Thoughts About Josh Barnett's Bloodsport II

Thatcher was in the best match at this Bloodsport as he was in the first two
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein

This past Saturday night, the Josh Barnett iteration of Bloodsport had its second show, notable because it was the first of the three shows not to be held at Mania weekend and the first one not to have Minoru Suzuki in the main event slot. Like the prior two shows, however, it was an entertaining display of shoot-style pro wrestling in a landscape where that kind of wrestling isn't found a whole heck of a lot. At best, you get a rougher, rawer version of pro wrestling that has the best counters and unique striking. At worst, well, it's people misunderstanding what shoot-style is and trying to do worked MMA. I feel like the latter has a higher floor though. I'd rather watch Allysin Kay and Nicole Savoy do 80 percent of the match in side control than Randy Orton do anything, to be honest.

I'd rather talk about the good matches though, the ones that showed the range of what shoot-style can provide, starting with the Timothy Thatcher/Minowaman match, which I thought was the best on the show by a mile. No one explores Bloodsport's studio space quite like Thatcher, maybe because he, more than anyone who has worked MMA and pro wrestling in their careers, embodies the spirit of the event. His style is the rawest version of British grappling possible, but it's a style that is still professional wrestling, and he knows it. So the way he approaches a match in Bloodsport isn't to make it look like a MMA fight, it's the way he approaches every match. His style is one that fits so snugly into the whole aesthetic.

If you look at his arc through the three Bloodsport events, it's hard to think of anyone else as the MVP so far. All three of his opponents were cut from different cloth. At first Bloodsport, he took on Nick Gage, who is the furthest thing from a shoot-style wrestler. What kind of match was it? It was Thatcher riding out the storm of Gage throwing so much violence at him, a maelstrom of fists and detritus. At the first Barnett Bloodsport, he wrestled Hideki Suzuki, who is as much of if not more of a grappler than Thatcher. That match was just straight up locking and countering. And here, vs. the Japanese hybrid wrestler/fighter, Thatcher went out and did his thing. Minowaman did his thing. It was, like the Gage match on that show and the Suzuki match on that show, the best complete bout on the card.

It wasn't the only good match though, and the other ones that were satisfying were the ones that didn't try to pretend that they weren't wrestling matches. The opener, Zachary Wentz vs. Anthony Henry, was a blistering strikefest that finished hot. Davey Boy Smith, Jr. vs. Filthy Tom Lawlor was probably the platonic ideal of how you do a "worked MMA" fight in the template of a wrestling match. It had the heavy submissions and a little bit of stalling, but they went through the beats of a wrestling match with the requisite big spots that popped off the screen, like Smith's homage to his father with the running powerslam or Lawlor's sliding D that took him and Smith out of the ring. Nick Gage vs. Killer Kross was a goddamn hoot even if it was only under four minutes. Then again, four minutes is just enough time not just for a shoot-style match, but for a regular match. Like, too many matches go long for the sake of going long (like both Barnett matches at either of these shows with his name!). All this match needed was a Gage headbutt and the chokehold where the ref called for the bell prematurely.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Kross calling out Batista after the match. Part of me wants to believe Game Changer Wrestling mogul Brett Lauderdale wouldn't have signed off on it if he didn't have reasonable belief Big Dave would accept and make Bloodsport 4 3, by far, the biggest show of Mania weekend. On the other, he had Gage invade a Combat Zone Wrestling show to try and jumpstart an angle without letting CZW know, so talking that shit is on his resume. Either way, you gotta shoot your shot, right?

I doubt that Bloodsport's tenor will change too much going forward. They're always going to go for names, hence bringing in Frank Mir to face off against Dan Severn at Mania weekend. You'll have the matches like Kay/Savoy or Erik Hammer/JR Kratos, and again, there's always the chance that even if those matches are way too by-the-book worked MMA bouts, they might have an exciting moment you otherwise wouldn't see in some standard wrestling match featuring dudes trying to get their shit in. But this show, much like its two predecessors, had some unique matches that you have to go out of your way to watch. It's only $20 on FITE TV for the replay, and you can watch it as many times as you want.