad version of that. Sometimes he's throwing hands, throwing clubbing blows, landing a great fat guy dropkick, great second rope leg lariat, hitting a Vader bomb, making me go "oh yeah I do like this guy" and then before long he's doing a derpy Stunner (and you know Theory is a guy who is going to take a Stunner like a real bouncy idiot), and overshooting a rickety moonsault the exact same way he always overshoots his moonsault, and I'm like "THAT'S why I don't like that guy!" They're doing the "exhausted and holding each other up" just 12 minutes in, and the back stretch has a dumb on our knees elbow exchange. Drake gets hit and plainly says "You can't hit me harder than life has," came off like a pretty flimsy line. Eddie Kingston could make that line work. JD Drake couldn't. They knew exactly what kind of cherry I wanted on this sundae, too, because Theory did some hilarious overblown pump handle slam finisher that landed Drake 100% on top of Theory. I am not familiar with Theory's signature offense, so I genuinely thought Drake had reversed something. Nope! Austin Theory won the title by strategically throwing a larger man onto his own chest. Hey WWE Network, This Is Indy Wrestling!

Akira Tozawa vs. Adam Cole

ER: I wound up enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would, and I gotta give a lot of that credit to Tozawa. Tozawa has always been a guy I've liked, but this year I really realized I had been underrating him. I don't think he's wrestling any differently this year than he did last year or the year before, I just now appreciate him the correct amount. He really turned an interesting match out of a guy I don't like. I didn't think Cole was as annoying in this one as he is in his interminable NXT main events that I now dread. You read it here: Tozawa is good enough that he takes the dread out of Adam Cole main events. I really like what he throws behind his strikes, they look good and they look his own. He comes off like a guy who takes cool risks, and his matches benefit from that. Cole, for his part, worked an actual good side headlock. That might sound like a putdown, but a good side headlock is a pretty important thing to me. His was better than I thought it would be. Tozawa's offense is always explosive, his dive always looks like it's going to punch both guys through the barricade, he throws a great spinning heel kick, great low dropkick, bumps big and fast, etc. He's a 1999 Taka Michinoku in 2019 and that's great. I think Tozawa winning would have actually been good for NXT, interject a new and credible opponent into the mix, wouldn't seem like a demotion. Really the only thing I didn't like about this was the finish, and that's because Adam Cole has arguably my least favorite finish in wrestling. That bunny hop flipping piledriver looks so damn silly, and then he pulls his kneepad off his scrawny little knee and hits a low end "2002 indy guy working a shining wizard he just saw on a tape into his moveset" vibe to it, more like a sliding leg lariat to the back of the head which is...well it just didn't do it for me.


ER: No breakout classics on this one, and it wasn't one of the better Evolve shows I've seen - and there are a lot of great Evolve shows - but there was plenty of stuff I enjoyed. I liked several individual performances, thought the Kingston tag was a fun style clash, and I dug seeing Ruas for the first time. Plus, that Shotzi bump made me jump forward in my seat, and seat jumping moments are always special.

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EVOLVE 98 1/13/18

PAS: Really liked the opening with Darby Allin giving a promo at his skate park and getting Champ tattooed on his upper lip. A wrestling version of a Soundcloud rapper is a pretty in culture gimmick, wrestlings Lil Peep is a pretty great gimmick especially for a guy who takes the bumps Darby takes.

Jarek 1:20 v. Snoop Strikes v. Brody King v. Jason Kincaid

PAS: This was a four-way with all of the pluses and minuses of a four way. We got a chance to see all four guys do some impressive stuff (well three guys, I am not riding the Jarek 1:20 train), King had a great dive for such a giant fat guy, Kincaid hit some brutal double stomps including the finishing stomp which nearly caved Strikes chest in, Snoop had some really fast counters and a great missile dropkick. Still there was the downsides which was a lot of complicated four person spots which weren't always pulled off and what ever the fuck Jarek's comedy magic gimmick is. First time I have seen Strikes and King and they are a fine poor mans Cool J and Mike Mars

Dominic Garrini/Tracy Williams v. Timothy Thatcher/WALTER

PAS: Man was this great, Garrini is a guy we love and I am really happy to see him step up in his most high profile match and deliver like this. He was a pitbull, getting his teeth on a scrap of meat and not letting go always pushing pace and attacking, he also laid in his strikes better then I had seen before. Loved the early Thatcher v. Garrini matwork, Thatcher is super comfortable rolling with a Jujitsu black belt, and they do a bunch of cool things based around knee and ankle locks. WALTER is a beast and is a great hot tag, just wrecking everyone with big boots and sack of laundry german suplexes. Williams is a problamatic guy for me, he has a lot of skill, but will occasionally do some comically bad looking stuff, this was mostly the good Tracey (outside of one silly 619) and I really liked how tenaciously he went after the neck near the end. Finish run was dope with Garrini countering a rear naked choke and pulling a triangle  but WALTER hoisting him up and chucking him on Williams. One big WALTER powerbomb later Williams is smushed. So much fun, and I am hoping 2018 has Garrini really mixing it up with the EVOLVE uppercard.

ER: This is probably the best I've seen Garrini look in a match, even better than the Cain Justice match we loved so much. That match felt more like Cain knowing how to use every one of Garrini's strengths to craft the perfect match with him. This felt like him really bringing all his skills into pro wrestling, and knowing just how to work within a nicely built tag structure. The control segment on Thatcher was awesome, and I love how abrupt the finish was. There's a pretty high correlation between a lack of overkill and the guys we love, as I could have easily seen this match going much longer but was very pleased with where and how it ended. Thatcher turned in a great performance and I loved how he matched with Garrini, and really got into the match when Garrini and Williams were keeping him isolated. Williams brought really good energy to everything, and the longer they kept Thatcher isolated the bigger I knew WALTER's hot tag run would be. And before long WALTER is throwing chops and lariats and boots and Garrini and Williams and it's great. Garrini keeps trying to slow him down and smother him, going for triangles and chokes, allowing Williams to target Thatcher. The finish was awesome and sudden, with Williams catching Thatcher in an armbar and Garrini getting a rear naked on WALTER, and I love the camera shot of Williams' armbar in the foreground, and in the background you see WALTER rolling through and deadlifting Garrini, and then WALTER just powerbombs him onto Williams. Awesome moment. And I love how that leads to Williams eating an immediate powerbomb for the sudden win. Very fun tag.

Chris Dickinson v. Parrow

PAS: The End run out, and we get a brawl with Catch Point that lead to this singles No DQ match. Pretty fun ECW brawl. Parrow is a big dude and Dickinson really wails on his back with chair shots. I also like Dickinson going to the back and getting a broom to choke him with, I always like wrestling match with plausible plunder. Finish is Parrow eating a pazuzu bomb on some chairs which is a nasty bump for such a big dude, that is a lot of weight on a fat neck.

ER: I thought this was great! Dickinson looked fully consumed by hate as he went after Parrow, just the worst kind of initiation as Dickinson beats him all around ringside with nasty chairshots with uncomfortable plastic seats, and you can start to see bruises forming on Parrow's back as he falls around. Dickinson ramps it up and unfold a chair over Parrow's neck, and then stands on the chair as Parrow chokes. Nasty spot. Dickinson also makes a wooded broom look like a mean weapon, choking Parrow with it and talking trash before breaking it over Parrow's chest (but not before sweeping some dirt on him). Dickinson was classic dickhead Dickinson here, with his crazy eyes and zebra Zubaz (zebraz?), and it's weird for a giant 300 lb. dude to be the underdog babyface, but Parrow coming back and chucking Dickinson onto the stage with a powerbomb was an awesome moment. The camera angle made it look like Dickinson was swallowed by crowd and chairs, and I love integrating a venue's terrain into a match. Both guys take a couple rough bumps on the stage with Dickinson going through chairs and Parrow threatening to powerslam him OFF the stage before Dickinson - in true asshole fashion - claws at Parrow's balls to get down!! The vertical suplex is already an underrated awesome move, but a 300 lb. guy getting vertical suplexed on a small stage makes it even more awesome. Both guys take nasty bumps, with Dickinson back in getting powerbombed through a chair, and we get a great visual of Parrow - back to camera - asking for chairs and then swatting chairs into the ring as they're tossed. But as goes the rule of spot set up ("He who sets up the gimmick, goes through the gimmick"), Parrow takes too long and eats the insane pazuzu bomb onto a bunch of chairs. The visual was nuts with a huge guy taking that move, and this whole thing was a cool little mean spirited scrap.

AR Fox v. Matt Riddle

PAS: Fox comes out with a whole crew of dudes, and has an amusing back and forth with them. I enjoyed Fox taunting Riddle at the beginning by dropping down into guard and making punching motions. I also liked Riddle being pissed and super aggressive. When Riddle turns it on, he is a really dynamic offensive wrestler. I do think they are forcing the "Riddle hates rope breaks" story a bit, and I do have a hard time buying Fox's offense being strong enough to put him down. I did think this was better then some of Riddle's other matches against flyers as it felt like a clash of styles, rather then Riddle justing trying to work as a workrate junior.

ER: I love a good posse in wrestling, and Fox has a good crew of sycophants around him. It's awesome seeing all the boys overly praising Fox for everything he does, you got fanny pack guy, hair guy, wife in the high heels overselling Riddle's entrance music, etc. You gotta have a good crew. And I thought this was awesome, easily my favorite AR Fox performance ever. In the same way I hated end of career Shawn Michaels, but would have loved his same moveset as a heel, AR Fox is a guy who works much better as a heel for me. I love a cocky highflyer heel, and Fox is so athletic that he can pull off complicated stuff and then smirk like an asshole. It works great. Riddle doesn't fall for his trap and start pulling off a bunch of similar moves just because he's also athletic, instead he waits to sink in violence, like a killer leaping high knee lift to the chin, or a huge tombstone followed up with a powerbomb, that only doesn't get the 3 count because Fox was next to the ropes. Riddle also throws out these dismissive sentons that are heavy and smartly used. Fox's crew at one point gets baited into catching a huge springboard cannonball dive from Fox, again, you gotta have a good crew. Finish is insane and a total kill shot, with Riddle putting Fox up top but Fox hitting a stupid Destroyer off the top, then a Spanish Fly variation off the opposite corner, and then a hard 450 splash, no way anybody would kick out of that. Awesomely build crazily ramped up spotfest, both guys using their athleticism to the match's advantage. My easy favorite AR Fox performance, and my favorite Riddle singles match in awhile.

Austin Theory v. Fred Yehi

PAS: Fred Yehi is always entertaining, but I am not buying any of what Austin Theroy is selling, I am not buying Priscilla Kelly goth temptress, I am not buying the goofus redemption story with Jason Kincaid, his goofy ass NOVA finisher, I am not on board for any of it. Yehi tries, and I do like his stomps and his upkicks, but this was tons of booking and not very interesting booking. Pricilla Kelly has a nice flip dive off the apron though.

Jaka v. Keith Lee

PAS: I enjoy slugfest Lee way more then worlds thickest junior Lee and he and Jaka pound on each other here. Lee has some awesome throws, at one point Jaka tries to grab his arm and he just throws him through the air with his wrist, I also love his overhead belly to belly where he just tosses him with no back bump. Jaka had some cool flurries, I loved his leg sweep and his over hand slaps. Finish was a little goofy with Lee being distracted by AR Fox's posse which allows Jaka to unload on him, only problem was the finish spin kick didn't land with the kind of force you would need to drop a mountain like Lee, really took the steam out of an otherwise enjoyable match.

ER: I think I liked this more than Phil (and it kind of seems like I've enjoyed the show as a whole more than Phil, though I've also skipped a couple matches), but I thought Jaka looked good competing at the WWN champ's level, and didn't think Lee was brought down a lot in losing (though if beating him is to make him seem more vulnerable heading into a match with Fox, it's a lot to ask to believe he'd lose to Jaka and then turn around and lose to Fox). I thought Jaka was great bumping around for Lee, and I liked the varied strikes he tossed out, coming big with chops and leg kicks and working the knee, and I thought a couple of his blocks of Lee strikes were used nicely. Lee is a physical freak and breaks out the big rana (which he shouldn't use often, but as a big surprise moment it looks so cool) and Jaka makes me actually care about a tornado DDT in 2018! It's been such a regularly used, unimportant move to most matches, but somehow seeing Lee whip around and bounce off his head made it huge. Jaka hits some rolling kicks and then bumps awesome into the corner when he misses (and later bumps great into the ropes off a mean Pounce), leading to Lee chucking him with a couple big throws. I didn't hate the distractions from Fox's crew, but maybe it's because I'm really digging Fox's crew, and love how it kept Jaka in the game. Going into the match I thought this was going to be a 6-8 minute destruction of Jaka, so I loved him repeatedly staying in it, and was not expecting him to get the win. I guess the end spin kick could have landed more "KO blow", but it was a heel whipped into a guy's neck and jaw, so who am I to judge? I love Jaka and Dickinson got to both conquer two huge dudes, love them getting some singles match clout.

Zach Sabre Jr. v. Darby Allin

PAS: Tremendous match. Modern day version of Fuchi v. Kikuchi with stellar performances from both guys. Out of this world stuff from Allin, he is a guy who made his rep for taking insane bumps, so it is pretty incredible he could pull off a main event match with basically no bumps at all. Not only did he not take some crazy spill, he basically took two flat back bumps all match. Allin comes out and tries to catch Sabre quickly with some lighting fast roll ups, but Sabre quickly takes control and starts torturing Allin. He was twisting his body in some vicious ways, manipulating elbows and wrist, I mean gross stuff. Allin is super flexible and a really charismatic seller, you totally buy the pain etched on his face, and the stubborn willingness to go farther then anyone should to get a win. I loved Sabre as a technician in this, he had awesome counters for both the coffin drop and last supper (Allin's Gibson leglock rollup), and I loved how that composure slipped as Allin refused to go down. We get a couple of really persuasive Allin near falls, and going into this match not knowing the results, I bit on the code red totally, and then the finish is gruesome with Sabre transitioning from submission hold to submission hold kicking a prone Allin in the head until the ref has to stop it. Great stuff, hell of a match for EVOLVE to start the year on.

ER: Damn damn damn! Sabre is undeniable at this point, and he was a full force asshole to Allin's body in this match, and Allin can convincingly play the stubborn idiot who is too badass AND too dumb to know when to quit. But this was a savage Sabre performance, with him just torturing Allin, bending his limbs, slamming his legs into the mat, kicking at joints, throwing some of his best uppercuts, digging his elbow into meat to get Allin to offer up limbs, throwing the best mocking kicks to a downed Allin, just mean cruel stuff. The stretching and beating and torture would sometimes go so long without being broken that it made Allin's comebacks and surprise offense so much more satisfying. Sabre was just in full jock heel mode, showing the first day of class rookie a lesson, mugging at the crowd with doofy faces, flexing, cockily having the ref count Allin down after strikes while he waited in the corner, just awesome overly confident heel masterclass. Allin has tons of cool offense and Sabre's wide-eyed idiot faces were great when Allin would catch him with a flash roll up or plausibly executed Code Red. Sabre's control of Allin's limbs was a treat to watch, knowing when he had Allin's leg leveraged enough that he could break his grip (supporting the leg with his body) to allow him to shift focus to another part of the body, back to bending elbows or hyperextending arms or wrecking wrist ligaments. Allin was just the perfect amount of nuts in this, still crazy enough to try locking in an awesome guillotine choke, with no regard to what Sabre is going to do to him when he inevitably pops out free. This was really squashy in parts, but with Sabre's movements and cockiness it always felt like he was ripe to be upset, and with Allin's grit he always felt like a guy who could get that upset. He does get two very good nearfalls, close pinning combos that could have easily held Sabre down for an extra split second, and that just made the finish all the more brutal: Allin goes for the Coffin Drop, Sabre catches him in an armbar, and begins just bending both his arms back while digging his boot heel into Allin's face, kicking him in the head, just making you want the match to end. Ref stops it, and we get a truly awesome match very early in 2018.


ER: This was an awesome show, great start to the year, with three matches easily landing on our (very young) 2018 Ongoing MOTY List. A lot of guys are making big strides forward, and it won't be shocking to see a bunch of these guys continue to pop up on our list.


2018 MOTY MASTER LIST

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE MATT RIDDLE

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PWG From Out Of Nowhere 2/27/15 Partial Review

ER: Phil wrote up a couple of these matches 9 months ago, and usually if a card has two matches that look really good I'll go ahead and watch the rest of the card. So I started doing that, but once I got through the last match I really wanted to see (Hero/Gulak), I didn't really feel like watching three more 20+ minute PWG epics. So blame that on me for willingly watching a Chuck Taylor match. A bad choice to be sure, but not the worst choice I've ever made. For we are men. We are all just men. We are all just canceled fall CBS replacement sitcoms.


1. Speedball Mike Bailey vs. Biff Busick

PAS: Really fun spotfest intro match for Bailey. Felt kind of like the first Rey Jr. v. Psicosis matches in ECW, where you had a crazy impressive athletic guy show off his stuff with an opponent he is really familiar with. Bailey has a lot of Tae Kwon Doe training and throws these awesome looking spin kicks which he mixes in well with fast high spots, he did 10 crazy things in this match, and my favorite was a loony looking springboard headlock takeover. This was Busick as a power highspot guy, not a mat wrestler, and he really throws Bailey around. Fast food kind of match, but unlike a lot of PWG spotfests it hit the spot for me.

ER: Man this match was awesome! This might have actually been my favorite Bailey/Busick match and we've been collective fans of all of them. Bailey does neat little twists on a bunch of spots you're used to (the handspring headlock takeover was a wonderful momentum shifter, and Busick was great at looking like he was bracing for an elbow and then getting caught in the headlock) and throws these cool misdirection kicks where you think they're going to land one way and then loop under and hit you in the chin. Busick's power offense is sick and these two were practically made to work each other. Busick tossed Bailey in all sorts of great ways, battered him with mean uppercuts and shoulderblocks, and latched on with the best headlocks in the business. I could watch most of a match made up of Busick finding ways to get a guy in a headlock. Then he starts throwing his nice palm strikes while locking in the headlock?? His low bulldog, his accurate blockbuster?? Forget it, Busick just hits all the right notes. Finish probably went on a bit too long (this is PWG, after all) as they started kicking out of some pretty devastating moves (brutal lariat from Busick, shooting star kneedrop from Bailey, massive sleeper suplex from the floor to the ring by Busick) but I love these guys doing moves to each other so can't complain too much. I still love Busick's rear naked choke being treated like death, and this match was the best highlight reel match so far for me this year. Awesome stuff.

2. Cedric Alexander vs. Tommaso Ciampa

ER: Hey we're 2 for 2 on this show! Cedric Alexander (previously listed by us as one of the obvious better Lucha Underground black wrestler choices instead of Shane Strickland) has fun offense and so does Ciampa, and they string them together here in a satisfying way. Cedric throws a nice dropkick, can take a big bump and knows how to belly flop in an impressive way (seems like a lot of Ciampa's moves see his opponent falling at kind of a dangerous angle, and Cedric manages to take all of it in a painful way, but while protecting himself). Ciampa has some nice throws and I dug his cannonball off the apron. They worked around some really fun reversal-of-reversal spots and everything built into a nice little spotfest. I hadn't seen both men in awhile and they've both improved since my last viewing. That's always a nice thing.

3. Beaver Boys (John Silver & Alex Reynolds) vs. Best Friends (Chuck Taylor & Trent?)

ER: Well, we all knew what this would be. There are obviously many people who adore Taylor's shtick. The crowd was alive and way into this the entire time. They responded to every single thing he did in the match. He knows how to perfectly work in front of this audience. It just does nothing whatsoever for me. It is possible that I am a joyless shit sack, and in this instance I'd be okay with that. We get the grenade gag, some slow motion moves sold as high impact, some pause for photo gags, some Ace Ventura mannerisms, the whole shebang. My mouth was in a straight horizontal line the whole time. Trent is a guy who I think is an okay wrestler, who because of the shtick does very not okay things. Whereas Taylor is a guy who is a poor wrestler kind of saved by his shtick. I think Trent is capable of straight wrestling, whereas Taylor just looks bad no matter the circumstances. Trent has good timing, nice follow through on stuff like back elbows and running forearms, and knows how to take offense way better than Taylor. I had not seen the Beaver Boys before. I ended up liking Silver who is one of those short spark plug types. Reynolds was horrendous, like the worst possible version of Taylor. He had one long embarrassing comedy bit where he mimed jerking off on Trent, before "finishing" and throwing invisible jizz in Taylor's face, leading to Taylor desperately wiping it off with a rag. And you know that rag comes back multiple times the rest of the match. If you giggled at all while reading those last two sentences, that may be some insight into how much you would personally enjoy the match. Maybe it works better live. Maybe it works better while drunk. Maybe it works better if you're a teenage boy. I don't know. I don't think I have a very high brow sense of humor. But whatever brow level this is, it isn't for me. I think this could have been an actual good match, as once we got past the opening 12+ minutes of yuks there was plenty of the actual wrestling that I enjoyed. Beaver Boys in particular had an awesome run of timing based double teams, the kind where one guy does a move, immediately followed by the next guy, and so on. Silver had some cool deadlift suplexes and good energy (like to see more of this guy) but overall this match was close to 20 minutes of stuff that isn't meant for me. C'est la vie.

4. ACH vs. AR Fox

ER: Another one to file under "just not for me". Both guys do some things I like (although I would like ACH more if he cut down on the yuks, but there's me being a joyless shit sack again since obviously what he was doing worked fine for this audience), but both do stuff I don't like. ACH's comedy doesn't really blend with his actual wrestling, so we're left with starting off the match getting all his comedy spots in, and then eventually we transition to the "actual" match. This of course results in a neverending 22 minute match, and jesus why are PWG matches all so damn long? It really feels like they're long because each guy has shit and routines that they have to get in. "The fans are expecting the grenade bit, gotta fit it in" "The fans are expecting my Stone Cold routine, gotta fit it in". We bring back the jizz rag from the previous match, and really if you're working a jizz to the face spot you might as well work with a professional like AR Fox. We get a lot of intricate reversal sequences, and good timing is intrinsic in these things or else the curtain lifts a bit and you realize you're watching too much dance off, not enough wrestling. Stuff like ACH rushing, ducking a Fox kick, catching the kick around the back of his neck, then using that leverage to suplex Fox. But there are always little wrinkles like ACH not catching the kick flush, so having to place it there while Fox waits to be suplexed. There were things I liked about this, Fox had an awesome weird springboard cannonball to the floor, where he was facing the ring and sprung backward while tucking forward. It looked killer. Also really loved a giant swing that ACH did, where he grabbed Fox in a Texas Cloverleaf, did the swing while holding the Cloverleaf, and then set him down and locked in the sub. It looked great. We had a cool Fox dive over the turnbuckles, some of the worst 10 count punches you've ever seen (from both!), and overall this just didn't click for me.

5. Chris Hero vs. Drew Gulak

PAS: Really happy to see Hero mixing it up with the next generation of Indy mat guys, one of the cooler things in wrestling this year. This was the first of these match ups with EVOLVE running them in March. I really liked the beginning of this, with Gulak showing himself a step ahead, catching and dumping Hero with some fast german suplexes. Hero turned the tables with a killer elbow KO and landed some nasty kicks to the head and elbows. Finish run had Gulak going after the leg and even ripping off Hero's boot, it got a little discombobulated at the finish although I loved the jumping piledriver by Hero. Looking forward to checking out all of these.

ER: Classic great 16 minute PWG match, that goes 22 minutes. As they go, things keep building, and peaking, and building....and then still peaking....then more building....then an ending. These guys beat the holy hell out of each other but it's crazy how PWG matches so often overshoot that peak excitement and then kind of drift into mindless slog territory. The guys still look great, the work is still high end, you just want the match to end every single move past the point you mentally think it should have ended. I love how these two work around each other though. You can tell Hero is kinda like Kraneo, as he's put on a bunch of weight but still prides himself on agility and shutting up the naysayers by working as hard as ever. I loved his rolling ankle picks on Gulak and loved how the evolved during the match, how Gulak would get wiser to them and Hero would switch them up and go for fakeouts. And then Gulak would bait him and try and work his own ankle lock. But before long these two are railing into each other with kicks and elbows to the face. So, so many kicks and elbows to the face. Probably too many elbows and kicks to the face. But they aren't your standard issue your turn my turn growl strikes, because each guy is always looking for an opening, each guy is always waiting to catch a limb. And there are some damn cool sequences and reversals and some fun silly spots. I loved Gulak grabbing the ankle lock and Hero slipping out of his boot, kicking Gulak a bunch and but then getting leveled by Gulak swinging his own boot at him. Is it silly that a loose boot does more damage than a boot with a foot in it propelled by the force of a leg? Most definitely, but this is wrestling physics.


***Bailey/Busick and Hero/Gulak were both clearly awesome and easily made our 2015 MOTY List. So really I can't talk poorly about a show that had two great matches on it. Maybe it had more! The final three could be real killers, for all I know. I heartily encourage you to watch them and fill in the rest of the review in the comments section. All I know is if you add up my time spent watching this show, it was spent watching more good wrestling than bad wrestling. Believe in yourself.***

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Evolve 37 1/10/15 Review

1. Shane Strickland vs. Anthony Nese

ER: So earlier in the week I watched a CZW show from late last year which had a Strickland match (vs. Flip Kendrick) that is one of the worst matches I've seen this decade, just a sloppy, poorly laid out mess. Both guys looked awful. Now Flip Kendrick is a guy I've always enjoyed, and had that been the first match I'd seen him in I would not be excited to see him again. So he had an off night. Maybe Strickland also had an off night and is usually somewhat better? Well, he's still not very good, but he didn't look nearly as bad as in that CZW match. He didn't look great, but better. He basically works like the worst version of CMLL wrestler Titan. Does a few of his spots, but worse. His front flip rana to the floor is impressive in theory, but it's set up a mile away and goes really slow. Some of his stuff can look good, but he's really really bad at going through planned sequences. He cannot make them look more rehearsed. His face just goes completely blank and you can practically see him mouthing the steps. None of the stuff comes off looking natural in the least. Nese is a guy with some polish and some good execution. The match didn't really go in a direction that interested me, but Nese has been around long enough that I can see him having good matches with better opponents.

2. Timothy Thatcher vs. Roderick Strong

PAS: Really enjoyed this, as this was a grittier more violent match then Thatcher often is involved in. The matwork was less trading holds and more really aggressive amateur rolling. They roll to the ground and Strong firemans carries Thatcher and smashes his head into the post. Then you have Strong throwing big bombs and Thatcher, glassy eyed trying to grab holds while he still had his wits about him. It actually felt a little like a Fujiwara performance, down to the cool flash finish.

ER: Really loved this match up. Strong is a guy who I like, who does a lot of stuff that I don't like, a guy who has always done good stuff, in between the stuff I hate. But this right here seems like the best possible version of Strong. He was a real ass kicker in this and I love that it brought out aggression in Thatcher. And as Phil said this was less about transitions and holds and reversals, this was two guys not wanting to let up position on the ground, like a spar that turned real nasty. At one point Strong as a can opener locked on while Thatcher is just forcing his elbow into Strong's jaw. Not elbowing him, put holding one side of Strong's head with his left hand, so he can dig into that jaw with his right elbow. And the whole time Strong kept yanking Thatcher's head more and more forward. Awesome spot. Strong had a few nice knee strikes that Thatcher leaned into, and I'm loving more and more the sudden finishes that can happen with Thatcher, Gulak and Busick. Here Thatcher grabs a sweet arm bar that I didn't see coming for the finish. Excited to see more 2015 Strong.

3. AR Fox vs. Trevor Lee

ER: This finished after just a few minutes because Trevor punts Fox right in the eyeball and legit KOs him, or at minimum concussed him. I was starting to think that Fox was just a real good salesman. Match before that was kind of dorky, but kind of amusing. Both guys do really questionable rope running/reversal/one step ahead of your opponent type of stuff, and sometimes that looks good and other times it looks ridiculous and mapped out for miles. I liked all of their cool early armdrag reversals, with a couple blocked armdrags (which is a spot I love) and some real neat variations. But with those cool spots come a lot of needless flips. One spot saw Fox go for a dive, Lee backflip off the apron while Fox does a Misawa feint to the apron, then Fox backflipping off the ring post to the floor which led to him getting his eye socket punted in by Lee. We also get plenty of ambitious strikes that whiff, and would probably look better if they didn't add a spin to everything. Announcers pushed real hard how Trevor Lee is real "over" in PWG but the fans haven't quite taken to him the same way here, saying they aren't sure what to make of how he acts and how he dresses. Wellllll….color me confused as I have never seen Lee before but he acts totally normal and he was wearing black trunks with black boots/kickpads. It's not like he was wearing crotchless chaps and wrestling on his hands or anything. Until they started babbling about how he looked I never would have thought he looked odd. Am I missing something?

4. Biff Busick vs. Uhaa Nation

ER: Well Uhaa has the best theme song in wrestling. And I loved the announcers going the full Kal Rudman while talking about him. "Just eat a cheeseburger why don't you, get up to 1% body fat. Muscle on top of muscle. Jacked." I love that they're just going for it, looking at Uhaa and getting choked up like John Boehner talking about America. Overall I liked this match, really liked Busick in this and Uhaa had some moments. Uhaa's problem seems to be that he really focuses on the "athletic" portion of his offense, even if the follow through of said offense suffers. You can't go 30 seconds in this match without hearing the dual Rudmanning of Uhaa's athleticism. Every time he left his feet was met with orgasmic moans, followed by more fawning over his abdominal muscles. But he seems way too inside of his athletic self. He'll leap up real high for an elbow drop, but the elbow drop doesn't look very good. He'll get an insane leap on a flying clothesline, but the clothesline itself won't look great. So it's obvious he has impressive leaping ability and looks very light on his feet in general, but when you look at his offense from the angle of what is actually being done to his opponent it does not seem as impressive. But it's very easy to get blinded with the athletic portion of the move and the actual impact portion gets kind of swept under as you're still reacting to "athleticism". I liked how the story began, with Busick working over his ribs, tossing out some of the nastiest knees you've seen (which led to a nice reversal by Uhaa when he did a forward roll over a knee for a roll up) and a nice abdominal stretch, followed by a cool half nelson suplex reversal (which Uhaa popped up for to hit a clothesline, blecch). Busick looked great throughout, always seems to have a good match planned for his opponent. I think he fed into Uhaa nicely, bumping big on suplexes and clotheslines, large bumps but appropriate for what was being done. I love his headlock takeover into a choke submission finisher, and while there were faults to the match this was plenty good.

5. Drew Galloway vs. Ricochet

PAS: Great match, the best I have seen from either guy. Galloway has grabbed the early pole position for wrestler of the year. We start out with some outside of the ring brawling which delivered a couple of crazy athletic spots by Ricochet, he gets thrown in the air, grabs a basketball hoop and twists his way into a rana, it is something Gerald Green and Juventud Guerrera should steal for the dunk contest. Ricochet then tries a wall walk moonsault, gets caught and thrown brutally into a concrete wall. When the match gets back into the ring, Ricochet goes after the finger Galloway injured in his Strong street fight, and Ricochet makes a surprisingly effective Fuchi. Finish was great, Galloways splint comes off and catches Ricochet in the eye, and after waiting a split second Galloway jumps him and hits a couple of big moves for the finish, fun subtle heel turn in the spirit of Tommy Rich v. Bill Dundee in early 80's Memphis.

ER: Well this match was great. I loved loved loved all of this. The early spots that Phil mentioned were insane. Ricochet getting tossed into the hoop and then fluidly swinging back with a rana is something that could easily come off like an overused winking Human Tornado kind of spot, but here it almost comes off organic, as if Galloway tossed him into a wall not knowing there was a hoop there and Ricochet pulled off the ultimate ad lib. It's like when a guy goes through a table that wasn't actually set up by his opponent, just so much more satisfying when you don't see the spot coming. The run-up-the-wall moonsault, caught by Galloway and ending with Galloway chucking him into the wall was flat out brutal, Ricochet's body splayed out in a fantastic thud. Back in and Ricochet gets all Finlay on us by ripping off Galloway's finger splint and ripping apart at his fingers. He even does amusing indy spots like a standing moonsault onto the bad hand. Ricochet bumps like wild on Drew's comebacks, not just that earlier spot getting tossed into a wall. He gets suplexed into the corner, leans into strikes, and then the spot of the match with Drew obliterating Rico with literally the greatest top top clothesline in the history of this great sport. I've wracked my brain trying to think of a better one. I remember Ikeda hitting a great one off the top in NOAH. But this one. This was the best. Drew's follow through was immaculate and the way Ricochet imploded was perfection. Wrestling spot of the year? Most possibly. They really could have done anything after that spot and I would have given it 8 stars, but the rest of the match is perfectly fine, and the finish is great as Drew accidentally catches Rico in the eye with his splint, and looks genuinely apologetic with the apologies. I bought them. Then sprints out of the corner to blast him with a kick for the pin. Awesome. Great match-up.

6. Johnny Gargano, Rich Swann & Chuck Taylor vs. The Bravado Brothers & Moose

ER: Well, this was...okay? But not really my cup of tea. One of those matches where for every thing I like about it, there's something that takes me out of it. None of these 6 are guys who I will actively seek out, or get excited about if they're an opponent of somebody I like. But 6 mans can be a kind of magic for average wrestlers, where they can hide all their flaws and come out the other end with a nice tidy 15 minutes of pro wrestling. And this wasn't not that...on a base level the match was fine. No silly overkill and plenty of fun moments. By the end it just didn't add up to much. It's the kind of match that seems fine if you're watching it with buddies, half paying attention to the match and half focusing on chatting about movies you've seen recently or how you can't believe you love Bates Motel as much as you do. But actually watching the match, you see cracks. Dives that whiff, eyeballs trying to remember sequences instead of looking natural, people timing out their steps tap dance style. Gargano is a guy who is pushed hard by Evolve, and even the announcers put over as "the face of Evolve", which just seems wild to me as there are few guys on the Evolve roster who I usually remember less about than Gargano. He's a guy I've rarely been offended by, and has rarely impressed me. Swann I probably like the most of these 6, he adds the most little details to his flash. He can throw in little struggles like he and Harlem fighting over a suplex that he ends up eventually reversing to a small package, and comes off the most natural in rope running exchanges. The Bravados have improved in the last few years and look good when working team spots, less so separately. Lance seems like the clear better one to me. I actually liked some of his punches during brawling portions, and Bravados were never guys I thought "nice punches!" about. Moose is your large Kofi Kingston, doing athletically impressive spots that don't really hit very well, or is dependent on big bumpers. His standing clothesline looked good, or was it Swann leaning into it? His duel fallaway slam/samoan drop looked impressive, but it also required Swann to find a plausible way to set it up. But none of this overstayed its welcome and that counts for a lot, finding the right time to end things is a big deal that a lot of indy wrestling doesn't understand. This match was all perfectly acceptable wrestling, just as equally as it was perfectly forgettable wrestling.


Overall this was a real good card. Two MOTYC on one card will do that. Outside of the excellent Drew/Ricochet and Thatcher/Strong, I dug the Busick match and nothing else was offensive. Definitely going to be doing more Evolve reviews. Linked below is our 2015 MOTY list, since both the Galloway and Thatcher matches were easy inclusions to that:


2015 MASTER LIST

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Beyond Wrestling Secret Show 4/13

I heard some good things about this show, and I always like Beyond Wrestling more then I should, so I threw down $5 and checked it out

Connor Claxton v. Frankie Pickard

Both of these guys are CZW trainees, and this was a hell of a four minutes. Really aggressive amateur wrestling by both guys. Reminded me of the Steiners v. Gordy and Williams matches in WCW, like UWFI with a colligate wrestling base, instead of a Martial arts base. We had one strike, a great headbutt by Claxton, and one suplex an overhead by Pickard. The rest was just grappling. I am not sure if they have a longer match in them, but they are on my radar.

Supercop Dick Justice v. Leon St. Giovanni

Justice looks like a young Ron Jeremy and is working a 80's patriotic babyface gimmick. Giovanni hams it up as a heel. A couple of clever spots, but the whole thing was turned up to 11, and I didn't find it nearly as amusing as the participants did.

DJ Hyde v. AR Fox

Really surprised at how much I enjoyed this. Fox was working heel, as was fun as a cocky asshole who would flip around and taunt Hyde. Meanwhile Hyde was working as kind of a poor man's Ian Rotten, as he was countering the flippy taunts with some nasty potato shots. I really liked him countering Fox's lucha armdrag by just chucking him face first into the mat, and he threw a elbow that knocked Fox across the ring. Finish was cool as Hyde survived a couple of cool in ring dives before obliterating Fox with a lariat.

Darius Carter/TJ Marconi v. Det Dan Berry/Monsta Mack v. Kevin Graham/Punisher Van Slyke v. Thomas Dubois/Mathieu St. Jacques

I like that they have been keeping these matches pretty short, without the bloat which can effect indy wrestling. This gave everyone a chance to hit some big impressive stuff, get in and get out. Mack is the vet here and he looked the best, he took a bunch of big bumps, hit a diving rana off the top, and a superfly splash. The Dubois/ St. Jacques team looked like the French Canadian mafia guys that killed Dino Bravo and I wouldn't mind seeing more of them.

Jay Freddie v. Eric Corvis

I have always dug Corvis, he was a JAPW guy back in the day, and is a Beyond guy I look out for. He kind of reminds me of Sami Callihan. He has an innovator gimmick, but usually has pretty cool sensible innovations. Here he seemed to be less about innovation, and more about Tenryuish stiff shots from odd angles. He had this great spot, where he placed his foot on Freddie's knee and smacked him with a jab. Freddie is a little bland, but isn't afraid to deliver some shots of his own. Fun stuff and Corvis is as nifty as I remember him.

Brandon Watts/Randy Summers v. Sugar Dunkington/Pinkie Sanchez

Didn't love this. Lots of dancing and gay shtick with out much substance. There was a nice running boot by Watts, but not much else of note. Smirky Beyond Wrestling is not my bag, it comes off like a a bunch of Vine making hipsters winking at their inside jokes.

"Dirty" Buxx Belmar v. "Speedball" Mike Bailey

I like Bailey, he is a spot guy with some fun variations on spots, kind of like Matt Sydal back in the ROH days. Belmar is working a dirty guy gimmick, and this match was a victim of him needing to get in all of his "I don't take a shower" spots. We only get glimpses of what Bailey can do, fun glimpses and I want to see more, but this was a waste.

Nicholas Kaye v. Benny Martinez v. Ryan Rush v. Shyron

Spotfest with four dudes doing some stuff. Not as many big spots as the tag spotfest, but everything was executed fine. This kind of match has diminishing returns this late on the show, probably would have been better off as an opener.

JT Dunn/David Starr v. Jaka/Chris Dickinson

This was set up earlier in the show with an angle and was a big workrate tag. Workrate tag wrestling is not my cup of tea in 2014, but I enjoyed this. Dickinson, Starr and Dunn are basic indy American Wolvesalikes, but Jaka is working as indy Haku, and indy Haku makes the rest of guys more tolerable, Dickinson has gotten a lot better too, his stuff is really solid looking, stiff kicks and nice amateur take downs. Dunn and Starr didn't make a huge impression on me, but this built to an exciting finish and didn't have an overdose of near falls.

Biff Busick v. Timothy Thatcher

These are two of the three (along with Drew Gulak) of the most exciting new group of guys in Indy wrestling. They are working Euro style matches, although Euro style that owes more to Billy Robinson and Terry Rudge then Johnny Saint and Mark Rocco. Tight agressive mat wrestling and nasty uppercuts and punches. Nothing fancy just hard hitting and rough.  The big highspot was an uppercut that knocked Busick into the wall, and came off as a bigger deal then any of the crazy shit in earlier matches. I loved Busick finish here too, great sensible counter to lock in the choke nastier and looked really tight, I bought Thatcher going out. I could watch these guys work each other a ton of times.

This show was really good, 5 matches which I enjoyed and nothing I hated. Worth your $5, throw them some cash.

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