The Young Man and the Sea: Greco-Malenko vs Bosby

PRODUCE Vol. 3: Azùcar 8/3/26

Karl Greco-Malenko vs Tim Bosby

Generation after generation, the story is the same.

Those who possess youth, strength, vitality cannot help but feel immortal. 

The world stretches out before them. Possibilities are endless.

There is always tomorrow. There will always be another tomorrow after that and another tomorrow after that.

Any mountain can be climbed. Any obstacle can be overcome. Any foe can be defeated. All it takes is hard work and determination.

Time is on their side. 

Success follows success and with success, adulation. Everyone wishes to celebrate the new champion, the next big thing. Everyone wants a piece of the future.

Eventually, the young champion, like every young champion before him, thirsts for a greater challenge.

Eventually, the possible is no longer enough.

Eventually, he seeks out the sea.

And then, to his ultimate regret, he finds it.

The sea is fluid. The sea is endless. The sea cannot be contained.

The young champion is an expert at planting his feet, at controlling his balance. There is no footing to be found in the sea. 

The young champion is lithe, powerful, quick. To traverse the sea is to have every movement hampered. 

It snakes around him effortlessly, with a calm, relaxed ease. The sea is at peace with itself, even if it wages war with him. It batters him with waves. He survives the first and the next comes right behind. There is no rhythm to the onslaught, or at least not one that he can recognize, not one that any youth might possibly recognize. 

But the champion is no simple youth. He tries to snatch at the sea, to lock it in a hold. The sea slips out of his grasp and threatens to drag him down. He survives it, grits his teeth and puts his all behind it. He slips around a wave, tosses it overhead, not once but twice. The water splashes and reforms as if nothing had ever happened.

How do you fight the sea itself?

Surely, as the young champion was battered and dragged and stretched and strained, the thought must have crossed his mind. Hardship tended to have that effect on the youth, to make certain thoughts cross their mind when nothing else could. 

Hardship leads to such thoughts and such thoughts lead to truths and thus wisdom is grown. 

It was never about fighting the sea, never about conquering the sea. The effort is about fighting one's self, against fighting the legacy of all that had come before, all that had themselves fought the sea in the months and years prior. 

Perhaps, once upon a time, the sea itself had battles of its own to fight. The point was to measure one's self against all that came before through effort and determination. The sea was the crucible, not the opponent. The opponent was one's self. 

Yet, the sea threatened to drag him down, his arm stretched, his throat constricted. But now, realization in hand, the young champion knew what he had to do. He hung on to the waters and pulled himself up, dropping them down around him. 

And that's just about when Karl Greco-Malenko had enough of this shit. He's 56 years old. Bosby was born in 2004. His career was basically over before this kid was even born! Yeah, he was fluid as hell. Yeah, he was toned. Yeah, he could take a fall and escape a hold, take a lot and escape almost all of them, but this was getting old, and he knew a thing or two about old.

So he wrapped the lace of boot around Bosby's throat and went for another triangle choke. Time to punch out, say good game, and ice up. Yellow cards? Red cards? Ref can't call what ref can't see. Wisdom. 

Bosby, suddenly realizing that it wasn't the sea at all, just a cantankerous bastard of a warhorse who'd seen it all and done it all, and was about to do it to him as well, lifted up again. This time, he wasn't going to let the sea splash away. Instead, he put his knee down, a surface hard as hell, and power bombed Greco-Malenko down on it. A crash instead of a splat.

But Bosby wasn't just some young champion. He was the new King of Tennessee and feeling his moment, he harkened back to the generations before and dropped his straps. Dropped his straps and walked right into one last wave, a kick to the skull. Greco-Malenko wrapped him back up, shifted his grip from chin to throat, and ended the match. 

Maybe Bosby would have tomorrow and tomorrow's tomorrow, and the tomorrow after that, all the tomorrows he wanted, until he, just like everyone else, ran out of them, but today was over. 

The young champion had faced down the sea itself and survived to tell the tale. A tale worth telling.  

And the old warhorse? He was more like the rushing stampede of a herd of waves crashing over waters that by all rights should have been calm. Challenges accepted, challenges made. He has some tomorrows left ahead of him too.

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The Possibilities of the Now: Liiza Hall vs Hazuki

PRODUCE: PRODUIT 7/26/26

Liiza Hall vs Hazuki

MD: Pro wrestling is interactive and no pro wrestling is more interactive than indie wrestling. 

That's not just true for people watching in tightly packed, close-up rooms either. It's true for us as viewers at home. You don't just consume pro wrestling. You engage with it. That's doubly true for indie wrestling. 

It's not just closer to the fans there live. It's closer to all of us. There's less polish, less distance, less over-production. It's more natural, more organic, less about glitz, glamour, and artificial spectacle and more about passion, showmanship, and human spectacle created entirely by the wrestlers plying their trade. It's more a conversation.

WWE isn't going to challenge your priors. It tries to drown them out in slop and noise, rewriting history and presenting a twisted insubstantial alternative to reality that it needs you to buy into without doubt or hesitation. Without thought. AEW's better along these lines, but it still goes out of its way to reinforce your priors, giving you what you want, even if it's often not what you need.

Indie wrestling is out there trying to figure it all out with you. Sometimes it works out for the best. Sometimes it doesn't. But that risk, that effort, that triumph and frustration is half the joy, half of what reminds you that you're alive while you're watching it.

I had priors coming into this, not a ton, but some. I think Hall did too. I think the PRODUCE as a whole did. Hall had been presented a certain way leading up to this show. PRODUCE may not flood your senses and try to shut off your brain like WWE does, but it certainly works to establish the wrestlers and the fights ahead of time, encourages them tell their own stories in their own way. In my eyes, Hall came out to the ring with a certain expectation clearly expressed through her reaction to the crowd and subsequent bemusement when the crowd didn't want to love her back. 

She's Canadian. She works hard. She fights hard. This was Canada. Except for it wasn't. It was Quebec, and she doesn't have a big history with the province. Hazuki was more the attraction, someone that this crowd might have felt like they'd never get a chance to see live. 

Either way, whether this was the plan all along or whether Hall shifted in the moment, it's a testament to her that she landed where she did and a testament to indie wrestling that it has that sort of flexibility to be agile, to turn on a dime, to live in the moment, to face the human reality before it and adapt to take advantage of all the possibilities of the now. 

I came in thinking that Hall would have a chip on her shoulder after her loss to Billie Starkz, sure, that she would meet the opportunity for what it was, that this would be spirited and technical and hard hitting, and that eventually it would boil over into something mean. 

But I didn't think it would start that way, that the chip would split into a fissure before the bell and any sportsmanship or good will that Hall might came in with would fizzle away in the face of a crowd that had a very clear preference for Hazuki. 

I didn't think Hall would be trying to distract the ref so she could pry at fingers just a few minutes into the match or that Hazuki would have to channel her fire to fight from underneath from the get go because Hall had every intention of using her superior size and reach to bully her around. Maybe it all cost Hall in the end. She took that yellow card with panache but she simply couldn't keep Hazuki down. Maybe she was thrown by the crowd. Maybe the strength that resentment fueled in her wasn't pure and potent enough to get the job done. Maybe she couldn't get out of her own way. 

But that's why we watch, isn't it? That's what makes pro wrestling, and indie wrestling especially, interesting as an art form. It's not enough to just see a bunch of spots and yell This is Awesome. That's just being fed candy. It's fun once or twice but eventually, you get sick to your stomach. Sometimes you want something that's real, that hits at odd angles, that comes together a little off center, not polished and perfect, but with just enough dirt and grit. Sometimes it doesn't even come together at all, but the parts that hit still hit you in ways you didn't expect, ways that have value, that make you engage and strain and grow instead of just being another picture perfect spotfest for you to consume.

So maybe, just maybe, this crowd and this match gave Hall something she wasn't expecting, and because of that, they gave me something I wasn't expecting too. If you go and watch this now, you might have a completely different reaction. Maybe it'll even be my fault for priming you a certain way. But that's fine, that's good. Wrestling is art and art is subjective and the journey matters a hell of a lot more than the destination.  

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What Worth a Title? Mad Dog Connelly vs Mance Warner

PRODUCE Volume 2: TAIGASTYLE 7/16/26 

Mad Dog Connelly vs Mance Warner 

What is a title worth? 

What value does a title have?

What can any of this possibly mean to Mad Dog Connelly? 

As I watched this match, I kept struggling with that thought.

A title, a belt, a championship is an artificial thing. The only value it has is the value we, as a society, place upon it. The title does not make the wrestler. The wrestler makes the title. Over time, wrestler after wrestler, through defenses, through blood, sweat, and tears, give it worth. 

But still, what does any of that matter to Mad Dog Connelly? 

A title is a responsibility. It is a mantle. It is something to be defended, an obligation.

It is a chain.

And there is only one chain in this world that should matter to Mad Dog Connelly.

Yet here he was. He, who had broken all ties to society, who had gone from an “Austin” to something else entirely, who emanates red-eyed rage and fury in every action he takes, was there, at Produce fighting for not just one title but multiple titles. 

It was a bit like putting a beast in a tuxedo and setting him down to dinner.

Something just felt off. It felt off when he went after Nick Gage with Beastman (What did Mad Dog Connelly care about authority such as this?). It felt off as the match started, in the way that they used plastic chairs, in how they subsequently sat down to throw almost polite (though surely vicious) shots at one another, even in the way he set up a simple machine of a ladder hanging off of chairs. Something just didn't seem right. Something was holding him back. This was violent. This was brutal. But it was almost too civil, almost too grounded. It bordered on conventional.

The blood all over the ring did not belong to Mad Dog Connelly. It did not belong to his opponent. It had been there when they got there. 

What did Mad Dog want?

What did any of this mean to him?

The answer could be found in the form of his opponent.

Mance Warner. 

Mad Dog Connelly is a man who lives apart from society, who constantly gives in to the urge to tear it down for all of its failings. But, for all that he channels a bestial nature, for all that he embodies rage, for all that he evokes the spirit of violence and comeuppance and consequence, he is still a man. 

Mance Warner, however? He is not just any man, but the sort of man who can live on the outskirts of society. He's a man who can embrace the sort of violence that Connelly embodies, but instead of instilling a sense of horror in all those around him, people welcome him. People embrace him.

He can go on TV. He can learn pure rules (once upon a time, Connelly was welcome in UWFI styled circles, a practitioner but not anymore). He can team up with his wife and fight enemies back to back. He can win titles. 

He can go in front of a crowd and not be a monster, but instead be a folk hero. Like Dickie Murdoch and Jimmy Valiant and JYD. He can finish a strike exchange by rolling his arms, flipping, flopping, flying like Dusty Rhodes.

They'll sing songs about old Mancer. Connelly? If someone tells a tale of him, it's to frighten children into compliance. Don't go off the edge of the map: here there be monsters.

Were you to ask Connelly if he wanted that sort of existence, he would deny it. He might even destroy you for daring to ask. I write it only from a very safe distance myself. 

But there was something in this match, something about Connelly forcing himself into a strange shape, contorting himself to almost pantomime villainy, running about the back and causing trouble, playing legos with chairs and ladders, sitting across from an opponent instead of just tearing at his throat, that made me think through this match, through those titles, he saw a path long cut off to him.

Mance Warner's path. 

And it created dueling impulses within Connelly. He wanted it, but even more than he wanted it, I think he wanted to take it away from Warner. But he wanted it nonetheless. In order to get it, he had to put one foot back into a world of respectability, a human world that we all walk through, a world of more conventional hardcore matches, a world where Warner was more at home, perhaps even Mance’s place of power. Warner can do it, can thread that needle, but Connelly was a wild thing and for him to leave his world and come into ours, it came at a cost.

So despite temporarily eliminating the authority figure, despite this being anything goes, despite the weapons (chairs, a wire, the ladder), Connelly found himself trudging through mud, living tropes that belonged more to Warner than to himself. 

I think that it was only at some point after Warner stapled a red card on him to a hero’s pop, after he returned the favor stapling the yellow card on Warner’s tongue, that he realized he would never again have what Warner did, that he realized it was all hopeless, that instead of fighting for it, he had to fight to tear it all down. But by then, it was too late.

Up until that point, he was fighting for a title. He was fighting for a hope he dare not admit. He was fighting for a path back to the light. But he couldn't commit. He couldn't ever admit that to himself. And by the time he shifted direction, it was too late. He brought in the chain but Warner countered it with the screwdriver. He went back for it, but he was off balance (emotionally and literally, having a screwdriver mangle your foot would do the latter), and Warner was able to fight him off and hit a lifting headbutt and a DDT for the win.

If Connelly had been of one mind from the start, he would have triumphed. If he had merely wanted to destroy everything Warner had fought so hard for, he had a good chance of doing it. If he wanted to find his own redemption, to restore all that he had lost, represented in gold and platinum, well, I wouldn't bet against a fully committed Mad Dog Connelly. 

But he was at war with himself, and no man at war with himself is ever going to win a battle with Mance Warner.

I’ve been watching Mad Dog Connelly for a while now, though, and I was left with this thought. Now that he realizes that he can’t possibly have what Warner has, now that he hates himself all the more for ever showing weakness and wanting it in the first place, there’s only one possibility left for him. If he can’t have it (and he’ll never have it, can never have it), then he’ll fight to his dying breath to make sure no one else can have it either.

Mance Warner may have won the battle, but some wars never end.

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Every Dog Has Its Day: Zack Sabre, Jr. vs. Darian Bengston

PRODUCE Volume 1: The Octopus 6/29/26

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Darian Bengston

"Let Hercules himself do what he may,

The cat will mew, and dog will have his day."

Hamlet, Act 5, Scene 1

MD: Wrestling, even artful wrestling, especially artful wrestling, is quite often purposeful. An opener serves a purpose. This is just as true for a first scene in a movie, the first track on an album. It sets the stage. It establishes a mood.

While there were pre-show matches on PRODUCE Volume 1, they were tastes and teasers, a glimpse of the wide breadth of the possibilities of the indies in the span of fifteen minutes: comedy, power, toughness, style, and just the right amount of karaoke.

This was the start of the main card and the main course, and it had to do heavy lifting. It had to make a statement about PRODUCE itself, about independent wrestling, about all of the possibilities in the previous paragraph and more.

Zack Sabre, Jr. is often likened to Johnny Saint, and for good reason, but I see him more as a modern day Billy Robinson, not necessarily in how he wrestles, but in who he wrestles. I've seen footage of him in places of the world few other foreigners delve and it reminds me of the stories of Robinson in Iraq or India. While his home base is New Japan, he presents himself as someone who wrestles who he wants, when he wants, where he wants. He is a globetrotter, a world warrior. He created a role for himself and then, over time, with effort (and not at all a sure thing), he grew into it. For him to be starting off a show like this represents something.

Bengston represents something too. There's such life to him, such joy in how he wrestles. This is a guy who loves wrestling, loves technique, loves to challenge himself, loves to open up those little moments of triumph and celebrate them (even sometimes to his own detriment). It's clear as day to watch him move. And that technique is underpinned by a humanity and vulnerability. He has fun, he flexes his skills, he certainly has his pride, but he's relatable. He's a wrestler, and wrestlers do manipulate by trade (and we welcome them to do so; we invite them in and, in turn, they invite us in; that is the pact between us), but there's an earnestness to the process to him that just makes it all the more effective. You want to root for the guy. You want him to succeed. 

This would be a battle of technique, but not wrestling for the sake of wrestling (which can be fine and good, of course, but often is best seen as a starting point and not the destination). Personal issues are at the root of professional wrestling, and they contrived a fine one between these two for this opener.

ZSJ is on record in saying that putting on a great technical match for an American audience is like “reading Shakespeare to a dog." It's a notion that undermines the audience, the audience here being far more important than the country as a whole. PRODUCE touts a different relationship with the audience, claiming that it won't insult their intelligence. At the same time, it expects something more from them, that they embrace professional wrestling as art, something worth thinking about and engaging with, worth experiencing with an open heart instead of irony and self-conscious minimizing. The wrestling will be brave and confident and the fans will be brave and confident as well.

It insults Bengston as well. To hear it from him, he went to England to learn both wrestling and Shakespeare. This is an opportunity against an opponent who was on a featured match on a huge PPV the night before, against one who is considered one of the best technical wrestlers of his generation, but it's also a chance to prove Sabre wrong, to lift up himself, the crowd, and the fledgling organization.

So yes, there was a mood to be set, and they managed it admirably on the mat. Sabre controlled to start, using one hold to unlock the next (sometimes a criticism of him, but in 2026, it comes off as strategic to me more often than not). He was able to pry down Bengston's leg despite an attempt to jam it. When controlling the arm, he gave a little wave to the crowd. He saw this as easy work. Bengston however, snuck a leg in as a simple too to create leverage, breaking a hold and turning things around on ZSJ. Bengston chose to use his superior positioning to ride ZSJ's back in the most insulting way possible. Sabre, of course, took offense. The mood was set.

ZSJ came in hot, separating arms and stepping down upon them, forcing pain to blossom across Darian's face. Bengston cartwheeled away at first chance and was able to return favor to ZSJ's legs. Sabre managed an elevated half crab but when he went for a bow and arrow, Bengston snuck in a tight short dragon screw. It wasn't necessarily a human game of chess so much as frenetic technical table tennis of joints and limbs.

Sabre volleyed back, dropping down and kicking out the arm. So far the match had its rhythm, its punctuation, but that felt like the first real transition as Sabre honed in on one specific body part. That's how we break down matches, how we analyze and organize them. Some have clear shine/heat/comeback structures, but so many don't. In those, you're looking for the transitions, the shifting of the tides of fate and advantage. You're watching to see how the characters interact, how they are affected, how they affect one another. And how they interface with the rules and norms of the world.

This match was an opportunity not just to establish these two characters, the style, the stakes, but also the rules and the potential consequence for them. Sabre doubled down on the arm, starting in with his trademark joint manipulation with the fingers. The ref immediately pulled out a yellow card, something new, something different, something perhaps timely in this World Cup year. Sabre complained, and riding another wave of transition (or, perhaps were we to lean into the narrative itself, opportunity), Bengston was able to recover.

He reversed a whip into a headlock takeover, and, much like Sabre before him, shifted from one hold to the next, looking for what he wanted. Unfortunately, what he wanted here was to preen and taunt, to shoot an imaginary basketball through an imaginary hoop and right down upon Sabre's head. Character drives action, and Bengston's character, human as it might be, allowed Sabre to drive right over him, and right into a cross arm-breaker.

A few minutes later, after the two traded uppercuts and once Sabre took over himself, Sabre's own character reared his head, for good and ill. The holds became less rote and more experimental. In this, Sabre was an artist dabbling in bodily architecture. What if a joint was twisted this way, one limb stacked over the other, a leg raised high over head? What edifice might he create? There was a schoolyard element to it, an older sibling contorting a younger, something that wasn't done with respect, but perhaps with familiarity and affection. Bengston had proven himself worth this sort of playful effort, worth an affectionate bullying instead of just a professional dismantling. It was a welcome into a global family of grapplers.

Unsurprisingly, Bengston took it like all younger siblings take it, with frustration and aggravation. He broke free, slapped the mat, pushed up and kept fighting. Sabre, at times, and as the match went on, certainly wanted this, but Bengston needed it. It gave him fire, but it left him well-suited for table tennis, not chess, and at some point, when it was time to bring things to a close, Sabre shifted gears from jamming (literal and figurative) to precise mastery. 

Bengston held his own during the pin exchanges of the finishing stretch, but even being admirably and effectively reactive was never going to be enough in a world where you have to think three moves ahead. Sabre was, unsurprisingly, perhaps inevitably, able to trap him for the pin.

Zack Sabre, Jr., wrestling nobility in his own way, having christened another ship, will trot off to another part of the globe, will go off to fight elsewhere, and, as revealed post-match, will return to create a show of his own. 

PRODUCE, thus christened, still has a journey before itself. One match does not make a show. One show does not make a legacy. But at least the stage had been set.

And Darian Bengston? Even though he lost the match, he won something greater. The quote above wasn't about Hamlet winning anything. It was simply about him being heard. Was Bengston heard? Absolutely. Was he seen? Undeniably. He had his day here, and there's every reason to believe that his tomorrow will be brighter still.

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