Davey Richards vs. Eddie Edwards, Impact Wrestling (4/6/2017)

This was a Last Man Standing match.

Once more, it is a match in this feud that seems like more of a tease than a finale, which seems incredibly strange given that their pre-Impact feuds were marked by a complete disdain for anything but the most brazen maximalism. There’s even something of an ode to that in this match when a superplex from Davey Richards onto a pile of chairs is simply on move, released, and not rolled through or countered or followed up upon in any way but with the sort of respectable and logical selling that I would have wanted from these two six years ago.

Once again though, I kind of love it.

To be clear, it is not a great match. That’s not to say matches like this — those with an eye towards furthering the issue and stringing things along until a bigger match — cannot be great in their own right, but it is to say that this one just isn’t quite. It’s very good though, and along with their previous 2017 match, is one I like a lot more than those 2011 would-be epics. Eddie is fired up and aggressive, once again being kind of secretly a really stellar babyface. Davey Richards is not quite so gifted nor quite so great in this match, but operates as a perfectly functional heel for such a good babyface to fight against, and so it works, despite clearly holding back in many respects.

Davey Richards once again winds up on top as a result of his wife’s interference, and after she kisses him through a brief crisis of confidence about killing Eddie to win, he lands a round head kick with a chain wrapped around his ankle and gets the ten count to win.

This will wind up a feud without a real conclusion, as after their mixed tag team match at Slammiversary, Davey Richards will wind up taking a few years off away from wrestling. It’ a shame, because this feud has been one of the real highlights of Impact in a way nothing quite has been outside of Lashley himself, and all of these great angles without a climax is a genuine bummer. Still, another nice little piece of business here from the home of the owl.

Davey Richards vs. Eddie Edwards, Impact Wrestling (2/16/2017)

This was a Street Fight.

Genuinely, it is really really really good. Shockingly so.

Mostly, because it is the match I would least expect these two wrestlers to ever have against each other. They’ve been in some good brawls or at least good gimmick matches, Davey especially, but this was also ten minutes long and more of an angle than anything. Totally not focused on delivering a Great Match, and so as a result, delivering an authentically really good piece of good old pro wrestling.

In the interest of complete honesty, I was also deeply deeply charmed by Davey Richards taking over initially by attacking Eddie Edwards’ hand.

Given what this pairing has done to me specifically in the past, I was kind of in awe that they had this in them, not only a match specifically like this, but one that also not only utilized an idea I loved so much, so loudly, and for so long that it became enough of a bit to name this blog after that, but also to do it in such a fun way. After Eddie initially kicks Davey’s ass with the punches and chops, Davey takes the hand out with a steel chair and the steps to avoid the repetition of such a thing. Eddie’s selling could be better, but he also always has to stop when he tries to use it on gut instinct, and it’s the thing that allows him to get his ass kicked to the extent that he does. It’s a stunning thing to not only see from these two at all, but such a gigantic leap forward together psychologically, given what their famous Ring of Honor series wound up being.

The booking itself, that good old pro wrestling, is some classic bullshit.

Davey’s evil wife Angelina Love helps Davey pull ahead, the referee gets taken out, and when Eddie’s wife tries to help, it winds up cutting off Eddie’s comeback when he protects her. Eddie’s wife gets handcuffed to the ropes to watch, Davey brains him and kills his former friend with a million chair shots, and the evil couple rubs their former pals’ faces in the whole thing.

I have natural and instinctive doubts about their ability to have a match this good again to follow up on (yet another) great simple piece of wrestling nonsense like this, but great is great, and this is a real nice little angle. Another 2010s TNA/Impact victory for these old standards.

Not quite a great match, but easily their best work against each other.

The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels, TNA Impact (7/1/2015)

This was the fifth match in the Best of Five Series for the TNA World Tag Team Titles.

Unfortunately it was a thirty minute Iron Team Match.

This was bad. It’s not to say it’s without positive moments, as Eddie Edwards cared enough to sell a leg throughout the rest of the match after an early attack on it, and the last five to ten minutes had a lot of of exciting action. It is however an iron team match where they don’t score a fall for the first twenty minutes plus and where the action is nowhere near exciting or interesting enough to carry that burden for them. It’s a match that goes as far as possible without doing much of anything, either in story or on a mechanical level.

It’s lazy and boring, and after the previous three matches that have all been pretty good to great, that just isn’t an acceptable outcome.

TNA is reaping the benefit of the last thirteen years of shooting themselves in the foot at every available opportunity so you can’t say any one thing hurts them at this point more than the toxic brand they’ve cultivated, but it says SOMETHING that they followed an exciting gimmick match in Match #4 with this. It’s an unbearably dull attempt to force an epic, but involving talent who didn’t seem to care at all about having one.

Still, they get two or three great matches out of this series, which is more than I ever expected out of TNA in 2015.

 

The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels, TNA Impact (6/24/2015)

This was the fourth match in the Best of Five Series for the TNA World Tag Team Titles, and it was a FULL METAL MAYHEM match.

In this specific case, this is now just an indie style TLC match where the match type is simply a description of the weapons they are encouraged to use. Yes, not even a year prior, this company held a Full Metal Mayhem match where you had to win by bringing down the titles. In the past, a ladder match in a Best of Five Series was also in the middle of the series, so you can’t say anything to the effect of “well what would they be pulling down?” either. It’s just that this is what they were doing this time, and it changes all the time based on situation, the people involved, and maybe just what direction the wind is blowing in. You can call it Impact Wrestling and be on good behavior a lot of the time, but it’s stuff like this that means it will always spiritually be TNA.

The match rocks though.

It’s easy stunt show stuff, with a few nice little offensive innovations from Aries and the Wolves. Roode again sticks out like a sore thumb when they try to move a little faster and get a little more dangerous, but he again knows to stay out until the match asks him to do cheating or one of the set spots he knows how to do. There’s a delightful extended spot near the end in which Aries has a garbage can over his head for a minute or two straight, and they go in some new directions with it. They’re all brutal and violent, but also enhanced by the pure physical comedy of the moment.

A perfect finish follows that, as Roode shoves Richards off the top to block a Powerbomb double team, low blows Eddie Edwards, and lets Aries fall off of him with the trash can still on his head before covering to take it to the obvious and deciding fifth match.

To that point about TNA always being TNA, this is yet another great tag team match that achieves that status independent of every other horrible or embarrassing thing around it.

The same as it ever was.

***

 

The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels, TNA Impact (6/3/2015)

This was the third match in the Best of Five Series for the TNA World Tag Team Titles, with the Wolves up 2-0 and only needing one more to regain the titles.

It’s not great in the way that the second match was, but still an improvement on the first.

They have less time than they did the previous week and work more of a sprint. It’s fun. Not every match that isn’t great is bad, this is the exact sort of a match you watch, enjoy, and forget about in a few days. The Wolves are good. Aries is good. Shorter bursts and less fat does the match a lot of favors. Roode is still out of his depth, but they a.) again use him smartly & b.) make it part of the story at the end. Aries gets him a chair and a distraction when he can’t beat Eddie Edwards himself, and with a low blow and a chair shot (to the back, coward shit), the heel superteam finally gets on the board.

The actual highlight of this episode is something I skimmed past when finding this match — an acapella version of EC3’s notoriously perfect theme song “Trouble”, performed during some kind of heel bragging segment to open the show. There’s a limit to how much I can recommend this match, but no such restriction exists on a flawless musical performance like that.

 

The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels, TNA Impact (5/29/2015)

This was the second match in a Best of Five Series for the TNA World Tag Team Titles.

The first match in this series was very much a first match in a series. All about setting the table and establishing themes to play with. Roode being more out of practice in the style that the other three work. Aries having leaned on being the fastest person in the ring for years and being surprised by old enemies. The Wolves being the best out and out TEAM and winning because of it.

As expected, the second match is where they begin to play with that more and get a greener light and a clearer runway to go wild.

It’s also definitely a weirder match, as for the first time, it strikes me that THE DIRTY HEELS are maybe not heels? The match is fairly even, but it’s Bobby Roode who winds up as the face in peril before the final hot tag that goes into the finishing run. It’s not bad exactly, as the Wolves can get mean with the offense and because Aries is still a pretty solid hot tag at this point. It is, however, unbelievably odd. It’s disorienting because TNA is so confusing sometimes and never clear to more casual viewers about what reality is. Is this the way things are or is this just a weird way this match went? If it’s the way things are, why is that their name?! I remember when they first teamed in 2012-2013, when TNA was still a fairly interesting promotion in some ways, fans online named them The Greatest Team That Ever Lived. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, but it’s better than Dirty Heels, if only because it doesn’t marry them to one individual role (yes, they could work face ironically, but irony is for children).

Role confusion aside, the match is genuinely a lot of fun.

By that, I mean that Aries, Davey, and Eddie do their best to have a proper ROH style tag banger with multiple controls, counters, nearfalls, inventive ideas, and all of that. Richards and Aries both show the unmistakable signs of time’s arrow moving in an uncomfortable direction as two explosivity based guys slowly being robbed of that, but like most great Wolves matches from 2010 on, it’s Eddie that holds it all together. He’s good at everything, never allows a moment when he’s involved that looks phony or isn’t interesting. Even if that just means throwing out a real hard shot to wake everybody up, Eddie always does it. Like many Wolves matches, it’s a far worse match without him. Bobby Roode is still kind of lost, but he knows enough to know he’s the odd man out and to let them cook and add in what he can. He adds in some of his own decent late match offense, but primarily gets out of the way.

They manage a few genuinely great nearfalls, play on the ending of the previous match, and the sort of unpredictability that comes from the second match in a five match series.  Aries and Roode display more teamwork than in the first match and come close, only for Roode to not be able to stop Richards from breaking up the Last Chancery with a double stomp off the top. Roode is again kind of useless in a match like this, and the Wolves go TWO STRAIGHT with the old SD/DR style Powerbomb & Lungblower combination.

A borderline great match made all the more impressive by everything about the setting in which it took place.

***

The Wolves vs. The Dirty Heels (Austin Aries & Bobby Roode), TNA Impact (5/15/2015)

This was the first match in a Best of Five Series for the vacant TNA Tag Team Titles.

To get it out of the way:

1. yes, it is a very obvious attempt to go back to what worked in the past, despite The Wolves being a poor substitute for MCMG and being entirely different and despite Aries and Roode having nowhere near the chemistry as a team that Beer Money did. It’s hamfisted and falls short for a reason
2. yes, Dirty Heels is one of the worst tag team names of all time

All the same, this is nice fun television wrestling. The sort of thing that TNA’s largely gotten away from by this point and that is sorely missed in a lot of televised wrestling in the US, outside of Ring of Honor.

Nothing wildly complex, but good formula tag wrestling. Davey Richards can be very very grating, but Eddie is a likeable and steady enough presence to always ground him. Aries is past his prime by now, but always manages to get a little more motivated — be it here or in his WWE run — when he gets to face off against any of his old ROH pals. So he’s feeling it here like he hasn’t in a while. Bobby Roode is also in this match. So while imperfect, it’s good easy formula wrestling, telling a story about teamwork against a superteam. Davey and Eddie aren’t as great one on one, but know each other far better. Davey manages a quick cradle to get up 1-0.

A jumping off point for the rest of the series moreso than a great matcch on its own, but still just good and solid classical pro wrestling. The best thing TNA’s put on television that wasn’t a shortcut filled bloodbath in at least six months.

The American Wolves vs. Fourth Gunn (Biff Busick/Drew Gulak), SMASH Art of War (4/26/2015)

Hell yeah.

There are so few Fourth Gunn tags out there that I will watch any single one of them that comes up across my screen, assuming it’s the Biff Busick and Drew Gulak pairing. They’re a delightful team and while it’s super easy to understand why they weren’t more active as a team (two of the best singles wrestlers alive), I badly wish they could have done more together. Or could do more together now, you know? You can’t tell me this wouldn’t be better than half a decade of Biff hoisting Martin Stone up upon his back, right?

Anyways, this is not one of the better 4G tags.

The immediate comparison is their match against the Dojo Bros from Beyond Wrestling in the fall of 2013, but Davey sure isn’t Roderick Strong and this sure isn’t Beyond. Commentary seems unaware of any of that or anything the Wolves have done outside of TNA, so that’s a shame too, because there could be some real weight behind this. Biff and Eddie are again just electric against each other at every point at which they touch. There’s not a bad pairing in this because Davey is kind of feeling it without any pressure on him, but one of these pairings produced some of the best independent work of the decade and it’s a joy to see it again.

It’s a much lower stakes affair than any of that.

Davey brings out Sleazy Davey aka Team Bandit hip gyrations. Biff shouts “SHOW HIM” when Gulak has Davey in super rudimentary holds. There’s some stooging. In general, it’s a sort of classic b-show formula tag that you might not get out of these guys elsewhere. It’s a fun look at another universe, and they’re pretty good at it. If not the classic that Biff and Drew can deliver in other settings, it turns out that guys who are great at everything are just as great at working this kind of a match. Davey’s not a great hot tag or anything, but Canadians are perpetually five years in the past, so him making the hot tag makes a lot of sense. The finishing run itself is fun.

That’s the operative word here. Fun. It’s not all that serious, nobody here is all that committed to the idea of a Great Match, but it’s just a nice time for twenty or twenty five minutes.

Pure house show nonsense before pure house show formula, but with wrestlers this great (and also Davey Richards), that can be a wonderful time too.

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Davey Richards, AAW The Art of War (2/28/2015)

This was for Kingston’s AAW Heavyweight Title.

STUNNINGLY this is not a great match.

They’re too different, and meeting in the middle basically never works like you’d want it to. Each man gives a little to the other, but it’s primarily Davey trying to do an Eddie match. He works the arm instead of the leg, but it’s good all the same. Eddie then cedes his own ground and they have a big dumb finishing run, resulting in the post-peak Davey classic, a match that’s only nineteen minutes but that feels closer to half an hour.

Mostly though, it’s yet another example from AAW of Eddie Kingston being the best limb seller in the country, if not the world, and how it can elevate a match. This was never going to be great, but by letting Eddie do one of the things he does best, it at least wound up being pretty good.

 

The Wolves vs. The Hardy Boyz vs. Team 3D, TNA Impact (10/8/2014)

This was a FULL METAL MAYHEM match for the Wolves’ TNA World Tag Team Titles.

What this means is that it’s about the same as the Ladder Match from three weeks prior, only that now there are more tables and chairs used, and it gets to go fifteen to twenty minutes. It’s not a negligible difference, exactly. The match quality is generally the same because the match is real similar. It’s a stunt show with an incredibly loose story. The stunts rule, and to the credit of Team 3D and the Hardys, it’s incredibly impressive that around fifteen years on from the stuff that put these matches on the map, they still find ways to do new stuff and to change around the old stuff just enough to make it somewhat fresh. It’s still limited in that a lot of it is the same and that some of it is caught being obviously set up, but just enough works. Most importantly, it never comes close to outstaying its welcome or being annoying. Just a nice breezy piece of setpiece wrestlin.

All in all, a really fun series of matches, even if it hardly matches up with prior high points of TNA’s vaunted tag team division. Like most widely praised TNA things in this post-peak period, as long as you watch it with that in mind, there’s a whole lot to like here.

***