We Need to Get Dixie on a DEAN~! Show

 

Dixie vs. Rainchild JAPW 7/13/02

ER: Why did Dixie beloved by me and all the Real Ones during the early 2000s? Who's to say but he starts this match with a long standing cravat in 2002 and proceeds to work mid 90s Jamie Dundee schtick in Seaside Heights while selling hiptosses and armdrags. He is the youngest man working rope scrapes across the eyes in 2002 wrestling and he knows how to shit talk during a chinlock as well as Tracy Smothers or Adam Pearce. Rainchild was so good for wrestling so few matches. He does "simple" offense well, like his beautiful dropkick, and aims high on his big offense. He might have bit off more than he can chew but I like his brand of go go go. A complicated DDT doesn't quite work? Whatever, he also does a shooting star press to the floor while a ferris wheel glows in the background. His offense is big, like his backpack stunner and his beautifully executed falcon arrow, and he is a dynamic bumper. His bumps are athletic, but in a way where he clearly leans into offense to force the bumps, not looking like he predetermined which athletic bump to take. It looks great because Dixie is someone who can force a mean bump. 

Dixie runs a knee into the side of Rainchild's head and hits increasingly violent back elbows, aimed at Rainchild's eye, and does single arm chops that hit as hard as Tenryu (once you scale the size accordingly). He keeps returning to that cravat he began with and hits snap suplexes with full Dynamite energy, building to his stiffest back elbow of the match. Dixie missed a kneedrop off the top that was so sweet it brought a tear to my eye. I love how Singlet Era Dixie always had the visual threat of a strap drop but he never used it as a regular spot, preferring to keep the straps secure in case the need for a strap drop arose. Finishing the match with an Alabama slam into a snug jackknife pin is a perfectly heel troll Dixie way to win a match that featured a shooting star press to the floor. 

After he's won the match, Dixie hits a fistdrop and doing that feels so on the nose for A Thing That Eric's Favorite Wrestler Would Do that it makes me believe slightly more in a Truman Show universe made just for me. I hate this world in its current state, so at what point did my show get canceled? Taking my girl out to a cheap happy hour now costs $60 but when I was 21 skinny east coast fliers were perfecting southern style and doing perfect fistdrops. The world was mine. 

Dixie vs. Azrieal  JAPW 8/10/02

ER: I don't know if wrestling gets better than Dixie wrestling in Seaside Heights. It's like a perfect Conner O'Malley bit. He's challenging guys to step over the rail, telling loudmouths exactly where they can find him outside after the show. He responds to Azrieal's side headlock takeovers like a guy who is wondering what this shit is all about. What's this Working Holds shit!? There are too many things I love about Dixie's wrestling. How was he this good? He isn't just a good bumper, he's a good bumper who can add comedy after the bump. He takes a huracanrana with 0.7 Juventud speed and turns it into a comedy bump as it's happening, taking the rana as if it quickly bumped him to the floor. It's like the comedy bumping of Chris Candido with the athletic speed of Juvy. His leaping kneedrop is something nobody in wrestling is doing right now. There's a wide open market for Best Drops because all forms of Drops are a dying breed. How strange is that? Fistdrops are barely around, kneedrops have been phased almost entirely out, even elbowdrops are nowhere near as common (or as good) as they were a couple decades ago. Think about how few elbowdrops there are in modern wrestling, and how everything is worse for it. Can you name any of the guys in the current discussion for best elbowdrop? No good ones come to my mind. 

Dixie is great at little individual aspects of wrestling, like fighting for the ropes. I like the levels of panic in which he fought for the ropes, like he has a 1-5 panic dial and knew when to start kick his legs to help him scoot faster when the dial hit 4. He is great at putting over the armbar of a man with the smallest arms on the roster. Azrieal does a wild swan dive cannonball into the aisle and Dixie catches as much of it as we can reasonably expect a small teenager to catch. I always loved how Jersey All Pro guys sold big offense that didn't fully hit. I thought it only added to the craziness of spots when one of them would stand up slowly but proudly, in pain after hitting as much concrete as man. They did the thing, they survived the impact, they'll deal with the bad joints in a decade. Dixie was great at using the Alabama slam as not just a finish, but as a move to set up the finish, and thinking about his own offense as multifaceted and not just a myopic "This is My Finish and it comes in This Order" was just one more thing he did that was a cut above the rest.  

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H Effect Are Losers and Users So Don't Need No Accusers

Wasted Youth (Insane Dragon/Deranged) vs. The SAT (Joel/Jose Maximo) vs. Rainchild/Jay Lethal JAPW 6/7/02 - EPIC

PAS: This is just what you want from a turn of the century skinny Jersey fliers match. Rainchild is a guy who wrestled for maybe six months, but he looked good here, especially early doing some nice fast arm drag and rana exchanges with Wasted Youth. Maximo's were working pretty stiff I don't remember them as Dynamite Kid/Beniot style juniors, but they were all about stiff chops snap suplexes and head drops. The match finishes up with a great dive train right next to the Bayonne wall, so lots of height but not a lot of distance, Lethal hits a tope where he basically piledrives his head into the concrete, but all the other dives were beautiful. Insane Dragon then gets finished off with some truly harrowing head drops, the kind of thing which you want to watch through your hands like a horror film.

ER: This was right in the middle of when I was most excited about indy wrestling, with tons of skinny hyper athletic freaks all competing to see who could take a more dangerous bump on their head, shoulder or neck, and everyone wins! I always like Rainchild, he was in an early match of the first JAPW tape I bought (against Ghost Shadow!) and I thought he was really good, was shocked to learn years later how little he actually worked. It's great seeing Lethal when he was working as a Waltman disciple, just a skinny guy dropping fast legs and dives with bad landings. I also didn't remember the SAT as Benoit disciples but I liked that here. I think they were better at dangerously dropping skinny guys with fast suplexes than working quick sequences with them. And for quick sequences you can't really do better than Wasted Youth. These guys were so fast and so damn clever, falling in ways you wouldn't expect and working sequences you had never seen before, adding new twists to familiar wrestling. I flipped when Izzy came off the topes with a double ballshot, then did a flipping dropkick (one guy for each foot) with no regard for his landing. And there were a dozen moments like that, like Rainchild doing cool dodges for Maximo clotheslines, or Izzy jumping and flipping backwards over guys to set up ranas, Deranged flipping himself onto his shoulder with a spinkick, these guys are all just fearless. The dive train is one for the ages, into the Bayonne wall as Phil said. Everyone tries to one-up and they were all a blast, even Rainchild's Space Flying Tiger Accidental Rope Bounce Tope en Reversa. Izzy not only has the best punches in the match, but also takes the nastiest bumps, getting absolutely dismantled by suplexes at the end. I can't wait to watch more of this stuff.

H Effect (Dixie/Insane Dragon/Deranged) vs. JAPW Legends (Magic/J-Lover/Skinhead Ivan) JAPW 11/12/16 - FUN

PAS: Insane Dragon comes out of a nearly decade long retirement to land an awesome looking tope con hilo and take a few crazy bumps. Dixie (who had come out of retirement on the last show) still has great execution, and took Magic's insane Tiger Driver 98 style finisher right on his neck, there was some goofy over bumping by Deranged and a not great section built around J-Lover's hard head, but it was really good to see all of these Wes Hatch comp tape legends back and doing their thing.

ER: This was the match that started the idea for a Dixie/Dragon C&A, seeing these two nutbars come back and still bring their specific brand of rich kid stoner crazy was so much fun, I called Phil and suggested we revisit their entire output. We were both fans of the early 2000s NE indy scene, and shoot one of our earliest interactions was me buying Phil's Low-Ki comp tape off him. It feels appropriate. Skinhead Ivan really should be wearing a khakis and a white polo these days, needs to be more in touch with his people (though their uniform hadn't changed at this point, so he gets at least a pass on the uniform, nothing else). Deranged hits a deranged flip dive that flings him hard into his opponent AND the guard rail, Magic is still a compact powerhouse, and Izzy and Dixie still know how to die. That Tiger Driver '98 was just an insane bump to be taking, and I'm glad these guys haven't changed.

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