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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the year’s great hidden gems.

***1/4

Fred Yehi vs. Cain Justice, ACTION For Wishes (4/27/2018)

Great match.

Thanks for reading.

I wish a sex pest wasn’t on commentary also.

***

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.

***

Matt Riddle vs. Fred Yehi, EVOLVE 96 (12/9/2017)

This was a No Rope Break match.

One might expect these two to build upon their wonderful match from October, lean into the match rules like this often deliver, and get real perverted on the mat. Riddle once again drawn down to the ground by a better wrestler, as has been the case with many of his best matches of the year, Yehi getting to play around with spots in the ropes like the ROH Pure Title match he was born a decade too late for, that sort of a thing.

Sadly, that is not the case here.

Instead, this is much closer to a normal Matt Riddle match, with strike trading and bombs, and at least one egregious no-selling exchange (Riddle, as is often the case, forgets the small part of the thing where you eventually have to register some pain via collapse or stumbling when the moment is over, or otherwise you are simply saying a German Suplex didn’t hurt). The rope break rule here feels coincidental, like this just so happens to be a match where rope breaks don’t count. It’s a sort of wasteful stipulation for all that they do with it, as if they were afraid of having a match that was too smart for the crowd or something, and so instead opted to dumb it down to a usual level.

Fortunately, Fred Yehi is still in this match (and is also baited into fighting barefoot as well by a very loud chant to show his feet).

Much in the way Yehi was able to get Riddle on the ground to riff it out here or there in October, translating Riddle’s game into his sort of a match, he pulls off the opposite really really well too.

In a dumber match, complete with apron fighting, longer strike exchange, no-selling, and the like, Fred Yehi still makes it work so much better than almost any other Riddle opponent in 2017 (save one or two). The deliberate work when he gets Riddle down here and there, the selling on his end forcing a little form and structure to this and transforming it from something bad into simply being a great festival of bomb hucking, all the little facials and mean strikes and different offense in general. It’s not to say Riddle didn’t hold up his end of this, but it’s clear for most of this match that someone here is walking in front of the other and carving a path for the match to succeed, and it sure isn’t Matt Riddle holding that machete.

Riddle gets his win back with the Bromission near the ropes, but that’s not all that important. That was always the ending, and while I wish any promotion in the world valued Fred Yehi as much as he clearly ought to be valued, it’s no surprise that the golden boy took back one of the year’s more surprising upsets. This is more about the process than the outcome, and it’s so impressive that despite every classic Riddle flaw, this still turned out as well as it did.

While not as smart or as good as their previous match, still a quality ode to the benefits of keeping your big dumb bombfests shorter and sweeter, as well as just what can be accomplished when one brave soul commits to the bit and shows feet.

***1/4

Matt Riddle vs. Fred Yehi, EVOLVE 95 (10/15/2017)

A wonderful thing.

Matt Riddle, objectively speaking, and for all his many many flaws, is a good professional wrestler.

I won’t coach that in terms like “in 2017” or “at this point in his career”. Obviously, you wish someone accused of the sorts of things he was accused of was worse so that, like a great many wrestlers of this era, he could be ignored entirely (or, as with one specific case, that he was so great that I refuse to write about his matches at all because I don’t want to write that much positive stuff), or a million other things. He will never be as great as he was in 2016, spoiled by the influences of other places and the mainstream aspirations that he clearly has. Riddle is not exactly a unique wrestler in that he is outstanding at executing and can do a bunch of thing well, but comes up short mentally, having been under some real bad influences (British wrestling) for the last year or so, and influenced by trying to develop the sorts of skills and routines that will help him where he is clearly going to wind up within the next year.

He has not achieved up to that standard in 2017 exactly, outside of his series against maybe the best wrestler in the world, but Fred Yehi is another story.

While in the midst of a career year, Fred Yehi once again meets up with poor little Matt Riddle, and leads him to one of his best matches.

It is not to say this is all on the ground, or that Yehi forces Matt Riddle into a match with any kind of focus. That is not the case. Instead, Yehi applies the gifts that Riddle has — matwork, striking, a lot of energy — into a classical sort of a Fred Yehi riff-centric match. The focus is more on slow escalation, a feeling of growing intensity and discomfort with each other, a dislike that bubbles up into increasingly hostile wrestling. Yehi gets Riddle in the way that I don’t think anyone in EVOLVE has since Roderick Strong, crafting a match that allows him to stand up and throw just as much as it forces him to show off on the ground.

Likewise, this match — whether it is on Yehi, booking, or simply a thing that pops up independent of anyone’s choice at all — seems to understand that for all Matt Riddle’s gifts, he is not a likeable person to anyone but the most morally bankrupt and ideologically empty sort of person (the British), and so the match does not require him to be so. Instead, this is an even sort of a match, and as the healthy mind naturally gravitates towards Fred Yehi over the course of the thing, the match shifts more and more in his direction. The normal wrestler, the perpetual underdog, up against a super athlete.

Despite the match never one hundred percent going in this direction, Yehi’s performance is enough to make it matter, and to make it feel like something worth getting behind. He is increasingly dogged, frantic and desperate in the face of Riddle’s easy confidence, and more and more, it begins to pay off. Riddle doesn’t rush, while Yehi does, and at the end, Matt Riddle simply cannot escape.

The Koji Clutch is escaped once in the ropes, nearly powered out of a second time, but as Our Hero keeps dragging Riddle right back down into this one hold, it slowly slips away from this vile cretin, and the match goes in the direction that it and all of wrestling ought to. Riddle passes out, and Yehi garners a big time and long overdue upset.

A return to form for Matt Riddle in that he allows one of the five to ten best wrestlers in the world hold his hand through something rather than trying to lead the way, resulting in easily his best match of the year.

***1/3

WALTER vs. Fred Yehi, EVOLVE 90 (8/11/2017)

This was for WALTER’s PROGRESS Atlas Title.

I don’t know if there’s a better one here.

Certainly, you would not be insane to suggest that two strong 2017 Wrestler of the Year favorites (in a weak year for said award) ought to be able to come together to produce something stronger than this. It is simply a second or third from the top three boy level match on a B-level EVOLVE show. Yehi and WALTER have both individually have had better matches than this in 2017 with worse opponents. I don’t blame anyone for saying that this maybe didn’t live up to every expectation.

At the same time, a match can only be, more often than not, what it is allowed to be.

Should this have had a better crowd, set up, and the clearance to be a real God damned gem, rather than the match going on before a Matt Riddle vs. Lio Rush main event? Of course.

It wasn’t though.

Relative to where this is slotted and what it actually is — a showcase for WALTER for a new audience, rather than a dream match between two of the best wrestlers in the entire world — it’s pretty great.

WALTER is a force of nature. Nobody in 2017 looks like, unquestionably, the best wrestler in the entire world, but the big guy is one of a few who seems close to it. Everything he does on offense is unbelievably good looking and even better sounding. Few wrestlers understand the idea that this is an auditory medium as well as a visual one more than WALTER does at his peak. Likewise, he’s an outstanding bumper and a seller for his size as well. That’s not to say he is taking these shot out of a cannon bumps, but that he builds up and executes each stumble and fall so well that just about everything that he does has some value to it. Everything WALTER does in this match, offensively and defensively, is superb. I recommended this match to a few more casual friends at the time it happened, before the show, and after watching the entire show, they came away only able to talk about WALTER. That’s circumstantial as hell, it doesn’t really mean anything, but I think it goes to show not only the strength of the match, but how great WALTER was at this point at not simply wrestling itself, but presenting himself as the biggest deal in the world.

Fred Yehi is fine here as well.

It’s not a match that asks a whole lot from Yehi in the way that, say, a Brian Cage match or whatever did earlier in the year. He is more of a tool here to get someone else over than the beneficiary of anything here. He is, however, once again superlative in the role, as he was for much of his first year in EVOLVE. Fred hits hard, takes these crazy bumps and shots, sells his ass off, and is the ideal wrestler for a match like this. Above all, Fred always seems tough as hell, and by essentially running through him, WALTER immediately feels like the most powerful wrestling force in the world.

Yehi and WALTER maybe — almost definitely — have a better one in the, but relative to every other match on this show and most other EVOLVE outings in 2017, its hard for me to be too disappointed. Judge things on the basis of what they are, and on that basis, this is a complete and total success.

The ideal WALTER showcase.

***

ACH vs. Fred Yehi, EVOLVE 88 (7/8/2017)

Following up one of the year’s quieter and earlier hits in January, ACH and Fred Yehi deliver the goods for a second time this year.

It would be a pretty easy thing for them to do to go about it the same general way, a back and forth riff sessions that never gets real serious or bogged down in focus and that simply operates with the mission of delivering a Great Match. Your standard combination of good old Grapplefuck and ACH’s style, all of that. It’s been six months, and after the last six months plus of Fred Yehi having tons of great matches that you could describe using those terms, these things blend together, so I doubt too many people would accuse them of copying off of past work or anything.

Thankfully, this is great in a different sort of a way!

By this point in the year, ACH has been largely abandoned by EVOLVE booking after he’s outlived his usefullness to Gabe, having put over all the golden  boy booker’s pet acts on the roster and gotten all he can out of his name value (I mean, not really, you and I know this, but it’s hardly the first time Gabe hasn’t known what to do with literally one of the greatest wrestlers currently working), and is drifting out there in the wind. He’ll be gone from EVOLVE by early in the fall, the brief lived and truly wretched Troll Boyz act with All Eggo being the real last grasp of ACH in EVOLVE.

As the extension of this idea into a single match, ACH now works not only from above, but with a much greater hostility and casual cruelty than ever before, spending the match attacking the back of Yehi.

Moving past just that this is an exciting new thing out of ACH, who’s primarily been great in one role for the previous four to five years, albeit in many different forms within that role, it’s just really good. ACH reacts to everything in a very natural kind of a way, the negativity and spite feels genuine, and makes it work so much better than I would have thought coming in. It’s not to say this would work against everyone, I’m not sure bitter veteran ACH would succeed like this against, say, Austin Theory or Matt Riddle, but against a wrestler in Yehi who is genuinely very likeable himself and who has a sensible style that ACH fits in perfectly with, ACH is freer to play around in a newer role. He’s never exactly tearing the back up and it’s not like he’s spitting and sneering, but there’s just enough of a distinct negative energy and just enough of a clear focus that the match sort of naturally organizes itself around these ideas.

Yehi’s selling is tremendous. There’s that classical kind of Bret Hart or Tanahashi feeling to it, not simply selling a hurt back by holding the back after being hit or slammed there or failing to be able to do a few things because of a lack of support (Fred Yehi does all of these things very well too, of course), but selling it just as much in the way he moves around. I repeat myself every time with something like this, but it is a form of selling that, once again, I’ve always been so enamored by. There’s a real blue collar ethic to it, and something about selling like this when done well that I think people can understand so much easier, and that I think feels realer. Most working people don’t have the luxury of lying down and rolling around in pain forever and screaming and crying, it’s selling like this that holds truest, gutting through and just walking in a different and more clipped way, holding your body with more tension, things like that. Yehi is not the best to ever do a thing like this, but he’s very very good here at putting this ideal into practice.

When Yehi can’t yanks ACH up for his big double arm clutch into the German to set up his late run offense, ACH finally has the opening for big moves that he’s always struggled to find against Yehi. He lands his absolute motherfucker of a Lariat and then the Buster Call, but when Yehi kicks out there when he didn’t in January, ACH loses his mind and nerve just enough for Fred Yehi to take advantage.

ACH’s plan falls short this time when the follow up Midnight Call is blocked, and Yehi rolls him into the Koji Clutch. No longer as baffled by ACH’s unique pacing and bursts of energy, or perhaps more driven now by raw desperation now that he has a hurt back, Yehi gets ACH where he couldn’t before, and gets his submission.

Classic meat and potatoes EVOLVE midcard, once again from its greatest remaining practitioner and one of his perfect dance partners. A lovely chunk of pro wrestling, artfully crafted and, maybe just slightly so, spitefully hammered into place by two wrestlers who deserved far more than they got both from this company and from professional wrestling at large, showing exactly why that’s such a depressing summary in the first place.

***1/4

Keith Lee vs. Fred Yehi, EVOLVE 85 (5/21/2017)

EVOLVE 85 was in Livonia, Michigan, outside of Detroit.

Now, as someone who had been praising EVOLVE at the time since the grappling focused rebrand in fall 2014, I had been waiting for something like this for years. I got my ass over there on a Sunday afternoon, vote with your dollar, and all of that. I was a peak ROH fan and I’ve seen with markets like Minnesota or wherever Gabe tried to run and failed that you don’t get more shows in the area if the first one does bad. None of the matches (this, Zack/Lio II, KOR/Tracy, Riddle/Cobb for the umpteenth time) were especially interesting, but it’s EVOLVE and, in real time, you don’t always realize a peak is over until like six to twelve months after it is. I thought the magic might be there, independent of the matches booked themselves, and so I went.

I’m not going to tell you it was a great show.

It wasn’t.

This isn’t going to be a full ass old DVDVR style Road Report, because I don’t remember everything and I’m not watching a full mediocre 2017 EVOLVE show to jog my memory (if this is a thing people are interested in for current day live experiences, hey, maybe?). But it was a fine time at the pro wrestling. KOR/Tracy was also borderline great, I just have nothing to say about it, and Zack/Lio II was fine and flawed in the same way as their first meeting in April (just a bad stylistic mesh).

However, if not for the PROGRESS U.S. tour show that I went to a year later, it might be the most forgettable wrestling show I’ve ever been to.

Later in the year, EVOLVE would run Livonia again, and I would buy tickets, only to completely forget that I had done so or even that there was a show that weekend. I was online talking to some pals in the Slack, and it dawned on me that they were talking about a show’s results, read off of Twitter, that not only was currently happening, but that I had paid money to be able to see in person. It’s never happened to me before, it’s never happened to me again, but that’s both where EVOLVE was at the time and then also where I personally was in the later months of 2017.

I can think of no greater sign of EVOLVE’s fall through 2017 than this, literally forgetting to go to a show that I had bought tickets for.

Saying all of that, Keith Lee vs. Fred Yehi was a whole lot of fun.

Classic big vs. little wrestling, which gets the most important thing right about a match like this and never betrays the central conceit of the thing. Unlike a lot of other Keith Lee matches — and this is to his absolute credit in a match like this — there’s no flying or moves a big guy shouldn’t be doing. He tries and mostly fails to grab and squash little Fred Yehi, before he’s eventually able to do it.

Yehi’s especially great here, in yet another stellar outing for one of 2017’s quietest Wrestler of the Year contenders. Mechanically speaking, everything is pitch perfect, but it’s more than that. Beyond just what he does (and Yehi does some really really cool stuff, once again), it’s the way he does it. There’s always a desperation and occasionally fear in Yehi’s eyes when he’s almost hit or when he barely gets out of Keith’s grasp, and certainly a more frantic feeling to his movement throughout the match as well. The match’s story comes off so much better as a result of all the little motions and reactions Yehi makes throughout the match.

Lee eventually catches him and turns him into a pancake with the Ground Zero to win, but it’s another one of these matches that’s more about the journey.

It’s not the success that getting out of Brian Cage is exactly, but a Keith Lee showcase match is not always the surest success in the books, and so it’s yet another situation in 2017 in which Fred Yehi is given a task and wildly exceeds any and all expectations.

***

 

Jonathan Gresham vs. Fred Yehi, NOVA Pro The Great Grapsy (5/19/2017)

Ah, NOVA Pro.

Beyond the jokes about pay and conduct on Twitter, NOVA Pro’s a promotion where I’ve watched five or six matches from the promotion for these projects up to this point, and just never bothered writing about them. Not always because they’re bad, and in fact, a lot of them were great. Chris Hero vs. Arik Royal, Tracy Williams vs. Arik Royal, Donovan Dijak vs. Sonjay Dutt, the rematch between Dijak and Jonathan Gresham, and some other stuff. There’s just something about the environment — a big largely empty gym, devoid of any real flair or charm — that makes its matches less exciting.

Jonathan Gresham vs. Fred Yehi (and a few months later in its sequel) stands as the exception to the rule.

The thing with this match compared to the other great NOVA Pro matches before it is that, mechanically and scientifically and logically, it is so good that, while a better crowd undoubtedly would have helped it in the ways that it helps any match, it doesn’t need that. It’s not a display of cool high flying moves, nor is it some large narrative based contest (be it big vs. small like the Dijak stuff, or Arik Royal’s work as the company Ace turning back outside challenges) that works a hundred times better with some atmosphere to it, it’s just wrestling boiled down to the essentials. Strategies and attacks. while far from a basic match, it’s the sort of match that operates and succeeds for basic reasons. Perfectly executed pieces of offense, great selling, clear throughlines from start to finish, the pure and simple truths of the matter. Environment helps, but even here, it works.

NOVA Pro, sometimes, is like pandemic era wrestling come early, and so it ought to be no surprise that a meat and potatoes grappling and striking based match like this excels in an environment where few other kinds of wrestling do. Put in a vacuum like these shows are in all but name, everything else fades away.

Of course, life is strange and wrestling is funny. As a result of wrestling a match that is simply great no matter what the environment or atmosphere is, the environment and atmosphere becomes better than usual for these parts in the last few minutes of the match. The result is that this great feeling forms around a match, and even if it’s not one that a match like this needed, it is a sort of wonderful statement about wrestling.

As for the content of the thing?

This is exactly what you’d expect out of a Jon Gresham vs. Fred Yehi match.

Real slick stuff, great striking, fast movement, nasty double limbwork, all of that. It’s not all perfect, of course. Both men are prone to occasionally forgetting things, and so the selling is not GREAT. Gresham runs a little too much for a guy with a bum wheel, Yehi’s selling is either out of this world great or nonexistent from moment to moment, but these are smaller concerns. Generally speaking, it’s great work.

In particular, this match is very smart about how it handles those big bursts of offense from Jonathan Gresham, while still being this sort of a match. His big runs of offense, flying around, dives, even his Shooting Star Press, all come before Yehi REALLY gets to go after the knee like he does in the last quarter of the match. It’s not a double limb match with these dueling drawn out segments of control on these limbs, exactly, so much as it is a struggle for control at all that neither man entirely gets the best of. So while Gresham’s knee and Yehi’s arm are hurt, the match never gets to a point where it feels like either man should be absolutely destroyed and barely able to move. It’s the most impressive part of the match to me, not only one man understanding the opponent and match and situation they’re in, here in essentially a showcase match on a smaller indie, but both men understanding that and crafting a match that is able to get to these big and fast moments and exchanges to liven up a quieter crowd, but still delivering their kind of match.

The way the match unfolds is also real interesting, and unlike the match from far away, doesn’t quite look like you’d think it might.

Gresham never gets to go after the arm like he wanted, seemingly also surprised by Yehi’s attack and ferocity. At the end, Yehi uses the leg not to try and win, but instead to shut Gresham down at the end and to open him up for big stuff. Yehi’s usual double wrist trap upwards kicks to the body get leveled up this time, as he kicks out Gresham’s back legs to get him down there, and kicks at the head, neck, and collarbones in that position, until the referee calls the match.

Yehi doesn’t get his submission, but it’s a clear win and a show of force at the end, not only beating Gresham in a Gresham style match, but never letting Gresham excel in a Gresham style match, before battering him so bad that the referee had to stop the fight. A less showy version of what Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Jonathan Gresham did the year before, a renowned technician getting surprised and taken to task by someone with a little more grit and pure want-to in their games at the moment. Most people will probably prefer the showier version of the story from the year before, but I think I like this one just as much.

This match and its follow up stands out, years after the fact, as NOVA Pro’s greatest accomplishments. Even just hosting the sort of thing that likely would have been this great everywhere, it’s clearly the best stuff ever to come out of these parts, and not only among the best independent wrestling matches to come out of the country in 2017, but one of my favorite matches to come out of any scene or any country this year, period.

***1/3

Kyle O’Reilly vs. Fred Yehi, EVOLVE 83 (4/23/2017)

Not the smoothest mix in the world, but it works.

Kyle O’Reilly isn’t the most natural fit in the world into EVOLVE midcard grappling meat and potatoes matches, still being weened on the bad version Davey-ism (all limb work is time killing and has no value + a lot of dumb stuff, etc. whereas the good version is rolling Tree of Woe sack taps and dangerous double stomps to the face and trying to kill yourself on every dive). The other part of the equation though is that Fred Yehi is a remarkably adaptable wrestler within the spectrum of different scientific matches, and so he fits really well into a Kyle O’Reilly match.

In a recurring theme of this drop, it is a leg match involving someone who I don’t want to see in leg work matches, and in another recurring theme, it works anyways.

Fred Yehi doesn’t approach the subject with the same tact and light touch that KAI does (one sentence I never imagined myself writing), going completely after the knee. His work is sharp and it’s mean and, as always, Yehi approaches it from so many different fun angles. Nasty cut off shots to the leg, real inventive holds on the ground, counters to Kyle’s holds that get him back down to the leg. None of this ought to be a surprise to anyone who’s ever seen a Yehi match, but it is a stellar Yehi performance once again.

The less expected thing here — not so much a shocker, but something less predictable and that could have gone the other way — is that Kyle O’Reilly turns in a pretty good selling performance to match all of that. Not great, but really good. He does a lot of the right things, holding the leg and shaking it off when he uses it, trouble running sometimes, hobbling, things like that. It’s not perfect, he still throws a little too much with the leg and runs just fine a few times when the match calls for it, but there is enough here to show a clear care and attention paid to this side of the match, which has certainly not always been the case for Kyle O’Reilly in the past. He even avoids any real comical over-sells or silly bumps like you might have gotten in PWG or like you’ll get a lot of in NXT, in a real nice show of completely knowing your environment, and what does and doesn’t fit in EVOLVE.

Another part of this that I loved is while, technically, this is a double limb match, it’s a status the match really has to earn.

What I mean by that is that rather than them establishing these focal points in the first half and trading, Kyle really struggles to get to actually get to the arm and to do any real sustained damage. There’s a lovely little bit here where Kyle gets distracted and goes for a legbar, only for that to be Yehi’s back into control by easily countering into his own legbar. The match forces Kyle to get a little smarter about his attacks as a result of stuff like that, and the story of the match is Kyle having more and more success on the arm as a result of hard work and persistence. It’s the best Kyle babyface performance I’ve maybe ever seen as a result, not just assuming a viewer is going to root for him, and instead giving a reason to root for him in a depressingly novel concept.

The work pays off at the end, and O’Reilly is able to get the Cross Armbreaker on for an immediate submission.

It’s still a little long and the leg selling is not perfect. I am not going to go overboard in praising this match. However, it gets so much more right than it gets wrong, and I loved the way they went about a match like this so much. It’s a unique take on an overly familiar sort of a match, and that makes all the difference.

Just barely great, a testament to Kyle’s improvement since 2015 to some extent if I have to be fair, but so much more than that, a testament to just how great Fred Yehi is at this point.

***