Matches from EVOLVE 66 8/19/16

Phil went to this show with his 8.5 months pregnant wife and has been (rightly) on my case for me to watch Thatcher/Riddle ever since. There were a couple other matches on the card that interested me, so I figured I'd skip around and you know, not bother writing up Ethan Page/DUSTIN.

Tracy Williams/Fred Yehi vs. Jigsaw/Peter Kaasa

ER: I really dug this one. Phil had told me Jigsaw looked really bad live, but I thought he looked quite good in this. There was one moment that was too 2000 indy (Yehi having to be draped over the middle rope while Jigsaw went up to hit a dropkick), but he matched up especially well with Williams and liked the way he took offense. He was kind of the guy overmatched by Catch Point, and I thought he got that over nicely. I liked their grappling, Jigsaw had a fun little wristlock counter, some fun leg stuff. Jigsaw was also fun with Yehi, dug him tossing some stiff kicks before one got caught, leading to Yehi straight up punching him in the foot bones! But this match was really the Tracy Williams show, one of his best outings, and he was in it a lot. A lot of this was Williams/Jigsaw, which was cool. Yehi hung back more than usual, coming in occasionally to stomp some limbs and drop Jigsaw with a couple of big germans. Kaasa didn't make it in a lot either but hit his big space flying tiger drop and some fast power moves. He has an impressive high bridge on his northern lights, and I loved his flying shoulderblock in the corner. But this worked as a super fun Jigsaw/Williams show. Really wouldn't mind a singles match between them, or more Jigsaw in Evolve.

No Holds Barred: Timothy Thatcher vs. Matt Riddle

PAS: I was at this match live, loved it, and I may have loved it even more on video. Both live and tape had advantages. Live I could really feel the thud of all of the strikes. These shots didn't have the snap of a Low-Ki kick, they thumped, the sound when they landed wasn't sharp it had a real bass to it. On tape you can really see the close up of the mat work, I could tell that Thatcher was mauling Riddle's foot, but on video you can really see him try to separate the toes and turn the ankle. Thatcher has been hit and miss lately, but having this kind of harrowing violence in his grappling is where he is at his best. There is no test of skills, this is a mean guy trying to use grappling to maim the guy across from him. The no holds barred stipulation came in to play mostly with a lack of rope breaks, there was a bunch of innovative cool looking spots around no rope breaks, including both guys locking in kneebars and rolling off the apron to the floor, and Thatcher using the ropes to choke Riddle out and break a triangle. Finish was also an awesome use of the ropes, as Thatcher hung Riddle by the arm into a hangmans crossarmbreaker. Great stuff, right up there with my favorite Thatcher matches ever, and the best Riddle match of his young career.

ER: My god what a match. Phil has been on me for 3+ months to watch this, it has been the subject of at least two arguments, maybe three, and I get it. This match was ridiculously awesome, Phil was a lucky enough son of a gun to see it live, and he was just trying to share some wonderful wrestling with a friend. I was the bad friend. When I heard "No Holds Barred" I was thinking it was going to devolve into cheapshots and chair shots or something, and I'm so happy that wasn't the case. The stip took away rope breaks and you don't realize how important rope breaks are to these type of matches until the don't exist. So you're left to cringe at the twisting and screaming for extended periods of time, until one of them gets desperate caged animal eyes and starts lashing out at the other to save a limb. This is just a hyperviolent war with no weapons necessary to enhance the violence. This is a match that would translate across all eras of pro wrestling. As we learned through the 80s projects, violence and brawling are what most consistently transcend any particular style. And this whole thing is just awesome. Riddle jumps Thatcher during his entrance and the whole thing is go go go but with no big moves or rope running or anything like that. I was honestly hooked right from Thatcher's early match heel hook. It was one of the nastiest things I've ever seen. I fully bought into Riddle's screams, and Thatcher kept ratcheting that ankle further and further out of position and you could hear the crowd swelling each time. And from there they just tear into joints the entire time. The whole match looked like a constant struggle. Arms bent at awful angles, suplexes fought over, necks cranked, ankles twisted; everything in this looks career shortening. You hear about all those PWFG guys had wrecked joints into their 30s and you wonder if the same is going to happen to some of these Catch Point guys. But I will not think about that now because these men are fighting for my enjoyment!!! Phil covered how great all the rope based spots were, so I'll mention how much I loved how much sweat played a factor in things. "Slipperiness" as a match goes on is a favorite Joe Rogan talking point and I love how that proved true here. The longer things went the tougher it was to keep on a hold. You see Thatcher lock in what could have been a match ending ankle lock but Riddle slipped out. Riddle locks on a Bro lock in the middle and Thatcher is able to slide right through into a vicious calf crusher. The violence never stopped in this, and the whole thing really felt like a high water mark for this style. Love.

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Cody Rhodes

ER: I was really curious about this one, as I've somehow become one of the bigger Sabre supporters (despite my opinion on him remaining relatively consistent), and I was also a pretty early fan of Cody. Cody would go through peaks and valleys in WWE, but every year or two he would go on a TV run that would reconfirm his quality. He had a nice 09/10 syndicated run and as recently as 2014 I thought he and his brother were the best tag team (and it wasn't just Dustin doing the heavy lifting, Cody was more than holding his own in those tags). So I was excited to see his first non-WWE affiliated match of his career. And I really liked this match, although admittedly it was mostly Sabre that I liked, and the ending was far too sudden. But I thought this match was a nice feather for Sabre, who has gone from internet favorite to "overrated". I thought he was pretty vicious here working over Cody's wrist. He kept on that wrist and plenty of stuff he did made me cringe. I injured my wrist 15 years ago working at FedEx and I'll go months without feeling any pain, then out of nowhere be hit with a stabbing pain on my top right wrist. Seeing Sabre bending and wrapping and twisting Cody's wrist made the pain palpable to me. Sabre locked on some really cool stuff, especially loved his short arm scissor. He locked it on real tight and clasped Cody's hand to wrench it in even more, and it even lead to some nice pinfall counters by Cody. Also loved the moments of him stomping the wrist, stomping the elbow, really everything Sabre did looked really good. Now any problems with the match mostly lied on Cody. He had a bunch of weird dated Edge offense that landed completely flat with me and the live crowd, several of those lame power plant moves that look like the giver is bumping just as hard as the taker. He even rolled the dice! His springboard kicks both looked weak, and it's not like I was expecting him to come in and wrestle all "indy", but his style also seemed somehow more dated than it ever looked in WWE, so that's weird. And the finish, as I mentioned, just came too suddenly and didn't really work for me. Maybe the match structure is to blame, and maybe that's on Sabre, but Sabre took 80% of this match, and it ended with Cody basically dropping him with a slam, and then locking on a (nice looking) knee crank to get the tap. The sub looked great, and the ring positioning was good, but we had just seen Sabre work Cody's wrist for 15 minutes while none of Sabre's limbs got worked over, so it came off really hollow for Cody's wrist to suddenly be strong enough to tap a guy who hadn't been weakened. The finish just didn't feel earned, which is a shame as I really dug the match overall. It stinks when the weakest part of the match is the last visual.


Overall a fun show (from what I watched), and Thatcher/Riddle is one of the easiest locks for our 2016 Ongoing MOTY List as there ever was. Every wrestling fan owes it to themselves and the wrestlers to go out of their way to watch that match. It is near wrestling perfection.  Find it, watch it, love it.

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Rifling Through the Trash: The Unfinished Segunda Caida

We here at Segunda Caida all watch a lot of wrestling. We also start a lot of projects. More projects than we can ever ever possibly finish. We start watching something, write about it, don't finish writing about it, and there it sits. We have about 80 unfinished drafts dating back 4 years. Some of them may get finished some day (IWA-MS show reviews, WAR show reviews), others are kind of pointless to ever finish (old CMLL TV write-ups, reviews of WWE Superstars episodes). Still these write ups all took at least SOME time out of our schedules, and it's only fair that we get SOME use out of them. Tom used his best shitty tag team name from his "shitty indy name" rolodex AND made fun of RPGs in almost the same sentence.

The FINAL snippets from TomK's review of ROH's "Take No Prisoners":

Vulture Squad v No Remorse Corpse

TKG: Huh? Why? The bonus match from other show on ROH PPV is kind of a staple, but why this match? Did someone say “hey this show is missing a big moves workrate tag”? This whole entire card has been really well paced with every match being different than the one before, and matches ending without long finisher exchange sequences and excessive kickouts to protect the main event. There is a reason not to do a workrate tag with hot finisher train. The opening Ruckus v Rocky Romero mirror missed stuff was every bit as laughably bad as you’d expect. Where is Julius Smokes? Jigsaw without the mask looks like a guy who should have been on the second season of the Wire. Maybe not White Mike, but White Mike’s skinny cousin. When Ruckus eventually joins Eddy Kingston, I want a Smokes managed Jigsaw/Grim Reefer tag team. Is “Eight Myle” a shitty enough tag name? I also don’t think I’ve mentioned the shitty “pokemon” style tales of the tape that they’ve been doing before each match. I didn’t mind this when they used it for the Aries v Nigel main event as they where actually building the match around the idea that the two knew each others stuff. But really if these are the talking points, give them to the announcers to make. Putting it up on the screen really feels like someone is laying out the profile pages from a role playing game.

Notes for Phil: I think you liked this more than I did and thought the spike piledriver was a good finish and finish train wasn’t too long or something like that. You're wrong. But that's what you were arguing.

Phil reviewing IWRG 6/17/10:

Bombero Infernal v. Dr. Cerebro

PAS: This really felt like heavyweight professional wrestling. Just a pair of big guys throwing big bombs (indy lucha big, I am sure Dr. Cerebro is like 5'4). Infernal jumps Cerebro outside and whoops on him for the first fall. Cerebro has a really great looking trickle of blood rolling down his face. Cerebro fires back with some soup bones, including a spectacular elbow smash plancha which looked like the ghost of Misawa. Finish was decent, although the low blow finish is such a lucha cliche, I don't want to see it infecting IWRG.

Mickie Segura/Trauma I/II v. Los Gringos VIP

PAS: 2010 IWRG is so good that the baseline for an average match is pretty high. It will consistently put out solidly worked excellent matches with occasional flashes of brilliance, that it is kind of hard for a match like this to stand out. This was six very good wrestlers having a very good trios title match. We got a long first fall of mat work, it isn't normally what you expect out of the Lucha Libre VIP team (outside of Avisman, who is the guy who doesn't work the mat in this match), but they are pretty good at it. I especially liked El Hijo Del Diablo v. Trauma I, which was really a pair of powerhouse using their strength to move in and out of hold, Diablo is having a hell of a year. Second fall was rudo triple teams and brawling, which was done well, although there was no huge bump or blood or anything to distinguish it. Third fall was a traditional title match third fall, down to the step over toe hold comedy spot which you see a ton of in classic lucha (the spot which ends with the Technico wiggling in a pinning all three guys.) Good workman like lucha libre, which won't register when we look back at 2010, but is certainly well worth spending 20 minutes watching

Notes from EricR watching the 3/27/14 TNA iMPACT:

~Davey/Edwards vs. Magnus/Abyss: Wow Davey Richards is just a hilariously bad wrestler. I mean, not as horrid as Abyss, who seems to fight every natural way to take bumps and go against every body instinct to fall in the most ridiculous way possible. So Eddie Edwards always does a spit take bump in his matches, and here he took an elbow from Magnus and ended up accidentally spitting directly into Davey's (on the apron) eyes. And what's amazing is Davey sold it! He didn't just casually pretend another human being, his partner, didn't just accidentally spit directly into his eyes. He sold it. But he didn't sell it like a normal human would sell the indignity of feeling another human's warm spit hit your eyes and face, he sold it like Eddie Edwards was a Dilophosaurus and he was Nedry getting acidic mucous spit into his eyes. The goggles! They do nothing!!! He also later took the most hilarious back bump, where it looked like he was jumping up and landing back first on a big trampoline, just 11 year old me getting bounced higher and getting sick air, landing on my back. Or doing a cannonball into a swimming pool, with all the grace of a "mom watch me dive!" child.

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Folks Rush In, 3 Letters try to Stop It. D-I-C-K-T-O-G-O, One Letter Short but Motherfuck the D.A.

Dick Togo/GENTARO vs. Takashi Sasaki/Masashi Takeda FREEDOMS 10/28/10 - GREAT

This was a workrate tag match, kind of the indy Japan version of a ROH Briscoes tag. That isn't my type of wrestling at all, but Dick Togo is the great style equalizer. This kind of match is normally judged on the coolness of moves and the amount of overkill, however Togo's little spots were cool enough that he added and extra dimension. It did well on the two normally criteria though. I thought the end of this match felt like the end, with GENTARO hitting a sweet looking bridged Saito suplex while Togo slapped on a crossface. There was a bunch of cool moves too, Sasaki countered a flying clothesline with a kick to the stomach, Takeda hitting a top rope northern lights suplex. Could have used a dive train, and maybe some cool double teams. Also there was one spot where GENTARO was on the top rope and Sasaki kept spanking his ass, I guess he was trying to knock him off the top but it was weird. Wouldn't be the best match on a PWG show, but would probably be in the top 3.

Dick Togo vs. Antonio Honda DDT 1/30/11 - EPIC

The Dick Togo singles match train continues. Gem after gem, his last six months have been incredible. Honda is a comedy guy an used to be Togo's partner in the DDT Italian Horseman. This is clearly the match of his life, and I give him a ton of credit for stepping up and bringing it to Togo like he did. Early part of the match had Honda working over Togo's arm. Togo did a really nice job selling, and it makes total sense to give him a ding to make Honda's offense credible, still Honda's attack was a little pedestrian. Match really kicks it into gear when Honda hits a nice tope and comes up bloody. After that, the match morphs into a Mid South Coliseum main event, with Togo working over the bloody babyface and Honda making awesome valiant comebacks. Togo has him in the corner, smashing his head into the turnbuckle and punching him, and Honda does a full on Lawler 1986 TX Death Match comeback, dropped strap, 17 punch combo ending in a huge uppercut for a near fall. Such a neat moment, which Togo sold perfectly. We get a big near fall run, which is really something that Dick Togo does better then anyone in the world, and then take a trip back to TN with an awesome punch Lawler v. Mantel style toe to toe punch exchange. Hell of match, the kind of thing only Dick Togo can deliver in 2011. If he really retires in June it will be at the height of his game, like Jordan leaving in 93, lets hope Togo does a season of minor league baseball and returns to the game

Dick Togo/Great Sasuke/Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Mike Quackenbush/Jigsaw/Manami Toyota CHIKARA 4/16/11 - FUN

The Chikara trios matches continue to be disappointing. Everyone in this match it as least a solid wrestler, but it never felt like they got on the same page. Togo was the best guy in the match, although it may have been the least spectacular Togo match I have seen in this project. He was a bunch of fun smacking around Toyota, making great asshole faces. I enjoyed Jigsaw here too, as he hit a pretty tope and moved around well. Everyone else was pretty MIA. You kept wanting this match to explode in a crazy run, and it never really did. The finish especially felt really flat. This didn't have as many things to hate as the opening round match, but it didn't have a ton to love either.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE DICK TOGO

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