(Photo credit to Scott Lesh Photography.)
As with all matches on this show and other Bloodsport shows to follow (I do not feel the need to repeat this bit for every match on this show, but as it’s dropping first, hey), there are no ropes around the ring, and you can win by submission or knock out only.
Bloodsport, over the last five years and counting since this first show, has been maybe the surest thing in professional wrestling.
The set up not only makes for more unique wrestling in a bell-to-bell mechanical sense than you often get to see anywhere at this point (no disrespect to a concept like WXW’s AMBITION, but they still have the chance to use the ropes, still tethering itself somewhat to professional wrestling), let alone the U.S. indies, but also allows for a really unique visual. Without the ropes, there is very little visual barrier between the combatants in the foreground and the audience in the background. Especially with the shots that get up close in real high quality, it’s beyond visually impressive and, at least speaking on a personal level, grabs one in a way wrestling matches often are not immediately able to in that way.
Out of all of the different Bloodsport shows that GCW’s put on following the immense success of this one, this is still probably my favorite.
Yeah, it doesn’t have the absolute highs that some of the later ones do. No match on this show is as great as the 2022 Jon Moxley vs. Biff Busick match, and probably not the 2019 Masashi Takeda vs. Jonathan Gresham match either. It is also not perfect. MASADA gets to have a match on this show, you know? It’s not flawless. However, there is so much less on this show. Less matches, shorter matches, less nonsense on this show, and in terms of the entire thing, it has probably the highest success rate of any of them. Beyond that though, it has that special kind of freak show element while also having that kind of consistent quality. Wrestlers like KTB or Nick Gage or, in this case, Eddie Kingston shoved into these spots is so much more interesting to me than one hundred guys who are all good at these sorts of matches.
Maybe it is sloppier and maybe it is not as great, technically, but it is a thousand times more interesting to see all these weird people in half freak show early UFC style fights, trying to adapt to the style in either the sorts of matches that they would normally not have and/or against opponents they would not otherwise face. It’s not all guaranteed and it might get messy, but that’s half the fun.
All things considered, I prefer the mess.
Kingston and Williams have the former of the two options, not a new match specifically, but a newer sort of match for them to have. Their AIW work is about roughly the same thing in a narrative sense, the brawler against the technician, the classic Puncher vs. Boxer story, but the rhythms are entirely different. Those matches are wrestling matches, but this is very much a BLOODSPORT kind of a thing, and that division is transformed into a match where Eddie needs to stay off the mat to have a shot, and Tracy needs to get him down to have a shot.
Eddie maybe doesn’t have the hours in matches like these like Tracy’s built up over the years, but he has a quality that feels far more important, which is that everything he does feels genuine, and he makes this feel the same way. He cannot do ten thousand holds or flow between them perfectly, but everything he does in this environment feels like what Eddie Kingston the wrestler and character would do. Swinging wildly, trying to turn the match into a stand-up one that he can win, showing desperation whenever Tracy almost gets him, all of that. Tracy Williams is always going to have a decent match within this system, but it’s Eddie Kingston — not only how he conducts himself, but how the match organizes itself around him — that makes this great.
Wonderfully, the match stays completely true to its premise, and as soon as Eddie is able to get to his feet and stay there, it doesn’t take long at all.
Following a delightfully shocking high kick to the head, Kingston reels off the Backfist to the Future for an immediate KO call.
Oh, also, it does all of this in just a hair over six minutes, making it this incredibly efficient thing as well as a deeply interesting one. It’s not only a hell of a six minute match, but the perfect mission statement for this show (it is not the opener, but KTB vs. Dom Garrini went three and a half minutes and wasn’t much, so effectively, it is), and going forward, every one of these to follow.
HANDWERK 