Matches from Beyond Wrestling 9/20/20

To Infinity and Beyond vs. Mike Verna/Rex Lawless

PAS: Verna and Lawless are two jacked up Jersey looking guys, with fun power offense. TIAB are one of the best tag teams in the world, although this was much more of a move, move, move match then the traditional tag structure they excel at. The moves were pretty fun, although not hit perfectly. Verna gets one guy in a powerslam position and the other in a powerbomb position and Lawless Hart Attacks the guy in the powerbomb position. TIAB also chain stuff together really well and make SAT double teams look plausible. There was some timing issues which kept this from a real high level, but Cheech and Delaney are always worth watching.

ER: To Infinity are my favorite tag team going, and I have a feeling this would have been a real mess without them in there. Lawless is like a green Brody King and Verna is a guy working a Brian Cage power gimmick while being roughly the same size as Chris Candido. Almost all of his power spots come off terribly, a power guy who relies on his opponent to make him look powerful. He did a slingshot suplex spot (and it's a spot he does regularly) where he walked Cheech around each side of the ring and bounced him off the top rope, only he was just walking Cheech close enough for Cheech to lower his own legs to touch the ropes. To do a slingshot suplex you have to be able to lower your opponent on your own power, and Verna's whole thing is basically making other guys provide the illusion of power. This doesn't really have the build or nuance of the best Infinity tags, had more the feeling of "guys doing things" which isn't what makes Infinity matches great. They're good at setting up timing spots, but the timing has to at least somewhat be there from the other team, and here it was not. 

9. Matt Makowski vs. Chris Dickinson

PAS: About the most fun I have had watching pandemic era wrestling. Feels very much in the spirit of the BattlArts and FUTEN I have been binging lately, clearly pro-wrestling with rope running and pinfalls, but shot through with shoot holds and stiff violence. Dickinson is such a horse, everything he does has a thud and an oomph to it, meanwhile Makowski matches him shot for shot and throws in some really inventive shoot innovations. They start out with some tough simple grappling, hard takedowns and escapes, mixed in with thudding kicks and elbows, moving into some big submission near falls, and really great moves. Makowski does a cutthroat torture rack spin into a cross armbreaker which is indescribably cool, and Dickinson counters into a deadlift spinning German from the ground which is Tamon Hondaish in its beauty and force, one of the niftiest two move exchanges I can remember seeing. I also loved the later battle out of the cross armbreaker, where Dickinson does one of the coolest Hughes lift counters I can remember. I want to see this run back again, and want to see both of these guys against nearly anyone.

ER: I've watched plenty of pandemic wrestling that I loved, but this stood out as unique among the stuff I loved. Makowski brings Z-1 shoot gaijin feel to these kinds of matches, and Dickinson is the kind of pro who is great enough at shoot elements that he can take a guy like that and do something special. Not everything hits clean, but this isn't the kind of match where clean matters as much. The grappling is strong and comes off like both men are fighting for dominant position at all times, focusing on the actual struggle rather than pulling off a cool reversal. But there are cool reversals! Once they start bringing hard kicks and elbows, I completely wasn't expecting Makowski to catch a Dickinson kick and spin counter to a Judas elbow, and I love how Makowski couldn't capitalize right away and throws his own kick, only for Dickinson to rearrange his patella placement with a dragon screw. Makowski was going after Dickinson's arm and Dickinson managed to tie up Makowski's way in cool ways, and both sent the other scrambling for the ropes in meaningful ways. It took a little effort to prep, but Makowski lifting Dickinson into a fireman's carry and violently unrolling him into an armbar is an incredibly cool move that somebody incredibly less cool will probably steal, but Dickinson had a bunch of less flashy but no less nasty tricks. I loved Dickinson locking in a trailer hitch and then roughly rolling Makowski over with it, and the fights out of barred legs were all nasty. Makowski hasn't been at this very long, but has a cool tool bag to pull from, and Dickinson is someone who will gamely hang in and throw leather with that kind of guy. It's no wonder this came off as awesome as it did. 

2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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Matches from EVOLVE 140 11/10/19

Colby Corino/Sean Maluta vs. Kekoa/Mike Verna

ER: I was into this one because I really like Corino and Maluta has made a lot of jumps since teaming with Kingston, and this was those two against two guys who recently impressed at an Evolve tryout. So I was expected The Unwanted to just destroy them and instead they basically worked a competitive 50/50 match with two guys who worked like they had recently won a tryout competition. I was surprised to see both Kekoa and Verna have close to a decade of experience because both looked tentative and felt like rookies who were figuring things out. Verna is a muscle guy who they played off as a BIG muscle guy, and he does big muscle guy Brian Cage offense, but he's clearly Candido size. So you have a 5'9" 220 lb. guy out there doing slingshot suplexes walking to all sides of the ring and getting Maluta and Corino placed on him for tandem powerslams, but he barely looks like the biggest guy in the match. It was weird. Kekoa had a couple of nice strike combos, but had a hesitance to a lot of it and it felt like Corino and Maluta were waiting around longer than they should have been. I loved all the parts of The Unwanted on offense, so that's what makes the match worth watching. Maluta has some strikes that I wished he would use even more, because he really knows how to punch through an elbow strike, great form, and I like a lot of his double teams with Corino. 

Corino is wisely looking at Jimmy Jacobs as his ceiling, and I think he's a really good Jimmy Jacobs. He makes the most of his size and throws himself hard into every piece of offense, the way Spike Dudley would throw his whole body into his battering ram headbutt. Corino looks like a guy who shouldn't hit hard, but he's got great elbows and kicks and is awesome at recklessly throwing his body around. There's one sequence that kept threatening to turn into the kind of indy wrestling sequence that I hate, where Corino and Verna kept running across the ring hitting each other. So Corino would hit him and take off across the ring, followed immediately by Verna who hits him and takes off, followed immediately by Corino, etc. Those sequences are almost always trash, but Corino decks him with an elbow, mixes it up with a wicked yakuza kick, and instead of continuing the sequence he flings himself over the ropes into Kekoa, doing a sloppily effective tope con hilo. It always feels like Corino is throwing as much of himself as possible into his offense, and it makes everything he does read so much better.


Babatunde vs. Brandon Taggart

ER: Well this wasn't very good, filled with tons of moments I wouldn't want from a hoss fight (as they called it on commentary). I've seen Taggart around but its always in scramble matches, feels like a good time to really see what he can bring is in a match like this. And I did not like most of what he brought. He's got a look that really screams Backyard, with super distressed jeans and Murderface hair. I know he was in IWA Mid-South a lot and he wrestles like the only training he got there was "How to have the precisely exact bad body as Ian Rotten", just a pale pinkish lumpy bod. He looks like his entrance theme should be Also Sprach Keratosis Pilaris. There are several sections of really shitty "reversal striking" where they go through these tedious block dance sequences. Taggart throws a blocked back elbow which spins him around into a blocked forearm smash which spins him back around into a mule kick, which spins him back the other way into a tornado clothesline. It all looks awful, and they need to take that shit back to their Wednesday night square dancing class and keep it the fuck away from a hoss fight. Taggart also clearly struggles to get himself up to the 2nd set of turnbuckles. Babatunde has workable tools, like how his missed big splashes land where the opponent actually was, forcing Taggart to really roll far out of the way or still get hit. Babatunde also had a series of running shoulderblocks in the corner, first ramming Taggart in the guy, then backing up, running into his body, backing up farther and running in harder, etc. Babatunde feels like a guy who Shinya Hashimoto could have had a great match against. Brandon Taggart felt like a guy who paid to be on an Evolve show.


Anthony Gutierrez vs. Donovan

ER: This was literally one minute long, but it was a good minute. Donovan throws a bunch of strikes, rushes in and gets got by Sharkbait's one man Spanish Fly, and then immediately tapped with an armbar. But Donovan showed me a lot with his strikes, throwing great body shots and a couple nice elbow smashes, definitely seems like a cool guy to have as the flunky in Eddie Kingston's stable.


120. Eddie Kingston vs. Arturo Ruas

PAS: Kingston's run as the modern day Inoki continues as he takes on Ruas, a Capoeira and BJJ fighter who is in the WWE system for some reason. Ruas has some fun body shots and kicks and Kingston is a guy who can work a match around body shots and kicks. I really liked Ruas's scissors kick takedown and it was a fun precursor to Kingston banging him in the eye with a wrench for the DQ. Seemed a bit weird for Kingston to look for the way out, when he was more than competitive,  and it was a bit of a flat finish. But I really enjoy these minor key Eddie matches and I grabbed a WWN Live sub just to watch him work green Performance Center guys.

ER: Kingston really is great as a modern Inoki, and I'm sure there isn't anyone currently as good at being totally overwhelmed by someone's fighting style, getting his bearings, and storming through with his own style. That's what makes Kingston so great, right? His stubborn hardheadedness that allows him to rush into attacks, eat shots that could have been avoided with a stronger game plan, and still come out the other side swinging. Kingston makes the best befuddled faces as Ruas is picking him apart, getting King to bite on one strike before sneaking in hard body shots, and nobody is better than Kingston at selling a stitch in his side. I don't love Ruas's offense, and maybe it's happened but I don't think we've seen someone make capoeira work in a pro wrestling setting, but Kingston is really the perfect foil for all of it. He's great at bumbling and getting his timing thrown off while Ruas is dinking around in a handstand or something. Kingston really laces into Ruas when he finally gets hold of him, my favorite shot when King just grabs him by the dome and clonks him with a headbutt. I liked the DQ finish, but it's a disappointing finish that Kingston can do really well. Even though he was clearly landing as many shots as Ruas, I like him just bashing a guy in the eye with a wrench because "fuck it this ain't worth it". Ruas catching that flying body scissors and requiring Kingston to quickly work for a rope break was the line Ruas caught, Kingston deciding this guy is too problematic so let's find the quickest way to leave this party.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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