Motor City Machine Guns vs. Beer Money, TNA Impact (8/5/2010)

This was the fourth match in a Best of Five Series for Shelley and Sabin’s TNA World Tag Team Titles, with Beer Money up 2-1 and was an Ultimate X Match.

A fun fourth, if a weird one.

Speaking in terms of the narrative first, which had been the strength of the first three matches in the series, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of connection between this and the others.

It’s as if the bottle shot payoff maybe came too soon, as this is purely and simply a wrestling match. It’s another gimmick match and for the fourth time this year, the Guns again succeed at turning the idea of the match into its own story, but that’s it. As part of the series, it feels kind of out of order. Following three matches with a clear line through them, it feels like this was actually supposed to be the first match in the series, not only because it’s fairly ordinary on a larger scope level but also because of the bells, whistles, narrative function, and desperation at times on display in the cage match.

That being said, this match is also a little bit behind the eight ball in a way that is absolutely nobody’s fault either.

With wrestling being what it is, or really any dramatic artform being what it is, this fourth meeting is somewhat limited by those structures being what they are, and the basic media literacy of most people watching it, unless they’re brand brand brand new here.

You can buy a sweep more than you can buy a series like this ending in four, I think. If you get this far, everybody knows that the series will end on the fifth match, so it’s harder to really get really involved in the one match in the series that feels like an absolute gimme. It’s nobody’s fault, I’m not really sure what you can do to avoid short of oversaturating the market with Best of [X] series that fail to go to the final match, and that probably isn’t worth it. Ultimately, it is what it is, and it’s the problem every penultimate match in an official series like this tends to have.

All they can really do is to do their best with the fourth match, and they do.

The thing I appreciate the most about this match is the honesty of it, especially as it relates to the Ultimate X stipulation, and the way that yet another Guns match this year found an interesting way to take a match that’s usually a pure fireworks show and find something in the material to dig a lot deeper on.

Many other promotions would use this to try and do a tired “opponent adapts to the specialty of the other side” bit (something the cage match very impressively sidesteps and turns around), but given the physical limitations of Beer Money in a match like this as well as how high the bar has been raised for these matches over the previous seven years of TNA putting them on, my favorite thing about this match was the futility of Beer Money’s attempts to adapt.

No point exists in this match where the Guns seem out of control of the match. Even in the first half when they’re going back and forth, before trying to climb (a great approach, given the size and style of Storm and Roode, giving them a reason to not spend all match doing that sort of thing), it’s even. The fight is for distance and even when that distance finally happens, Beer Money feels like they’re spending time trying to stop the climb more than trying to get there themselves. It’s successful, to their credit, as they use their size to repeatedly pull them down when they try to cross on the wires because they can reach up higher where someone like the Bucks or a Sonjay Dutt or Petey William might not be able to in more standard Ultimate X matches, but ultimately, pure defense only goes so far.

It’s when Beer Money finally goes up and tries to win that they immediately lose.

Bobby Roode tries to balance rather than inch across with his hands, using the truss above the wires to grab onto and walk across with his feet on the wires. Sabin’s much much much faster though, the all-time expert in the match, and kicks his feet off to crotch him down on the wires there, before pulling the X down.

The Guns put it to 2-2 at the end of a match that, to its credit, never once tried to pretend that anything else was all that possible.

Another hit, different in its own way relative to other Ultimate X matches, although one that disappointingly feels more disconnected from the series at large than the previous four matches.

***

Motor City Machine Guns vs. Generation Me, TNA Destination X (3/21/2010)

This was an Ultimate X match.

For fifteen minutes tops, the Guns and the Bucks break out every flashy, silly, implausible, and wonderful thing that they can think up.

It absolutely whips ass.

When I go around and write things like “quality fireworks show” or find myself defending the idea of matches like these from some of you water brained freaks, this is the sort of thing I really mean to defend. This is what it ought to look like. Yeah, it’s 2010 TNA, you aren’t getting this with a great world of build or institutional support (although by even doing it and giving them half-decent time, TNA provides more than a lot of other companies might, could, or have before), but they get the mix pretty much perfect here.

Not only is there no attempt to disguise what this match is about, to lie about its intention before the bright lights and loud noises begun to erupt, but they manage to both structure the match very very well while also offering some genuinely spectacular sights to behold. Not only in terms of what they do with the trussing and the high wire act, but offensively in general. Even by their later standards, the Guns and Bucks’ work against each other here feels a decade (and counting, realistically) ahead of its time. 

Alternately, if you’re the type who needs a little narrative meat on bones this colorful, this match kind of slyly has you covered too, provided you have any sort of wrestling literacy whatsoever.

Most obviously, the point here is that experience in a new style of match matters. Mike Tenay is helpful enough to point out that this will be Sabin’s fourteenth Ultimate X match as well as Shelley’s fifth, while the kids are brand new. They never seem to quite get the right times to climb, and frequently lose any advantage when they do. They get it a little later on, but still really struggle, while the Guns always seem to know both when to climb, but also how to stop either Buck before too long. The match also makes a little something out of basic numbers too, with the Guns splitting the Bucks apart so they would always win the one on one matchups, but primarily, it’s a great display of how to make the stipulation really matter in a match like this, even if the clear goal of the match is much more about showing off as much cool stuff as possible. Even when it doesn’t matter, it always matters, which is a big component of every great Ultimate X match.

It even matters in the end, as one of the Buck tries to echo Chris Sabin’s strategy of getting all four limbs up on the wire and army crawling, but Sabin is a thousand times more comfortable, and stomps them in the chest from that same position, until they fall down. Sabin comes down with the X yet again, with the match doing nearly as much to illustrate how to win matches like this and that experience matters as it does to offer up a lovely little time watching some explosions.

The key, as always, is that the fireworks have to stand out. Go too long, throw too many of the same kind or color up there, and it stops feeling special. Get it totally right — or even just as right as a match like this manages to, even under these circumstances — and you have a real hard time forgetting it.

Even if, again to the credit of these team and somehow, this promotion, it’s only like the third best MCMG/Bucks match of the year.

***1/5

Low Ki vs. Trevor Lee vs. Andrew Everett, Impact Wrestling (5/18/2017)

This was an Ultimate X match for Low Ki’s Impact X Division Title.

If you’ve ever laid eyes on this thing before, then you ought to already know I adored this.

Certainly, this match is not on the level of the great Ultimate X matches in the history of Impact Wrestling and TNA before it. It’s no AJ/Sabin/Petey, or MCMG/Beer Money, or one of my dark horse favorites in Low Ki/Daniels/Sabin/Shane. It’s certainly no match for LAX vs. AJ and Daniels in the fall of 2006, my personal pick for the best Ultimate X match ever.

It is, however, easily the most interesting one of these in years, if not ever.

While something like MCMG vs. Beer Money worked on a level beyond the usual stunt shows for fish out of water reasons, this is even more than that, both kind of setting this match back to what it ought to be or at least what it should be once or twice to really make it count again, and then delivering something real novel for a match like this.

First, it’s the hardest fought Ultimate X match in a really really long time.

Similar to ladder matches that have opted to re-insert some sense of struggle before any climbing comes into play, this is a match that takes the time and care to build up the climbing attempts. Not only in that it saves those big attempts for later on so that the match gets as much as possible out of them in terms of construction, but also in the sense that it emphasizes how hard the actual climb and travel along the wires really is. It’s constantly cut off, people are dragged off the top to the apron or the mat, shoved off to the floor, shoved into the steel truss that holds the whole system up, and things like that. The utility of this is also twofold, as it not only makes it into an accomplishment, this hard fought thing, when people are able to get up successfully later in the match, but it also adds a level of meanness and brutality that isn’t often on display, if present at all, in a match like this.

The second reason?

Well.

Low Ki blocks a chair shot from Trevor Lee by punching the chair into his face and sells a real bad injury to his right hand for the rest of the match.

To some extent, it’s some simple WHAT IS THE NAME OF THIS BLOG? canon stuff.I love this shit. I don’t know why I love it, even years removed from my own hand injury and the way in which it affected my own physical labor at a far less physical job than wrestling. I just do. There’s something so cool about such an obvious and understandable injury, and someone who puts as much care and thought into wrestling as Low Ki does it absolute justice against Lee and Everett. He can’t grab, he can’t close his fist, he has to pull the glove off after a few minutes when the swelling comes in, it’s all very genuine feeling.

I would love to say that Low Ki doing hand selling is exactly as great as I always imagined, but honestly, I never imagined it. There are some things you never even consider to hope for, you know?

Beyond just that it’s one of my favorite things to see in wrestling though, it also gives this an element that Ultimate X matches rarely have. There’s been one or two with a hurt arm, as I recall, but nothing quite like this and certainly nothing where that injury matters quite as much as it does here. Low Ki not only can’t get out on the wire, but he can’t really even hang onto the truss for support when he’s on the top rope properly, and almost falls off a few times because he’s only supporting himself with the left hand. It’s an entirely new element to a match like this, which paired with a more stripped down and back to basics approach that the match takes even independent of Low Ki’s injured hand makes for such a cool take on this match.

Coolest of all is that, outside of the finish to the LAX vs. AJ & Daniels Ultimate X match from 2006 (if you’ve seen it, you know and if you haven’t, I won’t spoil it), they bring it to a head in my favorite finish to one of these matches yet.

Everett and Lee climb to the middle from opposite sides, but while they do that, Low Ki finally figures out a way to overcome. Using his three other good limbs, he climbs to the very top of the steel trussing, crawls to the middle of it, and slides through the middle to stand on the wires. With the good hand holding him steady and finally on decent footing, Low Ki kicks Everett and then Lee down to the mat below, before steadying himself on the wire, and unstrapping his title, proving once again that where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Something about the size of a fighter and the size of a fight.

Low Ki finds a path through both smarts and guts, not only making himself look stronger, but giving a more thoughtful and understatedly violent match like this a finish that it both deserves and that stands out on a conceptual level. This is the good shit, and had this not been cut up by some commercials or opted to go even bigger with some of the louder moments, it might be one of the very best matches of the year.

The most interesting one of these matches in nearly seven years, armed with the sort of conceit that in the fourteen years of regular Ultimate X matches, nobody had quite thought up before. I’m certainly biased given the content of a match like this, but it’s just such a treat to see people actually do something with a match this rich in potential. Leave it to these three to find a way.

***1/4