RIP Brodie Lee

Hillbilly Wrecking Crew (Necro Butcher/Brodie Lee) vs. H8 Club (Nick Gage/Nate Hatred) JAPW 11/21/09

PAS: The Hillbilly Wrecking Crew tag run was this truly awesome under the radar series, every match was like a 21st century Moondogs match. Hopefully with JAPW showing up on IWTV more folks will get to check it out. As one might imagine this was an all around the arena tag brawl between four nutjobs. Necro grabs a pair of scissors to carve up Gage, Lee and Hatred brawl outside in the cold and slam each other into walls. Lee might take the biggest bump in the match with all of these crazy bumpers and he gets hurled over the top rope and lands on his knee. I think the end meandered a bit, which kept this from all timer level, but it was as bloody and unhinged as it looked on paper.

ER: It's hard not to love the Hillbilly Wrecking Crew, and this team was my first exposure to Brodie Lee. This match is filled with tough guys taking awful spills on concrete, bleeding, and landing on each other in ugly ways. Gage brought this great Give No Fucks energy to this, running hard enough into guys that he seemed totally unaware that he could come out taking damage as well. Brodie had this insane hulked up Necro Butcher energy, stomping through crowds of people and shoving everyone who got near. He looked like Brody during an All Japan entrance, shoving fans on the upbeat and running into Gage or Hatred on the downbeat. Gage does some gnarly work on Necro's leg, stomping it in a chair and leaping onto it in a way that looked extremely dangerous. But what is danger to a man who was jabbing scissors into Nate Hatred's head? Necro also takes a sick sunset flip powerbomb onto the bad side of a chair, Lee dishes out big boots and big bumps, just the exact kind of war you'd want. The sit and brawl stuff wasn't any good when it was happening in 2009, and it's completely stupid that we're seeing that spot even more in 2020, and I think in this case especially it really slowed things down unnecessarily (it literally always fucks up the pacing of any match that spot appears in). If someone like Necro can't make it work within a match, what chance does anyone else have? Still, this match brought the brawl violence that you would want to see these loons inflict on each other, so let Necro take a seat. 

Brodie Lee vs. Mike Bailey C*4 1/19/11

ER: This was Brodie and Bailey doing the things you'd want them to do against each other, and perhaps doing it for too long. We get some wild Bailey stunts stunt together in fun ways, starting things with a tope, hitting a tornado DDT in the aisle off a cool as hell moonsault, building to him hitting a dragonrana off the risers. I like how they had Bailey not hit these things super clean, having Brodie look like he was about to reverse all of them before Bailey would find a way to finish it. Lee takes over with a big boot and then alternates back and forth with big power offense, and showoff Mike Bailey-style offense. He hits a powerbomb, but also a fantastic dropkick, hits a black hole slam (that honestly looked big enough that it should have ended the match), but also hits a nutso Asai moonsault. I thought they got a little silly with kickouts (I don't think it would have been tough to give Bailey a better way back into the match than just kicking out of things), but they did cool offense after all the kickouts (Bailey hits his great shooting star press, Lee hits his awesome Liger bomb), so who really cares. People want to see Brodie bounce Bailey off the mat and want to see Bailey hit wild offense, and both those things happened a lot.  

PAS: Good example of how comfortable Lee was in a spotfest. He had a great ability of keeping up a juniors pace while still retaining a heavyweight aura. I really liked Bailey's early hit and run offense, and Lee's takeovers were as violent as you hoped they would be. He does this pumphandle suplex which sends Bailey damn near to Manitoba. I do think they had a couple kick outs too many, and a match like this doesn't need as many near falls to work structurally. Still this delivered what you hoped it would, the imported wrestler works a Mike Bailey match formula was one of the cooler things in end of the aughts, start of the teens indy wrestling and this was a great example of it. 

Brodie Lee vs. Eddie Kingston Chikara 3/25/12 - GREAT

ER: This didn't quite get to the heights that it could have, but with these two you know there was a damn high floor. I think this was their only singles match, and it's great that they ran it right before Lee was headed off to WWE. We got some big stuff, including topes from both big men and a half nelson suplex that I'm sure made Kingston think about Lee for weeks after. I love Kingston as Grand champ, going into the match and getting outfought and outgunned by Lee, and Lee was really really swinging like a man who thought he wasn't going to be allowed to work Indy Stiff any longer. The strike exchanges here were really cool, because they were sold exactly how they looked. Lee was buckling Kingston's knees with his elbows and rattling his brain box with uppercuts, and against a beast like Lee you knew that Kingston would be best playing a man outgunned. Kingston realizing he's being outstruck and still letting his mouth get him into hotter and hotter water is one of my favorite types of Kingston match, him taking a hard shot and saying he's been hit harder is such a real thing to bring into wrestling. Nobody likes getting their ass kicked, nobody wants to give the guy beating their ass any satisfaction, and Kingston is the guy who would rather absorb a worse beating as long as its on his own terms. I love King selling individual injuries (like hurting his arm after Lee blocked a backfist), and again that half nelson suplex was a real monster. I wish we could have seen a series of matches between them, as I know they would have kept going out there and doing new things as a feud progressed. I'm glad we got what we got. 

PAS: It was cool to see Lee work a big time heavyweight title match. Kingston did a great job of making the Grand Championship meaningful and this felt like something that mattered. This was two big guys hitting each other very hard, but with the variety and selling to make it matter. Lee was throwing his sick looking open hand shots to the ear and Kingston sold it like a guy getting his equilibrium jarred. Eddie was on his back foot but was going to try to give as good as he got. I liked Lee going for the foul after the ref bump and getting a big near fall on a Liger bomb, it really felt like he was going to be taking the title to Connecticut. I didn't love the finish run, felt like it needed a bigger explosion to put a pin in the match they were building, still this was two greats having their big match and it was neat to see. 

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2014 Ongoing Match of the Year List

58. Kevin Steen v. Speedball Mike Bailey C*4 5/3

PAS: Really great match, one of my favorite Steen matches ever. Worked really similar to the NXT Owens v. Zayn match, with Steen as this violent threshing machine and Bailey trying to survive. Nasty chops, big powerbombs, throws into chairs, Bailey really took a pounding. Bailey unloads some really cool spin kicks here and they time them nicely to stun or slow down Steen, Bailey is one of the best guys at using fancy martial arts in a wrestling context, although his flying spots aren't as impressive here as his kicks. Built to a big set of near falls, and by the end the crowd was going bananas. Really good indy wrestling style match

ER: Man I loved Steen in this. Had almost a modern indy Finlay feel to him, as he would do some dangerous indy spots, but pepper in things like standing on Bailey's hands or raking his face with his boot eyelets (which will ALWAYS make me like a match that much more). Bailey is a cool little worker as his flying stuff can be impressive, breaking out loony things like shooting star kneedrops or shooting star sentons (like an inside version of Richochet's 630) but not always with the crispness or ease of some of the flyers regularly featured on say Lucha Underground. His main selling point are his cool strikes and he has a way of throwing big arching spin kicks and always making sure they land with precision. Steen is more than game for that kind of action as he leans way into Bailey's kicks. Steen was a real fun bully here, dishing out big chops, a great kneedrop, crotching Bailey on the post, splatting him with a few sentons, and the coup de grace: a devastating powerbomb on the apron that deserves Jim Ross freaking out and spitting more than most calls. My problems with the match were that powerbomb looked so brutal that it should have resulted in death, not been something that happened 2/3 of the way through; and Bailey doesn't seem to sell any more in this match than Steen does, which seems odd to me. It ended up being worked fairly even by the end which, if you've seen both men, doesn't quite add up for me. But I cannot deny how much fun I had watching it and I always enjoy two guys who complement each other this nicely.


2014 MASTER LIST

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