Amigo Tag (Masato Yoshino/Shachihoko BOY) vs. Jimmy Susumu/Jimmy Kagetora, DG Gate of Passion Day Four (4/9/2015)

This was for Amigo Tag’s Open the Twin Gate Titles.

Even relative to the few years before it, Dragon Gate footage from 2015 is incredibly hard to come by. As someone who sort of faded out of watching it (again) during the long BxB Hulk title reign that began in 2014, and didn’t totally come back until 2016, I hate it. I hate it more than the other absences because I at least know what’s missing and how I felt about it at the time. There’s none of that in 2015. It’s this thing I didn’t experience and can’t find anywhere, either legally (outside of the three or four shows from 2015 on DG’s official service) or otherwise (step it up IVP and streaming pirates), save for a few things that have remained online, either due to the star power of the names (Shingo vs. CIMA) or an exceedingly high reputation (Shingo vs. Mochi).

This is one of those matches from 2015 that has remained pretty widely available, and with really good reason.

It’s the best Twin Gate match ever.

Granted, that’s not an exceptionally high bar to clear. Twin Gate matches can get weighed down pretty easily by the same things that weigh down Dream Gate matches a lot of the times. Outside of this, the best of them are virtually all these great little dudes rock style slugfests, usually with Shingo, YAMATO, T-Hawk, Mochi, etc. involved. There are a handful of those matches that I really love all the same, but it’s not the same as calling it the best match in company history, or the bar it would have to clear if I called something the best IWGP Heavyweight Title or the best AJPW Unified World Tag Team Title match ever.

All the same, it is comfortably the best Twin Gate match ever.

It achieves that status largely through a combination of miracles, existing as God’s own Twin Gate match.

Firstly, it’s a both a big and a great Dragon Gate match in which very little context is needed.

The big story here is that Shachihoko BOY is the big underdog. It might help you to know his history. His years of working undercard tags, his failure to ever break through, even his place as the clear obvious and only weak link in Monster Express. Really though, you don’t need to know anything, because a big strength of this match is how clear they make everything from beginning to end. Shachi is undersized compared to everyone else, doesn’t get as much offense, and lacks both the aggression of his opponents and the confidence of his partner. He also comes in with tape on his lower back, marking him as injured in a way that nobody else in the match is. It’s clear very quickly into the match where everybody stands. Knowing the moves helps, but it only helps so much. The match is already great, and then a little context gives it a little push. It’s the kind of match someone can drop in on ten or twenty years later with a few sentences explaining things, and still totally get.

People very deeply into Dragon Gate on a level I can never truly understand (the real psychos) will praise the storytelling of this match as some great victory, like it wasn’t the easiest and best story to tell no matter what. Like most praise for deep Dragon Gate storytelling though, it’s kind of a load of shit. More often than not, that always just feels like a cover. There are a few long running stories that enhance certain matches and occasionally a big deal in one of the multi-mans with high stakes, but it’s not as hard of a promotion to parachute into as you might think. Things are generally pretty self evident, they’re all pretty expressive wrestlers, it’s not like how you need to start at 6/5/89 to totally appreciate 6/3/94. Context matters, only a fool would argue otherwise, but this really isn’t all that deep.

The real great matches don’t require supplemental homework to get them, and this is a really great match.

This is also a miracle because it’s a double limbwork match in Dragon Gate in which both sides of that are respected for the rest of the match and not just immediately blown off when the segment is over. Even more than that, it’s a genuinely respectful arm selling performance from SUSUMU YOKOSUKA of all people, one of the biggest offenders in Dragon System history of having matches in which none of that shit ever ever ever matters. I can count on one hand the other Susumu matches I’ve seen in which he paid this much attention to selling his arm throughout the entire matches, and I’d probably have a finger or two left over. Sometimes, we hyperbolize and stretch the meaning of words, but no, this is a genuine miracle. An act of God, with his hand on the bad shoulder of Yokosuka, if only to remind him of that fact.

Masato Yoshino has to be the one to go out and get that advantage. Shachihoko BOY simply can’t do it on his own. He can’t get much of anything on his own, and before too long, Kagetora bails out his partner before too much damage can be done. This is a particularly good way to go about it, as it means Susumu doesn’t really have to go wild with the selling, and it’s his choice to give a shit anyways even in little small ways twenty minutes later that does so much for the match. It’s also immediately a great contrast to the imbalance of the championship team. Kagetora clearly isn’t the star that Susumu is, but Susumu can trust him to go out and do it on his own. The work on Shachi’s back is genuinely mean as hell, and another aspect of this that absolves the match of needing much in the way of previous knowledge. It’s mean and dismissive and really brutal, it’s one of the better focused segments in recent Dragon Gate history. Shachi himself isn’t an incredible seller, he’s not even as good as Susumu is, but he’s functional and always seems very hurt, and it’s exactly enough. The onus is really more on Yokosuka in that department, and he does the best work of his career on that level. Shachi’s job is just to not let the match down, and he more than comes through.

Naturally, the finishing run is wild and awesome and hyperdramatic.

Yoshino’s hot tag is one of his best ever. There’s an urgency to it that stands out. Yoshino is always unbelievably fast in a way that you can only imagine someone becoming through a Faustian bargain, but he rarely feels desperate and frantic like he does here, having to do a lot of this on his own. Susumu’s arm selling continuing through this last third is where it becomes really impressive, and the Kagetora vs. Shachi nearfall runs are tremendous, but this is primarily Yoshino’s part of the match, and he kills it. Beyond all the big drama, most impressive of all from Our Hero is that in a match full of great Susumu Yokosuka lariats, Masato Yoshino is the one who delivers the single best and most fist pumpingly emphatic lariat of the match.

It comes down to Yokosuka and Shachcihoko BOY, and surprisingly, the two lesser wrestlers in the match absolutely kill it. Susumu strikes a rare perfect balance between selling the arm and still just hammering Shachi with the lariats, especially the Jumbo no Kaichis at the very end. Shachihoko BOY again doesn’t have to do a ton besides bump and die and look incredibly sympathetic, but he does it. Korakuen is with him. The world is with him. The kickouts, one of the regular Jumbo and the second of the leg trap followthrough cover, feel genuinely shocking and significant in a way that most nearfalls simply don’t.

It’s a role player or just a non-superstar having the game of his life in the most important game he can possibly play. It doesn’t always make a lot of sense and nobody can ever predict it, but sometimes this stuff can just break loose out of the universe into real life, and nobody ever wants it to end. It’s the stuff of legend. Steve Kerr snuffing out the Utah Jazz at the buzzer in ’97 and playing his part in denying a pedophile a ring.

Big Shot Shachihoko.

Fate of the universe on the line, Martians have the death beam, I want Shachihoko BOY.

All of that.

The match delivers one last miracle at the end, beyond just Shachihoko BOY surviving so much. Instead of the typical Dragon Gate thing of giving him his own big nearfall run and having some big dramatic piece of impact offense to have His Moment, they instead opt for something more surprising and more fitting with the story. Susumu just tries another, but Shachi twists around into a takedown, before diving into a cradle to just barely win.

Fittingly, a match full of small miracles ends with a finish and a result that feels like a gigantic one.

One of the best matches of the year, and in recent company history. A lot of the times, great matches can get lost, but a match like this has survived for a reason. If a mystical force in the universe ever smiled upon a Dragon Gate match, it did so in this match (and also for every Florida Brothers match).

****

Chris Hero vs. Timothy Thatcher, WWN Mercury Rising 2015 (3/28/2015)

Grapplefuck arrives.

The guard changes.

Interestingly, Chris Hero is wearing plain maroon trunks here in a match against the best technical wrestler of the next generation. Nothing is said about it either by Hero or on commentary. It’s just as likely a conscious thing as it is a mistake, another set got lost or damaged or whatever. However, nothing is ever nothing, and it’s this weird little departure from the usual that I cannot help but notice.

The match itself is stellar.

Truly and genuinely great, among the best work in the careers of each men.

It helps significantly that from the onset, the crowd is WITH THEM. If you put sheets on the walls like Gabe used to in Ring of Honor, you could easily convince me this is in another city entirely and somebody just got the date wrong on the upload. It is unlike their reaction to any other match all weekend, and not just through the EVOLVE shows in this building. It’s bizarre, but it helps the match so much. Hero vs. Busick was also an incredible match, but the difference in energy does a truly significant amount for this match, especially as they hold onto that energy throughout the entire match.

There’s a reason for that too, as this match never loses a sense of purpose or direction.

From the start, it’s a match about everything you could expect and that you were implicitly promised over the last several days that it would be about. Each man has won matches this weekend by focusing on their element. Thatcher caught End slipping on the mat. Hero forced Busick to take him on in a striking match. Interestingly, they take the approach here of teasing out what each looks like, as Hero initially tries to go on the ground with Thatcher. The cool thing about strategy in matches like these is that there’s never a clear “why”, because wrestling doesn’t do a lot of post-game interviews and wrestlers aren’t often very smart or conscious about things or interested in extending the character after the bell in those ways, but there’s a few reasons to explain the choice here, just like the maroon trunks. Hero might not fear Thatcher on the mat in the same way he does Biff Busick, because he’s a much more measured wrestler. It also might be a decision done as a clear statement, that this is the best technical wrestler of all of them, and Hero is going to go onto the ground and take back the property that he feels still belongs to him. Even if it very obviously does not.

Very quickly, it is clear that the ground belongs to Thatcher now, and that there isn’t even a question. Hero gave it up years ago to pursue knockouts, and you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Hero adjusts and forces his style of match, but in classic fashion, there are moments in between in which he has to lure Thatcher into it. Once he’s there, it’s classic Hero. The trick with the variety of strikes so Thatcher can’t ever see any one thing coming. The super mean spirited cut offs, now coming with one really nasty back senton where Hero really throws his new weight around. Thatcher willingly goes out of his element here and there to try and get Hero off of him, and it goes as poorly as you’d expect. Busick had no luck doing that to Hero, and he’s a far better stand up fighter than Thatcher is. He tries to throw Hero with some Germans and slap at him, and it does not work. As much as it is that Thatcher is not at his best doing these things at this point, it’s also Hero just seeming to read it for what it is and throwing out big shots.

It’s exactly the sort of match Hero wins at this point, and exactly the sort of match he’s been winning against guys like Timothy Thatcher lately.

However, there are guys like Timothy Thatcher and then there is Timothy Thatcher.

A small distinction, but one that the match makes very clear in the end.

Chris Hero hits the big series of Rolling Elbows in a row, angrier here than he was against Biff or Gulak and not trying to pin right away after any of them. He covers after a fourth, but Thatcher kicks out and snatches the Fujiwara Armbar entirely out of thin air. It’s the ultimate “out of nowhere” submission, both answering the questions going into this and performed in the exact right way to get all of the benefits of a spot like that without it ever seeming phony or showy, like other people to do similar things. It feels desperate and frantic, and at the same time, this major thing that Hero isn’t expecting at all, and he gives it up.

In the end, the question isn’t ever totally answered. Hero hung with Thatcher at Thatcher’s style, Thatcher couldn’t do Hero’s style half as well, and it SHOULD make the difference. It just doesn’t. It’s a ballsy move, but it completely works, it’s this great fake out. Timothy Thatcher is just special. It doesn’t matter if he’s out of his element, because he can grab anything out of anywhere, and it’s enough, and Hero never did enough to counteract any of that. There’s a reason a guy like Zack Sabre Jr. or Drew Gulak can beat Thatcher, because they had plans in motion and saw him 100% for who he is as a wrestler, but Hero forgot that at some point and started just trying to make a show out of it. Hero spent too long trying to prove a point and talking his shit, and got caught by one of the best closers in wrestling. Beyond that, Hero made the mistake that both Gulak and Busick did against him, become a more reactive wrestler in the ring simply to prove a point against someone there to win.

A brilliant approach that both neatly wraps up this wonderful story, while also elevates Thatcher with more than just the result.

Timothy Thatcher has no title, but all the same, Timothy Thatcher is The Man now in EVOLVE.

Beyond being one of the best matches of the year and the decade, a truly seminal moment in the history of independent wrestling.

***3/4

Johnny Gargano vs. Drew Galloway, WWN Mercury Rising 2015 (3/28/2015)

This was a title vs. title match between John Boy’s Open the Freedom Gate Title and Galloway’s EVOLVE Title, long overdue after DGUSA has been dead for a year.

Overlong, spiritually vacant, all filler until the final third of big moves and one incredibly labored story beat (John Boy now refuses to use the Heel String when protege Ethan Page (lmao) wants him to). It’s an NXT main event years before either became NXT main eventers, except it’s conducted to near total silence. The bright side is that the silence has a way of really underlining how flawed it all is, as none of this lands with anyone in the crowd for the most part until the finisher kickouts. It’s almost as funny as Gabe having his pick of anyone on these rosters for the last year, looking at John Gargano and Drew McIntyre and going, “Yes. It’s these two. These are my best wrestlers.” and selecting them for the biggest match in company history.

For some reason, this used to be a match that I really loved.

Personal growth is cool.

Evie vs. Nicole Savoy, SHIMMER Volume 71 (3/28/2015)

This was also part of the CHICKFIGHT tournament.

Much like Savoy’s match earlier in the show against Candice LeRae, this is a match that should have happened like twenty times between now and 2021. They have a few other meetings in 2015 in SHIMMER, it’s not the end of the world, but again, there’s something here.

More than that match, this works a lot better to showcase what Savoy can do, as Evie is much more in line with her. Kicks and holds and the like. Candice rules, but Savoy seems a hundred times more at home working someone like this and not dealing with the clash of styles. This still isn’t QUITE great as the low energy crowd hurts and it’s still under ten minutes and on a tournament show where the winner has one more match to work later on. There’s a lot against them, too much to overcome. They manage a really fun sprint though. More than a lot of promise here, just an entire planet full of it. Cool holds from Savoy, mean kicks from both, and some really cool ideas.

Evie wins with the Tree of Woe double stomp.

In spite of the non-traditional SHIMMER crowd and the horrible setting (the EVOLVE venue that is a graveyard), this is the closest thing to a great match on this show.

Candice LeRae vs. Nicole Savoy, SHIMMER Volume 71 (3/28/2015)

This was part of the CHICKFIGHT tournament.

Not a great match exactly, but a ton of fun.

Savoy is still pretty new and isn’t as great as she’ll get around 2017 or so, but there’s undeniably a lot of potential. Her movement is already great, her offense is smooth, but she’s just young still. Some awkward attempts at filling space in control, but then also this is only seven minutes as part of a one night tournament and it’s all a little rushed as a result. Candice is similarly great here. No longer the best babyface in the world (as Bayley has hit her stride and Mike Bailey as well), Candice is still on a short list and a match like this shows why. Her offense is all cool, relatively crisp, and it’s this super likeable performance putting over the local newcomer. Nothing complex or all that enticing, but a steady and consistent performance, which is always real impressive.

Savoy hits a really good looking Tiger Suplex on Candice for the moderate upset.

This match has happened a few more times, most notable as a six minute Mae Young Classic match in 2017. Unfortunately, it’s never quite been the match that it feels like it should have been. Savoy is still pretty inexperienced here, they didn’t get the time right later on, whatever else. One hopes the window isn’t entirely closed, because it really seemed like there was something here.

Jay Lethal vs. Jushin Liger, ROH Supercard of Honor IX (3/27/2015)

This was for Lethal’s ROH World Television Title.

A stellar stellar performance by Jushin Liger.

It’s wonderful, and one of the best of Liger’s US/European indie matches or overseas excursions in his last decade.

The key here is that at no point does this ever feel like a veteran match.

Liger simply owns Jay Lethal for most of this match. There’s no taunting of Liger or any overt story stuff, just one of the greatest wrestlers of all time turning back the clock. Lethal controls him eventually, but in a way that doesn’t feel half as held back as what guys like Adam Cole did in Liger’s appearance the year before or even what Austin Aries did against Liger when he made an ROH date in 2010. Jay Lethal is a bad human being, but it’s not nothing that he got a better Liger match than anyone in ROH has since the Weekend of Thunder ten and a half years prior.

***1/4

Jimmy Jacobs vs. BJ Whitmer, ROH Supercard of Honor IX (3/27/2015)

This is Jimmy Jacobs’ farewell match before he goes to WWE to become a writer, and it’s the effective end of his in-ring career as anything of note.

Would I be reviewing this if it wasn’t his final match in ROH and thus the end of the company’s all time greatest character arc? No. Absolutely not. I don’t seek out BJ Whitmer matches to write about.

But it is.

So I am.

It’s a perfect end for Jimmy’s story in ROH, both during the match and especially after it.

For anyone not aware of the entire Jimmy Jacobs storyline, it’s one of my favorite stories in the history of wrestling, and one of the all-time great character arcs. It helps of course that as someone who saw a lot of my own life in certain storylines in the larger arc (girl stuff minus the kidnapping and stabbing, the drug abuse aspect of the Moxley storyline) and appreciated a short non-athlete from Grand Rapids, MI doing things, Jimmy Jacobs is one of my favorite wrestlers ever, but it’s just so well done in general. Even this second ROH run, where Jimmy is less of a booking priority, but still ties everything together so well with his own history.

This weird undersized goof came into ROH and got beat up a lot and had a lot of confidence issues after his first partner, Alex Shelley, turned on him. He spent the next five years clearly striving for some sense of belonging and had these real tangible confidence issues. He initially turned on Whitmer when Lacey showed him attention, and finally won her over through some combination of bloodlust, guts, and destroying her enemies. Still lacking that confidence though, Jimmy tried to become a revolutionary but clearly never believed any of it, eventually losing Lacey and going insane. He spiraled, dropped out, fought the worst possible fun house mirror version of himself with Moxley (in which Moxley briefly brought Lacey back to taunt him, before attacking her), and eventually came back to ROH. Good intentions turned bad when the company itself was bad, and SCUM happened. Jacobs later had a moment of doubt when Corino went too far in Steel Cage Warfare and tried to do things right before growing disillusioned with rude younger talent like Adam Cole and Mike Bennett. He formed The Decade with fellow veterans Roderick Strong and BJ Whitmer, before once again becoming alienated with a group as a result of the fanaticism that Strong and Whitmer seemed to go after the young guys with.

This is a perfect full circle ending to all of that, spending the last several months slowly giving up on all of that. He shook hands with Jay Briscoe after a great little television World Title challenge, saw the light with The Decade and shortly followed Roderick Strong’s departure with his own, and as a character, finally just decided to leave. BJ Whitmer now took issue with his partner abandoning him while he was getting too insane, a perfect reversal of their first split, with Lacey being replaced by Whitmer’s evil young boys, Adam Page and Colby Corino. It’s not the first time he’s suddenly grown a conscience, he sponsored Steve Corino in 2011 and then tried to curb his worst impulses two years later when they both had fallen from grace together. It is, however, progression. Instead of sticking around and repeating the same pattern for the millionth time, he’s finally just taking himself out of a situation that’s just bad for him. This arc has never been about titles or wrestling things, it’s about confidence and growth and the idea that personal happiness has to, at least to some extent, come from within. The perfect ending to that is finally displaying all of these things and simply leaving.

The match itself is fine. It’s good. I like it a lot, and admittedly, so much of that is driven by a sense of finality and the love for the story and this one character, but you can never separate the way some things are intertwined, so whatever, it is what it is.

On its own, the match is a really fun undercard brawl. Nobody is getting as crazy as they did in 2006 and 2007. There’s a few really great callbacks, particularly Whitmer trying the Superbomb again, and the classic Jimmy Jacobs back senton — second only to Dick Togo’s if we’re all being honest — through a table, performed twice until the table finally breaks. Nobody gets stabbed in the face with a railroad spike (or two), nobody gets stabbed in the hog with one either, and in general, it’s not the sort of manic and deranged effort that made those matches in 2006 through 2008 so special.

All the same, it’s still a fairly deranged performance by Jacobs given how little he probably could have done. It isn’t as though he’s going to WWE to wrestle, there’s no impetus to protect his body to make a ton of money with it later, but it’s still something he absolutely didn’t have to do. The table bumps, the chair shots, even just the way he hurls his body around when reacting to everything Whitmer does. You roll the dice with Jimmy Jacobs in this 2010s ROH run a lot of the times, but along with the Adam Cole matches and some of his wilder early 2013 efforts, this is one of the time when he really comes up big.

The finish is as gross as they deserve, an Exploder through two back-to-back steel chairs Necro style, finally putting Jimmy down to end the match. Not big and bombastic, but gross and nasty enough that it doesn’t feel like a letdown at all.

Bell to bell it’s probably a *** match, a classic three boy just on the border, but this is not one that’s just about bell to bell.

Way more importantly than any of that is what happens after the match.

BJ Whitmer fakes Our Hero out on a hug, and says he doesn’t shake hands with people who don’t belong here anymore, before dropping the classic “I love you, little brother” as a sign for Colby Corino to attack. It’s then that the dam breaks and we finally get the payoff all these years later.

Lacey returns from the crowd and she saves Jimmy for once. BJ Whitmer finally leaves in disgust, having accomplished nothing here once again, and Jimmy and Lacey leave ROH together. “The Victory of Love” returns for the night. Cell phone flashlights in the air.

It’s an overwhelmingly beautiful thing.

It’s especially welcome after the absolute mess that was made of it in the 2008 Age of the Fall storyline with Austin Aries in which Gabe realized too late that nobody normal would side with Aries, so they then tried to do a kidnapping angle but left it too ambiguous so nobody ever actually knew what happened, and it just made everyone in the feud into a heel. This is the resolution the entire long running story always needed, especially when Gabe later opened it back up during the Jacobs/Moxley feud in 2010. It’s a story that I never ever thought would get anything close to a satisfying resolution, no matter what said resolution actually was. Giving it one is one of the best things to happen in ROH in the last thirteen years and counting.

Given ROH’s seeming disdain for things like emotional payoffs and investment at points, it’s hardly a shocker that this is the most uplifting thing they’ll do all decade. It’s one of the best moments in ROH all decade, one of the highlights of the year, and a perfect ending both to the entire Jimmy Jacobs character and a storybook farewell for him, Lacey, and this entire storyline.

It’s prom night.

The villain gets what’s coming to him and the hero gets the girl.

 

Tommaso Ciampa vs. Matt Sydal vs. Cedric Alexander vs. Caprice Coleman vs. Andrew Everett vs. Moose, ROH Supercard of Honor IX (3/27/2015)

An awesome fireworks show.

These can be real middling a lot of the time because ROH will shove in their dull project guys or people who can’t hang. This isn’t EXACTLY an exception because Caprice Coleman is not as good as the others in this match and Moose is exactly a project guy, but there’s too much talent otherwise. The multiple bump freaks in this match help Moose a ton and Caprice is mostly there to illustrate the toll that Cedric Alexander’s losing streak is taking on him by alienating his former mentor and partner. It’s pretty short too, allowing for zero dead air.

Nothing worth hunting down and nothing that exactly deserves superlatives, but a stellar little undercard match primarily carried off by two of the best in the world.

Another of these great little undercard nuggets from ROH.

three boy

Chris Hero vs. Biff Busick, EVOLVE 40 (3/27/2015)

A match that’s largely forgotten about, and really shouldn’t be.

Given that this happened on the middle show of the weekend and didn’t have the payoff of the more celebrated Hero match of the series, it’s easy to see why it slipped through the cracks. For one, it’s a build up to Hero/Thatcher. That’s a big time bummer because I think Biff is way better at being the hero that Thatcher is, as the recent Beyond tag with these two proved. However, it’s hard to know how long Biff was being recruited at this point, and Thatcher is a guy who clearly is not going anywhere for a while, so it’s hard to really fault the decision in a long-term sense, especially after the fact. Wrestling fans also don’t have great memories, but it seems like had this happened on a better positioned show and maybe not in the middle of the card (Ricochet vs. PJ Black clearly needed to main event), it might have a far stronger reputation. Or any reputation to speak of.

I say that primarily because, more than anything else Hero’s done so far, this feels like the version of Chris Hero that everyone suddenly fell head over heels for in 2016.

It’s a match entirely about striking and the Hero bully routine, and it works better here than it did in many of those matches.

A lot of that is because there’s a point to it here.

That isn’t to say Hero’s routine is pointless, but it’s always just a thing he does, a part of Hero’s offense. An explanation doesn’t always need to be given, because as a famous wordsmith once said, his name is Chris Hero and he throws elbows. This match though, with a little context, explains specifically why he’s doing a thing like this. Biff Busick is a great stand up fighter, but he finishes on the ground. Chris Hero might know more than Biff does in a technical sense, but he’s nowhere near as good as Biff is anymore at not only finishing on the ground, but the ease at which Biff can flip a switch and do so. Th goal, stated explicitly on commentary and in angles preceding this, is to not let Biff be Biff.

Specifically, it is to make Biff himself be the one to step out of his element and to fight Chris Hero on Hero’s terms, instead of the other way around.

Like the Gulak match earlier in the show, the immediate strategy works.

Biff Busick is stubborn and prideful as anyone, and when Hero spends the early parts of the match daring him to throw shows, refusing to sell them, and then trying to embarrass Busick as a striker, Biff spends the match trying to destroy him on that level. Hero uses some old veteran tricks to pick Biff apart and throw him off, all while clobbering his brains in. He’s talking a world of shit, always changing the strikes up so that Biff can never quite catch him like he’s able to do to most other wrestlers. He does a really great job trying out some big man sells of Biff’s few hope spots too, really nailing how to make something feel big while not bumping like a maniac for it. The bend over sell is something he masters here especially. It’s exactly how someone Hero’s size should be selling, getting over the fight he’s being given back but without prostituting his size. He slowly bumps and sells bigger and bigger as it goes on too, giving a real sense of accomplishment and that Biff is closing in more and more as the match stretches out.

It’s a Chris Hero showcase, but Biff Busick is incredible here too. The little sells of near knockouts and being rattled around are great. His little miniature comebacks are the best thing about this match, including an all-time memorable full circle sprint around ringside for a leaping European Uppercut. His striking is just as good as Hero’s, even if it isn’t as flashy. Most of all, he’s so likeable in this role. Put upon, back against the wall, and unbelievably Pissed. It’s my favorite role of all of them that Biff can play, weaponizing his obstinate nature and turning it into a virtue, and this is one of the best ever babyface Biff performances.

Unfortunately, most of this happens to silence in this horrible building in front of these horrible California people and whatever Europeans flew out for WrestleMania weekend. I badly wish this happened in Ybor City, or that they waited a few more months and it was in La Boom in New York, or wherever else people were more familiar with these two (Biff specifically) and with EVOLVE stories. They get them by the end, because it’s too great to deny, but it’s also real hard to say the atmosphere isn’t a major detraction from the work done.

They really really do get them in the end though. Biff gets Hero on the ropes, he’s outstriking him and moving in, but he just can’t get his finish. Hero blocks the Saka Otoshi both by design by hooking his body around and later grabbing the hands, and also just by being too big. Once he does that, he rains down Rolling Elbows again until it’s over. Like the sort of Hero work in 2016 that resembles this, it goes a little too far. Not that he’s killing Biff or that this is unsafe, but it becomes repetitive and belabors a point that could have been made with less. The one count kickout rules, Biff then kicks out with less strength, before Hero wins with the Tombstone. A great idea for the conclusion, but one that could have landed even better with a little more efficiency and a greater sense of urgency.

As a big idea though, they nail it.

It’s the second match on the show to make a clear point about stepping out of your element. Tommy End had Timothy Thatcher rocked and maybe beat until he made the mistake. Chris Hero never let Biff Busick get in his element and brought him into his instead, leaving Biff a little too beat up for the last second adjustment that he always win with. On the third day of the triple shot, Chris Hero and Timothy Thatcher will meet, and the weekend has set up a great narrative for them, where one side or the other will inevitably break. Hero got someone as stubborn and prideful as Busick to sink to his level, and he lost for it. Can he do the same to Thatcher? On the other hand, Tim has punished everyone who slipped into his element even for a moment and finally showed an ability to drag a heavy striker down to the ground. Can he do that to Chris Hero? If the answer to either question is yes, what happens after that? It’s a question without an obvious answer, making the match that much more enticing to the sorts of people who love puzzles and real sports things like this alike, the core audience for this division.

I wish this match was more than a set up for Hero vs. Thatcher, just like I wish Biff Busick was more appreciated by any company outside of Beyond Wrestling and allowed to be more than the heater for larger stories. That’s not the world we live in though, and like Busick himself, it’s an unheralded great. For the most part, Biff’s lot becomes being the guy who can raise all of these questions to begin with, underline them, and make them stand out. He doesn’t get to answer them, but there are few better this decade at raising those questions than Busick.

It’s not all I wanted it to be. It’s not all it could be, as much due to booking as it is to the setting, both in terms of which show it’s on and the Vorhees Skate Zone level crypt that these shows are conducted in. However, this is a hell of a match and one of the best build up matches of the year and the decade.

The Vader vs. Dustin Rhodes of mid 2010s EVOLVE.

***1/2

Drew Gulak vs. TJ Perkins, EVOLVE 40 (3/27/2015)

Generally speaking, like most sane people, I can leave or take TJ Perkins.

A remarkably skilled wrestler and then also a complete and total shithead. The former rarely makes up for the latter throughout his career, especially in the 2010s. That’s primarily because places like WWE and TNA weren’t the best options for a guy with his skillset, and it’s why this 2015-2016 EVOLVE run is the best work of his career. It isn’t particular close, given that the second best run is a brief period in 2008 PWG where he tapped into similar things before moving to Florida suddenly. What works about this run (and the aforementioned PWG run) is that nobody is asking him to be a cool moves babyface or anything. He’s presented as exactly what he is, this ultra-talented technical wrestler who is also unbelievably annoying and that nobody ever wants to see succeed.

True to form, Gulak opens the match in a much more animated way than usual by jumping the little creep at the onset and dragging him to the ground.

Not only is it viscerally satisfying to see someone react to TJ Perkins’ presence like this, but it also serves as this great tone setter for the match. TJ Perkins is a wrestler who can do a lot of different things, and Gulak focuses from the start on only letting him do the one thing.

That’s how the match plays out, and it’s a blast. TJ can’t do as many complex things as Zack or Gulak and doesn’t hit as hard as Biff or Thatcher, but he always brings a focus to these more technical matches that I like a lot. It’s classic 2000s indie style double limbwork stuff here, where Gulak goes to the leg and TJ compensates by going to the arm. Perkins’ selling is better than Gulak’s, but that’s not a performance issue from Drew Gulak. It’s simply that he’s more effective at going after the leg and especially the ankle, and it warrants a bigger performance from Perkins. Gulak sells the arm exactly as the work from Perkins deserves, which is really well in the moments before fading it out because Perkins can’t get a hold of it as often as Gulak can get a hold of his leg.

Ultimately, Gulak’s persistent work does the job. He stays 100% on the ankle once it starts to pay dividends, and TJ can never get back to the arm once Gulak really zeroes in. Gulak goes to his trusty ankle locks at the end, and all Perkins can do is try his own. Perkins will later come up with a really effective leg hold as a finish, but they’re not quite there yet and he can’t ever close out like this. He especially can’t close out like this when he’s limping on one leg and easy prey for Gulak to roll over and yank back down. On the third or fourth try, the ankle lock works and Perkins taps out.

It’s a great simple pro wrestling story, aided in some part by Gulak’s immediate strategy paying off. There’s a straight line from the beginning to the end, and it’s something I really really appreciate. It’s as much a part of EVOLVE’s slow education process to get everyone acclimated to the style as it is a great character win and moment for Gulak. As we see examples of Biff Busick and Timothy Thatcher being more and more stubborn and pigheaded over the course of the weekend, this is a second win in a row for Gulak that’s garnered simply by being smarter than everyone else.

Not the sort of match that typically winds up being the best match on a show, but the sort of a match that always makes a show more fun to watch.

***