Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 4: Fat Frank's Suicidal Games

54. Team Doghouse (Low-Ki/Homicide/Da Hit Squad vs. Team Pazuzu (Chris Dickinson/Jaka/Team EYFBO) JAPW 4/30/16

PAS: This was a War Games style match without a cage and a fans bring the weapons stip (more ECW style weapons like stop signs and ironing boards, then the kind of CZW style barbed wire and glass basement hooker torture devices.) It had the kind of chaotic fun that the best ECW fights had, lots of fun charismatic, talented guys, grabbing everything they can to try to brain each other. Really impressed with Mike Draztik from EYFBO here, he bled the most, took some nutso bumps and hit a crazy tope. Dickinson and Ki had a match in 2015 which I loved, and they had some awesome interactions here, I really wish this was a touring indy matchup. There was some really fun bumps by everyone, Dickinson was delivering cool old school piledrivers, Mack gets blockbustered through an ironing board.

Finish was a little goofy, Mack does a very 80s wrestling "you accidentally hit me, so I am going to turn on you" thing where he pushes Ki off the top rope (Mack turned on Ki on the 2015 show, although they didn't acknowledge it, which is kind of like Terry Taylor joining the York Foundation on every WCW Syndie, he turned on Dustin like three times.) Then instead of that causing Ki to be pinned, Ki ducks the clothesline from Compton and they have a stare off, Joker comes from the back and hits a nasty running knee on Mack, and Mack does a great open eye KO sell, the ref calls the match and awards it to Pazuzu. The knee was awesome, but the whole thing was super confusing, Mack felt like the heel initially, but then came off sympathetic because he was sucker punched and KO'ed, Pazuzu also felt Shelton holed, disappearing completely to set up the big important angle, after how much they killed themselves, they deserved more.

ER: This is 8 guys I really like in an unhinged brawl, so the odds are high I was going to like this one.  This is worked like a WarGames without the cage, with Dickinson and Homicide starting, and one new entrant every couple minutes. Dickinson was awesome throughout the whole match, you want someone working with intensity if they gotta be in there for 30 minutes and Dickinson always brings intensity. Jaka is in next and I love Doom Patrol stuff, the dudes mesh really well together and they were my favorites in this. They were both the glue here and always bring out clever offense in brawls (Jaka had some awesome throws, big capture belly to belly, headbutts, kicks with his heels, Dickinson dropped a huge piledriver, huge running kick at ringside to a seated Homicide, threw sharp chops and was super active the entire match) but they also know how to work through everyone and eat offense to let other team shine, Dickinson especially just eating all of Ki's strikes when Ki came out as the final man. I was also super impressed with EYFBO, especially Draztik. Draztik was a real ham (in good ways), bled way more than anyone, and both EYFBO guys basically got beat around by Hit Squad the whole time, and all built to them hitting a pair of dives down the stretch. The dives were nuts as security was trying to hold the guardrails with their backs to the action, and the dives were coming right at them, would have been real easy for security to get rolled up on. We get fun moments like Mack giving Jaka a cannonball while holding Ortiz on his back, later Mack takes a bump through an ironing board. In fact the true MVP of this match was the camera crew and whomever edited this match together. We jumped around perfectly to all the action happening at ringside and in the ring, never felt like we missed anything, never felt like the cuts were jumping from one to the next too quick, just excellently timed bursts of violence. It helped the chaotic feel of the whole brawl, really seemed to find the best action currently happening. Now the finish sucked a lot of wind out of this, took way too long to set up, and required everybody in the match not directly involved in the finish to just disappear. And it wasn't worth it. Mack turns on Ki for an errant dropkick moments earlier, then stands in the ring forever to set up his big clothesline, which eventually misses. The Joker stuff looked fine but felt so dumb coming as the end of a 30 minute match. Suddenly 75% of the guys in the match are selling damage and not working for the first time all match, and it just ground everything to a halt. The KO knee from Joker looked good, Mack sold it great, but it came off like a super flat and confusing way to end what had been such a wild fun match.


2016 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Briscoes vs. EYFBO

76. Briscoes vs. EYFBO wXw 10/7

ER: Tons of fun, just go go go go with no stopping for breath, great way to start off night 2 of this tournament. Even though the Briscoes aren't too much bigger than EYFBO, they are able to convey a super overpowering aura in their matches, always coming off faster, stronger, crazier, and I thought EYFBO was good at finding their moments and bumping big for the Briscoes. We start with a kind of lucha style opening, arm drags and rope running and ranas, but once they kick into the next gear and start chaining together big moves and double teams they never look back. Match really got great once Jay got the hot tag and started throwing savage lariats, really throwing from the shoulder with huge follow through. Both teams keep one upping the other, everyone is throwing huge dropkicks in the corner, Draztik hits this crazy swanton into Mark slumped in the corner (vaulting off Ortiz), they set up some loony cutter in the corner with Mark stretched from the turnbuckle to the shoulder of Ortiz, and Draztik runs the length of Mark and flies off with a heavy crossbody on Jay. Mark takes out Ortiz with a cannonball off the ring apron, and Jay crushes Draztik with his best lariat of the match (which is saying something), and they really knock Draztik's block off with the Doomsday Device. This match couldn't have been more than 12 minutes but was a fantastic spotfest, not a second of slow down. I would have been burnt out already had I been there.

PAS: This was the best EYFBO match I have seen, as they have always felt like a team I should love but always fell short for me. This was total go-go stuff, reminded me of the great Garden State Gods JAPW matches in the mid-2000s. I have been watching the Briscoes since their earliest matches, and man have they fully gone in on their scraggly militia look. They look like they should hijacking Federal land for grazing rights. All of their stuff looked great, they have gotten so good at making little things look impactful, big highspots, but also great looking elbows and clotheslines. I haven't watched ROH in years, but I need to check out some more recent Briscoes.


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AIW Double Dare Tournament Night 1 11/4/16

After really loving AIW Absolution show this year, I got pretty excited that Powerbomb.tv was going to start putting up AIW shows. They didn't have anything from 2017 up yet, but this was a super intriguing set of shows from 2016 a big tag tourney full of fun teams.

Space Justice (Space Monkey/Supercop Dick Justice) v. To Infinity and Beyond (Cheech/Colin Delaney

PAS: Space Justice had their Chikara shit they had to shoehorn in, and it was pretty groan worthy. When this wasn't half assed junior college improv troupe stuff, the wrestling was pretty good. Justice is a really fat dude, he looks like a less athletic Ron Jeremy, but he looked pretty good doing some lucha exchanges with Colin Delaney, he also took a great looking bump on a Delaney dive. The finishing run had some nice fancy stuff, and ended with a double team Kudo driver on Space Monkey which seemed like way too mean of a finish for a comedy guy to have to take.

ER: I showed up to this party mostly to watch my boy Weird Body, but caught the end of this one, and Phil is right, that Kudo driver is WAY too nasty to use against freaking Space Monkey. They practically dropped him vertically, seconds after he was doing comedy Baba chops (and some surprisingly nice headbutts to the midsection). Dick Justice is fat enough that I probably need to seek out more of him.

Jollyville Fuck-Its (T-Money/Dirty Russ) v. Weird World (Worldwide Alex Kellar/ Weird Body Evan Adams)

PAS: One of the reasons I was most excited to dig into this show was to see more Fuck-Its, and they didn't disappoint. Weird Body is one of the oddest looking wrestlers in the world, he has this hesher hair and a famine victim physique, but being such a tiny guy he takes a huge impressive beating. Worldwide is a big dude who kind of looks and wrestles like a young Bugsy McGraw, and he basically uses Weird Body as a weapon. Meat of the match is the Fuck-Its laying a beating on Weird Body which is exactly what I want. T-Money does multiple violent bodyslams that feel like they might break him in half, at one point T-Money hits the pounce and Weird Body flies violently into the ropes. Really fun beating, great first round match from the Boys from Jollyville.

ER: This was really fun, Weird Body is just totally entertaining to me, for reasons I can't explain. Maybe it's because his body looks like the David Cross acid bath character in the Mr. Show Titannica sketch, probably more because I've always been drawn to the weirdos and the chubsters and the freaks in my pro wrestling. Now that Ellsworth is out of WWE, I can't think of anybody more worthy of a strange Gowen/Delaney/Ellsworth contract. I guarantee you Weird Body would get over in WWE. Bring him in, sell a few t-shirts, send him to 205 Live, quietly release him. Then someday Chikara will bring in Delaney/Weird Body/Ellsworth for their trios tourney. And yes, this match is what I wanted it to be. I have absolutely no clue how long Adam's weird body will actually be able to hold up to pro wrestling bumps. He has absolutely nothing except his skeleton to absorb the shock. I imagine there is a finite amount of brutal T-Money bodyslams he'll be able to take before his skeleton just shatters apart, ruining the lives of everyone in attendance. But until then, we get to see him getting pounced violently into the ropes and getting suplexed while atop another man's shoulders. Alex Kellar has preposterously small "over trunks", as if he stole them from Adams. He borrows his boy's trunks, he needs to do a better job of protecting him from savages like T-Money! T-Money really did look awesome, and I don't think it was because he mostly matched up with a guy smaller than any female wrestler. Money has a Chris Dickinson aggressive jerk vibe, smashing headbutts and full force. Weird Body has some fun offense, most of it ineffective due to his size, so you see him hit a crossbody with his opponent draped over the ropes and instinctively go OH! and then immediately realize oh wait he's 85 pounds. But no matter, this was a blast. Finish is great as Russ drops a huge elbow/senton off the top (like Izu's old falling meteor)on Kellar, and Weird Body bursts in with the save!! Which is a huge mistake, as T-Money then wastes him, and Kellar gets pinned anyway.

Massage NV (Dorian Graves/VSK) v. Twerk Time (Marti Belle/Ray Lynn)

PAS: Ick. Massage NV's gimmick is that they give unwanted massages to their opponents to unnerve them, so watching them work a team of women was basically Harvey Weinstein the wrestling match. Even worse, Twerk Time are part of Gregory Iron and Alex Daniels crew, so team inappropriate touch were the baby faces. No one in this match seemed particularly good at straight wrestling (Marti Belle was famously the worst part of the MYC) so the parts of this that were a standard match weren't good either. This was gross and I wish the OCD completist part of my brain allowed me to tap out after the first minute or so.

FBI (Tracy Smothers/Little Guido) v. Team IOU (Nick Iggy/Kerry Awful)

PAS: Lots of pre-match horseshit with Smothers coming out with a Cubs shirt and Cubs flag to taunt the Cleveland audience. Smothers is a master of cheap heat, and it feels like he is beneath baseball team cheap heat, he wasn't bringing his best. Smothers is clearly in the no bumps portion of his career, which is fine his chops and karate thrusts still looked good. Not sure why Guido isn't booked all over the place, he still looked really good and the initial takedown and grappling section with Iggy was the highlight of the match for sure. Match itself was about half as long as the pre game stuff, and was a fine but unmemorable use of all four guys. Looking forward to seeing what IOU/Carnies did for the rest of the tourney.

Tracy Williams/Matt Riddle v. EYFBO (Mike Draztik/Angel Ortiz)

PAS: This was an enjoyable tag. I was really impressed how good EYFBO looked when they were doing some grappling early, you would expect them to get smoked, but they both looked good. There was a longish beatdown section on Riddle with a bunch of fun double teams, including an insanely high cannonball by Draztik. There was some SAT memorial silly double teams, including a goofus looking romero special on one guy, camel clutch another guy which definitely was the result of some stoned late night brainstorming. Finish run was exciting including a brutal tombstone right into a German finish by the Catch point team. Didn't out stay it's welcome and had some real exciting moments. Good stuff.

ER: I really liked this, and liked how it kind of evolved out of a semi-joking around atmosphere (fitting in with the rest of the card) into violence, big risks and some big nearfalls. I thought the early wrestling was really good, haven't seen anything close to this interesting from them during their entire Impact run. And during the opening half we get a nice look at what a solid underdog babyface Riddle is. He's an amazing athlete but his athleticism can cause him to go overboard on offense sometimes. Here we get to see his athleticism putting over the attacks from EYFBO and it makes them look like credible threats. The (brief) comedy moments are kept during the moments where EYFBO is cutting off the ring, so the match never stopped for everybody to work a bit, it was instead worked in as heel taunting: Ortiz posing while throwing weak mocking stomps to Riddle, or breaking out several backrakes while isolating him in their corner (though on a show where Weird Body already did an electric chair backrake, we had already reached peak backrake). It all lead to a super hot tag to Williams (perhaps Fiery Hot Sauce?) that sees him sprint across the ring to boot Draztik in the face, then kicking at him until he's off the apron, and hitting a nasty back elbow on Ortiz. We get hot nearfalls, some awesome BroSauce double teams, a dope Ortiz tope con giro through the ropes that smashes Williams into the guardrail, Riddle's big splat senton, just a super hot finish. The match built nice and really exploded.

Crime Tyme (JTG/Shad Gaspard) v. Brian Carson/Dr. Daniel C. Rockingham

PAS: I am too old to get any nostalgic thrill out of semi-crappy early 2000s racist WWE gimmicks. This was fine, but if you are going to book the Gangstas, book the Gangstas not some ripoff team aimed squarely at the Trump voter inside of Vince. This had some amusing shtick from the student team who cheated a bunch, until Crime Tyme got pissed and smacked Carson with the hoverboard in front of the ref. I did like the part where they blew a leapfrog and JTG started potatoing Dr. Dan, outside of that it was very skippable.

Crazy Pain (Steve Pain/Gringo Loco) v. NES (Facade/Flip Kendrick)

PAS: Always happy to see Segunda Caida favorite Flip Kendrick, having two great rudo bases like Pain and Loco is a perfect fit for all of Kendricks fancy shit. Liked the early lucha rope running section, both Pain and Loco are crazy agile for portly dudes. We had a rudo beatdown, which including Loco hurling Kendrick in the air into a Loco cutter. Cool dive section with a nutso multi spin dive by Flip and a fun finish run, with the rudos really winning convincingly with Pain hitting the painkiller and slamming Facade hard on Kendrick. This probably maxed out as a fun IWRG opening tag, but I really like IWRG opening tags.

ER: This was a perfect vehicle for the super impressive lucha stylings of Loco and Pain. Both have big bellies and seem like they have only grown since buying their ring gear, but damn are they just as quick as any tiny flier out there. The rope running and armdragging to start was maybe my favorite I've seen all year, just gorgeous stuff and the kind of flippery I love. Facade is a guy I always forget that I like, as I see him on sight and immediately go "ugh look at this guy" but he brings big strkes from weird angles, really feels more complete than a lot of juniors. Also, tagging people's signs during his ring entrance is a genuinely cool touch. The flying in this had a nice dangerous feel to it, as after we get past the super fast armdrags and quick exchanges, we get into some daredevil flying, quick ranas (Pain and Loco take fast ranas perfectly) big power moves (that alley oop into the cutter Phil mentioned was insane), the whole thing was tons of fun.

Headhunters v. Lucky 13/Eric Ryan

PAS: Pretty shocked that the Headhunters have all four of their feet at this point, much less actually moving around pretty good. Lucky 13 and Ryan are deathmatch guys brought in to eat the bumps for the Headhunters and both guys get killed and bleed all over the place. Headhunters really weren't taking bumps, but they were getting hit hard with chairs, and one of them even takes a Van Daminator from 13. Hunters are still flying, with each Hunter hitting a tope rope splash and one of them hitting a splash off the ring apron crushing a plastic table. I have no idea where the Headhunters had been for the last 20 or so years, but for nostalgia guys they looked pretty good.

PAS: Nothing blow away from the first night, but all of the right teams advanced for the most part, and I dug the Fuck-Its beating of Weird World, lucha tag, Catch Point and the Headhunters. Very excited for night 2.

ER: I greatly enjoyed the matches I watched , and we decided that the BroSauce and Pain/Loco AND the Weird World tags deserved a spot on our 2016 Ongoing MOTY List. AIW delivers the goods, again.

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