2023 Ongoing MOTY List: AEW PARKING LOT BRAWL 2

 

13. Trent Beretta/Chuck Taylor vs. Claudio Castagnoli/Jon Moxley AEW Rampage 8/4/23

ER: This is the second Best Friends Parking Lot match, and if the Height of the Pandemic words I wrote about the first one are to be believed, I thought that one was one of the best matches of the year. That one was against LAX, who doesn't exist anymore. This one is against Blackpool Combat Club, who didn't exist then but is as good and as watchable as LAX was then. But this wasn't as good as that and I know that even though I couldn't tell you one clear detail of that first match which I loved if you had a gun to my face, I would guess, but it would be a lie and I would spend some days unexpectedly suddenly afraid that I cheated death and would someday be forced to pay back double. That first match was the first match Chuck Taylor was a part of that I thought was great. Now it's a couple years later and he has the dark red cheeks of a man with lupus and it reminds us all how we've aged since our last parking lot fight a couple years ago. 

This match knew what it was, in a way that hurt it. It didn't have the freshness or the element of surprise that the original had. This was violent - Trent Beretta essentially got busted open good in the first few seconds - but had this weird approach where everything that happened in the parking lot was equally damaging as anything else that happened in the parking lot. Selling is less important to me in matches where guys are just taking "real" bumps. But this felt long in ways the other one didn't, moving at a pace that was like the match walking alongside itself. Getting hit with a spoiler was about the same as getting piledriven on the roof of a KIA which was about the same as getting powerbombed through a windshield. The price was about 3 seconds. It felt like they were on an itinerary. But also Trent Beretta tried to recreate the legendary Real Parking Lot Fight where Cliff Booth threw Bruce Lee into the side of a Lincoln Continental. 

Really it's the Trent Beretta match. That's why we watch this. We love Claudio doing strong man spots in a junkyard brawl, we love Moxley bleeding almost as quickly as Trent, but Beretta is the guy doing the spots you want to see on cars. That cannon ball into the side of the car was sick, Claudio press slammed him on top of a car, he got slammed inside the engine and stayed inside as Taylor was powerbombed on the hood, he gets bombed through a windshield, Claudio swings him into the head of one of those big yard waste bins, and every time he fought back his offense it was just him taking the same awful falls only offensively instead of defensively. He drove this forward and his body kept taking the most real bumps on concrete and cars and then getting right back up to do it again. I don't give a shit about his mom. Chuck Taylor siphoning gasoline should have led to something special - and I'm not looking up whether Taylor actually siphoned like a divorced dad who hates his wife's new boyfriend, because I believed he was that man; eyes flaring redder than his rosacea cheeks, he thought only of his hallway that used to be lined with pictures. But a man siphoning gasoline shouldn't lead to the weakest stretch of the match, not when guys are out there killings themselves. 

Trent Beretta is a guy who I just realized has three different Tags on our site because I've spelled his name differently three different times. But I thought he was so good in this match that it made me take the time to go back and fix all of the times we tagged him as Trent Barretta. I didn't have the energy to update the ones that just used Trent. 

2023 MOTY MASTER LIST