This was an Ultimate X match for Low Ki’s Impact X Division Title.
If you’ve ever laid eyes on this thing before, then you ought to already know I adored this.
Certainly, this match is not on the level of the great Ultimate X matches in the history of Impact Wrestling and TNA before it. It’s no AJ/Sabin/Petey, or MCMG/Beer Money, or one of my dark horse favorites in Low Ki/Daniels/Sabin/Shane. It’s certainly no match for LAX vs. AJ and Daniels in the fall of 2006, my personal pick for the best Ultimate X match ever.
It is, however, easily the most interesting one of these in years, if not ever.
While something like MCMG vs. Beer Money worked on a level beyond the usual stunt shows for fish out of water reasons, this is even more than that, both kind of setting this match back to what it ought to be or at least what it should be once or twice to really make it count again, and then delivering something real novel for a match like this.
First, it’s the hardest fought Ultimate X match in a really really long time.
Similar to ladder matches that have opted to re-insert some sense of struggle before any climbing comes into play, this is a match that takes the time and care to build up the climbing attempts. Not only in that it saves those big attempts for later on so that the match gets as much as possible out of them in terms of construction, but also in the sense that it emphasizes how hard the actual climb and travel along the wires really is. It’s constantly cut off, people are dragged off the top to the apron or the mat, shoved off to the floor, shoved into the steel truss that holds the whole system up, and things like that. The utility of this is also twofold, as it not only makes it into an accomplishment, this hard fought thing, when people are able to get up successfully later in the match, but it also adds a level of meanness and brutality that isn’t often on display, if present at all, in a match like this.
The second reason?
Well.
Low Ki blocks a chair shot from Trevor Lee by punching the chair into his face and sells a real bad injury to his right hand for the rest of the match.
To some extent, it’s some simple WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS BLOG? canon stuff.I love this shit. I don’t know why I love it, even years removed from my own hand injury and the way in which it affected my own physical labor at a far less physical job than wrestling. I just do. There’s something so cool about such an obvious and understandable injury, and someone who puts as much care and thought into wrestling as Low Ki does it absolute justice against Lee and Everett. He can’t grab, he can’t close his fist, he has to pull the glove off after a few minutes when the swelling comes in, it’s all very genuine feeling.
I would love to say that Low Ki doing hand selling is exactly as great as I always imagined, but honestly, I never imagined it. There are some things you never even consider to hope for, you know?
Beyond just that it’s one of my favorite things to see in wrestling though, it also gives this an element that Ultimate X matches rarely have. There’s been one or two with a hurt arm, as I recall, but nothing quite like this and certainly nothing where that injury matters quite as much as it does here. Low Ki not only can’t get out on the wire, but he can’t really even hang onto the truss for support when he’s on the top rope properly, and almost falls off a few times because he’s only supporting himself with the left hand. It’s an entirely new element to a match like this, which paired with a more stripped down and back to basics approach that the match takes even independent of Low Ki’s injured hand makes for such a cool take on this match.
Coolest of all is that, outside of the finish to the LAX vs. AJ & Daniels Ultimate X match from 2006 (if you’ve seen it, you know and if you haven’t, I won’t spoil it), they bring it to a head in my favorite finish to one of these matches yet.
Everett and Lee climb to the middle from opposite sides, but while they do that, Low Ki finally figures out a way to overcome. Using his three other good limbs, he climbs to the very top of the steel trussing, crawls to the middle of it, and slides through the middle to stand on the wires. With the good hand holding him steady and finally on decent footing, Low Ki kicks Everett and then Lee down to the mat below, before steadying himself on the wire, and unstrapping his title, proving once again that where there’s a will, there’s a way.
Something about the size of a fighter and the size of a fight.
Low Ki finds a path through both smarts and guts, not only making himself look stronger, but giving a more thoughtful and understatedly violent match like this a finish that it both deserves and that stands out on a conceptual level. This is the good shit, and had this not been cut up by some commercials or opted to go even bigger with some of the louder moments, it might be one of the very best matches of the year.
The most interesting one of these matches in nearly seven years, armed with the sort of conceit that in the fourteen years of regular Ultimate X matches, nobody had quite thought up before. I’m certainly biased given the content of a match like this, but it’s just such a treat to see people actually do something with a match this rich in potential. Leave it to these three to find a way.
HANDWERK 