80s Joshi on Wednesday: Yokota! Hori! Martel! Martin!

Volume 3 

4. Jaguar Yokota & Jumbo Hori vs. Judy Martin & Sherri Martel 

This is the last match Judy Martin and Sherri Martel would have in this tour of Japan before heading back to the United States. From what cards I can see Sherri actually tagged with Kaoru (later Dump) Matsumoto for most of this tour. Those are matches that'd be interesting to see if there's any evidence she had an influence on Dump (they certainly have 'act insane' in common). No footage of any of them though. 

To the match, Jaguar has her arm taped up and Judy & Sherri immediately go after it. There's no shine at all. Barely 30 seconds into the match and this is the heels working over a body part. It's a lot less hectic than their previous outing, which maybe doesn't suit them at first, but it also gives them something to build up to. They were going somewhere with the heat but I thought Jaguar's tag out was a bit anti-climatic, she literally just throws one punch to the gut and then rolls over to the over side of the ring to tag in Jumbo Hori. Could have done with a bit more struggle there.

This was basically a set up for a double figure-four spot. Sherri Martel sells Jaguar's figure four by shaking around like she's in the most unbearable pain ever. When she rolls out of the ring and Judy Martin gets in, Jaguar does one of the best rolling handstands I've ever seen her do into a dropkick. I find it mesmerising. 

This is my favourite part of the match though. Judy and Sherri have an argument after a miscommunication, they're driven to the outside and are still arguing. Then Jaguar and Jumbo chase them around the ring going in opposite directions, until Judy and Sherri meet on the other side and crash into each other! Perfect. I don't remember seeing that anywhere else but it's such a simple and funny spot to make the heels look like clowns.

We then get a double countout, which in AJW 2/3 falls rules means the score is 1-1 so this next fall is the final one. 

I'm not some big limbwork obsessive but in this match I think it would have been better for Jaguar's arm to come into play. Mainly because if you're going to spend the first few minutes of the match setting up that and nothing else, it doesn't make much sense to me for it to then have no impact on the rest of the match. It's like spending the opening chapter of a novel establishing that the main character has a fear of heights but then that trait having zero impact on the plot.

Instead, this final fall is more heel shenanigans, but relatively tame compared to what we've seen before. There's a beatdown on the outside, Jaguar gets thrown onto a table. There's a decent comeback where she ducks a double clothesline and then has Jumbo lift her up for a couple of double thrust kicks. Jumbo actually gets the pin with a top rope crossbody, which would have been a good win for her.

Fans of Judy & Sherri will appreciate seeing this. It's a better opportunity than they usually got in the USA to show how good they were and it has some uniqueness going for it. Pretty good. I don't think anyone gave a standout performance though nor did we really learn much.

***

MD: A lot going on here. Less chaotic and more focused to start as they target Yokota’s damaged elbow but that does go away after a while. Early transitions aren’t super interesting. Hori gets swept under on the outside when she tries to help save her partner but then she comes back with just a punch to the gut. Love the end of the fall though. Yokota handsprings through but ends up 2-on-1. It bleeds into heel miscommunication and the heels shouting at each other and shoving. Hori and Yokota take over and chase them around ringside where they crash into each other. Then it becomes a mad dash back into the ring, really putting over the countout in a way you can only do in a ⅔ falls match. Yokota makes it back in but I don’t think it’s in time so it’s 1-1.

This had more of Hori working big too. She crashed into both Americans in the corner like Andre might do. Martin sold a Vader Attack from her by almost being taken out of the match. They had Yokota barely survive another count later on, but the finish was pretty definitive with Hori hitting a big flying body press for the win. It had a lot of disjointed stuff (I didn’t mention the double figure fours) and lacked the overall chaotic feel of the last Martin/Sherri tag but the highs were pretty high and very fun here. 
 

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80s Joshi on Wednesday: Mimi! Yukari! Martel! Martin!

 Volume 3

3. Judy Martin & Sherri Martel vs. Mimi Hagiwara & Yukari Omori (WWWA Tag Team Titles) 

K: I'll forever associate this match with DEAN. It was one of the last matches he reviewed on the DVDVR board before we lost him and in his classic hyperbolic style he declared it the GREATEST MATCH OF THE 80s. 

Before the match starts Sherri steals the tag belts and runs outside with them, apparently thinking the rules in Japan are that the winner is just whichever team is able to physically take possession of the belts. They both act so insane it makes you feel like anything could happen here, this atmosphere is helped along by them getting in the ring and getting immediately ambushed by Hagiwara and Omori and thrown into the crowd to big applause.

When we finally get something you could definitely call 'wrestling' (no value judgement here) Sherri is targeting Hagiwara's throat dropping her on the ropes, and later when she has Hagiwara grounded she's seemingly biting her in the face. She just comes across as a nutcase, and then Devil Masami gets involved on the outside whacking Mimi with her big cane. I should add for a bit of context from matches not on the set that Devil Masami seems to have given herself a personal quest to make Mimi's life a living hell. This is far from the only time Mimi will be wrestling someone else but Devil keeps getting involved in her matches just to torment her. She's obsessed. It's like she had a premonition that after her wrestling career was done Mimi would become a Christian evangelical preacher (not joking that actually happened).

I really like Mimi's selling here. For example the more hurt she is, the more she wobbles/looks a bit unco-ordinated when she's running off an Irish whip.

This is not a famous match, but if it were to become one, it should be famous for the spot where Sherri and Judy put Mimi's head between the ropes, put the middle rope over the top rope, and then swing back and forth with her head stuck like they're trying to break her neck. I'm watching this thinking "why does nobody steal this?", think about it a bit more and decide "ok, this does look legitimately dangerous" so maybe that's why. Still it looks absolutely awesome, brutal and makes the heels look like psychopaths.

Oh also, sick piledriver by Mimi to take the 1st fall. This alone would have been a really good and memorable match. This is for the tag titles so it's 2/3 falls.

In AJW tradition, the babyfaces are 1 fall up, so the heels go crazier, take things to the outside and try causing carnage. It's so wild it's hard to follow what's going on. At one point Devil Masami is on the outside swinging her cane at people. I think Mimi gets a chair up to the protect herself from the shots meanwhile someone else is being thrown into the seats. For whatever reason Devil is so enraged she comes into the ring swinging her cane around, and the heels FOR THE SECOND TIME now put Mimi's head in the rope trap of death like they're trying to kill her. Things are so damn out of control and someone is gonna die so the referee DISQUALIFIES the heel team, which almost never happens in AJW. 

Not the most important thing I know, but there's a 2/3 falls match which ended 2-0.

Is this the greatest match of the 80s? Well no. That’s a little silly. It’s relatively limited in what it’s trying to achieve, that Martel & Martin are homicidal maniacs and Hagiwara and Omori are such heroes for being willing to fight them. It did most of that. The big flaw is I don’t think Omori really got herself over here, in fact I barely remember her doing anything. Devil Masami probably had a better contribution to this than she did. It was certainly entertaining and not one you’ll forget soon.

***1/2

MD: Hey, I’ve seen this one! DEAN gave it to me during a Secret Santo in 2023. 

Here’s what DEAN said about it when giving it to me:

“This match is fucking INSANE.  It's the fucking DREAM tagteam of Sherri Martel and Judy Martin aligning with total lunatic Devil Masami at ringside trying to murder the hell out of Mimi Hagewara and Yukari Omori in 1982.  GREATEST MATCH OF THE 80s!”

Here’s what I said about it then: 

“The big thing I learned from this however was that Martin and Martel were basically Raging and Ravishing. I'm a big Glamour Girls fan, but Kai and Martin were pretty similar, great bullies, incredibly credible offense, big bumps, great pacing. Martin is basically the most credible Moolah-ism wrestler ever. Sherri on the other hand, is wildly over the top. Her punch to the gut may have been goofy, but she was all antics, all the time, starting from stealing the belts and refusing to give them back to just screaming, fighting with fans, heatseeking like wild. Then Martin would come in and just assert control and leave things for Sherri to cause havoc.

After the whole belt stealing thing, the faces got the early offensive advantage, but then Martin/Martel took most of the rest. Whenever the faces tried to comeback it became an absolute gang scene with everything completely breaking down. Devil would interfere liberally. So that meant whenever comebacks actually did take, they ended up being super violent. Structure here ended up being comebacks and quick cutoffs, and then a real comeback for the first fall victory as they switched up on top rope leaps and then hit a kneeling pile driver. There was more heat again right at the start of the second fall and it all broke down into chaos. Mimi and Omori looked fine but it was hard to get much sense out of them other than getting battered around a few moments of fiery comebacks. Sherri, however, came off as a generational heatseeker; obviously she was as a manager but I think she couldn't flex quite as much in the AWA and WWF as a wrestler maybe? Here she had a lot of freedom to just toss poise completely out the window and go wild.”

Here’s what I think about it now:

What I have now that I didn’t back then is a much better understanding of Hagiwara and a much better sense of the chaos in Black Army matches from 78-81 or so. And honestly, even compared to those, this was pretty wild. Sherri is such a natural. She understood pro wrestling so well, bursting out of the ring with the belt and parading around with it, snatching it away when anyone tries to take it from her. What a natural heatseeker, just perfect in her role.

They controlled most of this, and on Mimi for most of it as well. Lots of choking, both naturally and in the ropes which formed a sieve around her neck. Brutal stuff. Lots of beating them around the ringside area too. Whenever they started to fight back for more than a second, everything would break down into chaos. Omori actually got to flex her strength a bit here on comebacks. Eventually, Mimi finally had enough and unloaded fists and neckbreaker drops on Martin, Omori hit a Vader Bomb and Mimi a nasty looking kneeling pile driver, where you could see Martin’s life flash before her eyes. That was the end of the first fall. Second went quite well for Martin and Sherri until Devil accidentally clocked Sherri with the pole. It still went pretty well for them after that though and eventually everything really broke down and they just choked their opponents in the ropes until the ref called for the DQ. I’d say this was pretty clearly the best showing of any American women so far. Martin hit like a truck and ground things down and Sherri was just as over the top as she’d be ten years later. And at least Omori and Hagiwara survived it to stand tall with their belts in the end.

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Found Footage Friday: BABY TAUE~! HARA~! BRET~! VIRGIL~! BABY MONEY INC~! BLONDY~!

Akira Taue vs. Ashura Hara AJPW 10/28/88

MD: This isn't long, but if I'm not mistaken, it might be the earliest Taue singles match on tape. And honestly? It wildly overachieves. I'm used to 89 and even into 90 Taue who is trying to figure out how to be Taue. This is not that guy. This is a big athletic guy trying to figure any of it out. And he's trying to do so against Hara who is stoic and brutal and ready to kill him. Taue hits a Thesz press right at the bell and the crowd ooohs. Great, effective start. The first two minutes of this are pretty sprint light, all building to Hara clocking him with the ring bell on the floor. Throughout this, Taue will throw chops and kicks and there really is the sense that he's learning in the moment, even from a purely kayfabe perspective. He's trying to figure out what angle to throw his strikes from, what technique to use, how to get enough mustard behind the kicks to actually impact Hara, despite his size and presumably strength advantage. It means that every four or five shots from him equals one of Hara's. It means that when he hits the hundred hand sumo slap in the corner and it doesn't register and he escalates to outright smacks across Hara's face, Hara is going to clean his clock with one massive retribution shot of his own. It means when he's able to score four or five kicks, Hara's able to cut him right off with just one off his own off the ropes, even if both of them will keel over after the fact. 

When it comes to the actual execution, Taue bumps big, most especially for the clotheslines at the end, but there is a sense of him telegraphing his stuff (especially the missed stuff) way more than it ought to. We get a great camera shot of Hara managing the same exact thing, a missed clothesline in the corner, with a lot more intensity and grace. I think, and this is just a guess, that Taue didn't know enough to get in his own way yet. He has some single matches with Taue over a year later, right as Taue was on his way out, and in those, he tries to fight from underneath and show fire and I almost see more of that here, naturally, against Hara. Watching the AJPW mainstays this early in their development is so interesting, because you can see all sorts of possibilities and realities that didn't happen. This Taue, one that was more than willing to run into Hara's open hand, and then throw his entire body right back at him, was a different sort of Taue than the one we'd eventually get.

ER: I can't get enough Taue, the man who took over as my favorite pillar sometime post-Misawa death and together we haven't looked back since. I just like how he moves and how he falls and how he sells on his feet. He's a permanently old man and this is the youngest I've seen the old man doing his thing, Akira Taue with the fluffed up city pop hair of All Japan Young Boys. Taue is an athlete who is clumsy in form and clumsy in fall in all of the best ways. He is in his first year - which means he has been thrown to the wolves for over a hundred matches already on the Kings Road schedule - and can barely budge the Hara the Tank. It's one of those fun reaction worthy young boy matches where a brick solid stoic badass in his 40s lets a young boy hit him as hard as he can while he barely budges until he shows him several times how to throw proper kicks to the ribs and butts to the head. Ashura Hara barely reacts to Taue's slaps and yet also feels the need to bash him with a ring bell a couple minutes in. Early! Taue sells slaps really well and Hara knocks him silly really well. He lets Taue kick him in the chest and back if it's hurting him he's wearing it all inside. He catches a kick when he decides to catch a kick - casually, like he was just throwing Taue's leg around with his buddy - and gets to his feet with an uppercut to Taue's left cheekbone. Taue absorbs all of Hara's clotheslines and kicks really well, and Hara literally just clotheslines and kicks him until pinning him. They all looked great and none of them looked clean. 

Fabuloso Blondy/Guerrero Negro vs. Stuka/Apolo Estrada CMLL 1989

MD: Three falls in fifteen minutes or so. Blondy was in his full glory, and Guerrero Negro, sans mask, seemed just happy to be there with him saluting along to the anthem. Tecnicos charged in immediately thereafter. I haven't seen a ton of Apolo Estrada but I like what I have seen. He's very charismatic and over the top in his own particular way. Blondy fouled him to lose the first fall but take over the momentum which is not something you see often actually. They focused in on his stomach and took the segunda after a solid beatdown. In the tercera, Estrada came back after shrugging Blondy into the post on a ram attempt on the floor. Nice pop for it. The fans were into these guys. He got some solid revenge on Blondy's stomach, too, which is again not something you see a lot of focus on. As they cycled through Blondy did a sleeper, which, again isn't usually part of the diction of lucha libra. Finish was fun with Stuka getting Guerrero Negro but Estrada missing a big leap off the top only for Blondy to get overconfident and rolled up. It was a good, over act and here was another look at it, brief, a little slight, but still enjoyable.

Bret Hart/Virgil vs. Ted Dibiase/IRS WWF 8/16/91

MD: This came out of nowhere. They started running this matchup in July, with Duggan sometimes teaming with Virgil. It's still very early in the Dibiase/IRS pairing. We don't have a ton of them with Sherri so it's fun to see it. Super hot crowd and you can hardly blame them as there was always something to look at here. Just having Sherri out there meant that there was a constant reaction to everything that was happening. That meant lots of attempts to interfere which didn't come to anything but drew the eye (and the fancam) to holding her head during a double noggin knocker, to taunting every single person in the arena when Dibiase and IRS finally took over. I almost can't comment on some of Rotunda's holds because the cameraman was more interested in seeing what Sherri was up to. There was a long, long shine here with a couple of false calls on the heels taking over but some very fun stuff, like Bret feigning an eyerake from the outside from IRS (that never happened) which let Virgil unload on Dibiase illegally and this great bit where Virgil did an arm wringer to IRS and then Rotunda's fist right into Dibiase's face. I'm sure I must have seen that spot at least a few times but it felt new to me. The heels had to work three times harder (and dirtier) than the babyfaces to get anything which, I suppose, made the fans care all the more when they finally took over. There was a ton of heat for it at least. Bret ended up taking maybe 80% of this match though Virgil seemed plenty competent when he was in there. Finish was probably what people usually got around this time, with Virgil, almost, almost getting to triumph over Dibiase only to have it stolen out from underneath him (by a loaded purse). Summerslam was just around the corner though.

ER: I have bad taste in wrestling, so this kind of thing is the kind of new match that excites me. I love seeing new WWF pairings from this era, matches that didn't exist in any other form. They ran this tag on a few house shows leading up to Summerslam '91, the peak of Virgil's career and Bret's first singles match title win. Other than these few house show tags, Bret and Virgil rarely associated. Both babyfaces, both careers on the upswing, both in wildly different places one year later. Virgil's World Title Challenge the next year would be by far Bret's shortest match of his first World Title run. This is our lone Bret/Virgil partnership on film and it's a really good tag match, and every person in the match is really great at their role in the match. Bret gets loud crowd sympathy out of getting out of a long chinlock, Dibiase reacts perfectly to a hot tag, IRS works faster and hits heavier than later Money Inc., and the timing of everything is pinpoint. 

But this is a Sensational Sherri. Whatever single Montreal man snuck their camcorder to horsily record Sherri's every single movement at the importance of anything else on the show, was correct to do so. Regardless of the intentions of a lone Quebecois cameraman probably named Edouard, this camera belonged on Sherri. This was one of the hardest working, entertaining, constant motion and broad breathless interaction that few managers in history could replicate. Sherri works an incredible and active manager role with the best looking legs of her life, running around the ring to stop and rub specific fans' faces in it, shouting specific encouragement to IRS or Dibiase in between interacting with fans, physically interact with all four men in the match multiple times ranging from big to small ways, all while adding to the match by getting the crowd more invested in the match by also being more invested in her. She is incredible to watch. It's like she's acting a big scene out for her own biopic; an incredible confident performance that is bigger than any TV performance. You put this performance of hers in any territory and she is a megastar. 

This is a gem of a tag. Every participant did a leaping punch off the middle or top buckle, and any match with jumping or falling punches is going to be a house show gem. But this is a Sensational Sherri match, a match I'm not sure I've seen anyone work better. That it plays like a documentary scene about a Great Manager due to our French New Wave handheld with swirling squeals of in the red crowd noise makes it a wrestling match that should be referenced going forward. 

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The Sherri Martel x Luna Vachon Fight

Sherri Martel x Luna Vachon WWF Raw 4/12/93

ER: During the first few months of Raw, Vince and Macho Man would frequently try to get Raw's slogan to actually stick. Raw! Uncut, Uncooked, Uncensored! doesn't sound bad in print advertising, but I don't think it was going to work when Vince and Macho Man would take turns saying each word like they were recording their first answering machine message. Importantly, even if the slogan had worked, there was nothing whatsoever about Raw that was Uncut or Uncensored. You have seldom seen wrestling more Cut or Censored. I suppose they chose not to cut the Brutus Beefcake comeback interview where he talks in depth about his depression following the parasail accident, and someone in the Manhattan Center yells at him to kill himself. That probably should have been cut, but was painfully Uncut. 

It took a Rob Bartlett interview segment with Luna Vachon to finally give viewers something that did feel Raw! Uncut and Uncensored. If there was blood I could have called it Uncooked. But even without blood, this was a wild, out of nowhere violent segment. To my knowledge this was the first segment given to Bartlett, right at the end of his short-but-too-long WWF commentary career. By the end of the segment, it was clearly his greatest contribution to wrestling. It starts as a simple interview with Luna Vachon that was mostly Luna growling through a non-sensical Ultimate Warrior Promo for Girls with Bartlett nothing much more than a guy holding the mic. As Luna calls out Sensational Sherri and continues talking about the impact of her presence in the ring on time and space and the universe at large, Sherri storms out and things get real. Sherri is dressed like a character on White Lotus: white suit jacket, black bra underneath in lieu of an actual top, billowing slacks, and it's topped off with a great head curly Jim Croce hair. Luna continues on her bullshit and Sherri rolls her eyes, laughs and throws a side kick right into Luna's tit. 

From there we get one of the wilder, unscripted-feeling, violent brawls from any era of Raw. This is a real brawl, the kind that would have stood out on the grimiest IWA Mid-South show. Sherri starts throwing stiff right hands, Rob Bartlett makes the mistake of staying in the middle of it too long and gets his vest and shirt ripped off while his body gets thrown aside, Luna swings her heavy studded belt straight at Sherri's face multiple times, Sherri throws a full extension vertical suplex on the floor, and brother, clothes are being torn off at unsustainable levels. Bartlett accidentally gets in the way and gets chased off and he shows that he can do a funny comedy run. I wouldn't have thought he could do a good comedy run and it showed he could at least do comedy. Meanwhile Sherri is absolutely falling out of her top, tits spilling out next to kids' heads, and that's before the brawl goes over the guardrail into the front row. Look at the vivid elation and nirvana on the faces of mulleted children and Poughkeepsie hockey dads as Sherri punches her way past them with a handful of Luna's spectacular Michael Jackson Bad Tour '97 Backup Dancer hair and you know they're seeing something they've never seen before. Sgt. Slaughter hauls Luna off over his shoulder, legs kicking, and it seems like everything is settled business. 

Instead, we come back from commercial break and for some reason Sherri is wearing only her black bra and black satin lingerie shorts, covering her bosom with Macho Man's tastefully black and white spangled cowboy hat, and frankly looks fucking incredible. Within moments of her yelling about Luna over the house mic, Luna comes back down to ringside, apparently left totally untended-to backstage during the break. This woman had to be carried away by a man not 5 minutes earlier. You gotta have someone keep an eye on her for at least the next few minutes. But Luna immediately comes back down the aisle doing this funny theatrical Lon Chaney creep to start shit up all over again. She chokes out Sherri and this woman is out here fighting in her underwear that is barely containing her, and still throws a RINGS level knee to the stomach. Luna gets hit with that shoot knee and sells it like Flea getting hit with a bowling ball in Lebowski. It's incredible. Sherri shouts into the mic again and they frame her made-up face in the overhead lights in a glowing shot. She looks straight out of a Russ Meyer movie, or the Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman poster. She walks out of the arena in her bra, literally shoving past Papa Shango doing his dumb voodoo shit in the aisle. 

Rob Bartlett later came back to do commentary covered in scratches and scrapes and bruises, torn undershirt hanging half off, a hilarious far off dazed look in his eyes. Macho Man and Vince dunk on him the rest of the show and make mean girl comments about his physique. Bringing out a man covered in cuts just to do commentary for the debut and last match of Friar Ferguson. They had Friar Ferguson going on after a brawl that would have fired up a sold out Mid-South Coliseum in 1985. If Ronda Rousey and Charlotte came out and had this brawl on Raw, it would be talked about as a universally great moment in pro wrestling. Here, it was barely capitalized on in any way. Luna had attacked Sherri multiple times at WrestleMania, and this was Sherri's earned revenge, and all it lead to was a month of house show matches later that summer. Maybe it's for the best. A straight match wouldn't have come close to matching the rawness of this fight.

Is so strange that it even happened. There was next to no female presence on WWF TV in 1993. There were Raw ring card girls, Sherri, Helen Hart, and a couple interviews with Jim Duggan's wife after he got flattened by Yokozuna. You did not see women on Raw in 1993. But it took two women to go out and have the most memorable, most raw, uncut, and uncensored segment of the first few months of the longest running pro wrestling show in all time and space and the universe at large. And then it's gone. 

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Phil Cherry Picks MAW

I got my hands on a bunch of MAW shows from the early 2000s, this was a Milwaukee area indy which used a bunch of IWA-MS guys. Since these are dozens of long ass early 2000s indy shows I am going to cherry pick some interesting looking matches.

CM Punk/ Jason Kronnan/Dave Prazak v. Dino Bambino/Bobby Bambino/Sherri Martel 2 out of 3 falls Tables and Ladders match 7/23/00

Punks team comes into Kid Rock which should strip him of all of his straight edge scenester cred. WWIMKT (What Would Ian MacKaye think). He also has a stringy blond front rattail and cut off jorts, his look didn't exactly scream future PPV headliner. This was a total shitshow trainwreck but a pretty entertaining one. Sherri was awesome stiffing Punk and Prazak, and even taking a bump off a ladder through a table which is nuts for a lady in her 40s in front of 100 people. Dragged a bit in the middle, but the end was pretty nutso with Prazak going head first through a table and Dino doing a shooting star press through a table which looked really dangerous, he barely rotated enough and looked like he almost spiked himself headfirst into the concrete.

Ian Rotten v. Peter B. Beautiful 6/3/01

This comes off of a KOTDM match between the two of them where Ian crowbarred this kid in one of those weird quasi shoot IWA-MS angles. I have no idea why Peter signed up for this a second time, as again Ian gives him nothing and just brutalizes him with lightbulb tube shots and chairshots. There was some angle where the MAW owner runs in a ineffectually chokes Ian with a pool cue, this leads to PBB's one cover which Ian kicks out of and then Rotten goes right back to mauling him. The end got downright Kurisuish with Ian throwing wind up kicks to this kids eye and punching him square in the cheek. I like meth BattlArts Ian a lot, but this was a different sort of thing and I didn't enjoy watching it.

Ian Rotten/Necro Butcher v. Corporal Robinson/Bull Pain 9/21/02

On paper this is just a murderer's row lineup of early 2000's brawlers. I don't think any match could have lived up to the match I had in my mind, but this was still really entertaining. First part of the match is worked as a southern tag with the heel Pain/Corp team working over Necro. Necro is a guy willing to get worked over and Pain and Corp are awesome guys at beating on someone, awesome punches and stomps and nasty chair shots. Pain is amazing at baseball bat shots, one of the best magic tricks in wrestling history, he really looks like he is braining people with bat shots. Corp has these amazing fast punch combos where he looks like he is beating on a guy in fast forward, man what a heel team those two were. Instead of a hot tag Ian just beats up the ref, and we then have about twelve minutes of straight brawling. I did think that not having the hot tag was a bit deflating, and while the brawling was super nasty looking it got a bit repetitive. Still this was violent nasty stuff executed well and fun to watch. First MAW hidden gem

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