Tyler Bate vs. Mark Haskins, PROGRESS Chapter 75 (8/27/2018)

A surprisingly unheralded match, given the amount of public praise that any half decent match on British soil seemed to get from 2015 through 2019.

This is not to say I think it is amazing or the best either man can do, or even the best that they could probably do against each other (for the record, the best version of Haskins/Bate that I can conjure up is a thirteen minute cool moves sprint on an SSS16 show), but that given the reception to many matches with the strengths and weaknesses of this match, I would have expected a greater discussion of it.

It certainly is not perfect.

Nineteen minutes is a little too long for a match between these two with a real point of limb attack focus. Bate does a much better job selling the leg here than he did in a much higher profile setting recently for whatever reason, but it is far from perfect. A few too many things that someone with a bad leg would/should not have done and that felt like they only happened because they were in a script somewhere, your masturbatory one-legged bridge, and things of that nature. Even independent of the leg, it is also just a match with just a little too much time to work with. Not so much that it ruins the match entirely, but maybe even more frustratingly, just enough to notice that this is not a match that ends at its highest possible pint.

Having said all of that, it is much more good than bad.

Bate’s selling is genuinely very good, if imperfect. It very much feels like after he was not so great it recently on a big stage, someone talked with him and gave him some tips, because the improvement is genuinely significant. Struggling to run but doing it in a believable way, doing the Airplane Spin with a bad leg in a way that did not feel phony, constantly rubbing at it in ways that made sense, all of that. It is not one hundred percent genuine feeling, but he does a markedly better job of having a great indie style match while still selling than both he did like a week prior, but also than a lot of other people these days do period.

It is also just a great display of a lot of very cool moves.

Haskins’ expertise comes into play here, as again for the most part, they get so much right here. The escalation, the ebbs and the flows, teases and payoffs, your classic independent wrestling ideas. Matches like this get a bad rep because so many people are bad at putting them together, but Haskins is one of the best of his generation in his country at it, and this is such a Mark Haskins match in that way. Bate is the better wrestler in the match on a performance level, but you watch enough and you will see signatures and the seams, and there is a clear leader in this match, even if he does not get the credit, given that Bate is in the midst of his career year in 2018.

Bate waits it out through the knee attacks, eventually catches Haskins being a little too British and forgetting about it while trying bigger and more ambitious things, and reels off the Tyler Driver ’97 to win.

The rare super British combination of both frustrating and sneakily great.

***+

Jonathan Gresham vs. Mark Haskins, ROH Honor Re-United Night One (8/16/2018)

I have a very strong feeling that, given the fairly negative public perception of late 2010s ROH, Jonathan Gresham after 2022, and Haskins post-BritWres boom, this is not going to garner a lot of eyeballs, but, you know, numbers and such. Make the point about guys like Gresham for the big year-end lists, and all of that. Still, nobody is going to read this unless they have either (a) seen this before and liked it and wants to read what I have to say about it, or (b) did not know it happened, but are interested in the style of wrestling one or both of these two offers up to the world, and want to know if this is the match you imagined in your head.

The answer to the latter is…probably.

Realistically, I don’t know what exactly goes on inside of your mind.

What I imagine though is that you see Gresham and Haskins and you have roughly the same thoughts I have. Both wrestlers with an inclination towards double limb matches, who tend to believe in the right things and have more good matches than bad, although neither without their weaknesses either. Gresham will occasionally give the plot up to do something cool, and despite being one of the best of the 2010 crop, Mark Haskins is still British and so he will occasionally lose his head and do something silly too. For the most part though, yes, two wrestlers with a similar philosophy, and I IMAGINE you would imagine they have a match that reflects this common ground. So, you know, if you saw this on paper or cagematch or just from the link to this review, this is the thing you probably anticipated.

Congratulations!

That‘s the match. You got it right.

Gresham works the arm while Haskins works the leg. They trade off here and there, in classic double limb nerdbait format, and get a little hectic with it. Gresham does best in a match like this with a steadying presence like Jay Lethal or Fred Yehi, and Haskins is not that guy. The selling is good enough. Which is to say, as anyone well-watched viewer and/or well-read Reader may expect, it is both not without flaw and also good enough that I still struggle to call it anything less than very good.

It offers up zero surprises, and given the strengths of these two and how rock solid this is despite the obvious three-boy ass nature of the thing, that is absolutely for the best.

Haskins gets a moderate upset with his trusty Sharpshooter, a solid near two years after his peak as a wrestler people cared deeply about (this does not fill me with joy, 2015-2016 Working Class Hero Mark Haskins is the best babyface in 2010s BritWres who isn‘t now also deeply canceled, to the best of my knowledge), to continue ROH‘s borderline criminal use of Jonathan Gresham, especially given that, again, he is going to challenge for the World Title soon. 

Anyways, the match you want, if you wanted it.

***

Will Ospreay vs. Mark Haskins, PROGRESS Chapter 66 (4/6/2018)

(photo credit to Scott Lesh Photography.)

It may no longer be 2015, when both Ospreay and Haskins at the peaks of their powers and abilities as wrestlers (do not @ me, I am not interested in arguing this, I know I‘m correct) combined to have two of the better matches in PROGRESS history.

Will Ospreay has become a worse wrestler in his attempt to be more legitimate, getting away from what he used to do so well while also having stronger ideas about his kind of wrestling, as opposed to being a force of nature that better wrestlers could plug into their matches. Haskins has maybe not gotten any better or worse, but without the run of booking behind him that he had in 2015 and 2016, he is left more to his own devices than ever, and has not ever really achieved on that level again. He certainly is not in the best spot he could be in at this point, doing a midcard heel act with his wife as a valet.

However, what worked between these two still lives there, somewhere on a bridge between them.

Ospreay and Haskins have a certain chemistry together, and it‘s just great enough to still be one of the only Ospreay matches I’m still even half interested in seeing in 2018. Haskins simply has a way of getting Ospreay into the sorts of matches he should be having, this kind of honest wrestling that Billy has all but abandoned since his career peak of 2015-2016. 

This is not exactly the pure fireworks wrestling of their best work together, nor does it have the benefit of a white hot crowd and main event title match level feeling and build, but it works for a lot of the same reasons. Haskins is really great at constructing these sorts of matches, and Ospreay is very good at executing sick moves. Combine the two, cut them off at fifteen minutes or less, and it works. They tease things out and pay them off later, escalate really well in a broader sense, and generally speaking, it is just a very easy sort of professional wrestling to watch.

Imperfect, of course, but likeable all the same.

Not what it was, but just good enough to be borderline great.

***

Mark Haskins vs. Axel Dieter Jr., PROGRESS Chapter 46 (3/26/2017)

Just some real good pro wrestling.

It’s not quite the sort of flash match making that you’ll find in other places on a 2017 PROGRESS show and that leaps off of the page so impressively, but it’s deeply and reliably solid.

Both Dieter Jr. and Haskins are different versions of the same sort of guy, the jack of all trades who can do basically everything outside of brawling, and lack a clear weakness. The match does well to exploit that, running through a show of cool mat tricks, big strikes, higher impact offense, and even giving room for a dive out of Dieter Junior. One could level the typical accusation at a match like this, yet another PROGRESS match that fails to ever really focus on any one thing, that effectively just sprints through, but when a match pretends to be nothing more than this, that’s not a problem that I really have. It is what it is and it is really good at being this sort of a thing, both because of how well it’s executed in a raw nuts and bolts ass mechanical sense, but because it never tries to lie about what it is.

As a show of pure offense — a display of the range and force of their collective arsenals before a swift turn to fire them off at each other — it is not quite a world changer, but it is the sort of match you’d hope for out of a match like this. Devious little central European deviant is a shitheel to the local hero, one of the only English wrestlers worth cheering for as a result of showing any sort of real humanity to their work (not that it fails to stop the British from cheering equally for the shiny new object), and the local boy makes good at the end with his Sharpshooter.

Wrestling can be so much more than this, of course, but a match like this shows just as well how very very very easy this can be, even when you don’t have the greatest brains or sensibilities in the world.

Rock solid meat and potatoes stuff, or at least what passes for that in England (assuming that because half of this is German, it will counterbalance whatever the stomach churning English take on meat and potatoes is).

***

Cedric Alexander vs. Mark Haskins, PWG Battle of Los Angeles 2016 Night Two (9/3/2016)

(photo credit, as always with PWG photos, to Mark Nolan Photography)

This was a first round match in the 2016 Battle of Los Angeles tournament.

While not quite some EVOLVE or Big Japan or DDT midcard level certified Meat & Potatoes Wrestling, there’s that same kind of a workmanlike quality to it. While not the most simple and direct wrestling in the world, these guys like their counters, there’s still a certain honesty to it that’s always drawn me to both men. It can get a little fancy, but there’s still a tightness and an efficiency to it that I find so refreshing.

Cedric’s always, somewhat secretly (although it feels like you can say “somewhat secretly” about 99% of Cedric Alexander’s career), done a lot of his best work in PWG where others haven’t always. For his last ever singles match in Reseda, he’s given a tremendous opponent for his style and sensibilities. A wrestler I’ve often lovingly referred to as “the Scott Lost of BritWres” comes to Reseda, and shocker of shockers, he fits in perfectly.

Haskins and Alexander mesh as well as I always imagined, and even if it’s not the best possible version of this I don’t totally think, it is the sort of a match I am almost always going to get something out of.

It is just a sharp ass wrestling match.  Crisp and tight and all very concise.

Not the greatest thing in the world, we’ll both forget this match again five minutes after we’re done with this review, but it’s the sort of a match that makes wrestling shows better and more watchable and well rounded. Quality that doesn’t insist upon itself, quiet consistency in a real crunchy little package. A neat little reminder of why these two, at their best, made their respective scenes and every promotion they wrestled in better for hosting them.

***

 

Will Ospreay vs. Mark Haskins, PROGRESS Chapter 33 (7/31/2016)

This was a #1 Contender’s match.

Once again, this pairing just sort of works.

I can’t really explain it.

The match definitely isn’t flawless. There’s some stuff here’s that’s pretty stupid. You could lose a few minutes here, whereas that’s not the case with their previous work together. I think that, compared to their two matches the previous year, this is definitely the least of them all so far. But it clicks. It connects, it works, somehow. Haskins isn’t a smart wrestler in the ways we often think of, but he’s really good at getting the best out of Ospreay, or at least channeling his gifts into something more coherent. Cutting off the dance fighting spots at the right moments, so one’s brain is stuck with the “whoa, damn” reaction to a series of counters and new concepts, but never quite letting it get to the stage these moments can reach, after the fourth or fifth missed thing in a row where it’s like, alright get to it. I don’t know how much of that is thoughtfulness and how much of that is just divine providence, things working out well simply because they do, but process is not quite so important compared to the result of things like these.

Perhaps the best way to sum this match comes in the closing moments, as Ospreay goes for his springboard cutter only for Haskins to catch him and hurl him down to the side on his face, and then going into the bridging armbar. A bunch of other people or a bunch of other matches might have had some convoluted spot happen where Haskins leaps into a bodyscissors there or in another spot to get his move off. And shit, that might have just happened here had Haskins had a finishing hold like that, you know? But he doesn’t, and so he didn’t. No matter how they got the idea to do it, what happens instead is a far more palatable spot and an ending to this.

That’s why it works.

Ospreay and Haskins are dumb enough to be thrilling, and just barely either lucky or smart enough to avoid all the worst mistakes, not allowing anything to tear down a fun little fireworks show

I’m not going to sell if you if you weren’t already sold, but there’s something here between them that once again, cannot be undermined by either external nor internal forces. Not a best-case scenario for this style of wrestling in the way their prior work was, but still a match with a lesson to be learned about knowing exactly where the line is.

***

Pete Dunne vs. Mark Haskins, PROGRESS Super Strong Style 16 2016 Night One (5/29/2016)

This was a first round match in the 2016 Super Strong Style 16 tournament.

(I’m not sure where exactly to talk about this, but I want to talk about it, as it really stood out here —

If I can’t find someone’s photos of an event or official photos from the company themselves (this is something WWE is great for, genuinely), how I find the images in the header or that you see on Twitter attached to a link to these posts is I watch the match and find some good screengrabs. Occasionally, this poses difficulties, usually with streaming sites that don’t pause cleanly, which is to say without things like a pause button or logo on the screen. I’m looking at a Russian site here mostly, but Youtube is also guilty of this. It means sometimes there I have to try and get it just right while the video is still playing.

Usually though, if I have the media on my computer already, it’s not a hard process at all.

Except with PROGRESS.

It is a FASCINATING look into the British mind that — just like their wrestling, a lot of the times — PROGRESS cameras are unable to stay still. It’s not a Kevin Dunn sort of a thing with constant cuts, although they do cut too often. The ringside camera is constantly walking around, and wholly unable to stay focused on any one shot for a long period of time. It makes it incredibly hard to get any sort of real good shot, and why I’ll often settle for early match staredowns or a brief moment in time where a British wrestler can stay with a hold for a fucking second at a time before moving around. It’s kind of a perfect fit, British style camera work for British style wrestling (you can throw in British style chanting here, a people who genuinely cannot live with silence for a god damned second), wholly incapable of staying with any image or concept for long enough for it to set in or have any value whatsoever. With the wrestlers, you can call it a lack of confidence that young wrestlers often do have, but when it extends to the camera work too, you know, shit.

All of a man’s problems come from an inability to be alone with himself, and the British people have so many more problems than the rest of us.)

There is a wrestling match here also!

Once again, Mark Haskins opens one of these SSS16 shows in style with a real tidy and perfect sort of opening match.

Nothing complex to discuss here, a tidy and exciting fifteen minute match.

A mean heel abuses the local hero, and the working class hero, BritWres’ only likeable man (I do not know why I like Mark Haskins in a way I like very few other British wrestlers of the last decade. Do not ask me. I can not explain it, he just kind of seems like a working class grown up in the way that others don’t.), does his level best to overcome it through a combination of grit and skill. Dunne has some neat cut-offs, and once again in one of these lower card PROGRESS matches capped at a certain length, he really does seem like a future can’t-miss level guy. They do some pretty cool moves, and Dunne is advanced enough scientifically (as well as being a dirt rotten motherfucker) that it forces Haskins out of his comfort zone a little bit in a fun way.

Haskins flips through a release suplex, and goes into the old Superstar Armbar at a real nasty god damned angle, and gets the win.

A great and simple little thing, and also the perfect excuse to talk about PROGRESS production.

***

Mark Haskins vs. Zack Gibson, PROGRESS Chapter 25 (1/25/2016)

The rare 2016 PROGRESS match I actually get to review, under the terms of my promise to you and myself.

Part of that is because I feel for Mark Haskins.

So much of his year revolves around working against the umbrella nonce, and so I’m not going to review it, but his 2015-2016 run is genuinely one of my favorite things that the English ever managed to string together. A kind of plain but hard-working blue collar hero going on a scorcher for a year, and reaching the summit. It’s not as flashy as a lot of the other big PROGRESS angles, there’s no Assassin’s Creed entrance or hype video where another Me Too guy supposedly kills people with an axe and eats them, but it’s just good. It’s good and easy and solid, and it’s the simplest god damned tenets of professional wrestling shit that there is.

He’s as great here as he always is. Energetic and creative, but one of the only guys at this point in the scene who really totally commits to something when the focus of a match shifts there. He has his arm worked on here and while his selling isn’t exactly flawless, it’s something he never forgets about. Perfect ought not to be the enemy of good, and Haskins once again wins me over in a match like this simply by caring so much and by trying so hard in the right direction.

Zack Gibson also rocks here.

Baby Nigel is in full force here, clobbering the hell out of little Haskins on top of all the great arm work, even using That Arm Submission, of all things. He’s nasty on top of being mechanically sound, a wrestler who is equal parts remarkably endearing and easier to hate than any wrestler to come down the pike in some time. One of the great tragedies of BritWres as a concept is Gibson getting shoved into a tag team, because he’s so much more talented than almost every singles star who comes along after this point, and his career over the next five or six years is one of the great “what if” questions in all of wrestling.

What isn’t a question is that this match is great. The arm work matters, Haskins tries a lot of tricks and brute force tactics to get away from it and to Gibson’s leg. He’s largely stuffed as a result of the kid’s size and power, on top of the hurt arm, but scared money don’t make money, and Haskins never stops, as is his wont and his charm.

Eventually, he pulls up more gold in his hands than dirt, and Gibson taps out to a real nasty Stretch Muffler.

It’s a British match, they still go a little long and complicate things a little much, but just an exceedingly good match that tries and commits in ways that many of these matches do not.

***

Will Ospreay vs. Mark Haskins, PROGRESS Chapter 21 (9/6/2015)

This was for Ospreay’s PROGRESS Title.

At the time, I really loved this match.

No hyperbole, like upper level on the spreadsheet, one of the best Ospreay or PROGRESS matches ever loved this match. Six years and counting later, it’s another one of these matches that worked especially well in the moment and not nearly so much all these years later, once one is more adjusted to offense like this and matches as charmingly ambitious as this.

What still works all these years later are the sorts of things that will always work.

Firstly, it’s just a bare bones title match. Haskins works the arm briefly to go into his big armbar, but for the most part, there’s nothing for them to get lost in. Things escalate properly, nothing all that silly ever happens, and while the match hardly stands out as a beacon of thoughtfully constructed wrestling, they get all of the things right that they need to in order for a match like this to work as best it can.

Secondly, it’s the character stuff that still holds up.

Specifically, the harsh ways in which Mark Haskins and Will Ospreay collide, and how well they pair up against each other. Like any great face/face match, each side has a route open to them to do what they were already going to do. For Will Ospreay fans, the truly deranged, Haskins is the sort of wrestler Ospreay is not. Orthodox and older, plain black gear, and without a lot of pretense. It’s very hard for me to put myself in this frame of mind because I find it viscerally repelling, but in a sort of reverse engineering way, this feels right. What works so well about this pairing is that kind of mirror effect. As a plainer but more honest blue collar sort of wrestler (relatively), everything about Ospreay stands out in contrast. Constantly making dumb expressive faces, overly animated, and with so much pretense to everything. It never became a big match up like other showier Ospreay pairings, but it’s one of my favorite pairings for either man because of how well they work compared to each other.

Haskins is a deadly serious and oddly likeable working class hero challenger to wunderkind Bill Ospreay, who can do any wildly athletic thing he sets his mind to. There’s a universality in Haskins’ performance here that once again makes his work more durable than many contemporaries (also the fact that nothing about him ever came out, to my knowledge, that undercuts this as it has for many others), doing just normal wrestling against this unlikeable freak who has an athleticism at this point that is, frankly, just god damned rude. Compared to that, Haskins is just a normal wrestler doing every single thing right and still having it not really matter. He doesn’t waste a lot of time on a limb like he did in their previous match, stays with Will at every stop and constantly on his ass. Objectively speaking in a kayfabe sense, Haskins seems to wrestle a perfect match.

The harsh reality is that it absolutely doesn’t matter.

Ospreay can flip out of a thousand things and hit a hundred that a.) Haskins won’t see coming & b.) that come too quickly for him to dodge or counter in any meaningful way. Haskins gets swarmed at the end with a reverse rana (after this little shit backflips out of Haskins trying one off the top in an uncharacteristically big move), multiple head kicks, the inverted 450 Splash, and then the 630 for the win. It’s tough and it sucks, but sometimes there’s just nothing to do. The next year of PROGRESS is largely about the Mark Haskins story and him finally pushing past things like this to succeed on a higher level, and there’s no more effective start to that than a match like this.

Removed of what relied more on the moment, there’s still the bones of something great here that makes it a very easy match to love, if no longer one of the best matches of the year.

***

Will Ospreay vs. Mark Haskins, PROGRESS Super Strong Style Sixteen 2015 Night Two (5/25/2015)

This was a quarterfinal match in the 2015 SSS16 tournament.

Chemistry is weird.

Some pairings just immediately click. Guys meet in the ring for the first time and there is immediately something there. Think about Tomohiro Ishii and Katsuyori Shibata first meeting in a Nakamura/Sakuraba build up tag at the end of 2012. You don’t immediately think about a pairing, but they touch, and it’s magic. Some pairings seem like they should but never do, and repetition can only get them up to being good or passable. Usually this happens when type meets type, but logically, it can happen to anyone at any time. This isn’t a pairing that, in 2015, I would have put down as immediately clicking. I wouldn’t expect it to be bad, as I like Haskins a lot bell to bell (the Scott Lost of British wrestling) and Ospreay is beginning the best in-ring run of his career at this point. However, I never really expected THIS.

For whatever reason, Will Ospreay and Mark Haskins have incredible chemistry with each other.

They go on to have an even better match in 2015 than this, but this is still an absolute blast. Helpfully, it’s a pure sprint. The circumstances of the tournament and the booking of said tournament force their hand, and it’s for the best. While they go on to have a longer match that’s even better, this is still Will Ospreay to worry about and this is still British wrestling we have to worry about. Limit the chances that everyone has to fuck up a good thing, and you might just wind up with a great thing.

Haskins and Ospreay make perfect foils for each other, both as wrestlers and characters. Ospreay has a natural talent, but is real hard to like on a level beyond that of enjoying the fireworks. Haskins is great but especially gifted in any one area. He’s all work, the rare British wrestler possessing a working class hero feeling to him that feels even halfway genuine. To some extent, that’s helped by having the experience of seeing him on earlier shows and pre-PROGRESS shows and seeing him grind and improve but never being as flashy as the headline grabbers, but I think it really stands out. Especially against Ospreay. Similarly, Ospreay’s flying and athleticism stands out against someone likes to hit and grab holds. It’s one of these pairings that naturally draws attention to these differences without every having to try too hard to do it, without making too many mistakes either.

Naturally, temptation is just a little too hard to resist completely.

Despite all that I like about Haskins, he still has some real British wrestler brain moments, such as insisting on filling a few minutes near the end with work on Ospreay’s leg. It’s another of these signs PROGRESS always offers up of how things could and often would go wrong. Luckily, he structure and length of the match saves it, as Ospreay doesn’t get much of a chance to really blow it off and come back, although once again, his selling is a long ways from being what I would call “great”. Ospreay has to stop before trying to run for a dive, costing him the chance to hit it. He never really comes off the top rope much once Haskins really gets on a roll with it. The ending serves them best of all, as Ospreay blocks a Stretch Muffler, lifts himself up in the air in it, and down into a sunset flip to just barely steal the match.

In spite of their worst instincts, this still kicks a ton of ass. Fun and high spirited and a little inventive, all performed with so much energy. Will Ospreay has never been charming in his life, but as a sum of its parts, this match has a little charm to it. It’s short and simple and surprisingly sensible in a way. Not the sort of match worth demanding everyone see (much like the possession of charm, not something common to Ospreay matches), but exactly the sort of match that sticks around my brain for whatever reason.

A wonderful sprint and the perfect sort of opening match in this style and on a tournament show.

***1/4