This was for ACH’s AAW Heavyweight Title.
I do not anticipate a lot of casual eyeballs on these 2018 AAW reviews. It’s not to say this is like a DDT house show tag or weird little grapplefuck thing or old lucha in terms of readership self-selection, but generally speaking, you click on this if you’re probably already familiar with how I feel about these things in general. That is to say, I believe everyone reading this is aware of a few things.
Firstly, that in 2018, ACH has maybe the best year of his career.
Not so much in terms of the raw numbers output, he’s probably not beating 2013-2015 when he was in ROH and PWG at once when both were still regularly producing great matches on a show-to-show, and in ROH’s case, week-to-week level. However, in terms of what he gets to do in 2018, he’s so impressive. In 2018, AAW finally does what every other indie in the country decided three or four years prior that they were too afraid to do, and builds the entire company around ACH as the top champion. In doing so, he gets to have a ton of different kinds of matches, all based around him finally getting to prove something smart people had known for years, that a guy like ACH — crisp, exciting, mostly sensible, incredible likeable — not only can 100% be this guy now, but probably could have been for years.
Less importantly, although important to this specific match, is that I’ve always had a soft spot for Jimmy Jacobs, at least once the bell rings. (We don’t need to talk about anything else. I would prefer not to talk about anything else.) An undersized little blood goblin involved in still probably one of my favorite wrestling storylines ever, and who wrestles a certain sort of sparse bare bones style that I’ve always liked a lot. His return after the WWE writing job didn’t go especially well, but in the rare cases one of them goes like this, borderline great with enough positive qualities and no real negative ones, I am more inclined to give it a break than a lot of others.
So, I don’t expect a lot of people to like this as much as I did.
However — and respectfully — eat one, this is my platform, and I liked this a whole lot.
In terms of the mechanical aspects of the thing, construction, execution, whatever, it is as good as you’d expect. Everything ACH does looks and sounds tremendous, Jimmy is capable of keeping up, and he’s in his element in the middle of the thing with your standard few chair indie pop set up. Character wise, it’s the same story, predictably real good. Jimmy is again real good as a sneaky veteran, and ACH is one of the most likeable wrestlers in the entire world. It all runs smoothly.
The match really succeeds in the way an ACH/Jacobs match was always going to though, and that’s through pure narrative might and real great ideas. Jimmy goes back after the AAW Title only a few months after returning from a three year retirement, and it isn’t going super well. He talks shit but can never actually do anything to ACH. He gets outmaneuvered and run out of the ring on pure wrestling, briefly uses a bunch of chairs and veteran wiles, but ACH eventually turns that against him too, leading to something that isn’t exactly new or all that novel, but that they pull off so well that it’s what makes the match great, instead of simply really good.
Jimmy pulls off the fake injury act when nothing else is working, rolling outside holding his ankle right before it looks like ACH is about to enter the last stages of a successful defense, and it’s one of the best versions of the idea in recent memory.
As always with a bit like that, what it requires more than anything else is commitment, and everyone involved really really really commits. Not just in terms of the way Jimmy sells it or the way ACH reacts to it, although both are outstanding (ACH promising another match, Jimmy acting actually pissed off instead of just holding the leg), but the institutional support it gets. It’s one thing for the referee to come out, but clearing out the back to check on Jimmy after he’s down on the floor for maybe longer than usual to sit the bit up. So often, it’s isolated to just the two people involved and a referee, so you can spot it coming, given how real injuries are usually treated, and in actually giving it the hallmarks you’d get from an actual unfortunate accident, the whole thing works a hundred times better.
Most impressive is the way that the crowd goes from a few people at ACH not to fall for it when Jimmy first rolls outside to then full-throatedly chanting for Jimmy when ACH and others help him up on the outside.
The punishment for the act comes so soon that it’s both hilarious and a thousand times more rewarding. Jimmy gets him back in immediately and sets a chair up for something, trying to weaken ACH with the End Time first, only for ACH to immediately muscle him up and into the Buster Call (Brainbuster) through the chair to win.
It’s perfect.
Not only perfect pro wrestling, Pro Wrestling Ass Pro Wrestling if you’ll allow me to abuse one of my favorite turns of phrase, but just a lovely piece of storytelling. Impatient with still having relative ring rust after three years off, unable to successfully bully he somebody he used to be able to push around, Jimmy tries to skip forward and bypass the hard work that probably could work, only to immediately pay the price. You do not get moral lessons all that often in this corner of wrestling, or at least, you do not get endings like this that so completely feel like inarguable moral lessons, and it’s a fascinating and wonderful thing.
Looking at the pure mechanics, a borderline match, but wrestling is so much more than the mechanics, the nuts and bolts, and so I really loved this.
HANDWERK 