(photo credit to @photosbymanning on Twitter)
This was an Iowa Street Fight.
Wrestling in 2021 offered up a lot of things that were very special to many of us. Getting the greatest wrestler of all time out of the WWE. A childhood hero returning, people getting their due after a long time, much-needed changed of scenery, multiple returns to form in so many different ways. A lot of these felt like things large swaths of people wanted, but every so often, wrestling in 2021 offered some very specific presents to very specific people.
This match, very specifically, felt like something specifically for me, and I can’t think of a better one.
It’s another one of those matches in 2021, on top of that personal appeal.
Their 2010 feud is one of my favorite of the decade, speaking to me on a real human level in the way that many Jimmy Jacobs storylines (non-kidnapping ones, anyways) tend to, and the blowoff “I Quit” match they had in DGUSA was one of my favorite matches of the year and of the decade.
Obviously, this is not that.
Not just because they’re more grown up and banged up now, but because of all the matches where the wrestlers have changed for the last eleven years, this is the one with the largest change in between the wrestlers and in what the match up can be. I don’t think this is a better match than Danielson/Kingston II or the latest KO/Zayn match, but it is the match of the three like it with, I think, the largest hill to climb, and it’s one that I find so impressive. While Jacobs has gone into something approaching semi-retirement, it’s Moxley who’s become this gigantic star. In most of their 2010 matches, it was Moxley as the the upstart bully against this undersized weirdo, and that just is not a story that they can tell again.
Moxley is who he is and Jacobs is who he is, and like those other great rematches, this is a match that lives with and works around those new realities.
That is to say, Jimmy works as more of an antagonist now against the big hero, and it’s a lot of fun.
Jimmy Jacobs, beautifully, doesn’t play it as pure evil. It’s not 2008 AOTF cult leader Jimmy. It’s something mostly new, this little psycho who seems to know from the moment the match begins that he’s probably going to lose this fight, but that it’s still one worth having. Focused on procuring his pound of flesh first and foremost, making this on hard on his old opponent as possible, on every level. At times, it seems the goal is simply to drag Moxley back into the muck with him (this being Jon Moxley’s final match before going to rehab is something else), not into the WWE or AEW sort of prop hardcore wrestling or even the light tube deathmatch that Moxley recently had with Gage, but into something bloodier and more guttural.
The result is a more classic kind of independent wrestling brawl, something closer to Midwest in origin and feeling then the east coast. It’s more about punching and stabbing and bleeding than about big flashy spots. There’s an acquiescence to that at the very end with one (1) barbed wire board spot, but even that’s done in a more impactful way and built up to better throughout the match. That comes both on accident, with the wire catching and tearing the ring skirt some and on purpose, with the usual avoidance of it, and also Jimmy shaking his hands out after touching the wire to set it up, in a cool little trick. For the most part though, it maintains that rawer kind of a feeling. Deathmatches can feel like real struggles and competitions, but this is a match that feels like a fight, and I’m always going to appreciate that more.
Like the other matches in this vein in 2021, they’re also really great at adding in new bits while playing an old song. They strike several familiar old chords with Jimmy’s spike and Moxley using a fork as his own stabbing weapon, with Jimmy dual wielding at a point and the classic Frye/Takayama-with-stabbing-weapons hockey fight, both spots that never fail to be gross and awesome. However, what’s new is the spike in the mouth from Jimmy, and what’s both new and really cool is updating the spike-in-the-turnbuckle bit to now be used by Jimmy to swing up into Moxley’s face to break a sleeper, instead of being a big comeback spot.
It’s a perfect little shorthand for this match, what was once jaw-dropping and groundbreaking losing that novelty, but having it replaced by a kind of airtight function and utility. What no longer amazes still works, the match stripped down to all but the most basic and primal elements of the thing. Just the beating heart of the matter.
Through a combination of evasive tactics, a mastery of edged weapons, and just a little luck and willingness to die for a match like this, for a moment, Jimmy Jacobs has a shot. Not a big one, but a window being able to crack open just a little feels like the biggest victory in the world when it seemed painted shut only a moment earlier. Unfortunately, like the other matches of its ilk, there are realities to deal with here. Jimmy isn’t what he once was, and Moxley is so much more than he once was. While lacking the ability in 2010 to fight Jacobs off when he lost his mind entirely and went on a late-match rampage, Moxley now has the size and power to not only fight him off, but to do real damage in the process.
Moxley throws Jacobs not only off of the front guillotine, but flips him off with the release suplex and through the barbed wire board. He follows right up with the Paradigm Shift (with wire still stuck in some part of Jimmy Jacobs, taking the strands of barbed wire and half the board with him for the move in a beautiful visual), getting out as quickly as he can, and that’s that.
Jimmy takes the loss he was always going to, but along the way, gleefully extracts the pound of flesh in the way that few others are ever able to.
I don’t know if this is going to hit quite the same for anyone else. I kind of doubt it, but ultimately with a match this fun, this bloody, and this satisfying, I also don’t especially care either.
HANDWERK 