RIP Danny Havoc

Drew Gulak vs. Danny Havoc CZW 5/12/12

PAS: This was an excellent blowoff match, taking a no-rope barbed wire stipulation and having it mean something real, rather then just being a chance to watch people get sliced up. Gulak had been doing an anti-hardcore gimmick in CZW, and had trash talked the incarcerated Nick Gage, leading to a rift with Havoc who was someone he had trained with. Havoc had gotten Gulak to sign a no roped barbwire match and was going to take him into the hardcore world and make him pay. This built really well to the big bumps, with Gulak taking Havoc down and stretching him, and consistently avoiding the barbed wire. Instead of it being a scaredy cat comedy spot, Gulak used the eschewing of the barbed wire as a chance to shit talk the CZW crowd. He opens up Havoc and taunts the crowd with his blood, only to finally go into to the wire. The delayed gratification worked so well. This was a Gulak show, but Havoc made a great foil, taking a bunch of nasty bumps into the wire (I especially loved the Gu-lock with Havoc wrapped in barbed wire) and serving as the personification of CZW and what it stood for. Match ends with Havoc triumphant over a bloody Gulak, the Jersey bloodletting raining supreme. Havoc was a guy who fully embrace death match wrestling as the guiding ethos of his life, and this was a tale of personal and stylistic triumph.

JR: There is something really clever about Gulak knowing and understanding that he can use compelling mat work sequences in the same way that Perro Jr would use heel stall tactics. The narrative of course is that Gulak has never been in a death match before, and the opening sequences are all centered around near misses with the wire before Gulak returns to grappling. While neither announcer focuses on it, Gulak makes it apparent that this particular stipulation, while perhaps not an advantage per say, is certainly less of a disadvantage simply because he I more than capable of working an entire match without ever using the ropes. And that mere threat, the possibility that this crowd may see Danny Havoc tap out after twenty minutes of Indian deathlock variations with no blood whatsoever, is just present enough to get everyone pissed off.

Gulak is strong in the opening moments here. He has enough wherewithal to understand he doesn’t constantly have to tease going into the wire to make that pay off noteworthy. Instead, he just has to be a cruel dick. Havoc is sympathetic throughout, willing to get stretched and athletic enough that Gulak can really work stuff in without having to slow down.

When Gulak finally goes into the wire, Havoc transforms. It’s an immensely dynamic performance. Havoc has always been a favorite of mine but I never thought his strengths centered around emotive babyface comeback work, but here he might as well be death match Hogan, pointing to the various sides, staring into the hard cam, milking it in for all its worth.

Gulak’s big late stretch with the Gu-lock is a strong pay off for the early work. Part of what made the early matwork so ominous was the barb wire making rope breaks painful for the person in the hold. Here, Gulak tries to take advantage of that, but Havoc throws his whole body against the ropes. It’s a wonderful marriage of Gulak’s style with the death match trope of being hoisted by your own petard.

The finishing stretch here relies on Havoc’s strength as a death match worker, in that he is generally game for anything and able to keep up no matter what. Gulak is a generational worker, although this is a little before his true prime, but Havoc matches pace and creates a dynamism that is wholly unique to this match and the confines therein.