The 2017 CWF Rumble, CWF-MA CWF Rumble (10/14/2017)

In this specific Rumble, unlike virtually every other Rumble ever, Trevor Lee’s CWF Mid Atlantic Heavyweight Title was on the line, in addition to him starting at #1.

What really works about this — rather than Lee acting as an overconfident champion and simply going wire to wire to prove a point — is that it happens through the orders of Golden Ticket holder Roy Wilkins, forcing Trevor into this spot.

It is not the 2016 CWF Rumble.

That match, I thought, was the best match of its kind anywhere in professional wrestling all decade.

A year prior, this match was immaculately constructed, and filled up with enough talent to carry the more ambitious booking sections of the match, while expertly utilizing its weirder and less experienced acts early on. The problem that this match has, especially in the early and middle sections, is that they cross over a line and now there are just too many inexperienced, weird, or novelty local nostalgia act wrestlers for this to truly be a great match. It is a balancing act with guys like that, and while a fifth or a sixth of the field being made up of guys like that is alright, a third or nearly half of the field being essentially warm bodies is not.

What works for this though is that it is a one man show done by one of, I don’t know, the ten to twenty best wrestlers in the entire world.

Relative to that sort of a thing in other Rumbles, it is not 1992 and it is not 2004, but it is a truly spectacular Trevor Lee performance, and especially in the last quarter or so of this thing, an outstanding story that CWF Mid-Atlantic crafts around him.

Trevor Lee going from wire to wire is a lovely story and one that CWF gets as much out of as possible, given how few really believable other winners this match has to offer up (count them on one hand, you’ll have enough fingers left over to carry the groceries into the house). Ric Converse is great at the start against him before the match loses its way, Nick Richards is a fun oddity once again, and in the last third, they unload all they’ve got with guys like Arik Royal, Chet Sterling, Roy Wilkins, Brad Attitude, and Cain Justice. Trevor Lee is especially great throughout, not only hitting all the old Rumble iron man bits by hanging on the ropes and putting on an exhaustion selling clinic, but also innovating in fun new ways, such as catching his feet on the ring frame underneath the apron.

The real genius of the thing comes once all thirty are in, with one of the great booking swerves of the year and decade. Roy Wilkins, using the Golden Ticket to come in at #30, have his stablemates all come in in the last five, and making Trevor Lee start at #1, enters with the brass knuckles around his hand, only for Lee to duck and immediately throw him out. It’s not only a beautiful piece of comeuppance for maybe CWF’s single most despicable antagonist, but a lovely piece of smaller scale booking that throws the rest of the match into doubt by removing what felt like the match’s natural final boss.

Wilkins knocks Trevor out and busts him open (although not as much as anyone would hope for) with brass knuckles right after, and the match again does as good of a job as it possibly could at creating doubt.

Following a Brad Attitude and Chet Sterling skirmish once the final four hits, young shit kicker Cain Justice is left against Trevor Lee, and it turns into this kind of match unto itself, one of CWF’s most compelling of the year. Justice still has so much to learn but between Trevor Lee’s exhaustion and the damage of the brass knuckles, there’s that all-powerful “well, maybe” thrown in there that makes every near elimination just that much more believable. Doubly so when Cain begins to zero in on Trevor Lee’s left arm, adapting his strengths to the match in a way that makes it all the more believable, even if, deep down, we know what’s really going to happen.

Trevor stomps him down onto the apron and off, falling off a second after Cain Justice, to get again keep a hold on the title. It’s not quite as impressive a feat as it ought to feel like as a result of a weaker field, but the king does stay the king, and it’s still somewhere among the year’s more impressive performances.

If decidedly not a great match, another outstanding feat of booking from CWF Mid Atlantic, and yet another unbelievable performance out of Trevor Lee.

Trevor Lee vs. Arik Royal, CWF-MA For The Record (9/9/2017)

This was for Lee’s CWF Mid Atlantic Heavyweight Title.

As opposed to their first meeting during Lee’s reign eleven months prior, this has a little more behind it, as if Trevor Lee can beat Royal this time, he’ll break Royal’s record to become the longest reigning Mid Atlantic Champion ever, on top of already being pretty universally recognized by this point as the best. You so rarely, in sports, get to see a situation like this, and it’s what makes professional wrestling so cool when taken seriously. I’m writing this at the end of October 2022, and you won’t get to see Kareem try and stop LeBron from getting the scoring record and making him second place. Ray Allen and Reggie Miller didn’t get the chance to try and stop Steph Curry a year ago from the three point record. However, in professional wrestling, you get things like this. There’s a higher profile one to come in Japan in 2018, there’s been one this decade already, but it is a rare thing this match gets to do.

What we have is not just a title match itself, but one side fighting to make history and the other side fighting to preserve their place in it. Forget just some great professional wrestling storytelling, this is some great pure sports nonsense, the reason you script this shit out to begin with.

I don’t love this match the way that I loved their 2016 match.

To a large degree, that is because this feels like a kind of obvious thing and a retread on top of that. Arik Royal never feels like he has a chance of dethroning Trevor in the way that he did, even briefly, eleven months earlier. The obvious outcome impacts the story of the match in a sense too, as they offer up something less interesting than “Arik Royal has owned Trevor Lee for years”, with Trevor now having gotten past Royal definitively nearly a year before that, with Royal now desperate and reliant on nonsense. This is not an insult to this match so much as it is a complement to the story CWF spent years telling and that got blown off — maybe eleven months too early in retrospect, as “guy beats former Ace who had his number in the past” and “guy sets title reign length record against former Ace” feel like stories that could have dovetailed perfectly together into one match — in something close to the most perfect version of this the year before.

The fun part of that though is that “Arik Royal, on the verge of losing his place in history, leans entirely into cheating, interference, and bullshit” is still really really fun.

Between the interference of both All Stars managers and Roy Wilkins. Snooty Foxxx on the other end to remove Wilkins, and multiple referee bumps, there is some really well orchestrated and plotted out nonsense in this match. Trevor Lee blinded by powder to the eyes, reaching blindly, snapping the referee’s fingers, and accidentally robbing Royal of a win when he has a blinded Trevor Lee down for a ten count only for the referee to not be able to count, is some TREMENDOUS bullshit. Likewise, the All Star’s main manager, Coach, spending the match sneaking around brass knuckles, only for the end of the thing to be Royal getting them himself, only for Trevor to take him down and Royal never being able to actually use them himself, that is some outstanding nonsense.

So often in CWF Mid Atlantic, I find myself thinking a thing goes a step too far or not far enough in situations like this, but here and now — nevermind if I thought they should have used this match for this or not — I think they got the balancing act totally and completely correct.

Trevor stops Royal from using the brass knuckles, and levels up his usual STF into a Regal Stretch to not only beat Royal like he did eleven months prior, but to force a submission. It feels like how a match with these stakes ought to end, not on a cradle like the year before (one expertly turned into a hot nearfall in this match, to their credit), but now with a clear and undeniable submission. Trevor survives and overcomes all of it, and at the end, Royal vocally and physically gives up his place in history with his surrender to the champion.

Not all it could be, not all that it was the year prior, but still a lovely little chunk of professional wrestling.

***

Trevor Lee vs. Arik Royal, CWF-MA CWF Rumble 2016 (10/1/2016)

This was for Lee’s Mid Atlantic Heavyweight Title.

First, I will give you The Damn Veggies.

As with just about every Trevor Lee CWF Mid Atlantic Heavyweight title match, save the real cream of the crop best match of the year contenders, it is too long at nearly half an hour. That is more a little too long than so long that it ruins anything, it is a minor complaint, but it is the major one here that hurts them. Too many things that don’t manner, a solid ten minutes of work here that could be totally removed to the benefit of the match.

I say that specifically because, really, this match is pretty god damned great.

Speaking in a purely mechanical sense, this is a delight. Arik Royal is a spectacular bully and Trevor Lee is one of the most purely likeable wrestlers in the country. He bumps huge, sells remarkably well, and has that sort of special quality to his comebacks that I often find hard to put into words. I naturally want to see him succeed, not just because he’s so sympathetic in those latter sections, but because he kicks so much ass and in such a believable way in the former. Everyone hits hard, just about everything they try in a pure nuts and bolts way works, and it’s exactly great enough to yet again allow the strengths of the company to really shine through.

The big thing here is that, once more, the CWF Mid Atlantic long term storytelling lands another major victory.

Arik Royal has owned Trevor Lee for the last three years, beginning with Trevor Lee’s first failed challenge to The Ace when he was champion, and going through different tournament finals, title challenges, and tag team matches. Royal spends the match not as yet another would-be Trevor Lee challenger with this idea in their head of how to solve the puzzle, but as someone who knows he can do it, not just because he’s done it before, but because he’s done it so many times before.

It’s a fascinating piece of new ground for a Trevor Lee title defense, in no small part because it also informs the way that the match unfolds in a purely mechanical level. Someone trying to grind out and/or bomb out Trevor Lee isn’t anything all that new following the Cedric Alexander and the John Skyler challenges, but both are just different enough from what Arik Royal does for this to work. The difference between both and this is that there’s neither stalling nor subterfuge on display. Royal rushes him and spends some 75% or more of the match in control. The result of that change from the norm is not only the simple thrill of doing something new, but the peril that it feels like Our Hero is in when he’s unable to really shut down Royal or deal with him in any real way.

Beautifully, it’s not for lack of trying.

Repeatedly throughout the match, Trevor Lee makes his best attempt to grab his safety blanket and go to the arm. He’s stopped once, cut off a few more times after a brief attack or two, and it’s another major difference between this and just about every other Trevor Lee title defense to this point. Trevor has his pockets of offense, of course, he’s not eaten alive and he has wonderful comebacks like always, but this is such an interesting match because he clearly tries something and is completely stifled every time he attempts it.

The greatest little CWF Booking wrinkle of all comes at the very end, in which Trevor never really gets to have a proper Trevor match and feels like he’s once again being slowly picked apart and destroyed by the one guy who has his number, only to grab it out of thin air. One regular strength cradle would have been interesting enough, Trevor finally at a loss after eight months, only to reach into the aether and grab something. The genius comes not in the act itself, but the font in which it’s written, using the samme exact kind of cradle that Royal used to beat him the first time out.

Arguably, it’s a little cutesy, but in a promotion like this and with wrestlers like this, I buy it. Arik Royal has always seemed like the sort of hyper jock who often doesn’t consider why or how, but just powers through and wins. Trevor Lee has always seemed like his counter, obsessed with the why and how, using it here to finally win when he had no other clear path to do so.

Truly, another wonderful piece of storytelling from CWF Mid Atlantic, capping off one of its more purely interesting matches of the year.

***1/4

Arik Royal vs. Nick Richards, CWF-MA Weaver Cup 2016 Final (8/13/2016)

This was the final of the 2016 Weaver Cup.

For Arik Royal, being here is no surprise. At this point, he’s still CWF Mid Atlantic’s longest reigning champion ever. Right behind the two guys on national television, he’s one of the people most synonymous with the company. He should make the finals of a tournament like this. He could make the finals and/or win every tournament or contest that CWF puts on, and nobody would bat an eye. He’s already won this tournament twice in the past. Of course Arik Royal is here.

That’s not the fun part of this, although he is the steady foundation that helps create such a fun contrast.

Our control group.

The real thrill of this comes from Nick Richards tearing himself away from activities one expects from professional wrestling’s king of the line cooks such as throwing knives at professional kitchen ceilings, refusing to buy a bed frame, trying to hit on new hostesses, and using cans of beans to hold up curtain rods JUST long enough to make the finals of this tournament, finding himself on the doorstep of a Mid Atlantic Heavyweight Title match. For those less into the Hot Couch Hero mythos than me (this is almost everyone I think, I am at peace with it), there’s also a story put together by CWF-MA that largely matches that same feeling and translates that sort of a story into pro wrestling terms, where Richards tries to overcome all his more impulsive brawling/hardcore instincts and overcome one of the best wrestlers in the world.

Unlike other matches this weekend that simply live up to what great and interesting booking’s set up in front of them, this is a match set up with an incredible story, but one that eclipses it with the match that happens.

The story, bell to bell, is as great as everything that exists going in, if not even better. An extension of all of it, translating a great set up into the perfect sort of a match in which to take that story to its logical conclusion. Richards annoying Royal with his improvement, but just not being as good. Not as big, not as fast, not as skilled, only having heart on his side and forcing the match to become about how much that really matters. There’s a little bit here and there about Richards avoiding bad habits, but slipping back in with a reckless dive or almost using a chair and losing his advantage a few times because of them, and that adds so much to the proceedings as well. Mostly though, it’s a wonderfully simple story.

In the interest of complete fairness, Arik Royal is incredible here.

What Royal does for the match are the things that allow it to succeed. His constant composure and earned arrogance are what create this baseline that the match works on. As a control group in a match about someone else, Royal in this match is exactly what that should look like. Richards is a guy I want to see succeed, but that feeling is stronger if I also want to see Royal lose. Richards is a guy who makes even above-average offense seem spectacular, and every big piece of offense or comeback from Richards is made more impressive by not only how great Royal is on offense, but by how easy it always feels for him. A miracle has more value when constantly contrasted by someone who would otherwise easily succeed. The earnestness of Richards is only emphasized by the way Royal gets increasingly meaner and nastier about every single thing happening in the match.

Because of the story, this match is probably great no matter what. It’s because of Royal’s performance as the measuring stick though that this match is as great as it happens to be.

This match is about Nick Richards though, and in his big moment, he turns in yet another shockingly great performance.

As always, there are few other wrestlers in this territory that are as flat-out likeable as Richards. It’s that dirtbag charm, and he’s better than ever at working to that here. Little smiles and nods early on when he’s better than Royal expected. When he has to fight back, he fights back like Nick Richards should, not with these large bursts, but with these attacks that feel equally desperate and petty, the best of which sees him just kind of jet his body out of the corner at Royal in what’s this awkward and wonderful combination of a body attack and a headbutt. For most of the match though, he’s an object of sympathy and absolutely nails it. Largely, he achieves that through a shockingly good selling performance.

Richards’ selling of the leg is perfect. Unable to run more than a step or two, having trouble with basically anything outside of the few seconds adrenaline gives a man. Most admirable is the way he handles a bridge, opting not for some showy nonsense, but instead eventually collapsing. It’s a far more likeable tact to take, not showing off how you’re above it in a way that feels a little phony but appeals to nerds, but trying to do something and failing. It’s so much more human. Likewise, Nick also shows the longer effects of leg work, losing his ability over the course of the control segment to kick Royal off of holds. Nick’s also REALLY good at transition selling out of it when Royal thinks it’s enough and he can begin dropping bombs. He’s not dying in the same way he was for a while there, but there’s holding of the knee a lot of the time, and there’s always this sort of stutter step that he moves with. Short bursts of movement, things like that. It’s a super impressive thing here, a knee selling performance that allows for greater action later on, but that also always feels super genuine.

With the performances being as great as they are, late in the match is where the booking really shines.

The cut offs of Royal become increasingly brutal. Richards’ efforts become increasingly desperate. With every big thing Our Hero breaks out that either can’t put Royal down or that doesn’t work at all, it seems farther and farther out of reach. Royal fails to shut him down though, seeming at times like he’s waiting for a mistake or opening that never comes, waiting for Richards to fold in a match like this like one images he eventually will. Royal gets caught waiting for the day that never comes, and Richards manages to slip behind into a sloppy and ultra-endearing bridging O’Connor Roll to somehow get the three count.

It’s hard to say if the final decision this match makes is a conscious choice or simply a way to protect Royal somewhat, but it’s the perfect sort of an ending to this story. Richards achieves not through totally changing who he is, but in the way the slobs often overcome the snobs in stories like this, which is having one perfect moment that nobody sees coming. Nick Richards is not a better wrestler than Arik Royal, but he applied wrestling at a moment that Royal wasn’t expecting, and won because of it. It’s not being tougher or stronger, it’s the most shocking victory of all, as a wrestler like Nick Richards succeeds through outthinking somebody.

Secretly, this is one of wrestling’s great stories of 2016, as our dirtbag icon finds himself in over his head, and in pro wrestling terms, he is essentially trying to cut out the nonsense and get a promotion. An attempt to leave those ways behind and to grow up even just slightly, resulting in not only one of the best told stories of the year, but one of the most human stories as well.

(Full disclaimer: Around this time I was going through a similar journey, so I always connected to it on maybe not a deeper level, but on a level that I don’t always connect to wrestling on. It’s hard to shed an image people have of you, and especially hard to succeed and advance professionally while doing that. My method was more that i would allow professional rivals to make mistakes like getting things very wrong and not correcting them, or in one case, seeing that they were about to start a fire due to unsafe Sterno positioning and allowing it to happen (it was not hard to put out these sorts of fires, no danger to it, but it does leave an impression), essentially taking themselves out of the running for the same positions. Wrestling is fantasy and wish fulfillment, as a match like this shows, and sometimes you have to go to some extremes. Anyways, if you don’t like this match as much as I do, or like the Richards/Kazi LMS as much as I do, there are reasons for that, and those sorts of connections are one of the coolest things about pro wrestling.)

The best match to happen this weekend.

***1/2

Arik Royal vs. Dominic Garrini, ACTION Boogie Nights (5/14/2021)

This was for Royal’s ACTION Title.

It’s one of those matches.

The sort of wrestling that gets you through the winter, or something like that.

Not something for year end lists, but the sort of gruff heavyweight wrestling that’s always a delight to see pop up in a graphic when announced and then on the IWTV feed. A reliable sort of pro wrestling, as two big guys grapple around and then smack the hell off of each other. Things get meaner and meaner as the match goes on, and while this isn’t a particularly deep or masterfully thought out and constructed affair, it’s also the sort of match that falls much shorter when performed by two men without the command of basics and the moments in between the moments that Garrini and Royal have.

It’s a riff session, at the end of the day, and it goes as those sorts of matches do. A lot to like, but more of a moment of experimentation than any sort of real narrative, beyond “two tough guys try to beat each other up”. Sometimes that’s all you need. I’d like more given that these two are capable of more, but I’m real happy with what came out of it, given that these are some guys with real heavy hands capable of producing some truly beautiful sounds together.

Not the greatest match of all time, but a wonderfully spartan and reliably sturdy sort of an affair.

***

Arik Royal vs. Trevor Lee, CWF-MA No Excuses (7/19/2014)

This was part of the 2014 Weaver Cup.

It’s not the epic that their title match at the previous year’s Battlecade was, but it also never sets out to be. It’s just a fun fifteen minute piece of tournament wrestling, and an incredibly INCREDIBLY effective piece of character advancement.

Roy Wilkins and the other heels have recently screwed Arik Royal out of the Mid Atlantic Heavyweight Title that it felt like he had for a decade, and they’re near the ring for a good chunk of the match trying to rob him again. Trevor Lee’s won the crowd over by this point, while still being a little bit of a coward. Chet Sterling is still there on the outside corner to help, Trevor still stalls a whole lot, but there’s something kind of vaguely more respectable about the entire act. It’s helped out by the end, in which Trevor is able to hang with Arik Royal a little more evenly after the comeback, only to blow it because Roy Wilkins misses an interfering belt shot and hits Trevor instead, letting Royal get the win. Royal beats Trevor again, not because he was so much better or Trevor was so much worse, but because this third shithead got involved in their match. What was established last time is called into question, and then cut off before an answer is really given.

It’s a great piece of laying groundwork for Trevor’s eventual turn and for future matches with both Royal and Wilkins, all achieved through small little details. No shouting of new ideas and changing concepts, just a matter of fact series of little pieces that all create a slightly different picture than you might have come in with.

Trevor doesn’t play it clean, his transitions aren’t honorable, but he’s growing up and handles it all with a little less desperation than before and a lot more poise. He doesn’t overreach like he did seven months earlier and wind up with a self-inflicted injury that costs him the match. Their match at Battlecade was about how good Trevor already was at nineteen or whatever, about what he could be, and this is about what he’s becoming. It’s about the present, not the future. A concrete thing, not some abstract “what if?”. He’s not great enough yet to beat Royal, but improved enough to avoid all the mistakes he made last time. It’s not honestly a match that Trevor Lee himself lost.  An error-free performance, only losing because Royal is more experienced than Trevor is and because some other asshole got involved, and because Royal was in the right place and had enough experience to take advantage when it backfired.

It’s how progress in wrestling is supposed to work. It’s not a race, it’s a puzzle, and it looks like shit when you skip over pieces.

This company can be annoying and as frustrating as any other up its own ass independent, but when they get it right, they get it right.

***

Arik Royal vs. Trevor Lee, CWF-MA Battlecade XIV (12/28/2013)

This was for Royal’s CWF Mid Atlantic Heavyweight Title.

It’s definitely weird to see Arik Royal here as a heroic babyface, but it just WORKS.

IIt’s weird as hell to see him here as the heroic babyface against cocky youngster Trevor Lee, but it all works. It work both because Royal is already both so good in the ring so so natural in his role, but also Trevor Lee here is only twenty years old and already this great. Beyond that, he doesn’t turn twenty one for another nine months. It’s genuinely unbelievable. To find another wrestler this great at this young, you have to turn to the literal greatest of all time, Bryan Danielson, or a top twenty to thirty all time guy in Rey Misterio Jr. It’s unbelievable.

He hurts his knee early on here on something as simple as a backbreaker, but it WORKS. Royal wins in the end, as he should, but the focus is on Trevor, and he absolutely kills it. Great selling, but also while pulling off all his coolest offense, the sort of thing that people way older than him struggle with, but that he innately seems to understand at TWENTY YEARS OLD. When I was twenty, I was doing meth with my downstairs neighbor because I was bored during a Ninja Warrior marathon on G4 because I hadn’t established residency yet. At twenty, Trevor Lee looks like he’s going to be a top twenty wrestler in the country, if not the world, within twelve months. Fuck him.

The knee selling is perfect for the occasion. Not pristine, but Royal also never devotes himself to it. It’s just good as hell. Trevor sells the heck out of it while also delivering all of this really stellar offense. Trevor’s twenty years old and his performance here genuinely made me Google other super-rookies through wrestling history to see how this performance stacked up.

A mission statement for the next four or five years.

***