AEW Five Fingers of Death (And Friends) 7/8 - 7/14 (Part 2)

Athena vs Masha Slamovich Prestige 7/12/24

MD: I'm lacking keyboard access currently as I'm writing this one ahead so I'll have to double back for Darby vs Mortos. I'd been looking forward to this match for ages though and wanted to get some thoughts down about it now that it's come and gone. Let's start with Masha. I was most familiar with her from watching her Northeast indy stuff a few years ago. My big takeaway then was that she was a bit of a victim of circumstance. She was positioned in a lot of intergender matches where she was supposed to come off as a real force, equal, maybe even superior. No problem with that in theory. In practice, the issue was that it repeatedly led to escalation too early in her matches. Before she was fully established there was a need to make a splash in those matches and show immediately that she could hold her own against any sort of opponent. As she became more established, having been rewarded for doing too much too soon in her matches led to what felt like bad habits that bled into more conventional settings (or the same sort of unconventional settings but long after they were necessary as she was fairly quickly established). That clashed a little with her positives, the biggest of which is her ability to just jump off the screen and be absolutely electric, which just happens to be one of Athena's biggest qualities, that unpredictable intangible that makes her stand out from everyone else. I was expecting sort of an unstoppable force vs immovable object type war here. Life sort of got in the way though. 

I've written a ton recently about how Bryan Danielson (the person) likes to lie. This was a tangential sort of situation where it was actually Athena (the character) who is living something of a lie. We're just not sure how much of one, which made for a fascinating, committed performance. She was injured against Viva Van in a Proving Ground match a month or two ago in a fluke moment of hitting the floor. She hasn't wrestled since but they've been playing it up as part of the storyline on ROH TV. Obviously, for her to have a serious injury in the middle of this generational run would have been devastating so it's good that they've made an angle out of it and she's keeping dates and working the PPV, etc. It definitely put a different tint on this one though. No longer was it a godlike clash of the titans. Instead, this was a different sort of Masha, more wry, more subdued, and an Athena that oscillated from scheming to desperate to vulnerable to vicious, that was always on her back foot, whether it was due to the character actually working injured or just being forced to portray that injury as more serious than it was because of the longer term issues at play and a #1 contender breathing down her neck for the ROH PPV. That's a lot at play for what is, in a lot of ways, an inter-promotional sort of dream match. You didn't usually have that many things in play for Backlund vs Race or Flair vs Bockwinkel for instance. 

Athena started with a pre-match promo putting over her accolades and presenting a mission statement, to prove that she was the best champion in wrestling. Masha, a tag camp in TNA, sort of handicapped herself in return, spending the entire match refusing to touch Athena's leg once. If Athena was trying to prove A, then she would prove B instead without any question. Considering that Athena had no intention of fighting fair, it was a fairly successful big of goading that spoke to Masha's confidence and pride. Again, this was a fairly remarkable performance by Athena, always hobbling, always hopping, always off-balance. Early on, when they stayed on the mat, it seemed challenging but not impossible, but later on as she was throwing strikes and kicks and hitting bombs, I don't think there was a moment where I wasn't conscious of the boot on her leg because of how into the moment she always is. That's not normal. It's the ideal, but so few wrestlers ever reach it, and it was all the trickier because we're not supposed to know how injured Athena actually is. She's an unreliable narrator even in her physicality. Eventually, as Masha pressed her natural advantage and started to take over, Athena feigned even further injury to lure her in for the magic forearm. That let her take over for a while, but either the need to portray the injury or the actual injury gave Masha a wedge to keep coming back, and it all led to first bombs and then a ref bump, a phantom pin to allow Masha to save face and Athena ultimately using the boot. This wasn't the match I anticipated or expected, but that's still on the table for a rematch somewhere down the line. As it was, it was Masha being reactive in very impressive ways and Athena being as impressive as always with living in the moment, just for an entirely different and challenging sort of moment.

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Scenic City Invitational 2022 Night 1 8/5/22

Adam Priest vs. Cole Radrick

ER: This is probably worth seeing just for the woman in the front row who lunges hard at Priest as he casually walks to the ring, and Priest acts like he doesn't even see her, two feet in front of him, as she's being hauled away in a rear waistlock. Stunt Granny? Perhaps. I really liked Priest here. He acts like an asshole, and works like a modern Jamie Noble. He's really explosive when the move calls for it, putting a lot of snap on everything. I dug how he snuck in attacks around the ref's blindspot, sneaking in a punch past the ref's shoulder and a back elbow over his back, and I liked how he did bratty little things like lightly kicking a rolling trash can towards a kid after rolling to the floor. All of Priest's strikes looked good, he missed offense with intent, took all of Radrick's offense well, and made everyman moves like the DDT look like actual finishers. Radrick is a mix of some things that work and some that don't. I thought he had some really nice fired up babyface punches (with Priest doing an excellent job feeding into them), like  Robert Gibson coming in on a hot tag. He had a nice diving elbow to the back of Priest's head, and hit a cool Hitman elbow off the top rope. He really didn't do anything at all with the "bad knee" part of the match, but Dylan Hales on commentary did a good job covering for that, adding to an awkward botched cutter by pointing out the bad knee couldn't adjust to the loose bottom rope. 

Hoodfoot vs. Orion Bishop 

ER: I'm kind of surprised by how much I disliked this. Scanning the card, this was one of the SCI matches I was most excited for, but hardly anything about this worked. They started with some unnecessary quick rope running stuff and then both seemed to hit a gas tank wall 10 seconds in. Hoodfoot looked like he was on tranquilizers through a lot of it, like he could barely lift his arm to throw strikes. Now, I love in a hermetically sealed bubble and miss a ton of what is happening in pro wrestling, but I did hear that Hoodfoot lost an absurd amount of blood in a deathmatch against Slade. There's a chance he isn't fully recovered, and if that's the case then I'm impressed by the grind. Also, if that's the case, I would rather him fully recover. His missed standing swings to set up Bishop's offense were some of the most quarter assed swings I've seen, and every shot of his that landed was telegraphed a mile away and thrown at half speed. At one point they both trudged passed each other and ducked offense that neither man threw. Hoodfoot took a nasty suplex bump and hit a nice cannonball in the corner, but this felt like a match where no exchange came off properly. Even the finish looked bad, as Bishop hit a spear ("hit" doing a lot of work there) and Hoodfoot flinched on the 3 count, making it look like he was supposed to kick out but couldn't lift his limbs. The ref made the bizarre choice to not verbalize a single thing, merely holding up two fingers and a thumb that didn't clear anything up. Instead of just saying "ring the bell", she kept alternating between holding up an index finger those other three digits. Shockingly little about this worked. Did both guys put in a couple hours on the bike before this match? 

Myron Reed vs. Eli Knight

ER: Now this, I liked, even though it had a finish that I sincerely did not understand. The ideas and some of the execution dipped in the latter half, but there was more than enough to make this a really good 8 minute match. I'm not super familiar with Eli Knight but came away a fan. The man has springs in his legs and has amazing form on his moonsault, and I loved how he jumped Reed before the bell with a super high and impactful running dropkick and then a gorgeous moonsault press to the floor. Reed is a clever wrestler who is good at setting up some complicated sequences, and Knight is a guy who can execute some complicated stuff and make it look effortless. Knight had a really cool dropkick from the top rope to the apron, and then kipped up on the apron and grinned right into the hard cam. Both guys hit strikes with some nice jolt, and on the couple occasions where something didn't quite work they just quickly moved along into something more spectacular. Reed had a big flip dive over the ringpost, and I liked how Knight was able to use his moonsault as both a feint and as a strong nearfall. The finish might have sounded better on paper, but I don't think it worked in reality at all. Knight hit a moonsault, but Reed slightly lifted his head and neck off the mat as it hit, and apparently this meant that Reed hit a kind of grounded cutter on Knight? It just looked like Reed was sitting up to take some of the impact and I don't think anyone would have thought it was supposed to be Reed catching Knight with a reversal. Nonetheless, even with the dodgy finish this was probably my favorite match of the first three. 

11. Daniel Makabe vs. Damyan Tangra 

MD: I've bumped my head against this review a couple of times, but it was my favorite match from SCI this year and it's worth writing about so I'm going to power through. Phil talked about the great Makabe vs Garrini matched from Night 2 on the Ringer, but this was pure, unbridled move chaining and gamesmanship, build and payoff, total engagement.

How about some examples? Makabe previously beat Tangra with a seated triangle. One of Tangra's big moves is a swing into a gutbuster from a Saito Suplex position. Early on, Tangra went for it, Makabe turned it into the triangle, Tangra had an answer and could escape. When Tangra finally hit it, it was out of Makabe escaping a Fujiwara Armbar, which Tangra had put on through cleverly countering something else. The match had high points that were built to like that, that were teased earlier, countered, worked for later, but they're more a microcosm of the endless struggle. Makabe laid traps, Tangra was ready for them, and it became about which wrestler could take advantage of where they ended up after the counter to the counter.

It should have been exhausting, a endless cacophony of noise and counters of counters of counters of counters, of limbs provided and capitalizing technique, but it wasn't. These weren't two wrestling robots, two drilled out shooters driving forward at each other. They are human beings, characters, wrestlers, entities with emotional stakes written on their sleeves (or in Makabe's case, underneath his wrapped up fist). When Tangra got an especially impressive counter, you could see it on Makabe's face. Not overwrought, not over the top, but human and appreciative and consummate to the moment. Tangra, sympathetic, with an ever-growing connection to the crowd, expressed a real sense of desperation in escaping Makabe's holds, escaping late hammer and anvil shots, in avoiding Makabe's punch at all costs (right up until the point he couldn't, of course). When the wrestlers care, when they let things sink in, when they let them matter, those things matter to everyone watching as well.

The turning point of the match was Tangra making the most of a cleverly captured leglock, both legs viced together in a way that wasn't sustainable, that wouldn't draw a submission, that led to a quick ropebreak, but that did lasting damage to one knee. By no means was this the singular story of the match. It gave it color, like any of the other elements. It enhanced instead of dominating. In key moments, Makabe couldn't capitalize due to the leg. In key moments, it provided Tangra a target. It gave him an edge, but against Makabe, you need dozens of them. On this night, he had just enough to survive and to score a believable, well-deserved, still shocking upset.

In watching this on Night 1, we (or at least I) didn't know what we'd learn about Makabe's physical condition on Night 2, that there's a possibility that his in-ring career is winding down. Looking back, that makes this feel like a potential changing of the guard, one that embraced and highlighted so much of what makes Makabe special and unforgettable, while letting Tangra not just hang with the master (no small thing), but also show his own worth and uniqueness and reinforcing the notion that he might carry the torch forward in years to come.

ER: This was so good, easily the match of Night 1. Matt covered this about as thoroughly as I've come to expect from Matt, so I'm not sure how much I have to add. I dug how this was a real Makabe showcase in the front half until he got slowed by his leg, and then those same tangled holds he was breaking out in the first half were given a sense of desperation down the back half. Makabe is so good at taking a sequence that you think you've seen before, and then suddenly taking it in a direction you've never seen. Early on they went into a series of inside cradle reversals that ends with Makabe reversing into a nasty head and arm choke. I swear, there are always at least three moments in a Makabe match that look like something that could plausibly finish the match, and this would have been a cool way to do a sudden surprise finish. This wasn't the venue for that, but the point stands. Dan really glued himself to Tangra like a spider monkey here, keeping himself close for several minutes, constantly tying Tangra up, climbing around his body before rolling into one of the cleanest triangles I've seen. I thought Tangra's body scissors takedown into a heel hook was a really cool way to counteract Makabe's clinginess. 

Makabe getting his leg worked over changed the pace and the strategy, and I really liked how Tangra threw kicks at every angle to Makabe's knee. Some guys get locked into throwing the exact same kind of leg kicks, but Tangra was kicking it from the inside, outside, upper patella, lower hamstring, just throwing them all over the target. Makabe is one of the best at selling a limb, dragging himself up by the ropes while favoring his good leg, trying to hold a bridge with one leg and then getting instantly reversed when he flattens the bum wheel, slowing his reaction time during standing exchanges. He still had several answers to whatever Tangra tried throwing, and I especially liked him wriggling out of a fireman's carry by quickly getting a crucifix on Tangra's arm. Once Tangra made this into more of a strike battle, Makabe kept trying to unload that Logan Gilbert right hand, mostly getting countered due to his slowed down wind up. Makabe getting slowed face Tangra openings to show off on the mat, and he had an awesome STF where he choked Makabe out with his own arm, while also hammer fisting his bandaged hand. That didn't finish things, but it could have, and having multiple ways to finish and be finished is one of the things that makes this pairing so engaging. 

Dominic Garrini vs. Kevin Ku

ER: I didn't really like this. I don't think I really like them against each other. This started at one level, and basically stayed at that level nearly the entire match, and never really let the crowd in on where they were going. They came out and took turns throwing chops, then took turns throwing kicks, and I'm not sure they even looked beyond the ring during any of it. These matches feel like they're done for the weird enjoyment of the two guys in the ring, as I never got the sense they would have done anything differently regardless of the crowd reaction. Obviously this crowd did not hate the match, and I was amused by a couple of girls chirping in reaction to several of the chops, but I think this needed just an ounce of direction or purpose. I think I would have liked it more had Dom's scoop spinning tombstone ended things. Up until then it had been mostly perfunctory strike exchanges with neither really acknowledging that they had been struck, but that tombstone was nasty and would have made a fun "fuck it I'm tried of being hit" finish. Not for me, but no problem if it works for thee. 

Jaden Newman vs. Ashton Starr

ER: This kind of odd pantomime wrestling just does not appeal to me. Why are some guys so silent in the ring? It always comes off so bizarre. The Soddy-Daisy fans have a real connection to every wrestler on these SCI cards. It's a good crowd to work in front of, positive and eager to support. But this silent play acting wrestling just doesn't connect. At one point Newman hit a complicated but slick swinging DDT from the apron for a two count, and just sat there doing silent mouthing and hand signing. Every time either man appealed to the crowd it was done silently, going out of their way to not use any kind of words. This is a crowd where you can hear individual reactions of everyone in the crowd, so it plays even weirder when both guys are trying to stay so silent. It was so jarring when Jaden let out a grunt after being hit, as I had assumed neither could make sounds, but it's possible they just can't turn those sounds into words. I liked Starr's high extension kick while Newman was on the top rope, and liked how Starr whipped his head into the mat on Newman's swinging DDT, but mute reaction wrestling is so weird. 

17. Manders vs. Masha Slamovich

ER: Manders was the replacement for Trish Adora, which is a cool swap. I thought this was really good, playing to both strengths. Masha often goes really big in her matches, starting them with some big spots that can leave the endings of those matches underwhelming. Here, that made a lot more sense, as she actually felt like the underdog against Manders. Manders can absorb a lot of punishment and wasn't going to work this 50-50, so Masha breaking out all her big stunts felt like the only way she was going to pull off a win. She's such a fighter, but I liked how Manders overwhelmed her at times, starting the match by wasting her with a clothesline, throwing her through chairs, throwing hard targeted headlock punches. Her openings are all from fighting dirty, and I love it, like how she went after his nose and eyes to break out of a headlock. Her strikes all looked good, and Manders didn't sell them 1:1, instead he treated them more 3:1, making her land several hard elbows or a couple kicks before being moved. Once she started stacking strikes, it gave her more openings to hit big stunts. 

She dropped Manders with some big things, like an electric chair that bounced him off a couple of chairs, and it turned into Manders having to brute force his way out of things. He was taking real damage from Masha, but was always able smash when things got bad. I dug Masha throwing several elbows and kicking him across the chin, and it wasn't like he wasn't selling them, they just needed to come in bunches to keep him down. He was still able to dump her with a big powerbomb or flatten her with a lariat, but they were smart about adding that extra time or breath so this never felt equal. Manders really hammered her with a lariat that looked like it would be the finish, but had such a head of steam that he went right through the ropes to the floor. He still almost got the win (with a great pin leaning his weight way back over her shoulders) but that extra time gave Masha the breathing room she needed. The finish looked botched but in a way that I think benefitted the match. Masha piledriving Manders off the turnbuckles into a pair of set up chairs was pretty crazy, with both landing hard, and Masha basically just landed on Manders for the three. Whatever the spot was supposed to look like, I don't know. I didn't look totally clean, but I came away thinking that whomever was lucky enough to end up on top after the crash landing was the one who was going to win. A crash landing doesn't have to look clean, it's supposed to look like an ugly pile-up, so Masha being the one who got lucky on the landing works well as a finish for me. 

Robert Martyr vs. Billie Starkz

ER: I really liked a lot of this, but the Starkz win really didn't work for me. Maybe there was a way to set it up that would have worked, but I don't think this was it. Pretty much everything up until the finish worked. I loved how they started things, with Martyr being a little prick and then getting his circuits scrambled with a hook kick, actually doing one of the only good "stiffened legs while my lights went out" sells that I've seen in wrestling (I always hold up Jimmy Yang's silly "4 limbs in the air" off a Tank Abbott punch as the worst example of this). Starkz getting a flash KO pin would have been awesome, but as I said earlier in this review, this wasn't the venue for that. But I dug Billie getting that quick advantage and then having it erased when Martyr blocked a tope and ran her into the post, then hit a gross powerbomb on the apron. Martyr seethes into the camera "I'm gonna kill this girl!" and he kinda backs that up. He had some really disrespectful boot scrapes, punishing corner lariats, and a big layout powerbomb. All of his stuff looked pretty killer. 

I didn't love the forearm exchange, but only because Starkz has bad looking forearms that wouldn't look like they'd move even a small guy like Martyr. However, everyone probably knows the moment this match was building towards, and that was one of the greatest splats I have ever seen in wrestling. Billie splats across the floor of Soddy-Daisy with an insane swanton off the top, Martyr slipping out of his seat at the last second, chair absorbing none of Billie's weight. The chair might have slightly slowed her down but not much. This girl just leapt off a one story building to her concrete death. As everyone checks on her, Martyr is the one in the ring yelling at the ref to get the hell in and start counting her out, and I love that look on him. When she barely beats the count and crawls right into a brainbuster, I thought that was it. If that was it, this match would be going on the list. But the finish didn't work for me. I thought the electric chair set up was frankly stupid for someone who was holding the back of her hand to her lower back ever since the apron powerbomb, and I just didn't buy the set up or the win, no matter how sick a Rubik's Cube can look. Criticism of the finish aside, this was still probably my third favorite match of Night 1.

2022 MOTY MASTER LIST

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ROAD REPORT: GCW Devil in a New Dress 4/10/22

This Road Report is going to be much more vibes than actual match analysis. This was the first wrestling show I had been to with this many friends (seven people, including myself) in who knows how long. It was a great night, fun as hell, but there's no way I'm going to be remembering full details of a 20 minute Dark Sheik match or what specific Kidd Bandit spots I thought were stupid. The card was changed around wildly and the two people I was most excited to see (Biff Busick and Gringo Loco) were either there and not used or not there for reasons I don't know (travel?). So that was a drag! And yet, we still had a good time. It was fun seeing it with several friends who don't follow indy wrestling, as a couple of my boys were only familiar with Busick, Jacob Fatu, and Suzuki. With no Busick or Fatu, that meant they were seeing nearly everyone on the card for the first time, brains unsullied by the opinions of those on the internet. I told them to "just think of this as early Jersey All Pro" and that set the mood just fine. 

Effy vs. Nick Wayne

ER: If you had told me earlier in the night that Effy would be the guy putting on my favorite performance of that night, then I would have been skeptical. Had it been my Looper, I would have been more inclined to believe me. This was my favorite personal Effy performance and I thought he came off like an honest to god star. The Yellow Brick Road music, the trashy blonde asymmetrical mullet, the fishnets, and the extreme confidence on the mic. For reasons I could not quite make out (it is not an indy wrestling show without somewhat questionable sound), Effy stated that this was a family show and he would therefore be working much less horny. And honestly? Focused ass kicker Effy is much more entertaining than horny Effy. He did a great job bullying a high school junior, caught all of Wayne's dives (including a big tope con giro), and came off like a real complete act. I'm not sure there was anyone on the card who carried themselves like a bigger star than Effy did in this match, and that includes Suzuki. 

My favorite moment of the match - which might sound odd - is how he handled a failing prop spot: Wayne brought the doors into the match, and as Effy was setting up a door on a couple folding chairs and trying to keep Wayne on them, the door just fell off the chairs. As the fans were jeering the extended spot set up, Effy just did the most hilarious hurrr durrrr face with a funny dance to accompany it, immediately shutting down any potential derision. Now, the *craziest* moment came right after, when Effy went up top and Wayne got up way too quick to catch him with a Spanish Fly. Wayne got up so quick that Effy's feet weren't squared up, one of them looked to be slipping, and those knees were shaking hard as Wayne flipped. I was standing near the turnbuckle directly opposite them, and I swear to you I looked directly into Effy's eyes and saw the expression of a man who did not think he was properly making it over on that Spanish Fly. I thought he was going to brutally plant chin or neck first directly into the mat, but somehow he made it over (not really through the table, instead going off course and flattening one of the chairs). People were going nuts after that Fly, and I know I'm not the only one there who thought we almost witnessed an opening match murder. 

Jordan Oliver vs. Jack Cartwheel

ER: The only thing really worth remembering about this match is the bananas finish, but honestly on a show like this having the most GIFable finish is way more valuable than just having a good match. This was a match that I really didn't care for as I wanted to see Cartwheel get punished for his frequent cartwheeling and I don't think it got there. I did not need to see these two working multiple stand and trade spots and reversals of reversals over a too long 15 minutes, and I could not believe how many Cartwheels Jack got away with. We had to have seen at least a dozen of them (conservative estimate) and every single time I wanted them to end with Oliver cutting them off HARD. I like Oliver and liked when he did get stiff with Jack, but Cartwheel is like a bad Dynamite Kid, only replacing the crisp execution and crippling alcoholism with cartwheels. This match felt like it was peaking to a finish, and then kept going, then went to more slapping and missed its window. However, the finish is something that only the most joyless wouldn't pop for, as Oliver bounced Cartwheel off the top rope with a front suplex and then caught Cartwheel on the rebound with a sitout powerbomb, fundamentally erasing the previous 15 minutes from my brain by finishing with the far and away coolest thing they were capable of doing.  

Allie Katch vs. Kidd Bandit

ER: I would be plenty happy never watching another Kidd Bandit match ever again. I hate a babyface whose only quality is being cute, and this was some next level eye rolling uwu waifu horseshit. I wanted to see them get the shit kicked out of them but instead we mostly got them doing simp fingers, making Allie sell for an eternity while they posed, then posed some more, then did a shitty stunner and 619. Her kicks couldn't break paper and Allie was insanely generous selling for any of it. The best parts were Allie trying to snap Bandit in half with a Boston crab and battering her in the corner with a lariat, hip bump, and big cannonball. I did like Allie's match finishing piledriver, draping Bandit over the ropes and sitting back with it, but Kidd Bandit's act is 100% not aimed at me and that is fine. I do not want to be a member of that club. 

Jimmy Lloyd vs. Masha Slamovich

ER: Out of everyone on the show, I think my friends left this show as bigger fans of Jimmy Lloyd than anyone else. They liked plenty of people on the card, but the different boy just connects...differently. I was excited for Masha/Busick - the originally scheduled match - but this was a fine replacement. I dug the story of Jimmy trying to outpower Masha at the outset with a powerbomb, but when all it did was fire her up, going immediately to the weapons and pushing things to more dangerous places (and Masha being totally fine being pushed there). The floor brawl was cool and lead to some nasty spots, with both throwing chairs (Lloyd is someone who is going to lean into chair shots), Masha running up the apron with a tornado DDT on the floor, and Lloyd hitting a nutso death valley driver off the apron through a door. They broke some doors in this one, and when they took it back in the ring was when Lloyd started breaking out his biggest bumps. He was really good at selling and taking damage from the smaller Masha, never feeling like he was overbumping and mostly selling her shots appropriately. When he flies into a door, it's because he got hit with a high impact missile dropkick that sent him flying across the ring. 

Masha didn't escape damage, as Lloyd powerbombed her across a trash can and brother, that trash can barely took any damage. The can won that battle, and Masha's future back problems will be testament to that. Lloyd leaned face first into her running kicks, took and sold a nasty suplex across an open chair, even took a piledriver onto some open chairs. We don't get to see a lot of classic piledrivers in wrestling these days, so seeing one dropping a guy head and neck through a chair is insane, and I love how she finished with another one right after. It's hard not to be a fan of the different boy after this match, and the boy came off even more lovable later in the night when my friends kept seeing him in the crowd, not always knowing if it was Lloyd or any one of a couple dozen wrestling fans who look exactly like Lloyd. After the show, when most wrestlers were hanging around ringside and the merch area selling polaroids and gear, Lloyd was just chilling in the crowd sitting alone. A different boy even among peers. 

Titus Alexander vs. Midas Kreed

ER: This was kind of a local showcase, although I'm not sure you'll be able to call Titus a local guy much longer, as clearly bigger things await him. The Bay Area scene is not where you stay if you want to grow your career, all the big ones get out and move east. Titus stood out in a big way on this card just by actually working heel, doing things that got actual heat, and sticking to it. He wasn't out looking for MJF "I'm a HEEL" type heat, he did some actual hateful stuff like getting right in the face of the female ref when she made him break a count. He moved into her personal space so quickly that I think it actually caught a lot of the crowd off guard and really got them turned against him. Titus knew how to get heel heat and comedy heat, which is an important distinction. He was good at setting up spots and not paying them off with what the crowd wanted, like clearing a section of crowd to throw Kreed through chairs, only to throw him right back into the ring instead. It's an old trick, but one I'll laugh about every time. It's an especially funny trick in GCW, since every person in the crowd knows there's a chance any match will spill into the crowd and a minimum four guys are going to get thrown through a section of chairs. 

Kreed had some flashy stuff, like a 450 splash that connected (even though he's a small guy) and a really cool pendulum swing reverse DDT that Titus took right on the back of his head. It was like a Sliced Bread, only Alexander really got drilled into the mat. Alexander has a nice moveset: a spinebuster, a couple kneelifts to the face, and a big rolling Chaos Theory German suplex that threw Kreed across the entire ring. These guys were probably the least known on the show, and post-intermission is sometimes a rough spot to connect to a crowd (which typically correlates with how long the intermission is, and this one wasn't bad at all), but these two won the crowd over pretty quickly. 

Matthew Justice/Mance Warner/AJ Gray vs. Juicy Finau/Journey Fatu/D-Rogue

ER: I was excited to see my boy Justice live. I've seen him a couple of times live, and I just really connect with him as a big time babyface. He wasn't really a babyface here, but he's got that same kind of working man's charisma that Jimmy Lloyd has, that same kind of guy who will bleed and wreck his body for the fans, with the major difference being that Matt Justice fucks. He also did not let me down, as he hit some of the absolute LOUDEST chair shots I have ever heard. He was pasting these Islanders with shots (even broke a cane over someone's head!), hitting them so hard in the head and back that I bet his hands were getting hurt just as badly. Justice wasn't just wrecking people with chairs, he also caught a big D-Rogue dive and got flattened by a Juicy splash from the middle buckle. When Juicy told the crowd he was gonna hit a 450, he climbed to the middle buckle and slapped his belly: "THIS...is 450" and then made Justice disappear beneath girth. Earlier, Juicy had threatened to do a dive to the floor, and Mancer got on the house mic and said he had a bad leg and there was no fucking way he was going to stand there and catch that motherfucker's dive. Jacob was gone, but honestly Journey isn't much of a step down in quality. He hung in for stiff shots, ran Gray through a door with a running powerslam, threw headbutts, basically everything I would have expected from Jacob. 

All the stuff in the ring was even crazier than the stuff on the floor. SGC combined forces to suplex Juicy through a table, Gray threw his lariat as hard as possible at Juicy, Justice and Mancer made the perfect bug eyed dumb faces when Juicy grabbed them in Tongan death grips, and we got a cool finish with Justice and Gray nailing D-Rogue with Superfly splashes from opposite corners. The deservedly loudest pop of the match was when Mancer wasted Journey with an unprotected chair shot to the dome, and Journey roared his way through it because, well, the brother is Samoan. This was probably my favorite match of the night, a great mix of violence and personality and big spots. 

Dark Sheik vs. Joey Janela

ER: I am not a big fan of these 20 minute Joey Janela matches, but I recognize that I am likely in the minority, and even though they had the longest match on the card they managed to keep the crowd's interest for all of it. That means something. Still, this felt like a match that was about to wrap up around 12 minutes in, so of course it shot right past that window and yep, we were locked into 20 minutes of move trading, back and forth. If you have the offense to fill 20 minutes of time then more power to you, but a lot of times there felt like no rhyme or reason as to who was in control. Joey catches her with a kind of blue thunder bomb, and moments later Joey is eating a big Sliced Bread on the apron. Joey eats a brainbuster and big guillotine legdrop, but Joey is the one setting up the prop spots just moments later. There was some entertaining bullshit with Dark Sheik's valet, SF drag star Pollo Del Mar, that ended with Del Mar putting Janela through a table with a powerbomb. At the start of the match Janela had hit her with a cheapshot and this was a good way to pay that off. 

After the powerbomb, Sheik hit a big coast to coast missile dropkick, and that's what I thought would be the finish. You know, the cheapshot at the beginning got paid off in a big way, Sheik hit a big impressive finisher, felt like a good time to end all of this. But we still needed another 9 minutes of prop set-up, bad strike exchanges, and even worse kneeling strike exchanges! Janela did hit an insane running elbowdrop through a table, running from the stage and leaping  FAR off it, far enough that I wasn't actually sure he would clear the distance. Great spot. It looked like Janela would pull this whole thing off after a piledriver and top rope double stomp, but nah, we needed to get to some of that kneel and trade that never looks good. If I remember correctly, Janela eventually lost when he suplexed Sheik through some chairs, and Sheik just wound up pinning Janela. They went all out and had a bunch of big moves, and that's great, but man was I ready for this to be over and done with long before we got there. 

Minoru Suzuki vs. Speedball Mike Bailey

ER: When we got to the venue (The Midway, great building for wrestling that I had never been to before) and started wandering around scoping out a spot to stand, one of the first things I noticed was Suzuki just hanging out by the bar, leaning against it and silently surveying the growing crowd. He was wearing a track suit with his name on it, and a sunbeam was coming down from a skylight, giving him a perfect spotlight to lounge in. I swear, I didn't see another sunbeam shining into that entire (large) venue, and here's Suzuki basking in his own personal warm glow. 

Suzuki has a pretty great thing going with his US appearances. He knows what the fans want to see, and he knows the exact bare minimum he can do to scrape by while still leaving everyone happy and excited that they got to see Minoru Suzuki live. Sometimes you get forearm exchange/silly faces Suzuki, sometimes you get that plus a little extra. I think we got the latter. There were a lot of forearm exchanges (way too many), and you can see his personal formula for them when you're watching up close. He throws 90% of his shots totally worked, but knows to payoff his killshots with real stiff killshots. This leads to a bunch of dull exchange where guys are pulling everything and meandering through their 5th, 8th, who knows how many stand and trade sequences, but they always end with an absolute jawbreaker. It's like Suzuki is using George Costanza's High Note Theory, where he knows he can sleepwalk through most of an exchange before throwing one tooth loosener, and everyone will mostly just remember all the big endings to those endless exchanges. I really liked some of their mat exchanges, and thought this would have been a lot more fun if Suzuki kept tying Bailey up with arm and wrist work, leading to Bailey forgoing his arm and just attacking with kicks. We didn't get that, but I would have liked that. 

Suzuki had a hilarious misread of the room, as he kept getting into the female ref's face when she asked him to break holds, I guess thinking that him telling a woman to get out of his face was going to get him cheered? After Titus Alexander used the exact same thing to draw strong heel heat just a couple matches earlier, it was completely brainless to go in thinking he'd get anything but awkward reactions for backing down a much smaller woman. He won them back pretty easily with a funny spot where he ducked a couple of Bailey head kicks, stuck out his tongue to mock Bailey, and then got kicked in the face. Bailey had a few cool spin kicks that stopped Suzuki cold, a couple to the chest and one that wrapped around his head. He also hit a big moonsault to the floor and had a near fall off his flipping double kneedrop that got me to bite. Bailey wound up missing the same kneedrop, only off the top rope, mine own knees crying out in eternal pain just witnessing it, and Suzuki planted him with his Gotch piledriver. The match had far too many strike exchanges, but I don't think it would have been as bad if four of the other matches hadn't had the exact same strike exchanges. If you're on the undercard of a show Suzuki is headlining, it seems pretty dumb to have a shitty stand and trade sequence in your match, but that did not slow down all of the worst strikers on the show! Even thinking that a lot of the strike exchanging in this match was cumbersome, I can't deny that this was a bigger Suzuki performance than I was expecting. The guy is a legend and has some of the most contagious charisma in wrestling, and I couldn't be happier that he's getting the biggest paydays of his life while basking in sunbeams. 

After the show we battled the strongest winds I have ever personally experienced in San Francisco, and drove a couple miles to go to one of the great SF restaurants, Papito. Papito is a great taqueria with a French chef owner-operator, and this is the first time I'd been to their new location (around the corner from their old location). My favorite music venue in SF (maybe anywhere?) is Bottom of the Hill, and Papito is a nice steep uphill walk a few blocks away from B.O.T.H. As I have not been to any concerts in SF since March 2020, I have not been this close to Papito in over two years. The original location would have been a logistical nightmare with a five person party as there were only a few tables inside. Now they have 3-4x the space and we were seated immediately. Glorious. I filled up on their excellent chips and salsa, ruining my appetite for their incredible hamburguesa, one of the greatest burgers I have had in my lifetime. My plan, however, was ingenious, as I took most of my burger home and wolfed it down the next night, regretting not requesting some of their orange salsa to go. 

As I was the driver on this trip and therefore chose what we listened to, my friends' ears were blessed by a 3-2 Giants victory on the radio, some Gene Vincent, Grateful Dead's excellent 4/8/72 show at Wembley Empire Pool (with awesome tonally shifting 30 minute Dark Star, among other highlights), The Brides of Funkenstein's disco classic Never Buy Texas From a Cowboy, and Charlotte Adigery's amazing new album Topical Dancer. 

Even though this was not the card I wanted, there was not one person in our group who was disappointed by this show. Even the matches that were firmly Not For Me had memorable moments, and the people I was excited to see totally delivered. Every one of my pals had a great time too, and when GCW announced they would be returning in July, we made plans to do it all over again. 

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Matches from Beyond Wrestling Uncharted Territory 36 11/4/21

Masha Slamovich vs. Davienne

ER: This was a 6 minute pre-show showcase match, and it worked as advertised. I'm not sure I've ever watched a Masha Slamovich match before, and I'm sure that I've skipped past her matches on shows before. I assume I wrote her off due to her name sounding too Chikara Gimmick and never thought about it again. Now that I've seen her in a showcase match, I would like to seek out potential great matches, because I thought she came off great. This was 6 minutes, and this was a fairly breathless 6 minutes. Neither took a single breather and this was just wave after wave of some stiff shots and big kicks and a go go go pace. Davienne has nice selling, can get some nice force behind her clubbing shots, and went back to a flat boot yakuza kick that I liked. But Slamovich worked with a ton of intensity and really went for the kill on strikes. She had a solebutt that was like a young Naoki Sano, a couple of spinning heel kicks where she really used her heel as the blunt object and not just the side of her leg, and a lariat so much stronger than you'd expect from her frame. She packs a wallop and it made me want more Masha. Luckily she's wrestled practically as much as any human on the planet in 2021 so I have some options. 

37. Slade vs. Alec Price

PAS: Slade is pretty much a must watch wrestler for me at this point. I am not sure why he isn't booked in GCW or ICW-NHB as he is the most compelling guy to be doing that kind of new age ECW brawling. I hadn't heard of Price before, but thought he was great too. He has a real Harmony Korine vibe to him, a real scuzz who is great at making the crowd want to see him murdered. He takes a Wrestling Slade level beating, but actually is super vicious on offense too. Price gets mauled for a bit including getting lawn darted into the ringpost, but takes over by driving the top of a steel chair right into the top of Slade's kneecap and unleashes some sick looking leg work including one of the cooler dragon screws I have seen. The knee gives him an opening not to get steamrolled by Slade, and Price actually goes over by kneeing Slade hard in the balls and rolling him up in the ropes using the no DQ stip to steal one. Feels like a big rematch is coming, and Price is a new guy I am into.

ER: I agree, Slade is can't miss right now. He's the most NWA-Wildside vibe we've gotten out of a new wrestler in ages, a guy who feels more like a cult MMA star from UFC3 than a pro wrestler. It's testament to how good Alec Price was here that he managed to outshine Slade at times and come off credible against a guy I thought was going to tear him apart. Price looks like Jardi Frantz but wrestles more like Jimmy Jacobs or Brian Kendrick, which is a style I love. His pre-match mic work showed impressive timing and confidence, the kind of thing MJF wants to do every week but goes so long that it loses all momentum. Price made me a fan in just one minute, snatching the mic to say that this is his fed and he doesn't need to wrestle anyone in a No DQ match, delivering his demands with the right amount of venom and indignance. By the time Price clonked Slade with the mic I was sold, and when his strikes landed just as hard as Slade's I was through the roof. 

This looked like a bratty college Freshman somehow holding his own against a hardened convict and that's a vibe we don't get enough in wrestling. He stood up to a Slade beating and fought back by crossing Slade up, throwing hard stomach kicks and insanely taking a fight to a very dangerous man. His leg work was really vicious, dropping Slade patella first on a chair and throwing a Maeda-level dragon screw. The chose their chair spots really well, making them stand out as uniquely violent. Slade getting dropped on his knee looked even more painful than Price taking a disgusting snap suplex across two chairs on the floor, and that's because they went out of their way to make everything look vicious. Price pulling out the win felt like a huge shock, and he's so great at being able to fully piss off every person he wrestles. The Slade/Dickinson/Price 3 way feud could yield some memorable beatings, and this just made me want more.  

Matt Makowski vs. Tracy Williams

PAS: Williams had been in ROH for the last couple of years and off my radar, but it was good to see him back and working a very Catch Point style match against Makowski, who may be the best of that next generation of Catch Point inspired guys. Lots of very cool grappling, as you would expect. Williams put on an Octopus hold and when Makowski got the break he rolled it into a Fuller leglock. There was also some nice violent arm work from Makowski. Really appreciated how Williams would adjust his body in submission holds to lessen their effect, for example Makowski put on a cloverleaf and Williams rolled onto his side so he couldn't fully crank the back. Finish had a slap fight which I thought didn't look great, although I liked Makowski sneaking in a thumb to the eye to stun Williams enough for Makowski to sink in a sick looking choke and give him a nap. 

ER: I really like these two and like a lot of what they did to each other, but a lot of it felt a but more time-filling than match-building to me. There was some strong shootstyle wrestling, with some cool grappling fakeouts and mistimed striking, and all of it looked good but never felt like it built to what it could have. Still, there was a lot to like about this, because a lot of it was them doing their very cool thing. Makowski has some of the best strike exchanges in modern wrestling, sneaking in kicks in cool ways and excelling at catching strikes. Williams is able to work a strong mirror to Makowski's heavier onslaught, and I even thought the slap fight worked really well. I thought it looked like some of the better UWFI standing battles and not something that kept to a turn based system. This was two guys throwing open hands to face and body and I thought looked good, with the Makowski thumb a great climax to it. The submission work looked good, the striking looked good, it just felt less than the execution.  

Trish Adora vs. Jordan Blade

PAS: This is a pair of the DMV's finest fighting for Adora's Pan Afrikan World Diaspora Championship. This is my first time seeing Adora, but I have been a fan of Blade from her PPW UWFI rules stuff. I really liked how this started, with hard aggressive simple mat wrestling. Blade is a powerlifting champion and does a really great job at making her grappling feel weighty. Adora is able to whip down Blade's arm and then really goes to work on that, forcing Blade to do some throws with only one arm which was super impressive. Sadly I think they lost the thread a bit near the second half of the match. It got very Garganoish, lots of faces of despair on two counts and talking to hands, and the finish run was a lot of 2 count nearfall stuff. Adora has a signature "Lariat Tubman", and she did a short arm version of it for the win, and it didn't land the way I want a finishing lariat to land. Still there were lots of this match I liked and both wrestlers feel like they have a lot of promise. 

2021 MOTY MASTER LIST

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