Fire Ant vs. Francis O’Rourke, Wrestling is Respect 4 (9/29/2013)

All-time dream match, provided you have exactly the same sort of deeply damaged brain as I do and have the right opinion that Fire Ant is The Greatest Babyface Of All Time based on a match from thirteen years ago.

Not all it could be, of course.

It’s fucking WRESTLING IS.

And yet, it’s Biff vs. Fire Ant. I don’t know, it’s hard to get too annoyed. I grew up with IWA Mid South shows where stars would show up and two-thirds ass it and seeing a dogshit AJ/Daniels hour broadway on a 2005 PWG show that they clearly didn’t actually want to do. Guys not doing their absolute best on smaller shows doesn’t really bother me, so long as there’s still something to enjoy, and these guys gave a lot of stuff in this to still enjoy. Biff beats the hell out of Our Hero, and Fire Ant’s still the best. Wonderful comebacks, great strikes, stellar looking offense in general, etc.

It’s not as big as it could be, but with seventeen people in the crowd, I don’t know that they could have summoned the atmosphere to make the most out of that anyways.

Biff wins with his Tazmission aka THE FRANK CRANK because this is basically CHIKARA and everyone in CHIKARA who first made a name outside of CHIKARA has to have some bullshit CHIKARA thing added onto them.

Again though, Biff Busick vs. Fire Ant! I simply cannot summon the energy or vitriol to stay mad about anything that happened, because finding out this happened at all feels like a gift from God.

***

Drew Gulak vs. Francis O’Rourke, Wrestling is Respect 2 (3/24/2013)

Francis is Biff Busick under a classic Weird CHIKARA Name (which I will not be calling him because fucking come on), which means hey, it’s Gulak and Busick again!

Stunningly, it’s great!

This isn’t the proto GRAPPLEFUCK match that their 2012 Beyond match was, as they’re given a main event spot and slug it out and throw each other around just a little bit more. The truth is though that Biff Busick was never really a Grapplefuck sort of guy in the way Thatcher and Gulak and later ZSJ were. He could adapt and work that match with them because he’s a really incredible professional wrestler, but he was always more of a Bryan Danielson type who would mix things up more. Hard grappling, but also a real nastiness on more traditional offense and very hard striking. He has some European Uppercuts in this match that I’d put up against just about anyone else’s ever in wrestling history outside of Claudio’s very best. There’s some delightful and insane pieces of offense. Prior to this match, you can look at Biff’s stuff and see that yeah, this guy is good and he’s going to be great. After watching this match, you mark March 2013 down as the point when that stops being this future text prediction. He is great now, point blank.

Gulak has been great, but 2013 is similarly his big breakout year as a full on top 20-30 best in the world level guy. He largely cedes the floor to get Biff over here, but every small detail is pretty much perfect. Great little touches at the end wind up helping Gulak out, like lifting Gulak by popping his hips to stop the Half Nelson Suplex, and Biff’s feet managing to get caught on the ropes, so Gulak can turn out and drop him on his face. It’s a fortunate accident for Gulak, but the ending absolutely isn’t. He manages the Gu-lock out of a roll up, and this time when Biff tries to roll to grab the ropes, Drew lifts his arm up just enough to grab Biff’s wrist, roll over away from the ropes, and Biff’s forced to tap out once again.

Another positively wonderful match between them, and yet another harbinger of a wonderful and far too short lived trend in independent wrestling.

***1/4