Blackwood and Icarus Shut Off the Lights on the Way Out

Kevin Blackwood vs Judas Icarus Prestige Roseland XIII 2/20/26

When I picture Portland Wrestling, I picture the Portland Sports Arena in 1979 or 1980. I picture Frank Bonnema hosting and Don Owen ring announcing. I picture long 2/3 fall matches given away on live tv to please the sponsors. I picture Buddy Rose and Ed Wiskowski or Roddy Piper and Rick Martel doing interviews between falls.

But most of all, I picture all the fans huddling together to fit in the camera as Bonnema talks about upcoming shows, knowing that they might get to see themselves on TV later. Portland, more than any other old territory, felt like family. Buddy was the cousin you had to put up with. Don Owen was the put upon dad, Frank Bonnema the welcoming uncle. 

In watching the fans huddle around the ring for Roseland XIII, the last Prestige show, Kevin Blackwood's last match, slapping on the mat, chanting the company's name, it felt, as much as anything else, like Portland Wrestling. It felt like watching family gather to partake in something they love one last time. 

Wrestling is best when it combines the real with the mythic. The look on Blackwood's face as he walked to the ring, the emotion charging the air as he exchanged words with Icarus before the bell... as real as could be. But there was something else in the air too. The preceding match had been a Construction Site match, and the ring was covered in dust. With every bump, it flew up as a fog, a mist. As the match passed the 11 PM mark, it created a fanastical, dreamlike atmosphere. The harder they hit the ropes, hit the mat, hit each other, the more surreal and mythic everything felt. I can't imagine they had planned for it, but it created the mood of ships passing into the darkness, of something meaningful leaving this world behind. 

And they did hit hard. They did everything hard. This was a match meant to celebrate Indie Wrestling. They put past encounters, past animosity behind, to create a main event title match that represented the super indie style of the 21st century and just maybe Prestige's place in it.

At first it was clean, quick exchanges, quick attempts, quick counters, but when Icarus ran into a foot in the corner, the tone changed. Everything became chippier, more aggressive, more personal. He leaned in with his chin, but ended up suffering most with his back as he overextended and took a nasty bump onto the apron and to the floor.

Blackwood honed in. In some ways, he felt like a man fighting his own instincts. He wrestled the match hard but clean, not falling to more underhanded habits. He tossed Icarus into the third row with a powerbomb, but then wouldn't sit back and take the countout. 

That was the humanity underpinning the myth, that underpinned the fight both wrestlers brought to the table. When the match ended, Blackwood would end. Prestige would end. Neither wrestler wanted that. It was the structural truth beneath each reversal, underneath each kickout. Icarus refused to quit, refused even to let Blackwood put on a Boston Crab. He refused to stay down even after Blackwood's signature moves. 

As Icarus fought back, Blackwood's back buckled under the pressure as well. They stood and threw shots, staggered, unrelenting. They continued to escalate, leaning on their familiarity, building from their previous matches. 

Down the stretch, they went to the well of moves from hallowed Prestige wrestlers of the past, including one another. I've seen such sequences before. It's a range. Sometimes it's gratuitous. Sometimes it doesn't feel earned or plausible, sometimes it takes you out of the match, feels like wrestlers playing at pro wrestling. On the other hand, when Tanahashi called to the past in his retirement match, it felt desperate in the best of ways. 

Here, it felt natural. They didn't want it to end. They wanted to celebrate it, celebrate each other. They were wrestling for pride, for posterity, to be the last of something that meant everything to them. Once the floodgates were open with Blackwood attempt of Shelly's Shellshock, it made sense to me that Icarus' pride would rise to meet his opponent halfway.

In the end, Icarus survived everything; Blackwood survived almost everything, including a Liontamer. Icarus realized it wasn't going to work and he went to the Bulldog Choke one last time, a move that Blackwood had tapped to before, one that should have gained Icarus a win in a previous match, but didn't due to an oversight, a technicality. Even though the universe was forever slipping out of alignment, even though things would never be the same, and for this crowd, maybe never be right again, at least one thing could be put back in order, as Blackwood did tap for all to see, and Icarus was left, dust in the air, ribbons flying from every direction, a champion as the screen faded to black.

Not long ago, we saw another tap end another career, one that felt like a confusing contradiction at best. This, though? This felt like Blackwood letting something go, setting something free, passing something forward. I don't know if this specific match would have worked in this specific way in another place, on another night, in front of another crowd, but likewise, I don't know if any other match would have worked quite like this in front of this crowd, on this night, in this place. 

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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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2024 Ongoing MOTY List: Makabe vs. Sabre

 

Tangled Up in You

1. Daniel Makabe vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Prestige Wrestling 4/14

ER: I didn't plan on following Dan around on tour like I was following late era Dead, but after he worked the main event of our DEAN~!!! show last week and I saw he was working Zack Sabre in Portland the next weekend, I checked plane tickets just to see how feasible it would be. You know those plane ticket deals you hear about but never actually experience? The kind where someone you know makes it sound like an airline paid them $1,500 and gave them free flight vouchers to anywhere in the world just for moving to an empty seat to accommodate a mom and her child? And then a similar deal is offered to you on a future flight and there is no cash offer, no flight vouchers, only the knowledge of letting a mother sit with her child, and you feel like a sucker? Well, whatever happened, I looked up flights and there was the kind of screaming deal that I have never benefitted from, some kooky mileage plan perk that was giving me 5x the usual value on points, meaning I booked a trip to see Wrestling Genius Daniel Makabe wrestling Zack Sabre Jr. for what came out to $22.40. That is a deal I could not pass up, so after seeing Dan in Philly and New Jersey one week, I jetted off to see him in Portland the next, and this summer I plan on seeing him in Deer Creek, IN, the Alpine Valley Music Theater in East Troy, Wisconsin, and possibly out to the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia for a two-nighter. 

It was totally worth it. Makabe and Sabre worked a long, nearly 25 minute match, that did not in any way feel like a 20+ minute match. It was heavy on grappling and leverage and the crowd ate it up. That's not an easy feat on a 4 hour show that already had several 15-20 minute matches, but this packed 1,000+ strong house at the Roseland wanted to see some fucking grappling, and these are two of the finest to do it. Seeing a match like this up close (standing behind the 3rd row on camera side) only makes this style of wrestling sing, but I also feel the match would play no matter how you watched it. You can watch it on 240p on your phone to save battery, or you can stand and watch it next to some gal who is going to be married to Makabe, both of you reacting with disgust and glee as Sabre leaves a literal boot print on Dan's neck with a kick. There's no wrong way. They could have gone on grappling forever and tricked the crowd into watching a 60 minute Broadway until midnight on a work night. That's how strong a command they had. 

They stayed close and tangled through much of it. The gamesmanship was great. Sabre is the perfect kind of cock who can back it up, Dan is a guy who can be goaded into things but also loves letting opponents get comfortable thinking they can ace him. Both have tricks, both wrestle with the confidence of someone who knows their tricks are craftier than the other. My favorite thing to see Makabe do up close is dig his palm or elbow into flesh to procure a method of advancement, Digging a quick elbow into Sabre's ribs and being right there to catch his arm when he flinches. There are no seams, nobody is moving their arm or leg into place for the other, you can watch Makabe force an error and be waiting to catch the forced error, like a guy bouncing a ball off a wall and anticipating how to play it before the bounce. Dan digs elbow points into thighs, throws a stiff palm underneath the ribs, seemingly knows many pressure points to strike on every limb that allow him split second distractions on his way to advancing up or down that limb. It's a joy to watch up close, like Ricky Jay is showing you a card trick repeatedly, until you can process what he's doing. 

A kid standing on his seat not far from me kept screaming out for Zack Sabre to twist or injure a part of Makabe. This kid was a real sicko, screaming for Sabre to twist Makabe's neck, leg, feet, fingers, just screaming out his childlike voodoo doll requests with every Twisting Dream sounding like a worse and worse existence for Dan. I loved little ways Dan would play possum, lying in wait for Sabre to throw a kick just so he could catch him with a sick abbreviated dragon screw, or luring Sabre into a stomach kick just to pivot instantly into a trap leg suplex (the only throw of the match). The possum moments were great, because they also led to possum moments that worked out terribly: laying in wait for a kick he knew was coming only to not be quick enough and instead take a full kick to the chest, or later when he gets a little too married to a kneebar while legs are tangled, he's left prone for a swinging kick right in the neck that sounded louder than anything else in the match (and left an even louder welt). Sabre was of course the first one to go for strikes, but this is a match that didn't need any kind of strikes (and didn't have many). Sabre is always the first one to pull shit like that, but I loved the ways Dan forced him back into a Frye/Shamrock stubborn kneebar battle. Watching ol' slippery Daniel Makabe slip his way in and out of an octopus, or squirm through shifting Sabre's foot a couple inches to allow him to get his own trailer hitch while Sabre was also pushing on Makabe's foot to do the same, locked in a ligament twisting ouroboros that managed to always build while still feeling like they left hours of material on the table. 

Sabre worked over and welted up Dan's arm whenever the leg twisting didn't go well for him, and there were multiple times where Makabe couldn't capitalize on something because of the ways it was now harder to utilize his left arm. Posting up on the arm was now out of the question, but using it bluntly for twisting now became more focused, and no matter how many times Sabre kicked at Makabe's left arm, he couldn't slow down Dan's Luis Castillo-like right hand (one of which landed hard and clean, one which landed on Sabre's jaw just as a flat boot kick landed right in Makabe's gut). Both men had a couple of rope breaks during some long engagements with tangled legs, including Sabre having to scramble so quickly that he ended up grabbing the bottom rope on either side of ref Aubrey Edwards like he was Eddie Guerrero hugging the referee for protection. Every twist felt like a possible finish, a thing that could catch the other on a bad day, but when Sabre locked his leg around Dan's left arm and trapped them both behind his back in a sick attempt to make Makabe's elbows touch, the could started feeling like a certain would. 

I don't think it's easy to main event a long show and keep a tired Sunday night crowd hot for wrist bending and elbows dug into hip points, but it's business as usual for a wrestling genius and the evergreen Gotta Hand it To Sabre. These people, me included, got louder and louder for all of it, and I think we all would have been right there in minute 45. Two wrestlers so good they make you lose track of time, when everything we do every day revolves exclusively around time. I like the way they twisted. 

2024 MOTY MASTER LIST

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