2021 Ongoing MOTY List: Gacy vs. Troy

29. Joe Gacy vs. Desmond Troy WWE 205 Live 6/29 (Aired 7/2/19)

ER: What the holy hell is happening on WWE's D programming? Here we have a 205 Live match between a stud amateur wrestler and a CZW asskicker, neither within 50 pounds of 205. Who's in charge of anything these days? Did somebody know that this match happened? How did Joe Gacy vs. Desmond Troy happen? This match is the kind of match that makes trawling WWE's unnoticed programming a worthwhile effort. This was an out of nowhere style clash and showcase for a guy making his debut and a guy making his re-debut, and it ruled. It started with some nice armdrag work and athleticism, with Troy showing off eye catching leapfrogs and floating kip ups while Gacy slammed into him as hard as possible with a shoulderblock. Gacy kept hitting harder the longer this went, getting impressive impact on standing clotheslines and even more steam with a few feet of headway. Gacy's clotheslines really move Troy and Troy is no pushover, and it builds to Gacy throwing a forearm shiver that would make Ron Simmons flinch. The more Troy got rocked with Gacy's gravity, the more he upped the wrestling. Troy had some absolutely insane gutwrench suplexes, lifting Gacy from deep bends and throwing him far, then throwing him into his own knees. When Troy hits an overhead belly to belly, it looks like Scott Steiner hurling an eyes-closed job guy to his doom. I dug these two slamming into each other and the way both were believably being thrown or slugged, it created a feeling that anything could happen. A match where someone gets realistically stopped by a punch to the chest is a match that should be celebrated. Here it is. 

PAS: Really fun match which didn't feel like a WWE match at all. Gacy hits super hard, and I loved how Troy wouldn't take a back bump for every shot, sometimes he would just get stunned or staggered. WWE style is heavy on constant bumping so it is cool to see someone get their bell rung. Troy had crazy athleticism, his double leg was super fast, his leapfrog was super high and I loved the gutwrenches. Gacy was much more of a brawler, and this almost had the feel of a Buzz Sawyer vs. Red Bull Army New Japan match. The back handspring into the lariat felt unnecessary, but that Lariat was nasty enough to end any match. Really got me excited to check out more Troy, so of course this was his last match, and he was cut a month later. What an idiotic company.

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

New Footage Friday: SANTO! PANTHER! FISHMAN! BORNE! FINLAY! SABU! BRODIE LEE!

Fishman/Espanto Jr./Blue Panther vs. El Hijo Del Santo/Volador/Octagon AAA 5/15/94

MD: My hard drive went kaput, which has been a fight that's been going on for a while, so I lost my initial write up of this. In short, it was a solid lost trios with long entrances and a spirited post-match Panther promo where a lot of stuff hit well and where it moved briskly. There wasn't a pairing that really stood out, but there are things that will stick with me, like Espanto landing on his feet off of an exchange or Volador looking almost inhumanly athletic towards the end or Blue Panther being an absolutely amazing stooge off a quebradora, selling his groin in a spasm all the way across the ring and out to the floor or Santo's lightning crack tope off of an irish whip. The more I see of Fishman from this specific era, the more I think Eric should deep dive on him since he's got a sort of hammering Bestia del Ring vibe to him.

Matt Borne vs. Sabu ACW 11/23/01

MD: Deceptively long video. The match is pretty much what you'd hope it to be and doesn't wear out its welcome. That's because the back half is a pretty manic Borne post 9/11 rant about how he'd die for the crowd and challenging Sabu to come back out (he does, once, but not the six or seven times Borne wants). For the match itself, Sabu does his stuff and Borne is a very game foil. There's crowd brawling that we miss but that we can be assured was solid due to a father in the outskirts putting his kid up on his shoulder to see it, a sure sign of quality. They use weapons liberally but never gratuitously. Borne bleeds big as Sabu stabs at his head. There's a table. It does not break. I'm amazed they could move after that (I'm not really, because I've seen it before, but you know what I mean). Sabu's so good and experienced at this sort of match that he knows exactly when to head out and move things along when Borne can't get it in. Blood, plunder, big bumps, unmitigated violence, a clear finish, and only about ten minutes before the rant begins. Afterwards the camera sticks with Borne as he goes backstage and is told how spectacular it all was.

PAS: I thought this was excellent, it really had the pacing of a great 80s brawl, the kind of thing you might imagine Matt Borne might have had in Mid-South or Portland. It also had Sabu at his unhinged greatness, flying around, stabbing Borne in the head, crashing awkwardly into tables and chairs. Borne kept the whole thing connected, at no point was anyone standing around waiting, or setting stuff off, it always felt like a fight. The crowd brawling really felt chaotic too, they were just flying through the crowd, not seeming to care who they hit. This is easily the best 2000s Sabu match I have seen, and it felt right up there with the top tier Funk, Foley and Sandman stuff. 

Fit Finlay vs. Brodie Lee vs. Joe Gacy 3/16/12 - GREAT

MD: Our theme for this week are matches shorter than the video run times as this doesn't go as long as was indicated. Here, though, I could have used a few more minutes, because I liked what we had and I wasn't quite done with it. There was a sort of unique element for a three-way here, where the guy on the floor often operated like a moat monster. If you got too close to Brodie or Finlay on the floor, they'd just pull you right out. It made for a more interesting dynamic than guys laying around and played well into Finlay's ability to use the apron, for instance. Gacy felt like he belonged, with a great jab and willing to bump around for the other two.

PAS: I really liked the way this was organized. I hate three ways normally, but this was less about doing choreographed spots, and more about the third guy being a violent cheap shotter. I mean imagine leaving your back open and giving Finlay a free shot, or being near the ropes and being pulled out and smacked by Brodie Lee. I am crediting Finlay for the structure, because he is one of the greatest match architects ever, but whoever called this match was really smart. There were a lot of great little Finlay moments: he blocks a Lee Scorpion attempt by straight punching him in the face, takes his signature top rope bump to the floor and is just constantly killing people. Gacy is by far the least of these three guys, some of his stuff looked good, but some did not, and it seems totally BS to have him go over. That indy Finlay run was one of the coolest things ever, and I am excited we got to see another classic Finlay match. 

Read more!

Matches from EVOLVE 139 11/9/19

Colby Corino vs. AR Fox

ER: This had some problems, but it also had some things that made it very much worth my time. A lot of the problems I had were with Fox, because he's one of the flat out most uninteresting salesman in Evolve. He sells almost every move he takes the same way he sells moves that he delivers, and it makes his matches look like we're all just waiting around for something serious to happen. Delivers a cutter, stands up and does a little hyphy dance; takes a cutter, stands up and sells like a later step in that same hyphy dance. He sells "about to deliver a move" and "just got kicked" like a guy who is just figuring out he ate some bad whitefish. Oh, until the end, where instead of selling indifference, he sold being knocked out cold on a kick that looked like it missed. So he either sells a couple of kicks to the face by doing handstands a moment later, or he sells a kick near his face like Kurisu was his debut match opponent. But that's cool, because after that KO and great false finish he managed to get up and hit a 450 just fine. So Fox worked a match where Corino was competitive the whole time and genuinely looked like he might pull off an upset, and the way he shrugged through every part of the match really lessened the impact of Corino's performance. Corino had a couple off moments, but way more strong as hell moments. He looked like he flinched on that missed kick at the end, and I get it because he probably didn't want to cave in Fox's face (spot was Fox leaping off the top by Corino sidestepping and upkicking like he was Kawada). But he does so many little things well, like not skimping on less severe kicks (his kicks to the stomach are straight thrusts, and his super kicks have great full extension and actually look like he slides into it to increase impact), and he starts the match with my favorite lock up I've seen in months. He really goes in hard on the lock up, keeping low to shore up his gravity, and believably bulls the larger Fox across the ring. He has a couple of great logical reversals out of sequences, like a really nice ace crusher that came out of a fine battle over a vertical suplex, or the way he just starts punching Fox in the back of the head immediately after a Fox kickout, or how he snapmares Fox into a turnbuckle. This didn't need a ton to be a really good match, really all it would have taken was some extra effort from Fox, but this is just more proof of how good Corino is getting.


97. Sean Maluta/Joe Gacy vs. Anthony Gutierrez/Arturo Ruas

ER: Great way to work a match like this, just have the two different fight guys come in and do their tricks, have the heel team cheat like assholes, have both teams work funky double teams with a couple of stiff pinfall saves, and get the hell out of there before it all blows up. Gutierrez is great in matches like these, all fast kicks that land heel to gallbladder, a willingness to take some nasty spills, and a surprise tope con hilo onto both The Unwanted. Non-pro wrestler athletes are a glorious goldmine early on in their wrestling career, and if Gutierrez sticks to this I seriously doubt we'll see him trying loose but effective (and dangerous) stuff like that tope. It doesn't have any of the slickness that someone like Ricochet brings to the move, and it benefits from that, as it just looks like a guy winging his body best he can into two men larger than him. Maluta has great chops and a nice right, and uses both of those effectively here. Gacy cuts out BS handspring offense and instead sticks to lariating Ruas in the back of the head (to set up a Maluta chestbreaker), and his 360 lariat is perfectly used as the final killshot after Maluta punts Gutierrez in the balls FROM BEHIND! Everyone moved quick and didn't linger on anything, Gacy and Maluta constantly either getting overwhelmed by weird fighting styles while also finding fun ways to stay ahead of those fighting styles. Not everything is going to land (I still don't love Gutierrez's corkscrew shooting star that never quite lands, and some of Ruas's strikes can look silly), but this was a kick ass style clash.

PAS: This was fun stuff. Maluta and Gacy are a really good hard hitting team, and they make the beat down look good and really let the face team shine. I liked all of the double teams in this match, they all made sense, and looked good. I am all in on Gacy if he is going to limit his offense to hard clubs and nasty lariats. The announcers said that "Joe Gacy can do anything" but I really want him to just do one thing. Gutierrez is two steps forward, one step back, but the steps forward are fun steps, and I love wrestlers going to the body. Unwanted versus the Performance Center is a fun feud, and pretty much always delivers.


32. Eddie Kingston vs. Babatunde

ER: We wanted to watch Kingston against green Performance Center guys, and we are getting just that. Kingston vs. Giant isn't a match we get a lot, and there's a ton of joy to be had watching Kingston get ragdolled around while trying to rip a man's ear off. There's a Burt Reynolds movie I really love called Heat, and in it he gets hired to teach self defense to Peter MacNicol. Burt immediately takes things up to 10 and suggests in his first lesson that his go to move is ripping a man's ear off. "It's surprisingly easy to do, only held on by a little cartilage. Showing a man his own ear is a good way to get his attention." Kingston as down and out Las Vegas degenerate bouncer going after the ears of tough guys is my kind of Kingston. We're starting to get a real glut of "Big Man Launching Tiny Man" matches, what with AEW running at least two per week, so watching a big man try and throw someone who can land with actual size and sell those throws in unique ways, gives us a welcome twist. We get the old Vader/Cactus Jack spot where Kingston is hanging off Babatunde like a backpack, and Babatunde just takes a back bump to crush Kingston. Kingston's outstretched, frozen arm is a great sell for someone afraid to move because of damage incurred. Kingston keeps going to the ear, even after eating a big vertical suplex he rolls over and just grabs that damn ear. I like how Kingston takes big power offense, like the torture rack neckbreaker, or the pop up chop, but I like even more when Kingston just kicks Babatunde right in the balls. The match was "Relaxed Rules" and really outside of that ball shot and Kingston stealing and attempting to use the ref's belt, there wasn't much done that wouldn't have been allowed under Agitated Rules. But Kingston brought a ton of color to a big man battle, and scanning the Evolve roster I don't see anyone who could have given him a more fun match than the King.

PAS: I thought this was totally awesome, loved every second of it. Babatunde is aways away, but Eddie made all of his offense look great and really went after him with unhinged viciousness. There are so many great flavors of Eddie Kingston, nasty unprofessional asshole is one of them, this felt like him beating on Shane Storm. All of the ear attacks looked great, were really simple and made a ton of sense fighting a huge guy like Babatunde. Eric made a good point about how great Eddie is at taking huge power throws. He doesn't bounce, he thuds. I also loved his big German suplex, you could really see him using all of his leverage and strength to get Babatunde over. I can't imagine this match being worked better, what a performance by the King.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

Matches From ICW New York Respect The Game 7/27/19

This show popped up on IndependentWrestling.TV and has some real on paper bangers, figured why not cherry pick our way through.

54. Nick Gage vs. Dan Maff

PAS: Really not the match you would expect for these two guys on paper, and I think the difference really helped it stand out. Gage jumps Maff before the bell and hits the chokebreaker. Gage immediately rolls to the floor clutching his knee, and starts getting helped to the back. Gage turns around and limps back to the ring and demands the match start. Maff doesn't even hit him back for the first couple of shots, but is eventually convinced to fight, and ends up working over Gage's knee while he fought through the injury. I loved how they built to Gage getting desperate enough to try the choke breaker again, and Maff's barbed wire board bump was nasty. This was much more compelling than the Gage by numbers match, and he makes a surprisingly compelling underdog.

ER: Gage is like Marko Stunt for me in a way, in that I usually don't enjoy their matches, but they both have an undeniable live charisma that can add to their matches. I'm usually a kind of low vote on them, but I know they have tools that can be used in a match I really like, and this was a great instance of that. Give me and interesting story like this any day over sitting in chairs and trading shots. Phil went over what happened, Gage immediately injures his knee by making the insanely stupid decision to drop 300 pounds on his own knee. You get the gutsy return, you get Maff not wanting the fight this way, and you get Maff goaded into beating the hell out of him. Once Maff starts off his flurry by locking in a figure 4, I was in. "You wanna hit me? I'm gonna wreck your leg." You have Maff alternately working dangerous cannonballs and hitting a flat out tremendous dive, and then he's working World of Sport tumbling stump pullers. Big fat guy working cannonballs, dives, and Regal legwork? Hell yeah sign me up. They work some cool sequences are the guardrail , and their apron work was cool too. I liked that we didn't build to a big dumb apron bump, instead just Maff hitting at Gage's knee causing him to collapse on the apron. The eventual Gage comeback is really good and appropriate, as the piledriver was a big moment and Maff flying through the barbed wire board was our first big bump, and gave us the cool visual of Maff covered in wire and screaming like on the cover of Evil Dead. Gage's run was logical as hell, including a logical reason to illogically use the chokebreaker again. The fact it lead directly to Maff hitting that brutal cannonball stunner through another board was perfect. The layout of this was really fantastic, played to the strengths of both and gave us a cool look at something different from Gage. Maff is 45 and looked as great as I've seen him look. This is my favorite Gage match of the year, and now I want to see even more old man Maff.

Joe Gacy vs. Tony Deppen vs. Jimmy Lloyd vs. Facade

ER: This was kept under 10 minutes and worked brisk, but - and this seems like something one of us has typed dozens of times - would have been much more interesting as two singles matches with literally any combo of the 4 guys here. Jimmy Lloyd isn't really as suited to these multiman matches, but a singles against any of the other three could have been cool. Gacy vs. Lloyd, Gacy vs. Deppen, whatever, it would have been more interesting. But there's still plenty of fun on display here, it just has that multiman thing where guys are always inching a couple feet over to be in the right position, or looking over their shoulder to make sure somebody is springing off the ropes for some tandem horseshit. The kind of "we're performing an act" that is concealed easier in singles matches that don't have so many moving parts. Gacy was a guy trying to actively combat that, and that made his performance stand out the most. There was a moment where he was about to DDT Lloyd, while Facade was setting up something off the top that would hit Gacy, while causing Gacy to DDT Lloyd. Well Facade lost his footing, Gacy saw that and immediately improvised and tried to hoist Lloyd up for a waistband assisted Hashimoto-style DDT, buying Facade some time until the spot came off. I love those moments of professionalism. Deppen hits what appeared to be the longest dive in history, but we missed half of it due to camera angle. Facade hits a big flip dive that doesn't get caught by anyone, and we get one of those dumb spots where all 4 guys are standing in a circle swaying in the breeze taking turns hitting each other; typical multiman stuff. But Lloyd has a couple of cool bumps (I really liked him spiking himself vertically on a DDT), Gacy looks good throughout, Deppen is a guy I like a ton more after seeing him at SCI, and Facade is at least someone willing to try things. I thought this would be better, and it wasn't, but it won't negatively affect my opinion on anyone here.

Homicide vs. Chris Dickinson

PAS: This was a pass the torch match for NYC indie wrestling and was really worked like that. They start out with some mat wrestling and escalate into so real hard hitting stuff. Homicide was really working hard, taking some nasty bumps on a guardrail, some sharp kicks, and a german where he landed right on the top of his head. I liked how as the match went on, Homicide got dirtier and dirtier, clawing the eyes and fishooking, like if he was going to lose his crown as King of New York, he was going down throwing it all out. Good stuff and a nice kicker to the Dickinson challenge series gimmick he had been running on IWTV.

ER: Passing the torch is a good way of describing this match. Homicide is in his early 40s and has been through some wild battles, and understandably doesn't quite have that fire that Dickinson has burning in his eyes any more. But that doesn't mean he's an old sack of meat thrown in the garbage! I don't think these kind of nearing 20 minute close pinfall matches are really his bag at this point, though he's clearly a guy I still enjoy and love seeing. I am always going to like older, slower, more vulnerable versions of the wrestlers who I loved, and here's Homicide getting thrown tailbone first on a guardrail and ripping at Dickinson's face. The fishooking spot was so good, I was waiting for Homicide to pull a fork out of his shorts to stab Dickinson in the cheek. I also liked some of Homicide's reversals, especially catching Dickinson's lariat off the middle buckle and turning it into a Fujiwara. Dickinson is a guy who I've been real over the top for the past few years, and I dug the early mat takedowns so much that I was kinda hoping the whole match would be like that. Homicide is shaped exactly like Ian when Ian was in his "peak" condition during his MethBatt years. Homicide could have a whole second life as CatchPoint Ian. Dickinson hits those hard corner clotheslines, a big German that tosses Homicide all the way over onto his knees, the pazuzu bomb looks killer, and to lift right up into a piledriver is always going to be my bag.

25. Eddie Kingston vs. Daisuke Sekimoto

ER: What a fun and weird main event, taking an Eddie Kingston main event and the veering into oddball 70s kung fu comedy in a delightful way. We get a huge part of match devoted to chopping chest, and peaks with an awesome ring high camera shot of Kingston on his back, sitting up towards the camera right into chops, both guys filling the camera shot perfectly, Kingston making these anguished pained but almost Don Knotts faces in he best way, Kingston doing these tough no hands sit ups into getting the breath taken away by a heavy chop, eventually tiring and just getting pulled up by Sekimoto into more chops. Soon Sekimoto is throwing 12 to 6 chops while Kingston is on his back kicking his legs. This segment stood out so much from these type of chest thumping matches. It's the kind of thing that feels like it could only happen in an Eddie Kingston match these days, but seems like it owes itself to 80s feelgood house show matches. Kingston makes this kind of thing work and I'm not sure who else can or will be able to if Kingston leaves. I loved when he would get overwhelmed with chops and go in with knees, and worked simple but well done things like a good neckbreaker. His chops right to Sekimoto's neck looked like they would change my posture, and we still hadn't got to Sekimoto clotheslining the hell out of Kingston's arms on subsequent chops. Kingston works in some incredibly fun ways to get his fists blocked, and Sekimoto was swinging his inflated hulk arms as hard as he could was one of my favorites. I also loved the sudden death, Kingston being tenderized like veal and then put away instantly. Sekimoto softens him up with strikes, hits that big splash and plants the surrendered Kingston with a German. Also, I actually thought it was a cool touch that the commentators opted to not call the action. It could have come off cheesy to have them actually say they were going to not call the match, but I liked them stepping away to "let the match speak for itself". Fun as hell.

PAS: Kingston is pretty much the only guy I want to watch doing these kind of test of manliness matches. Sekimoto is here to beat on Kingston's chest and let him die dramatically. Eddie gets beaten down brutally, and we get a chance to watch him rage against the dying of the light. I have watched a ton of Eddie Kingston matches in the last year or so, and his chop sell where he starts to fire back but instead collapses, is one of my favorite bits of wrestling selling ever. He has so many interesting ways of conveying pain, and Sekimoto is a great ball of muscle to punish him. His moments of grace are pretty awesome, the backfist is a great stunning shot and he gets a couple of real believable near falls, before ultimately failing. No one is better at falling short then Eddie Kingston, he may be the best agony of defeat wrestler of all time.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

Read more!

EVOLVE 131: 10th Anniversary Special 7/13/19 Live Blog!

This is weird! But I'm home alone on a Saturday night, and there's no way I'm going to miss Eddie Damn Kingston's debut on the WWE Network.

Josh Briggs vs. Anthony Greene

ER: I've gone out of my way a couple times to watch Greene, because he's been getting talked up a lot lately, but I watched him have a lame match with Stevie Richards and I pretty much wrote him off at that point. I dug Briggs/Chris Dickinson from earlier this year, but even in that match Briggs came off like "Test on an above average night". And this match started off plenty fun, but it was really same-y and started to feel like 2 minutes for every 1 minute that passed. Greene has a nice straight right hand that he used several times (and even a nice straight left that he used once), and I think his offense looks good but a lot of it is tied together with combos, which I kind of hate. I liked the stuff worked on the apron, thought it was cool when Briggs got knocked down to a knee and to the floor, dug Briggs catching a tope and chokeslamming Greene on the apron. They work some fun stuff out of the corner, with Briggs getting caught with a kick charging in, but kicking Greene in the chest anyway and then hitting a follow up yakuza, and plenty of things looked cool (Briggs' chokeslam into a powerbomb was killer, his release suplex looked dangerous but was safe), but around the 7 minute mark they started going into the "He can't believe it!" shocked pinfall faces and more learned behavior stuff, and then I just wanted it to stop. This wasn't bad, though with the tools each guy brings they could have laid this out in a more interesting way.


We get an Eddie Kingston promo on the Network, and I'm a happy man. There is nobody in modern wrestling close to Kingston when it comes to promos, no clear second place.

Sean Maluta vs. Curt Stallion vs. Stephen Wolf vs. Harlem Bravado

ER: Harlem Bravado is such a goofy dude, like if Adam Driver lost 30 pounds and got a tech job. And I thought this mostly stunk. We got a dive train spot where Wolf shot a couple feet past everyone on a tope con giro, then Maluta shot only one foot past everyone with his tope con giro, then Stallion at least hit a decent Fosbury Flop. Bravado is bad at setting up offense, doing some silly bad missed clotheslines; Maluta threw a bunch of superkicks, and some of them looked good; Stallion would throw a nice big boot and then do a blatant thigh slap knee. It boiled down to a fairly dumb strike exchange between Wolf and Stallion that had a total of one nice strike (a cool rolling elbow by Wolf). The brief finishing run was hot and had a couple finishers chained together nicely, but I couldn't wait for this one to end.

Arturo Ruas vs. Anthony Henry

ER: I've never actually seen Ruas before, and this is kind of exciting! I don't actually know if his amateur credentials are a work or not, but he's a guy my age doing cool body scissor takedowns on WWE TV so I'm ready to buy in. And this match was a really great change of pace after that last clunker. It comes out of the gates looking like it's going to be a 4 minute match, worked like something off that awesome Tetsujin Shoot Style show from 2015. And I think this would have benefitted from being 4 minutes. It was a good 10 minute match, but it felt like it could have been a classic 4 minute match. Ruas brings some unique takedowns and strikes, coming off like a capoeira guy trying jiu jitsu, going for scissor takedowns and armbars, throwing kicks at ankles and chest, a fun replacement for my boy Jaka (who disappeared in January). I'll typically be into any Evolve guy who would fit into Check Point. Henry is a pro, and I liked how these guys scrambled, though again I do wish we cut the time and kept some of the mystery. Once it crept past 6 minutes or so it got a lot more pro style, which I didn't find as interesting. But that still had some gold, like Henry trying to burst Ruas's gallbladder with a gross stomp off the top, and the finish was great with Ruas surprising Henry with a gorgeous sweeping high kick. I dug this and would love to see more Ruas. Hell, tell Ruas to cut a few pounds so I can see Gallagher/Ruas, or bring back Gulak as a special challenge opponent.

No DQ: Brandi Lauren vs. Shotzi Blackheart

ER: Really it didn't matter what happened in this one, as Shotzi wound up hitting one of the nastier crazier bumps we've seen, and this alone is going to be GIFed to eternity. She had several crazy moments, but this was another match that felt too long at 10 minutes. Since this was No DQ Lauren had Natalia Markova work this like a handicap match, but Shotzi did away with her in barely 2 minutes, which is odd as I'm not sure why Markova bailed. Shotzi appeared to bust open her nose delivering a missile dropkick, and she comes off as a kind of unathletic Darby Allin, willing to take some absolutely dumb reckless bumps, but without Allin's landing ability. Lauren hits a killer baseball slide dropkick to the floor, sending a hard chairshot into Shotzi's face, and you'd think that would end up being the most violent spot in the match. Ha. Shotzi sets up a bunch of chairs, Lauren and Greene wind up in them, but by the time Shotzi's tope gets to them nobody is home. Shotzi crashed so damn ugly through several set up chairs, looking like 6 different chair backs hit her in 6 painful spots before she hit the ground. Absolutely nutso spot, in a match where she had already fallen onto the apron and floor. I liked Lauren beating her senseless with a kendo stick for the finish, but this felt like it would be more effective as a short wild violent brawl.

Colby Corino vs. Babatunde

ER: Hell yes. Gimme that absolute Reis/Juventud energy baby. I've not seen Babatunde (probably not going back to check out the Greatest Royal Rumble), but I'm down for any new 350 pounder. Colby at least actually looks like a wrestler now and not like a little kid (which he did as of like 2 years ago), and really he just looks the same as his dad in the late 90s. Babatunde doesn't have tons to offer yet besides size and presence, but that's fine. We get a couple great spots in this one, the best being Corino hitting a springboard swanton right onto the back of the kneeling Babatunde, but close second was Corino getting caught off the top with a huge chokeslam. This was only a couple minutes, but a welcome breather.

Eddie Kingston/Joe Gacy vs. AR Fox/Leon Ruff

ER: This was a ton of fun, starting with a ton of dives and not really letting up. Fox and Ruff hit dives to start (Fox flying into the front row) and then do it again on different sides of the ring, Gacy accidentally hits Kingston with a dive, letting Ruff hit another. Good god guys. Fox does his wild inverted cannonball to the floor and basically crashes right through everyone to pavement. And I think this got pretty great once we moved into Kingston and Gacy's double teams, as they have a bunch of mean stuff. Gacy hits a hard elbow while Kingston dumps Fox on his head with a back suplex, Kingston hits a superplex into a Gacy powerbomb on Ruff, a big damn time Gacy lariat into Kingston german suplexing Ruff across the ring, Kingston hits a great powerslam off the middle rope, they both throw big chops, they're a team I'd love to see do more of their thing. They really packed some cool stuff into the run time, thought Ruff hitting a tope con giro over the turnbuckles to put Gacy threw a table looked spectacular, thought Fox's pop up Spanish Fly on Kingston was suitably crazy. I obviously didn't want to see Kingston lose, and it felt like Ruff took too much of a beating to instantly come back from, but these guys were fun opposite each other.

PAS: I didn’t like this as much as Eric. I am a Kingston super fan, and this kind of spotfest isn’t really going to use him to his best. This felt like a 12 minute match jammed into 5, and we never got to see Kingston and Gacy really take it to anyone outside of some work on Ruff which he kind of shrugged off. Gacy also had some of the worst “ONLY TWOOOOOOO” faces I have seen in a long while. Fox and Ruff really looked dancey when they were stringing spots together, I have been watching a lot of AIW tag spotfests and that set a bar Fox and Ruff couldn’t live up to. There were some cool dives, and I did like some of the Unwanted’s double teams, but I was hoping for more from the Mad King on the Network.

Matt Riddle vs. Drew Gulak

ER: Gulak gets Catch Point druids!!! As a match I think this underperformed and never felt like anything new. This felt like kind of a greatest hits collection from both guys without some of the drama that their best matches have. It felt like a slightly sanitized version of a match they would have had a couple years ago. The good news is that I happen to love the greatest hits from these two. We get a pair of cool belly to belly superplexes (Riddle getting the worst of it), both guys throw hard shots to the body (which were weirdly maybe my favorite thing about this), big Riddle senton, both throw hard uppercuts, Gulak always cutting in for single legs, it's them doing things that I like to watch them do. But this kind of felt like the recent run of 205 Live main events, where good workers are given 20 minutes to do their thing and it doesn't totally live up to the time. There were obviously hot stretches of this, and the Riddle corkscrew senton into Gulak's rear naked choke felt like a cool spot to end things. They didn't end it there, with Riddle simply picking Gulak up and hitting Bro Derek that didn't look finisher worthy. It really just looked like Gulak taking a heavier than normal slam, didn't read as a piledriver at all. This match was going to have a high floor - both guys are great - but it felt like we only bumped our head against their ceiling a couple times.


So I'm pretty in the dark on large patches of Evolve, but Leonard says that Bryan Idol was involved in "maybe the most important match in Evolve history"? Did I mishear that? Is that correct? Was there a really important Earl Cooter match that I need to see?

Austin Theory vs. JD Drake

ER: Well hey, this had some good moments in the first half and hit nothing but "this isn't wrestling I enjoy" down the back stretch. They would do cool things and not go back to them at all, like Theory cracking his elbow on the ringpost really early on, then never once hesitating to throw elbows the entire match. I hate when they burn a cool spot like that when the match would otherwise be the same. Theory is a guy who works like a dickhead Finn Balor, and that's not something I wanted. He has stuff I like: his elbows in the corner to Drake looked really good, and that running elbow to Drake's kidneys was really great. I need more of that guy. That guy rules. The guy doing a doofy pose before hitting a very normal standing moonsault? I don't want that guy. Drake is super hard for me to pin down. Half the time he's a fat guy doing things I enjoy fat guys doing, the other half he's working like a 50 year old never was doing recognizable spots on a minor league baseball show. And to be clear, written out that probably sounds something that I would actually write a couple themed posts about, but Drake would be the bad version of that. Sometimes he's throwing hands, throwing clubbing blows, landing a great fat guy dropkick, great second rope leg lariat, hitting a Vader bomb, making me go "oh yeah I do like this guy" and then before long he's doing a derpy Stunner (and you know Theory is a guy who is going to take a Stunner like a real bouncy idiot), and overshooting a rickety moonsault the exact same way he always overshoots his moonsault, and I'm like "THAT'S why I don't like that guy!" They're doing the "exhausted and holding each other up" just 12 minutes in, and the back stretch has a dumb on our knees elbow exchange. Drake gets hit and plainly says "You can't hit me harder than life has," came off like a pretty flimsy line. Eddie Kingston could make that line work. JD Drake couldn't. They knew exactly what kind of cherry I wanted on this sundae, too, because Theory did some hilarious overblown pump handle slam finisher that landed Drake 100% on top of Theory. I am not familiar with Theory's signature offense, so I genuinely thought Drake had reversed something. Nope! Austin Theory won the title by strategically throwing a larger man onto his own chest. Hey WWE Network, This Is Indy Wrestling!

Akira Tozawa vs. Adam Cole

ER: I wound up enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would, and I gotta give a lot of that credit to Tozawa. Tozawa has always been a guy I've liked, but this year I really realized I had been underrating him. I don't think he's wrestling any differently this year than he did last year or the year before, I just now appreciate him the correct amount. He really turned an interesting match out of a guy I don't like. I didn't think Cole was as annoying in this one as he is in his interminable NXT main events that I now dread. You read it here: Tozawa is good enough that he takes the dread out of Adam Cole main events. I really like what he throws behind his strikes, they look good and they look his own. He comes off like a guy who takes cool risks, and his matches benefit from that. Cole, for his part, worked an actual good side headlock. That might sound like a putdown, but a good side headlock is a pretty important thing to me. His was better than I thought it would be. Tozawa's offense is always explosive, his dive always looks like it's going to punch both guys through the barricade, he throws a great spinning heel kick, great low dropkick, bumps big and fast, etc. He's a 1999 Taka Michinoku in 2019 and that's great. I think Tozawa winning would have actually been good for NXT, interject a new and credible opponent into the mix, wouldn't seem like a demotion. Really the only thing I didn't like about this was the finish, and that's because Adam Cole has arguably my least favorite finish in wrestling. That bunny hop flipping piledriver looks so damn silly, and then he pulls his kneepad off his scrawny little knee and hits a low end "2002 indy guy working a shining wizard he just saw on a tape into his moveset" vibe to it, more like a sliding leg lariat to the back of the head which is...well it just didn't do it for me.


ER: No breakout classics on this one, and it wasn't one of the better Evolve shows I've seen - and there are a lot of great Evolve shows - but there was plenty of stuff I enjoyed. I liked several individual performances, thought the Kingston tag was a fun style clash, and I dug seeing Ruas for the first time. Plus, that Shotzi bump made me jump forward in my seat, and seat jumping moments are always special.

Read more!

Eye on the Indies: CZW Déjà Vu 9/27/14

Wanted to see this show for the Busick/Gulak match, figured I would watch the whole thing since I don't know most of the other guys; Get my brain caught up on some current indy guys.

1. Mason Price vs. The Preacher

I kinda dig the Preacher's vibe. He's a small guy with an old face, like an emaciated MC Gainey, with a big scar across the back of his shaved head. Actually he looks like a really skinny Christian, but with mixologist facial hair. Price looks like Jim Norton working an army gimmick, but an army guy who des a lot of thigh slaps. Match itself wasn't bad, but Price was very much not good. He had zero follow through on any of his strikes or moves. He'd throw a back elbow or pump kick and just kind of stop right where the point of contact would have been. It made all his stuff look like guys going over their moves in the ring before a show. He'd even do it on bigger moves like a Blockbuster, just kind of go through the motions of the move. Preacher had a Jimmy Jacobs vibe, some weird strikes, nice bumps (including flying wildly into a release German), good elbow drop. I'd like to see more of him.

2. Alex Colon vs. Latin Dragon

Lousy video game wrestling filled with reversals that weren't and big moves that didn't matter. Colon wanted to have his cake and eat it too, not really deciding on what kind of character he wants to be. He wanted to be eye raking cheap shotting point at my head heel, but also wanted to do some This is Awesome spots. Some of the reversals were mind numbing. Dragon did a tope, and Colon just didn't sell the tope and gave him a suplex on the floor. Dragon did a nasty reverse rana, then turned around and Colon just small packaged him. A lot of those reversals where you go "oh, so that move just had zero impact I guess." That nasty suplex on the floor I mentioned, which also saw Dragon partially getting slammed into a support pole, and the announce crew talking about a possible broken foot….well Dragon was rope running mere moments later. Yuck.

3. Joe Gacy vs. Aaron Williams

This one had me until it totally lost me. The match gets about 15 minutes to do its thing, and the first half was mostly based around headlock exchanges, some strikes, and then Williams working over Gacy's knee in cool ways. I really dug Williams twisting the knee and ankle and dropping knees on Gacy's knee, and also digging into it with his elbow. Gacy was really good about selling it, really showing how it was slowing him down as every time he would try and transition back to offense Williams could see it coming a mile away. And then suddenly a switch got flipped and Gacy just had to do a whole shit ton of moves with most of the knee stuff a distant memory. It was really like two different matches, and once it turned into "workrate sprint" it turned into a much weaker match.

4. Sozio vs. Caleb Konley

I'm…starting to remember why I don't do more reviews of full indy shows, and why I stay unfamiliar with a lot of indy talent. This one had a couple compelling moments, I liked a lot of Sozio's arm work, and Konley did a fine job of selling the arm damage done, but it didn't save me from a really bad elbow exchange showdown with super slow roaring elbows. Sozio was one of those guys who I couldn't tell if he was a comedy guy or if he was super serious. Sometimes he seemed serious, but then would throw these goofy sweeping crescent kicks and wrestled the first exchanges of the match still in his overcoat. His mafia kick that ended the match looked good at least.

5. Kimber Lee vs. Nevaeh

This was fine although a lot of the stuff seemed overly rehearsed, especially the opening "they know each other so well!" stuff. In fact the more I think about it the more I realize this whole match was practically built around "Kimber goes for this move and misses! Nevaeh follows up with this move and that misses!" kinda stuff. You get your German suplex tradeoffs, your forearm exchanges, you know the drill. I liked one of Kimber's submissions here and both girls seemed willing to lean into things. So that counts for something.

I talked with Phil and it came up that I was reviewing a full CZW show. Phil's response: "Yeah that was a weird thing for you to do."

6. 4 Corners of Ultraviolence: Ron Mathis vs. "The Wrench" Conor Claxton

I really dug this. This was a pretty classic brawl that wouldn't look out of place on older IWA-MS shows. I had never heard of either guy before. Mathis just looks like an athletic kick pads guy, Claxton looks like Dean Ambrose, and they both took and dished out some nasty shots in this. This was constructed really nicely as there aren't just weapons shots for the sake of weapons shots, the early non-weapons work was tight, and once we devolved into weapons the order went pretty logically. Mathis controls most of the early stuff, beating Claxton around the ring and then grossly stapling a dollar to his forehead (which awesomely stays on the rest of the match) and eventually Claxton gets ahold of a chair wrapped in barbed wire (which is a pretty good way to get the advantage to swing back to you). The chair shots were really nasty as they weren't held back much and Mathis took a bunch of shots to his back and sides, the first shot off his arm instantly left a dozen cuts. Claxton went for a light tube and aimed to superplex Mathis into it but took too long, allowing Mathis to reverse into a tornado DDT through broken glass. Gross. Eventually we got tacks in the mix too and they did a few fun tacks tease spots with one of them coming close to falling into them, steadying himself, reversing a move out of them, until both of course take the plunge. Also get the excellent spot of Mathis putting tacks into Claxton's mouth and punching him in the face, with Claxton doing a classic Danny Thomas spit take with tons of tacks. I thought this whole thing was awesome. Their work in between weapons shots was snug, weapons stuff built logically and looked great, didn't go into overkill. This is pretty much what you would want out of this kind of match. Very pleasant surprise.

DJ Hyde comes out but gets interrupted by LuFisto beating him with a stick and they brawl around for awhile. Great spot where Hyde catches her off a dive and launches her at a rough angle through a bunch of chairs. And then that spot is immediately ruined by an announcer saying "We have our Ray Rice moment here in CZW." Eventually LuFisto pulls a knife on him which is just…yeah.

7. Shane Strickland vs. Flip Kendrick

Well this was awful. This match was one 15 minute mirror sequence worked in 3/4 time with most shots missing. Oof. Kendrick is a guy I've liked in almost all the stuff I've seen him in. Strickland is a guy I've never seen before. This was the worst Kendrick performance I've seen, and I never want to see Strickland again. Strickland works the same way Chris Hero did when he was doing his 2001 JAPW extra flips gimmick, except Strickland doesn't seem to do it with a wink. At one point he hit a dropkick, but only after doing a 619 to get to the apron, then somersaulting over the ropes back into the ring. Every move he did had an extra spin leading into it, except he moved so cautiously and slow that it looked strange, like he would get dizzy if he spun around too fast, so he would slooooowly rotate and then just hit an enziguiri or something. The match started with both men slowly running through a bad super choreographed mirror exchange, filled with ducked kicks and dropkicks performed at the same time and stereo kip ups. It was done so slowly and poorly that it looked like clever satire of indy wrestling. Kendrick was moving slowly through his stuff the whole match, a lot of his strikes looked bad, and a lot of the move execution was bad or awkward. A Code Red that was supposed to fling Strickland into a turnbuckle ended with both men slowly tumbling into the corner. Match ended with Strickland hitting a double stomp off the rope, in theory. He really just jumped and landed with his feet on either side of Kendrick, with the camera zooming right in on it. It must have looked as bad live because it was pretty silent when it got the 3 count. Not sure if this poor performance is the norm for Strickland, but if this was the only thing I'd seen of Flip I'd assume he was an awful worker. Yuck.

8. Biff Busick vs. Drew Gulak

PAS: This was the rematch of their CZW title match in May. I haven't really been following the booking but here we have the heel/face dynamic reversed with Gulak coming in as the face and Busick as the bruising heel. This started out with some of the great grappling that these guys bring to the table, with cool armbars and short arm scissors and knuckle locks. Both guys are really great at forceful looking matwork, all of the counters looked like the guy countering was using every ounce of his strength to reverse the hold. Match switches gears when Gulak takes a pair of huge bumps, he gets thrown off the top rope to the floor and cracking the small of his back on the apron (leading to a nasty bruise over his kidneys, he was pissing raspberry tea on the 28th) and getting backdropped into the second row wiping out a fan. Then Busick is controlling, beating on Gulak, with Drew having his moments. This was well on it's way to surpassing their best match up, when sort of out of nowhere Busick counters a suplex into a roll up for a pin. I can't believe I am criticizing a US Indy match up for underkill on its finish run, but I was expecting it to really kick into gear and it just ended. Still much to love and this is a match up that consistently delivers.

ER: Man I love what these guys do, and I love how things have a sense of ending at any time due to both mens' knowledge of reversals and leverage. I agree with Phil that this could leave matches ending without as much drama as they could have built to. But at the same time it keeps me glued to the whole match in the same way I was glued to RINGS matches. Gulak is an ideal wrestler for me. I'm fascinated by all his movements and his combo of skills, maybe the most exciting "new" guy for me this decade. He always breaks out cool unexpected things that make me flip out as a wrestling fan, like his cool roll-up reversal of a Busick leapfrog here. I wasn't even expecting anything to happen there because it just seemed like any other wrestling rope run segment, until Busick leapfrogs and Gulak slides under with the great flash false finish. These two are so good they really make meaningless moments of wrestling mean something. The struggle between them is always so satisfying, I loved moments like Gulak dishing out cupped slaps to Busicks back and head, slowly gaining him access to the arms, moving into a bodylock, into a nasty variation on the Gu-Lock…and I like that he can go through all that but Busick gets a near immediate rope break. Other times they can get a reversal neither were expecting that leaves them in far greater dominant position. I like that ebb and flow of their stuff. The Gulak bumps Phil mentioned were sick and took the match in a welcome and different direction than I expected. Both guys lend an authenticity to their matches; I never feel like they're moving through one spot mechanically to get to the next part of the match. At one point Gulak really wrenches in a hammerlock that is ultimately inconsequential to the larger segment they were working, but that hammerlock looked like a real terror, a real nasty twist, and I could easily see capable but lesser mat workers just going through the motions and not wrenching in a transitional move like that, too busy focusing on what was "supposed to" happen next. These guys might not be for everybody, but for me they're right up their with my favorite all time wrestling. I hope we get to see these guys do their thing for years.

***Note: The Busick/Gulak match was easily good enough for Phil and I to add it to our 2014 Ongoing MOTY list, nestled cozily into spot #37. Instead of doing a whole separate post with my review copied over, I just added Phil's thoughts from the match here. Our full MOTY list linked at the bottom***

9. Ohio is 4 Killers (Jake & Dave Crist) vs. The Juicy Product (JT Dunn & David Starr)

ER: Well, this match was kind of difficult. Stuff I liked, stuff I hated, and then a fair portion of the match completely invisible! Match starts with the Crist brothers diving out of the ring, and they brawl out through the crowd, and outside. The problem is that the crowd was really dark, and the cameras weren't really equipped to follow the action around. What's worse, is when they brawled outside the cameras couldn't follow them. So I just had to fast forward until everybody made it back inside. Jake had a lot of color happening, not sure how it happened. The announcers didn't know either as they stayed at the table and kind of guessed what could possibly be happening outside. I'm sure it was cool for the live crowd, but a weird thing to do on a IPPV where workers should know your filming limitations. Even back inside the building doesn't do much as things are super dark so you can't really see what's happening. Juicy lawn darts Dave Crist into the concession stand. Minutes later Dave appears on top of the concession stand and does a wild Thesz press off the top of it (at least 9-10 feet up). After many, many, many minutes we finally end up in the ring for the match to officially start. There was actually a pretty good FIP story going on with Jake beaten bloody and Dave also gassed from the beatdown, and both Crist guys had some good comebacks and hope spots. But then the match hit the spot where it should have ended, and kept going…and going…and then kept going. They peaked the drama well, and it's just too hard to keep peaking that numerous times in a match. All the guys had some stuff that looked good. There were a couple double team tombstone variations that were nasty, one with Jake hitting a tombstone while Dave hit a double stomp off the top to drive it down. Dave also had an epic double knee drop off the top, and actually threw a really great looking mule kick (it's really hard to throw a nice spinning mule kick). Starr had a couple of neat power spots, and Dunn took some big bumps off clotheslines and other moves. Also, everybody apparently had a bet going to see who could throw more superkicks. At one point we had six consecutive superkicks from everybody. And there were so many more. So yeah, the match had tons of overkill but a lot of the stuff in the overkill looked good. I think the match could have been really great if laid out a little tighter, but as a spot spectacle it was plenty fun.

OVERALL: This was a good enough show, with some nice peaks but also some subterranean lows. The Gulak/Busick match was great, and I also really loved that weapons match. Kendrick/Strickland was one of the absolute worst matches I've seen this decade, but The Preacher was a cool guy I had never heard of that I'd like to see more of, same with Mathis and Claxton. The Crists were also better than I remembered (though had the same faults I remembered).


2014 MASTER MOTY LIST

Read more!