Now I Ask Big Meech What He Know About Low-Ki

Low Ki vs. Ahtu  EVOLVE 1/14/12 - FUN

ER: A fairly infamous match, that doesn't actually feel as sadistic as it's been made out to be. This is Low Ki's Evolve debut, and he literally knocks Ahtu out with a rolling kappo kick to start the match. A lot of people on the internet hate Low Ki because a lot of people in wrestling weirdly side with management at any opportunity, but within the realm of pro wrestling shoot incidents this feels like one of the least malicious incidents. If you didn't know better before watching this, you might just think it's excellent selling from Ahtu to jumpstart a cool angle. The kappo kick looks no more savage than any other Ki kick I've seen. He has a great looking kappo kick, and this one hits Ahtu right in the temple and sends him timbering down to the mat. Call me naïve, but the KO blow didn't look intentional to me. There are way more blatant and efficient ways of knocking out an unsuspecting opponent, and this wasn't exactly Kurisu punting Jado in the head. Ahtu has that thousand yard stare, and Ki drags him to his feet (now that is probably the most inadvisable thing Ki did here), nails a handspring kick in the corner, then hits the Warriors Way on a potentially dead body to finish it (totally protecting Ahtu on it, although Ahtu also sells it like a man with a concussion who doesn't know he's just been double stomped). To add to the complete bizarro greatness of this spectacle, Ki gets on the mic and cuts a REAL wrestling is BACK promo and literally ends his promo quoting TAZ! I mean literally shouting out a man from Red Hook and saying "Beat me if you can! Survive, if I let you!" That's weird! And the crowd shouted along to every word! I wanted him to pick up Ahtu's corpse, give him a Stone Cold Stunner, and shout "And that's the bottom line, because LOW KI SAID SO!"

PAS: Eric wrote this defense of Low-Ki before he came out as a COVID denier, so there are actual reasons for the internet to hate Low-Ki now. Still it doesn't make sense to have wrestling be a place to go for morality and common sense, so fuck it, we are still Low-Ki guys. Ki obliterating a roids dude entertains me, and I agree that this looked unlucky rather then reckless, but either way it was bad ass. I wouldn't take health advice from Low-Ki or want to be in the ring with him, but I still love watching him.

Low-Ki vs. Ricky Martinez MLW Fusion #62 6/1 (Aired 6/15/19) - FUN

ER: Low Ki debuted in MLW a year before this, against Ricky Martinez. That match was a complete one-sided Ki squash, not a solitary moment of Martinez offense. But that was before he was The Sicario, and he fares a little better here. The match is a little underwhelming, as normally you can give Ki 4 minutes and expect something a little more cohesive than this. At a certain point they seemed to be killing time waiting for a run-in, but the interference never came so maybe they just got off page for another reason. Their interactions are good and I know they have a better match in them, and at minimum they're good at taking each others' offense. There are even a couple of callbacks to their first match (not brought up in any way on commentary), like Ki rushing Martinez at the bell. A year ago Ki did the same and landed a knee that was the beginning of the end for Martinez. This time Martinez just bails out of the ring the second Ki takes off running. Ki eventually gets into it with Salina de la Renta at ringside, leaving himself open to a great baseball slide dropkick from Ricky. In ring Martinez runs hard into Ki's boots in the corner, and Ki works a cool body scissors. The finish is odd, as Ki hits essentially an axe bomber lariat, and they stop the match with a TKO. Low Ki is a guy who can work a convincing KO finish if the match calls for it, and this lariat (elbow?) looked like the least KO move in the match, so it came off confusing to the crowd. MLW built Ki as a guy who can finish matches in unpredictable and violent ways - which is an awesome way to push someone like Low Ki - but this finish was not that. 

Low-Ki/Tom Lawlor/Marshall Von Erich/Ross Von Erich vs. Jacob Fatu/Josef Samael/Simon Gotch/Ikuro Kwon MLW 9/7/19 - GREAT

PAS: This was a match with some real peaks and valleys. It's main flaw is it's length,  it is hard to sustain the pre Match Beyond parts of the War Games, and this had some real dead zones. Gotch and Marshall had 2 minutes of cool stuff in the opening section, but they had to go five, and by the end of their one on one they were doing chinlocks. Samael was the best time killer in this, he bleeds a bunch, trash talks Kevin Von Erich on the floor, sets up a section with Low-Ki where they tried to gauge each other on the barbed wire, bites Lawlor in the ear, breaks the claw by jabbing Marshall with a spike. I thought Fatu looked good too, although his entrance into the match was the kind of super hot run of offense you want from a face, not really from a heel. Ki was a minor part of this match, but I did like his karate stand off with Ikuro Kwan to start. The other big problem of the layout of the match was the length of the Match Beyond, the last guy in the ring needs to be the start of the end of the match, but they had about five to seven minutes of wandering and brawling before the hot finish. The finish was what put this into great territory for me, you had the cool spot of Kevin Von Erich in Dallas putting the claw on a random masked Contra agent, a big near fall with Fatu hitting a huge Samoan drop, and the Claw doomsday device by the Von Erich's for the win. The match was really losing me, but that ending brought it back big. 

Low-Ki vs. King Mo MLW 2/17/21 - FUN

PAS: This was a no ropes match on Filthy Island which was MLW riffing on UFC. I don't really get what this whole Low-Ki vs. King Mo feud was trying to accomplish. Mo squashes him in the first match, and then Ki wins by tap in a minute and a half, when he locks in a choke by crawling on Mo's back. The curse of MLW since it first started was cool looking on paper things which don't deliver, and this feud didn't. I did like the vibe of the show OK, and the post match Team Filty vs. Ki and the Von Erich's brawl was fun stuff which does keep this out of skippable. 

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Low-Ki Shock a Crowd Like a Bottle of Insulin

Low-Ki vs. King Mo MLW 2/1/20 - FUN

PAS: I appreciated what they tried to do here, although it was mostly ruined by an awful finish. I have been a King Mo fan since the Real Pro Wrestling days, but he isn't very good at non real Pro-Wrestling. This was basically worked like the first Ogawa vs. Hashimoto match. Lawal just destroys Ki for most of the match, he opens with a double leg and chucks him over the top rope, jacking Ki's thigh up. He taunts and mocks Ki while kicking his ass, and I really liked him checking his pulse. Lawal hasn't really figured out how to make pulled shots look good, and probably should have just stiffed Ki. We get a pretty good Ki comeback as he nails an overconfident Mo with a nasty Kappo Kick and locks on a hanging choke. There is a pretty terrible run in finish with Dom and Stevens coming out and shoving the Von Erich's, and the ref just leaving the ring to yell at them while Dan Lambert hits Ki with an umbrella to give Mo the win. Totally takes you out of the cool atmosphere with the hackiest and poorly executed rasslin finish. If you are going to do Hash vs. Ogawa, fucking do it and have Ki destroyed, or have Ki make the big comeback, doing this finish just shits all over the match.

ER: Yeah this felt like it was building to something potentially special but really fell apart down the home stretch. King Mo has presence and confidence and that would be enough to sustain him as a worker, even if his pulled shots don't look great. He hit one leg kick that made some sound, but all of his arm strikes looked really bad, and they couldn't really even be covered up in a "he's just mocking Ki" way because it looked like he was supposed to be wailing on him. It's funny, the past two Ki matches I've watched (this, and his match vs. Masada from a few months ago) have seen Low Ki get annihilated for much of the match. It's such an odd thing to see, as he's always been someone who's been very aggressive on offense regardless of opponent, and now I'm wondering if he's shifting into a different stylistic phase of his career. I really liked where this match was headed, as King Mo hoisted Ki up with a double leg and ran him across the ring, dumping him unceremoniously to the floor. Ki is someone great at selling a hamstring injury, and I loved Mo mocking him for being in over his head. Mo dumped him easily through the ropes with another double leg, and with Ki still selling that injury I was getting into either a Mo destruction or a big limping Ki comeback. Ki was all off balance without his leg, throwing desperate hands that were interesting because they were so out of character for him, and I wasn't sure what he was going to be able to land. But his kappo kick was thrown so perfectly, sending Mo flying and reminding me of all of Ki's available tricks. Still this finish was a real clunker, the kind of bad wrestling finish that is only made possible by making the ref look like an idiot. We get Lawlor running in to knock Low Ki out with an umbrella, and it's really silly to have Low Ki get knocked out by an umbrella than by a man who has knocked out many large humans, all the while the ref is still futzing around in the aisle dealing with Mo's crew. I had pretty high hopes for this one, and liked the early exchanges, but things got iffy once Mo started throwing strikes and others got involved. Shame.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW KI

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