Ongoing 2019 MOTY List: Jay vs. Shire

13. Gary Jay vs. Thomas Shire St. Louis Anarchy 5/24

PAS: What in the fuck was this? Match opens up with Shire tooling Jay with takedowns, Shire smirks, slaps Jay, and Jay responds with a nasty bar fight headbutt. Shire rolls out of the ring and comes out with his head spraying fruit punch all over the ring. It was about as deep a cut as I can remember seeing and it painted the ring. We get some nasty blood bodypainting by Jay, but Shire fires back with some big great looking throws, including a powerbomb on the ring apron and a UFO which chucks Jay kidney first right on the lip of the chair. We got a big time blood soaked punch out, and a KO. I am not sure what got into these guys but I sure enjoyed it.

ER: Well this was unexpected. We get a match starting off fairly joke-y, with Shire stealing Jay's cape and them having a silly back and forth...and a minute later Shire has his forehead completely split open and Jay is biting and licking the open wound and then misting blood up into the air. Jay really clonked him out of nowhere with that headbutt, just running straight into Shire head to head. It was not something I was expecting at all, but we certainly benefitted from it. Both men are soon covered in Shire's blood, and Shire channels Hijo del Santo in his classic LA Park bloodbath and the bloodier he gets, the more offense he does. Both guys stiff the hell out of each other, Jay throwing his hard elbows and Shire attacking with uppercuts and big full body falling lariats. Jay is great at taking lariats crazy suplexes, and Shire is someone who can throw great heavy arm lariats and snap off quick Germans. Jay hits a big dive and when he goes for his succession of them he gets cut off but an uppercut, powerbombed hard on the apron, then Shire straight launches him with a UFO. Jay grazes the back of a chair and lands flat and hard right on the floor. That was a finisher worthy spot, and by this point it felt like both guys were fighting for their careers. The shot of Jay splayed out on the floor while Shire literally held his head together was epic. Eventually Shire weakens and eats a KO elbow from Jay, and the crowd reaction for Shire's whole ordeal was really beautiful, with fans surrounding the ring and getting louder and louder for him while he marinated in his own juices. Fully agree with Phil that I have no idea what got into these two, but boy am I glad it got there. I also think this would have been a really exciting match without blood. But with blood? We got an absolute classic.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST