Found Footage Friday: CANNON~! BROOKSIDE~! BALL~! IAN~! GRIZZLY~! ST. CLAIR~!

Cannonball Grizzly vs. Tony St. Clair IWW 2/15/98

MD: Look, Segunda Caida isn't out to be revisionist. We don't wake up in the morning with the idea we have to reclaim John Nord just to be difficult to everyone. We watch matches, we see patterns, we comment on them, conventional wisdom be damned. That said, sometimes, if we see something that we think defies the general narrative, we chase it. This is me chasing Paul Neu to Germany based on a few things we've seen. As a 25 year old, he was notoriously bad, gifted a gimmick that the fans really wanted to get behind with a push to match, but without the skills (either on the mic or in the ring) to make it work. This is him seven or eight years later and this absolutely worked.

These two were fairly frequent opponents over the years, going all the way back to 89 (and I'm not watching 89 Neu; I have limits). St. Clair was 50 here but he was still grizzled and hard hitting. This went about ten minutes before Brookside interfered and things broke down, but it was a solid ten minutes, especially the brawling on the outside. Well they stayed outside too as the ropes weren't tight enough and Grizzly had a problem whenever he tried to go into them or especially up onto them. You'd expect St. Clair to have pretty good forearms and uppercuts, but Grizzly's stuff looked credible too, from just throwing his body at St. Clair to tossing headbutts or shots to the gut. Looking at these three matches as a set, you can't say he wasn't comfortable with these brawls, even if he, at one time, had been the least comfortable wrestler imaginable. This likely set up a Schumman/St. Clair vs Grizzly/Brookside tag and that was probably pretty good too.

ER: It's pretty perfect that Germany's 90s Big Daddy was named Neu. It's a shame he never got another real chance in the states and really did get better with - get this - experience. If PN News was Neu! '86, then 1998 Cannonball Grizzly was Neu!, and then obviously PN Neuz was Neu! '75. Also, David Flair was the least comfortable wrestler ever. PN News always had more body charisma than first year and beyond David Flair. But even Flair seemed to be figuring things out after seven or eight years of doing it. 

Cannonball Grizzly vs. Ian Rotten (Barbed Wire Baseball Bat Match) IWW 5/9/98

MD: This was pretty much what you'd expect, and I mean that in a good way. Ian came out and insulted the crowd, taking his good time to get there. He stalled. He ultimately put over Grizzly, needing to go to underhanded or desperate shots for each advantage that he got, starting with the kick on the handshake, going low a few times, using the bat first, sneaking in a chairshot with one of the chairs I love in this promotion because they fall apart in the best, most dangerous ways. 

And Cannonball sold for a bit and started firing back again and again. He was a pretty solid standing tall babyface in the midst of a hardcore match here, grabbing anything not hammered down. There was one point where he jabbed part of one of those broken chairs into Ian's head and the announcer shouted out "That's the hardcore! That's core! That's core!" as only a German announcer in 1998 could. Shortly before that, during one of his comebacks, he launched himself through the ropes with a giant sized tope just because he could and because he knew he had someone big enough to more or less (more less than more but no one died) base for him. The finish was pretty gnarly as he got out of the way of a charge with the bat causing Ian to smash it into his own chest, and then, with some effort, he pancaked him onto it. Post match they made up and Ian was as carny as could be and everyone left happy. I'd say this was another good showing for Grizzly though. Though both of them were no holds barred, Ian could assert himself more and Grizzly had to work from underneath and then get revenge both for himself and for the crowd and he did a pretty rousing job of it through the blood and the carnage and the violence for the sake of violence.

ER: Did everyone else know that Ian Rotten worked Germany? Everyone else knew that Ian Rotten worked Ox Harley a couple times in one week, smack in the middle of Kentucky, and in between those matches he was main eventing a German indy? The video tape time stamp does not lie. Ian Rotten swings his barbed wire bat like Leatherface's chainsaw in some Hannover college gymnasium, and obviously he is wearing his Ribera Steakhouse satin jacket. He does a long respectful promo that builds to him talking about how ugly everyone in the town was. Ian Rotten has the shittiest body in the building and does biceps poses and Hogan ear cupping like a Will Sasso character. He stalls on the floor and waddles around in this really funny little duck walk whenever he gets on the mic to plead for them to go easy on him. 

It's all really satisfying, because Grizzly isn't a dumb babyface. He finally starts doing something to stop Ian's bullshit and you get a cool big fat babyface kicking and punching and headbutting Ian around ringside. Grizzly bleeds good blood when Ian hits him with the barbed wire bat and rubs it across his forehead, and his suicide dive is a really incredible bump for him. He ploughs through Ian and bounces hard on the floor. Ian platers him with a disgusting chairshot to the face and Grizz does a perfect little cartoon dance into a face flop, then gets up and whips Ian through a bunch of wood slat 1982 Boston Garden ass chairs, using the splintered fragments to Pogo Ian's head. Ian transition back to control by squeezing Grizzly's ball sac like a sponge, some of the most realistic looking rugby violent scrotal offense I've seen. I have no doubt in my mind that Ian has done that to someone in a shitty bar. After getting his balls twisted, Grizzly makes sure to just fall on Ian a few times. Honestly it's really great. This was a fast paced rugged fight with two sloppy bodies and sloppy bar blood over the eyes. Why was nobody brave enough to rate Cannonball Grizzly in 1998? 

Cannonball Grizzly vs. Robbie Brookside (Street Fight) IWW 1/17/99

MD: Between the commentary (youtube translate as usual) and his post match speech, plus, of course, the non-finish, I get the idea he might have been a last second replacement for someone. It makes sense, because they seemed to be learning the opportunities of the venue as they were going. Maybe my favorite thing in the whole match is Grizzly getting Brookside on the outside after reversing a series of neck-based submissions/chokes and lifting him up and slamming him back first into the ridge of a barstool. It's one of those things that no one plans in advance. You couldn't look at the stool and think "Hey, if I do a lifting bearhug and charge in, it'll look brutal." At least, I don't think you can. It's a moment of being so in the moment that you just heft a guy up and try to figure out how to make it seem like you're doing harm to him, the antithesis of any big tv streetfight now with a ton of set pieces and spots. Doing harm in the situation of the moment is kind of a lost art when it once was the entirety of pro wrestling.

Anyway, Grizzly looked good here overall. He used his size well in all the ways you'd want him to, as a weapon, as a cutoff tool, as an out of control opening creator for Brookside. He wasn't afraid to bump, but most of his bumps were not off of things Brookside did (and when they were, it was on the second or third dropkick not the first), but instead him careening out of control on a missed corner splash or elbow drop on the floor or somersault cannonball senton off the second rope. He slammed Brookside back into the corner to break a hold or absolutely flattened him with a rising pounce or Vader Attack when it was time to cut him off. Even his punches looked pretty good, and certainly him smashing Brookside into pieces of furniture on the outside. Brookside was a game opponent, charging in right from the get go, switching from one hold to the next desperately later, sweeping Grizzly's feet out on a billiards table to create a spectacular bump, running when it was time to run, but it was Grizzly who stood out here, just a guy very confident in his own size and power, the absolutely opposite of all of our memories of him. 

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Ian Rotten Was Pushed With His Sorrow Well Rehearsed

JR: If you've enjoyed these Ian Rotten reviews, Phil and I have decided to collect them and print up zines. It will contain all we have written thus far plus I think three matches we haven't written up for the blog. Each match has art accompanying it and I think the overall idea of it all is going to come out pretty good. The layout is almost complete, so I have put up preorders on my itch page:



https://jrgoldb.itch.io/methlab-battlarts-the-pre-order

Ian Rotten vs. Tarek the Great 10/21/06 - EPIC

PAS: This is presented like a throwback to a legendary match of the past, Lawler vs. Dundee in SAW is great, but it isn’t Lawler vs. Dundee in Mid-South Coliseum, this however was actually better and nastier then their 2002 match. Tarek has filled out in the four years since their first match, he looks less like a junkie and more like a junkie who cleaned himself up and got a construction job. As one would expect from this series this is all about hitting people hard in places they shouldn’t be hit. Ian is merciless here, he throws these thudding palm strikes that land like he is aiming six inches past Tarek. He seems to be trying to strike through him and land on some guy behind him. At one point Ian takes the palm of his hand and drives in into the back of Tarek's head where his spine meets his skull, it felt like he was doing some Kung Fu movie strike which gives his enemy permanent paralysis. To his credit Tarek attacked like he was in the fight he was in, he kicks Ian right in the top of his skull and unloads with some big palm strikes of his own. Also, Tarek wasn’t putting on a ton of holds, but what he did put on was really tight, his choke sleeper popped Ian’s eyes out. I didn’t love the finish, they tried for the Hart vs. Piper sleeper roll up and it didn’t land, but everything else was incredible violent stuff.


JR: One of the things we have been so enamored with throughout this project has been Ian’s ability to work in ways and from angles that make wrestling seem like something just beyond comprehension. The movements and strikes seem to force an opponent “out of book”, creating a world in which to maintain the illusions that professional wrestling survives upon, a worker must react differently and organically.

While Hero almost certainly has the single most compelling match of the style, I am beginning to think that Tarek might be the opponent that gains the most from what Ian brings to a match like this. His selling is sympathetic and organic without making the match one sided. He struggles and feeds off of Rotten in ways that allow Ian to seek variations on themes and work them to natural conclusions.

Rotten is probably best remembered for truly gross headbutt spots in his matches, but the strikes he throws that feel the most sudden and violent are his palm strikes. He uses them so well to mark transitions and momentum shifts. Here, after a longer feeling out process, his first true strikes are open palms to the base of Tarek’s neck. It feels violent, it feels wrong. It feels like it could injure, rather than hurt. The palm strikes continue to be the theme, even as Ian works from underneath. The only thing he can hit is Tarek’s thigh, which he does repeatedly and with abandon.

There is a closeness to this match that makes it stand out. Against some other opponents (Joe comes to mind, but he’s far from the only one), Ian mines drama and tension from distance. There are moments in those matches that feel like two rams backing up slowly to collide until superiority is established. Here Tarek works like a boxer who knows he doesn’t have the length advantage. He must stay inside of Ian. He must take the punishment he knows is coming because the alternative is punishment that he can’t.

The finish, an obvious homage to Piper/Hart, falls flat and is poorly executed, which is shockingly almost a theme at this point. The finishes often seem so overbooked and “rasslin” that they feel jarring. Earlier, for the match against Claudio, I wrote about trusting the audience. Or lack thereof. The matches themselves establish a world in which both men must work outside normalcy to simply survive. The prior work is undermined by the tropes of wrestling.

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RIP Mitch Ryder

PAS: I used to buy XCW-Midwest DVDs from Mitch Ryder in the early days of Segunda Caida. We reviewed a ton of them and it sort of established SC as the kind of place that would review a dozen XCW-Midwest shows. Ryder was a breath of fresh air in the "do a bunch of stuff" era of indy wrestling and was always good for some bumping, bleeding, and brawling.


Mitch Ryder/Todd Morton/Tarek the Great/Bull Pain vs. Ian Rotten/Mark Wolf/Tracy Smothers/Sabu IWA-MS 10/20/01

PAS: Overbooked as it gets, but totally awesome. We probably didn't need a surprise partner (although Sabu is always great in that role), a Tarek the Great face turn AND a Tracy Smothers heel turn all in one match. The Tarek turn added nothing to the match and could have been scrapped. Still everything else was great, Pain cracking Ian in the jaw with a baseball bat, Todd Morton doing two crazy cage dives (including walking the side of the cage), Sabu taking a bump off the side of the cage to the floor, and tons of blood. Ryder was mostly on the outside of the cage running interference, throwing Wolf into chairs, brawling wildly with Smothers, punching Ian in his bloody head. Finish was some classic IWA White WorldStarism. Tracy puts on the ref shirt to count Bull down, only to jump Ian, then the Bad Motherfuckers beat Ian down while the fans throw things. Corporal Robinson tries to make the save by walking the rafters to the top of the cage, Ian's wife Patti tries to hit Tracy with a stick. Total Fentanyl clinic riot which is one of the best things about IWA.

JR: When I was in college I had to take an acting class as a general requirement. I was not a strong actor but I remember I did one scene with a partner and our thought process was “if we just cause chaos the entire time, it will cover up our distinct lack of talent”. It worked well enough.

I thought about that while watching this. As a wrestling writer, I’m someone who is constantly trying to identify narrative. I legitimately can’t do that here. There is a story and it’s established well, but I think to mention it or try and define it would in some ways take away from the sheer spectacle that unfolds. Every single person in this is insane. Sabu shows up early and spends almost all of his time bumping from the cage to the floor. Tarek turns face, the sniveling henchman finally growing a spine and standing up to the abusive Bull Pain and paying the price. Pain holds court, despicable and massive from the first moment, at once the center of everything and completely separate from it all.

Almost everyone is wonderful here. Smothers gets to work his greatest hits throughout, working as a fiery babyface and then turning mid match and working as a heat magnet for the rest, trying to start a riot every step of the way. Every single person takes a bump that they absolutely regretted moments after it happened. Todd Morton did two cage dives!

Of course, we watched this in tribute to Mitch Ryder. I wouldn’t exactly call this a showcase for Ryder, but his makes the most of his moments. In some ways, it’s a good microcosm of his career as a whole: while others will certainly have more words devoted to them, more camera time thrust upon them, in the moments that Ryder was the focal point, he stood out. The door of the cage was slammed on his back and he stooged and pranced like Rick Rude after an atomic drop. In the chaos on the outside, he flung himself around. Chairs and tables and fans scattered around him. He talked trash into the camera, filling the frame with his insane, sweaty face. In short, he was a wrestler. He did everything he was supposed to do and he did it well.

ER: When somebody seeks out an "IWA Mid-South" match, this is the kind of match they have in mind. This was undistilled IWA, the kind of grimy bloody violence you want to see, and the kind of match that's impossible to pick a favorite performance. Mitch Ryder's team come out to Eruption like they are zit faced teenagers, and jump Ian's team the second they come out from the back. And from there we got a perfectly messy terror of stiff punches, crazy bumps, and high emotion. Todd Morton was a real loon, doing TWO cage dives, and it's actually amazing how quickly and easily the shortest guy in the match can scramble up to the top of a cage. Morton hits a pinpoint accurate elbowdrop off the rafters ABOVE the cage, and later hits a frog splash on Ian off the top of the cage while fully protecting Ian. Sabu runs into the chaos and every time he pops into frame he is taking a way too dangerous bump, like falling out the cage door onto his head or getting kicked off nearly the top of the cage all the way to the floor. Tracy Smothers was a big Tasmanian Devil, and two different times I had to check and make sure the tape wasn't on 2x speed. tracy was throwing impossible to block punches, the kind of punches that look much more like the punches someone would throw in a parking lot fight. He was beating people around ringside, throwing Ryder meanly into a table and big cooler, and on his way out he clearly hit a fan. Ian bled about 5 seconds into this and didn't stop, then took constant offense from 4-5 guys for the duration of the match. Ryder was the real heel personality throughout this, taking stooging bumps, yelling at the camera, getting tossed into the crowd, running interference to kick guys off the cage as they were trying to get in, orchestrating Ian getting his arm slammed in the door, and that's all important. He wasn't doing the flashy stuff in the match, but he was constantly the guy doing the important stuff to bridge the violence, to kill time with charisma until a big spot from Morton or Sabu. Glue guys are underrated and important parts of big bloody cage matches, and they don't come more underrated than Ryder.


Mitch Ryder vs. Ian Rotten IWA-MS 11/22/01

PAS: This was an old fashioned walking tall babyface match with Ian putting up half of IWA-MS against Mitch Ryder's hair. It was a fans lumberjack match and Ian is seconded by Sherri Martel. Ian Bill Watts himself all over Ryder who bumps and bleeds the way you need to in this match. Ian adds disgusting headbutts to the big punches you would normally see in this type of match, and both guys get soaked by the end. Ryder is great at finding little moments to take over control while mostly giving the fans what they want to see by bumping around. The finish felt kind of blown by the ref, which is my only beef. Finish has the BMFs and CM Punk stop the haircutting, beat up Sherri and shave Ian's head. Keeping this feud going, I am not sure about bailing on stips like this, but the BMF's are always great to watch beat people down.

JR: So the stipulation here is that if Ian loses, Ryder gets 50% of IWA-MS. Does that mean they would then book by a two person committee? I’m really interested in how this would’ve worked.

Am I alone in thinking there is something about Mitch Ryder’s face, especially when it is masked by blood, that is similar in some way to James Van Der Beek? I’m not saying Ryder looks like him per say, I’m just saying that a drunken Ryder probably at one point claimed he looked like him. Anyway, it adds to the whole effect of scumbag heartbreaker.

This match is ludicrous. Ian selects fans to be the lumberjacks, four of whom were obviously pre selected and one was a spur of the moment call because Fanin and Prazak thought it would be funny and yelled loud enough for Ian to hear them. They essentially serve no purpose after some initial lip service that Ryder is trying desperately to escape. In some ways, the early portion of this is similar to what Phil and I wrote about with Methlab BattlArts, but with Ian cast in the role of conquering babyface. Ryder is good at helping Ian project that same sense of foreboding and dread, as though a match with Rotten is always moments away from slipping completely out of control.

Ryder does well enough while on top. A match can go far on simple things when the participants know how to work the margins. Ian is great at bleeding. That may sound silly but it always looks both grotesque and sympathetic. Ryder understands where he needs to be at all times, working the cut, using the sleeper enough times where a finish would be credible but the predictable escape is warranted. While the finish here is obviously a mistake, the work before is hearty enough to still be enjoyable.

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All Time MOTY List Head to Head 2007: Rotten vs. Dukes VS. Hero vs. Kingston

Ian Rotten vs. Jason Dukes IWA-MS 10/13/07

PAS: Incredible stuff, the kind of violent unprofessional brawl that Ian Rotten does so well. Ian isn't afraid to both deliver and receive a nasty beating, and Dukes comes forward and meets Ian's aggression with some of his own. We get two crazy bumps by Dukes: a missed tope which landed him into a bunch of chairs, and a crazy Psicosis corner shoulder bump. Ian lands some sick forearms to the jaw, and killer looking jabs, everything he did looked like it hurt so bad. I love some unprofessional crowbarring and Ian always delivers, and Dukes hit back with appropriate force. There was a killer moment where Duke pulls off Ian's boot and does some Eddie Marlin boot punching and some sick looking knee drops right on Ian's exposed ankle, just gross. Finish kind of sucks as we have a ref bump, and a Joey Ryan and Karl Anderson run in. Still, this was super high level violence. IWA-MS ran so much, it is clearly a real vein of untapped gems.

ER: Dukes comes out to Handel's Hallelujah Chorus looking like an Ian Rotten who hasn't yet experienced horrific body scarring, and before Dukes can make it into the ring Ian jumps him, future meets past. Ian has his whole head wrapped in a bandage, busted open on a show earlier in the day, and the announcers do a great job pointing out that Ian has been bleeding for basically 6 hours. Dukes opens up that cut immediately, Ian's face eventually dripping with a deep crimson mask, thick blood rivulets streaking down his neck. Ian swells up Dukes' face with the hardest punches and meanest jabs, taunting Dukes to throw harder by no selling punches directly to the jaw. Dukes is really great at spilling through chairs and grabbing onto fans while staggering through he crowd (made up nearly entirely of clones of the same man). Dukes' two big bumps were placed really well in the match: the first time he even steps foot in the ring he goes for a dive and Ian just slowly walks out of the way, crashing Dukes disgustingly shoulder first into the floor and a chair; later he flies (other) shoulder first into the ringpost on his way to another ugly trip to the floor. It's smart to give Ian a couple of good rally/recovery moments in front of his crowd, bleeding everywhere while going back in hungry after his injured prey. The leg work from both looked really ugly, like they both wanted to do permanent damage, both guys stomping and dropping knees on ankles and the inside of knees, and I'm always going to be into an 80s style brawl with a loose boot. We don't get loose boot spots anymore (which might be for the best as nobody wants to see Gargano emoting while untying laces) but these moments looked like something you'd see in a smoky arena 25 years prior. The run in finish was at least quick and paid off immediately, but it's still not the way you want something this bloody and raw to end.

Chris Hero vs. Eddie Kingston Review


Verdict:

PAS: Really close, and I think a better finish might have pushed it over the top, but we got the finish we got, so I am going with Kingston vs. Hero.

ER: This was a real classic grimy brawl that had been entirely off my radar until the last week. The big tope bump from Dukes may have been a higher peak than Hero/Kingston, but Hero/Kingston came in with a higher floor and felt like even more of a complete brawl. That's why it's the champ. But Ian/Dukes is a real hidden gorefest, more violent than most death matches while not being a death match.

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Ian Rotten Hurt You in a Voice Like a Prayer

Ian Rotten vs. Claudio Castagnoli ROE 6/19/04

JR: It’s hard to remember just how different indie wrestling was fifteen years ago. How when Kenta Kobashi came to New York to wrestle Samoa Joe for ROH, it took days to convince him that people would know who he was, that he wouldn’t have to work a stereotypical foreign heel gimmick for the night. You can see it on his face when he comes out, the realization that he was somehow relevant to a room full of people from half a world away, people he presumed had never even heard of him.

I think, in some small way, this is probably how Ian felt almost exactly a year prior, wrestling in some ballroom in Austria against Claudio Castagnoli. I guess this is from a company that is tangentially related to WXW, so people probably knew who he was. But did he feel naked in some way, not wrestling a death match? Was there some fear of going outside of some agreed upon comfort zone for an expectant crowd, like when a band plays songs off the newest album instead of the hits?

I’ve sort of nibbled at the edges of an idea while watching all of these Ian matches, but there is something structurally interesting in them that reminds me of cosmic horror. The matches all start out nominally like a wrestling match; they have holds, there is a feeling out process, there are things that Ian does and that Ian’s opponents do that allow the viewer to say “yes, this is a wrestling match in some identifiable way”. But the longer they go on, really, the longer Ian exerts some offensive control, the more weird it feels, the more the viewer is confronted with things that feel out of place, that feel just off enough to make you stop and pay attention because something is happening in front of you that is recognizable in some sense, but undefinable and grotesque in some other. Phil spoke about it in the Homicide match, where Ian, as time goes on, works holds from angles and places that are not angles and places that we are used to seeing. It’s unsettling then and it remains unsettling here, as he uses short palm strikes while Claudio is on the ground, sharp and violent things that are within the rules of wrestling, moreso even than a close fisted punch would be, but are so absurdly violent looking that they feel illegal, as though the ref should move in and say, “no, this isn’t allowed” and start counting to five.

Ian’s work is always accentuated because it presents his opponent’s with a binary choice: to follow him down a dark path or not. Some, like Joe or Homicide, are capable of transforming and becoming more violent themselves, creating their own dark oddities. Others, like Tarek, perhaps B-Boy, are ill-equipped and can only respond by doing things we see them do in a standard wrestling match. Both serve to create narrative and atmosphere, albeit in very different ways. Claudio is more the latter at this point in his career, although part of that is due to him being hamstrung by Ares being a very present heel manager on the outside. But prior to Ares becoming a major part of the match, Claudio tries in vain to wrestle and strike and have a match, while Ian makes the choice to consistently punch and kick and grab at the back of his opponent’s thigh. It’s horrific, each shot landing with a dull thud, each causing Castagnoli to crumple and lose his balance for the briefest of moments.

There is a sequence that probably marks the midpoint of the match that is a tremendous distillation of Ian’s work in this style as a whole. In the corner, he absolutely pastes Claudio with a forearm, so hard he follows through, almost like a boot scrape. He whips Castagnoli across, who is still selling his leg and basically hops along the diagonal before collapsing. From there, Ian hits a drop kick in the corner, somehow equal parts more athletic than it should be and awkward and unsafe to the point where it looks like he's never attempted it before just now. The announcers, who prior to this had spoken in hushed German like the match was a golf tournament, just start laughing incredulously. There is nothing to be said.

It’s this dropkick that serves as a clear escalation, in the same way that headbutts often do in the previous matches we’ve looked at. Castagnoli works with purpose in his control segment, taking Ian’s arm using the mat, the ropes, his own head, anything he can find to create a fulcrum and bend it in some direction it isn’t supposed to bend. He tries to escalate, to follow Ian the way that others have, but he lacks the tools. He sells his leg throughout, and it plays in to the next major transition, as Ian is afforded too much time and counters a move from the top rope. Well, he knees Castagnoli in the face during a diving headbutt. The announcers laugh again. It almost comes across as a defense mechanism. They do so a third time on a lariat.

That’s why it feels so jarring when the finishing run, instead of a continued devolution into something eldritch and unknowable, turns into a pro wrestling match. There is a failed interference spot, and a tribute to Dusty Rhodes. There is referee distraction. It all feels so….normal. Not even normal for Ian’s standards, but decidedly normal. Perhaps it was Ian’s suggestion, a rare lack of confidence in his own work or a lack of trust in the audience. Maybe he simply thought that they needed something easy, something universal that could be grasped by people who haven’t seen him stretch the boundaries for years. Perhaps, unlike Kobashi, no one took Ian aside and convinced him that he was relevant, that people would be able to follow along.

PAS: Wasn't Claudio's early 2000s gimmick that he was a wealthy millionaire? He is wearing a short sleeve patterned shirt with a tie and white jeans, he looks like he about to do a bringers set at the Fort Wayne Indiana Comedy Barn in 1987. This was pretty early Claudio and you could see the outlines of what he would become, but he wasn't there yet. This was a hell of an Ian performance though, and for most of the match he delivered the kind of viscerally violent performance that has drawn us to him. I coined the term Meth Lab BattlArts for this style of match, but after watching so much French Catch over the last couple of months, Ian really reminds me of those nasty Catch heels, much like Tony Oliver or Cheri Bibi where they look for every opportunity to throw in a hard cheap shot or twist a limb in a wrong violent way. Ian's palm strikes in this were their own unique bit of thrilling transgression. This was great stuff until it wasn't. I agree with what JR said, it felt like both guys were unwilling to take the match where it should have gone, and kind of took a hack road out. Still this was a heck of a hidden gem, because large parts of this were some of the most vivid wrestling you will ever watch.

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Ian Rotten Looked at the Floor and Scribbled on Gum Wrappers

Ian Rotten vs. B-Boy IWA-MS 12/19/03

JR: The conversation on twitter the past few days has been based around a few notable people (erroneously) categorizing professional wrestling as performance art. I will not bore everyone here with my thoughts on why this comparison falls short. Instead, I will describe one of the more popular performance art pieces of the last decade or so: Melati Suryodarmo’s ‘Exergie: Butter Dance’. In the piece, Suryodarmo, wearing a short black dress and high heels, attempts to move and dance in evocative ways, while perched atop a stage covered in thick blocks of butter. As she moves, she inevitably slips and falls and collapses and seems to care very little for her own physical well being. Eventually, she removes her shoes and crawls off in silence.

I mention this piece because, strangely, the opening of this Ian Rotten and B-Boy match is the first thing I’ve seen in wrestling that has even tangentially reminded me of performance art. Rotten, confident in his movement and in control of his own body, makes an uncharacteristically smooth takeover and pulls B-Boy down into an armbar. In doing so, he manages to land awkwardly upon his opponents leg, and for the briefest moment there is doubt, a sense that he lost track of where he was, like that feeling when you think there’s an extra step and you plant your foot too forcefully and your entire equilibrium is off for longer than it takes your body to register that you’re still on solid ground.

This feeling continues into the first strike exchange, after Rotten comes off the ropes, on his heels from a few forearms. When he swings back he somehow leaves his feet, collapsing onto B-Boy, forcing them both back on the ground, rolling around and desperately grabbing and looking for some minuscule advantage. Last week Phil wrote about how Rotten applies holds from unseen angles, as though he is breaking some unspoken compact within the cooperative confines of professional wrestling. Here, even as it looks clumsy and oafish, I am struck that it is a conscious decision, that he does this to create a feeling of chaos and reality, not only for the audience but for his opponent. He finds ways to get people, seasoned and talented people, to run away, to expose themselves, to move quickly and purposefully without thought. It heightens everything.

When discussing professional wrestling, an idea that comes up often is escalation. I’ve touched on it briefly in this series. In most cases, we take it to mean an increase in motion; moves that the crowd accepts as ‘more devastating’, done in quicker succession, an inevitable and unsustainable perpetual motion machine. Here we see that to some extent, as B-Boy’s kicks create momentum and space that we had not previously seen. But at the same time, Ian’s previous efforts to look wild and unfettered serve to create their own sort of awkward escalation. As he ties B-Boy up and goes for headbutts, a spot that would normally look contrived or cooperative instead looks forceful, a declaration of war.

This match, moreso than any of the others we have written about, strikes me as a one man show. Perhaps that isn’t fair to B-Boy, whom I actually think is quite good here. But he is so stoic and emotionless throughout, whereas Ian is again so vibrant and vocal. He is constantly talking and screaming and grunting and doing small things to tell the audience where and when to pay attention. He creates a fuller experience for a crowd, for he has an innate sense of when to let things breathe and when to let things crash and come to conclusion.

The finishing run of this presents another narrative wrinkle that we haven’t seen from Ian yet, and one that is immensely interesting. The consistent story throughout all of these matches is that Ian is forever moving forward. Here he does so even to his own detriment. Even as his body breaks down, as he can’t stand on his weak knee, as his headbutts do more damage to himself than to B-Boy, he presses. It only serves to expose him. It’s like watching a bull lose a bullfight.

PAS: B-Boy is a guy who has been in my life for nearly two decades now, but I have never fully developed an opinion on him. He has cool entrance music and hits really hard, but always seemed a bit formless. Like JR mentioned above, he felt like an Ian opponent here,  a replacement level stiff worker, he will hit hard, take some shots, do some stuff on the mat, but the all of the seasoning in this match was Ian's. B-Boy puts on a pretty basic leglock, and Ian turns it into figure four, B-Boy throws some solid, but leg slappy kicks, and Ian cracks him with a palm and knuckles directly on the side of the jaw. They mention that Ian was wrestling BJ Whitmer the next night and I imagine it was a similar kind of match.  The real flaw of this match is B-Boy just kind of putting on an armbar for the finish after focusing entirely on the leg. 

My parents were both avid Contract Bridge players, and I grew up in the world of high level Bridge, going to National tournaments for vacations, caddying etc. There isn't prize money in Championship Bridge so really elite players make their living from taking on clients. Often World Championship teams will be made of 4 or so of the best players in the world, and a couple of rich guys paying to be part of the team (famously the chairman of Bear Sterns was playing in a National Championship Bridge Tournament during the first days of the Financial Crisis and was unavailable as his bank collapsed). If you are going to be a client playing at the level, you have to a very good player (Bridge is a partnership game), but almost all of the real flash, brilliance and moments of grace are provided by the Pro. That is what this match felt like. B-Boy is a competent wrestler at this style, but Ian is the world class maestro making the magic. 

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Ian Rotten Was Living In a Devil Town, He Didn't Know It Was a Devil Town

Ian Rotten vs. Homicide NWL 8/2/04 - EPIC

JR: There are two ideas about wrestling that I find myself fixated on. The first is the inherent romance of the idea of professional wrestling: the idea that the world, or some approximation thereof, still has intrepid and conquering heroes, willing to fight for something beyond themselves. The second, and perhaps the inverse to that, or at the very least something that informs that first idea, is that successful wrestlers are broken and jagged people, whose success in wrestling is because they have no other avenues for success. They are people who live outside society.

I’m not sure that Ian fits the first idea, but he certainly fits the latter. He never presents himself as someone with any goal beyond bleeding to put food on his table, but there is a workmanlike joy in that from him in some way. I wonder then if these seemingly rare mat work exhibitions were moments in time that he relished. Rare opportunities for him to show off, to do things that are reserved for performers that other think more technically sound, sleeker, more proficient, more practiced. But like we’ve touched on in almost all of these reviews, there is an earnestness to Ian’s work that sets it apart. The spots that he relies on, the aspects that are revealed as performative only through study, still have a groudedness to them. He ignores the flash that other, showier workers use to keep people invested. He trusts himself, and he trusts that he knows his audiences. He makes no apologies. There is something admirable about it. 

Take, for example, the way Ian (and Homicide, to some extent) uses his head. In a rear mount, Ian digs his chin in to Homicide’s spine. He uses it as a tool, as a way to gain leverage, as a way to press upon his opponent. And because of that, he exposes himself to harm and to danger and often finds himself caught. It’s an encapsulation of his style as a whole, using anything he can to continue to press forward, putting every bit of weight on his opponent. 

In the first match we looked at for this project, in which Ian fought Chris Hero, Phil talked about the palpable sense of dread that Ian’s matches have. There is a wonderful example of it early in this. After both men get back to their feet, and Homicide has control of the arm, Ian pulls them both down. Cide rolls quickly and decisively, as he did earlier to gain advantage, but Ian has learned, and Homicide finds himself rolling directly into contact. He squirms away and goes to the outside and there is the first real breath, the first show of negative space, and it works because of a moment on the mat that feels almost like a near death experience. And Homicide, for his part, despite pointing to his head after the escape to tell us how smart he is, is hesitant to get back in the ring, and even more hesitant to lock back up. He’s a wrestler that doesn’t show fear, that doesn’t beg off, but for a moment he has to regroup, and that is perhaps just as powerful and just as telling.

From here, the match falls in to a familiar rhythm. Ian uses headbutts as another reset button of sorts, creating a clear second act within the match, although not before once again trying to use his head for leverage, digging his forehead in to the back of Homicide's neck. They start to exchange blurry eyed strikes, Homicide on his feet, Ian on his knees. Homicide continues to show hesitation to go back on the mat, and when Ian finally bring Homicide back down, Cide cheats and bites and claws his way to an advantage, all so he can stand back up and strike. It’s strange. While the match itself has some different notes, this almost feels like the touring equivalent of the Joe match we just watched, albeit one that has a definitive finish. Rather than ending during the threatened brawl on the outside, here they continue to swing wildly, and Ian breaks a whiteboard over Homicide’s head in a truly preposterous moment of violence. 

While I think Rotten has a lot of strengths as a worker, I think his genius in this series shows in how clearly he finds breaks and ways to escalate. This match is almost a three act play, with each division acting as both an escalation and a separation. After the whiteboard, even the matwork is more frenzied. A figure four is countered and both men roll off the apron to the floor. When Rotten goes back to the same submission it gets broken with a chair. There is a desperation to the work from both men. Ian tries a double leg takedown from his knees, but ends up in a choke. Homicide starts working the arm again, paying off his work in the early portions. The finishing stretch is mostly lead by Homicide, with him trying and testing various ways to grab Ian’s arm. It is a definitive and rather abrupt finish, and somewhat less clever and decidedly more “wrestling” than what we’ve seen until now. Perhaps had this match taken place in IWA-MS and not NLW, we would’ve seen the Ian we’ve become accustomed to, the one who moves ever forward, even in defeat.

PAS: I always thought of these two guys as mirror images of each other. Pair of guys who started out as Deathmatch wrestlers and brawlers but had this secret skill on the mat and desire to show off. Both guys had training schools, both had cult favorite indy feds which they headlined. In many ways this was like a battle between a DC and Marvel versions of the same superhero, like if Quicksilver and Flash had a race.

I think the crowd was expecting a brawl, and it was cool that they decided instead to hit the mat as hard as they did. I loved how Ian would grab rollups from weird angles, and how vicious Homicide's arm work was. One thing about Ian is that wrestlers seem perfectly willing to violate the unspoken agreements, Homicide really kicks the shit out of Ian's arm in ways that had to ache for weeks, and those headbutts were knocking large parts of Ian's education out of his head. No wonder the IWA-MS payouts were always hinky, that guy couldn't do math after those headshots.

According to Cagematch this is their only singles match, I had never heard of this match before, it had 40 views on Youtube. One thing that is so great about this hobby is mining for lost classics, and this totally counted. This feels like it should have been a legendary rivalry. Like Ian vs. Homicide should have ended in a JAPW vs. IWA-MS War Games match or something, instead we got this one shiny jewel of a match.

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Ian Rotten Dropped His Last Dime Down a Wishing Well

Ian Rotten vs. Samoa Joe IWA-MS 4/8/05 -EPIC

JR:Have you ever seen Death Wish IV? The opening sequence, if I’m thinking of the right movie, is of a criminal doing heinous and criminal things, and then all of a sudden Charles Bronson shows up and fucking annihilates him. The criminal runs and hides and shoots desperately at him but Bronson just keeps coming, walking between the shadows in a dimly lit parking lot.

I think about this scene often, well, perhaps not often, but probably more often than anyone else. In it, Bronson, the ostensible hero, is filmed almost exactly like an 80s movie monster, this unstoppable and silent killing machine that we have been trained to fear. He is a grey haired Jason Vorhees. But we are rooting for him, because the actions of his victims are so awful.

There is something about Ian that reminds me of this. Not that his opponents are awful people or doing particularly dastardly things, but because he is positioned throughout these matches as a conquering hero, a dominant force, and yet the way he wrestles and works positions him as something other, something monstrous. He comes across as manically violent and almost inhuman in his disregard for safety, and yet there is something charming about him, with his tuft of blond hair and almost cherubic face, albeit one that is scarred heavily.

This match is somewhat uncharted territory thus far in this project, as this is the first time we are seeing a match in which the narrative is that Ian is essentially outmatched. The Hero match was in 2002 and before many of the matches that would make him well known nationally. The Tarek match was against Tarek. Here, we have Ian vs Samoa Joe in 2005, against a man at the height of his powers. It’s subtle, but the differences are noteworthy. Very early in the match, Ian opts for a slick counter into an arm drag, followed closely with a headstand escape. Perhaps I am projecting a bit too much upon the work itself, but I find these early earnest attempts almost heartwarming; for the first time, we see some effort from Ian to leave a positive impression upon his opponent. It’s as if he wants Joe to see him do things that most would think him incapable of. It’s an interesting choice narratively, as so much of Joe’s mystique is based in a practiced unflappability, but there is enough negative space after the sequence to make sure the crowd also notices the importance of it.

The early narrative is one of increasing desperation from Rotten, although he does it in such a way to come across as canny rather than outgunned. His earlier attempts at impressing Joe with his agility and creativity slowly and assuredly give way to things on the borderline of legality; dropkicks to a knee, a clear choke, a fishhook to break a hold. Each brings Ian a slight material advantage and a more than slight moral victory, as Joe is reduced to grabbing ropes for breaks, motioning for the referee to break the hold, and taking his time to shake out a limb or catch his breath. In some ways, Ian’s plan has worked: he knew what he was in for, while Joe did not.

We have talked at length about Ian’s matwork throughout this series, but I don’t think we have devoted as much space to his strikes, which are sublime. I’m going to work under the assumption that they look good because he is actually just hitting his opponent very hard, but holy lord everything lands perfectly. There is a matter of factness to them all, this immensely understated violence, as though by not commenting on the stiffness of the forearm, by not giving it room to breathe, it somehow becomes more pronounced.

The match ends with this extended exchange of strikes, as it pours over to the outside and both men are counted out. As the bell rings and they announce a double count out, Joe I still putting his hands up. Ian takes off his shirt, hands at his sides. There is probably ten feet between them and it may be the most violent image I’ve ever seen.

PAS: This was more Methlab Futen, then Methlab BattlArts, but man alive did they deliver what you want out of this match up. The match didn't have a ton of matwork, but the matwork it did have a bunch of small moments of innovation which are traditional in these Ian matches. Joe tries to roll over with an Indian Deathlock, and Ian blocks it twice, by pushing at Joe's knee. When Joe finally rolls it over, Ian grabs a neck crank so Joe can't really rip at the knee. It is those kind of little reactions which is missing from all but the best mat wrestling.

Most of this match was on the feet and they were really pasting each other. The headbutt battle was both really stupid and really awesome. Joe cracks Ian with a headbutt, and Ian fires back, does a bit of a glassy "I shouldn't have headbutted a Samoan" sell, and says fuck it and just starts ramming him until they both fall down.

I am two ways on the count out, it is sort of silly to have a double count out in a fed like IWA-MS which basically has no rules, and it was clearly not what the crowd wanted to see. Still if you are going to do a double count out, this kind of Godzilla vs. King Kong rumble is the way a count out should be done. I loved Joe cutting off the traditional Ian post match "Introducing a Shriner's luncheon speaker" speech and threateningly demanding a rematch. It was a real minor tragedy we never got that rematch, it was set up great and would have been epic, it is up there with some of the all time great teased but never delivered matches.

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Ian Rotten Perverted Me

Ian Rotten vs. Tarek the Great IWA-MS 10/4/02 - GREAT

JR: Maybe about ten years ago someone wrote an article on boxing for Triple Canopy that I believe is now lost to time. It tried to use Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse as a metaphor for something I can’t really remember, but one of the more cogent points that was made throughout was that while individual fighters are generally compelling because of their greatness, fights themselves are often more compelling between two fighters who have distinct and obvious weaknesses. At some level in boxing, everyone is good enough to exploit an opening, repeatedly and with profound cruelty, but only a very select few are able to do so without having a similarly glaring weakness themselves. So while watching two tremendous fighters play a game of mental chess, cautiously circling, pressing incremental advantages, and having wondrous and lightning quick footwork is perhaps beautiful, the fights that drive the popularity of boxing as a whole, and the fights that we think of when we picture a quote-unquote prize fight, are the ones that are more about flaws, and the inability to mask those flaws.

I thought of that article and its potential application to pro wrestling while watching this match between Ian Rotten and Tarek the Great. Often, extended mat sequences, and even the amorphous and general idea of “strong style” can come across as overly cooperative when in the hands of talented performers. They work with a speed and fluidity that can only be accomplished in a universe that is fictionalized, and their work serves to highlight the idea that the universe is fictionalized, that what they are doing is agreed upon on some level. A back and forth strike competition, even if the performers are “actually hitting each other”, one where no one gives an inch, one where the speed increases in such a way as to bring applause to a fever pitch, is a design. It is a choice. And after the moment is gone, the viewer is left with the knowledge that it is a choice that was made to play upon their emotions, to play upon the general want to participate and to acknowledge performance.

So really, there is something refreshing about this, about watching two performers who have that same general agreement, that they will pound upon one another for the theoretical enjoyment and engagement of the crowd, but have to do so in fits and starts, without the polish and veneer that others have. Their attempts to lock in holds are slow and clumsy. Strikes are wild and deadly looking affairs, looping and wide swats that look all the more dangerous due to their unexpected nature.

I speak a lot about what I call “dynamics” when I discuss wrestling critically; for me, matches are compelling when there are moments of work that shift gears, that change speeds, that make a narrative experience beyond escalation. Ian is tremendously naturally gifted as a dynamic performer, and the matwork here is a solid example. Throughout the match thus far, the work has been cautious and guarded, the work of two men who are consciously trying to defend themselves, aware of their own shortcomings in some way. And then! Out of nowhere, Ian reserves something with speed and grace and power, and it creates such a meaningful narrative transition out of what could have easily been a moment done for polite applause, a moment for the crowd to follow the bouncing ball. Instead, he changes speed and forces the audience to pay attention, as the work has gone against the natural rhythm of what we expect from these matches.

Tarek, for his part, is a capable and understanding performer, and is able to work in a way that shows off the size difference between the two. On things like pinning combinations out of counters he shows clear struggle at having to leverage someone who probably has 40 pounds on him. Whereas the Hero match we did last week looked uncooperative in its desperation and cruelty, this match finds ways to create the same energy while establishing a clear hierarchy. We aren’t supposed to buy Tarek on the level of Hero, and we don’t. He looks game but overmatched, with enough skill and shine to push Ian, albeit not to the same point of no return that Hero brought out. While Tarek may be lacking as a credible opponent, he does have skills that serve to bolster Rotten’s work; namely his inherent stillness. Rather than always flailing and grasping for ropes and escapes, Tarek is comfortable not moving while Ian has things locked in. It again reinforces the size difference, and creates a stark contrast to when they do finally get off the mat towards the end, and Tarek’s brief flurry looks like it truly shocks and surprises Ian. It’s not enough, but it creates contrast, both to the earlier segments in the match and to Ian as a performer.

There are moments toward the end that are a bit cute, a bit more cooperative than anything we see in the early stretches here or in better matches like the Hero one. But those aren’t enough to undermine what is otherwise compelling work. I am pleasantly surprised by the tonal differences that Ian is capable of within the same style, and his natural affinity for transition. As Phil pointed out last time, he is capable of enveloping the whole of his match in this extremely sinister aura, but here he proves he doesn’t have to rely on it to create good work. He has tools beyond what someone would expect.

PAS: I thought this was excellent, compelling, violent wrestling. It was clearly worked in the same style as Hero vs. Ian, but while that was something truly separate from pro-wrestling, this felt more like an interesting stylistic outlier, but within recognizable boundaries. Part of it may have been that Hero vs. Ian was without commentary, all you could hear was the cursing and shrieking in pain, while this had Jim Fannin and Dave Prazak just dribbling out inane nonsense. This also had a bit more of a wrestling ending, Ian sugar holding Tarek asleep was pretty cool, but it wasn't as visceral as Ian quickly tapping as his knee tendons shredded like coleslaw. 

It is hard not compare the two matches, but this had a lot in it to love. I thought the bear hug from the bottom by Ian was especially nasty, you could really see him digging his knuckles into Tarek's spine. There was some really slick counter wrestling here, Tarek is able to reverse a leglock from the bottom. Not to be outdone Ian reverses a Tarek leg lock, by grabbing and pulling Tarek's head to Ian's chest and rolling into a small package, totally cool almost Solaresque counter work. We had our bits of violence too, Ian and Tarek exchanging CTEbutts and Ian landing a sick open cuff to the ear.  The first match we reviewed felt like a pinnacle of a style, this feels like more of a great representative example, you may learn more from a representative then from a peak.

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Ian Rotten Came Knocking At The Door, I Let Him In for A While

Ian Rotten vs. Chris Hero IWA-MS 5/4/02 -EPIC

JR: Late last year, Phil Schneider approached me about working together to write up all the Ian Rotten matwork matches, known colloquially as “methlab battlearts”. I jumped at the opportunity, for Phil remains an inspiration of mine. My wrestling writing, and truthfully, the entire way I watch wrestling, would be very different without him. It was a task that got pushed back, as we both have our own things, and life sometimes gets in the way. But tonight it starts! This is the first write up in what will surely be a long project, spanning many, many matches. I have no idea when it will end. Off the top of my head, I can think of about 6 or 7 matches I would safely categorize as MLBA, I’m sure there are more, but that will require us both sifting through a few years worth of Ian Rotten matches. I don’t really look forward to this. That’s a lie. I do look forward to it, just not to the time it will take.

But that is a problem for future JR. And future Phil S. Tonight, our problem is watching Ian Rotten fight Chris Hero in 2002 in Dayton, OH.

There are 37 people at this match. I know this because I watched a match from a few months later that had 24 people in the audience and they commented on the crowd size of the two shows. The matches starts with a clean break and some solid tie up work. Hero is game, and this is before he became obsessed with World of Sport, or at the very least before he let that obsession work its way into his matches. But at the very least, Hero is someone who has a pretty innate understanding of leverage and is someone who doesn’t shy away from contact, which makes him a great opponent here.

I have no idea if Rotten has ever watched WoS, but more so than any BattleArts wrestler, his performance in the early portion of this match reminds me of Jim Breaks. Not in the world necessarily, but in how vocal he is. Ian has an understanding of his audience, what their expectations are and how well they can follow a narrative. By having a match that is so out of the ordinary for both participants, he knows and understands that he has to guide them a bit more, and he does this but yelling and whining and cursing and hollering any time there is a level change or a moment of resolution in the work. It creates clear rhythm that the audience can follow and enjoy, like how the audience knows and understands when a jazz solo ends.

The other major strength of Ian’s work in this match is the sheer weight of everything he does. Not in a metaphorical sense, I mean that every hold that he has Hero in he makes look as though he is truly pressing upon him. There is a wariness to participating in constant contact with someone, and Ian understands that. He may move slower than some others, or have to visibly think through the steps to do something in a way that other, more technically adept wrestlers do not, but he makes an effort to always be touching and pressing and falling and laying on Hero. He forces the issue in ways that other performers do not. Often, technical wrestling can almost come across as no different than a high flying match in structure; fast paced reversals followed by a break as the two competitors circle around and pace, waiting for their polite applause. Here, Ian and Hero are always forcing the other to confront them and their actual, physical forms.

All of that is a somewhat overly confusing way of saying that this match just features Rotten and Hero hitting each other very hard. They exchange headbutts that knock the every present bandage from Rotten’s forehead. Ian hits an uppercut and later a crossface that both land with a thud that is harrowing, like watching someone on a bike collide with a mailbox. Hero’s strikes are equally hard, but are almost all in retaliation. There is a natural quality to them, kicking and screaming and flailing while on his back, desperate to avoid Ian grabbing his knee and ankle and just mangling them over and over.

It’s interesting to see how Ian’s understanding of the layout and rhythm of deathmatches infers how he works here, specifically in regards to the use of props, for lack of a better term. While there are no weapons or elaborate death match machine set ups or anything of the like, Ian manages to get huge amounts of mileage out of small and simple things that act almost as act breaks. The end of the first portion of the match is symbolized by Ian's forehead bandage coming off, whereas the finishing stretch is marked by Hero having to tape his knee while a tired and desperate Ian lunges for it over and over, eventually leaving himself open for a counter attack. One could watch this and see these transitions and moments being instead barbed wire bats or panes of glass, and the match makes roughly the same amount of sense. While I tend to think this word is meaningless, there is a universality to the structure here that allows Ian to consistently remain in control and never find himself out of book in any meaningful way.

This match is wonderful. One of my favorite matches ever is the Satanico/Sangre Chicana match from 89, and the work in the second half of this almost is a matwork equivalent, where everything looks desperate and wild and subsequently more real. Watching this match is watching two people struggle in the mud, concussed and angry, hoping that by some stroke of luck the next thing they try will land true.

PAS: This project is going to be a challenge for me, because JR is such a talented, thorough writer, I am going to get his reviews, and struggle try to find something interesting to say which isn’t just going over points that he made better.

JR talked a lot about the vocalization in this match, and it is really powerful and makes the whole thing almost uncomfortable to watch. There are 37 people in the audience, so you aren’t going to hear traditional crowd reactions, instead you hear people just expressing shock, “Fucking Christ”, “Shit”. It really adds to force of headbutt or forearm when some guy in the audience seems disgusted by the whole thing. This is a death match promotion, Ian Rotten is normally going through panes of glass, but the crowd seems way more appalled by a hammer fist to a knee then anything with barbed wire or lightubes (and it is a great fucking Hammer fist, these guys were throwing heaters).

Both wrestlers were really vocal too, cursing at each other, shrieking in pain, mumbling under their breath. There is a lot of over the top vocal selling in wrestling these days, but in a performative way, nothing felt performative here. At one-point Hero’s shriek gets really high pitched, it is the kind of shriek I made when I dislocated my kneecap playing Rugby, or you will hear on the pickup court when someone shreds an Achilles, it didn’t feel like selling, it felt like two guys taking it much too far. I loved how fast Ian tapped out too, it felt like both guys tendons were slowly ripping througout the entire match, if you tore a tendon in your knee, you wouldn’t gut it out and make tough guy faces, you would scream, tap and go to the hospital. The lack of traditional wrestling selling in this match really made it special, it unnerved me, it isn’t the way a wrestling match is supposed to work, it isn’t how wrestlers are supposed to react to holds and it makes the whole thing seem wrong. It has been a while since I watched any of this stuff, and even with grappling being a much more prevalent thing in independent wrestling these days (They weren’t running Bloodsport and Ambition shows in 2002), this felt wholly alien, a completely separate bit of horror.

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Complete and Accurate Meth Lab BattlArts

JR Goldberg, one of my favorite wrestling writers, was talking up matwork Ian Rotten, and I remembered how much I loved that stuff and how I hadn't watched it in years. It also gave me an opportunity to rope in JR and get him to write for Segunda Caida. We are going to be going through this stuff and seeing how it holds up and if it is as great as we remember. As always matches are going to be ranked EPIC, GREAT, FUN and SKIPPABLE


2002

Ian Rotten vs. Chris Hero IWA-MS 5/4/02 -EPIC
Ian Rotten vs. Tarek the Great IWA-MS 10/4/02- GREAT

2003

Ian Rotten vs. B-Boy IWA-MS 12/19/03-GREAT

2004

Ian Rotten vs. Homicide NWL 8/2/04 - EPIC

2005

Ian Rotten vs. Samoa Joe IWA-MS 4/8/05 -EPIC

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Eddie Kingtson In Some Sick Hills, Bagging Up Fishscales

Eddie Kingston vs. Ian Rotten IWA-MS 7/8/05 - EPIC

PAS: This was just a grimy sick fight, an I Quit cage match without any 21st century fanciness, just two guys in close quarters trying to maul each other. The whole thing was filmed with one super close camera angle, and it could pick up the sick smack of every crossface and headbutt. It is pretty hard to do any close magic with the camera right in your face like that, nothing seemed pulled, everything was raising bruises and welts. Kingston and Rotten were cursing at each other and threatening to beat each other to death. Rotten comes in with a cast on his arm, which he uses as a weapon, but Kingston also rips it off so he can beat on the injured arm. Rotten also tries to mangle Eddie's arm with a chair and some armbars. There are some thumbtacks which get pushed into temples and foreheads, and the finish is Ian trying to take Kingston's eye out with a fork. This doesn't have the Jackass style entertainment of some death match stunt shows, this is hard to watch violent stuff, really not a match for everyone, but an achievement nonetheless.

ER: This was a real sick, grisly fight, something that horrified parents would have had to shield their kid's eyes from minutes in as they left in horror. But at no point does it feel like a geek show, this isn't guys rolling around in light tube glass needing attention, this was a fight that started with chairs and strikes, and devolved into strikes and gouging and threats. There isn't a whole lot of "wrestling" (Ian has a couple armbar attempts and a neat kneebar reversal, and he even does a koppo kick to Kingston's arm that had to come as a surprise), there's a lot of knuckles into face and gross headbutts. Ian gets bloody real quick, to no big shock. Ian is one of wrestling's great bleeders, able to get that deep crimson red covering his whole face, that color of red that would cause any normal man to panic and realize their situation is BAD. And Kingston is certifiable because no sane man would let Ian clonk his deep red bloody head into his own head many times. Kingston may be certifiable, but he's also a savage, going after Ian's hand and bending at his fingers, prying at his cast, and Ian does some amazing selling with his pained howls. Ian breaks out that high pitch howl a couple times, and it really is the sound of a man being tortured, totally chilling to see a dude covered in blood screaming like that. These two are just nasty to each other, and Kingston's selling is top level as usual. When he was holding his arm and telling the ref under his breath "It's broken, fuck, it's broken," and begging Ian to just not hit him with a chair for a moment, it's all too real and not much of a stretch to think he could be hurt. This whole thing was grim and violent. Most of my peers and loved ones probably already think I'm a weirdo for watching pro wrestling, but if they found out that this was what I was watching they'd probably think I was keeping somebody in my basement.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE EDDIE KINGSTON

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Wednesday Morning War Games: IWA-MS- Team IWA-MS v. Team Fanin v. Team NWA

Team IWA-MS (Ian Rotten/Chris Hero/Axl Rotten/Corporal Robinson/Bull Pain) v. Team NWA (Tank/Eric Priest/Chandler McClure/Sal Thomaselli/Vito Thomaselli) v. Fanin Family (Eddie Kingston/BJ Whitmer/JC Bailey/Mark Wolf/Steve Stone) IWA-MS 7/2/05

This was a three team, two ring War Games with ownership of IWA-MS at stake. While it was a little overstuffed (Team NWA seemed superfluous, and were the first team eliminated), this really shows the value of having great brawlers and letting them brawl. War Games are always going to have section where lots of guys are just wandering around kicking and punching, Corp, Ian, Eddie Kingston, Bull Pain, Tank, these are all time great punchers and kickers. Watching Corporal Robinson hurl those half punch/half forearms is just pleasurable. We also had the Chris Hero v. Eddie Kingston feud weaving through this, which is one of my all time favorite indy feuds, there is a great moment near the end where Hero just unloads with crazed elbows. Steve Stone was my favorite under the radar guy in the match, his brawling looked on the level of the legends, he bled a ton and he took some nasty bumps. I didn't love either finish, Tank seemed like he went down a little early, and having JC Bailey turn on Fanin seems like a weird finish for a face team to win. Still this is a violent bloody brawl which was very entertaining and worth tracking down.

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Phil Cherry Picks MAW

I got my hands on a bunch of MAW shows from the early 2000s, this was a Milwaukee area indy which used a bunch of IWA-MS guys. Since these are dozens of long ass early 2000s indy shows I am going to cherry pick some interesting looking matches.

CM Punk/ Jason Kronnan/Dave Prazak v. Dino Bambino/Bobby Bambino/Sherri Martel 2 out of 3 falls Tables and Ladders match 7/23/00

Punks team comes into Kid Rock which should strip him of all of his straight edge scenester cred. WWIMKT (What Would Ian MacKaye think). He also has a stringy blond front rattail and cut off jorts, his look didn't exactly scream future PPV headliner. This was a total shitshow trainwreck but a pretty entertaining one. Sherri was awesome stiffing Punk and Prazak, and even taking a bump off a ladder through a table which is nuts for a lady in her 40s in front of 100 people. Dragged a bit in the middle, but the end was pretty nutso with Prazak going head first through a table and Dino doing a shooting star press through a table which looked really dangerous, he barely rotated enough and looked like he almost spiked himself headfirst into the concrete.

Ian Rotten v. Peter B. Beautiful 6/3/01

This comes off of a KOTDM match between the two of them where Ian crowbarred this kid in one of those weird quasi shoot IWA-MS angles. I have no idea why Peter signed up for this a second time, as again Ian gives him nothing and just brutalizes him with lightbulb tube shots and chairshots. There was some angle where the MAW owner runs in a ineffectually chokes Ian with a pool cue, this leads to PBB's one cover which Ian kicks out of and then Rotten goes right back to mauling him. The end got downright Kurisuish with Ian throwing wind up kicks to this kids eye and punching him square in the cheek. I like meth BattlArts Ian a lot, but this was a different sort of thing and I didn't enjoy watching it.

Ian Rotten/Necro Butcher v. Corporal Robinson/Bull Pain 9/21/02

On paper this is just a murderer's row lineup of early 2000's brawlers. I don't think any match could have lived up to the match I had in my mind, but this was still really entertaining. First part of the match is worked as a southern tag with the heel Pain/Corp team working over Necro. Necro is a guy willing to get worked over and Pain and Corp are awesome guys at beating on someone, awesome punches and stomps and nasty chair shots. Pain is amazing at baseball bat shots, one of the best magic tricks in wrestling history, he really looks like he is braining people with bat shots. Corp has these amazing fast punch combos where he looks like he is beating on a guy in fast forward, man what a heel team those two were. Instead of a hot tag Ian just beats up the ref, and we then have about twelve minutes of straight brawling. I did think that not having the hot tag was a bit deflating, and while the brawling was super nasty looking it got a bit repetitive. Still this was violent nasty stuff executed well and fun to watch. First MAW hidden gem

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Saturday Night Digging in the Crates

We take a visit to a minor league baseball stadium in Wisconsin, to see friend of a friend of the blog CM Punk who is in the news a bit against a friend to no one Ian Rotten.



CM Punk v. Ian Rotten MAW 9/2/01

PAS: This was a Texas Death Match for the MAW title and is a nifty chance to check out early Punk against one of my favorite severely underrated guys Ian Rotten. This was a nasty bloody brawl, but worked like an old school Texas Death Match not a Indy Death Match. Punk starts out by ripping off Ian's omnipresent bandage, and lands some nasty cut opening punches. Punk is a guy whose stiffness is a little hit and miss over the course of his career, but you bring it against Ian and they both lay it in here. Some really nifty brawling spots, including Ian reversing a whip into the crowd with a great looking monkey flip which sends Punk flying into chairs. They also use the chain link fence in the bleachers like a steel cage. I also really liked the lack of overkill, early 2000's indies could really overdo it, but the finish here felt like a reasonable place to finish. Also loved Ian with the earnest post match offer of a handshake, which Punk takes and then jumps him. No one does earnest sportsmanship like Ian.

ER: Ian the shake my hand/respect/gentleman is so amazing considering 20 minutes before he was comparing Prazak to a used tampon and reacted to being called a fat prick by saying that's the best thing to put in a woman. And he's Ian Rotten. And he was the babyface. All this seems like he perfect kind of thing to be happening in a promotion called Mid-American Wrestling. Match itself went maybe a little too long as it appeared Ian gassed pretty hard (the more muscle you have obviously the more oxygen is needed to feed that muscle) and was having trouble getting up off the mat or climbing ropes. Still there were plenty of great moments: Ian's beastly somersault senton, Punk taking a double underhook DDT right on his head, the aforementioned awesome monkey flip reversal in the dirt through chairs, Ian leaving a bloody stain on a chair after getting it dropkicked into his face. Fun stuff.

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R.I.P. IWA-MS, 2/8/03

PAS: To memorialize IWA-MS, a promotion which has provided entertaining shows for over a decade, we are going to review some random shows over the next couple of weeks, after which I imagine the promotion will be back in business.

Shark Boy v. Vortex

PAS: Vortex was accompanied by American Kickboxer who trained him. This match was mostly built around an apparent Shark Boy v. the ref feud, and ended with a restart fast count bullshit finish. Vortex had some impressive athletic spots for an unathletic looking dude, but definitely looked a little rookieish in his other stuff. It was good to see the crazy old dude smoking a pipe though.

ER: Vortex had some pretty OK looking stuff here, and I was fully expecting sub pretty OK. Good to see American Kickboxer coming out and talking shit while wearing a full-on all over print button up Gundam shirt. If you can still sound credible starting shit while supporting Mobile Suit Gundam then more power to you. And that old man's pipe was full on Hans Landa size, just puffing away in the front row.

In between matches saw Todd Morton work the STICK and it was great. He cut a genuinely threatening promo, really intense and hate-filled. What doesn't this guy do? Dave Prazak tries his best to make lame jokes over it man I hate that guy.

Mark Wolf v. KO

PAS: KO was a legit Scottish Games competitor who was green as grass but probably a better athlete then pretty much anyone who ever worked IWA-MS. There were moments where both guys seemed to be visible calling spots. KO looked good on offense, and not so good on defense, dropping early on a bulldog ect. Wolf was solid too, although he kind of had one good looking move, one weak looking move.

ER: I liked KO here, and Phil is overstating how bad the bulldog looked. Most people wouldn't have even noticed it. Plus, I hate when it looks like dudes leap into a perfectly positioned front flop. This dude made the bulldog look REAL, but stumbling and falling way more painfully than if he had taken the bulldog as planned. If you're gonna stumble during a spot, might as well do it when you're supposed to land on your face anyway. Wolf was wearing some classicly torn Balls Mahoney shorts. I can just picture these guys sitting at home, carefully tearing their pants JUST so, just so they'll be PERFECT when they throw shitty forearms to some guy's chest.

Adam Gooch v. Drake Younger

PAS: This was pretty great, Adam Gooch was totally awesome in 2003, great height on his bumps, great looking execution on his moves and a legit sleazeball heat machine. He had this great run for a couple of years and then totally disappeared. He was accompanied by Michael Todd Stratton (AKA Todd Morton), and he is always awesome to watch, even when he is the apron. This was Younger's IWA debut and he looked pretty good, a bunch of energy and some cool spots. It got a little two county for my taste at the finish, but this was blast.

ER: Man, I forgot how great Gooch was earlier this decade. Pre-match heat garnering with Stratton was awesome. They turned an old bit into a forgotten classic, something that easily could've been botched in most others' hands. Fan gives Gooch a wifebeater as a gift, wifebeater says "Gooch is da MAN!" on the front, Stratton urges him to put it on and then poses Gooch to all sides of the crowd, which naturally reveals the back of it says "Who takes it in the ASS!" and Stratton does the slow reveal then reacts in all sorts of awesome "Boss Hogg getting worked by the Dukes" mannerisms. Stratton was the ultimate second in this match.

Steve Stone/Ballz v. Devon Fury/Cornbread

PAS: This was a Pro-Am match, the concept being that a professional was teaming with an amateur. I assume what that means on an IWA show, is that the pros were working for free and the amateurs were paying to work the show. Cornbread was the better of the two backyarders, as Ballz was there mostly there so the announcers can make dozens of puns. Still I never thought I would appreciate the polish and professionalism of Devon Fury.

ER: You can also tell the pros are the ones with new jean shorts and a non-faded black t-shirt. Steve Stone had some good offense including a real nice kneedrop and some good spunk on the ring apron. Cornbread was a pretty enjoyable backyarder, but I'm kind of a chubby chaser as far as wrestling is concerned. If a fat guy does a nice leg drop I'll think he's the best guy in the match. Ballz is my new least favorite wrestler, as Fannin/Prazak with their fucking awful "balls" puns were just constant. Not a one of them funny. Fury slammed balls! Fury punches balls! Fuck you guys.

Danny Daniels v. Spider Nate Webb

PAS: Daniels is a guy I have never particularly cared for, I love Nate Webb but wasn't expecting much. I was plesantly surprised at the beginning of this match as they had some really nice sequences, including Webb climbing Daniels body while in a knucklelock and ripping off a sweet rana. Match fell apart though about six minutes in and never really recovered. Nice moonsault by Nate though.

ER: Nate Webb's pedo-stache always looked so funny with the rest of his vinyl/mesh Hot Topic look. Really came off as a guy who had a friend that worked there and would regularly steal stock, so Nate just gets a bunch of free clothes. There is always a bunch of cool stuff in Webb matches, and Daniels really SUWA's the aforementioned hurracanrana. But that really was the highlight of the first 10+ minute match of the night, and it came in the first minute.

Ian Rotten v. Brad Bradley

PAS: Man was this great. Classic Ian Meth Cook Battlarts. Bradley is a big dude who got a WWE deal at one point. Apparently he was coming off of a MAW victory over Ian, so Ian was coming at him hard. Bradley wasn't really firing back hard enough for this kind of match, although Ian did a great job selling the shots. Ian just goes after Bradley's leg, slapping on some nasty looking leg locks, and even pounding at his thigh with punches. Finish was great with a bloody Ian grabbing a steel chair and decimating his leg with chair shots and then putting on an STF for a submission.

ER: I was a big supporter of Brad Bradley/Ryan Braddock in WWE. I really loved all 9 total minutes he got on Smackdown. Loved the Festus match, loved the tag he had opposite Festus, thought he had good heavyweight offense and a nice dropkick. Anything he had in 2008, he did not have here. Steen-esque bod and a bland face/haircut, this was the Ian show. Ian sells a stomp to the face better than anybody. Bradley was throwing some really wimpy stomps to the face and Ian really made it look like his skull was getting caved in. Those chair shots to the leg were so damn nasty.

Shaq Daddy v. Rollin Hard

PAS: This is another Pro-Am match, with Rollin Hard in the traditional Ian roll of guy potatoing a backyarder. No John Calvin with a kendo stick here, and Rollin actually sells for this guy a bit which kind of kills the gimmick. Shaq Daddy seemed kind of over with the crowd and this feels like the kind of thing that can't be understood out of context.

ER: Shaq Daddy didn't just seem kind of over, he was practically the most over guy on the whole show. Maybe he was a popular local tattoo artist? I have no explanation for this match. It gets like 11 minutes, Shaq gets a lot of bad looking offense, Rollin' really doesn't actually stiff him at all, puts him over afterwards like they had just gone through an epic war, crowd goes apeshit. I have no fucking clue what happened. Rollin' took a real nice spill through some chairs at ringside, but....I just guess you had to be there?

Bull Pain v. Corporal Robinson

PAS: Pain comes out with Mickie Knuckles as his valet, which is an angle that I didn't remember happening. This started out a little underwhelming, but man did it kick in gear. Both these guys really convey "tough guy" well and there were large parts of this that felt like the two craziest guys in a small town clearing out a bar. At one point Bull does a frog splash off the bleachers to the floor, which is a totally insane spot for a veteran to do, I could see Nate Webb or Vortex doing it, but Bull Pain worked in the AWA for fuck sake.

ER: Mickie rocking the little black dress and stylish bob! Cut to 6 years later and she has tangly long hair and a scarred up forehead. Bull is one of the most intimidating guys in wrestling, and Cpl. can do a real nice brawl. Their brawl through the crowd was a lot more impressive than most. Really had a cool fight atmosphere. Bull's bat shots are so awesome. They always look so nasty. They should've used him as an advisor to Ox Baker on "Escape from New York".

Chris Hero v. Michael Todd Stratton

PAS: I had seen this match years ago and I remember it fondly, and man does it hold up well. Stratton (aka Todd Morton) is just amazing at drawing heat, this is the day after Hero and Punk went 90+ minutes, so Hero is coming into this with a disadvantage. Lots of cool shit here, this building has a support poll off to the side of the ring and Stratton takes a huge flying bump into that poll, which looked just brutal. Stratton also breaks out a ladder and they do some cool spots with that, including Stratton pinning him in the corner with the ladder and blasting him with a perfect dropkick. Finish looked to be super overbooked, with a ref bump and Bull Pain and Adam Gooch run in, they get cut off by KO and Mark Wolf and Wolf smashes Stratton. That felt like the finish, but instead Stratton kicks out at two, and they do an amazing kneeling punch exchange, leading to Hero sweeping his legs and getting the Hangman's clutch. Awesome, awesome match, really one of my favorite Chris Hero matches ever, and another spectacular Todd Morton performance.

ER: I am usually not a huge fan of 30 minute matches, as more often than not it seems like the guys could've accomplished just as much in 16-18. But this 30 minutes flies right on by. Everything here was great. Phil mentioned all the cool spots. Hero dropkicking Morton off the apron into the support pole was a real rewind moment. Hero started the match out with real bad punches, but by the time they got to the kneeling exchange he was finally opening up and belting Morton. Of course Morton's punches started great and by the time the exchange rolled around they were just perfect. The size difference was really noticeable here, too, as Morton is a short guy, but they worked the match really believably around that, as even a big guy can get hit in the face. This whole show was a really great showcase for Todd Morton. This would be a real good place to start if you've been wanting to get into him.

Say, we should do some sort of Complete & Accurate Todd Morton list after the Fujiwara one...

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Wrestling I've Enjoyed Recently (9 Months Ago Edition)

Whenever I talk with Phil I always feel like the most out-of-the-loop wrestling fan around. I love watching wrestling on DVD. DVDs have revolutionized tape trading. You used to buy a tape for $10-15, and now I can find people selling DVDs for $2 a pop. I can afford to keep up with every single promotion in the world at that rate. BUT, I don't love watching wrestling on a computer. I will watch if it is the ONLY way I will ever see a match (the amazing VIP lucha tag from a couple years ago, the Navarro/Terry match, etc.), but otherwise I'll just wait for the DVD.

PHIL, however, is the master of watching wrestling on a computer. He watches matches matches that have disappeared forever by the time he tells me about them the next day. "Oh man, it was fucking amazing." "Where can I see it!?" "Oh, it got taken down 7 minutes after I watched it. I doubt it'll ever be uploaded again." If we're talking music terms, then Phil is getting his hands on all the cool new 7"s from hip indie labels like Hozac or Captured Tracks or Woodsist before they go for ebay money, while I'm still listening to my Deep Blue Something cassingle on my Walkman.

So, yeah, I watch wrestling way late, on DVD, like a loser. Here are some matches I watched recently that I really enjoyed, that took place 9 months ago.

1. Bronco/Romano Garcia vs. Danny Boy/Flecha (El Toreo, 12/3/08)

Going into this I didn't know Bronco, loved Garcia but didn't realize he was still even making tape (Mr. Condor/Diabolicos, along with Apache and Pimpi, were one of the only bright spots on early 2000s Galavision AAA TV), didn't know Danny Boy, and knew Flecha was Skayde. Didn't have tons of hope for it but I love old guy lucha so figured it would be OK.

It was awesome. Romando Garcia is a total monster here. He's a little greyer up top, but he's as sneaky and bastard-y as ever. He just makes Danny Boy (who has the appearance of an older, hispanic Joey Maggs) his target the whole match and is just ruthless. Just kicking him in the balls, beating him with nasty chairshots, and in one of the greatest things I've ever seen in wrestling, Garcia grabs an empty beer bottle from a ringside vendor, breaks it on the ring post, and goes after poor Danny Boy with it!! Garcia is a marvel here, one of the ultimate heel performances I've ever witnessed.

Danny Boy bleeds like a champ and plays a really great sympathetic technico. Really interested in all their other meetings this year (two of which I have on my old fashioned Digital Video Diskz), so look forward to watching those some time in 2011.

2. Sami Callihan vs. Trik Davis (IWA-MS, 12/5/08)

These guys matched up a couple times in '08, but THIS was the singles match to watch from them. This is one of my favorite indie workrate singles I've ever seen. Trik Davis is so great here it really makes me think I should've had Trik over Sami, and Sami just got more showcase matches against cool opponents (Trik didn't get the Scorpio or Ian singles matches). Trik makes Sami's offense look better than I've ever seen it look before. Trik just leans into EVERYthing and both guys really deserve some kind of weirdo standing ovation for giving and taking such nasty beatings in front of like 35 people. The way Trik takes Sami's finisher on the floor is just totally painful, and it was on a side of the ring that had like 6 people sitting on it. Sami doesn't really know how to play to the crowd very well and project, he just kinda does his Billy Idol sneer and that's it. Trik is getting really good with his facials and plays to the crowd well and it really ties the match up. This is a great match, well worth going out of your way to see. PLUS, Fannin points out that Trik came out to the Fall Guy theme song , which may be appropriate. Trik still doesn't get much credit as a great worker, just because he looks like Big Pete Wrigley. So even though he might fall from a tall building, or roll a brand new car, he's still the unknown stunt man, that in this match made Sami Callihan such a star (I still have my Fall Guy lunch box up on my living room shelf).

3. Grits N Gravy vs. Ian Rotten/Mickie Knuckles (IWA-MS, 12/6/08)

This was part of the IWA-MS Candido Cup tag tourney. Grits N Gravy is Sami Callihan and Michael Elgin. You're all familiar with Ian, Mickie, and Callihan, and Elgin is a big doughy squishy dude squeezed uncomfortably into a singlet, who hits REALLY hard.

Ian is the standout here, and he's just awesome. He looks like my old elementary school classmate Nathan Hoffman, who would kinda do anything just to get attention (and had a baby blue Member's Only jacket with a spot on the left breast pocket so you can put I.D., so Nathan sloppily wrote "Nathan" on a piece of torn lined paper and put it in there). I usually don't get too excited for bullshit in wrestling. I have to be in the right mood for it. But Ian's bullshit? I could watch that all day. The dude is always on and people could gain a lot by watching his tag work. The dude is just always on. His apron work here is fantastic, his stuff on the mat is cool, there's a great spot on the floor where he dishes out some classic "Smothers-Fu" to Elgin, and when Sami wanders over to save Ian delivers a mule kick to the balls. Just watching the guy waddle around and somehow be awesome is such a treat.

Mickie Knuckles genuinely scares me. I like watching her wrestle, and like seeing her come in and headbutt her brain cells away, but she scares me. She really has a kind of reckless way about her -- not in a sloppy way, but in a I-don't-care-if-I-die way -- that makes her really intriguing.

Real fun tag match with four people who hit hard and get hit hard.

4. Takeshi Rikio/Naomichi Marufuji/Mohammed Yone vs. Yoshihiro Takayama/Takuma Sano/Ricky Marvin (NOAH, 12/7/08)

I am such a sucker for NOAH six mans. Throw six guys with seemingly little connection to each other, one side acts like heels, the other acts like faces, somehow all six guys end up looking awesome. I have no idea how this happens. Marufuji consistently looked like the worst guy in everything he was in the last two years, and he was great here! And remember when Ricky Marvin was the best wrestler in the world!? Well he looked like those days were upon us NOW. All his stuff looked good and he did a rope-walk dropkick that I had to rewind a few times. Yone is really big now and he has his fro back. The only guys larger than him in the match were Rikio and Takayama, and man he packs a wallop. This had all the shit you know and love about NOAH. Dudes getting thrown into guardrails a bunch, dudes setting up spots where they run all the way across the building to clothesline a guy, stiff strikes, hott stand-offs, everybody wins. I love NOAH six mans.

5. Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima (NOAH, 12/7/08)

This was the first time I enjoyed a singles match with Nakajima. I've enjoyed a good amount of tags where he's in with heavyweights that just beat him up and all he has to do is get beaten up and throw some big kicks. But this was a good Nakajima singles match. Misawa is fat, grumpy, and in no mood to get kicked by some punk. Misawa's elbows are truly insane. They're like an Anderson Silva back-peddling jab: He doesn't look like he's throwing them that hard, but when they connect, they just might dislocate your jaw. Misawa hits all sorts of elbow combos and Nakajima reddens his chest, and the match ends when it should end.

6. Yoshinobu Kanemaru/Kotaro Suzuki vs. KENTA/Taiji Ishimori (NOAH, 12/7/08)

There are gonna be a hundred of these matches this year that I can't stand, filled with wasted big moves and dudes popping up doing the jacking two dudes off fighting spirit fist pumps. But I dug this one. KENTA plays a great face-in-peril and Kanemaru/Suzuki are really good at cutting off the ring. The first 10-15 are classic southern tag, and by the time we get to the big spots they're all really fun and well strung together, making good use of saves to avoid too many pointless kickouts. This was real fun and I seriously doubt I'm going to enjoy a juniors tag this year as much as this one...but like a sucker I'll still watch them.

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XCW Midwest Rollin Hard Memorial Show 2/3/09

Suicide Kid v. Drake Younger v. American Kickboxer

PAS: Fine little five minute three way, a couple of awkward spots, but Kid and Kickboxer looked pretty good for a pair of guys who don’t really wrestle regularly. Kickboxer had an especially pretty flipping asai.

TKG: About two years ago Suicide Kid was doing commentary for a couple IWA-MS matches and mentioned that he was thinking about a come back no longer as Suicide Kid but now as a more seasoned Suicide Man. He comes out to a big pop and has nice baby charisma but he is no longer a baby, he is a man and eats the pin from the new generation in Drake Younger.

J Boy Allister Fear, Guido Andretti v Ian Rotten, Chris Champion, Mickie Knuckles

TKG: About a year ago Chris Champion had a stroke. Chris Champion is currently working some sort of almost AAA style middle aged Marilyn Manson gimmick. He comes out wearing white face paint and a fascist military uniform with an iron cross insignia, waving the old Wildside Skull and Crossbones flag while carrying a Misfits lunchbox. Inside the Misfits lunchbox are chemicals which he mixes up to blow fireballs. Before Champion had his stroke the joke I used to tell was that for a drugged up tatted charismatic guy with martial arts offense and goth gimmick, Vampiro was a poor man’s Chris Champion. Post stroke for a charismatic tatted up ex druggie with martial arts offense and a AAA type gimmick Chris Champion essentially is Vampiro. This was a fun lil match. I haven’t seen Fear in ages, Ardetti is a XCW regular and I’ve never seen J Boy before but he really did the bulk of stuff for his team. Post match Ian with heartfelt speech about Roland.

PAS: This was a showcase for the faces, and they all looked great. Ian has an awesome Buddy Landell elbow drop here, and Mickie throws some nasty headbutts. I enjoyed all of the heels bumping and talking shit. Ian is really great at emotional speechmaking.

Sexy Shawn Cook v “Mean” Mitch Page

TKG: Mean Mitch Page is a guy who I think is retired but doesn’t look the least bit rusty in the last two matches I’ve seen with him (Mean and Hard v Vulgar Display of Power and this one). His stuff looks really great and he eats Cook’s stuff really well with his legs going al wobbly in neat ways. Mitch Ryder should try to get him out of retirement and run Mitch Page v Freezer Thompson series. Page/Thompson v Hawk/Cook would also rule. Page and a young babyface partner. I want Mean Mitch Page as a regular.

PAS: This was pretty short but Page did look good. His strengths are clearly the kind of brawls which you wouldn’t do on a tribute show. I was pleasantly surprised how good he was in this kind of undercard face v. heel match.

Mitch Ryder v Tracy Smothers

PAS: This is a show with no great match, but where everything was totally satisfying. Tracey Smothers does his classic shtick, and does it well. Ryder looks good, has the crowd behind him and works well around Tracey being Tracey. I imagine they have a great match in them, this wasn’t it but it was a blast

TKG: Smothers comes out and announces that he loves Roland but hates these fans and we’re off. Smothers with a bunch of nasty combinations in the corner and a match that just puts a smile on your face.

Flash Flanagan v. Chris Michaels

PAS: This was for the title and was worked like a title match. Both guys have been in very good matches on previous XCW shows, but always as the solid hand against a guy with some flash. This was technically good, but a little dry. Flanagan really looked facially like Curt Henning which isn't something I noticed before. Good match with a fun finish, but not a top ten XCW match

TKG: Flanagan eats everything in this really really well. This starts really great and is a fine showcase match. The superplex into roll up finish was executed better than usual.

Bull Pain v. Todd Morton

PAS: These are my two favorite guys in this promotion, and two of the best wrestlers in the world. I imagine that this feud will produce one of my top matches of 2009, and I am going to want to see them all. This wasn't that kind of match, but man was it a total blast. Morton comes out with Sexy Shawn Cook so Bull calls to the back and brings out Little Roland and Crackbaby to even the score. Whole match was Morton and Cook with really nasty cheap shots leading to a Crackbaby low blow and a little Roland shot with the Kill Whitey sign for the pin. Really great moment and so much more heartfelt and classy then your WWE tribute show shtick.

TKG: This was being reffed by Mitch Page with Roland’s kids as Bull’s seconds, and so I was expecting more fun than “classics”. Still the wrestling was really good with lots of neat uses for Brother Pain. Bull is shockingly effective face. But this was a match about the kids. That’s what the whole show was about. On some level I’m used to wrestling memorial/tribute shows as being classless and really exploitative. This show wasn’t that. It really felt like a bunch of guys getting together to entertain two kids whose dad had just passed. Those kids coming out for the main event to take out Todd Morton was really sweet. There was something ridiculously gentle and sweet about the whole show.

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