Eddie Edwards vs. Kenoh, NOAH Winter Navigation 2017 Day Eleven (12/22/2017)

This was for Edwards’ GHC Heavyweight Title.

It’s not perfect, and in fact nearly makes a kind of weird decision that could have gone much worse than it did.

For whatever reason, rather than leaning entirely into Kenoh as a real shit ass, which he’s best at, the match instead opts for something more even. It’s not a hard thing to understand, the outsider against the home promotion guy, only they chose the wrong one to do that with, given Kenoh’s strengths. He’s naturally easy to root against and near impossible to root for, and if that was the story they wanted to tell, the naturally likeable and endearing Eddie Edwards was the wrong one to do that with.

Still, it’s a fun little character bit that they wind up with on accident.

Unlike a lot of situations like this, an outsider coming in to take a company’s title leading to a new top guy stepping up to take it back for the home promotion, Eddie Edwards is not really any kind of an antagonist. He spent a long time in the NOAH dojo, and years wrestling in NOAH. Eddie was in NOAH before Kenoh was, there’s not any real bad blood to speak of. Whatever there is is entirely in Kenoh’s mind, and I find that to be a fascinating turn of events. Kenoh inventing enemies where there are none, calling out likeable workhorse Ed Edwards as soem great foe when it’s just Kenoh who is the psychotic one between them. It’s a more interesting way than usual to communicate this idea, and to elevate a more antagonistic figure up to the main event scene.

Beyond that, it’s another case of your first impulses about a match probably being more or less correct.

Eddie Edwards vs. Kenoh is a fun match about hitting.

Few other wrestlers in the 2010s are as great at matches like this as Eddie Edwards, and once again, a match like this really proves that.

This isn’t exactly Eddie vs. Go or Eddie vs. Nakajima from earlier in the year, but Eddie is met with a guy who hits real hard and does cool moves otherwise, and plugs him into a classic sort of lizard brained Eddie Edwards match. It’s very simple, to its benefit, and the strength of the thing comes not from the big things they’re doing exactly, so much as it does the pristine construction of the thing.

Specifically, I mean the honesty in which this match is conducted.

Eddie and Kenoh have a match about hitting hard and doing cool stuff, and this is never a match that makes any attempts to disguise that or to trick you into thinking it’s something it isn’t. There’s no limb focus here, no first third or first quarter where they’re clearly taking it slower to try and trick you into thinking this is some prestige wrestling ass “slow build”. It’s a remarkably confident thing, the same sort of a match that’s always really impressed me when Eddie Edwards has been at the helm in other places against better wrestlers. The escalation is handled perfectly. Strike exchanges happen at points in the match when it feels like they should, each shot established as having big power early on leading to it feeling like this clash of wills. Big moves are saved for moments when they mean a lot, apron spots have a sense of importance to them. It’s not an especially intelligent or thoughtful match, but there’s such a difference between a match assembled like this with craft and care, and so many other Kenoh matches and so many other NOAH main events.

Kenoh wins the title with the double stomp off the top, the obvious outcome comes to pass, WHATEVER.

An imperfect match, but one mechanically brilliant and dumb enough in the exact correct kinds of ways for me to still get a whole lot out of this.

***

 

Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Eddie Edwards, NOAH Summer Navigation 2017 Vol. 2 Day Eight (8/26/2017)

This was for Nakajima’s GHC Heavyweight Title.

Once again, as you probably should have always expected, a delightfully fun match about hitting.

There is a little bit more to it than that, if you want to squint. If you are the sort of person who needs stories to get up for anything, you can talk to yourself about Nakajima reacting harshly to someone representing another company trying to take the title after 2015-2016’s Suzuki-gun/NJPW nightmare or you can remind yourself of Eddie Edwards’ history in NOAH, and tell yourself the intensity they eventually lead to is an extension of Nakajima’s misplaced rage or Eddie’s justified indignation in response to that. Personally, I don’t require this level of largely baseless fanwank to enjoy a match like this, but I know not everyone reading this is as mentally strong or powerful as I am (I would like you to be, please get like me), so those things are maybe present in this match if you require them.

Mostly though, it’s just a classic style dumb meathead match, performed by two wrestlers who hit hard enough to keep it interesting, and conducted by at least one wrestler in Eddie Edwards, who has been having great matches in this style for most of the 2010s through the strength of construction and composition and the strength of little aspects of the match, just as much as through the power of his right arm. It moves briskly, there’s very little nonsense or bullshit or time spent that doesn’t matter, and the escalation up to the finish is handled real well too. It’s certainly not the greatest ever version of a thing like this, but relative to a lot of other Nakajima work at this time, and a lot of other GHC Title matches at the time, it’s among the best.

NOAH perverts will and did complain about the result of course, with Eddie winning the title, but given both that Eddie Edwards’ promising and shockingly good feud with Davey Richards got canceled when Davey retired for a few years in mid-2017 and given that he is simply a better professional wrestler than Katsuhiko Nakajima at this point (it is not even a real discussion, Nakajima could have never had one of the best matches of 2017 against Bobby Lashley), I see little problem with it, and in fact, it ruled even more than the match itself.

***1/5

Lashley vs. Eddie Edwards, Impact One Night Only – No Surrender 2017 (6/16/2017)

This was for Lashley’s Impact World Heavyweight Title.

Impact’s ONE NIGHT ONLY specials are not a particularly serious affair. They’re taped months in advance, at best, and their relationship to current stories could be called quasi-canon at best. They are best known, at least in my mind, for either widely reviled womens matches or weird little bits, such as booking Beer Money vs. The American Wolves to pay off a long running super niche joke. They’re house shows put on (I think) pay-per-view for the diehards and overseas fans, and while that isn’t the most offensive thing in the world to me, it is rarely something worth looking into.

Even in this match, things are a little lighter and easier, as seen with the start of the match interplay with Lashley trying to butter up Eddie with a headband to match his own, and failing that, making referee Brian Hebner wear it againt his will. 

However, this is still a Lashley vs. Edwards match.

Like their other work together, including the most surprisingly great match of the year in January, these two rise above what ought to be, and succeed above any expectations I would ever have (as all expectations for Impact reset once a great match is over, I have been watching this company off and on since its inception, I have to protect my heart and mind above all else). If the entire company was up to the standards of these Lashley/Edwards matches, it would be the best promotion in the world, but things are what they are, and instead, this is just sneakily one of the best pairings of the year in a year largely defined by great repeat pairings (Gage/Tremont, Reigns/Strowman, and then some stuff in Japan idk).

There’s no magic touch here. Nothing about this is all that different from their other matches. You get a lot of the same stuff, rearranged of course, and then minor shifts around of where certain things are in the match. It’s a great house show version of one of the best matches of the year, and like a great house show match, I am almost as impressed by a great match that doesn’t have to be great but still is as I am by a match that is great on an even higher level. It shows not just a pure effort that I find so appealing, but also a real ability in its own way, to still have a great match without doing every single thing and having this entire apparatus of booking and big gimmick match layout to assist like they did the first time this year.

Eddie comes close to overcoming Lashley’s power and strength edge through speed and intelligence and mostly through guts, only to get caught when he makes one (1) mistake. It’s a classic story of the more confident heavyweight playing around too much, almost getting caught yet again (something I absolutely love about these matches is that they never forget Eddie’s title win over Lashley in 2016 and that the possibility for that happening again is not always ever present on commentary, but in the way both men react during these matches), and learning his lesson.

Bobbo catches Eddie repeating a dive, hurls him on the floor, and then quickly back inside for the Spear to keep the title.

(For like two weeks before losing it to fucking Alberto El Patron and kicking off a run of title holders that would include Austin Aries, Eli Drake, Johnny Impact, Brian Cage, and on down the line, because TNA/Impact/GFW/Anthem Presents Impact is completely incapable of sustaining anything great for too long a time before stepping over their own feet and shooting themselves in the dicks. But, you know, the whole Lashley run did objectively rule.)

Impact’s greatest one on one pairing does it again, resulting in maybe their least vital and, save for Impact’s best match in years between them in January, their most impressive outing to date.

***

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.

Eddie Edwards vs. Go Shiozaki, NOAH Spring Navigation 2017 Day Seven (3/25/2017)

Do you like chops?

I like chops.

Generally, I like it when my wrestling features people hitting each other as hard as possible, and with as much visible feeling and audible impact behind those blows as possible. Chops are a great way to do this, hard not to create a good sound when you swing a palm into basically anything, hands are pretty cool in that way. Not everybody throws a great elbow or punch, not everyone’s knees and kicks are absolute motherfuckers, but it seems harder to fuck up a chop than almost anything else. At least on this side of the screen, there’s a much higher success rate with those.

Anyways, these two throw some great chops. In this match and elsewhere, they’re two of the hardest and most reliable chop guys in all of wrestling, and most Eddie Edwards and Go Shiozaki matches exist in a kind of “oh yeah, I’ll give that a shot” spot in my brain because of that. With Eddie especially, not being as prone to the whims of GHC Title Match Brain as Go has unfortunately been, that’s the primary way space gets filled up in between high points, and that’s a great way to fill space if you’ve gotta.

This match isn’t as filled with chops as I’d like, but it works for many of the same reasons as most of their matches individually do, which is that they throw painful things out there in a very workmanlike manner and waste no time. It’s a no frills kind of easy bombfest that works for very simply reasons (big moves are cool, matches where people hit hard are objectively better than other kinds of matches), and which these two employ with the same sort of ethos that they wrestle most of their matches, or in Go’s case, most of their non-title matches.

If you’re like me, I think you’ll at least get something out of this, which means like 65% of you will hate this just to spite me.

***

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.

Lashley vs. Eddie Edwards, Impact Wrestling (2/9/2017)

This was for Lashley’s Impact World Heavyweight Title.

It’s not their Iron Man match, to be sure and to be clear. While both were technically on free television, in a spiritual sense, one was a major pay-per-view match and the other, this match, is a free TV rematch used to serve two different masters in providing a great match to main event an episode and to go into a different storyline.

Still though, it is pretty good!

Borderline great even, and when that comes out of this promotion, I’m inclined to grade on the curve and just give it to them.

Lashley and Eddie work well together, the power vs. technique thing is very easy to do, and they play off and payoff some things from their previous matches. Nothing revolutionary, nothing I think that warrants a thousand words of praise, but basic good work. Counters from before now being met with their own counter, moves that worked once failing to work in a rematch, things of that nature.

Once again, it is just this beautifully simple and admirable classic wrestling thing. A powerhouse super athlete and an overachieving mostly heart based underdog. There’s a certain kind of natural chemistry here that’s hard to really nail down or at least that’s hard to properly put into words. It’s one of those grey area things in wrestling where this is a performance at the end of the day, and some pairings just naturally have something together. Like so much of the best TNA/Impact stuff of the 2010s, it doesn’t leap off the page immediately, but something about Lashley vs. Eddie Edwards simply works. There are all the mechanical and intellectual explanations about big vs. small, striking vs. suplexing, but at some point, it is more of an art than a science, and no explanation will every completely do the trick.

The match is also home to another nice little chunk of booking from Impact that, likewise, doesn’t reinvent the wheel but that just comes together right. Davey Richards comes down to stop Lashley from using the title belt, and with things entirely even once again, Eddie has it won. Only for Davey Richards to then pull the ref out, kind of snap on Eddie about how it’s always about him, have his wife also attack Eddie’s at ringside, and to cost him the match with a belt shot to set up Bobby’s spear. It’s a great sort of a turn, coming across as something the guy in question (Davey) had thought about (and clearly talked over with the old lady) but not totally decided on until that moment, coming across as far more realistic for that feeling.

Another great chunk of wrestling TV here delivering a great match and a lovely little chunk of booking, and if we’re being honest, a better American Wolves break up angle than anything that ever came out of their ROH run.

***

Eddie Edwards vs. Lashley, Impact Genesis 2017 (1/26/2017)

This was a 30:00 Iron Man Match for Eddie’s Impact World Heavyweight Title.

Genuinely, this is really great.

Being entirely fair, it is not a thirty minute Iron Man in the way we often think of them, as a solid ten minutes are lobbed off on TV. That’s not to say those ten minutes are not also as great as everything we see on screen, but I can only go off of what I’m seeing, and it is more of a great twenty minute iron man than a thirty minute one. Great is great, and that doesn’t matter quite so much to me, but it’s worth noting.

Still, I have not enjoyed a match from TNA/Impact (they are now officially just Impact, ANTHEM OWL and all, although they will spiritually always be TNA) this match in a long time, probably going back to the summer and fall of 2014 with the good Lashley defenses and the Wolves/Hardys/Team 3D series. Truly, I’m not sure I didn’t like this even more than that stuff. If someone said to me that this was the best match in the company since AJ Styles left, I wouldn’t have it in me to argue. I don’t have a real hard stance on that, but yeah man, maybe. It’s a phenomenal achievement not only from a company I don’t expect much from anymore, but also from a match up that I didn’t expect to achieve on this level.

There is a synthesis here, between great simple wrestling and great simple storytelling, that TNA has not had in some time.

Firstly, the story and the booking of the thing is just about perfect.

Eddie Edwards captured the title from Lashley near the end of 2016, when Lashley picked Eddie instead of other challengers, thinking it would be easier, only to get upset. The match wasn’t all that great, but it was a classical piece of pro wrestling booking. This is the receipt for that, the other shoe dropping, but because of how it’s handled and how great the match is, I don’t mind it at all.

This match is as great of an underdog title loss as you’ll find, in terms of how the story is told. Lashley now takes him completely seriously, and the match is a story about how you cannot come out of nowhere twice. Lashley gets him first as a result, following an even first third of the match. He pours it on once he does, with a gnarly suplex over the top and then a Powerbomb on the ramp for a count out. Eddie’s got in him to fight back again, and evens it up with his flying knee and with a flash cradle, presented as still good enough to catch him, but physical realities and smarter wrestling against him is too great a combination. Lashley powerbombs him out of the air and goes into an Arm Triangle to go up 3-2 with two minutes and change left. Eddie manages a front choke in the end as a counter to another Spear that Bob plans as a final message at the end, but doesn’t have enough time to overcome the size difference in a hold like that.

Lashley regains the title and proves something by correcting his previous error, but only leaving Edwards stronger in the process for pushing him like he did. Lashley does it cleanly and fairly, but also meanly enough with the floor attacks and with an ending as cruel as that to give Edwards sympathy in a few different areas. Eddie loses in the most heartbreaking way possible, without a real actual gripe, and undone by the sorts of physical realities that his hard work can and has overcome before, but simply didn’t in this moment.

In a mechanical sense, it is above and beyond anything I would have expected, and that primarily goes for Lashley. It’s been a few years, but in 2011, 2012, and 2013, Edwards was a perennial Wrestler of the Year shortlist guy, so long as he had the material to work with, your classic consistency candidate. Everything he does is solid, he just needs a little more, and with a lot of time and an environment like this, he killed it again. Good offense, tremendous energy, and while his selling isn’t INCREDIBLE or anything, he got it just right for every single phase of the match. Lashley is the real gem here, putting forth what I’d call a career level performance for him. It’s not like he hasn’t been in great matches before, but not at this length and they’re usually against guys we think of a little higher like a John Cena or whoever. There’s also a great character performance element to Lashley here as well, getting pissy at times when he had to work harder than usual, and in my favorite bit, going at the end from wanting to run the clock out to getting mad when Eddie dove after him, and then trying the impactful finish out of spite, only to just barely avoid eating shit once again.

This match is, for the first time in a while, the old TNA Special.

Akin to something like Roode vs. Aries or some of the hits from the 2000s, it’s this display of like, what wrestling is arguably supposed to be. Not the greatest talents in the world and not the flashiest thing in the world, but through a synthesis of performance and writing, they get so much out of it. Two hands working together, with full knowledge of not only what the other has done and is doing, but of what the other seemingly is going to do next.

It is all so much more than what it looks like on paper, a production so much greater than the sum of its parts that, as I’ve experienced, sometimes it has to be seen to be entirely believed.

Genuinely, it is a real accomplishment, an alignment of good simple booking and great performances in one coherent and cohesive package, from a company that hasn’t had an alignment like that, at least not on this level, in some time. 

***1/2

Trevor Lee vs. Andrew Everett vs. Eddie Edwards vs. DJZ, TNA Slammiversary (6/12/2016)

This was for Trevor Lee’s TNA X Division Title.

Genuinely, this kicks a ton of ass.

TNA or not, it is pretty hard to deny another good fireworks show like this. Some really great wrestlers throw their best stuff against a wall for twelve or thirteen minutes and most of it sticks. It is not any more complex than that. Outside of the Eddie Edwards vs. DJZ stuff, pretty much everything in this match leaps off the page, and it feels like as close as TNA’s come to capturing that authentic X Division feeling all years. Even the long Austin Aries run never felt quite “right” in the way that the old stuff did, but a match like this is the sort of thing that would have been right at home opening some pay-per-view over a decade earlier main evented by a Jeff Jarrett walk-and-brawl. On a show ostensibly about celebrating TNA’s history, this is the most authentically (as opposed to something like the Wolves/Dirty Heels series in 2015 that felt like an ultimately failed attempt to recapture past glory) in touch with it that they’ve felt since AJ Styles left.

It will mean practically nothing to you to say this is the best match to come out of TNA in some time, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Of all Trevor Lee’s accomplishments in 2016, this is definitely on the list too.

***

 

Biff Busick vs. Eddie Edwards, Beyond Greatest Rivals Round Robin (9/26/2015)

This was the unofficial finals of the Greatest Rivals Round Robin, as each man had gone 2-0 so far. More importantly than any of that, it’s Biff Busick’s final match in both Beyond Wrestling and independent wrestling.

Biff and Eddie have gone 2-2 up until this point in their Beyond series. The record doesn’t matter quite so much at this point, given that the feud made Biff two years ago, but it’s worth noting. While I wouldn’t call Eddie Edwards the greatest rival of Biff Busick, it does feel like the right ending. It’s how this all seemed to start, both for Biff and the company that’s largely been built up upon the backs of what these two did in 2013 and 2014. Very few endings are ever perfect, especially one that feels as premature as Biff Busick’s, but they do make it quite a fitting one.

While not the greatest match that they’ve ever had together, it is the perfect match for the moment.

Firstly, so much of this is carried by the moment, and specifically the reaction of the crowd in attendance to the moment. At several points in the match, the fans break out shout singing “Bro Hymn”, creating an atmosphere unlike pretty much anything else in wrestling. The crowd doesn’t stop there though, creating and maintaining a constant energy throughout the match. Sometimes that’s chanting, and other times it’s specific fans getting actually riled up when Eddie Edwards takes offense, shouting things like “WE DON’T WANT YOU” or “THIS IS BIFF’S CITY”. Wrestlers join the crowd to see the match, and in a few moments, what seems like a mix (do not tell me if it isn’t) of wrestlers and fans pick a beaten up and battered Busick up, and carry him back to the ring (someone will pick you up again).

The full circle element also does a lot for the match.

It’s not just that the match is happening again, but it’s the way in which it happens. Eddie Edwards spent those other matches in the series clearly above Busick, and got aggressive, but there’s nothing like this. After the early moments, Eddie snaps in a way that he never really has before, hurling him around Fete Music as harshly and rudely as possible. He breaks every merch table he can find with Busick’s body, tears up his 8x10s, and finally starts to revel in everyone preferring their boy. There’s one especially great moment where he slams Biff on the ground and begins whipping every single object in his vicinity down at Biff. Bar stools, drinks, a binder, all of it. It’s nasty and raw, and this one spurt of aggression and spire does almost as much for the match as the fans do.

Mechanically, the match is fine. It’s good, it’s great, but that’s really the least important part of this.

All they had to do was not fuck it up, and they do it. It’s not as great as the iron man, or even the Americanrana ’13 match probably. It’s a match seemingly with the knowledge that none of the bell to bell mattered as much as it did in every other meeting, and that’s fine. It’s fifteen minutes of whipping ass and encouraging the atmosphere. Busick’s comebacks are perfect, full of nasty wide-eyed maniac fire ups and brutal chops and uppercuts. Eddie leans a little too much into TNAism and more indieriffic offense, but as the one here to be reviled and then beaten, it’s not the end of the world.

The highlight of the match, apart from Eddie’s outside tantrum, is the ending. Biff uses the Lance Storm roll back into a half crab, as much paying tribute to his trainer as he does steal something from Eddie Edwards. He transitions down into an STF and then the straight bully choke, and Eddie submits.

A perfect farewell match for Busick to cap off of a perfect farewell show, and one of Beyond’s best ones, period. Given that Busick already passed something of a torch a few months prior to this, it was a lovely surprise to see him leave by going 3-0 against his greatest rivals. It’s what everyone wanted, and feels truest to Biff Busick’s tenure in Beyond Wrestling. After all, this is the one place where Busick got to be a hero. Everywhere else, he was someone’s foil or a Good Match Guy, but as someone who started watching Beyond to see more of this oddball who captured my interest so immediately eighteen months earlier, I loved it. Biff’s The Man, and one last time, Biff gets to be a big god damned hero, resulting one of the best feeling wrestling shows in independent history.

Biff Busick wins one last time and receives another rousing chorus on his way out the door.

After one of the best wrestling shows of the year revolves entirely around his departure, and he feels like one of the biggest and most ascendant stars in independent wrestling, Busick will never again be treated or received on a level even comparable.

That’s the part that sucks.

It’s not that he left, it’s that he left when he did and left to do what he did (basically nothing for years).

The tragedy of Biff Busick isn’t that independent wrestling lost one of its biggest stars. Despite what Busick meant to Beyond, there are others waiting in the rings. It’s not like Bryan Danielson and Nigel McGuinness leaving Ring of Honor or El Generico leaving PWG. The tragedy is that it could have been. Busick spent the last year and a half inching closer and closer towards being one of the handful of the world’s greatest wrestlers, and it’s only now when he seems right on the precipice of that does he leave. In retrospect, it’s a brutal harbinger of the next five years to come as more and more promising young talents get plucked off before their primes, and shoved on a shelf. Busick himself won’t have another match that makes tape for another four months and won’t get to produce anything of this quality for over a year, until the Andrade series near the end of 2016. He’s not the first and he won’t be the last, but it doesn’t suck any less.

Of all the major WWE independent signings in the 2010s, Biff Busick’s is the one that feels the worst. With the signings of Chris Hero (x2), WALTER, Timothy Thatcher, Claudio, Kevin Steen, or even an ACH or Trevor Lee later on, I always got the feeling that it was the natural next step. Someone who’s done everything possible at this level and has higher goals. It’s always a bummer to lose a great and/or interesting wrestler to a company that is rarely great nor interesting, but it is what it is. Buy the ticket, take the ride. That’s not Biff at this point though. There’s still so much he hasn’t done, only just starting to really break out as a top guy around the country and not just in Beyond. We should have years, like we did in the golden age. The thing about the old days is that they’re the old days now. Lessons have been learned by those who have come to power since, and you might never get the independent scene of the 2000s and early 2010s ever again.

What we have instead is a match and a show and a moment like this though to stand as a monument to all those possibilities (and for the ways pro wrestling can occasionally make me feel like the Once-ler).

It’s doesn’t feel like a fair trade, in the way that no monument ever really does.

However, at least it’s there. Here it stands, one perfect round robin there to say “UNLESS”, if you ever want to go back, look, and think about what was, what is, what could have been, and ideally, all the things that still can happen.

***1/4