(photo credit to @JWasherBeyond on Twitter)
This was for Yuta’s IWTV Independent World Title, as well as being the 100th defense of said title.
It’s a match that’s gotten a lot of buzz in the few days since, that will likely become one of the more talked about matches of the year, and it’s worth talking about. It was also a match I wanted to watch again given how bad the IWTV Roku app can be sometimes and that, in the case of a match like this, the buffering and missed patches can do real damage to the way a match flows in real time. Also it’s important to remind many of you that unless you pay me to do something, I will write about any singular thing I god damned well please. Thank you.
Mostly though, it’s that I thought I should see it again, because I never appreciate long matches when they’re happening live in front of my eyes.
That’s not an old man thing. I’ve been like this my entire life, with a few major exceptions. I was live in attendance for the Bryan Danielson vs. Roderick Strong match that lasted fifty six minutes, and while you can very easily chalk that up to it not ending until after midnight on a show that lasted over four hours, I didn’t love it until I was able to watch it back later. The same can be said for matches like this that I’ve simply watched live on a stream or something. Sometimes it’s that a duller part early on makes it a lot easier to lose immersion if something is just in a smaller box on a screen and sometimes it’s that something more interesting will grab my attention later on. Even beyond my own personal struggles, it’s just harder to have a great longer match than it is to have a great shorter match. Virtually every match I’ve liked within the last ten to twenty years that’s longer than forty minutes, with a few special exceptions (Joe/Punk II, Joe/Bryan in 2004 (not in 2006), Bryan/Aries at Testing the Limit) is a match that I didn’t like nearly as much on first viewing as I did on second or third.
So, any match that’s this long is a match that I need to watch again after the fact to get a real feel for.
On second viewing, this is really really great.
Some of the hyperbole is a lot. Is this the best U.S. indie match in half a decade? No. However, it’s the best one in something like two years (hello Violence is Forever vs. They Might Be Giants) and a genuine ray of light, especially for people like myself who are more inclined to really love this more combative and realistic style of wrestling. Is it the best match of the year? I don’t know. It might be? It’s in the running. I have a shortlist and it’s on it. I don’t think it’s a slam dunk exactly because I don’t necessarily think the MATCH OF THE YEAR should have the issues this does, but it’s unbelievably impressive.
Warts and all, that’s what I keep coming back to here, how stunningly ambitious it was and how impressive it was that they got as much right here as they did. It’s a very obvious attempt to garner buzz because long matches are flashy and grab the eyes, but a.) it worked (always has and always will, especially on an independent level, sadly) & b.) it’s still just a really great professional wrestling match. I’m not impressed immediately by ambition, but I am very much impressed by ambition that comes as close to the goal as this did. There are all time greats who have had the same ideas as these two and had far worse matches together than this.
What helps so much is that the majority of this match does genuinely feel wrestled with a purpose. Throughout something like the first seventy five percent of this, something is always happening that feels important.
Of course, context helps too.
In the week before this, Daniel Garcia has had a schedule that could be optimistically described as psychotic. This show happened on a Sunday. On Wednesday, he debuted on AEW Dynamite in a losing effort as part of a six man tag team match against Jon Moxley, Darby Allin, and Eddie Kingston. On Friday and Saturday nights, he participated in the Scenic City Invitational and made it to the finals, wrestling three matches across two days, before then coming up to New Jersey to have this match. As commentary (a genuine highlight of this match and a tremendous assistance to the story told in the ring, one of the better commentary performances in independent wrestling in recent memory) points out, it’s not as if YUTA has been in the lap of luxury either, having defended the title two days prior. However, in the eight days preceding this, Wheeler YUTA has had two matches while Daniel Garcia had been in five. There’s a difference and everybody knows it.
It’s a tremendous assistance that not only do they lean into the obvious story, but that they do so immediately. Garcia doesn’t exactly run right in, but he opens the match with an urgency that Wheeler YUTA simply does not have. As soon as he sees an opening, Garcia pounces with a Piledriver. The champion is able to survive and gain distance immediately after, but Garcia spends the first ten to fifteen minutes of the match frantically mauling Wheeler YUTA. He’s desperate on the mat, cagey and antsy as hell, and grabbing anything he can think up, while Wheeler just kind of hangs back and aims for distance. Beyond the classic trope of the champion only ever having to survive, there’s a real sense to the match that Garcia needs to end this within fifteen to twenty minutes or the adrenaline is going to wear off, the exhaustion will set back in, and it will become a significantly more difficult match to win.
YUTA survives though, and true to form, things suddenly become much harder for Garcia once that flurry is over.
Wheeler escapes a headlock with a backdrop suplex, and wonderfully, Garcia makes the decision to focus on arm damage and not neck damage, giving the match a much juicier point of focus.
The arm selling of Garcia is not quite perfect, but it is so much better than anything that he’s ever shown before. He hits the classic notes like not being able to lift the champion or needing to use the good arm to grab his wrist to hang onto holds, but he has some really unique approaches too. He falls down a few times trying to push up off the mat, he holds his wrist and elbow in little ways that denote an injury even when it’s not the focus of the match. There’s one particularly good bit before YUTA really gets to work on it in which Garcia lands a takedown and has to go into a complex hold but without ever using the left arm. He uses his legs more effectively and the right arm, putting over not just the pain he’s in, but how smart and skilled he still is. One of my favorite things that Bret Hart would do is that when he had his back worked over, he would always just carry himself differently. He would walk around in a much tighter way, like someone working a real working class job who hurt their back but can’t afford to go home. The job still had to be finished, you know? It was never flashy like the far worse Shawn Michaels back selling performances, but always felt a lot more realistic, taking every step in a match intent on reminding you that this is a man with a bad back. Daniel Garcia is a little showier than that, as he should be as a character, but there’s real elements of that same idea here. For a significant stretch of this match, Daniel Garcia moves and operates like someone with a genuinely hurt arm. It’s imperfect, but as someone who’s had a bad wrist injury once, there are elements of Garcia’s performance like the way he can’t grip things in a certain way or how he holds himself that immediately feel correct and true.
It’s in this middle part that a major weakness of the match emerges, and it’s that Wheeler YUTA is simply not as good as Daniel Garcia.
His arm work doesn’t quite match up to the level of Garcia’s performance in response to it. YUTA honestly forgets it after a few moments and it’s largely on Garcia’s back that it matters at all and isn’t just obvious filler. His work that’s meant to be more vicious doesn’t ever quite come off that way as opposed to the more organically gutsy and gritty feelings that Garcia evokes doing similar things, which might wind up working in a way differently than he intended. This isn’t to say YUTA is anything close to bad in this though. YUTA has some of these great moments of offense as well to cut him off, and what he lacks in character work as a heel champion, he makes up for in mechanical skill. It’s just that there is one really good performance in this match and one incredible one, and the gulf between the two cannot help but reveal itself at some points. All the same, given that this feels like Daniel Garcia’s coming out party as genuinely one of the best wrestlers in the entire world, it’s not enough to bring this down.
Garcia, beyond the arm selling, is incredible here. My favorite thing about Garcia before this match was how antsy he always was. It makes him worth watching even in moments of lower importance and it made him an incredible heel. In a match like this, in which he transforms from a cocky challenger who’s also something of an antagonist to being a full blown hero by the end of the match, he never loses that and super impressively finds a way to turn it in his benefit. It means against a cur like YUTA, the impulsiveness and stubbornness is turned into a virtue. Wheeler YUTA doesn’t necessarily inspire me to want to see someone take a pound of flesh out of him, but the longer this goes and the more the contrast between the two gets to play out, the better it feels in those moments where Garcia can catch Wheeler sleeping and throw out a wild shot or desperately try and grab a hold.
The major weakness of the match is that in the last ten to fifteen minutes, this loses something. Part of that is that the draw becomes more obvious. Part of that is that they repeat themselves here and there. Some of that has a point, such as Garcia struggling with the grip on one hold and finally getting it near the end before time runs out. Sometimes it’s not that. They lean a lot on chop exchanges too, and generally just kind of run out the clock (until the final minute or two of Dan finally getting that move on), but in a way that benefits the match. The real thing is just that sixty minutes
All the same, there is so much to love.
The character stuff they do from start to finish is just about perfect. The performance from Garcia is pristine and fully accomplishes the goal of elevating him into being on of the best wrestlers in the world. The performance of YUTA isn’t quite there, but it’s his best one yet as a villain, and the gap between #1 and #2 is astronomical. Mechanically, it’s just about perfect aside from the repetition. The strikes are all great looking and mostly great sounding. The holds are all tight and mean and good as hell. It always feels like they’re wrestling with a purpose or a goal, trying to convey something. Most importantly, there’s almost always this sense of struggle. Garcia or YUTA is always trying to fight back or grabbing something extra hard, or throwing in a shot just because. If nothing else, every part of this feels like a battle in a way that a major independent wrestling match hasn’t since Timothy Thatcher left.
They get so much right that what isn’t totally perfect doesn’t really bother me. Sure, it’s the reason this isn’t even better, but it’s a ratio that overwhelmingly favors the bright spots. At some point, there’s no need to dwell upon the negative.
Like anything like this in the past, and like things like this in the future (as there is no way, once again, that the lesson learned here by independent wrestlers isn’t simply that longer = better), the praise in the moment has been hyperbolic. The negative reaction to that praise and the buzz for this matches and matches like it will be just as hyperbolic. Young guys are going to go too long and do too much. They’re kids and they want everything, because we all do. Many lack the experience, proper instinct, and patience to do it right, and it’s always the right call to be cautious when guys like this go an hour. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.
If more of those ultra-ambitious attempts got as much right as this did, it wouldn’t be anything to be cautious about to begin with.
A true accomplishment.
***1/2
HANDWERK 