DEAN~!!! Summer School

DEAN~!!!: Summer School 9/13/26

MD: Every one of these shows we get is a gift. As always, I've got nothing to do with these except for what you're about to read. It's Matt G, Phil, Eric, JR from the Action and Segunda Caida side, this time working with PRODUCE to make this happen. It has happened. It's on film. It's part of history now. Part of a body of work now, a curated spectacle covering the range and breadth of underground pro wrestling. This time around, given the size and scope of this one, I needed some help, so even though he's never written for Segunda Caida before, we've got a special guest star, one of the best best and most-inclined minds that's ever discussed pro wrestling in a critical sense. The "E:" below? Elliott. We've got a lot to run through. Let's get right to it. 

Violence is Forever vs. Angus Legstrong/Oldman Youngboy

MD: What a way to set the tone. If someone was intrigued by this being on MyAEW or by the Low Ki match on top, they were going to figure out real quick that they weren’t in Kansas anymore. I could write all day about these four. We all came out of Legstrong vs Youngboy thinking that every indie in the country should have run that match as a traveling gimmick like Fleisch vs Storm twenty+ years ago. An attraction. Yet here they were teaming.

This started with Garrini vs Legstrong and that’s probably what’s going to stick with me the most (well, one of three things and I’ll get to the other two later). It’s not every day Garrini,  practitioner in his own right, gets to scrap on the mat with someone as talented as Legstrong. Angus is a joy to watch. He just is. This is a guy who, in his pre-match promo, said that he didn’t need it. And he doesn’t. He has a great day job. This is purely him following passion, chasing joy, right into the welcome arms of the Bone Collector. I can appreciate that. I’ve been fortunate that while so many people writing about wrestling do it because they have to, because they’re chasing some sort of fiduciary success, I have a great day job and just love to do it. That’s probably where the comparisons end, as I’m risking a lot less pain and toil than ol’ Angus here. 

They hung with each other. This was set up to showcase Angus, but like matches of old. Garrini would get him into some sort of twisted, complex hold, nothing given, everything earned, and then Angus would almost effortlessly escape. Again and again. By slipping in one forearm, Angus got the advantage, but Garrini was too good for him to take it too far so early in the match. Moreover, and this was a trend for the match, Garrini is a tag wrestler. Angus is not. Garrini has total trust in Ku. Angus is part of a super team of sorts, but they are two individuals pressed together. Garrini made the tag and Angus chose to keep going, pressing Ku out of pride and maybe even arrogance, maybe not a bad thing, until Ku shot a kick into the leg. THEN it was time to tag Youngboy.

Youngboy and Legstrong are completely different body types. They move differently. Youngboy is slicker, swooshing into Imanari rolls (my second favorite part of the match), making full use of his bridge, scissoring a body part out of nowhere. Legstrong is more like a wrecking ball, surprisingly quick, sure, but more apt to put his head down and pry you over. A powder keg. They complement each other well, but at the same time, you understood when Youngboy got swept under when facing a tag team fighting like a tag team.

Likewise, you the viewer had to go huge when Youngboy was able to make the quasi-hot tag and Legstrong came in like a Steiner brother in 1990, flowing, flawless suplex after suplex. They were the sort where the opponent just flew through the air beautifully, the inevitable sort, pro wrestling physics at their finest. Also inevitable, however, was that the tag team was going to overcome the two singles wrestlers in this setting and they did. Youngboy/Legstrong made a good attempt at it, hitting their own version of Chasing the Dragon into an Exploder Suplex, but Garrini softened things up with a brutal Snowplow and then the real Dragon appeared and ViF chased it all the way to victory. 

If anything, however, this confirmed my priors. Indies around the country should be taking a chance on Legstrong and Youngboy. In a world where so much feels homogeneous, where one match after the next feels the same, they’re strikingly, startlingly unique and different, and the wrestling world is better off for them.

E: Angus Legstrong - Looks like Farva, wrestles like Gotch. Had to get out of my system before moving on. Legstrong & Youngboy is such a natural pairing for a team. Both their names and wrestling approaches fit together. I’d eagerly sign up for a Legstrong vs Youngboy Best of 7 Series, but a tag team works too. 

The long opening between Legstrong & Garrini sets a tone not only for the match but in many ways for the afternoon. While Mad Dog Connelly vs SLADE in a Dog Collar match was one of the top promoted matches & the Gypsy Joe Open Challenge the surprise main event, this show really highlights a variety of scientific wrestling. Early on this felt like an old UWF/UWFi Shoot Style tag. Legstrong & Garrini test each other. They go for takedowns, submissions, feed each other openings for counters to move things along organically without ever really getting close to a finish. You’d almost forget it was a tag match because the focus is solely on the two wrestlers in the ring. Legstrong & Garrini aren’t looking to tag out, Oldman & Ku aren’t looking to tag in. Even when Garrini finally tags out with a slight advantage, Legstrong opts to test Ku in favor of tagging out to the fresh Oldman. Ku & Legstrong continue on a similar path as Legstrong & Garrini before Ku just blasts Angus in the knee with a kick. Some great selling from Angus who finally tags out to Youngboy. The way this whole opening movement was worked & paced felt like it would’ve fit right in on a UWFi show in 1993. 

Oldman Youngboy takes us out of this world and into reality. There’s a brief grappling exchange but it quickly leads to one of my favorite parts of the match. Ku extends a handshake and Oldman just kicks him right in the chest. Oldman goes to follow up and Ku gets a chop in and dares Oldman to hit him back. So you figure they’re going to go into the one billionth chest to chest you chop me I chop you strike exchange but instead, Oldman just superkicks Ku right in the fucking throat. Just a beautiful thing to happen at like 2:10 on a Sunday afternoon. 

From here Violence is Forever is done messing around playing into Oldman & Legstrong’s style. This goes from a UWFi structured tag match with 4 singles wrestlers facing off to a traditional tag match. VIF isolates Oldman in the corner. They use double teams and quick tags for the advantage. Southern style tag wrestling will forever be the greatest style of tag wrestling so we get a HOT TAG~! TO ANGUS~! who comes in like a mini Gary Albright throwing Violence is Forever around with some beautiful suplexes. 

Eventually & inevitably the teamwork & experience of Violence is Forever wins out. Angus stays in too long, loses his advantage and VIF puts them away. On paper the result telegraphs itself. The experienced tag team beats the two cool singles wrestlers coming together for the first time. But as usually happens on a DEAN Show, everyone came to work hard and the cool on paper match became a cool reality. 

Tony Deppen vs. Ryan Mooney

MD: If Angus Legstrong is the Cliff Clavin of professional wrestling (and I mean that as affectionately as possible), Tony Deppen may well be the Al Bundy of professional wrestling. He probably worked a double shift the day before, hopped in the car, drove however many miles to Jersey City, got himself a free Produce shirt, cut it up, was going to have some fun, get a payday, and maybe get his first ever Action win (I have a feeling the commentators cared more about that than Deppen did). 

But Mooney is a whirling dervish, a rabid honey badger, constant motion, and this went from spit-laden handshakes to a wild sprint, both guys charging headlong across the ring from obtuse angles within a matter of seconds. Mooney even opened things up with a cross chop off the turnbuckles and an erratic tope. 

Things took a turn a minute or two later when he went for a second one. Deppen stopped him flat and walked away, the most put upon, aggrieved, look on his face. The shit this guy has to put up with… Deppen’s the hero of his own story, and the world’s out to get him.

Mooney, a guy with one speed (all-out) and one direction (forward) found his way back into things, but lacking brakes, he overshot, stumbling on his way back into the ring when he tried to do a slick out-and-in (that earned him a nasty German), and then missing a top rope splash (which earned him a knee to the face and the loser’s share of the purse). I wasn’t quite sure what to expect coming into this one, but that’s on me. It was pretty obvious and certainly it met whatever expectations I SHOULD have had for it. I’m sure it met the expectations everyone else paying attention had.

E: Younger unorthodox opponent vs Veteran is the name of the game here. Usually wrestlers doing an unorthodox/aren’t they weird? style can just end up being annoying but I really enjoyed what Mooney was doing here. The opening rope running sequence where he’s running all over the place came off really well. I LOVED when Deppen came off the 2nd rope with a flying nothing and it looked like they were setting up for an inverted atomic drop and instead Mooney just blasted him with a headbutt. One of my favorite spots of the whole show. Ultimately, Mooney’s pacing and style was never sustainable. Eventually he was going to gas himself out or trip himself up and that’s exactly what happened & Deppen was there to capitalize at every opportunity. It plays into the finish but the best is definitely when Mooney gets tripped up in the ropes & Deppen plants him with a german suplex. I didn’t really have any sort of expectation for what this would be going into it but it was a lot of fun and completely different from everything else on the show. 

Matt Mako vs. Tim Bosby

MD: Matt Mako did an amazing job putting over Tim Bosby by being the very best he could possibly be. It’s a little counter-intuitive, but it’s the heartblood of pro wrestling. You don’t cut a promo cutting down your opponent. You build a promo building them up so that it means so much more when you actually beat them or you insulate yourself if you take a loss. Right? That’s become something of a lost art in a world where everyone wants to be the Rock.

It’s not dissimilar in the ring. When you’re in there with someone clearly talented, clearly powerful, clearly impressive, to have to go all out, to have to wrestle your absolute best, not only makes you look like a million bucks, but it makes them look like a million bucks, and if you beat them, you look like two million because of it (and if they beat you, you’re still looking like a hot $750k at least). 

Bosby is incredibly impressive. He just is. And he gets it too. It’s impressive to kip up out of nowhere, to hit suplexes like they’re nothing, but you add in a little bit of wear and tear, of consequence? You make sure to sell that damaged ankle after the kip up but before the move, and then after the move as well? That makes it all matter so much more. It means that not only are you a physical specimen, not only are you able to do mighty physical feats, but you’re able to do it THROUGH the pain. He gets it. 

Mako certainly gets it. Nothing looked easy. He was playing human chess in there, using one movement to unlock two more. It wasn’t for highlight reels or gifs, though you could make those. It was to create an overall effect where that was established as just what it took to damage Bosby, to avoid him catching Mako and tossing him to Mars. Sometimes, even that wasn’t enough, but it wasn’t for lack of trying, and the effort and struggle made that trip to Mars mean so much more. Mako didn’t drop it for a moment either. At one point, Bosby got him up in a fireman’s carry. Mako went to the eyes to get down, but he didn’t just go to the eyes, he also moved his knee as if he had caught Bosby at the same time, giving him plausible deniability with the ref (and to a degree with the fans). 

Was it intended? Was it just a flail? I honestly don’t know, but because Mako was showing such attention to detail, you suspend your disbelief and go with it. Likewise, Mako fumbled a bit on the top rope as he went to dive to the floor. This followed him kicking the post repeatedly without much negative incident, leaning hard into his honed leg and kickpads as a shocking spot. Was the stumble him paying for that? Or do you just connect dots that weren’t there because everything else was done with such care? At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter, because it worked. It worked for me. It worked for the crowd. I’d argue it worked for the match. 

Bosby came out of this looking like a nearly unstoppable force and Mako came out of it looking like the guy who actually managed to stop him. One wrong move, one banana peel, one misfire or wrong decision (just one), and it would have went the other way. What a massive success of a pro wrestling match.

E: Here’s the thing about Tim Bosby, he’s not just more powerful & athletic than you are, he’s also just as technically sound. So it’s going to take more than technique to beat him. You’re going to have to think outside of the box and you’re still gonna need him to do you some favors and beat himself. Mako enters almost every match with an advantage when it comes to technique but Bosby is close enough that his size, power & athleticism give him a distinct advantage. Mako isn’t just going to be able to get a takedown and lock on a submission. Bosby will just stop him and throw him around. Mako has to try other ways to get the advantage where he might not ordinarily. That might mean going to the top rope multiple times or going to the eyes to set up his cross armbreaker. And it works. Until it doesn’t and then it does again. 

Mako’s eye rake gives him enough of an opening to go for his flipping cross ambreaker. He almost locks it in but Bosby is able to use power advantage + his technique to deadlift Mako into the backbreaker powerbomb. (First. Goddamn that spot ruled so much.) Mako sells it like death & has to roll out of the ring to recover. But most importantly, Bosby sells the knee. He could’ve just powerbombed Mako, but he wanted to get fancy and it ended up backfiring. He doesn’t get to it right away, but this self-inflicted wound gives Mako an opportunity for an advantage later on. 

I love the way they circle back to Bosby’s leg.. Mako creates an advantage on the outside using kicks & a cross body from the top rope to the floor, tosses Bosby back in and dives through the ropes for his rolling rear naked choke. Mako has a brief advantage but his rear naked choke stops his own momentum & gives Bosby a chance to rely on his power. Bosby fights to his feet with Mako on his back and slams Mako from turnbuckle to turnbuckle to get him off. That works but it leaves Bosby open for a devastating kick to the back of the knee from Mako. Both guys sell it huge and this finally gives Mako his opening. 

Mako targets Bosby’s with some brutal looking offense. He doesn’t go straight for a submission. He’s learned from that mistake. So he’s slamming Bosby’s knee into the mat, doing a standing knee drop. Kicks to the leg. That sort of thing before attempting an ankle lock. Bosby is able to power out, create some separation & still land a big suplex. Bosby is getting his suplexes in. He’s bigger than Mako, stronger & an athletic freak. But he’s selling the leg the whole way. Even the Kurt Angle run up the ropes spot worked because not only is he selling it, it led to the finish. That adrenaline works but it’s not everlasting. Mako beat Bosby in the end but he needed Bosby to beat himself first.

On a show full of exciting matches, when this was announced I was thrilled. These are two of my favorite modern wrestlers and they hit this one out of the park. Terrific match with both guys coming out of it looking great.

The Infantry vs. Top Team

MD: I’m not sure this worked quite as well. It was always going to be a high lift given the finish, a red card after things broke down too much and Infantry wouldn’t let up double teaming, a classic sort of finish when you have bigger stars coming in, and it did theoretically put over the red card gimmick for PRODUCE, but I’m not sure if the DEAN show was the right place to do that. 

On first watch, I had issues with the double heat because I thought just doing an extended heat with cutoffs leading to a big hot tag would have worked better than basically having two hot tags, but on second watch, it worked better for me. They cut off Yaki by shoving the ref and kicking the rope for a low blow, which led to the yellow card, so from a story beat perspective, that worked. I think it did partially disrupt the energy of the match, however, maybe because the Infantry were too playful with that second round of heat instead of being meaner and more brutal about it? Hard to say. Maybe it was just a case that while the crowd was behind Top Team, they didn’t really want to boo the Infantry either. It could have been a setting thing. This might have worked better in Georgia? 

Even there, I’m not sure the finish would have worked. It definitely would have if the Infantry were champs and they drew the DQ to keep the belts, but as challengers, I’m a little iffier on it. In the grand scheme of things, Produce commentators can point to this as a case where the cards were utilized and you do need a few of those under your belts to keep the rules over and give everything a baseline. 

E: Our second tag team match of the show and it couldn’t be more different from the opener. There’s lots of teamwork from the start. Double teams, quicker tags and just a quicker pace from the beginning. While the first match was almost all on the mat grappling, strikes or suplexes this was much more of a traditional 2026 tag match. They’re keeping a fast pace with lots of action, movement, momentum switches, rope running etc. 

The match is ok but I’ll be honest this one didn’t work much for me because of the card system. It felt really forced. One of my favorite aspects of tag team wrestling is referee distraction & misdirection stuff. There’s some interesting stuff you could do with the cards & distracting a referee intent on enforcing the rules and I would like to see a match where they really lean into it. I think this would’ve landed better if they were just focused on having a great match~! Or work a match totally around the cards & distracting the ref & building heat which does sound like a great time to me. 

Slim J vs. Adam Priest

MD: Slim J vs Priest 1 was maybe my favorite match on any DEAN~!!! show so far. That said, at the start of this one, watching Priest positively interact with fans on the way down, shake hands in the ring, and screw around with Slim’s visor by sticking it on the ref’s head, I couldn’t help but think of 1993 Jerry Lawler. In 93, The King was a clear heel on WWF TV but he was facing off against the WWF McMemphis invasion back home, a clear babyface. He thread that needle explaining it away as only he could, but he put a definite divide between the two worlds.

Adam Priest is a babyface on ROH and AEW TV. He’s a next generation pitbull with Tommy Billington, a southern gentleman following the Code of Honor, the heir to the Alabama Armstrong legacy. He’s a heel on the indies. He’s Adam Priest, the dirty white boy, scourge of the 2020s southern scene. It’s been a pretty clear divide from what I’ve seen. 

On this afternoon, though, in front of a smart, engaged crowd that was willing to go along with the amazing wrestling that they were seeing, he blurred that line, straddled it, maybe even wiped it out entirely. I thought Matt Mako wrestled a picture perfect match and maybe was the best wrestler in the world on this day, but Adam Priest may have been the most interesting. He played to the fans, played with them, smiling, clapping, daring them to root for Slim J, daring them to root against him. He treated them not like people he couldn’t stand but like old friends that were going to put up with his shit one way or the other, like family even. What are they going to do, boo him? Really? Nah, they weren’t going to do that. Yet one of the first things he did was go straight for Slim J’s eyes. He didn’t ask for forgiveness; he assumed it. He’s Adam Priest, a babyface on TV, national TV, on the internet too. You got to give it to him. You got to love him. Why wouldn’t you? So maybe he cuts a few corners. Deep down, you’d do it too if you had the chance.

This wasn’t a man wrestling a pro wrestling match. This was a man walking on water, who could run right off a cliff because he wasn’t about to look down. He didn’t need to. Frankly, it was a hell of a thing.
And of course, it was counterbalanced by the smoothest operator in the game. Slim J has a way of flowing from one thing to the next that almost no one this century can match. Sometimes it hits you when you least expect it. You’ve seen him do that walk up headscissors takeover a hundred times, but he got out of an abdominal stretch by punching Priest in the face and then using the tension from Priest trying to stop an armdrag to go up and over with a different headscissors takeover variation. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone else do it quite like that out of that specific hold. He can do contorting flying kicks off the top, but he can also put a twist on the simplest move and make it into something unique and special. 

Long story short, these two were incredibly equally matched. There were times where you thought Priest might run away with it. At one point, he jammed a ‘rana off the top and hit a subsequent power bomb. Later on, he was able to hit his slip around German from the corner (a little clunkier than usual but that just added to the match; Slim J could be pretty, Priest would get the job done no matter what it took), but he couldn’t press the offense for long  Neither could Slim J. Priest could always take a shortcut; Slim J could always hit him from an angle no one would expect. Yet both understood how dangerous the other was. Slim kept trying to end it with his cravat hanging cutter that he beat Priest with at DEAN~!!! 1. Priest? He kept going for a superplex. 

Maybe they both went to the well one too many times, but it was Slim that paid for it. That made sense. Priest has been winning matches with a half crab or a pile driver. He had his heart set on the superplex but it wasn’t what one might expect out of him. Meanwhile that cutter was what had beat him previously. Well, this time, on a subsequent attempt, Priest was ready for it, lawn darting Slim into the corner face first. Finally he was able to hit a grisly dangling, slightly delayed superplex and he evened up the series. 

I say bring it back for one more, this time a Yard Call match.

E: Not to read into every single little tiny thing but Priest putting Slim’s hat on the ref as a heel move and then a smilin’ Slim readjusting it for the ref to make him look cool while Priest shakes his head “no” is such a beautiful little piece of pro-wrestling storytelling. It’s just a little moment but it shows you who these guys are. 

I keep thinking of what to say about this match and I just keep coming back to professionalism. These two are just absolute pros. There is a sharpness and confidence in everything they do. It’s only 11 minutes but they’re in complete control the entire time & not rushed at all. They build to some truly spectacular moments & give them room to breathe so you’re still thinking about them after the show instead of forgetting them after the next spectacular moment. This is just an absolutely fantastic match. Timeless. Looks great today. Would’ve looked great 25 years ago. It’ll look great 25 years from now. You knew when it was announced it was going to be great it was always just a matter of how great. These two couldn’t miss together. 

Darian Bengston vs. Skayde 

MD: How beloved and respected is Skayde? With playfulness in his heart, he offered his hand to Bengston and then tied him up in a pretzel on the shake. Then? And I don’t know if I have ever seen this before in all my years of watching wrestling… he offered the shake again, put his hand to the heavens to prove his sincerity and with a bit of a macho wind up, Bengston took it. Why? Because that’s how much shaking hands with Skayde is worth. Amazing.

This whole show was a celebration of pro wrestling, but this match was especially one. They fought for every advantage and celebrated every victory, no matter how small. It was a match that could bounce back and forth tonally, because it was all pro wrestling. Obviously, Skayde had his own staccato style, but they went from twisting and turning one another from controlling the arm to the head to the arm and back, to fighting for advantage on the floor, with Bengston brutally eating the post, to Bengston hitting a dive that forced Skayde into the chairs. Then, just a minute or two later? They were play acting shooting three pointers against one another. The glue between it all was them trading holds and positions.

And it worked. It all worked, because who they are, the skill they had, the respect they showed, the sense of competition and oneupsmanship between them, and because wrestling can be this varied, even within one match, if all of those other things are somehow present.

They built it to a very fun finish, trained movements unlocking limbs to set up holds, until Bengston, in a flash of motion, rolled to cut the distance and snatched the legs mid-stride. That was the beginning of the end, and one of the few good rolls I’ve seen in pro wrestling in 2026. It was exactly what was needed to upset the balance and shift the tide. Bengston bet on himself and his skill and the bet clearly paid off.

E: Such a neat addition to this show. This is another match you’d describe as a “scientific match” with an experience gap between competitors and it looks completely different from the other matches you could describe that way. The “scientific match” part is good. Bengston isn’t a lucha maestro but the way he works can fit against that style. He’s very much a rhythm grappler. He’s able to go from hold to hold in a lot of ways with his own flair to it. So when this was announced I was really excited. It’s kinda weird on paper but then it makes a lot of sense when you think about it. The exchanging of holds is good throughout. It spills over a little bit outside but this is mostly a sporting match. The finish is a surprising result I popped for both times I watched the match. But what I’ll remember is the fun they had along the way. Bengston falling for Skayde’s handshake the first time & getting tied up. The celebration when Bengston got the handshake the 2nd time. And of course, Skayde stealing the ball & sinking the 3. Maybe a goofy little moment but also the spirit of wrestling in a lot of ways. 

Karl Greco-Malenko vs. Low Ki

MD: A call was made.

That didn’t mean Low Ki had to answer it.

He doesn’t answer every call. He answers very few. Less than ten matches over the last two years.

Yet he was here, stripped down to tights, poised, posed, honed, ready to wage a practitioner’s duel against the resurgent Karl Greco-Malenko? 

Why here, why now?

The call itself wasn’t enough.

But Greco-Malenko was.

This was never about Greco-Malenko, never even about the call. This was about Low Ki. This was about a man at war with himself, with expectations, with the inevitable weight of age and passage of time. The call was pretense. Low Ki had nothing to prove to Produce, nothing to prove to the crowd fortunate enough to witness this, to the history created in the recording, nothing to prove those who made the call, nothing even to prove to Greco-Malenko.

This was not about the call. This was only about the answer.

This was not a match. This was a mirror.

And Low Ki was not afraid to look himself in the eyes.

Greco-Malenko was not an opponent to overcome. He was not an entity to defeat. He was a barometer, a scale to be weighed against.

If Low Ki left so much of what made him successful over the years: the kicks, the moves, the leap from the top rope, aside, and took to the mat: wrestled, grappled, fought for inches and miles on the ground, against a man who was made successful himself by those very things, then he would know his own worth. 

It is not on me to judge that worth, but I, like the rest of us, bore witness. 

You may say that he wrestled this match with one hand tied behind his back. Yet, those things I mentioned are not the things that made him the World Warrior. Even stripped down, he was still Low Ki. He was fluid and explosive, disciplined and unyielding, savvy and focused, and most of all, he was trained and professional. 

Greco-Malenko would go for a hold, would jockey for position, and Ki was right up, floating over, giving nothing, already moving to the next attempt. It was a chess match and Greco-Malenko was the admitted master, perhaps, but Low Ki refused to fall into traps. If he ended up in one, it was to prove (to himself, not the world) that he could then get out. He scored a number of advantages as well, forced Greco-Malenko to places that he might not have chosen to go were he in complete control of the situation, were he facing a lesser opponent. 

There was escalation as well. Ki was wise enough to know when a rope break was necessary. After the first, he shifted to a more defensive position, and eventually maneuvered things around so that Greco-Malenko was charged a rope break of his own. 

Even had he used both hands and all of his skill, this would not have been a fair fight. Greco-Malenko against anyone is not a fair fight, no matter the circumstances. At one point, he pulled his own legs down to set up a choke, manually defying age to force unnatural flexibility in a blatant and brazen manner.

In watching this match (and I have seen it many times at this point), I do wonder if, by the time of the second rope break that Low Ki was forced to use, he had seen enough, had proven enough. He had already lasted twice as long as anyone else against Greco-Malenko. A good general understands the battlefield. Just as Low Ki understood when it was time to resort to a rope break, he also (perhaps) saw six moves ahead to a certain inevitable point. Perhaps that is why he reached down and unleashed the Ki Krusher. He saw enough, proved enough, looked himself in the mirror and nodded in approval, and decided to roll the dice, to make life just a little more interesting for Greco-Malenko, almost as a gift for the crucible KGM so deftly provided Ki. 

Greco-Malenko had offered himself as a test for Low Ki; maybe it was time to give Greco-Malenko a little test of his own. He passed. By pressing a foot down on Low Ki’s ankle to switch positioning, by laying in a knee, and then locking in a crossface chicken wing, he was able to make Low Ki pass out.

His reward? Respect already earned reconfirmed to the world, and Low Ki’s tie to go along with his medals and belts. 

The real reward, much as it had been for Low Ki, was the test itself. 

A call was made.

A call was answered.

The record book may say that Greco-Malenko won the match that followed the call, but no one could watch this match and say that Low Ki lost, not when he found everything that he had been looking for.

E: Low Ki is my favorite indie wrestler of his generation. When many of us lost our minds after the 2001 Super 8, the DVDVR Road Reports took off and many of us started diving into the US indies as WCW & ECW were dying, Low Ki was always the name I was on the lookout for. I loved the way he mixed high flying, brutal strikes, MMA inspired submissions into this totally unique style. He felt so fresh and unlike anyone else in wrestling. The closest comparison I can make was how it felt discovering Sabu for the first time. I’d just never seen anything like it before & I couldn’t get enough. 

Similarly while the Yuki Ishikawa vs Daisuke Ikeda rivalry was the big draw & introduction into BattlArts for so many of us, the wrestlers I was always most interested in were Alexander Otsuka and the Mark McGrath from Sugar Ray looking mat wrestling wizard with a hoop earring from the US, Carl Greco who later went by Carl Malenko. I was always a firm believer that Kiyoshi Tamura & Volk Han were the greatest mat wrestlers ever and Greco-Malenko was never far behind.  For me this is a bonafide dream match I didn’t think would ever happen. 

Karl Greco-Malenko’s return to wrestling after a 12 year hiatus has been nothing short of incredible. Aside from the grey hair he doesn’t look any different than he did in the late 90s & early 2000s when he was one of the best wrestlers in the world. I love the way he’s been treated since his return. He’s basically a special attraction Legend who oh by the way is absolutely still at the top of his game and is going to take your best shot, tie you up and beat you. Karl so outclassed Matt Mako on the mat he was doing a superman pose while Mako was tied up with nowhere to go. He withstood Mad Dog Connelly’s Haymakers and Tim Bosby’s Suplexes and no one has been able to push him past even 9 minutes. And he beats you with a different hold every time. The further people have been able to push Karl out of his comfort zone the more success they have. Connelly’s haymaker’s. Bosby’s suplexes. But eventually if you keep getting close to him, Karl’s going to get a hold of you and he’s going to take you down and he’s got the advantage from there. 

This brings us to Low Ki. Ah, Low Ki. The more things change, the more they stay the same. What would you say about Low Ki? Enormously talented, once in a generation athlete, his own worst enemy. We’ve been saying it for a quarter century and it’s still true  Low Ki is a great grappler & mat wrestler. He always has been going all the way back to the early 2000s. But when we think about Low Ki the mat wrestling has never been the first thing that comes to mind. When I think about Low Ki I think about the intensity, the athleticism and the striking. Given what Ki’s strengths were and the blueprint for having even a chance against Karl Greco-Malenko (lean into your strengths & away from his), my expectation was for them to take more a striker vs grappler approach to the match. Low Ki was always a prodigious talent. A truly great wrestler from the very start with unique charisma. But he always made things harder on himself and that’s exactly what he did here. Instead of leaning into his striking and utilizing his greatest advantage, Low Ki took the hard road. He tried to climb the mountain on the mountain’s terms. Low Ki tried to grapple with Karl Greco-Malenko and pushed him further than anyone has so far. 

It was Karl-Greco Malenko who was using strikes to get Low Ki down or open him up to go for the next submission. Early on Low Ki refuses to panic when Karl catches him in a hold. He relies on his technique, strength & flexibility to remain patient and look for a counter instead of utilizing one of his 3 rope breaks or resorting to using strikes to escape a hold or even create an opening. Low Ki had an answer for almost everything unless Karl did something extraordinary. There’s been a moment in every Karl Greco-Malenko match where he does something that just absolutely blows your mind like the superman pose in the Mako match. Here it was the flexibility when trying to position his legs for a triangle choke. He’s 57. It is insane. How can his legs do that? It takes Karl doing something that shouldn’t be possible for Ki to go for a couple of knee strikes. The first one is a solid hit & loosens the hold but the 2nd makes a big impact. It causes Karl not only to break the hold but it gives Low Ki an opening to take over and lock in a rear naked choke which necessitates Karl’s first rope break. 

Does Low Ki take note of the opening his knee strike gave him? Nope. But Karl does. It’s Karl that follows up with kicks to the chest & knees in the corner & getting the first knockdown of the match. Karl keeps kicking, but when Low Ki snatches him and goes for a takedown you think for a moment he’ll go for his footstomp. Instead he follows Karl to the mat and keeps trying to lock in a hold. He almost does and this time Karl is forced to punch his way out. It’s not a punch or two, it’s repeated desperate punches to the chest so he can get an opening to regain the advantage. He doesn’t follow up right away with a submission attempt, he keeps punching. It leads to a rope break for Low Ki when Karl finally locks in a hold but you leave the sequence sensing it’s Karl that feels more desperate even though Low Ki is the one down to his last rope break. When they stand up, Low Ki stands ready to fight but Karl takes a step back and takes a deep breath. No one has pushed him this far in over a decade. 

They go back to the mat, Low Ki has an advantage and actually blasts Karl finally with a few punches to the chest and stomach but he just refuses to win that way and goes for another submission. Karl punches his way out again and Low Ki finally gives in. If Karl’s gonna keep hitting  him, he’s gonna hit back. They get back to their feet, Ki hits two knee strikes & then plants Karl with a Ki Krusher. Some tremendous glassy eyed selling from Karl. Ki follows up with some more knee strikes and takes Karl down. Karl finds an escape, hits some desperate knees of his own and locks in the cross face chicken wing. Low Ki figured out how to win but it was too late. He was locked in the middle down to his last rope break with nowhere to go. He kept sticking his hand into the fire and finally got burned. 

The crowd (fortunately) never went for the “You Still Got It” chant but I wouldn’t have blamed them if they had. Here’s a man in his mid-late 40s who wrestles at most a couple of times a year versus a man in his mid-late 50s in his 4th match back after a 12 year hiatus from the ring. I mention the ages because they’re incredible but also to say that it takes years of dedication to your craft to be able to work like this. It’s easy to point to their ages and say they’re past their peak but there aren’t many wrestlers of any age who could have a match like this.

I said on Twitter that this was the best shoot style match to take place in the US. Maybe it sounds like hyperbole and yeah we aren’t able to watch Frank Gotch vs Tom Jenkins but this stands alongside anything we are actually able to watch. We’re extremely lucky that this happened. Let’s do it again!?

Mad Dog Connelly vs. Slade [Dog Collar Match]

MD: Certainty.

That’s the word that came to me as I watched the two of them at the start of this match.

Mad Dog Connelly ambushed Slade on the way in and put the collar on him, but he didn’t need to. I’ve seen opponents run from the mere idea of getting collared with Connelly. Not Slade. He just calmly ate a few shots and let the collar slip around his neck.

He wanted this. He embraced it.

The collar represented certainty. Assurance. 

Whatever would happen in the match to come, they would always stay just a few feet away from one another. While neither would run from the other, things did happen. Someone could stumble away, get tossed away. The violence might stop for a moment in a conventional match.

The collar prevented that.

They would be locked together in an unholy matrimony of violence, hatred, pain, blood, misery, and, for Slade at least, joy. Maybe not Connelly. For him, it’s more like release.

And for the next nine-and-a-half minutes release is what we as viewers were provided.

How can you worry about the weight on your shoulders: work, bills, politics, illness, late-capitalist decay, when you’re watching these two absolute monsters tear one another apart tethered together by a fury and steel?

Once chained, Slade threw the first heavy forearm. On the floor, he drew first blood by posting Connelly. He sat over his fallen remains in a chair and tossed him into those chairs in equal measure. He headbutted Connelly so hard that he knocked him out of the venue itself. And yes, back inside, he slammed his head into a brick pillar, leaving the imprint of Connelly’s bloody skull, very likely the greatest single pro wrestling image of the year, maybe even of the decade.

But Connelly was Connelly. He staggered, he stumbled, he fell. Then he got up and kept coming. He threw headbutts, he dove at Slade, he used the chain as a weapon, more deft and experienced with it than his opponent. He forced Slade up into a Gotch-style pile driver. He bounced back up off of a chokeslam. And then, as only he can, he went to use the chain-assisted hangman’s choke.

But Slade was ready. There’s no way to prepare for Mad Dog Connelly, but someone who is fearless enough, who is deranged enough, who is mad himself, can prepare for this one moment, and Slade did. He dropped Connelly into a neckbreaker and hung him over the top rope with his own chain.

The chain was certainty itself, the promise of violence, but a finish like that? It was simply a promise of more violence to come.

E: I think the first Mad Dog Connelly vs SLADE match is the best match to take place on a DEAN Show and one of the best matches of the century. It is less than 7 minutes and is despicably violent. I see their rivalry as a match up between the toughest man alive who might have a bit of werewolf inside of him (Mad Dog) versus the actual Devil (SLADE). It’s a horror movie that has come to life and every horror movie needs a sequel. This time they had a bigger budget and a bigger stage. They weren’t stuck in a single room, this time they had the whole house and they used it. The technical difficulties were frustrating in the moment but also made the match feel less like a match and more like a snuff film. I wouldn’t have complained if they switched the film to black & white. We might need it for their next match. Thanks to all the fans at the show who uploaded all sorts of great cell phone footage from the brawl outside. Always watch your fan cams! 

At a time when everyone is trying to be cool & likeable and so many come across as polished and media trained it is so refreshing to see these two. Violent outcasts of society. They’re pro-wrestlers because what else are they supposed to be? There’s a popular quote from the great Johnny Valentine, “I can’t make them believe that wrestling is real, but I can make them believe I’m real.” Nobody today represents that idea quite like these two. Mad Dog is determined to Live His Truth no matter what and SLADE is the Devil incarnate you can’t convince me otherwise. 

What can you say about this? They beat the hell out of each other inside the ring, outside the ring, in the street. All over the place. It’s messy, violent, bloody, gnarly and it absolutely rocks. Horror franchises get sequels. There are 13 Halloween movies. 12 Friday the 13th Movies. I will sign up for 13 of these. Lets do it. Get weird with it. I know there’s an upcoming Taipei Death match but keep going. Barbed wire? Naturally. Cage match? Why not? BattlArts Rules? Hey, that sounds kinda awesome.  Nobody out there embodies the spirit of the best kind of wrestling like these two. 

Team Smokes (Azrieal/Bam Sullivan/Calvin Tankman/Isaiah Broner/Homicide) vs. Team Rev (Colby Corino/Jake Shepherd/Nathan Mowery/Tank/Cole Radrick)

MD: I’ve been through this three times now (you don’t want to know how many times I went through Ki vs KGM). First time, I rode the chaos. Second time, I thought I had it cracked. Third time, I realized that I didn’t. I should embrace that chaos, but it’s hard, because, due to who I am and how I look at this stuff, I do see the order struggling to burst through.

Work with me here for a second. In this match there is one driving force, one looming presence, and three throughlines. The driving force is Cole Radrick going with Team Rev after Azrael didn’t make it (robbing the world of Azrael vs Azrieal; and giving the match that clear sense of “babyfaces win the War Games coin toss, but there’s a twist!”). The three throughlines are Tank vs Tankman, Cole/Colby vs Broner, and Bam vs Mowry. And the looming presence? Jake Shepherd. 

Shepherd makes it into the ring once, taking out Azrieal after his dives and facing off against Broner (only to get hefted), but he’s all around the ring throughout the match, like the world’s mightiest bottom feeding fish churning up the water. In many ways, he’s the difference between this and every other multi-man (tag or otherwise) overly produced, guys laying out on the floor match you’ll see on TV today. Yes, things cycled in and out of the ring. Yes, different people were showcased front and center at different times, but it was much more like a festival concert with three stages.

Or you know what it was like? It was like that 5-star Horace Hogan match, the one where everyone’s brawling around the arena while Casas and Santo are owning the ring. Except for who gets to own the ring changes in cycles and Shepherd is out there on the floor doing interesting things that we barely get to see the whole time.

After my second watch, that was where I was with this thing, a nice neat package with a few key moments, like the Mowry flaming knee sending Sullivan through the door and the Cole/Colby combo curb stomp on Broner, and of course Homicide coming out, offering Colby a fork and then ending the match by jabbing his own back-up fork into Colby’s ear when Corino was just a bit too slow to actually do anything with it. 

It’s a good story, right? I could probably even get away with it. You guys would buy that, right? I tied a nice bow on the thing.

But I would be lying to you. And maybe you wouldn’t know it. Maybe Eric and Phil and JR wouldn’t know it. Maybe even Elliott wouldn’t know it as he followed behind me. But I’d know, and I can promise you the Reverend Dan Wilson would know it, and quite frankly, I don’t want that hanging over me.

So yes, Tank and Tankman had two or three exchanges in the center of the ring, massive behemoths crashing into one another until Tank finally was able to drop the strap and smash Tankman through a table, but that wasn’t some sort of framing device. It was violent inevitability. 

And Sullivan? He took time off from tossing a chair at Corino and Radrick (and dropping one onto the groin of the other) to battle Mowry again and again. That included him jamming a headscissors takeover attempt, because that sort of pretty, fancy BS wasn’t going to fly in a match like this. That wasn’t all just to build to the big spot on the stage. It was because like attracts like and violence begets violence. 

I can’t impose order on this. I can’t make sense of it. I can’t even chronicle it, not really. Here’s what I know: Nine men faced off against one another. One was a turncoat. A tenth arrived in darkness with great fanfare. New blood was spilled. Old blood was remembered. When the smoke cleared, Homicide stood triumphant over a heaping mass of murderers and one scion who didn’t find his killer instinct quite in time.

If you claim to be able to make any more sense of it than that, you’re lying to yourself and to the world. 

E: This is another “how do you even talk about this” kind of match so I’m just going to watch it and write about whatever I notice. 

Ok first of all, of course you can’t trust Cole Radrick. Look at that fucking guy. Of course he was gonna turn on Team Smokes. 
Jake Shepherd is the man. When everyone starts fighting he starts to get in the ring and then is just like “nah, fuck this I’m going to the floor and will fight whoever ends up out here.”
Calvin Tankman is so awesome. I could watch the shoulderblock he hits Tank with 100 times. That’s a fucking shoulderblock. Tank takes such a perfect bump for it leaving his feet and looking up like “What the fuck was that?”
Nathan Mowery is such a great bumper. I love that he’s trying weird shit like that headscissors take over. Love that it didn’t work out for him. 
Shepherd vs Broner should be a touring feud where they just go around the country beating the hell out of each other. Their Death Valley Days match is spectacular and I love their all to brief interaction here. 
Radrick and Corino are really good together. Perfect scumbags. 
As an advocate of more fire in wrestling, I’m in favor of the flaming knee. 
Tank vs Tankman meeting up again in the ring is fantastic. They’re great together. They needed to figure out a way to take out Tankman and that worked. 
Broner’s headbutt to Radrick. I screamed. 
Broner was awesome as the last man standing on his team out gunned but refusing to stay down. What a wrestler. 
And then Homicide. 

When I first watched this show I was really confused that this was the main event. Don’t get me wrong, I was very excited for this match. Every single name announced got me more excited. I am a huge Coven of the GOAT Fan. I LOVED the Gypsy Joe Invitational so I expected this to rock. But I’ll be honest watching the show live when Low Ki vs Karl Greco Malenko happened and then SLADE vs Mad Dog came out I thought to myself maybe this was cancelled and I somehow missed it. 

By the end I wasn’t wondering anymore. Even on a show with those other top two matches, you couldn’t end on anything other than Homicide’s surprise return to save an outnumbered team. The way Team Rev responded and went after Homicide was perfect. Tank standing out front first. The most experienced member of the team he backs down to no man. Mowery a loyal disciple & undeterred by how easily Homicide got rid of Tank charges in next. Radrick that cowardly turncoat ran in half heartedly & quickly and let himself get thrown out of the ring with ease avoiding the fork altogether. Big Jake Shepherd was next. Big Jake is a mountain of a man, young with something to prove. Homicide decided to make an example out of him. He took his time and made Jake suffer and taste the fork. Last was Colby. The Prince of Old School. The offspring of maybe Homicide’s greatest opponent. What a perfect way to end a show.