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| Statlander had the best match of the evening with Solo Darling Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein |
Leyla Hirsch vs. Jon Silver - It's so funny because Silver is almost like the male counterpart for Hirsch, at least body-wise. They're both short and incredibly thick with musculature. Granted, Silver is more jacked than Hirsch is, but man, would you want to try and move her from a standing position? I think not. Anyway, this opener was exactly the pace-setter the show needed. They threw bombs at each other for like 15 minutes or so, and it was glorious. It was the kind of high spot match where you fear for each wrestler's safety at its worst, but the thing was they're not high spot wrestlers. I mean, Hirsch does a moonsault, and it's really good. But they translated recklessness into doing mat shit and apron suplexes, total car-crash mentality. After the match, of course, Alex Reynolds came in because the Beaver Boys are NO MORE. If it leads to a tag match where Silver and Hirsch just menacingly roll into Reynolds and his partner like human bowling balls, then I'm all for it.
The Butcher and the Blade (Andy Williams, Pepper Parks) vs. American Strong (Rory Gulak, Jay Freddie) - I wanted to like this match a lot more than I did, to be honest, because it was extremely my shit on paper. You had burly, avuncular Williams fending off two smaller dudes with Napoleon complexes who do amateur wrestling, and Parks is decent too. But this match never really got started, and when it got going, it went off the rails slightly enough that it felt askew but didn't really look as disastrous as one might expect. There was stuff to love here, and I'm still in awe that the guitarist from Every Time I Die is now one of the most prominent HOSS guys on the indies, but overall, it was flat.
Daniel Garcia vs. Christian Casanova - If promos were indicative of match quality, Garcia would have fucked up all his moves and slipped on a sweaty turnbuckle. I really think that wrestling schools are doing their students a disservice by not having promo coaches there, but then again, it was only one promo. Either way, it let my guard down for the concentrated intensity that was his Discovery Gauntlet match against Casanova. It may not have even reached the 90 second mark, but my God, Garcia chewed Casanova up, spit him out, and breathed fire while doing it. Maybe it'd be a monkey's paw thing, but I can't wait to see this guy in a longer match against a more weathered opponent.
Fred Yehi vs. Chris Dickinson - Maybe it's unfair that I placed my expectations so high for this match, but really, Yehi has been one of my favorite wrestlers since I first stumbled across one of his matches in 2013, and Dickinson has been perhaps the best dude on the American indies for the last year. They had a match that would have been the best on probably two-thirds of every WWE pay-per-view of the last 12 years, and a top match on several indie cards as well. It was probably the fourth or fifth best match on this card, depending on how one would feel about the main event (more on that later). I think that speaks to two things. One, this show was pretty stacked. Two, both Dickinson and Yehi have a tenth gear where they just go apeshit, but even when they don't hit it, they're still giving you a solid match of the night contender. Those are guys you want to have on your roster, especially if you're an indie promotion based more on in-ring than overall.
The match itself had a slow pace, but not boring, which is an important craft to master. I'm so used to seeing Yehi move like a toddler with a sugar high that him slowing down the pace and working as more of taskmaster was shocking. He played the hits too, especially with his hand stomp, which is one of the best mid-match signature moves going today. I feel like Yehi as this dungeonmaster borrowing from equal parts Bryan Danielson and Charlie Kelly would be an amazing touring character. I have to wonder if Dickinson's nagging injury that caused him to miss the Homicide Tribute show flared up and gunked things up. I'm not sure, but hopefully he'll be healed enough not just for Daisuke Sekimoto at Americanrana, but Timothy Thatcher next week. As for Yehi, it feels like he's not going too far away from Beyond. Him wailing on Dickinson's nutsac after the match hints that he'll be back and probably will be the Dirty Daddy's focus after A-Rana.
Going back to the Thatcher news, if you're reading this Denver Colorado (The man, not the place!), can you please get Trashy Tim to stick around for one more week so he can work Leyla Hirsch? I need it. For science.
Thomas Santell and Nick Gage vs. Richard Holliday and Kenn Doane - I really don't have much to say about this match except that Nick Gage is a flaming ball of violent energy wherever he goes, and I still can't believe people just write him off as a bank robber (rehabilitated, thank you very much) or a deathmatch guy (as if some of the best wrestlers of the last 20 years haven't been deathmatch guys). Santell looked good too, but I couldn't tell you a damn thing about Holliday, and Doane kinda was muted here too. It was a showcase that did its job, building up Santell and Gage for both next week against Cam Zagami and Christian Casanova, but for Americanrana where they face the team of Filthy Tom Lawlor and Bryan Alvarez, yes, the same Bryan Alvarez of Figure Four Weekly and Observer Radio.
Brandon Thurston vs. Wheeler YUTA - Holy shit, this match was tight, focused, intense, and brutal, just like any match you'd want to be on the top half of your show. I'm getting higher and higher on YUTA everyday, but man, Thurston, who knew he had that in him. I thought he saved his fastball for analyzing the most boring aspects of financials on Twitter, but apparently, he's a grapplefucker on the level of Thatcher, the Gulak Bros., and Tracy Williams. The match centering around YUTA's arm and selling it was brilliant as well. Of course, that arm thing dovetailed into Chuck O'Neil coming out and continuing his quest to armbar the hell out of YUTA, and this time, he attacked an official, much to the delight of Sidney Bakabella. O'Neil is "banned" from next week's show, which only makes me hope he shows up and armbars the shit out of more security guards.
Kris Statlander vs. Solo Darling - First off, I will never, ever, EVER get tired of Officer Magnum coming to the ring with Darling. Second, these two had a real tough act to follow, and man, they exceeded expectation bigtime. Hard to believe, but this was the first time I watched a Statlander match that wasn't her in enhancement mode putting over the Iiconics on WWE television. My God, I see what the hype is about. There were times in the match where I thought that the height disparity was going to cause an issue, but Statlander's athleticism and flexibility not only made bumping for Darling work, she busted out some pretty insane kick counters out of places I didn't even think could generate them. Just the various backs-and-forths and the counters alone put this as one of the best damn matches I've seen all year. Seek this match out.
Josh Briggs vs. Anthony Greene - The main event of the show saw Briggs and Greene wrestle a tremendously emotional and hard-hitting match with stakes that they set up with Briggs attacking Ava Gardner and Angel Sinclair, Greene's valets, before the match, and then saw it get thrown all away after when Briggs cut the Davey Richards Memorial "I Respect You" Promo afterwards. The dichotomy presents itself posing the question of "how quickly can you turn off your kayfabe brain and is that a good thing?" I personally don't think it is, and if the endgame was Briggs wanting to team with Greene in a future (limited, to the chants of "Season Two!" from the crowd) tag match, well, I can think of a few other ways they could have gotten there without just flat out saying it like the prior match was inherently fake. I don't know, maybe this is my old fogey hill that I die on.
But really, the match itself was fantastic. Like, having Briggs attack the valets beforehand established him as the villain, and Greene went slid into the white meat babyface role like a horny athlete sliding into Mia Khalifa's Twitter DMs. Gardner and Sinclair got to give Briggs his comeuppance, and even though Greene lost, he lost like an honorable warrior in a hot finish. My advice is that you maybe turn it off after the pinfall is counted, or not if you're not like me and you don't mind that sort of thing after the match.
