Mil Muertes vs. Fenix vs. Jeremiah Crane, Lucha Underground 4×03 ~ REST IN PIECES (6/27/2018)

This was a three way Grave Consequences match.

Lucha Underground Season Four is barely worth covering. I do not intend on watching much of it, let alone narrowing that down too much into anything worth writing about. Based on the segments during this specific episode, Dario Cueto was murdered at the end of season 3, his dad is in control now, and his dad maybe also killed him. The ropes are blue and yellow and the temple feels more corporate, and wildly incorrect, which based on the results for the season and what people have said about it, is fitting. I mean, Jack Swagger ends the show as its champion. Shit here is probably exactly as dire as it looks.

You can even see that here, foisting an absolute dud (post-fed Sami Callihan) onto the company’s most proven match up and stipulation, watering it down immeasurably during the first half before he’s eliminated. A lot of matches could tell the story of the decline of Lucha Underground, but parts of this are as good as any. Aesthetic changes that feel weird, losing the spirit of the thing, loser talent decisions, all sort of perfectly summed up by adding Sami Callihan to Mil Muertes vs. Rey Fenix, the pairing that’s resulted in not only probably the company’s most famous match, but also maybe its overall best one as well.

However.

However.

When that first fall gets rid of the dead weight, and when the match comes down to just Fenix and Mil for the last two-thirds, very little of that matters, because Mil and Fenix are still just absolute magic together, even in their final ever shot at it.

Fenix bleeds, takes these obscene bumps, has the most energetic and snappy offense in the world when handled by Lucha Undergound mics, cameras, and editing. Mil is a monster unlike almost anything else in wrestling when given the material all of these Fenix matches give him. There is nothing in these Fenix/Mil matches that does not look great and does not sound great, there is very little dead air (not entirely on them, but a whole lot of other Lucha Underground matches have a lot of waste/bad parts, even with the editing), and this is not the match to betray any of that in their last moment together.

Certainly something of a greatest hits show, but the hits are real real great.

It will never be what it was, but when Fenix bleeds and when Mil hurls him full force into a metal coffin, it feels like it might be easier than ever to be taken back into time.

***

 

Mil Muertes vs. Jeremiah Crane, LU 3×30 ~ “BLOODLINES” (8/9/2017)

This was a quarterfinal match in the Cueto Cup.

Way more importantly, like a thousand times more importantly because nobody but the true genuine psychos out there cares about the Cueto Cup, it is a No Disqualification Match, and so two top-tier psychos get to have the sort of match you’d really want to see when you read this match up on paper.

Jeremiah Crane, also known as Sami Callihan, is past it at this point. He is half a decade removed from being a perennial top ten WOTY level guy, as a result of spending a little too long in WWE developmental, having his brain destroyed, and then going to establish an odd little fiefdom in Impact. I do not seek his matches out anymore nor expect anything from him, and that’s fine. Most wrestlers don’t have peaks that stretch on for a decade, he had his great work, and that’s that.  However, as this match and a few others show, even if he is no longer the driving force behind their greatness, he can still be in great matches in the right situations and against the right wrestlers.

The match serves as a lovely complement to the Sami Callihan vs. Low Ki match earlier in the year, if not so much in the level of quality, in the spirit of the thing as Sami is forced back into being a good wrestler entirely through the strength of spending a match getting mauled and destroyed by one of the world’s coolest wrestlers.

One such wrestler is Mil Muertes, the sole reason to still watch the show at this point.

Mil Muertes the god pic.twitter.com/jbYW237U3f

— killer spelled backwards (@ElHijoDelSimon) October 21, 2022

From start to finish, this is classic Mil Muertes.

A fight around the set, down through the stairs, an opponent recklessly and super charmingly hurled through multiple rows of chairs. Steel chairs and a few tables used in the ring and properly at ringside, basic setpiece spots with these objects that are enhanced both through the way that they takes these spots extra recklessly or dangerously (as seen above), or the way in which these spots are set up or milked for these big dramatic nearfalls. As a result of both Mil’s tremendous selling and my total lack of faith in Lucha Underground’s decision making, Callihan’s late match nearfalls have some real weight and drama to them. They all come with some other caveat — a table or a chair spot — that LU had used in the past to allow others to pull off upsets, and that because of the way the match has been constructed, feel like legitimate finishes. Even in the twilight of the show, late in the third season, it’s a delightful display of that old magic.

None of that happens, of course. Our Hero, the unkillable devil monster who has died a million times, survives all of that, and the dipshit underdog eventually sees his window close again. Mil catches him with the Flatliner to win, and that is that.

The true testament to the match though is that, in the aftermath, my first instinct is not to write that this was a match with an obvious outcome which succeeded because of how good the journey to that outcome was. Instead, this match is something so much more interesting and impressive, a match between these two at this point in time and in this promotion that not only succeeded

***

Drew Galloway/Will Ospreay/Lio Rush/Ryan Smile/Redacted vs. Ricochet/Sami Callihan/Dezmond Xavier/AR Fox/Jason Cade, WrestleCon Super Show 2017 (3/31/2017)

This is the year that WrestleMania Weekend becomes a whole thing, like ten thousand independent shows, and no match is a better example of how god damned annoying that was than this one.

A bunch of stuff in a row that ranged from decent to deeply awful and spiritually harmful, a ton of schtick as everyone was very tired from working like 20 shows over three days (Sami Callihan may have had the greatness forced from his body once and for all over the course of this weekend), a few cool things, but mostly an annoying match that lasts forever. The repetition of the previous year’s Ricochet/Ospreay Sequence going into a minutes long ten man dance contest is an especially lethal combination that is both hazardous to your health and a perfect example of this bullshit song and dance style of independent wrestling, before the stunt show resumes. The entire match feels like mandated fun, and that sequence illustrates that, and the entire ethos of the thing especially well.

If you’ve got a keen enough ear, you can hear the faint sounds in the background of WrestleMania Weekend leaping over a shark somewhere off screen, or at the very least, the sound of those jet skis hitting the water on the way down.

Sami Callihan vs. Low Ki, AAW Homecoming (3/17/2017)

This was for Callihan’s AAW Heavyweight Title.

A pretty fun backstory exists here. It’s not essential to know everything or to have seen everything, as commentary does a pretty solid job of giving a newer viewer the facts, but it’s one that does benefit the match significantly.

Way back in the long ago Before Times of 2010 or 2011, Low Ki returned to the indies and knocked Sami Callihan out in a match in Jersey All Pro Wrestling. As part of the build to this match, Callihan talked about being obsessed with trying to knock Low Ki out in the return match, and it is very much built around this fascinating idea of a heel’s revenge. It is not so much a supervillain origin story as it’s not as if (a) Sami is a supervillain or (b) this has really driven him for years or transformed him in the way that, for example, Chris Hero’s final loss to Bryan Danielson in PWG very clearly turned him into a meaner and more bitter wrestling character, but it’s a very interesting approach and a welcome addition onto a match that was already worth watching simply for being a Low Ki match.

The match itself is really great, both because of this and in a more general sense.

Speaking of the latter first, it simply whips ass. Low Ki hits really hard and everything he does feels like it is both genuine and as mean as possible. Assuming you have already come to terms with the fact that Peak Low Ki is never returning (seriously it’s been like six years now, at least try enjoy things for what they are presently), there is so much to love in this performance. A constant struggle where one doesn’t always exist in other 2017 Sami matchs, and in general, it feels like Low Ki forces Sami Callihan to bring something to a wrestling match that he hasn’t in close to a year. It’s the most motivated performance out of Sami I’ve seen. That sheer energy and activity isn’t coming back, much like Low Ki, but there’s a meanness and hostility here that does so much, on top of all of the little ways he communicates the story. It’s not really a thing that happened beyond this match as his gifts were often poorly applied or applied in poor environments, but it feels like a clear way forward for Callihan as well.

As a story, it is a real treasure.

True to what’s been said, Sami spends the first half trying to punish and knock out Low Ki. The way they handle it here is really sensational, not simply doing an even slugfest, but also balancing the heel and face elements of the match into it as well. Sami is (theoretically) better and stronger now and Ki can’t bully him anymore, but Low Ki is still LOW KI. Callihan needs his tricks, electrical tape to bind Ki to the ropes for a moment, chairs to the body and one real nasty shot to the side of the face, but he does it. The problem is that, being a shitheel dirtbag, Callihan revels in his victory too much, and Low Ki comes back.

In coming back, Low Ki has one of the greatest series of attacks anywhere in wrestling in recent memory. Callihan dares him while he has one hand, and yet again, Low Ki manages to knock Callihan out. Moving forward, while Callihan is still loopy, Ki exclusively throws punches and it’s this totally brand new kind of attack from a wrestler like Low Ki, a true violent delight. Once having proven that point, Low Ki pays back Callihan for the abuse in an absolutely psychotic way, pulling his jaw apartwith both hands, until a sudden yank back, followed by Callihan frantically rolling to the outside.

Lesser minds would craft a match about Callihan trying for revenge and eventually getting it, albeit in a wholly unlikeable way, perhaps a knockout with brass knuckles or a roll of quarters, and while that would probably still be good, what they do here is a million times better and a billion times cooler. Callihan, unable to do the thing he wants to do because there should be nothing admirable about him, paying for his hubris not only by being knocked out again, but now being punished in an even more severe way.

Callihan’s response is, I think, just as great. Stealing the old Sabu tape-the-jaw-shut routine with tape around the top and bottom of the skull, and trying to move forward, only to continually get his ass kicked when he’s too hurt to do much.

The match unfortunately loses its nerve at the very end, not being willing or unable (this is probably it) to go all the way with its goals in either direction, and instead skipping ahead to some real bullshit. Low Ki has the Dragon Clutch on the fucked up jaw, when Abyss comes to do interference. With the aid of Sami’s manager and Sami blinding Low Ki with powder to the eyes, Abyss chokeslams Low Ki off the top, and Callihan gets the pin to keep the title.

It’s not the worst finish in the world, but it’s never sat right with me. Not simply because it was a bunch of stuff in a match that had otherwise been this wonderfully straight forward fight, not nearly brutal enough of a close for a match like this, but also because it felt like the match skipped ahead to that point before it was totally time for that, if that was going to happen. I get it, it’s Low Ki and there are just certain realities to dealing with Low Ki unless you have a genuine legend in the ring with him, but I don’t think it quite fit the tone of the rest of the match, and arguably kind of undercut it at the very end as a result.

Still, this is something like ninety to ninety five percent of one of the greatest matches of the year. Instead of getting all the way there, they instead have to settle for a match that is only potentially such, and that is still a really impressive thing to settle for. Unfinished as it seems to be, still one of the best and well worth the time for either fans of Low Ki, or fans of what Sami Callihan used to be around the start of the decade.

(If you’re not a fan of at least one of those things, I do not know what you’re doing here.)

***1/3

Sami Callihan vs. TJ Perkins, EVOLVE 56 (3/19/2016)

I don’t imagine people outside of tried and true maniacs are going to read this.

With that kind of self-selection accounted for, I would like to discuss the process for a moment. First of all, Sam Hinkie was framed and should have been allowed to see his concepts through. Also, reviews with people who are lower key canceled (like for being annoying online and having horrible opinions) don’t really do #numbers, but we are here for two very important reasons.

The first, selfishly, is that I have a sort of mental quota I like to hit, a two-digit number of reviews on a drop day with a number starting with a 2 or higher. This is deranged, and I know this, but it is how I feel, and so on a Thursday night after March Madness began a day earlier than I ever remember, I lost many more hours than I would have liked and am, perhaps, writing about matches I wouldn’t normally write as much about while I am in The Zone in order to hit these numbers. I would rather not put anything out than to put out a drop, most of the time, with like twelve reviews or something. Fucking kill me. Jesus. I also have this problem where I have trouble keeping things in the “scheduled” tab for over a week. If I wrote something, I want you, The Reader, to see it. This is likely the result of far deeper problems and brain diseases but given that I do not imagine very many people will read this review, I am comfortable being a little more open about my process.

(very excited to one day cave and review like a WALTER/Starr match or a non-standout Riddle match one day but only talk about the best kinds of soup, or why I really only like racing or football video games.)

The second reason is that TJ Perkins really might make the 2016 Wrestler of the Year list, and I don’t want anyone to be taken aback by that just because he’s one of the worst posters in the history of wrestling and says a lot of real dumb shit. The work is there.

Here we have a match that shows exactly what these guys still have to offer, and why it sucks so much that Sami went insane after this initial 3-6 month post-WWE burst of output, and why it sucks so much that Perkins got caught up in this cruiserweight thing that fucking NEVER EVER EVER was going to turn out well. This is a fifteenish minute opener full of nasty holds, great shots, and a lot of really really mean moments. A little long sometimes, it’s not like some Match of the Year list output, but it is another great match and another example of some of the easiest to like wrestling that there is in the world. I love this shit, and I wish that you could just like take all phones and computers away from wrestlers this good on a permanent basis.

A great match. Thank you for reading.

***

Sami Callihan vs. Mike Bailey, CZW Seventeen (2/13/2016)

This rocks.

Mostly.

There are things to find offense with, such as a few too many one count kickouts (in a stakeless semi-main like this on a 2016 CZW show, that is to say, any at all) or Sami going through pains at the end to have all this great frantic work on Bailey’s leg, only for his selling to not be all that great and for it not to matter much anyways, since Callihan wins with the Package Tombstone and Jobber Clobber, and not any of his repeated Stretch Mufflers. In isolation, there’s a handful of bits here one could cut out and make a GIF of and that would cause me to roll my eyes emphatically if it came across my line of sight.

However, there is much more to this than just those unfortunate elements.

Sami Callihan and Mike Bailey is a match made in Heaven, even if they didn’t get to meet QUITE at the peaks of their powers.

Instead of a kind of flawless twelve minutes that they may have had if C*4 or someone booked this in 2012, it’s instead seventeen. While that allows more time for the sort of excess that brings this down, it also means they have the time to do every cool spot they’ve ever thought of and every nasty strike they’re capable of, and the match is a god damned BLAST. The result is a match in which the higher points of the thing make it very easy to care a lot less about the lower ones. Two total maniacs in different senses killing each other for a while, a remarkably easy sort of wrestling to like. Not as idiot-proof as a 2012 Callihan match or anything, but still just a little too hard to mess up when talent like this is involved.

In large part, I also just think it’s really awesome that this happened at all.

This was a match up with an extremely narrow window. Bailey was great before Callihan left, but in a very unheralded and more unrefined way. There were only two months in which Bailey was an independent name with the ability to work in the U.S. and in which Sami Callihan was still good to great. Like many Bailey matches against wrestlers not on the independents in 2014 and 2015, it would have been wholly understandable if the window closed without them making it through.

Credit to CZW for running full speed and sending themselves flying through that window to deliver this, warts and all.

***

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Sami Callihan, EVOLVE 55 (1/24/2016)

While they were oil and water as tag team partners, as opponents, Zack Sabre Jr. and Sami Callihan make for a wonderful marriage.

This is a Zack Sabre Jr. style of match, lots of cool tricks, double limbwork at the base, but still engaging in a lot of that “holds as highspots” sort of routine, drifting from bit to bit at a pace that sometimes does as much harm as good. However, Sami Callihan at this point is exactly the sort of guy who can get so much out of that formula and who can keep Zack Sabre Jr. a little more honest. It’s a Zack style match of a Zack style length (around twenty minutes), but conducted with the intensity and grit of an old Sami Callihan match from back when he was one of the best wrestlers in the world for something like half a decade.

You can’t rightly call it one of those old SAMI SPRINT style matches that he perfected from 2008-2013 because of the length, and because it’s wrestled at a more grinding pace, but it feels very similar. It’s great as much because of the intensity as it is every other reason, and despite the length, it’s also not a match with a lot of fat on it. This is a grittier and more grueling version of what worked years past for Callihan, combined shockingly well with what currently works so well for Zack Sabre Jr.

The offense throughout this match is killer. Sami’s attacks on Zack Sabre Jr’s knee, and Zack’s on Callihan’s arm are both really cool and especially nasty. The selling put on display by both men is very very good, and occasionally great. Zack Sabre Jr. still occasionally comes off as though he does certain things so that he can sell his knee, in a very “look at me” nerd-bait way that I don’t find very appealing, but Sami at least keeps that honest by continuing to go for the leg. Similarly, Callihan’s refusal to ever stop selling lingering damage on the arm always seems to drag Zack back to it with a regularity that you don’t always get out of Zack. Sometimes he’ll get lost doing cradles and strikes, but not here. Something about Sami’s selling and the sort of match that they have that feels a little pettier and more mean-spirited than a lot of what Zack’s been doing in EVOLVE prior, and so you get a version of Zack that I like a lot more, both more direct and focused, and leaning into his inherent nastiness just a little bit.

My favorite version of Zack Sabre Jr. is either as a guest star babyface, doing tricks you’ve never seen before, or as a world class shithead, constantly upset by the most minor things and trying to torture people. A close third is Zack thinking he’s smarter than he actually is, and being owned, as seen in the tag two days prior, or something like Thatcher/Sabre Jr. in EVOLVE in 2015. This match doesn’t TOTALLY offer up any of that, but it is a match where Zack shows a harder edge and one where isn’t presented as the protagonist, and so it works better than usual.

Zack once again plays around a little too long before Callihan catches him with a flatback Package Tombstone, and then a real god damner neck spike one, before the old Jobber Clobber gets Callihan a somewhat surprising win. A perfect meeting of a classic style Zack match and the old Sami Sprint, ending in the way it ought to, with Sabre Jr. insisting on his games and tricks, and getting totally obliterated.

It’s the first of many great Zack-style matches in 2016, but sadly, one of the last really great Sami matches we’ll ever see.

Both of these wrestlers can be immensely frustrating, but it’s a great reminder of why, at their peaks, both men were worth the frustration to begin with.

***1/2

Zack Sabre Jr./Sami Callihan vs. Drew Gulak/TJ Perkins, EVOLVE 54 (1/23/2016)

This was part of the EVOLVE Tag Team Title Tournament, as part of some Second Chance deal where losers from the f — it doesn’t matter. Genuinely and truly, it does not matter at all.

It’s just another really good match.

Zack and Sami are still not a good team. They learned SOMETHING from the horrific ass beating that they earned the previous night, and so they are less obviously bad here as a unit. They tag more frequently and, in general, avoid getting caught playing hero ball. It’s easier with a less physically aggressive and dominant team in this irregular Catch Point unit, but progress is progress. Just because the terrain is friendlier, it doesn’t mean that you didn’t still move forward, you know?

The thing is, they are still just bad at this.

Fundamental issues come up time and time again and stop them from succeeding, despite being arguably better individual wrestlers than Gulak, and definitely better than Perkins.

Successful tag teams don’t constantly run at an opponent with a strike with your partner behind them, especially if that backfired repeatedly not even a full twenty-four hours prior. Zack and Sami both do this time and time again. There’s also no real cohesion, in terms of blocking off the other guy so your partner can win, simple things that you see pretty much ever tag team in the world do. Sami has his Stretch Muffler on at a point, but instead of just blocking Gulak off or throwing him out, Zack again insists on the flash. He leaps into his hanging Kimura, leaving Gulak in control of his body, and able to run and drop Zack down onto his own partner to destroy their best shot at the win. It’s not as drawn out or as thrilling as the ways in which Sabre Jr. was punished for choosing style over substance the previous night, but it’s a great little bit that works for all the same reasons.

After yet another misfire, this time from Sami to Sabre Jr., Gulak does the thing neither Sami or Zack ever do, and that’s get proactive about the other guy. He hits a rare Tope Suicida to keep Zack outside, and Perkins is able to pour it on with the Benadryller and then an armbar for the win. An upset, to be sure, but another one with a clear point of view and a stance to take on how tag team wrestling is supposed to function.

At the end, it’s more delightful meat and potatoes shit from EVOLVE, who produces that at a higher level and rate than any other promotion at this point. Great technicians trading holds for a while, with Callihan interrupting to whip ass and add in big head drops too. Not too long, an easy story to it once again. Just a remarkably easy sort of a match to sit down, watch, and enjoy.

While not at the level of the previous night’s Zack/Sami tag, it’s one that works for all of the same wonderful reasons.

***1/4

 

Heroes Eventually Die (Chris Hero/Tommy End) vs. Zack Sabre Jr./Sami Callihan, EVOLVE 53 (1/22/2016)

This was a match in the EVOLVE Tag Team Title Tournament.

It’s one of the more beloved matches of the year, a centerpiece of Chris Hero’s famed 2016 run and of EVOLVE’s 2016 in general, and for good reason. I’m nowhere near as high on it as I was when I saw it around the time that it happened, as there are some flaws that are — as always — far more apparent once you have a little more distance from a match (again, this is sort of the point of our little enterprise). It’s a little long at near half an hour, it can sometimes become a little much in the way that a lot of the work of these guys in general around this time can become a little much, and in general, it’s just kind of an exhausting thing.

Despite all of that, it’s one of those times throughout wrestling history where things just all come together as well as they ever could. Planets align, Hades frees the Titans, things like that.

First and most obviously, mechanically, this is wonderful.

It’s laid out especially well, for one. Proper escalation, building up from work on the ground, with a lot of the time used to establish all the different characters, styles, and their relationships to each other. One tag team prepared, one not, the Hero/Sabre rivalry that’s slowly become less and less respectful, Callihan being a wild card, all of it. In the back half, things can easily fall apart both as a result of the length and the fast pace they’re keeping up, but it never does. Everything is in a right enough place to stand out and mostly have value, and while this is a match that DEFINITELY walks up to the line, it is one that always seems to know where it is, takes a sniff and a vigilant look around, before heading back away from it.

Individually and collectively, all four wrestlers are on their very best behavior here too. Chris Hero vs. Zack Sabre Jr. is one of the easiest match ups in all of pro wrestling at this point, and once again, it works incredibly well. This isn’t a match with a ton of forward movement for them, clearly with Gabe having an idea to run it back at WrestleMania weekend in two months and change, but what’s here works like it always has. End and Callihan are less reliable and less great wrestlers (at this point, anyways. Callihan’s 2009-13 peak destroys any run End ever went on, and I prefer it to whatever you’d like to call Zack’s peak) than their partners, but the match asks no more of them than they can deliver. For End, that’s being Hero’s back up and hitting all of his big shots perfectly, a task that he’s more than capable of. For Sami Callihan, it’s a little more than that, but he’s no less capable.

Sami Callihan sadly isn’t quite so much after his WWE run, save these first few months of freedom, but this is the match where he briefly looked like his old self, not only being tremendous on offense, but doing a tremendous job in the back half selling exhaustion and a kind of mounting frustration.

The thing about this match is that, beyond all the great mechanics, there’s also a really good story here, as fundamentally, Zack Sabre Jr. and Sami Callihan are not tag team wrestlers.

Once upon a time, they were. At least with other partners. With the umbrella pervert and with the Moxley/Callihan team. However, Sami Callihan and Zack Sabre Jr. were not supposed to team in this match or tournament. Sami filled in at the last minute to replace a Timothy Thatcher who went down with a staph infection, and at all times in this match, it shows. Not only in the fact that Sami and Zack have absolutely no chemistry together and miscommunicate a few times, but in the fact that neither of them seems to be entirely aware that this is a tag team match until it is far too late.

Hero and End are similarly not a frequent team, but there’s a understanding there, Hero stopping short multiple times when either Zack or Sami tries to set up a misfire, and general preparedness. They’re quick to tag, quick to save, and generally have a feel for each other. Even if they’re not frequently teaming up, they have an idea of what the other will do and when to help the other, and it’s something Zack and Sami just do not have, and do not ever come close to having. Neither Zack nor Sami gets isolated for all that long, but because they have no sense for each other and no real ability to function as a team, each hot tag is eventually cut off because they’re always fighting two men.

Most importantly though, Zack Sabre Jr. and Sami Callihan both seem to just try and win it on their own early on, and they pay for it long term.

It’s not the only reason this match is so great, but this is a match largely based around making Zack Sabre Jr. and Sami Callihan suffer for the way they conduct themselves, and it’s wonderful. There’s very rarely a morality on display in EVOLVE so much as an ideology, “ideology play” isn’t something I’ve ever seen or heard before, but this is absolutely a match with something to say about wrestling, and specifically about tag team wrestling.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, that exhaustion is reflected throughout the match, particularly in the back half.

When Zack Sabre Jr. finds himself stuck inside the ring for long stretches, he has one of his more impressive performances of the year and maybe his all time best babyface performance, slowly losing more and more wind and energy. The kickouts are less spirited, his comebacks are not only less effective and more desperate, but less and less successful. Callihan isn’t the focus of this final run of the match so much, but he does a really great job with this concept too. Sami wipes himself out once with a dive to buy Zack time, but it’s not enough when End’s taken very little punishment, and he’s able to wipe Callihan out with a wild Moonsault dive of his own. Sami never really comes close to being able to help out again, while End is fresher. Zack might not yet be able to beat Hero one on one, but taking more punishment and also having Tom End there just in case makes it a near impossibility.

It’s where the length of the match works to its benefit, things working just a little better when you have all this time building them up. Establishing things, and slowly seeing the consequences of the choices people naturally make in this environment. The consequences of Sabre Jr. and Callihan being such a bad team aren’t just that they lose, they’re in how they lose. Sabre Jr. and Callihan unable to ever stop a two on one, leaving them both far more worn out by the end, unable to tag out, and leaving not only Zack pretty much stranded with no escape, but similarly leaving Sami Callihan entirely incapable of offering him one.

All throughout the first half, Sami and Zack play one-on-one games, classic hero ball, and very slowly rack up a pretty huge bill as Hero and End figure out how to make them pay for it. It takes some time and a whole lot of effort, but Hero and End finally knock Sabre out with a combination Rolling Elbow/Northern Bicycle Knee, and that bill finally comes due.

One of the best tag matches in EVOLVE history if not #1 with a bullet, but the true complement to this match exists all these years later, with every independent or major stage tag team match that looks a whole lot like this, but fails to strike with the same venom, urgency, or construction that does this match so well.

A special match, in spite of every valid on-paper reason why it shouldn’t be.

***3/4

Adam Cole vs. Sami Callihan, PWG Is Your Body Ready? (6/15/2013)

This was a sixty minute iron match for Cole’s PWG World Title.

It sounds like a bit to people who weren’t there in a time when Sami Callihan was a great wrestler and Adam Cole regularly looked like a wrestler who might be great, but this is great. Genuinely actually great.

It is, of course, also a gigantic overreach with only like 40-45 great minutes involved and a lot of silly stuff that holds it back, but there are thirty one or so continuously great minutes at the start, and it doesn’t REALLY run out of steam until the very end. It’s a match with a lot of holes, yes, but given that an hour is probably forty more minutes than either of these two should ever be wrestling to begin with, a shocking amount goes right here.

To start, the first half especially works because they very quickly take a unique approach. So many iron man matches get to a point with someone trying to kill a clock when they have a lead, but these guys waste so much less time going into that, getting to that point some ten minutes in instead of thirty or forty. The back and forth at the start is exactly what you’d expect, and it’s good. The routine still works. Sami is all grit and guts and heart, and of everyone on the independent scene at this point, few make it as satisfying and fun to see them eat shit as Adam Cole. Suddenly though, he’s able to manufacture a low blow and a roll up for a fall. Callihan tries to reverse a move into a cradle right after, but he’s selling being punched in the dick correctly and lacks the immediate core strength to hold it. Cole reverses into his own cradle to go 2-0, and follows up with the Brainbuster onto his knee to push to 3-0, some ten minutes in. Beautiful stuff. Smart, creative, and interesting.

The twenty minutes after this is some of Cole’s finest all around work ever. He’s such a piece of shit. The line I always go to is that Cole in the early 2010s feels like if Shane Douglas came up watching 2000s Ring of Honor. A lot of cool moves and a fast pace, but still this incredibly unlikeable guy behind it once the personality started to be let out more. A gift for being an unrepentant dickbag, and it’s pretty much never better on display than here. He’s constantly parading around, trying to kill time in the most obvious and disreputable way possible. After eating shit again, he lucks into knee work. It’s never violent or outwardly impressive, but it’s great heel stuff, the sort of work that makes you want to see someone get their ass kicked. At his best, that’s Adam Cole. I’m pretty sure this is finally what I mean when I say “at his best”. Callihan’s leg selling is a delight too, and the benefit of Cole’s lazier time killing knee work is that Sami doesn’t have to be immobile. Work with a limp, hold it here and there, and it works.

Cole is made to eat shit once again when Sami goes to the Stretch Muffler to finally get on the board around half an hour in, before going right into a SICK looking STF to put it to 3-2.

After that, sadly, they immediately get a little goofy with it, sadly, by doing the Malenko/Guerrero or Lynn/RVD roll up sequence with Callihan getting two in a row off sunset flip cutbacks to move to 4-3. It’s a less hilarious and ambitious version of the incredible bit that CM Punk and Colt Cabana did in a 30:00 Iron Man Match in IWA Mid-South in either 2001 or 2002 in which they landed a million in a row near the end of the match by reversing, but with each reversal pin leading to three, so each man wound up in or near the double digits. One of the best pure comedy bits in independent wrestling history. To half ass it like this is to only half do the bit. Either it’s a comedy spot or it’s just weird. This is just weird. On top of that, it’s this weird half comedy bit in the middle of a match that hasn’t really been about that. A sudden tonal difference from the rest of the match to that point.

It’s only thirty seconds or so, but it’s thirty seconds to wrap up and slightly cheap an otherwise perfect first half of an iron man match and bring the match down a significant level.

(Yes, had this been a half hour iron man and had that been the finish with Sami winning 4-3, it would have been an incredible bit. Context matters, and this isn’t the finish.)

Disappointingly, the match then gets worse before getting better, deciding to do a Rock Bottom -> failed People’s Elbow -> Stone Cold Stunner sequence in the middle of this for some reason???? Dumb referential stuff in the middle of this thing, just absolutely sucks. They immediately get back to the hits, but it’s just this ODD two or three minutes following a great first half and preceding a pretty decent last twenty five plus minutes.

They immediately get it back by Cole going to the leg to open Sami up for the Florida Key to go to 4-4. Sami’s leg selling gets better and better, even doing the bit where you have hurt leg and stand on the side of your foot to bend the ankle. Real realistic stuff, the sort of thing you’d only get from someone that’s actually experienced actual pain in their leg but had to keep standing on it for work or something. The sort of minor detail that immediately makes it feel real. Cole follows up with the shitty Canadian Destroyer to take the lead back. Naturally, that interesting work mostly goes away after that, and they just kinda do some stuff. From there, it degenerates into guys doing stuff. Some of it’s great (Sami’s Nigel and Finlay tributes to pay homage to meaningful people in his career, big strikes), some of it isn’t (some real shaky Cole stuff), and a lot of it is repetitive. Sami evens it up to 5-5 with a Lariat, and the last fall is a real shitty one where Cole is hit with the Gin & Tonic, but kicks out into a sunset flip to 6-5. Awkward and weird and unbelievable, the worst sort of thing a final fall in a long match like this can be.

Fortunately, in the two and a half minutes between the fall and the bell, they go back to what worked so brilliantly in the first half and what this match up has been about for the last two years and change and why it’s worked out so well. Adam Cole runs like hell to try and avoid getting hit, eventually gets caught, but just barely manages to hang on. It’s a hit, it’s always been a hit, shut up and play your hits. It’s a shame they lost the plot in the middle of this thing, because the first half and last few minutes of it were just about perfect.

With that, Sami Callihan is gone, and really never shows up quite like this again.

This is the last match Sami Callihan will ever wrestle as one of the very best in the world. He’s going to go sit on a shelf in Orlando now for two and a half years while the wrestling world passes him by. When he comes back, there will be a six to twelve month period where a fire is lit under his ass and there’s a shadow on the wall in the shape of what he was, but that’s really all it is. Before long, he’ll become one of the worst wrestler in the world, where he’s stayed for most of the last five years and counting.

Given that this is an overlong weirdly constructed homage heavy match against someone who made a mistake signing a contract, and which falls apart in a big way in the second half…spiritually, this is Adam Cole’s finest ever NXT performance.

***1/4