Every Dog Has Its Day: Zack Sabre, Jr. vs. Darian Bengston

PRODUCE Volume 1: The Octopus 6/29/26

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Darian Bengston

"Let Hercules himself do what he may,

The cat will mew, and dog will have his day."

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1

MD: Wrestling, even artful wrestling, especially artful wrestling, is quite often purposeful. An opener serves a purpose. This is just as true for a first scene in a movie, the first track on an album. It sets the stage. It establishes a mood.

While there were pre-show matches on PRODUCE Volume 1, they were tastes and teasers, a glimpse of the wide breadth of the possibilities of the indies in the span of fifteen minutes: comedy, power, toughness, style, and just the right amount of karaoke.

This was the start of the main card and the main course, and it had to do heavy lifting. It had to make a statement about PRODUCE itself, about independent wrestling, about all of the possibilities in the previous paragraph and more.

Zack Sabre, Jr. is often likened to Johnny Saint, and for good reason, but I see him more as a modern day Billy Robinson, not necessarily in how he wrestles, but in who he wrestles. I've seen footage of him in places of the world few other foreigners delve and it reminds me of the stories of Robinson in Iraq or India. While his home base is New Japan, he presents himself as someone who wrestles who he wants, when he wants, where he wants. He is a globetrotter, a world warrior. He created a role for himself and then, over time, with effort (and not at all a sure thing), he grew into it. For him to be starting off a show like this represents something.

Bengston represents something too. There's such life to him, such joy in how he wrestles. This is a guy who loves wrestling, loves technique, loves to challenge himself, loves to open up those little moments of triumph and celebrate them (even sometimes to his own detriment). It's clear as day to watch him move. And that technique is underpinned by a humanity and vulnerability. He has fun, he flexes his skills, he certainly has his pride, but he's relatable. He's a wrestler, and wrestlers do manipulate by trade (and we welcome them to do so; we invite them in and, in turn, they invite us in; that is the pact between us), but there's an earnestness to the process to him that just makes it all the more effective. You want to root for the guy. You want him to succeed. 

This would be a battle of technique, but not wrestling for the sake of wrestling (which can be fine and good, of course, but often is best seen as a starting point and not the destination). Personal issues are at the root of professional wrestling, and they contrived a fine one between these two for this opener.

ZSJ is on record in saying that putting on a great technical match for an American audience is like “reading Shakespeare to a dog." It's a notion that undermines the audience, the audience here being far more important than the country as a whole. PRODUCE touts a different relationship with the audience, claiming that it won't insult their intelligence. At the same time, it expects something more from them, that they embrace professional wrestling as art, something worth thinking about and engaging with, worth experiencing with an open heart instead of irony and self-conscious minimizing. The wrestling will be brave and confident and the fans will be brave and confident as well.

It insults Bengston as well. To hear it from him, he went to England to learn both wrestling and Shakespeare. This is an opportunity against an opponent who was on a featured match on a huge PPV the night before, against one who is considered one of the best technical wrestlers of his generation, but it's also a chance to prove Sabre wrong, to lift up himself, the crowd, and the fledgling organization.

So yes, there was a mood to be set, and they managed it admirably on the mat. Sabre controlled to start, using one hold to unlock the next (sometimes a criticism of him, but in 2026, it comes off as strategic to me more often than not). He was able to pry down Bengston's leg despite an attempt to jam it. When controlling the arm, he gave a little wave to the crowd. He saw this as easy work. Bengston however, snuck a leg in as a simple too to create leverage, breaking a hold and turning things around on ZSJ. Bengston chose to use his superior positioning to ride ZSJ's back in the most insulting way possible. Sabre, of course, took offense. The mood was set.

ZSJ came in hot, separating arms and stepping down upon them, forcing pain to blossom across Darian's face. Bengston cartwheeled away at first chance and was able to return favor to ZSJ's legs. Sabre managed an elevated half crab but when he went for a bow and arrow, Bengston snuck in a tight short dragon screw. It wasn't necessarily a human game of chess so much as frenetic technical table tennis of joints and limbs.

Sabre volleyed back, dropping down and kicking out the arm. So far the match had its rhythm, its punctuation, but that felt like the first real transition as Sabre honed in on one specific body part. That's how we break down matches, how we analyze and organize them. Some have clear shine/heat/comeback structures, but so many don't. In those, you're looking for the transitions, the shifting of the tides of fate and advantage. You're watching to see how the characters interact, how they are affected, how they affect one another. And how they interface with the rules and norms of the world.

This match was an opportunity not just to establish these two characters, the style, the stakes, but also the rules and the potential consequence for them. Sabre doubled down on the arm, starting in with his trademark joint manipulation with the fingers. The ref immediately pulled out a yellow card, something new, something different, something perhaps timely in this World Cup year. Sabre complained, and riding another wave of transition (or, perhaps were we to lean into the narrative itself, opportunity), Bengston was able to recover.

He reversed a whip into a headlock takeover, and, much like Sabre before him, shifted from one hold to the next, looking for what he wanted. Unfortunately, what he wanted here was to preen and taunt, to shoot an imaginary basketball through an imaginary hoop and right down upon Sabre's head. Character drives action, and Bengston's character, human as it might be, allowed Sabre to drive right over him, and right into a cross arm-breaker.

A few minutes later, after the two traded uppercuts and once Sabre took over himself, Sabre's own character reared his head, for good and ill. The holds became less rote and more experimental. In this, Sabre was an artist dabbling in bodily architecture. What if a joint was twisted this way, one limb stacked over the other, a leg raised high over head? What edifice might he create? There was a schoolyard element to it, an older sibling contorting a younger, something that wasn't done with respect, but perhaps with familiarity and affection. Bengston had proven himself worth this sort of playful effort, worth an affectionate bullying instead of just a professional dismantling. It was a welcome into a global family of grapplers.

Unsurprisingly, Bengston took it like all younger siblings take it, with frustration and aggravation. He broke free, slapped the mat, pushed up and kept fighting. Sabre, at times, and as the match went on, certainly wanted this, but Bengston needed it. It gave him fire, but it left him well-suited for table tennis, not chess, and at some point, when it was time to bring things to a close, Sabre shifted gears from jamming (literal and figurative) to precise mastery. 

Bengston held his own during the pin exchanges of the finishing stretch, but even being admirably and effectively reactive was never going to be enough in a world where you have to think three moves ahead. Sabre was, unsurprisingly, perhaps inevitably, able to trap him for the pin.

Zack Sabre, Jr., wrestling nobility in his own way, having christened another ship, will trot off to another part of the globe, will go off to fight elsewhere, and, as revealed post-match, will return to create a show of his own. 

PRODUCE, thus christened, still has a journey before itself. One match does not make a show. One show does not make a legacy. But at least the stage had been set.

And Darian Bengston? Even though he lost the match, he won something greater. The quote above wasn't about Hamlet winning anything. It was simply about him being heard. Was Bengston heard? Absolutely. Was he seen? Undeniably. He had his day here, and there's every reason to believe that his tomorrow will be brighter still.

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Death Valley Days: Road Report

ACTION Wrestling Death Valley Days: Road Report 2/28/26

MD: Usual disclaimer to start. This is Segunda Caida, of course. But I don't personally have a hand in these shows. It's all Phil, Eric, Matt G, and JR. I get no privileged info. Up until now at least, I don't suggest that they try to book Marco Corleone. While I'm proud of these guys for putting their money where their mouth is, my mouth is here. I wouldn't say what you're about to read is fully unbiased, but it does have a level of distance at least. That said, they're doing great. But they already have a Matt, and he could hit an Iconoclasm on me.  

It's also been great seeing so many people write about the show in general. Engage with pro wrestling, write about it, talk about your experiences. That's the spirit that drove DVDVR and this place and the internet needs more of it once again.

Ok, on with the show.

Darian Bengston vs Ryan Mooney

MD: Kicking things off and setting the tone, this was for the ACTION title, one of the two title matches on the card. Bengston is free-flowing, technical, engaging, dynamic, entertaining. He's constant motion, shifting from one hold and position to the next. 

It was up to Mooney to stop him cold as many ways as possible then. Sometimes that meant throwing himself headlong at Bengston, foot first off the ropes and with a body block from off the top. Sometimes it meant throwing Bengston all around the ring with tricked out offense. And yeah, sometimes, especially when things got particularly hairy and Bengston inched closer to the Makabe Lock, that meant biting. 

As things escalated, tricks that worked earlier in the match failed later on, like a hitter who had seen a pitcher a couple of times late in a game, and that was true first and foremost for the biting. Bengston was able to redirect Mooney's hand right into his own mouth, lock the legs, and flip over for the Makabe Lock. This was solid, smart, straightforward. Both men were stylized in their approaches but the match itself was grounded and easily accessible compared to what was to come.

Angus Legstrong vs Oldman Youngboy

MD: I made the choice to write about this all at once, because it, even more than the DEAN shows, is a single card and should be looked at as such. In some ways, this match is here to prep everyone for the BattlARTS match to come, but it's also to pull people out of their comfort zone. Bengston vs Mooney was very much in their comfort zone, something well executed and familiar.

This though? 

This probably took a lot of the crowd for a ride into Parts Unknown. Legstrong looks like a mostly bald Cliff Clavin, if he had the strongest legs in the world, which he immediately showed off. Youngboy returned the favor with a super impressive bridge. 

And then they were off to the races. Gritty grappling where nothing was given and everything was opportunistic. In theory, it was a bit like a CWF undercard match where Eddie Graham sent a couple of guys out to shoot. 

Back on their feet, neither getting a decided advantage (though Legstrong was able to get Youngboy to go for a rope break), they each utilized more of a professional wrestling flourish. Youngboy faked high and picked a leg with a roll; later on he'd hit a beautiful takedown scissoring Legstrong (ironically enough) with his legs. Legstrong, on the other hand, was able to get Youngboy in a vulnerable position and just paintbrushed him.

Maybe, just maybe, Oldboy was winning on points, but none of that mattered after Legstrong hit the first real bomb of the match, a literal one. Oldboy, on instinct, managed a kickout on the folding press, but Legstrong did his best SENKA impression and bullied Oldboy over for the pin. 

This was two men plying their trade, showing off their skill, presenting a vision of what pro wrestling can and should be that's very different than most of what we've gotten this century and it was very welcome to see.

Isaiah Broner vs Jake Shepherd

MD: Exactly what it should have been (which is something you can say about every match on the card, really). Two behemoths going at it. Jake Shepherd possesses real Jerry Blackwell energy in the best way. There's just something about how he moves. They just threw shots at each other to start and Broner got the better of him. Shepherd had this way of shaking his leg as he stumbled backwards. When you're a super heavyweight, every movement matters. It draws the eyes, it tugs at the imagination. By stumbling back like that, it put over Broner's shot in a massive way. 

Then he crashed right through him (which is no small feat). They ended up on the floor and Broner started to get the best of him again, but there was Shepherd out of nowhere with an unlikely kick. He had an answer. And then he punctuated it with an absolutely brutal splash on the floor. Much of the rest of the match was Broner trying to heft Shepherd up for what the commentators thought might be a Death Valley Driver. Eventually, after catching him on the ropes, he did get him up, and then he planted him with the craziest F5 you'll ever see. I could have watched these two throw massive shots at each other all night, but clearly in a clash this titanic, something had to give. Broner's always worth watching, no question; we knew that. But Shepherd is such a perfect DVDVR guy.

Kasey Owens vs Adrian Alanis

MD: Character should always drive action, but that's especially true when you're deviating from conventional narratives. This was heel vs heel, but it was completely driven by who these two were.

That meant Owens came out, turnbuckle in hand, causing a fit and demanding the ref to check Alanis. That let him slip the brass knuckles into the turnbuckle himself, presumably to use later. 

Once the action started however, it was more akin to goofus and gallant, if both were heels. Alanis had one poised piece of offense after another, posing in between. Owens, on the other hand had cheapshots and finger pulling. 

After Alanis nearly got the win with a Flosion and Owens finally hooked in the Chicken Wing, things completely devolved into one of the best and rarest forms of wrestling there is, a dirty rotten scoundrels scenario. A crutch ended up in the ring, then one chair after the other. Owens tried to use the turnbuckle. The ref was yelling at them. They were yelling at the ref. They were yelling at each other. Then they both went for the Eddy Guerrero chair fakeout at the same time and only came to when it was obvious the ref was going to throw the match. It was fun stuff and completely different than anything else on the card and most things you'll see on any card all year. 

Alanis felt a little more out of his element though, which allowed Owens to get the better of him. Instead of getting to use the knucks, he ensured that Alanis went head first into the turnbuckle. I'm not 100% sure about the actual physics of that, but the pro wrestling physics (which tend to be more moral than anything else) were spot on, and the slovenly trickster of yore beat the slicker athlete on this night.  

Slim J vs Tim Bosby

MD: Slim J looked like the most professional professional wrestler in the world here. This was sharp as you'd expect, one of the most imaginative, versatile babyfaces of the century, with some of the best, smartest instincts, against a dynamo of a athletic base with bomb after bomb after bomb for offense. 

Slim tried to pry off an arm early, and he'd have some success with that technique, but there was always the sense that Bosby was just too big and too much for it to slow him down enough. Even then, were it not for Hales getting involved, maybe it would have been. But Dylan did get in the way and that let Bosby start in on the back. 

Some of his offense looked like it broke Slim in half. Despite that, Slim would climb up and around, bound over, hit from every angle as he was want to do, but he couldn't turn the tide. A match like this, while being as pro wrestling as it possibly can be, also has a bit of that sports feel. Bosby had the ball and was driving on net again and again but no matter the pressure, Slim J didn't break. And once he got ball possession, he ran with it. 

Even then, it seemed like it all came to naught as Bosby finally planted him with an F5, something they had conditioned the crowd to be a match-ender earlier in the night in the Broner match. It led to a huge kickout here. Finally, after a couple of finishing stretch counters, Bosby hit a spinecrunching German and it looked like that might be it. It just wasn't that sort of night though. It was, instead, the sort of night where Slim leaned as hard as anyone possibly could into being an arch-babyface, hulked up, ripped the shirt, nailed Dylan off the apron, and wholly immune to even the idea of negative consequence of that distracted action, took Bosby up, over, and around for the pin. And for at least a few minutes, all was right in the world. 

You know what? Sometimes we need that. Sometimes we need pro wrestling to be that. Why the hell not here and now?

Toby Klein vs Nathan Mowery

MD: Variety is the spice of life, and if you ask these guys, blood is a viable spice. This would be the death match portion of the show. The great thing about using a VCR as a ranged weapon, like Klein did to start this before Mowery could even make it to the ring, is that then you can use the tape from the VHS itself as a garotte. It's economical when you think about it.

This was about as straightforward as could be. Two maniacs (said affectionately) jabbing jagged objects ranging from antlers to a handsaw into each other's forehead and then peppering the bloody remnants with punches. Occasionally you'd get a DDT. More likely you'd get a chair, or a door, or a light tube. 

If there was the overarching theme to the night, it was wrestlers giving it their all, not in the A for Effort sort of way, but instead in that these characters, these unique, twisted, brilliant, wonderful entities, were pressing up against each other in this overwhelming cacophony of violence, technique, and grit that would drown out all the petty, meager worries of the day. And that was completely at play here. These two were, in this moment, the very most of their class, of their type, and they battled each other with all the trappings of their chosen style. It just so happens that Mowry had the Reverend at his side and the means to set his elbow on fire. Past that? Could have gone either way.

Jamesen Shook vs Tank

MD: Speaking of characters (but then I could start literally every one of these matches like that; that's the strength of this card!)... Shook and Tank. 

For a guy with just a few years under his belt, Shook is markedly good at commanding a room. He's very entertaining, especially when he's taking stuff. He wrestled this match big even in a small room, and you need to wrestle big to stand out against Tank. 

Tank's got the mass, but he's a center of gravity not because of what he is but because of who he is. It's because of the timing, the gravitas, some of the best punches you could possibly see in 2026 (or 2016 or...), and the wisdom to know how to twist the act just a little depending on his opponent, like here with the eyepoke. Meanwhile, Shook was living up to his name, arms flailing at every shot.

Even so, there's over a thirty year age gap between these two, and you got the sense that Tank wanted to win this one through crook as much as hook, just to show that he was canny, that he was the master of whatever game you put in front of him. Thus the feigned knee injury. If he had just plowed through, maybe he could have won this thing, likely he could have, but he wanted to win it on his terms and that gave Shook exactly what he needed to get a roll up and slip away with his title for yet another day.

Karl Greco-Malenko vs Matt Mako

MD: So Greco-Malenko could be Timothy Olyphant's stunt double on Justified, and I mean that in the very best way. He doesn't need to be though, because he's already Karl Greco-Malenko, and that's more than enough.

Back during the DEAN~!!! 1 review here, I noted my own difficulties in writing about shoot style given that it tends to be so free-flowing and full of primarily intrinsic storytelling. I've watched a lot of Newborn UWF since then, and I've more or less come up with a framework to see me through.

You're looking for the contrasts. They say styles make fights, but it's really a combination of character, physical attributes, and preferences (you can call that styles, I guess). If you can map out all three through the action, you've got things managed.

Here, Mako was younger, stronger, faster. He wanted that armbar. Was he starstruck a bit? Hard to say. Greco-Malenko was savvy with plenty to prove. They both had hunger but it maybe manifested differently, and it's in that difference, as much as all the skill and technique between them, that a fight like this shines.

The sum of it felt fairly equal to me. Mako looked for his opportunities, was quicker to grapple, was more the aggressor. Greco-Malenko had answers for mostly everything; sometimes that was firing off palmstrikes, both when in a hold and not. Sometimes it was a clever reversal. There was one time where he avoided a rope break by spinning out into a leglock. That was the sort of escape that would have gotten a huge pop in Japan decades ago from educated fans who knew the skill needed to not just settle on grabbing the rope and the crowd here, to their credit, understood and reacted just as they should have. 

In the most whimsical part of the match (proof positive that just like when Tank went for the eyepoke or the double drop down chair spot between Alanis and Owens, humor can find its way into almost any situation if the wrestlers are talented enough and allow their humanity to shine through), Greco-Malenko turned things around into a floating bodyscissors with his hands outstretched like he was king of the world. 

In the end, Mako came close, very close, to prying that arm off and getting what he wanted, using a fakeout punch to score a huge takedown, but maybe he wanted it too badly and Greco-Malenko was able to pull out one last counter into a heel hook and seize victory. It was a triumphant return in every way for Greco-Malenko with Mako looking all the better for pushing the old master as far as he did.

Mad Dog Connelly vs Slade

MD: Six minutes. Six minutes bell to bell, almost exactly. Maybe off by five seconds, maybe. 

That could be the review, right? I could stop there. That they packed this much violence, animosity, and mayhem into just six minutes. For a complete match with a beginning middle and end, it might be second for second, the most ... well, let me leave hyperbole aside. 

This was hot iron clashing with cold iron. Mad Dog Connelly is, and I say this with great fondness and at a great distance, a maniac. He channels the gaping wounds of the world into rage, seeking vengeance for all the wrongs done by man and done upon man. Slade on the other hand is a stone cold sociopath, the sort of man that would gleefully inflict those wrongs in the first place. There are universes of torment to be found in the eyes of Mad Dog Connelly. Within Slade's? Nothing, nothing at all. 

And here they were, in the middle of the ring, two dynamically opposing forces throwing fists, throwing heads, throwing each other. When they were done wailing on one another in the ring, they went to the floor. There they entered into an unholy pact to bloody one another with the crash of bone on bone alone. Goal achieved, Mad Dog drank in the fruits of their collective effort.

Things boiled over. This wasn't six minutes due to curfew. This wasn't six minutes due to people wanting to go home. This wasn't six minutes due to another show starting on IWTV. This was six minutes because it couldn't possibly be seven. Something had to give, and after the gutwrench and after the choke slam, what gave was Slade's throat with the chain from the dog collar wrapped around it. Violent fiend that he may be, he's still only flesh and blood and bone and sinew after all. Of course, the bell wouldn't stop these two. Six minutes now, but the promise of more to come. I'd expect nothing less from such polar entities of wrath and spite.

MD: Which takes us to the end of the card. I leaned hard into the six minutes of Connelly vs Slade, but look too at the tight two hours that this show came in under. It had a little bit of everything, an ode to the sort of shows that were written about by those of the Death Valley Driver faithful two decades ago, and those that they obtained on tape. 

There was conventional wrestling, Slim J vs Bosby being a modern version of Tito Santana vs a Heenan Family member in its own way. There was like vs like, contrast vs contrast. A deathmatch, a shoot style classic, a hoss fight, title matches, an outright war. It ran the gamut, with the underlying unifying element being the competitiveness, the struggle, wrestlers giving it their all across different styles. 

And that's exactly what pro wrestling, in all of its variety and gripping wonder, is all about, right?

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