Dominic Garrini vs. Joshua Bishop, AIW Slumber Party Massacre (4/4/2019)

This was a Submit or Surrender match, so basically I Quit.

It fucking rocks.

Just whips tons upon tons of ass, man. It’s just such a cool god damned match.

One of the most fun things to see happen in wrestling — and predominantly it happens in independent wrestling, both because of the freedom, the settings where atmosphere can easily develop and impact a match, and also that it’s full of younger wrestlers starting to pull it together — is when for no clear or obviously discernable reason, something just comes together.

This match, at the time and maybe a little in retrospect too, this had no real obvious reason to work as well as it did.

Dominic Garrini, while steadily improving for years, had yet to really break out like he would for the rest of the year. Hell, this is the match that made the idea of Deathmatch Dom a thing to begin with, an idea then later cemented by a string of great brawls later in the year. Joshua Bishop is not a guy I’ve ever really loved and who I cannot recall having a match that I liked as much as this either before or since. The math or science or whatever you put on paper to figure out probable outcomes does not look entirely in the favor of this match .

Again though, math is bullshit, this is as much art as it is science, and sometimes these things just happen.

So, as it happened, some sort of spirit came into the ring and possessed the two of them. Dominic Garrini reveals a true talent for bleeding and for fighting and for creating a sense of danger and chaos in matches like these. Joshua Bishop is put in the perfect environment to be an absolute freak. They have a bunch of incredibly sick and awesome and grotesque ideas, specifically involving Garrini’s cauliflowered ear getting stabbed with stuff. Additionally, the match benefits immensely from a relatively short eleven minute runtime, and mostly, its place early in the show in front of a real hot WrestleMania Weekend crowd.

Everything that could go right here goes even more correctly than one could ever reasonably expect.

The fill the thing up with jaw-dropping stuff from beginning to end, like Dom taking a horrific powerbomb through some chairs off the stage, nasty skewer and thumbtack spots, real wild shots, and an endearingly cavalier dive early on.

Even the finish — a non-impact type of finish where instead of a big gross thing to cap off the festival of violence, Dom is handcuffed to the corner, doused in lighter fluid, and threatened with immolation until surrendering — works out pretty well. It’s never my favorite way for one of these matches to end, the threat of something actually happening rather than the pain of something currently happening, but if it’s gonna be that, you really have to go as far as this match did. Don’t half ass it, if an I Quit match is ending with the threat of something, it should be something as insane as almost being set on fire and murdered.

Really, that’s the trick here. The dial is turned past ten on every single thing that happens in the match, on every idea they had, and on the environment itself, pushing past what the clear limitations might be in a normal match in front of a more normal crowd. The result of everything that works here, by design and through the magic nobody can ever plan for, is in my eyes, your annual Mania Weekend sleeper.

One of the most fun and memorable matches not only of the weekend, but of the entire year.

***1/4

Jonathan Gresham vs. Dominic Garrini, NOVA Pro Commonwealth Cup 2018 Night One (6/8/2018)

This was a 1st Round match in the 2018 Commonwealth Cup tournament.

Like a lot of these earlier Dom matches against indie greats of the time, it’s sort of a bittersweet thing. The match is great, both wrestlers looked really good, but you can tell you’re one to three years off from Garrini being able to make the absolute most of a chance like this. It’s not to say that this isn’t a great match, but it kind of feels like a collection of stuff, Garrini along for the ride, rather than something more distinctive.

Fortunately, along for the ride in a 2018 Jonathan Gresham match is not at all a bad place to be for a guy who can both hit real hard and more than hold his own on the ground, and so it all works out just fine.

Cool little riff session from a guy in Gresham who can do so much more than this and a guy like Garrini who, in several years, would be ready to do so much more than this. For all it lacks, you know hey, one more great match that didn’t exist in the world fifteen minutes before it started.

three boy

Fred Yehi vs. Dominic Garrini, EVOLVE 100 (2/17/2018)

As with Garrini’s relative standout match a month prior, it’s yet another lovely little occasion where EVOLVE turns the clock back a few years, even if only in a seven and a half minute midcard outing.

The real interesting thing about this match — beyond just that it is an airtight seven and a half minutes packed full of real cool stuff — is how well they pull of the idea of a real and actual clash of styles.

Usually, that gets tossed around wrestling a lot, like any time a guy who flies around fights a guy who kicks, and I guess it’s sort of true, but it rarely ever feels half as true as it does here. Instead of simply doing different things and leaving commentary to bridge a gap (which still would have worked here, given that they have all-time great Lenny Leonard to help out), it feels like an actual struggle over how the match unfolds.

Garrini, still being something of a puppy with big paws, is far more comfortable on the ground than standing up. Yehi can do basically everything, but has a higher impact game, only typically finishing with his Koji Clutch. Everything in the match revolves around one man trying to force the other into a match they can win, the ways in which they do it, and it’s so much more interesting as a result. It’s not exactly a shoot style match, or really anything all that close, but the way in which they approach the match has a feeling that’s very similar, both in concept and, at the end, narrative execution.

Yehi ultimately is just way too slippery for Dom at this point. He changes things up so much and changes them up so fast and so well that Dom can’t ever really do what he wants to do. Yehi is better at stopping Garrini than Garrini is at stopping him, has bigger bombs on top of that, and eventually, the bombs win out. Yehi hits a gross Dragon Suplex and a Butterfly Brainbuster, and garners a rare pinfall victory.

Everything a clash of styles ought to be, something that feels close enough to a genuine contest to count, and the ideal version of this match at this point on every possible level.

Now somebody please run it back.

***

Ringkampf vs. Tracy Williams/Dominic Garrini, EVOLVE 98 (1/13/2018)

Hell yeah, man.

Obviously, this absolutely rocks, and it rocks in a wonderfully specific niche ass way.

For ten or fifteen minutes, EVOLVE returns to its roots with a great little scrap based around grappling and hitting and absolutely zero nonsense, and it is an unbelievably welcome sight. Even just on the undercard, it’s a real joy to see something like this after the previous year of EVOLVE trending more and more towards the routine and ordinary, and a reminder of why — at least for a few more months before an official shift in focus — it was just a little too hard to ever turn away completely.

Ringkampf, even in a smaller match like this, looks like the best tag team in the world once again.

Individually, as we’ll discuss a few paragraphs down, they’re great. The two best wrestlers in the world over the last twelve months, more or less, whatever, but they’re also so great as an actual team. There’s a joy in seeing them absolutely maul Tracy Williams for minutes at a time in the first half, WALTER has yet another delightfully energetic babyface hot tag, and in general, it’s just a lot of fun to watch guys wrestle who are clearly having a blast out there.

Thatcher and Garrini scrambling on the mat is an absolute delight too.

Dom hasn’t transformed into a really good or great wrestler the way he will in 2019, but Thatcher keeps him grappling and flowing in and out of holds, and it’s the best part of the match. It’s both effortless and real cool, Thatcher meeting someone on the ground he hasn’t before, and young wide-eyed Garrini again shining in a situation like this against a bigger name. Even later on, when they’re beating up Thatcher, Garrini is the one doing the far more interesting work opposite Tim, and standing out far more than poor Williams does, here in the EVOLVE run where his gifts are totally misapplied as an antagonist. It would be inaccurate to call it a breakout for Dom, but in a match with three more established good wrestlers, it’s not an insignificant achievement that Garrini feels like the third best one in the match.

WALTER is a tank here too, of course, ever the force of nature in an environment that feels just a little beneath him at this point. You could call it a flaw in and of itself, as neither midcard Tracy (already proven over the last six to nine months as a pushed heel to be unable to beat anyone who matters) nor recent EVOLVE debut Garrini ever feels totally capable of beating him or even withstandiing him for too long, but that doesn’t matter all that much to me, sort of just being a byproduct of how WALTER carries and presents himself, feeling like a bigger deal than 95% of the people he’s going to come across at this point. Not exactly 2005 Samoa Joe, but something in a very similar vein. If I am going to watch one wrestler in 2018 steamroll some guys off a hot tag in 2018 wrestling, it’s gonna be WALTER, do just as much as the grappling, if not more so, that also absolutely rocks.

Obviously, you wish timelines had aligned just a little bit better and gotten Dom a certain tag team partner he had a little more natural chemistry with, but given that he’s still something of a puppy with big paws, and given that Sauce is clearly not long for EVOLVE, it’s about as great as it could be.

***

Dominic Garrini vs. Cain Justice, CWF-MA End of an Era 2017 (2/25/2017)

This was for Cain’s CWF Rising Generation League Title.

In the years following this match (and, to be fair, some preceding it), a few independents will try similar things, running kind of vaguely shoot style or shoot style adjacent shows as a gimmick to try and make things more interesting. Some of them will break away from commentary to yell at me for calling them phonies on Twitter. Anyways, none of the matches put on by any of these promotions either come as close to this as approximating a shoot/pro wrestling hybrid style on the U.S. indies or, flat out, succeed at delivering a great match on the level that this match does.

The story here is a relatively simple one, as the less experienced Garrini relies more on the raw amateur skill and the mat work, and when pressed, Cain Justice goes to more pro wrestling, fighting a little bit dirtier when the match calls for it, and succeeds for it. That’s it, that’s all the match is, and that is all it ever needs to be.

Both men are better off for the simplicity of a thing like this, and as a result of said simplicity, both men do only what they are most comfortable with at this point in time. The grappling is great. Tight and interesting, but also the kind of grappling that feels different than a lot of other work in the same vein. The stand up work is a little less prolific and more in Justice’s favor, but all works on the same level, I think. There is less nonsense to it, less bullshit, and less waste overall, and the result is that it all feels like a much more genuine struggle as a result.

Justice manages a series of hammerfists out of an armbar, in a spurt of aggression Garrini isn’t totally expecting, and goes into a real high angle Omoplata with an additional crank on the wrist into a near Kimura for the win.

A Hoot of the Year frontrunner.

***

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Dominic Garrini, AIW Hell on Earth XII (11/25/2016)

Zack comes to AIW to take on a first year rookie Dom, and it is a BLAST.

Garrini’s rookie status, in some ways, might wind up making this a better match than it might be a year or two later, or even today. That’s not to say they couldn’t easily wind up having a better match than this, that would hardly be some great surprise, but they’re forced into something more simple, direct, and grounded here in a way that I find so much more appealing than some longer or more drawn out match. Garrini isn’t Gulak here, but apart from that, it’s the most I’ve enjoyed a Zack match in some time.

The trick to that is that for something like ninety to ninety five percent of this match’s runtime, under fifteen minutes, it is pure grappling.

While that easily could drain on me — especially with the more riff-based nature of this, with the ambition of showing Garrini as a near equal to Zack on the mat, a goal completely met — in a match this short, there’s not enough time for that to ever happen. Instead, it’s this enormously fun twelve or thirteen minutes of that, showing off a bunch of neat holds, counters, and transitions, before they opt to continue the story of Garrini’s advancement in a very fun way.

Garrini gets drawn off the ground, and while he wasn’t dominating Sabre Jr. on the mat, he’s at much more of a loss standing up. He leaps to catch Zack in a choke to take it back down, learning something, only for Zack to properly read the frantic nature of that attack, and roll back into the European Clutch for the win. An endearingly efficient way to tell a great kind of meat and potatoes level rookie story, done in a match that’s just different enough from everything else around it to still be memorable all this time later.

One of the later part of the year’s more fun matches for a certain type of maniac.

***

Violence is Forever vs. Hot Wheelz (Tracy Williams/Wheeler YUTA), ACTION/SUP KEVINNNN! (12/31/2021)

I liked this a good bit more now that I’ve seen it on VOD and not on a traditionally choppy IWTV stream.

(this is maybe how independent wrestling should be experienced. ideally, you wait weeks for an SMV DVD-R, ordering off word of mouth.)

While I know this was announced beforehand, on account of watching this as it happened, the match has the feeling of a match that got booked on short notice and thrown out there, and I say that as a complete and total complement. There’s something a little rawer and more naturalistic, as four of the best independent wrestlers alive kind of just go out there for a jam session. It makes the match feel like more of a legitimate contest, but it’s also incredibly charming.

The more practiced team eventually takes over and gets a little meaner about it to boot. After their recent barnburner down South, it’s a fun thing to see Garrini and Ku work a little more antagonistically again. They don’t dig into it a lot and it may not have worked even in a Beyond venue in front of what is basically a Beyond crowd, as they leap off the page more than YUTA and Hot Sauce do, but it’s always fun to see an old wrinkle come back to the surface like that.

Apart from that, it goes exactly as you’d expect, in all the best ways. Every shot is great, every hold is nasty, every escape or counter is cool as hell. The match never meanders too long despite being of a sizeable length, always shifting in some fun new way to avoid a negative trajectory, before Dom and Kev win with a Sick Kick variation on the old High/Low.

One of the year’s best riff sessions.

***1/4

Violence is Forever vs. The Lost Boys (Hoodfoot/Chase Holliday), SUP True Believers (10/24/2021)

This was for Garrini and Ku’s SUP Tag Team Titles.

Normally, I like to watch wrestling on the TV. I don’t have a huge one, but I paid for the thing and it’s easier for me to keep my focus on something if it’s on the television and not in a window or in another tab that I can click away from. I started watching wrestling on the computer in like 2002, it’s not something I CAN’T do, but the television experience is often just better.

This is a match best served with headphones.

(or some kind of really great surround sound system. I don’t know your set-up. I’m describing my own.)

It’s an auditory delight. A sonic sensation.

For the ten minutes this goes, they are teeing off on each other. Not every shot is a thousand percent perfect, Hoodfoot and Holliday aren’t quite as experienced and so what they throw doesn’t land with the same reliable precision that all of Ku’s do. Garrini is also coming off a several month break, so he’s in a similar boat, if not the exact same one. However, every shot offers a different thrill. Different smacks and thuds, shots either pushing someone back or ricocheting off of the chest, neck, or leg. Ku lands one really beautiful and nasty kick to Holliday’s leg during a hope spot that causes him to just completely collapse and it might be the highlight of the entire thing. A truly wonderful shot thrown out in a great place in the match, reacted to in the best and truest feeling way.

The match works as more than just this perfect sensory experience too.

First of all, beyond just the sounds on everything, it’s a perfectly blocked out kind of thing. The match is a series of close-up physical encounters, each telling their own story. The Lost Boys double teaming Ku, Ku able to take them one on one, a series of teases of Garrini coming in, before Garrini then comes in himself. They’re all different, but they’re all just as mean and intense and spirited, all conducted in extremely close range.

It’s an entire match conducted in a phone booth, and it is so great.

The story of the thing is just as airtight as all of the action that it contains.

A younger team of big round monsters tries to take something from the best tag team in the country, and comes so close. They’re not as singularly great, but move as a more effective team for much of this match, really taking advantage of Ku and Dom not having teamed in months now. Playing off their hot headed nature not only in transitioning to controlling Ku by drawing Garrini in to distract the referee for a cheap shot, but also cutting off Ku’s ability to tag out a few times by challenging him to stand and trade, which he’s unable to do. Dom’s the big hothead, but secretly or maybe not so secretly, Ku’s always been just as petty. He’s the one always giving people the finger in response to strikes, daring them, responding to his own kickouts by shoving someone’s back as rudely as possible. It’s just as easy for this bright young team to box him out as it is to do so to Garrini, maybe even more so.

Even when Garrini gets in, the focus is on not allowing the champions to help each other out. It’s a tag team match, and for 99% of this match, there is one tag team in it. Unfortunately for them, it’s the 1% that matters here. In the end, their big shot at it doesn’t work, Dom’s not worn out enough from the match or in general after four months off, and he’s able to stop it.

As soon as they have a real chance, VIF end it as quickly as possible, with the single nastiest Chasing The Dragon that I’ve seen in my entire life as a result of the weight being lifted and driven down.

Dom and Ku keep the titles, and in the process, further make two very bright stars. A match that’s as effective as a story as it is hostile and brutal as a fight. Imperfect in execution sometimes, but an unbelievably charming match on the whole.

Spiritually correct professional wrestling.

The Motherfucker of the Year.

***1/3

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.

***

Eddie Kingston vs. Dominic Garrini, AIW Is This Something You Might Be Interested In? (4/30/2021)

Obviously, this match fucks.

Eddie Kingston is one of maybe a literal handful of wrestlers who you can call the best wrestler in the world and not have me dispute it in any strong kind of a way. Garrini isn’t quite that, but he is one of the most purely watchable wrestlers in the world. It’s a quality both wrestlers possess in spades, the ability for me to see their name attached to a show and wanting to see it on that alone, often times with the opponent not mattering quite so much.

On paper, it’s the sort of match that’s just too big to fail.

In reality, it’s not everything I had imagined, or maybe all that it could be.

(of course, this is the nature of imagination.)

The ideal nature of the thing is King either working strongly from underneath or turning back into that old bully against Dom. Instead, this feels much more consciously like a Great Match, and a more even display. Not a match without friction, but one that never quite seems to have the friction one thinks of when seeing this match on paper. Something about it never totally feels correct as a match between two heroes, although given Eddie’s status amongst independent fans (especially in AIW), it’s hard to say if there was any other way this could have gone in 2021. In general, it feels like a match that spends its time reaching out for something just out of reach. A finger or two on it at times, nearly in hand at a few others, but a thing never entirely grabbed onto and pulled to the surface.

It’s a testament to the greatness of Kingston and Garrini both that this is as great as it is anyways.

What they have to offer is a big meathead match that isn’t quite dumb, but that retains all the hallmarks of that kind of a style. An increasing hostility. Big nasty throws. Awesome strikes in all forms, often exchanged between the two in both big and small doses, and modified in all sorts of ways. As always, it’s the sort of match made or broken by the little things in between those big moments. It’s the way they react both to things about to happen by fighting like mad, and the way that they react to things that have just happened, and maybe nobody alive has a better grasp on that than Eddie Kingston. From little stumbles to the failed attempts at fighting spirit moments to force a more human struggle into a match like this, he once again makes something work by eschewing any notions of being larger than life in favor of being as true to life as humanly possible.

Garrini isn’t quite Eddie Kingston in this regard, but what he brings to this are a match full of great little bumps and sells on things. Garrini can’t bring the emotional heft that Eddie Kingston can (few can), but he’s so impressive in this match at portraying himself as a dead weight. The way he bumps at just the exact right angle late in the match on a Saito Suplex is specifically just so perfect and adds a certain something to this match. The way Garrini takes things early on is markedly different from how he takes them later on.

Between the actions and reactions of both men in big and little ways, there’s a struggle to the proceedings here if nothing else. It’s not quite to the level that one may have imagined, but by the time the match draws to a conclusion, it’s one they find all the same.

In the end, Dom simply lacks the offensive arsenal that Kingston has. He lacks any one absolute kill move, whereas Eddie has four or five things he can use to put somebody down. Garrini pushes and presses, survives a few of them, but the match moves to a point at the end where Garrini has obviously lost. King just has to find the right set of things in a row to finally dull the lights just enough. Dom survives a few real gross throws, but three Backfists to the Future in a row finally put him down. An obvious result, but done in such a way that Garrini at least isn’t any lesser for it.

Not my favorite sort of a match, but one filled with enough of the little things that tie matches like these together to make it undeniable in spite of that.

***