Ian Rotten Was Pushed With His Sorrow Well Rehearsed

JR: If you've enjoyed these Ian Rotten reviews, Phil and I have decided to collect them and print up zines. It will contain all we have written thus far plus I think three matches we haven't written up for the blog. Each match has art accompanying it and I think the overall idea of it all is going to come out pretty good. The layout is almost complete, so I have put up preorders on my itch page:



https://jrgoldb.itch.io/methlab-battlarts-the-pre-order

Ian Rotten vs. Tarek the Great 10/21/06 - EPIC

PAS: This is presented like a throwback to a legendary match of the past, Lawler vs. Dundee in SAW is great, but it isn’t Lawler vs. Dundee in Mid-South Coliseum, this however was actually better and nastier then their 2002 match. Tarek has filled out in the four years since their first match, he looks less like a junkie and more like a junkie who cleaned himself up and got a construction job. As one would expect from this series this is all about hitting people hard in places they shouldn’t be hit. Ian is merciless here, he throws these thudding palm strikes that land like he is aiming six inches past Tarek. He seems to be trying to strike through him and land on some guy behind him. At one point Ian takes the palm of his hand and drives in into the back of Tarek's head where his spine meets his skull, it felt like he was doing some Kung Fu movie strike which gives his enemy permanent paralysis. To his credit Tarek attacked like he was in the fight he was in, he kicks Ian right in the top of his skull and unloads with some big palm strikes of his own. Also, Tarek wasn’t putting on a ton of holds, but what he did put on was really tight, his choke sleeper popped Ian’s eyes out. I didn’t love the finish, they tried for the Hart vs. Piper sleeper roll up and it didn’t land, but everything else was incredible violent stuff.


JR: One of the things we have been so enamored with throughout this project has been Ian’s ability to work in ways and from angles that make wrestling seem like something just beyond comprehension. The movements and strikes seem to force an opponent “out of book”, creating a world in which to maintain the illusions that professional wrestling survives upon, a worker must react differently and organically.

While Hero almost certainly has the single most compelling match of the style, I am beginning to think that Tarek might be the opponent that gains the most from what Ian brings to a match like this. His selling is sympathetic and organic without making the match one sided. He struggles and feeds off of Rotten in ways that allow Ian to seek variations on themes and work them to natural conclusions.

Rotten is probably best remembered for truly gross headbutt spots in his matches, but the strikes he throws that feel the most sudden and violent are his palm strikes. He uses them so well to mark transitions and momentum shifts. Here, after a longer feeling out process, his first true strikes are open palms to the base of Tarek’s neck. It feels violent, it feels wrong. It feels like it could injure, rather than hurt. The palm strikes continue to be the theme, even as Ian works from underneath. The only thing he can hit is Tarek’s thigh, which he does repeatedly and with abandon.

There is a closeness to this match that makes it stand out. Against some other opponents (Joe comes to mind, but he’s far from the only one), Ian mines drama and tension from distance. There are moments in those matches that feel like two rams backing up slowly to collide until superiority is established. Here Tarek works like a boxer who knows he doesn’t have the length advantage. He must stay inside of Ian. He must take the punishment he knows is coming because the alternative is punishment that he can’t.

The finish, an obvious homage to Piper/Hart, falls flat and is poorly executed, which is shockingly almost a theme at this point. The finishes often seem so overbooked and “rasslin” that they feel jarring. Earlier, for the match against Claudio, I wrote about trusting the audience. Or lack thereof. The matches themselves establish a world in which both men must work outside normalcy to simply survive. The prior work is undermined by the tropes of wrestling.

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RIP Mitch Ryder

PAS: I used to buy XCW-Midwest DVDs from Mitch Ryder in the early days of Segunda Caida. We reviewed a ton of them and it sort of established SC as the kind of place that would review a dozen XCW-Midwest shows. Ryder was a breath of fresh air in the "do a bunch of stuff" era of indy wrestling and was always good for some bumping, bleeding, and brawling.


Mitch Ryder/Todd Morton/Tarek the Great/Bull Pain vs. Ian Rotten/Mark Wolf/Tracy Smothers/Sabu IWA-MS 10/20/01

PAS: Overbooked as it gets, but totally awesome. We probably didn't need a surprise partner (although Sabu is always great in that role), a Tarek the Great face turn AND a Tracy Smothers heel turn all in one match. The Tarek turn added nothing to the match and could have been scrapped. Still everything else was great, Pain cracking Ian in the jaw with a baseball bat, Todd Morton doing two crazy cage dives (including walking the side of the cage), Sabu taking a bump off the side of the cage to the floor, and tons of blood. Ryder was mostly on the outside of the cage running interference, throwing Wolf into chairs, brawling wildly with Smothers, punching Ian in his bloody head. Finish was some classic IWA White WorldStarism. Tracy puts on the ref shirt to count Bull down, only to jump Ian, then the Bad Motherfuckers beat Ian down while the fans throw things. Corporal Robinson tries to make the save by walking the rafters to the top of the cage, Ian's wife Patti tries to hit Tracy with a stick. Total Fentanyl clinic riot which is one of the best things about IWA.

JR: When I was in college I had to take an acting class as a general requirement. I was not a strong actor but I remember I did one scene with a partner and our thought process was “if we just cause chaos the entire time, it will cover up our distinct lack of talent”. It worked well enough.

I thought about that while watching this. As a wrestling writer, I’m someone who is constantly trying to identify narrative. I legitimately can’t do that here. There is a story and it’s established well, but I think to mention it or try and define it would in some ways take away from the sheer spectacle that unfolds. Every single person in this is insane. Sabu shows up early and spends almost all of his time bumping from the cage to the floor. Tarek turns face, the sniveling henchman finally growing a spine and standing up to the abusive Bull Pain and paying the price. Pain holds court, despicable and massive from the first moment, at once the center of everything and completely separate from it all.

Almost everyone is wonderful here. Smothers gets to work his greatest hits throughout, working as a fiery babyface and then turning mid match and working as a heat magnet for the rest, trying to start a riot every step of the way. Every single person takes a bump that they absolutely regretted moments after it happened. Todd Morton did two cage dives!

Of course, we watched this in tribute to Mitch Ryder. I wouldn’t exactly call this a showcase for Ryder, but his makes the most of his moments. In some ways, it’s a good microcosm of his career as a whole: while others will certainly have more words devoted to them, more camera time thrust upon them, in the moments that Ryder was the focal point, he stood out. The door of the cage was slammed on his back and he stooged and pranced like Rick Rude after an atomic drop. In the chaos on the outside, he flung himself around. Chairs and tables and fans scattered around him. He talked trash into the camera, filling the frame with his insane, sweaty face. In short, he was a wrestler. He did everything he was supposed to do and he did it well.

ER: When somebody seeks out an "IWA Mid-South" match, this is the kind of match they have in mind. This was undistilled IWA, the kind of grimy bloody violence you want to see, and the kind of match that's impossible to pick a favorite performance. Mitch Ryder's team come out to Eruption like they are zit faced teenagers, and jump Ian's team the second they come out from the back. And from there we got a perfectly messy terror of stiff punches, crazy bumps, and high emotion. Todd Morton was a real loon, doing TWO cage dives, and it's actually amazing how quickly and easily the shortest guy in the match can scramble up to the top of a cage. Morton hits a pinpoint accurate elbowdrop off the rafters ABOVE the cage, and later hits a frog splash on Ian off the top of the cage while fully protecting Ian. Sabu runs into the chaos and every time he pops into frame he is taking a way too dangerous bump, like falling out the cage door onto his head or getting kicked off nearly the top of the cage all the way to the floor. Tracy Smothers was a big Tasmanian Devil, and two different times I had to check and make sure the tape wasn't on 2x speed. tracy was throwing impossible to block punches, the kind of punches that look much more like the punches someone would throw in a parking lot fight. He was beating people around ringside, throwing Ryder meanly into a table and big cooler, and on his way out he clearly hit a fan. Ian bled about 5 seconds into this and didn't stop, then took constant offense from 4-5 guys for the duration of the match. Ryder was the real heel personality throughout this, taking stooging bumps, yelling at the camera, getting tossed into the crowd, running interference to kick guys off the cage as they were trying to get in, orchestrating Ian getting his arm slammed in the door, and that's all important. He wasn't doing the flashy stuff in the match, but he was constantly the guy doing the important stuff to bridge the violence, to kill time with charisma until a big spot from Morton or Sabu. Glue guys are underrated and important parts of big bloody cage matches, and they don't come more underrated than Ryder.


Mitch Ryder vs. Ian Rotten IWA-MS 11/22/01

PAS: This was an old fashioned walking tall babyface match with Ian putting up half of IWA-MS against Mitch Ryder's hair. It was a fans lumberjack match and Ian is seconded by Sherri Martel. Ian Bill Watts himself all over Ryder who bumps and bleeds the way you need to in this match. Ian adds disgusting headbutts to the big punches you would normally see in this type of match, and both guys get soaked by the end. Ryder is great at finding little moments to take over control while mostly giving the fans what they want to see by bumping around. The finish felt kind of blown by the ref, which is my only beef. Finish has the BMFs and CM Punk stop the haircutting, beat up Sherri and shave Ian's head. Keeping this feud going, I am not sure about bailing on stips like this, but the BMF's are always great to watch beat people down.

JR: So the stipulation here is that if Ian loses, Ryder gets 50% of IWA-MS. Does that mean they would then book by a two person committee? I’m really interested in how this would’ve worked.

Am I alone in thinking there is something about Mitch Ryder’s face, especially when it is masked by blood, that is similar in some way to James Van Der Beek? I’m not saying Ryder looks like him per say, I’m just saying that a drunken Ryder probably at one point claimed he looked like him. Anyway, it adds to the whole effect of scumbag heartbreaker.

This match is ludicrous. Ian selects fans to be the lumberjacks, four of whom were obviously pre selected and one was a spur of the moment call because Fanin and Prazak thought it would be funny and yelled loud enough for Ian to hear them. They essentially serve no purpose after some initial lip service that Ryder is trying desperately to escape. In some ways, the early portion of this is similar to what Phil and I wrote about with Methlab BattlArts, but with Ian cast in the role of conquering babyface. Ryder is good at helping Ian project that same sense of foreboding and dread, as though a match with Rotten is always moments away from slipping completely out of control.

Ryder does well enough while on top. A match can go far on simple things when the participants know how to work the margins. Ian is great at bleeding. That may sound silly but it always looks both grotesque and sympathetic. Ryder understands where he needs to be at all times, working the cut, using the sleeper enough times where a finish would be credible but the predictable escape is warranted. While the finish here is obviously a mistake, the work before is hearty enough to still be enjoyable.

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Ian Rotten Perverted Me

Ian Rotten vs. Tarek the Great IWA-MS 10/4/02 - GREAT

JR: Maybe about ten years ago someone wrote an article on boxing for Triple Canopy that I believe is now lost to time. It tried to use Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse as a metaphor for something I can’t really remember, but one of the more cogent points that was made throughout was that while individual fighters are generally compelling because of their greatness, fights themselves are often more compelling between two fighters who have distinct and obvious weaknesses. At some level in boxing, everyone is good enough to exploit an opening, repeatedly and with profound cruelty, but only a very select few are able to do so without having a similarly glaring weakness themselves. So while watching two tremendous fighters play a game of mental chess, cautiously circling, pressing incremental advantages, and having wondrous and lightning quick footwork is perhaps beautiful, the fights that drive the popularity of boxing as a whole, and the fights that we think of when we picture a quote-unquote prize fight, are the ones that are more about flaws, and the inability to mask those flaws.

I thought of that article and its potential application to pro wrestling while watching this match between Ian Rotten and Tarek the Great. Often, extended mat sequences, and even the amorphous and general idea of “strong style” can come across as overly cooperative when in the hands of talented performers. They work with a speed and fluidity that can only be accomplished in a universe that is fictionalized, and their work serves to highlight the idea that the universe is fictionalized, that what they are doing is agreed upon on some level. A back and forth strike competition, even if the performers are “actually hitting each other”, one where no one gives an inch, one where the speed increases in such a way as to bring applause to a fever pitch, is a design. It is a choice. And after the moment is gone, the viewer is left with the knowledge that it is a choice that was made to play upon their emotions, to play upon the general want to participate and to acknowledge performance.

So really, there is something refreshing about this, about watching two performers who have that same general agreement, that they will pound upon one another for the theoretical enjoyment and engagement of the crowd, but have to do so in fits and starts, without the polish and veneer that others have. Their attempts to lock in holds are slow and clumsy. Strikes are wild and deadly looking affairs, looping and wide swats that look all the more dangerous due to their unexpected nature.

I speak a lot about what I call “dynamics” when I discuss wrestling critically; for me, matches are compelling when there are moments of work that shift gears, that change speeds, that make a narrative experience beyond escalation. Ian is tremendously naturally gifted as a dynamic performer, and the matwork here is a solid example. Throughout the match thus far, the work has been cautious and guarded, the work of two men who are consciously trying to defend themselves, aware of their own shortcomings in some way. And then! Out of nowhere, Ian reserves something with speed and grace and power, and it creates such a meaningful narrative transition out of what could have easily been a moment done for polite applause, a moment for the crowd to follow the bouncing ball. Instead, he changes speed and forces the audience to pay attention, as the work has gone against the natural rhythm of what we expect from these matches.

Tarek, for his part, is a capable and understanding performer, and is able to work in a way that shows off the size difference between the two. On things like pinning combinations out of counters he shows clear struggle at having to leverage someone who probably has 40 pounds on him. Whereas the Hero match we did last week looked uncooperative in its desperation and cruelty, this match finds ways to create the same energy while establishing a clear hierarchy. We aren’t supposed to buy Tarek on the level of Hero, and we don’t. He looks game but overmatched, with enough skill and shine to push Ian, albeit not to the same point of no return that Hero brought out. While Tarek may be lacking as a credible opponent, he does have skills that serve to bolster Rotten’s work; namely his inherent stillness. Rather than always flailing and grasping for ropes and escapes, Tarek is comfortable not moving while Ian has things locked in. It again reinforces the size difference, and creates a stark contrast to when they do finally get off the mat towards the end, and Tarek’s brief flurry looks like it truly shocks and surprises Ian. It’s not enough, but it creates contrast, both to the earlier segments in the match and to Ian as a performer.

There are moments toward the end that are a bit cute, a bit more cooperative than anything we see in the early stretches here or in better matches like the Hero one. But those aren’t enough to undermine what is otherwise compelling work. I am pleasantly surprised by the tonal differences that Ian is capable of within the same style, and his natural affinity for transition. As Phil pointed out last time, he is capable of enveloping the whole of his match in this extremely sinister aura, but here he proves he doesn’t have to rely on it to create good work. He has tools beyond what someone would expect.

PAS: I thought this was excellent, compelling, violent wrestling. It was clearly worked in the same style as Hero vs. Ian, but while that was something truly separate from pro-wrestling, this felt more like an interesting stylistic outlier, but within recognizable boundaries. Part of it may have been that Hero vs. Ian was without commentary, all you could hear was the cursing and shrieking in pain, while this had Jim Fannin and Dave Prazak just dribbling out inane nonsense. This also had a bit more of a wrestling ending, Ian sugar holding Tarek asleep was pretty cool, but it wasn't as visceral as Ian quickly tapping as his knee tendons shredded like coleslaw. 

It is hard not compare the two matches, but this had a lot in it to love. I thought the bear hug from the bottom by Ian was especially nasty, you could really see him digging his knuckles into Tarek's spine. There was some really slick counter wrestling here, Tarek is able to reverse a leglock from the bottom. Not to be outdone Ian reverses a Tarek leg lock, by grabbing and pulling Tarek's head to Ian's chest and rolling into a small package, totally cool almost Solaresque counter work. We had our bits of violence too, Ian and Tarek exchanging CTEbutts and Ian landing a sick open cuff to the ear.  The first match we reviewed felt like a pinnacle of a style, this feels like more of a great representative example, you may learn more from a representative then from a peak.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE METH LAB BATTLARTS

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