ACH vs. Trevor Lee, AAW Unstoppable 2018 (11/24/2018)

Another wildly unnecessary Trevor Lee hour without any sort of reason given for the match to last even half as long as it does, but at least this time, he has an opponent who can keep up with him on both a macro and micro level. The result is that, while the match is clearly artificially long, it is at least great for something like ninety percent of the runtime of the hour it lasts. A testament to the talent of both ACH and Trevor Lee, at the exact same time that is an insult to their mental faculties, and also those of AAW as a promotion, for thinking they had enough in a narrative sense to fill up an entire hour.

This maybe feels mean, but at the same time, I mean it in the most complementary way possible, if two other independent wrestlers were in this match, I would have genuinely hated this.

However, with Trevor and ACH at the helm, even while I knew what was happening and didn’t like the direction, it was impossible to look away from.

three boy

Trevor Lee vs. DJZ, AAW Defining Moment 2018 (8/31/2018)

(photo credit to @SourceDuMal on Twitter)

This was for Lee’s AAW Heritage Title.

Once again, this is a blast and the exact sort of quality middle of the card bullshit that tends to slip through the cracks when watching in real time.

Part of that is individual, because this is a match with two great individual performances. As with their match in February, it is largely a showcase for Trevor Lee as independent wrestling’s perfect midcard heel champion. Not all pure coward bullshit, but just enough to make him come across so different and to hit that perfect like 1993-4 Steve Austin in WCW thing of being a guy who everyone knows is one of the best in the world, but always coming off as just beatable enough because of how frequently he opts for the easiest and sleaziest route. It’s not the absolute best version of Trevor Lee (2014-2015 PWG wunderkind babyface), but relative to the long and overblown CWF stuff, especially at this point, it’s such a breath of fresh air. He also gets into some light back work here, and gets to be a little nastier underneath it. That, in turn, allows for DJZ to show off a little bit of his great sympathetic selling too, on top of just being as great of an offensive babyface as everyone (everyone who had been paying attention anyways) knew him to be already.

The other part is that, under the radar, Trevor and DJZ have some remarkable physical chemistry with each other too. Everything that happens is so smooth, but it also looks so brutal and physical when they opt for that as well. It feels like a perfect kind of wrestling.

As opposed to their February match also, while only being thirteen minutes, this is a match that feels a lot bigger, and with a clear sense of the moment with the increased number of eyeballs on these shows. DJZ gets to hit a few much bigger and more spectacular highspots than usual, Trevor gets to show off a little more, the bumps are bigger, and all of that, and it all looks absolutely perfect while at the same time, the match is great on a foundational level before any of that happens, which is the key.

What helps too — going back to the bullshit part of this — is that the bullshit here is genuinely great too.

Lee manipulates a referee bump by dodging a superkick before landing a low blow, leading to Earl Hebner running out for a guest spot, only for Trevor Lee to kick him in the dick also. The third time is the charm, as DJZ manages a dick kick on Trevor and then the ZDT for a delightful nearfall, only to then have his follow up crossbody off the top rolled through with a handful of tights to allow Trevor to once again steal the victory.

To their credit, it is a match that both stands out as great on a 2018 level, but that also ticks off just about every box I would want for a television title style match on an episode of wrestling TV from twenty five or more years in the past. It’s what I honestly want wrestling to be. The foundational elements that make this shit work, tight and efficient, story and character focused first, but then with perfect mechanical execution and packed to the brim with as many cool moves as it can hold too. We usually talk about visions of what this can be and blueprints of the future in far better matches than this, but that’s not far off from how I feel about this match.

Enormously fun and easily digestible. The sort of wrestling sorely sorely missed from not just the U.S. independents, but all wrestling everywhere at this point.

***+

Darby Allin vs. Shane Strickland, AAW Defining Moment 2018 (8/31/2018)

Fittingly, on a show from the weekend piggybacking on the initial ALL IN show the day after that eventually led to AEW’s existence, we get an early preview not just of a future AEW match up a few years down the line, but of one of the sorts of matches that would eventually become the company’s bread and butter.

That is to say a sub fifteen minute match based around Darby Allin dying.

It’s a simple formula, executed as well as usual here, in which a generational bump freak gets to do a whole bunch of super questionable things to his body for exactly long enough to really impress but also exactly short enough that the lunacy of it all never has time to feel routine or overstay its welcome.

You can plug different guys in here and have it work pretty well at this point, it’s maybe the most reliable singles formula in wrestling over the next half-decade, but to his credit, Shane Strickland genuinely does add a fair amount.

Shane is really good at working with Darby in these evasion sequences that feel both spectacular and also just genuine enough to work. There’s a dance-fight element to them, but they always seem to stop right at the point when I’m about to roll my eyes and say this is all bullshit, which is an exceedingly rare gift for a match or a pairing to have. Usually when something even gets a good look at where that line is, they’re going too fast to stop themselves from running a thousand yards past it, but these two walk alongside it very very well. Shane’s also very good by this point at controlling matches like this, not only in terms of how to use his physical gifts, but also how to keep a match interesting. He’s not the best mat wrestler alive, and uses his holds sparingly, opting for the cool offense instead, and like the evasion sequences, it’s always this perfect mix of cool enough to impress but never so cool that I want to cheer for him. Strickland’s also a little bit of a bump freak himself, taking a sick header onto the apron that might be the single grossest bit of the match too.

Really though, it’s the Darby show, and it hits all the right notes you want and expect. He dies, he dies some more, he comes back, but never for long enough that you get past all the fireworks and remember that you should probably hate him, and then they hit the finish after something remarkably sick.

The story of the match comes down to the repetition of a German Suplex spot between Strickland and Darby. The first time, Darby eats shit on a release German to transition to Strickland in control. The second time, Darby is able to backflip out at the start of his comeback. The third time it happens, Shane learned something and adapted, and not only keeps his hands locked to avoid giving Darby the room to flip out, but does it on the apron too, to both kill him extra hard and deny him the foot room to land if he does miraculously flip out (he does not).

Strickland follows up with his stomp to win, and while normally that would look like absolute shit and clearly not hit the guy taking it, AAW’s incompetency works out, as the camera misses the impact and landing entirely, so if I can’t see it, I’m not forced to confront how clearly phony it is.

Pro wrestling baby.

Easy and mostly wonderful, as one of the best formulas in wrestling delivers again.

three boy

ACH vs. Jeff Cobb, AAW Destination Chicago (8/30/2018)

This was for ACH’s AAW Heavyweight Title.

ACH does it again.

Now, it’s not to say this is exactly on the level of some of the other major ACH accomplishments in this, possibly his career year, or really even that this is some kind of an ACH miracle performance. Jeff Cobb is definitely of a higher class than a lot of your NJPW junior heavyweights that ACH worked miracles with in the Best of the Super Juniors, and as far as U.S. indie heavyweights to wrestle ACH in 2018 go, he’s also better than Keith Lee.

Like that match though, it is ACH against a very mercurial heavyweight who often feels a lot more passive than he ought to be (the heel turn in AAW and joining the evil anti-vowel stable helps somewhat, but it is never better done bell-to-bell than here), and in an ACH title match, all of those problems find themselves diminished if not outright corrected and said heavyweight achieves at a higher level than he (a) typically does at this point, and (b) has achieved at in some time.

Essentially, the trick with Cobb and a lot of others like him, as his New Japan run will eventually make very clear with a series of further examples, is that when asked to be a match’s central focus or in most kinds of dream matches where stuff just gets thrown out there, it doesn’t really work all that well. But when he turns all of his sizeable talents into becoming someone’s obstacle and someone builds something around and incorporating him, in effect becoming the other side of somebody else’s story and a challenge for a great babyface to overcome, he is outstanding.

Conveniently, there is no better babyface in the country in 2018 (and few in the world) better than ACH.

This match, more than any other in ACH’s reign, is the clearest illustration of why that is.

More than any other match in the reign, this is about the struggle. ACH has a lot of cool offense and is, generally speaking, a likeable wrestler. He doesn’t leap off the screen in that way, but watching him, it’s hard not to like him. This match is much more about the nittier and grittier though, giving an already kind of vaguely likeable wrestler not only a big challenge to struggle against and overcome, but going into a series of specific details on every reason why it was such a struggle to begin with.

During the match, ACH’s struggle against Cobb gets broken down into (a) his inability to knock him down, (b) his inability to lift him off of his feet, & (c) his inability, once the first two challenges had been overcome, to actually keep Cobb down on the mat for three seconds to beat him. Each individual struggle gets paid off in a big moment after a series of well spread out teases, a string of individual victories within the struggle for the larger one, and ACH is unreal at communicating every aspect of that struggle. His selling of minor work on the back for the duration of the match, itself done in that classic Bret Hart “labor/service worker trying to get to the end of a shift“ way that always feels realer than almost any other selling in wrestling, is fantastic and adds another element, but he’s also specifically great at communicating the toll it all takes with mere facial expressions.

The construction of the match also does so much for it.

ACH doesn’t ever put it all together at once, but rather, it slowly builds until the very end, for maximum impact both in terms of emotion but also simply the nuts and bolts of a satisfying wrestling match. He picks up Cobb once after struggling before, but pays a price for it. He can never really knock him down until the closing moments of the match either. These things compound upon each other, and combined with all the cut offs and the way that Cobb can very easily do both of these things (there’s one especially great idea here where after failing to hit his own German Suplex, ACH is very quickly hurled by Cobb with a release German with an upsetting amount of ease) as well as surviving all of ACH’s biggest pieces of offense in the last third of the match has a way of making it seem almost hopeless by the end. It feels like a match where a champion loses the title, met by a force they simply cannot do anything against.

On that note, Jeff Cobb is also genuinely very good here, and to this point, I think I’d call it his career performance.

He isn’t being asked to do too much, he is essentially being plugged into an ACH formula, but his believability in the role and the casual meanness of his mere existence is at least part of the reason this works just a little better than all the other matches like it in this title reign. There’s no one moment, unlike ACH, where you can point to and say that’s it, it is not a flashy or heroic outing, and I liked it more because of that. ACH’s underdog story works so well here, I think, because Jeff Cobb is so casual about every advantage he has, and so dispassionate when he does easily cut him off in any number of ways.

The way Cobb conducts himself, especially opposite ACH as a personality, makes it all the more exciting and rewarding when Our Hero eventually does find a way in the end, and suddenly, what had seemed impossible for the last fifteen or twenty minutes is suddenly, very very briefly, not so impossible any more.

ACH eventually strings just enough together, fights through the damage to the back just long enough and musters just enough strength needed to hit the second Buster Call of the match, this time hanging on when he couldn’t before, and floating into the cover to keep the title.

This is it, man.

A great match featuring one of the great showings of the year anywhere from one of the best wrestlers anywhere, in terms of the entire complete package of the match from performance to mechanics to construction to pure pro wrestling ass pro wrestling babyface guts and fire, and if not for another Ace’s heroics around the same point in time, one of the great babyface performances all year too.

Naturally, AAW being AAW, it would be ACH’s final defense of the title, and save maybe another match from the reign that won’t be written about, it ends on the highest note of the entire thing. If it had to end (it didn’t), this is the best possible final successful defense, summing up every reason it and ACH have been among the best things anywhere in wrestling all through 2018 and delivering his most triumphant feeling victory as well.

The best comes last.

Go Ace.

***1/4

 

Eddie Kingston vs. Fred Yehi, AAW Take No Prisoners 2018 (5/25/2018)

On paper, especially at the point when it happened, was just for the maniacs out there.

Kingston and Yehi were, in 2018, maybe the two most underappreciated wrestlers on the independents. There’s always like five to ten people you can say that about based on personal preference or what you think underrated really is, but it’s real hard to go back to 2018 and find two men who fit the bill more. Yehi, who has been kicked into the cold once again with EVOLVE’s fourth wave not really having a place for him and him not really fitting in anywhere else, and Eddie Kingston, who despite the fact that he continues to make the most out of any opportunity (many of which, in AAW, I have not written about for reasons you can easily dig up on cagematch), is years removed in either direction from something he can really sink his teeth into outside of AAW. It is borderline criminal to see where they were in 2018, relatively speaking.

All of that despite, as this match will attest to, both men being among the best wrestlers in the entire world.

To their immense credit, while this could have simply been some deep nerd bait limbwork sort of a match so as to satisfy the bevy of people who wanted to see it no matter what, it is also a lot more than that.

Yehi and Kingston absolutely give you and I the match we wanted, as the absolute freaks out there in the world, of course.

They are a perfect match for each other in this way, as everyone with a spreadsheet would have told you, with Yehi’s unorthodox attack and mat focus allowing Eddie Kingston to stand out not only as a tough guy brawler (to which Yehi can also stand with him), but also to put on yet another great understated selling performance in the first half off of a hurt back. Yehi doesn’t stay on it long enough to really force an all-time selling performance, and it isn’t as if we get to see all-time great knee seller Eddie Kingston in his greatest element, but he is still so good at this more basic idea. It isn’t quite that kind of understated Bret Hart back selling, but there is a real working class quality to it that I immediately recognize as genuine. Not glory boy selling, trying to show off and garner sympathy, but someone gutting out a small injury and trying to get through until the end of their shift.

It is not a major part of this match at all, in terms of what happens and why it happens and why the match unfolds and ends the way it does, but it is again something I find so impressive.

Beyond the stellar mechanics of the thing, the usual crispness, energy, and fire you tend to find from Kingston and Yehi both, it succeeds in the other ways too. Constructed well, and all of that, especially in how they build to the bigger strike exchanges in the back half and the way those escalate as well, but mostly I mean that this is also a mean god damned match if there ever was one.

They aren’t carving each other up out there or throwing objects into each other’s faces or gouging the eyes or anything, but there’s a real dislike here that always feels just barely under the surface. It’s not above water and in your face, but these are not opaque waters, and you can really see it.  All the mean little look on their faces, mostly when they trade shots but not exclusively, and the way everything feels thrown with a little more force than you might see out of them otherwise (in Eddie’s case, this is maybe true, and in Yehi’s case, it is absolutely true). That escalation in strike exchanges I spoke of earlier also carries a certain meanness of spirit with it a well, as once Eddie takes the batting glove off, and the hateful feelings finally peak their head above water.

While Fred Yehi certainly puts them to good use, he simply cannot do it like the King does. Not only in that he is less inclined towards striking in general, especially when trying to win a match, but in that he gets less out of his anger than Eddie Kingston does. Yehi tries to drop bombs and get out of his comfort zone, but simply cannot succeed long term. It’s a fascinating situation to me, someone totally holding their own in a Styles Make Fights sort of a match, but totally unable to ever actually win. Eddie might be getting his ass kicked, but while Yehi tries to figure out something that might do it (including a genuinely killer Dragon Suplex for a shockingly great nearfall for that move in 2018), all Eddie really needs is one opening.

Kingston finally gets the distance, and lands the Backfist to the Future to win.

One of the year’s great hidden gems.

***1/4

ACH vs. Keith Lee, AAW Path of Redemption 2018 (3/31/2018)

This was for ACH’s AAW Heavyweight Title. 

Yet again, we are going to talk about 2018 ACH.

One of these days, you are going to listen.

There is no better babyface in independent wrestling at this point than ACH in AAW.  There are a few contenders, but given what would go on to come about about many of them, the only one you could reasonably hold up years later against ACH is Ilja Dragunov in WXW, and while that’s hardly incorrect, ACH is just a little better without any of the same benefits WXW gives its wrestlers at this point like real great long term storytelling and character arcs, or even half as devoted, loyal, and loud a crowd. What ACH does in AAW, he does largely on his own, outside of the company making the one (1) wise decision to position ACH as the moral center of its universe and let him work. 

As a result of what ACH can do, this becomes Keith Lee’s best match in a little bit, fittingly coming once one of the best wrestlers alive plugged him into his kind of a match, rather than just letting Keith Lee do Keith Lee Things. 

Narratively speaking, it’s as great as a 2018 Keith Lee match can be. 

Keith Lee on his own, as seen in EVOLVE and elsewhere, is a little too casual and a lot too much of a dork for my tastes to really work as a top level babyface. It’s not to say he hasn’t had some great matches, but generally speaking, he is not half as compelling as the central point of a story as he is here and in other matches like it, as a challenge to overcome. Keith Lee’s greatest gift is just how physically impressive and imposing he is, and when paired against an even more likeable wrestler in ACH, Keith’s more casual nature comes off as a kind of threat, a monster so above the fray that he can be as aloof as he is. Keith isn’t a full on bad guy here, but if anything, I like that more, as it makes ACH even more likeable, if anything.

Show me a guy who’s too big and strong and gifted to care about anything and a smaller wrestler who cares about everything, and 100 times out of 100, no matter how much I might like the former, I am going to side with the latter. 

Beyond what works as a concept, the match also whips ass in execution. Everything they want to do is done as well as they could possibly do it.

The match is not all that complex. It’s classic big and little. For every five shots ACH needs to back Keith Lee up (let alone ever knock him down), Keith needs one to send ACH flying. ACH inches closer and closer, the cut offs get bigger and progressively meaner, Keith Lee finds himself progressively more puzzled with the small man’s refusal to stay down, and eventually, the champ able to find a way. It’s all done exceptionally well, on every level. ACH is again super sympathetic, with picture perfect execution, and some truly disgusting bumps for the big guy. Keith Lee does a stellar job of preserving his whole thing as an act, but still accommodating what the match needs. If he’s not going to snarl and throw ACH into a brick wall at full force, he does a very good job at slightly ratcheting up the intensity, especially with his cut offs. The match is also constructed incredibly well, never selling out on the big build to Keith being knocked entirely off of his feet or being lifted, saving both until the end, and also really making it feel like as much of a struggle for ACH as possible, feeling more and more like a losing effort, until suddenly, it isn’t. 

ACH gets a last second burst after a second Pounce, bouncing up to finally knock Keith down with a lariat, and finally lifting him into the Buster Call for the win. It couldn‘t be done with a lot of build up or conscious effort, but instead, ACH only ever does the two things he needed to do to win the match with a last second burst of adrenaline that vanishes as soon as the bell rings. Exactly how this sort of thing ought to be done. It’s not unbelievable that ACH could knock Keith Lee down or that he could lift him, but (a) it feels more correct that he could only do it once or twice & (b) they got as much value as you possibly could by not only saving it until the end and turning it into this gigantic accomplishment for Our Hero. 

Not anything groundbreaking or mindblowing here, just a rock solid and real interesting execution of one of the oldest premises in the game. Keith looks like a bigger deal than usual after one of his matches, and ACH leaves looking that much stronger for finding a way anyways.

How it ought to be done. 

***

ACH vs. Jimmy Jacobs, AAW Showdown 2018 (2/17/2018)

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.

***+

DJZ vs. Trevor Lee, AAW Showdown 2018 (2/17/2018)

This was for DJZ’s AAW Heritage Title.

(Also it was a WRSTLING Rules match, but the less said about that, maybe the better.)

Since you clicked on this, I cannot imagine it would come as anything close to a surprise to you to learn that it’s pretty great.

Trevor Lee, of course, is fantastic, albeit in a far less flashy and attention-seeking (the CWF work is outstanding, but we should be honest about it also) way than usual.

He’s in a different role here than his more celebrated work in CWF Mid-Atlantic, and even kind of a different one than in PWG, focusing entirely now on basic stooging ass heel work, and it is a BLAST. He does something similar in PWG around this time, mixing some of these antics in with the prerequisite fireworks that PWG crowds more or less remand, but a match like this and the AAW work in general is much more bare bones, and super interesting as a result. It’s not to say this is all chinlocks and breaking chokes on the five count, Trevor’s still got the offense to throw out there, but the cooler stuff is much more sparsely distributed, with a focus instead on the simple stuff. Real mean clubs to the injured neck, classical cheating spots updated for modern matches, focusing on a kind of earthy brutality that feels not only meaner, but that helps DJZ’s fancier stuff stand out even more. All of that, on top of the usual stellar offensive execution and, sneakily, some of the best base work in the country.

It takes two though, as you well know.

DJZ again not only does a lot of really interesting things that nobody else is doing, but even does the more basic things with a real snap and precision.

The most impressive thing he did here wasn’t any of the dives or even cool lucha holds or takedowns, but the way early on that he runs to back Lee into the ropes to then pop him off the other side. It’s a common thing that everyone does, but DJZ really buries his shoulder into Trevor’s body to send him back into the ropes with some force. It’s not a trope that often looks all that fake, it’s easy to buy someone backing someone a few steps back when in that position, but it’s the best I’ve seen that thing look in a really really long time. It’s then followed up by the other thing he brings to the table, a fancy little hold made up of pieces I recognize, but that I’m not totally sure if I’ve ever seen before. It’s maybe twenty seconds of wrestling, but in that twenty seconds, it’s a short and simple explanation of why I like — or liked, prior to his current psuedo retirement — the guy so much, on top of the other like ten or eleven minutes here where he’s doing a whole lot of cool stuff.

Additionally, yes, it is a spectacularly efficient match. A likeable hero, a perfect villain, the clearest story in the world (someone who sucks wants to steal something from someone who everyone likes), and enough cool stuff to keep it exciting too, before Trevor steals the title in the least glamorous way possible, with two handfuls of ropes on a cradle reversal.

Tremendous professional wrestling, completely air tight and successful in all aspects.

One of the best television matches of the month, even if it’s not on television.

***

Sami Callihan vs. Low Ki, AAW Homecoming (3/17/2017)

This was for Callihan’s AAW Heavyweight Title.

A pretty fun backstory exists here. It’s not essential to know everything or to have seen everything, as commentary does a pretty solid job of giving a newer viewer the facts, but it’s one that does benefit the match significantly.

Way back in the long ago Before Times of 2010 or 2011, Low Ki returned to the indies and knocked Sami Callihan out in a match in Jersey All Pro Wrestling. As part of the build to this match, Callihan talked about being obsessed with trying to knock Low Ki out in the return match, and it is very much built around this fascinating idea of a heel’s revenge. It is not so much a supervillain origin story as it’s not as if (a) Sami is a supervillain or (b) this has really driven him for years or transformed him in the way that, for example, Chris Hero’s final loss to Bryan Danielson in PWG very clearly turned him into a meaner and more bitter wrestling character, but it’s a very interesting approach and a welcome addition onto a match that was already worth watching simply for being a Low Ki match.

The match itself is really great, both because of this and in a more general sense.

Speaking of the latter first, it simply whips ass. Low Ki hits really hard and everything he does feels like it is both genuine and as mean as possible. Assuming you have already come to terms with the fact that Peak Low Ki is never returning (seriously it’s been like six years now, at least try enjoy things for what they are presently), there is so much to love in this performance. A constant struggle where one doesn’t always exist in other 2017 Sami matchs, and in general, it feels like Low Ki forces Sami Callihan to bring something to a wrestling match that he hasn’t in close to a year. It’s the most motivated performance out of Sami I’ve seen. That sheer energy and activity isn’t coming back, much like Low Ki, but there’s a meanness and hostility here that does so much, on top of all of the little ways he communicates the story. It’s not really a thing that happened beyond this match as his gifts were often poorly applied or applied in poor environments, but it feels like a clear way forward for Callihan as well.

As a story, it is a real treasure.

True to what’s been said, Sami spends the first half trying to punish and knock out Low Ki. The way they handle it here is really sensational, not simply doing an even slugfest, but also balancing the heel and face elements of the match into it as well. Sami is (theoretically) better and stronger now and Ki can’t bully him anymore, but Low Ki is still LOW KI. Callihan needs his tricks, electrical tape to bind Ki to the ropes for a moment, chairs to the body and one real nasty shot to the side of the face, but he does it. The problem is that, being a shitheel dirtbag, Callihan revels in his victory too much, and Low Ki comes back.

In coming back, Low Ki has one of the greatest series of attacks anywhere in wrestling in recent memory. Callihan dares him while he has one hand, and yet again, Low Ki manages to knock Callihan out. Moving forward, while Callihan is still loopy, Ki exclusively throws punches and it’s this totally brand new kind of attack from a wrestler like Low Ki, a true violent delight. Once having proven that point, Low Ki pays back Callihan for the abuse in an absolutely psychotic way, pulling his jaw apartwith both hands, until a sudden yank back, followed by Callihan frantically rolling to the outside.

Lesser minds would craft a match about Callihan trying for revenge and eventually getting it, albeit in a wholly unlikeable way, perhaps a knockout with brass knuckles or a roll of quarters, and while that would probably still be good, what they do here is a million times better and a billion times cooler. Callihan, unable to do the thing he wants to do because there should be nothing admirable about him, paying for his hubris not only by being knocked out again, but now being punished in an even more severe way.

Callihan’s response is, I think, just as great. Stealing the old Sabu tape-the-jaw-shut routine with tape around the top and bottom of the skull, and trying to move forward, only to continually get his ass kicked when he’s too hurt to do much.

The match unfortunately loses its nerve at the very end, not being willing or unable (this is probably it) to go all the way with its goals in either direction, and instead skipping ahead to some real bullshit. Low Ki has the Dragon Clutch on the fucked up jaw, when Abyss comes to do interference. With the aid of Sami’s manager and Sami blinding Low Ki with powder to the eyes, Abyss chokeslams Low Ki off the top, and Callihan gets the pin to keep the title.

It’s not the worst finish in the world, but it’s never sat right with me. Not simply because it was a bunch of stuff in a match that had otherwise been this wonderfully straight forward fight, not nearly brutal enough of a close for a match like this, but also because it felt like the match skipped ahead to that point before it was totally time for that, if that was going to happen. I get it, it’s Low Ki and there are just certain realities to dealing with Low Ki unless you have a genuine legend in the ring with him, but I don’t think it quite fit the tone of the rest of the match, and arguably kind of undercut it at the very end as a result.

Still, this is something like ninety to ninety five percent of one of the greatest matches of the year. Instead of getting all the way there, they instead have to settle for a match that is only potentially such, and that is still a really impressive thing to settle for. Unfinished as it seems to be, still one of the best and well worth the time for either fans of Low Ki, or fans of what Sami Callihan used to be around the start of the decade.

(If you’re not a fan of at least one of those things, I do not know what you’re doing here.)

***1/3

Drew Galloway vs. DJZ, AAW Homecoming (3/17/2017)

A real hoot of a thing that rightfully demanded and garnered a world of attention when it first happened.

The match is not perfect, let’s be very clear. There are some obvious structural issues with the thing. Given all of the deeply horrific things that Drew Galloway does to poor Zema Ion in this match, his selling is not the greatest. Ion’s non-flying (this is a VERY important distinction, as his aerial based ones genuinely absolutely god damned ROCK) comebacks also don’t really feel like things that should be able to stop Galloway at all. This is mostly an issue the match avoids having to confront by having him constantly yanked out of the air and hurled into the nearest hard surface as the process of Galloway devouring him whole, but you’ll occasionally get a feeble little superkick and that doesn’t fit in so well when Drew sells for stuff like that.

Mostly though, holy shit.

Holy shit!

Drew doesn’t have matches like this often, he doesn’t have matches this great nearly enough given the clear skill that he does have, it’s why he’s so often disappointing in a bell to bell sense, but something like this is another look into this other world where it’s like this all the time. This is the ideal version of Drew Galloway, doing cool things with his power, hitting hard, mean mugging it up, although it’s also one aided in no small part by an unbelievable bumping performance on the other end.

There are better Drew matches — the Christian stuff from 2010, Chris Masters Superstars match in 2011 that was Just For Us Sickos, the Roddy matches in EVOLVE, a PWG match with similar qualities to this and an even better opponent/environment perhaps — but there are few cooler ones, and maybe no singular better Drew performance. This is ten minutes or so of Drew hurling Ion into the mat, into the floor, into the god damned WALLS of the Eagles Club, and occasionally yanking him out of the air to do that with a near Cesaro-esque level of ease. Beyond that, he is such a God damned prick about it all, taunting Ion and flexing and really making even more of a show out of every bit of it. It’s not entirely a squash as Ion does have these great moments of offense (a few with really incredible bumps from Drew as well), but they walk this line perfectly. Save for the previously mentioned comeback moments that are not the greatest, Ion rarely gets more here than it feels like he should, and the match lasts exactly as long as it feels like it should.

Galloway lands the greatest single Future Shock DDT of his career at the end, getting a multi-rotation swing on it with Ion’s feet in the air, before also landing with a nasty spike on the way down as well. It’s a perfect finish in any match, and in a rarity on an AAW show, it is actually the end of the match.

Near perfect wrestling, managing to be both sensible and unbelievably cool.

An absolute motherfucker of a match, and one of the great showcase matches anywhere in wrestling all year.

***1/4