80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Yukari! Martel! Martin!

 Volume 3

3. Judy Martin & Sherri Martel vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori (WWWA Tag Team Titles) 

K: I'll forever associate this match with DEAN. It was one of the last matches he reviewed on the DVDVR board before we lost him and in his classic hyperbolic style he declared it the GREATEST MATCH OF THE 80s. 

Before the match starts Sherri steals the tag belts and runs outside with them, apparently thinking the rules in Japan are that the winner is just whichever team is able to physically take possession of the belts. They both act so insane it makes you feel like anything could happen here, this atmosphere is helped along by them getting in the ring and getting immediately ambushed by Hagiwara and Omori and thrown into the crowd to big applause.

When we finally get something you could definitely call 'wrestling' (no value judgement here) Sherri is targeting Hagiwara's throat dropping her on the ropes, and later when she has Hagiwara grounded she's seemingly biting her in the face. She just comes across as a nutcase, and then Devil Masami gets involved on the outside whacking Mimi with her big cane. I should add for a bit of context from matches not on the set that Devil Masami seems to have given herself a personal quest to make Mimi's life a living hell. This is far from the only time Mimi will be wrestling someone else but Devil keeps getting involved in her matches just to torment her. She's obsessed. It's like she had a premonition that after her wrestling career was done Mimi would become a Christian evangelical preacher (not joking that actually happened).

I really like Mimi's selling here. For example the more hurt she is, the more she wobbles/looks a bit unco-ordinated when she's running off an Irish whip.

This is not a famous match, but if it were to become one, it should be famous for the spot where Sherri and Judy put Mimi's head between the ropes, put the middle rope over the top rope, and then swing back and forth with her head stuck like they're trying to break her neck. I'm watching this thinking "why does nobody steal this?", think about it a bit more and decide "ok, this does look legitimately dangerous" so maybe that's why. Still it looks absolutely awesome, brutal and makes the heels look like psychopaths.

Oh also, sick piledriver by Mimi to take the 1st fall. This alone would have been a really good and memorable match. This is for the tag titles so it's 2/3 falls.

In AJW tradition, the babyfaces are 1 fall up, so the heels go crazier, take things to the outside and try causing carnage. It's so wild it's hard to follow what's going on. At one point Devil Masami is on the outside swinging her cane at people. I think Mimi gets a chair up to the protect herself from the shots meanwhile someone else is being thrown into the seats. For whatever reason Devil is so enraged she comes into the ring swinging her cane around, and the heels FOR THE SECOND TIME now put Mimi's head in the rope trap of death like they're trying to kill her. Things are so damn out of control and someone is gonna die so the referee DISQUALIFIES the heel team, which almost never happens in AJW. 

Not the most important thing I know, but there's a 2/3 falls match which ended 2-0.

Is this the greatest match of the 80s? Well no. That’s a little silly. It’s relatively limited in what it’s trying to achieve, that Martel & Martin are homicidal maniacs and Hagiwara and Omori are such heroes for being willing to fight them. It did most of that. The big flaw is I don’t think Omori really got herself over here, in fact I barely remember her doing anything. Devil Masami probably had a better contribution to this than she did. It was certainly entertaining and not one you’ll forget soon.

***1/2

MD: Hey, I’ve seen this one! DEAN gave it to me during a Secret Santo in 2023. 

Here’s what DEAN said about it when giving it to me:

“This match is fucking INSANE.  It's the fucking DREAM tagteam of Sherri Martel and Judy Martin aligning with total lunatic Devil Masami at ringside trying to murder the hell out of Mimi Hagewara and Yukari Omori in 1982.  GREATEST MATCH OF THE 80s!”

Here’s what I said about it then: 

“The big thing I learned from this however was that Martin and Martel were basically Raging and Ravishing. I'm a big Glamour Girls fan, but Kai and Martin were pretty similar, great bullies, incredibly credible offense, big bumps, great pacing. Martin is basically the most credible Moolah-ism wrestler ever. Sherri on the other hand, is wildly over the top. Her punch to the gut may have been goofy, but she was all antics, all the time, starting from stealing the belts and refusing to give them back to just screaming, fighting with fans, heatseeking like wild. Then Martin would come in and just assert control and leave things for Sherri to cause havoc.

After the whole belt stealing thing, the faces got the early offensive advantage, but then Martin/Martel took most of the rest. Whenever the faces tried to comeback it became an absolute gang scene with everything completely breaking down. Devil would interfere liberally. So that meant whenever comebacks actually did take, they ended up being super violent. Structure here ended up being comebacks and quick cutoffs, and then a real comeback for the first fall victory as they switched up on top rope leaps and then hit a kneeling pile driver. There was more heat again right at the start of the second fall and it all broke down into chaos. Mimi and Omori looked fine but it was hard to get much sense out of them other than getting battered around a few moments of fiery comebacks. Sherri, however, came off as a generational heatseeker; obviously she was as a manager but I think she couldn't flex quite as much in the AWA and WWF as a wrestler maybe? Here she had a lot of freedom to just toss poise completely out the window and go wild.”

Here’s what I think about it now:

What I have now that I didn’t back then is a much better understanding of Hagiwara and a much better sense of the chaos in Black Army matches from 78-81 or so. And honestly, even compared to those, this was pretty wild. Sherri is such a natural. She understood pro wrestling so well, bursting out of the ring with the belt and parading around with it, snatching it away when anyone tries to take it from her. What a natural heatseeker, just perfect in her role.

They controlled most of this, and on Mimi for most of it as well. Lots of choking, both naturally and in the ropes which formed a sieve around her neck. Brutal stuff. Lots of beating them around the ringside area too. Whenever they started to fight back for more than a second, everything would break down into chaos. Omori actually got to flex her strength a bit here on comebacks. Eventually, Mimi finally had enough and unloaded fists and neckbreaker drops on Martin, Omori hit a Vader Bomb and Mimi a nasty looking kneeling pile driver, where you could see Martin’s life flash before her eyes. That was the end of the first fall. Second went quite well for Martin and Sherri until Devil accidentally clocked Sherri with the pole. It still went pretty well for them after that though and eventually everything really broke down and they just choked their opponents in the ropes until the ref called for the DQ. I’d say this was pretty clearly the best showing of any American women so far. Martin hit like a truck and ground things down and Sherri was just as over the top as she’d be ten years later. And at least Omori and Hagiwara survived it to stand tall with their belts in the end.

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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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D3AN~!!! Day 5: MAD DOG~! DEMUS~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Mad Dog Connelly vs. Demus [Hair vs Hair]

MD:  This begins and ends with the eye. Injured the day before in San Francisco, Connelly stumbled and crashed down the aisle in Philadelphia, a flimsy eyepatch the only thing protecting one of the most vulnerable parts of the body, already woefully damaged. He'd barely survived Demus on the first DEAN~!!! show, and now with stakes infinitely higher, on a more even playing field outside of his trademark match, he began from a deep, almost impossible deficit. 

Like a wounded animal, he leaned into his own pain and targeted Demus' eye. He knew his own agony and wished nothing more than to share that feeling with his opponent. Connelly's desperate back-against-the-wall impulse drove his every action. He went for an early pin and then started to tear at Demus' shirt. At first, I thought this was to expose the chest for chops, and he did that, but more so, it was to gather resources. The shirt became a weapon, one that he could use in the absence of a dog collar in order to hang Demus over the rope.

But as desperate as Mad Dog might have been, Demus' own survival instincts were canny and activated. He'd lost hair matches before. He knew the bitter shame of such defeats. He would not face it now, especially not against a damaged opponent. So for the first time in the match (but certainly not the last), Demus went to the eye to escape. This would be a theme as the match went on. All things equal, maybe Connelly could beat Demus and maybe Demus could beat Connelly. But all things were not equal, and Demus would stop at nothing to win. 

Before long, the eyepatch was torn off, and the mutual sense of desperation had escalated. The two were throwing their own bodies at one another. Demus crashed off the turnbuckles with the bulkiest body block you'll ever see. Connelly, able to stay in it with an awesome punch and crushing chairshot, went careening into the chair in the center of the ring as a seated Demus moved at the last moment. Demus likewise crashed and burned off a senton attempt. 

That left Demus open to Connelly's best shot, a Gotch style pile driver. Given the low center of gravity at play, the skull hit the ground with no give, no mercy, no respite. Yet still, Demus somehow survived it and desperation creeping back in, the wounded dog climbed the ropes once more. This time however, Demus made it to his feet too early and was able to brandish the chair himself, tossing it straight up and straight at Connelly's eye.

The throw hit true and Connelly was left staggered and hopeless. From there, Demus hefted him up and dropped to his knees with the meanest Muscle Buster you'll ever see. Connelly, channeling that desperate spirit one last time managed to kick out, but it was all for naught. Demus had one last trick up his sleeve, a dog collar of his own. If this had come into play earlier in the match, it might have turned the tide for Mad Dog, but now he was barely able to stand, and with it, Demus, in a pique of dark irony, was able to hang Connelly with his own twisted trademark. 

There'll always be the question of what might have happened on this night if Connelly had entered healthy. Maybe the pain drove him. It absolutely allowed Demus to prey upon a vulnerability and gave him an advantage in the match. Animal pride had empowered both men throughout and Connelly was possessed by it in the post match, causing chaos and shaving his own hair. He was defeated, but it would take far more than this for him to be truly vanquished.

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D3AN~!!! Day 4: SAMMY~! MORTOS~! DRALISTICO~! CHEESEBURGER~! ISOM~! TITUS~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

LFI (Sammy Guevara/Beast Mortos/Dralistico) vs Cheeseburger/Eli Isom/Rhett Titus

MD: Let's embrace the chaotic indie spirit of a random match popping up out of nowhere. We don't have a choice after all and embracing it would be a very DEAN thing to do. And why the hell not, right? Look, DEAN liked all of these guys. Yes, DEAN was great at finding things to like about almost anyone who had something to like, especially in the early 2020s, but he was also great at highlighting what those things were. More on this at the end because of Sammy's promo. 

This was definitely structured as an enhancement sort of match with name talent. Powers and Roma and Brunzell on a late 80s Superstars and that's okay. It meant that Isom could fire back a bit and give everything just a bit more dramatic weight. You know what to expect with Mortos (that headbutt) and Dralistico (throwing himself into his offense for good or ill, here good), but Sammy was the one to watch. 

Sammy's been paying his dues as Dustin's little buddy for the last year+, title belt or no, putting in the effort as a babyface. But now he gets to stretch and preen. They're still working it out. Him matching Rush's Tranquilo pose with his little bit of breakdancing works great. It didn't work quite as well with Mortos and Dralistico just standing beside him. Otherwise, they were a pretty well oiled machine here.

And of course the post-match promo was funny for what it was. Surreal to a degree to hear Sammy talk about Dean. Bobby Heenan is on record for giving someone advice in WCW that instead of saying they hated the fans, they should say they love them (the advice was not taken) and Sammy more or less did that here. Him referencing "pillars" in 2025 is a good bit. And then saying that he, and his stablemates were Dean's favorite wrestlers. Also a good bit. Sammy's online, of course. He's got that "Where are my five stars?" promo that he's never going to live down (Sorry), but I can't imagine him in these circles. So the fact that he didn't and wouldn't and couldn't know that DEAN was big on guys like Mortos and RUSH, but that he absolutely loved Sammy's JAS run with Tay, for instance, makes it even more funny. 

No, Sammy was not one of Dean's favorites, but in his own inestimable way, Dean loved wrestling more than anyone. And that meant he was going to find every awesome thing about Sammy and embrace them and shout it from the rooftops. There are absolutely things that Sammy does that I think are very good (and no, I'm not going to list them here), but I've written up a bunch of his matches with Dustin over the last year+ and while I’ve been fair and even-handed, I’ve not shouted anything from rooftops. So, though he didn't know any of this, though he was doing the right thing to get heat, what Sammy really did was remind me once again just what we lost when we lost the big guy. 

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D3AN~!!! Day 3: YUTA~! MAKO~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Wheeler Yuta vs Matt Mako

MD: If the first Texas residency belonged to Hologram and if the Chicago residency belonged to Toni Storm, I kind of sort of thing that this Philly residency belongs to Yuta. Maybe not the clearest choice. You could argue Daniel Garcia or Mox or maybe a few others. But there was something about how the hometown crowd thoroughly hated Yuta that puts it over the top. Every time he appeared on screen, the chants started. Every time he tagged in, the boos rang out.

As such, this will end up being his signature match for the residency (there's still that ROH mixed tag with Shafir coming up, which is TK booking for me once again), because it was very good. 

If Matthews vs Starkz was about contrast, this one was about dissonance. 

Yuta is incredibly skilled. The springboard takeover into a seamless, picture perfect Cattle Mutilation was a thing of beauty. He nailed his signature rebound between the ropes to hit a German Suplex. He's a former Pure Champion. Yet the transition to offense was because Shafir got involved. Yet when pressed, he pulled off the turnbuckle pad to try to get an advantage. Yet he only won because of another Shafir distraction and him going to the eyes. 

That gap between obvious truth (Yuta's skill) and reality (Yuta's cheating), between expectation and how things actually play out creates a sort of cognitive dissonance which is the cornerstone for heel heat. It's well and good if the bad guy does something bad, but when he does it in a way that runs counter to the possibilities the fans know to be true, that's even worse. 

Of course, you might argue that Mako drove him to it by being that good. Just one tremendous, memorable, crisp piece of offense after the next. Even when Yuta did get him, like with that Cattle Mutilation, he couldn't keep him in it. Even when Shafir got in his face, like after he dropped Yuta into a chair on the outside with a sleeper, Mako was able to just shift directions and crash into Yuta with even more speed. 

But still, Yuta should be able to at least hold his own and on a card like this, he should have at least tried (not to mention the insult to injury that was his out of line behavior post match attacking one of Dean's kids). The only thing he proved here was that Mako had his number. But that doesn't matter when it comes to the record books. 

And that selfless performative embodiment of true selfishness is exactly why Yuta gets the legitimate heat that he does in a world still afflicted by ironic chants and winking cool heels. And it's why he owned his hometown residency, even in more of a secondary role.

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D3AN~!!! Day 2: MATTHEWS~! STARKZ~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Nicole Matthews vs Billie Starkz

MD: I have absolutely nothing to do with putting these shows on. Can't reiterate that enough. This is Phil and Eric being bold and daring and working with the other Matt and eventually the fine folks at ROH. That said, one note that I, and a lot of other people had, after DEAN 2 was that they should get a women's match on the next one.

And the first name that came to everyone's mind was Nicole Matthews. She's a card carrying member of the club. She knows the secret handshake. She gets it, firsthand. Billie Starkz on the other hand, is more of a fifth of sixth generation creature (I'm more second generation myself, the early days of the board instead of RSPW). She was born into social media, not message boards, but early on in her career she had a couple of select voices in her ears. She may be Athena's No. 1 (actually a different number but I'm not googling it right now) minion, but there's a ~! built into her wrestling DNA whether she actually knows it or not. 

Matthews was naturally de facto face here. She left her fine wine heel gimmick (and the giant goblet that goes with it) at home. Billie on the other hand, is an absolute gremlin, a deranged goblin, a complete menace. Matthews understood the gravitas of the time and the place. Billie was boisterous, bragging that she was the hand-selected ROH rep here to win this first-time match between the two.

So while it was a cold match on paper, the characters really made the thing sing. Billie was incessant, the best possible pimple on the already craggly face of Philadelphia. She messed with Matthews' hair in a headscissors. She switched hands on a test of strength. She slapped her in the face after some chain wrestling. She caught her foot and took a bite out of it. She facewashed her in the middle of the ring. She snuck in an eyepoke during a strike exchange. Incessant. Irritating. Incorrigible.

So, in return, Matthews took her to school. She stretched Starkz with a bow and arrow. She wrenched that hand and drove her to the mat. She chopped right through her in the corner. She stomped away. She caught the foot and drove forearms into her jaw. She regained her vision and hit the nastiest short arm lariat you can imagine. The comeuppance was deserved and the comeuppance was delivered. 

If contrast makes the wrestling world go round (and it does, trust me), this world was happily spinning away. 

Contrast or no, there was a balance to this one. Starkz hit a brutal Alabama Slam in the corner. Matthews got her back later by pulling her feet out and causing the back of her head to hit the turnbuckle. That was the story of this as much as anything else. Starkz stretched as far as she could, taxing and testing Matthews with disrespectful question after disrespectful question and Matthews had a brutal answer for each and every one. 

Maybe the finish was some sort of master plan by Starkz, lulling Matthews into a false sense of security so that she'd miss the moonsault, but I think it was more down to one more irritating Starkz quality, her plucky resilience. Regardless, Matthews did miss and Starkz planted her with the Sugoi Driver to steal one out. Matthews had taught her a number of painful lessons and very likely, Starkz managed to not learn a single thing from any of them. Thus is the state of the American youth, alas. 

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D3AN~!!! Day 1: MAESTROS~!

DEAN~!!! 3 9/6/25

Blue Panther/Virus/Pantera vs Hechicero/Dr. Cerebro/Xelhua

This exceeded every expectation.

Don't look at me that way. I'm a true believer. These are my guys. This was the match I was looking forward to the most, the one that kept getting better with every announcement. 

(I would have loved to see what Angelico could have done with these guys but now that I've seen it, I wouldn't change it for the world).

But just look at the numbers here. The tecnico side has a combined age of 181, with an average of  60.33333. And I love maestros matches, I do. It was a joy whenever any of those old man FLLM Masters title matches showed up with Negro Navarro or Solar or Blue Panther or Satanico or whoever. And yes, of course, Blue Panther is having a blowaway year. And it's not like he and Cerebro aren't empowered by wearing the mask again and there was Hechicero with his relative size to base, and Xelhua has all the youth and energy and flash you could want in a scientific wrestler. 

BUT STILL...

Even with those FLLM matches, you had a certain expectation when it came to pace and style. They'd build to a few more impactful spots, would pepper them in when it mattered the most. You might even get one dive which again, they would make the absolute most out of, but that's not why you were watching. You were watching to see the technique and the struggle and the effort, the personality and the interaction. The way they worked the crowd, the way they worked each other.

I tend to get frustrated with how six-man (and more) matches work in AEW, dependent on who you have in there. There are lots of ways to run them. I love the big 80s NJPW elimination tags where there's no room for escape if you get too close to the ropes. I grew up on Survivor Series matches which would be the only time each year to see so many personalities interact with one another. 

On paper, I understand the concept of a lucha trios style match allowing for quick action, for people to cycle in and out and keep the spots endlessly flowing. The problem is that the US wrestlers who focus on that element the most when they get to play by those rules are the same ones who generally do so much of that in the first place. It just takes away the need for them to structure a match at all and just gives them every excuse to "do stuff" without thought or meaning. 

Here, though, where there were obvious physical limitations, it worked perfectly. Instead of being more compounding more, creating noise, it allowed the action to continue and for the rigors of time to be overcome by spreading the load across all six wrestlers.

The other side of the equation in my frustration over "lucha styled" US matches is that they drop all of the other trappings, the ones that give the action purpose and form. Here, most were there. There were initial pairings (Pantera vs Cerebro, Panther vs Xelhua, Virus vs Hechicero). They made full use of the 2/3 falls format. In the primera caida, the pairings were given time so that they could work the mat. In the segunda caida, they escalated to rope running with a second round of pairings. Then the tercera caida had tricked out submissions broken up one after the next. In each caida, everything broke down building to the finish. The only thing it was missing was a clear rudo control and tecnico comeback but in a match that was, in many ways, an exhibition and showcase, that was fine, especially since the rudos took the primera, creating some inherent pressure anyway.

With the structure clear and the action steady, the details were allowed to shine, and what great details we got here. The initial pairings were a blast, with Pantera doing his headstands, with Xelhua and Panther leaning into attitude and trading similar holds, and with Hechicero's size allowing Virus (blue tecnico facepaint brandished) to hit some of his more stylized agility moves from years gone by. Everything built to Hechicero once again basing, this time for a flying Blue Panther 'rana (He'd hit another dive to set up the finish in the tercera too. What a guy). This cleared the ring for Xelhua to tie up Virus for the win. 

I loved Xelhua's swagger here. Cerebro, Hechicero, and Xelhua were a team spanning three decades of under the radar technical rudo wizards, and the youngest of the lot was full of bluster and attitude, making sure everyone knew he fit right in. Meanwhile, you had Pantera constantly clapping up the crowd and Blue Panther flexing his newly obtained rights to the "Yes" chant, keeping everyone engaged and focused and ensuring all of this was not just technically amazing but rooted in character as well. 

It carried through all the way to the tercera. I loved the cycling through. You watch that in old lucha and sometimes they'd just grab an arm or something, but here the wrestlers were going out of their way to make every hold as interesting as possible and then to wind the crowd up before breaking it up, all the way to Hechicero's last contortion for the finish.

I have no idea what inspired these guys on this night. I don't know what they were feeling. I don't know what butterflies might have been in Xelhua's stomach, or even Cerebro or Panther's, but they were given the room to stretch and express themselves and present some of the most genuine, creative, dynamic lucha libre in front of a game crowd, and they ran with faster and farther than I could have imagined. 

Whether or not they fully realized how much it would matter, they created something beautiful for my friends, in the memory of my friend, something that hit so many of the marks that I love about lucha, in front of a crowd, in a venue, and on a stage where this sort of a portrait has so rarely been allowed to be painted so genuinely before.  

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DEAN~!!! 2 Day 7: Mad Dog Connelly vs Adam Priest

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Mad Dog Connelly vs Adam Priest (Dog Collar Match)

MD: Work with me for a minute here. If you ever got a tape from Dean over the years, there was a real good chance that it'd just be something he had watched recently and enjoyed. You never knew what you were going to get. That was, in many ways, the spirit of the Death Valley Driver Video Reviews. The wrestling came to them. Maybe they had a good idea of what to seek after repeat viewings, but it was the footage that ended up in their hands. It was very much the opposite of the Observer. That was at the center, the keeper of the canon. These ruled the periphery, full of strange energy where anything counted and everything was a possibility. 

Now remember, this show was put together in part by Phil Schneider and to get a Schneider Comp was a very different experience. You were already in through the door. You knew the password. You were choosing from a numbered list. If the DVDVRs took the footage as it came, Phil took the best of that footage: the weirdest, the wildest, the bloodiest, the hardest hitting, the absolute must-see distilled from every corner of the world and put it all in one place. 

For those of us who watched the show at 7 PM last Tuesday having looked forward to it for a month+, it was a Schneider Comp. But I imagine for those who walked up not quite sure what they were getting into, that took their kids, that saw the social media posts and clicked, thousands and thousands of people, it was instead the cool tape that you got from Dean which might have anything in the world on it. 

The DVDVRs helped to expose people to the possibilities of pro wrestling, to push people out of either one box or another, the culture or the counter-culture, and realize there was so much more under the sun. And that's what this match was meant to do as well. It wasn't Connelly vs Demus II, and that's okay. It was a bit more of the touring version of a Connelly dog collar match. You could see them run this around the horn in 1985 in Memphis, Nashville, Louisville, and Jackson. It was a gateway drug for a Connelly dog collar match. Here's a taste. Intense? Sure. Not what you're used to? Not at all. Unsanitized? No Dunn Cuts and corporate speak here. Want more? You absolutely do. 

But it was one that leaned into contrast. Adam Priest can, of course, wrestle any style, and this is a style he can wrestle, but the strength here was in the differences. He was canny, savvy, underhanded, and backed into a corner and fighting for his life. That meant getting some cheapshots in early. It meant having the corrective collar in his back pocket, a real equalizer that might, might have put Connelly down if he could get it on him through hook or crook. 

The problem was, connected by the chain as they were, every bit of violence Priest could bring to the table, Connelly could return threefold. He could whip Connelly into the guardrail, bruise and batter up his side, but Connelly would burst forth and drive his own head into Priest without abandon, a living breathing guardrail coming straight at you at high, reckless speed. You aren't going to outchoke Connelly. You aren't going to outmangle Connelly. You might outsmart him, but if that buys you one opportunity, you better damn well put him down with it, because otherwise, he will get up and you will have hell to pay. In this case, hell came in the form of Priest's own corrective collar clamped around his neck as Connelly pulled and pulled until it seemed Priest's eyes might bug out. 

This was a free show. It was on YouTube. For those of us who knew what we were getting into, it scratched the itch but left us wanting more. Of course it did. There was always another issue, always another post, always another road report, always another match to be found in the crates or the distant corners. For those new to this world, however? Well, the first one's always free, isn't it? There's so much truth still left to be lived.

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DEAN~!!! 2 Day 6: CIBERNETICO~!

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Torneo Cibernetico: Blue Panther/Hologram/Neon/Valiente/Virus vs Volador Jr./Averno/Euforia/Xelhua/Dr. Cerebro

MD: Dean could write about ciberneticos. His style was perfect, bombastic and over the top, throwing praise and emotion and tildes and wild metaphors. He could hone in on all the cool moments and somehow make them seem a hundred times cooler. I'm nowhere near as good at it, but yeah, this was awesome. If you saw this, you know that. I don't think I'm going to have a ton to add to just having lived it. 

I do have some thoughts though. First and foremost, this felt a little more produced than most I've seen, which isn't to say there isn't rhyme or reason for what happens in them. There is, but it all seems a little more honed in on the moment, unless there's a specific feud that it's furthering or leaning upon. When I say focused, there are a lot of things I could highlight. We had exchanges with Xelhua against both Blue Panther and Virus where he got to joust on the mat with them. There was a big elimination moment with Blue Panther and Dr. Cerebro in there. Blue Panther got to go up against the world with everyone stooging, feeding, basing for him. Euforia had his moment to shine as he walked like a giant swatting high flying tecnicos away. Valiente got to hit his fireplug tope. Hologram got to hit his that seemed send them flying halfway to the back. It all ended with Blue Panther and Hologram standing together against Volador and Averno and even then there was that great nearfall with the finishers used earlier used in tandom. 

You'd probably get some of that in any other such match but I don't think you'd get all of it. This was a match that knew its audience and catered to it, while still delighting the crowd at the same time. A bunch of things stuck with me: some kid in the crowd calling Euforia "big boy" when he was getting rocked. Virus working so amazingly hard and taking huge bumps considering his age. What an absolute legend. He's my guy. Panther hitting the flip dive off the apron not once but twice. How great Averno's finish still looks. That it's a joy to see Blue Panther and Dr. Cerebro work in their masks (though most of us are so much more used to seeing Cerebro NOT in the mask). Seeing not just Neon and Xelhua in with these guys but also Cerebro and Hologram. Just seeing Panther tough it out and fight through the end of the match. 

So yeah, the only way to tackle a match like this is by listing all the great stuff. I could have probably gone another two paragraphs with just that and then another on top talking about Danielson but, since I'm not Dean, let me say instead that it's really something to be experienced yourself. Go check it out on YouTube if you haven't already. 

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DEAN~!!! 2 Day 5: Lee Moriarty vs. Matt Mako

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Lee Moriarty vs. Matt Mako

MD: I'm a big fan of modern Pure Rules matches. Any match with a constraint is a match where you are forced to be creative. Maybe that sounds counter-intuitive but structure forces meaningful, driven, focused innovation in the same way that total freedom might allow for unbridled, wasteful, senseless innovation. It's not all the time in either case, but to me, it tends to be inherent in the nature of pro wrestling. 

When you get the right two opponents (or since Moriarty is a given, the right opponent for Moriarty), you end up with interesting, thoughtful bouts, ones that thread the needle between technique and imagination. I really liked how they set this up. Mako's the master of the cross-armbreaker and he went right for it twice. In a normal match, that might open him up to counters or wouldn't have much impact on a fresh opponent who could fairly easily get to the ropes. Here, though, that meant Moriarty had to blow two rope breaks right from the start. Moriarty countered with an early Border City Stretch but just mathematically, he was on a path towards defeat.

So he opened things up, using his speed and finesse to start attacking the arm instead. Thus the game of chess, one where the path of least resistance bumped up against strategic thinking and quick reactions, kicked into a higher gear. Mako utilized pins to force Moriarty into position for submissions. Moriarty made a brilliant and unexpected roll to lure Mako in. Both carried the damage to their respective arms with every move and counter move, even as they saw their rope breaks evaporate to zero. 

In some ways it became a race to the finish on who would get their hold on first (and therefore last), fully recognizing that any attempt to do so would be marred by the damage already done. Moriarty got Mako into position but couldn't lock him up fully. But he, fluid master of his own style, compensated by utilizing his foot in place of his arm and retained his title. It was a wrestler's duel underneath flickering, two practitioners of pressure and pain matching wits and mettle under flickering, unstable lights, fully grounded and just a little surreal, just how wrestling ought to be.

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DEAN~!!! 2 Day 4: Slim J vs. The Beast Mortos

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Slim J vs. The Beast Mortos

MD: Probably the match I was most looking forward to on paper. It was one of those things that you didn't even know how badly you wanted until you saw the graphic for it. Look, I like Ciberneticos as much as the next guy but sometimes, you want wrestling distilled to its purest form as a starting point and then and only then built up and embellished with every enhancement imaginable. Contrast so often makes the world go round and that's what we had here, a monster of a base vs the most underrated babyface of all time. 

Let's talk babyface Slim J. It's easy to get lost in all the move innovations and clever ways to do things. You could stop and say "Hey, this is a half generation later Nova" and make all the jokes that go along with that. But that's not Slim J. Wrestling is symbolic. A move is nothing but a tool, a piece of diction, vocabulary. It's everything else: the selling, the overall body language, the timing, the placement, that makes up the syntax, that makes wrestling live and breathe and separates it from a video game simulation or simple acrobatics. It's the heart and the soul of pro wrestling, and that's where Slim J shines. That he's able to then marry it with all of that interesting vocabulary: entry points into moves, clever variations, the inventions that others have taken as their own for decades now, that's the best of both worlds, and he's one of the very best of both worlds. He uses his size and resolve and determination to draw sympathy and then makes the most of every opening with a souped up shotgun blast that still somehow seem organic and plausible within the narrative realities of pro wrestling. He draws you in and then stretches your suspension of disbelief instead of disrupting it. It's really a hell of a thing.

And this Mortos is by far my favorite version of him. Yes, he can do amazing, spectacular things, flips and dives and everything else, but so can so many others. It's more impressive in some ways due to his wideness, his mass, his imposing frame, but it's best done sparingly. He is best when he is the center of gravity that others must revolve around and must escape. I want to see him hitting those brutal looking strikes. I want him to catch people as they charge at him. I want people to have to solve the puzzle of how to stagger him, how to push him back, how to get him down. And then yeah, as an exclamation point, I do want him to do one or two extraordinary things, but that's the cherry on top, not the meal itself. 

They got the balance just right here. Slim J would chip away at Mortos only to get caught and stomped on and tossed about and hit with the nastiest strikes in the corner or the center of the ring. Then he'd use all of his ingenuity to create an opening only to get caught again. There was a sense of inevitability here but it was the journey that mattered, not the destination, and even then, he was clever enough and persistent enough and canny enough to just maybe, maybe give people some real hope. But hope just isn't enough when you're up against a wild man bull that can catch you in midair and obliterate you at a moment's notice. The only possible destination in that case is a final one. Hell of a journey though.  

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DEAN~!!! 2 Day 3: JD Drake vs. Josh Woods

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

JD Drake (w/Anthony Henry) vs. Josh Woods (w/Tom Lawlor)

MD: The chaotic and mutable spirit of indie wrestling lives here as this was initially supposed to be Woods vs Lawlor, but ended up with Lawlor seconding Woods. Thankfully, this time around (as opposed to DEAN~!!! 1) Filthy Tom had time to carefully prepare his sartorial style and he came in looking like the caddie-ist of corner men. It actually matched Woods' turquoise wave gear well. Henry, on the other hand, has been training hard in his absence and felt it important to let everyone know that by coming down to second JD without a shirt.

I missed the Workhorsemen and this was a great venue to see them both back together again (even if it wasn't a tag, though I'd like to see this tag, but that's beside the point). They're the ultimate utility players. You can plug them in to any role and they'll get the job done. You could debut them as Ricochet's new crew next week (as opposed to CRU or whoever) and people would gawk (not a bad thing given they're trying to get heat and dissonance drives heat) but they'd be in the right place at the right time doing the right thing the right way every single time that they'd need to be and it would work. You could have them call out FTR and do a short program, could have them try to survive the Hurt Syndicate for ten minutes on TV, could have them challenge Dustin and Sammy on ROH, could have them menace Top Flight (not sure anyone works better with Dante than Drake), and they'd get the job done. Drake's instantly credible between his size, how he moves, how he carries himself and Henry has that snap precision execution and throws himself into everything he does. 

Woods, given his background, is instantly credible, and he definitely threw himself into everything here. This was just his second match this year (with a VIP match earlier in May). He got the better of Drake early on with takeovers, holds, and some nasty knee strikes on the floor. You don't want to be on the floor with JD Drake though because he's got the best transition move in all of wrestling, his press up against the ropes into a big meaty shot. I liked Dylan's call explaining that you're hurt not just by the strike but by the pressure of the ropes going the wrong way at the wrong angle or what not. After that, Henry made his presence felt and it made sense that he'd be a little more impactful than Lawlor out there (a perfectly fine encouraging cheerleader, mind you), given the tag team stylings of Henry and Drake. That included a beautiful neck twist on the apron with big follow through as Drake was distracting the ref. 

Woods came back with quicker, more high-impact, high-motion offense than you might expect and they rolled into a stretch where Drake hit his cannonball but missed the moonsault allowing Woods to hit a pretty impressive corner twisting suplex. Just good wrestling executed well. I don't think it chipped into the same sort of unique space that Woods vs Lawlor might have but it helped ground and round out the card.

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DEAN~!!! 2 Day 2: Arez/Gringo Loco vs. Coven of the Goat

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Los Desperados (Arez/Gringo Loco) vs. Coven of the Goat (Tank/Jaden Newman)

MD: Of all the matches on the card, this felt like the most DVDVR-coded one. It's like you could just grab guys off of a 2025 DVDVR 500 and here they'd be. WAR jokes. Tilde marks. Making sure everyone knew it was king sized. And man was it ever surreal to see the Coven out there with the Rev doing his thing in the daylight, surrounded by flashing digital casino billboards, amidst the palm trees. There was something downright post-apocalyptic about it, like the early stages of a Mad Max wasteland timeline where society was still breaking down and some of the old bastions of late-stage capitalism still creaked on. And here were these marauders to let everyone know that despite the sugar-coated trappings plastered around the ring, things were not okay and no, they'd never be okay again.

Between their match on DEAN~!!! 1 and the fact I've seen Loco in his share of crazy IWRG brawls back in the day I was expecting this to go all over the place and cause havoc. But it really was a conventional tag, one that was smart and hit the marks you'd want and some that you didn't know you needed. Arez and Newman got to play on the mat for a bit and do their thing. Loco and Tank were able to lay it into each other. Towards the end of the shine, Arez hit a series of rapid fire mid-air kicks on Tank and that was one of those moments where time stopped and you just had to gawk at the impossibility of what you were watching. It was a moment that would have never existed without Dean, without his openness of mind and broadness of interests, without his ability to inspire his friends and cohorts to create something in his memory. It was a moment that shouldn't be, this behemoth of the southern indies having his back percussed upon by the educated feet of the strangest of lucha masters. 

But then the Rev grabbed a leg from the outside and the Coven did their thing, cutting off the ring and doing damage. This didn't go particularly long but it doesn't have to when Newman's using his body as a weapon and Tank's leaning on you. A little then will go a long way. As they cycled into the finishing stretch, Tank, maybe feeling the sun on his back, maybe inspired by the palm trees, maybe drawing dark energy through the Rev from the bitter tears of a thousand lost souls who had bet away their pensions and alimony money at the casino nearby, moved with renewed fervor of years past, crashing into Gringo Loco in the corner again and again. That came at a cost though. He had been able to save Newman from Arez once. Spent and drained on the floor from his lost-in-the-moment exertion, watching from the outside in, all he could do was look on at the three count. But the Coven were able to lay in a post-match beating and walk out with heads high. The wheel ever circles on from one strange, dark encounter to the next. And this one was stranger than most, just like Dean would have wanted and just like we all need now and again.

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DEAN~!!! 2 Day 1: Manders vs. Rhino

DEAN~!!! 2 5/24/25

Manders vs. Rhino

MD: I actually really like Ron Bass. Some of that is a sort of after-the-fact nostalgia to his babyface turn on JJ Dillon and Black Bart and Buddy Landel in 1985. They more or less anchored the JCP midcard that year. But as a heel in the early 80s, he was a guy who knew exactly what to give and when, would lean on people, would throw himself into things when it was time get comeuppance. I was looking through the board and DEAN thought that he needed a reexamination in 2015. I tend to agree and...

Actually, let's put a pin on Outlaw Ron Bass for a minute as hard as that may be. DEAN~!!! 2 took place last week in Arizona. There is a Matt involved. He is promoter extraordinaire Matt Griffin (formerly #251, two spots above Ricky Reyes, on the November 2002 DVDVR 500, Jacey North). He is not me. I'm basically just here holding the fort on the blog while Phil and Eric put this stuff together and honor the big guy. It means, however, that I can enjoy the show like the rest of you can and that I get to write about it having not, you know, actually put together the matches. I ended up writing about DEAN~!!! 1 in one big post but I figured I'd write about each match here on its own. Maybe one a day. Maybe not. But we'll get through them soon enough. 

Anyway, back to Ron Bass. I got big Ron Bass vibes from heel-leaning Manders here. There was a moment early on where it seemed like the crowd was more than happy to get behind him, but they had put it together with Rhino as the babyface given that they were probably expecting a more-casual-than-not crowd and it all worked out. Unsurprisingly, he rose to the occasion. 

These could have been two big, hard-hitting guys just running into each other over and over again. When they announced the match, that was mostly what I was expecting. That would have been fine. It would have set the stage for the rest of the show. It would have given everyone a unique match-up worth talking about. And there was quite a bit of that smashing and crashing overall. But that's not all that this was. Manders gave a far more nuanced performance than that, layering in both vulnerability and canniness to give the match a backbone so it wasn't just working on heft and muscle alone.

That vulnerability was honestly lovely. That's the word I'll use. Lovely. He stood tall against Rhino, going shot for shot, but each shot he took snapped his head back. On the floor, Rhino might have backpedaled in the face of Manders' assault, but in the ring, he had just a bit more forward motion, which made sense both visually and because he was babyface-coded here. Manders went for a big shot early and missed the lariat on the outside, ravaging his arm into the post. He found really interesting ways to sell it moving forward. Rhino hit a suplex almost immediately thereafter and he played up the landing by focusing on it. Then, closer towards the finish, he whiffed on a lariat and sold the arm just from the motion of missing. That's a true relatable feeling. If your arm hurts and you move it the wrong way, you feel it. Of course going for broke and missing a lariat (even if the only contact was with the air) could stun someone, but it's a concept of immersed selling that you will almost never see from anyone else even if you watch eighty years of pro wrestling footage. 

And he was canny in his offense. He, being the heel, missed the charge on the outside, but Rhino crashed into the post only because Manders propelled him that way. He pointed to his head after the fact and well he should. This was still a crowd that half wanted to support him and it was best to make it clear what they were going for considering he'd be gutting his way though the rest of the match with one arm. That meant when Rhino clapped up later on (because he's a babyface vet who knows how to get the crowd going), the fans went with him, and it meant that they were happy and satisfied with the finish instead of disappointed. This was a match that could have just been the lowest common denominator and everyone would have been happy with it anyway but that tried to be something more, because that's the spirit of the thing, isn't it? And the spirit was alive and well with this opener.

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Found Footage Friday: DEAN~! 2 Special!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rhyno vs. Low-Ki PWS 6/7/14 - GREAT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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