This match kept making me think about modern spot wrestling. Will Ospreay and Ricochet. Ricochet and Logan Paul. The increasingly elaborate athletic exchanges designed to make people react, designed to become GIFs and circulate endlessly online. This feels like that idea translated entirely into deathmatch wrestling. We see the spots, we see the sections they want us to pop at, but they feature such grisly and unfakeable violence they become the spectacle the others can only aspire to be.

As we enter Tournament of Survival 11, Lil Sicko is immediately over with the crowd. There is an instant connection during his entrance and the audience stays with him the entire match. He enters the ring as Nino Extremo starts on the scaffold and begins the match by diving off it onto Sicko. The crowd is hot from the opening bell. I am with them.

What follows is surprisingly normal wrestling for a bit. There is some chain wrestling, decent reversals, limb work, and selling. Then the match shifts back toward deathmatch territory with a weaker section of tube attacks and rope flips that feel overly choreographed.

Things pick up when Sicko throws Nino through a barbed wire covered door and then drags the door over him. Blood starts flowing. Somehow when Sicko stands up after this section he seems taller. Briefly, he dwarfs the ring.

Nino answers with a poison rana from the top. He misses the light tubes but Sicko takes a nasty head bump anyway. Nino is wearing gold UFO pants and all of a sudden it is 1999 again and I am thrilled by watching young punks with no sense of self preservation almost kill themselves for the first time again.

Soon both men are flying across the ring. There is a coast to coast sequence that sends them crashing into glass. It is choreographed but still looks badass. The added layer of glass and poor decision making transforms what might otherwise be a familiar highlight reel sequence into something far more uncomfortable.

At one point Sicko completely falls out of the ring while attempting a spot. Normally that kind of mistake would hurt a match. Here it almost helps. Everything is already so messy, bloody, and oversized that the mistakes add suspense rather than taking you out of it.

Nino kicks Sicko directly into a ladder covered with glass tubes. It is face first. I wince watching it. This rarely happens when you watch enough deathmatch wrestling, this normal human repulsion to violence, but I find myself very concerned for his wellbeing. He follows with a skateboard covered in light tubes. Sicko is left barely moving. I am sure this match is over, then he somehow kicks out. It feels completely improbable that he can still function. The fantasy of this match has fully enveloped me.

The comeback begins and Sicko starts climbing the scaffold again. At this point I truly do not know how he is still going. He launches himself with a spinning dive from the scaffold. His clown makeup is melting off from sweat and blood and you can suddenly see how young he is. He somehow looks younger than his somewhat veteran age of twenty five.

Later Sicko constructs a structure made of glass placed over a box full of light tubes. It looks like a cruel Lincoln Log structure assembled by somebody with terrible intentions. Both men climb the scaffold above it. Sicko delivers a Spanish Fly through the entire thing. The referee is picking tiny shards of glass off the mat with her hands afterward. I am not sure what her goal is at that point. The damage is already done.

Another painful apparatus gets introduced. The announcers do not know what it is and briefly describe it as a poky sharp board. It turns out to be a board covered in toothpicks. They fight around it while both men are covered in blood. Sicko eventually crashes into it and comes out looking like a porcupine. Somehow he seems energized afterward while Nino now looks like the exhausted one.

It is worth remembering this cruel and bloody affair is somehow the first round of the tournament.

Another table comes out. Another square of light tubes is added. Sicko brings in a ladder. Normally these construction sequences can drag, but at this point he is doing it while covered in blood with toothpicks sticking out of his back, which makes the entire thing sickeningly thrilling. Then he brings in a very tall ladder. At the top is a weed whacker which at this point feels not just reasonable but logical. How could there not be a weed whacker hanging there.

Extremo gets control of it before Sicko can use it and yet another sickening bit of torture ensues. The match finally ends with Nino hitting a Razor’s Edge from the ladder through the table setup. The landing is difficult to even process. It looks like Sicko goes through with his head and feet arriving at nearly the same time. The match ends and we have almost half of this show still to go. Neither of these men will even reach the final round but that feels almost beside the point. They have done something much harder to do, which is restore the feeling of deathmatch wrestling, where every fall and spot seems to be the last. Where something that was designed to pop me pops me and I stop seeing the strings and just enjoy the magic.

Everything about Dump Matsumoto rules.

She comes to the ring dressed like a mean cop carrying a kendo stick and her name is fucking Dump. Sometimes the simplest things work best. Wrestling can spend decades trying to find increasingly complicated characters and then somebody comes along whose entire presentation can be summarized in a sentence and it works perfectly.

No shade to Chigusa, but I have never really understood the Crush Gals presentation. She looks cool, but nothing about her says 1980s pop idol to me. Her hair is short and practical. She rarely smiles. She looks and carries herself like a stoic angry samurai. Don’t get me wrong, that all totally rules, but it always felt like the wrong marketing angle. The qualities that made her special were already there.

Dump and Chigusa have a natural dynamic and the match establishes it immediately. Wrestling logic tells us that throwing somebody into the ropes should make them bounce back and run. Dump throws Chigusa into the ropes and Chigusa sells it like she just hit concrete. It immediately tells you the normal rules do not apply here.

Everything feels heavier than normal. Dump wraps a chain around Nagayo’s neck and delivers a hip toss that leaves her hanging in the air for an uncomfortable amount of time. The violence is exaggerated but never cartoonish. It always feels dangerous.

The crowd is unbelievable. I honestly do not know if I have ever heard a crowd this hot. Every exchange gets a reaction. Every moment feels important. The audience is fully invested in Chigusa’s survival. One of the things that makes Chigusa such a great babyface is that she is never passive. When the referee tries to stop her from kicking Dump, she looks ready to kick him too. She is sympathetic without being submissive.

What makes the match so special is that Chigusa is never really in it. She enters as an underdog and spends almost the entire match getting the shit kicked out of her. The dramatic structure is not built around victory. It is built around endurance. The question is not whether she can win. The question is how long she can survive, how long she can last on fighting spirit alone.

The test of strength is maybe the best one I have ever seen. It perfectly establishes the size difference and the struggle. Every inch matters. Every movement feels difficult. Then we get the scissors. The scissors spot does not work. Allow me a digression:

It did not work here. It did not work twenty years later or today. It is really a criticism of sharp object spots in general. Wrestling is already a magic show and deathmatch wrestling is an even harder magic trick to pull off. I have never seen a fork spot that was not obviously somebody punching another person with the fork safely tucked away. You either have to actually stab somebody, find a way to make the illusion work, or stop doing it.

The stipulation gives all of this an unusual weight. In modern wrestling, hair matches can sometimes feel like novelty. Here it feels genuinely devastating. Chigusa is not just risking a match or a championship. She is risking part of her identity in front of an audience that adores her. Every time Dump gains control, the possibility becomes a little more real.

Back to the match. Both of these women have fantastic hair. Watching this, you cannot help but think about the stipulation. Dump’s huge orange hair. Chigusa’s perfectly flowing bob. The match constantly reminds you that one of them is going to lose it.

The submission work is excellent. Chigusa sells like a maniac and Dump looks like she enjoys every second of it. Her size adds so much to the holds. Every submission feels impossible to escape because Dump can simply settle her weight into the position. The longer the match goes, the more Chigusa feels like Rocky. Every comeback feels impossible. Every successful strike feels like knocking over a redwood.

The fight spills outside. Chigusa smashes Dump’s head with a metal box. Dump looks stunned but never close to beaten. Chigusa goes back to the scissors but the referee stops her. Why? Honestly, I do not care. Sometimes when something is thrilling enough I stop worrying about the logic. By this point Chigusa is wearing a complete crimson mask.

The submission near the end is incredible. Chigusa locks it in, raises her arm in the air, and tries to hold onto something she clearly cannot maintain. It is glorious. Sitting here writing this I found myself quietly whispering “ganbare” under my breath.

Dump eventually drops her with a chair and struts around the ring. That strut is what makes Dump such a great villain. She is not angry. She is not desperate. She is having fun. Chigusa is fighting for survival while Dump treats the whole thing like a celebration. Every comeback just seems to amuse her. Every act of resistance gives her another excuse to keep hurting someone the crowd desperately wants to protect.

The match has effectively been over for several minutes. Chigusa cannot quit and Dump is having too much fun to end it. The referee finally waves it off with a TKO.

Then comes the shaving and it is wonderful. Chigusa has to be dragged to the chair. Her entourage covers her head like they are protecting her from an exploding barbed wire ring. She is held in place with a chain. There is a look of complete despair on her face. People in the crowd are crying. Others cannot even watch. The referee respectfully cuts the first lock of hair. Dump gleefully follows with the electric razor.

Eventually Chigusa closes her eyes and lets it happen. Her fighting spirit is finally extinguished. The match is over, evil has won, the hearts of children are crushed.

On paper he should not. Wrestling has produced plenty of undersized, skinny fighters whose physiques register as awkward or incomplete next to larger athletes. Aoki somehow has the opposite effect. The narrow frame, the long limbs, the almost fragile proportions all make him look tougher. Nothing about him looks optimized for spectacle, which somehow makes him more compelling to watch.

The match opens exactly in that spirit. Aoki immediately drags MAO into a submission and starts manipulating his arms. MAO reverses and turns the position into a choke of his own. Neither man appears remotely concerned. Nobody is selling pain. Nobody is scrambling. This is the classic shoot-style opening where two competitors are simply gathering information.

That is one of the things I enjoy most about submission wrestling when it is done well. The holds create a natural rhythm. A submission leads to a reversal, the reversal creates an opening, somebody threatens a pin, the pin attempt creates another escape. The match keeps moving forward without needing strikes or dramatic escalation. It feels less like combat and more like debate.

The contrast between the two wrestlers develops quickly. MAO fights with this slightly cruel smile that never fully leaves his face. Aoki looks permanently focused, almost grim. Even physically they seem built for different matches. Aoki’s long limbs become a constant advantage. Everything about him feels slippery. His arms and legs seem difficult to secure cleanly because there is always another angle available.

One thing I always find interesting about DDT is how serious its biggest matches often are. The promotion’s reputation is built almost entirely on comedy. People remember blow-up dolls and absurd stipulations. Then you watch the major tournaments and title matches and discover a company that often presents its most important contests with total sincerity.

The best example arrives when the match spills outside. Both men grab chairs. For a moment it feels like every wrestling brawl ever. They square off, weapons in hand, ready for the inevitable exchange then they stop and smile. They shake hands and put the chairs down and calmly return to the ring.

It is a wonderful little subversion because it works entirely through mutual respect. Most wrestling treats weapons as an irresistible temptation. Here both men essentially agree they would rather continue proving who is better.

The middle portion becomes a fascinating submission battle. MAO repeatedly tries to lock Aoki down while Aoki avoids him through tiny adjustments. There is one stretch where Aoki keeps taking these little dance steps around him, never quite escaping contact but never allowing MAO to fully establish control either. It feels almost playful despite how competitive it is.

Eventually the striking arrives. MAO clearly has the advantage there. He wins the exchange and forces the match into a faster pace, but even that does not last long. Aoki immediately drags the fight back into grappling. As the submissions become more intense, MAO starts looking genuinely uncomfortable. The holds no longer feel exploratory. They feel punishing.

What makes the dynamic so compelling is how the two men keep trying to pull the match toward their preferred version of wrestling. MAO wants space. He wants strikes. He wants momentum and movement whereas Aoki wants contact.

At one point MAO climbs to the top rope looking for a big aerial attack. Aoki immediately cuts him off and drags him into another submission. It feels like the entire match condensed into a single moment. MAO attempts to transform the contest into traditional professional wrestling and Aoki simply refuses to allow it.

The respect never disappears even as the intensity rises. Late in the match the two men slap hands before engaging again. They enter grappling stances but MAO immediately starts throwing strikes, slaps, punches, kicks, a running knee. Aoki suddenly finds himself in trouble.

There is even a brief moment where kicks get blocked and I remain convinced blocking should happen far more often in professional wrestling than it does. Every successful defense makes an attack feel more meaningful.

The finishing stretch is excellent. Aoki launches himself through the ropes on a tope. Moments later he comes off the top rope with a flying knee. The match gradually abandons the clean separation between shoot-style grappling and professional wrestling spectacle. By the end both men are using whatever tools remain available.

The final submission is particularly nasty. Aoki traps MAO and every attempted escape seems to make things worse. Each movement creates another point of pressure. Every adjustment gives Aoki something new to attack. MAO eventually reaches the ropes, but the effort has clearly drained him. Aoki finally puts him away with a quick, earned pin.

The finish feels right because neither man is framed as having been broken. They are simply exhausted. After everything they immediately return to the tone that defined the match from the beginning. Respect. Handshakes. Mutual recognition.

I keep returning my thoughts back to how positive the entire match feels. Modern wrestling often treats competition as something fueled by hatred. Here the tension comes from two men honestly trying to prove whose approach works better. Submission wrestling versus striking. Shoot-style logic versus professional wrestling spectacle. Neither side is mocked and neither side is dismissed. They spend twenty minutes testing ideas against each other. Aoki just happens to have the better answer on this night.

There are wrestlers who become frozen in your mind. TAKA Michinoku is one of those for me. I first encountered him through old tape trading recommendations, then later through WWF, then through a hundred different phases of wrestling fandom. Every few years he reappears somewhere unexpected and I find myself watching him again. Now here he is in 2026 wrestling Josh Crane in Indianapolis.

I lived in Indianapolis for a couple years after moving from the East Coast in 2005. It was one of the first places that felt genuinely different to me. Not dramatically different, just regional in a way that seems harder to find now. Watching this crowd brought some of that feeling back. They are loud, engaged, and fully invested in both wrestlers from the opening bell. A proper midwestern crowd cheering for both performers to do great instead of lusty east coast CZW crowd screaming for one to be impaled.

Crane enters carrying what feels like half the championships in the Midwest. I am always a sucker for a belt collector. There is something reassuringly territorial about a wrestler showing up with titles from promotions most people have never heard of. The belts are laid out in the ring and announced one by one, immediately establishing Crane as somebody important.

The match starts well. Crane wrestles like a bruiser despite not being especially large. His tackles have force behind them and an early submission looks genuinely nasty. TAKA immediately responds by slapping away an offered handshake and settling into the role of veteran heel.

The thing I love most in this match is how hard TAKA still hits. For whatever reason I still picture him as the junior heavyweight flying around in the nineties, but that is not really who he is anymore. The movement is economical now. The offense is heavier. The chops are violent. The kicks are violent. Even small exchanges carry a little extra malice.

There is a nice moment where both men are trading chops and TAKA simply blocks one to end the exchange. Wrestling often falls into patterns and this stood out because it felt like an actual decision. He had enough and moved on.

The problem here is that the match never quite develops momentum. Nothing is bad. In fact almost everything is good. The crowd stays involved. Crane performs well. TAKA performs well. The individual sequences work. Yet the middle portion keeps resetting itself. The match never finds a strong narrative current pulling everything forward. I kept waiting for a section that would define what the match was really about, instead it gradually becomes a story of survival.

TAKA begins attacking submissions with increasing urgency and Crane spends the final stretch escaping. Rope break after rope break. Small bursts of offense followed by more punishment. A particularly nasty double stomp to the face feels less like an escalation than a veteran deciding he is tired of waiting.

Those closing minutes are probably the strongest part of the match because they finally provide a sense of direction. Crane is no longer trying to outwrestle TAKA. He is trying to endure him.

The eventual time limit draw works for that reason. I usually dislike draws but this one feels earned. Crane survives rather than triumphs. The match left me with a strange reaction. I enjoyed it. I would recommend it. Both wrestlers are clearly talented and TAKA remains fascinating to watch all these years later.

At the same time I kept feeling like there was a better match hidden inside it somewhere. The performances are stronger than the structure surrounding them. TAKA gives you plenty of reasons to remember him. Crane continues to look like somebody improving into a genuinely notable independent wrestler. The match itself just never quite finds the shape that either man seems capable of filling.

The match being no count out immediately seems to favor Rush. He is a brawler by nature and the lack of count outs creates endless opportunities for chaos. It should also create opportunities for MJF to cheat. We talked recently about how the Darby match felt like a turning point because MJF chose not to cheat when he easily could have. Watching this, I found myself wondering whether that would hold.

Rush enters on a nine match winning streak, though AEW’s handling of him continues to frustrate me. Most of those wins came against enhancement talent. Rush is one of the most physically compelling wrestlers on the roster. He should be having meaningful fights, not padding statistics. Why is Ace Austin getting competitive showcases while Rush spends months flattening people who never had a chance?

They open with forearms before MJF immediately spits in Rush’s face. It is a perfect MJF moment. Petty, disrespectful, needlessly antagonistic. He follows it with mocking bull horns and DX crotch chops. Rush responds exactly as Rush always does: with violence.

Within minutes he is choking MJF with a television cable and somehow avoiding disqualification. The match spills outside almost immediately and stays there for long stretches. Rush launches MJF with a huge back body drop over the barricade and begins working the crowd. Early on he is already sweating heavily, giving him that strange athletic sheen where every movement looks more explosive simply because the body appears to be working so hard.

Rush removes a turnbuckle pad. That becomes important because he is clearly the aggressor throughout much of the match. He is the one cheating. He is the one escalating. MJF even falls into his familiar pleading routine at one point only for Rush to respond with another brutal strike. Nobody hits quite like Rush. His elbows always seem louder than everyone else’s.

Eventually MJF sends Rush into the exposed steel. It is one of wrestling’s oldest babyface tricks. The heel prepares a shortcut and the hero simply redirects it back at him. MJF gets the advantage without sacrificing his own moral position. By this point Rush is bleeding. Blood mixes with sweat and begins running down his arms. The visual fits him perfectly. He has always looked most comfortable when he appears slightly out of control.

MJF meanwhile continues proving that his greatest strength may still be his face. Excalibur describes one expression as a disdainful sneer and it is exactly right. Few wrestlers communicate as much through tiny reactions.

Rush eventually drives MJF into the steel as well and the match settles into a rougher rhythm. At one point Rush licks blood from his hand before launching back into the fight. There is something oddly familiar about him here. Not in style necessarily, but in energy. The constant movement, the aggression, the sense that every exchange might become a brawl. At moments he reminds me of Steve Austin.

The middle portion revolves around damage accumulating. MJF traps Rush in Salt of the Earth, but Rush manages to reverse into a pin attempt. Rush lands a vicious-looking headbutt. He begins favoring his arm. MJF starts selling a leg. Both men are hurt and both men commit to it, though the injuries never quite connect into a single coherent narrative.

The best spot of the match comes when Rush launches himself for a huge dropkick. MJF escapes and Rush absolutely destroys the barricade. The violence of it is startling. A few moments later MJF answers with a tombstone onto the broken barricade.

What stood out most to me, though, was MJF’s discipline. Throughout the match he keeps trying to win by setting up the Heat Seeker and the Salt of the Earth armbar. The things that define him. Older versions of MJF would have looked for shortcuts. Here he repeatedly returns to wrestling. Even when the match environment invites cheating he never seems particularly interested in it. He wants to beat Rush himself.

The ending reinforces that idea. Rush climbs to the top rope looking exhausted and desperate. He misses. MJF immediately returns to the armbar. Rush refuses to tap. Instead he defiantly flips MJF off before finally passing out. It is a great piece of defensive character work from Rush. He loses but does not surrender, and Max wins clean again.

What interested me most afterward was not that MJF won. It was how he won. He never really considered cheating. He never appeared tempted by it. He kept pursuing the same path over and over, trying to impose his own wrestling identity onto the match until eventually it worked. For a wrestler whose entire career has been built on finding shortcuts, that feels significant.

Thatcher enters immediately in that familiar mode: quiet and unsettlingly confident. He goes after fingers and wrists early, isolating small structures rather than chasing anything cinematic. Ciampa responds with a strange calm, smiling through the pressure in a way that reads less like confidence and more like psycho killer. He has been here before in different forms. Thatcher does not react to the smile. He simply continues, flowing from joint manipulation into an ankle lock that forces Ciampa to break and reset.

What stands out early is how decisively Thatcher dictates the terms of exchange. Even when Ciampa attempts to assert offense, Thatcher is already dismantling it at the level of mechanics. Holds are not just applied, they are revised in real time. A submission becomes another submission before the first one is even fully escaped. Ciampa tries to reverse into something of his own and finds it calmly stripped apart until he is once again in defensive position, forced to reenter Thatcher’s structure.

Thatcher has a particular physical presence that feels slightly displaced in time. He carries himself like a nineteenth century boxer filtered through modern grappling logic. Hands low, posture forward, movement economical but heavy with intent. It creates a kind of visual contradiction where the match feels both contemporary and archaic, like something built from older assumptions about how bodies are supposed to be controlled.

There is a limitation here that becomes noticeable in the presentation. The camera work, typical of smaller independent setups, cannot always capture the micro adjustments that define Thatcher’s offense. The match is happening in the hands and wrists, in pressure changes that are hard to translate without multiple angles. The result is that some of the most important work is partially implied rather than fully shown. Still, the logic of it remains readable even when the detail is obscured.

Ciampa eventually shifts the tone with a running knee that sends Thatcher to the outside. It is the first moment where impact replaces chess match like submissions, where the match leaves Thatcher’s preferred geometry. Ciampa follows with another shot against the barrier and a sharp slap that feels not like fighting strategy but more emotional reorientation, the fight will be fought his way now. At that point the match tilts, even if only temporarily, into Ciampa’s preferred language of violence.

There is a stretch where Thatcher runs the ring to build momentum for a knee strike, but the space itself refuses to cooperate. The ring is too small, too constrained for speed to fully materialize. Ciampa sells it by necessity more than by choreography, but he commits to the awkwardness and the moment works because of that commitment.

Once Ciampa establishes offense, Thatcher’s selling becomes unusually revealing. He does not collapse in dramatic fashion. Instead there is a kind of exhausted recalibration in the way he moves, as if each response is slightly more expensive than the last. His comeback attempts arrive not as momentum shifts but as last available options. A takedown, a submission, something applied out of necessity rather than ambition. Even when he breaks holds, the release reads like pressure leaving a system that is still structurally compromised.

Ciampa’s control phase is grounded in frustration rather than elegance. He begins going for pins more frequently, not as calculated strategies but as expressions of impatience. The match structure holds because both men are locked into opposing logics. Thatcher continues to prioritize control through submission, Ciampa increasingly defaults to striking and force. When they deviate from those roles, it is usually because exhaustion has forced the deviation rather than any planned escalation.

Rope breaks are used cleanly and quickly throughout, almost like procedural resets rather than dramatic escapes. There is very little indulgence in them. They function as rules being acknowledged rather than emotional moments being stretched.

A European uppercut from Thatcher briefly reasserts his presence, sharp enough to interrupt Ciampa’s frustration. But Ciampa responds with renewed aggression, slaps building into something less technical and more punitive. Thatcher eventually answers with a headbutt that lands with a stark simplicity, cutting through the exchange and creating the opening for the finish.

The ending arrives without embellishment. Thatcher secures control, Ciampa’s resistance collapses, and the match resolves in a way that feels consistent with everything that preceded it. No shift in tone, no sudden expansion of drama, just the logical endpoint of sustained pressure meeting accumulated damage.

What lingers is not a single moment but the way both wrestlers maintained coherence under very different systems. Ciampa operates through bursts of force and frustration, Thatcher through continuous mechanical control. Neither fully breaks the other’s logic. Instead the match becomes a sustained negotiation between those two approaches, shaped as much by exhaustion as by intent.

Mickie completely owns the building before the match even properly starts. She works the crowd like the pro vet she is. She yells at people individually. She reacts to stray comments. She mutters to herself. There are long stretches in this match where relatively little is happening structurally and yet the thing never feels empty because Mickie is constantly filling dead air with agitation. You can feel her anger bouncing around the room looking for somewhere to land.

Then the bell rings and she immediately starts cracking Deonna Purrazzo across the face with these mean little smacks that look substantially nastier than a lot of bigger offense in modern wrestling. Mickie innately understands that ugly violence often registers more honestly than spectacular violence. The crowd reacts to the slaps more viscerally than they probably would to a choreographed strike exchange three times as elaborate.

At one point Mickie also appears to have an axe. Wrestling has a unique relationship with implied rules where the existence of a weapon matters more than whether anybody meaningfully enforces consequences around it. Why does she have this axe? Is she allowed to use it? It does not actually matter because it disappears and is never seen again, laughing in the face of Chekhov and his rules for weaponry.

What makes the match especially interesting is that Mickie keeps intermittently proving she can absolutely out wrestle people when she wants to. There is a really strong sequence where she starts chaining together reversals into a nasty arm submission and then screams toward the crowd “see I can wrestle!” Fuck yeah you can, Mickie. Technical proficiency almost feels beneath her interests most of the time. Here though she briefly reminds everyone that underneath the chaos is somebody with actual wrestling substance.

Purrazzo is good throughout this, technically very sharp, but the emotional structure of the match entirely revolves around reacting to Mickie. Deonna’s holds matter because Mickie sells them like personal insults. Her strikes matter because Mickie responds like somebody trying not to completely lose emotional control in public. Even Deonna’s composure starts feeling partially defined by proximity to Mickie’s volatility.

Outside the ring Mickie does this tremendous stooging routine where she sells an injury like she has been shot. There is a worn, irritated quality to the way she crawls and drags herself upright, as if the act of being broken down is familiar enough to be offensive rather than surprising.

The announcers spend a surprising amount of time emphasizing the danger of Deonna’s armbar and that eventually becomes the match’s central tension. Deonna works methodically while Mickie keeps emotionally overextending herself. Mickie lets the crowd get to her constantly. Every time she pauses to scream at somebody or peacock after landing offense you can feel the match drifting slightly further away from control.

A Dusty Rhodes comparison kept lingering for me throughout this. Mickie hits a move and immediately starts strutting around the ring like the move itself barely mattered compared to the emotional statement attached to it. The offense is secondary to the performance of attitude. She wrestles with grievance but also a showy panache. The actual holds and strikes almost feel like punctuation around her emotional state which varies widely between overconfidence and anger at the world.

There is one moment where she charges on all fours into a headbutt that feels less like a wrestling spot and more like somebody briefly becoming feral in front of a paying audience. Mickie has always been unusually good at making herself look emotionally unbeautiful in wrestling environments that often encourage performers to protect their coolness at all costs.

Late in the match Deonna reverses a pump handle attempt into the armbar and the transition happens fast enough that it briefly feels accidental. Mickie’s selling there is incredible because she does not merely communicate pain. She communicates humiliation. She cannot stand the possibility of losing in front of these people she so clearly despises.

The finish comes almost abruptly afterward. Mickie misses a bottom rope senton and immediately gets trapped in the armbar for the submission. There is something perfect about the suddenness of it. No dramatic closing stretch. No grand heroic resistance. Just one mistake and then defeat arriving instantly afterward.

That ending felt true to the entire emotional architecture of the match. Mickie wrestles like somebody permanently at war with the room around her. Not in the theatrical antihero sense modern wrestling often gravitates toward either. She genuinely seems irritated by the audience, irritated by the match, irritated by her own body occasionally betraying her. The remarkable thing is how much life that irritation gives everything.

A lot of wrestlers try to create intensity through speed or escalation. Mickie creates intensity by making every second feel emotionally unstable. Even standing still she gives the impression that something embarrassing or violent could suddenly happen.

Laredo Kid enters to deliciously generic sounding 1980s guitar music, the kind of shredding arena rock that feels AI generated specifically to soundtrack “cool wrestler entrance 1987.” It rules. Wrestling entrance music does not need subtlety. It needs immediate emotional information and this tells you instantly that somebody rad is about to do kicks.

And to his credit Laredo looks fantastic physically right away. Sharp kicks, smooth movement, great posture. Both men are great athletes and the opening stretch reminds you how naturally lucha can create visual momentum even before anything meaningful happens structurally. There is one bottom rope flip from Laredo that is genuinely breathtaking mostly because of how little space he has to execute it. It feels like watching somebody perform a Bruce Lee style one inch punch with pure body control.

The problem is that almost everything impressive here exists in isolation. There is an interesting moment where Laredo applies a Texas Cloverleaf from the top turnbuckle, but Fenix stretches himself so dramatically into position to help set it up that the illusion collapses completely. That becomes the match’s central issue. Almost every ambitious sequence arrives already exposing the cooperation required to perform it.

The structure does not help either. The first third is almost entirely Laredo controlling the match while Fenix barely gets anything before the comeback begins. It creates an emotional flatness where there is no natural momentum carrying us from section to section. Things simply happen because the next sequence is scheduled to happen.

Which is frustrating because Fenix remains capable of moments of brilliance. At one point he launches himself on a plancha with such absurd height that he seems briefly suspended outside gravity. A frog splash afterward hangs in the air long enough to remind you this man is still one of wrestling’s great physical talents even if the match around him keeps betraying that talent.

There is another exchange involving DDT counters and reversals that is clearly intended as a major escalation point but mostly just looks exhausting to cooperate through. Everything becomes too acrobatic, too visibly dependent on mutual timing rather than struggle. Then seconds later Fenix throws a spinning high kick that looks vicious and immediate and suddenly I found myself wondering why he does not just fight more aggressively. His strikes often look more convincing than his elaborate setups.

A clever detail appears when Fenix catches Laredo attempting a low blow by literally reaching down and intercepting the hand mid-motion. I do not think I have seen that exact counter before and it gives the moment a nice specificity, especially with commentary referencing previous interactions between them.

But the match keeps drifting back toward empty escalation. Fenix starts using muscle busters repeatedly and honestly does not look particularly good delivering them. Laredo kicks out, the crowd reacts huge, and I mostly felt disconnected from it. Sometimes a live crowd and a viewer simply experience different matches.

Then Laredo lands a low blow and Rey Mysterio on commentary gives this attempted excitement of “what?” that sounds more strained than surprised, like watching a child do a magic trick and offering half-hearted amazement. It was maybe the most human moment in the entire match.

Fenix eventually wins with another muscle buster and the strongest feeling the ending produces is relief. What bummed me out most is that both wrestlers are clearly talented enough to have had something memorable here. You can see flashes of brilliance constantly. Beautiful movement. Incredible athleticism. Clever little details. But none of it accumulates into anything emotionally coherent. The match is a series of spots. The best moments are the transitions when exciting bits of wrestling improvisation happen. It never develops an internal logic or escalating emotional reality. It just continues presenting increasingly difficult things to execute until eventually somebody wins.

Tobita enters with this wonderful grappling stance, hands high, cautious and technical, while Azteca circles him as dramatic music plays over the match. Tobita looks prepared for a fight. Azteca looks prepared for some entirely different ritual.

The opening seconds establish the rhythm. Azteca lunges forward and Tobita avoids him almost like a matador sidestepping a charging bull. It is graceful for a moment and then immediately ugly again once the kendo stick starts landing. Tobita goes down hard very early and already begins selling every strike like bodily catastrophe.

What makes Azteca interesting to me is that his movement contains two contradictory languages. When he circles holding the stick he adopts what looks like an actual practiced swordsman’s stance. Controlled feet, measured distance, deliberate posture. Then the instant he attacks he swings wildly like somebody who has never actually hit another person with a kendo stick before in his life. Not enraged exactly. Just suddenly clumsy and impulsive. It gives the violence an odd unpredictability.

Tobita meanwhile approaches every moment with absolute sincerity. That is always what makes these matches work. Lesser wrestlers would play this material for parody or camp. Tobita reacts to everything with complete physical conviction. Even tiny taps seem to rattle his nervous system.

The match drifts out into the crowd for a rough little brawl where Tobita starts firing elbows while Azteca increasingly abandons the weapon altogether in favor of punches and kicks. There is a long stretch of circling and testing afterward that probably goes on slightly too long but also contributes to the strange atmosphere. The match often feels less interested in action than in tension between action.

A moment of high drama comes: Tobita catches the kendo stick mid-swing and for a split second seems to have bettered his opponent. Azteca immediately punches him directly in the face, takes the stick back, and kicks him while he is down. It is such a stupidly practical response that it becomes perfect.

Tobita takes control back in the finish as he strips away one of the mats beneath Azteca, hits him with it, lands a quick slam, and wins almost before the match fully settles into itself. In terms of pure Survival Tobita weirdness this is probably a relatively restrained outing. It is mostly just a strange little fight between a grappler and a masked man with a stick.

But Tobita’s particular gift is making even minor absurdity feel enormous. He wrestles every situation with such emotional seriousness that the match simultaneously plays like avant-garde comedy and genuine heroic struggle. Half the time it feels like he wandered accidentally into somebody else’s dream and decided the only solution was to fight his way through it.

Hogan comes out to “Eye of the Tiger” and the crowd completely loses its mind. It is funny watching this now because so much of the match exists in a pre-lawsuit universe. They call him “The Incredible Hulk” constantly. They are openly using a song from Rocky III they surely didn’t pay for. It all feels pulled together from pure cultural instinct before corporations fully understood how aggressively they could monetize ownership. Today lawyers are arguing whether four consecutive notes constitute copyright infringement. Here wrestling simply grabs whatever mythology feels largest and absorbs it immediately.

It is striking watching this match carefully that despite being young Hogan still feels already fully Hulk Hogan. The poses are there. The giant boots and exaggerated offense are there. The cadence is there. But the repetition has not calcified yet. There is still visible enthusiasm in the performance. His movement has more bounce to it. He looks less like somebody executing ritual and more like somebody thrilled the ritual is working.

And good lord does it work. Hogan in 1983 looks like an absolute freak. His upper body looks swollen beyond practicality, almost disturbing in scale. Like a side show freak. There is a moment early where I thought if this were 1983 I probably would have paid admission simply to watch him remove the shirt. Hogan’s entire existence here feels impossible enough to justify the ticket before the bell even rings.

Bockwinkel understands immediately that the correct response to this monster is cowardice. He starts the match by bailing from the ring like a man trying to delay an execution. The announcers repeatedly remind us Bobby Heenan may become a factor later and it creates this wonderful old territory rhythm where the match is never just the match. There is always management, interference, politics hovering around the edges. Wrestling as ecosystem rather than isolated contest. An interesting contrast, as the announcers are both trying to give us absolutely serious Howard Cosell-style coverage while reminding us that the serious world they are crafting is woven with fantasy.

The actual offense is incredibly simple. Bockwinkel throws knees, punches, headbutts. Hogan throws shoulders, boots, slams. Yet the match never feels empty because both men understand how to create emotional scale without relying on constant escalation. Modern wrestling often treats quantity of action as equivalent to drama. This feels gigantic with remarkably little happening.

Bockwinkel especially carries enormous responsibility here and completely rises to it. Hogan’s offense is honestly not very convincing physically. His strikes often look soft, especially compared to Bockwinkel’s nasty-looking knees. There is a moment where Bock lands a brutal knee and Hogan later returns the favor with one that looks like it belongs in a rehearsal. But Bockwinkel sells with such rich theatricality that it barely matters. Every Hogan punch seems spiritually devastating because Bock reacts like he has been struck by a god.

There is a strong section where Bockwinkel mounts a comeback despite clearly being the heel and I found myself rooting for him anyway. He staggers around half-conscious throwing desperate punches and suddenly the match briefly transforms into Greek tragedy. That is one of wrestling’s oldest pleasures: a great heel can accidentally become sympathetic simply through endurance.

Another lovely detail is Bockwinkel doing the original “I have until five” routine during a submission sequence. Watching older wrestling increasingly feels like tracing evolutionary history. Tiny behaviors that became genre language first appearing in rougher forms decades earlier.

At one point Bockwinkel drops onto all fours and starts ramming his head into Hogan like some feral animal. It rules. The match constantly threatens to become ridiculous without ever quite losing credibility. That balancing act is harder than modern wrestling tends to realize.

The sleeper hold section is the emotional peak. Bockwinkel clinging to Hogan’s back trying to drag down this giant swollen superhero. It feels less like a wrestling hold and more like somebody trying to drown a mythological creature. Hogan eventually escapes, the referee gets bumped, and suddenly the match enters pure territorial chaos.

Hogan throws Bockwinkel over the top rope, pins him, the crowd explodes, and then Mean Gene arrives to inform everyone Hogan has actually been disqualified for tossing Bockwinkel over the rope. It is objectively a dumb finish and yet the audience reaction almost justifies it anyway because they become absolutely furious. The lust boos and absolute fury are a more raw emotional reaction than a few moments earlier when they thought the Hulkster had won the title.

New South consistently looks better than many American independents. The ring setup is sharp, the referees and announcers are pros, the crowds are engaged without becoming obnoxious, and the camera work here is impressive. The cameraman moves with the wrestlers in a way that could easily feel amateurish or distracting but instead creates kinetic, immersive instability, like you are circling the fight with them instead of merely observing it from safety.

The match is for the IWTV Championship, which remains one of the smarter ideas modern independent wrestling has produced. A traveling title defended across promotions feels perfect for the fragmented streaming era of wrestling. The lineage helps too: Wheeler Yuta, Orange Cassidy, Jonathan Gresham, Alex Shelley. It feels less like a company championship and more like a belt representing a particular ecosystem of wrestling obsessives on an obscure streaming platform.

Jameson Shook is somebody I have seen on some ACTION shows without ever really sitting down to study closely. His presentation reflects his relatively young age. He’s a younger wrestler still figuring out how to fully inhabit himself. There are moments where he looks natural and dangerous and others where he visibly seems to be searching for the next beat. The raw material is clearly there though. He understands crowd interaction well and carries himself with confidence even when the match occasionally outruns him.

Shook offers a moment of real brilliance. He picks up a toolbox to drop onto Mance and it bursts open, spilling tools onto his head in a moment of pure cartoon heel comedy. It reminds me of the stories Bryan Danielson tells where he would accidentally punch himself in the balls at British holiday camp shows. Wrestling occasionally benefits from little moments of unintended stupidity as long as the performers understand how to absorb them into the world of the match.

The announcers tell us that Mance requested this be a hardcore match. The hardcore stipulation creates an interesting problem almost immediately because the venue itself seems fundamentally opposed to hardcore wrestling. Mance smashes Shook with a chair right away but there is this unspoken understanding that nobody is about to start spraying blood across the conference center carpeting. You can feel the limitations of the environment shaping the violence in real time. No light tubes or grotesque spectacle. Just men trying to force hardcore wrestling into a room that would probably prefer a regional sales meeting.

The strangest part of the match is that it gradually becomes about the wrestlers struggling to actually have the kind of hardcore match they seem to want. The environment keeps resisting them. At one point Mance literally picks up a small child to move him out of danger before a spot. That image almost perfectly summarizes the entire atmosphere. This is violence constrained by social boundaries. Maybe I am just a sicko for even speculating why this clearly family-friendly show lacks ultraviolence. You watch enough deathmatch wrestling and your mind becomes trained to think escalation is the only direction.

The submissions expose some of the remaining gap between the two wrestlers. Shook applies a figure four and cannot really make it look painful on his own, but Mance sells it beautifully, writhing and throwing desperate punches into empty space trying to escape. Veteran wrestlers can carry sections like this without drawing attention to the imbalance.

The match drags somewhat down the stretch. There is the usual deathmatch adjacent furniture construction sequence where everybody pauses while somebody assembles a painful object between chairs. Even here it is relatively modest, but those moments almost always puncture momentum because you stop watching violence and start watching arts and crafts.

The announcers deserve credit for holding the atmosphere together. They treat Mance like an important traveling champion rather than a guy wrestling in front of a modest crowd inside a conference room. Good commentary can scale a match upward emotionally even when the physical environment limits it.

The closing stretch nearly finds the right ending. Mance starts peppering Shook with brutal strikes and the match briefly tightens back up before outside interference arrives unnecessarily. More run-ins, more bodies, more chaos. Modern independent wrestling often seems afraid to simply let a match end once it has arrived at its natural conclusion.

Mance eventually wins after a short final exchange. He leaves feeling exactly how a traveling independent champion should feel: larger than the room itself. Shook is not fully formed yet but you can see the shape of something good emerging.

Then there is Volk Han, who remains aggressively ordinary looking. He does not project danger the way Vrij does. No huge physique, no theatrical menace, no visible intensity. He walks to the ring like somebody arriving to fix a printer. Even his pace feels subdued. Then the match starts and suddenly every part of his body becomes intelligent.

The entrances are incredible because they perfectly exaggerate this contrast. Han gets this dramatic almost ghostly presentation with green lighting and sweeping music, then emerges looking like a middle aged man who owns several practical jackets. Vrij meanwhile enters to “O Fortuna” layered over what sounds like 1990s nightclub percussion and somehow completely earns it.

The opening exchange sets the tone. Han immediately knocks Vrij down and begins attacking a submission. What stands out is how differently Vrij reacts compared to most Han opponents I have seen. Usually there is this feeling of procedural counter wrestling, subtle positioning battles, people trying to solve the hold correctly. Vrij reacts like a trapped animal. His entire body shakes trying to break free. At one point Han has him by the ankle and it looks like somebody dangling from a helicopter trying not to lose grip.

Then Vrij reaches the ropes and suddenly one of the things I have slowly started loving about shoot style becomes clear. Rope breaks here do not function like dramatic salvation the way they do in professional wrestling. Nobody slowly crawls while the crowd claps in rhythm. The rope break is tactical surrender. Fighters recognizing reality. Han lets go immediately because he follows the rules. Vrij uses the escape intelligently and preserves himself.

Han throws this ridiculous tornado punch twice I have seen him try a few times in other matches and misses both, he always misses it. I have started noticing this recurring thing with him where once per match he attempts something that feels pro wrestling coded and it completely fails. I honestly cannot tell whether it is intentional commentary on the form, character detail, or some deeper artistic choice inside the structure of RINGS itself, but I love it every time. It is like Han briefly tries to inhabit another kind of wrestling and immediately rejects it.

Vrij’s low kicks are terrifying. Shoot style increasingly feels built around low kicks the way traditional wrestling is built around lock ups. They dictate movement, pacing and caution. They are often exchanged soflyt, testing an opponent. Vrij cracks Han with a brutal one and you can immediately understand why this giant terrifying Dutchman has had success just obliterating people physically.

What makes Han continually interesting to me is that even when hurt he never emotionally changes shape. Vrij drops him with a head kick and Han almost casually folds to the mat before instantly tying him up in another submission. There is no panic or revenge fueled striking exchange. Han reacts to danger the same way he reacts to everything else: by looking for leverage.

Watching him apply holds feels almost uncomfortable after a while because of how fluidly he keeps discovering additional layers of control. He will trap an ankle, then subtly reposition his hips, then hook a leg, then rotate a shoulder, and suddenly the entire submission has transformed into something nastier. It resembles sculpture more than combat sometimes. He seems to be both running down a mental checklist of submissions and inventing them at the same time.

The drama of the match increases as Vrij himself starts adapting psychologically. In other fights he often comes across like pure macho violence. He looks like someone who would consider a rope break an insult to his manhood but at one point he escapes a hold through a break with a grin on his face like he has solved something important. Seconds later he detonates a huge combination and knee strike that drops Han brutally. He thinks ahead, his violence is calculated.

Han’s response to getting knocked down helps me to continue understanding his complexities He gets angry, clearly angry, but the anger never changes his style. He does not start brawling or rushing. He simply shoots lower and faster on the next takedown attempt. His emotions only alter tempo.

There is another moment later where Han gets hurt and immediately drops to the mat rather than standing with Vrij. He practically beckons him downward. The inversion compared to normal wrestling is fascinating. Han never really “bumps.” He gets dropped by strikes but falls in this functional, often awkward way. No dramatic recoil or visible pain just gravity taking over briefly before the next tactical decision arrives.

One of the smartest sequences comes when Han traps Vrij while barely even appearing defensive. His hands are low, almost passive, inviting attack. Vrij commits harder because the opening appears real and Han instantly converts the aggression into a takedown.

The ending startled me because of how abrupt and emotionally unresolved it feels. Vrij knocks Han down hard with knees and kicks to the head. Han rises at eight looking damaged but completely composed. Then almost immediately Han scores the takedown, traps the ankle, and Vrij taps without hesitation. No dramatic struggle, no attempt at reversal, ,no doomed final resistance. Just acceptance he has been defeated.

Anthony Michaels, future Snot Dudley, is here playing victim for Prince Kharis and immediately looks like the exact kind of wrestler territory wrestling specialized in sacrificing to monsters. Skinny, frantic, constantly circling danger instead of confronting it directly. What fascinated me watching this though is how much less effective the mummy already feels compared to the original appearance.

The first match worked because Smoky Mountain committed fully to the premise. Prince Kharis was not a wrestler underneath mummy wrapping. He was treated as an actual ancient horror dragged somehow into a wrestling ring. Everything reinforced that illusion. The dust flying off his body when struck. The strange movement. The total lack of recognizable wrestling mechanics. Even the finish protected the gimmick by giving him a TKO instead of forcing him to execute a normal wrestling pinfall.

Here the audience already simply accepts him as part of the roster. Nobody really explains him anymore. There is just a mummy now. In theory that should help the illusion however it does the opposite. The less effort spent establishing the premise, the more visible the wrestling machinery underneath it becomes.

At first the match still holds together. Michaels circles him cautiously and immediately discovers he cannot move him at all. Kharis absorbs contact like a wall. The offense remains satisfyingly primitive too. The chokes are still great because they resemble actual monster movie violence more than wrestling holds. Kharis just grabs a throat and keeps squeezing forever while his opponent slowly deteriorates underneath him.

The best moments are still the simplest ones, little bursts where Kharis just shoves Michaels around with overwhelming strength. That is where the gimmick still feels uncanny. You stop seeing “worker performing monster” and briefly start seeing “thing that does not understand wrestling etiquette.”

But the seams show much faster now. Kharis moves more naturally. He bumps more conventionally. He throws recognizable offense including a pretty standard looking lariat. It is not bad exactly. The match itself is probably technically smoother than the debut. The problem is that every competent wrestling movement weakens the original illusion a little more.

The missing dust effect matters more than I expected too. That tiny visual detail did enormous work previously. Without it Kharis starts feeling less ancient and less physically strange. He no-sells almost everything here but oddly reacts to body blows, doubling over in a very normal professional wrestling way. Michaels lands a low blow and the whole internal logic collapses in on itself.

I am apparently fully invested enough in wrestling mummy realism now that my immediate thought was: he is a three-thousand-year-old dead pharaoh resurrected through dark magic, why would this hurt him at all? That is the danger with supernatural gimmicks. Once the audience starts taking the premise seriously, consistency matters enormously. The original match understood this perfectly. This one occasionally forgets.

The finish at least still protects the core concept. Kharis wins again via TKO rather than a pinfall and I appreciate the discipline there. A mummy hooking the leg for a clean technical cover would probably destroy the gimmick permanently.

Still, what hangs over the whole match is the feeling of a premise slowly becoming normalized by wrestling itself. Prince Kharis is beginning to understand how to work a crowd. He stooges a little. He pauses for reactions. He behaves less like an unknowable monster and more like a wrestler portraying one.

Strangely, that makes the whole thing feel less magical despite technically functioning better as a match. The original appearance felt impossible, like wrestling briefly sustaining an absurd idea through sheer commitment. This feels more like wrestling gradually sanding the rough edges off that impossibility until it can fit comfortably into an ordinary card.

One immediate dissonance with modern wrestling is how composed everything feels. Contemporary matches often confuse speed with intensity, but this builds intensity through patience and control. Satanico slips behind Gran Cochisse and, rather than exploding free, Cochisse has to slowly untangle himself. The instant he escapes, Satanico calmly threads him into a headscissors. Each movement creates a new complication. Every escape immediately becomes another trap.

Satanico’s body control is unbelievable throughout. Gran Cochisse seems to hold the physical advantages standing up because his base is lower and sturdier, but Satanico adjusts himself constantly with these tiny gymnastic shifts of leverage. There is a moment where Cochisse traps him in a sharpshooter and Satanico’s arms and upper body strength basically keep him elevated enough that he almost looks comfortable inside it, calmly rotating the position back into danger for Cochisse instead.

That is the thing this match understands. The submissions are not presented as mystical agony machines where a wrestler suddenly forgets how to function because somebody touched their ankle. Most of the holds here are dangerous because they remove options. When Satanico wins the first fall with the wrist lock, Cochisse is not screaming in pain. He simply recognizes he has reached a point where movement is no longer possible. It feels procedural instead of theatrical.

The opening stretch especially has this almost laboratory quality to it. They exchange rolling reversals and neither man even appears winded. Nobody is selling fatigue because they are not tired yet. They are professionals testing each other. The drops and throws are great for the same reason. Modern wrestling often treats every bump like near death. Here they get tossed, roll through it, stand back up because trained athletes know how to fall down without collapsing into existential despair.

Satanico also possesses one of wrestling’s hardest qualities to define, which is simply that he looks frightening. Not bodybuilder intimidating. Not action figure intimidating. He looks like a genuinely dangerous man who understands violence in practical terms. Big shoulders, thick arms, heavy movements. There is nothing ornamental about him.

I think part of why this connected with me so deeply is timing. Shoot style did not really click for me for years. I admired it intellectually more than emotionally. Then I watched those Volk Han matches and suddenly something rewired in my brain. Now I find myself watching hour long mat battles between men I had never heard of inside half empty dojo buildings and feeling more tension than I do during most major pay per views. The rhythms changed for me. The tiny adjustments became dramatic. Escapes started feeling more meaningful than giant moves.

You can feel that transition happening in real time while watching this match too because the emotional escalation is so restrained and gradual. Cochisse eventually gains control with a wrist lock and begins tossing Satanico around while continuing to target the arm and head. The violence remains measured but now there is irritation behind it. Little flashes of cruelty start appearing.

The second fall arrives quickly and elegantly. A fast reversal, Cochisse traps the legs, folds the body, sudden pin. Nothing elaborate. No giant crescendo announcing the finish. Just somebody finally getting caught.

What makes this version of lucha so compelling compared to a lot of contemporary lucha for me is the texture of struggle. Modern CMLL can sometimes feel almost abstract to me, dazzling but emotionally distant, bodies moving beautifully through preset rhythms. This feels more tactile. High stakes, intense pressure. It reminds me less of choreography and more of a clever debate.

When they do explode into movement it matters. Cochisse landing the dropkick that sends Satanico outside feels gigantic precisely because the match has spent so long conserving motion. The huge plancha afterward lands with real force because it violates the careful grounded logic the match has built for twenty minutes.

The crowd fully understands the match’s language. They are not reacting because somebody hit a spectacular sequence. They are reacting because they can see exhaustion accumulating. The holds are becoming sloppier. The strikes are landing meaner. These men who began the match as cool tacticians are slowly becoming desperate.

There is one incredible moment where Cochisse carries Satanico across his shoulders in position for any number of dramatic throws and instead very gently lowers him into a pin attempt. It almost feels absurdly modest compared to modern wrestling logic and yet it somehow creates more tension because it feels like something a tired person would actually think to try.

By the end both men finally look damaged. Satanico writhes after slams like an injured insect. Cochisse’s movements slow down. The precision remains but now it exists under visible physical deterioration.

The finish works because it returns entirely to the match’s central language. Satanico traps Gran Cochisse in a brutal triangle variation, pulling the arm to intensify the pressure until escape simply stops existing as an option. No dramatic screaming. No exaggerated suffering. Just the quiet realization that the body has nowhere left to go.

Darby Allin meanwhile has quietly become one of the defining wrestlers of this era. What fascinates me about this recent run is how suddenly consensus seemed to crystallize around him. One great story and suddenly people who spent years treating Darby as a reckless cult favorite are talking about him like an all-time great candidate. Sometimes careers change through gradual accumulation and sometimes one feud rearranges the entire emotional understanding of a wrestler almost overnight.

Early on Tony Schiavone says something important while discussing the hair stipulation. Max fears humiliation. The stakes for him are bodily and masculine in a more territorial way. He cannot tolerate the idea of this school shooter twink (his words) taking something from him physically. Hair matches have always operated partly on vanity but mostly on domination. Someone standing over you while removing part of your body against your will carries a strange intimate ugliness wrestling rarely acknowledges directly.

The match opens with side headlock takeovers, immediately calling back to earlier sections of their rivalry. I like that they trusted repetition here. Wrestling feuds used to build around recurring physical ideas and modern wrestling sometimes abandons those connective tissues too quickly.

Darby starts explosively, immediately firing off dropkicks and movement combinations, but MJF quickly spikes him on his head in a tope reversal and the entire match subtly changes tone afterward. MJF is structuring this match around strategic emotional pacing rather than escalation alone. The early slowness works because Max wrestles aware of long term energy conservation knowing Darby is already physically depleted. He is strategic and waiting for his moments.

That exhaustion hangs over everything. Darby has defended the title constantly for weeks and he wrestles here like somebody held together by adrenaline and athletic memory more than actual physical stability. Every movement appears costly. Every landing feels cumulative.

The Coffin Drop remains one of the few modern wrestling finishers that still genuinely unsettles me a little. There is something horribly final about the crossed arms. Most dives allow visible mechanisms of self-protection but the Coffin Drop removes even the illusion of safety. When Darby misses and crashes directly onto the floor the impact seems to vibrate through his teeth and spine simultaneously.

There is also an interesting inversion midway through the match where Darby low blows MJF before Max has cheated at all. The old wrestling moral structure briefly flips inside out. Darby understands he may not survive this match physically without abandoning principle first.

The weakest section arrives during the collaborative rolling pin reversals and some over-orchestrated exchanges in the middle stretch. The match briefly loses its sense of bodily damage and starts visibly assembling spots instead of violence. It recovers quickly, but the contrast stands out because so much of the rest of the match feels grounded in physical deterioration.

Darby’s Scorpion Deathlock still does not really work for me visually. He never fully creates the illusion of unbearable pressure. Yet I love the tactical wrinkle where he repeatedly transitions directly from failed submissions into immediate Coffin Drops off the nearest turnbuckle. Darby repeatedly uses combos like this- he also does a series of quick slaps and a roll back in a way that feel more like a fighter with a moves that works for him then a wrestler doing his rehearsed spots.

Late in the match MJF traps Darby in the barber chair while obsessively reaching for the razor. What works there is not the threat itself but Max visibly losing focus. Earlier he wrestled carefully and methodically. Now obsession starts overtaking strategy. Meanwhile Darby’s selling becomes increasingly disorienting rather than merely painful. He looks around the arena, briefly unsure where he is.

One of the pleasures of genuinely great wrestling is how effectively it manipulates visual inevitability. The entire night the scaffolding sat there in the background and I registered it purely as set decoration. Even when the table appeared underneath it I somehow still did not fully process what was coming because the match had drawn me so deeply into immediate physical survival rather than stunt anticipation. Then suddenly Darby begins climbing and like a great story the next beats always feel investable but somehow surprising.

In a nod to Mick Foley who MJF had low blowed earlier in the night he throws up the Bang Bang hand gesture and launches himself through MJF and a table below. The framing of the shot almost resembles religious artwork, both men backlit while suspended above destruction. Taz spends much of the match defending MJF while Schiavone criticizes him, but after Max survives a brutal Coffin Drop both commentators briefly converge around the same conclusion: whatever else MJF is, he has the heart of a champion.

Darby eventually loses the Scorpion Deathlock in the same way he once lost to Sammy Guevara, clutching at his head and collapsing almost neurologically rather than physically. It is one of the few storytelling choices here I am less convinced by because the rest of the match so carefully establishes exhaustion through accumulated bodily damage rather than sudden neurological shutdown.

The ending itself lands beautifully. Earlier MJF screamed “side headlock takeover” mockingly while losing emotional control, allowing Darby to counter him. But after finally fully wearing Darby down with a top rope piledriver, Max finishes him not with spectacle but with another side headlock takeover. Suddenly the move that once felt almost dismissively basic becomes horrifying because Darby’s body no longer functions well enough to resist it. He folds downward like wet fabric.

What matters most is that MJF wins clean.No Dynamite Diamond Ring. No shortcut. No desperate external crutch. Yesterday I wrote that the tragedy of MJF has always been that he cheats even when he probably does not need to. For once he finally trusted himself enough not to. Writing this in 2026, that may honestly be the biggest character development of his entire career.

Watching early MJF footage shows not how different he is from today but how shockingly identical he already is. Same cadence. Same facial expressions. Same rhythm when working a crowd. Same sense that he simultaneously despises the audience and desperately needs their attention. He comes through the tiny CZW entranceway with exactly the same self-assurance he now carries into arenas. Watching him in this environment almost turns him into a measuring device for wrestling spaces themselves. Because he has remained so fundamentally consistent, the contrast between independent halls and giant television production becomes more visible.

The backstory here is surprisingly intricate for late-era CZW. MJF earned the title shot through a Combat Zone Rumble while commentary spends the early portions of the match explaining his undefeated streak, his constant cheating, and some heel attorney angle that feels deeply of this specific independent wrestling era where every promotion briefly wanted interconnected sports entertainment lore.

Rickey Shane Page enters as champion promising not to rely on his deathmatch background and instead outwrestle MJF. The problem is that Page never fully convinces as either a dangerous deathmatch figure or a superior technical veteran. The match keeps telling us he is both physically imposing and cagey but he moves with a sluggishness that drains some urgency from the role.

The opening stretch is all slow wristlocks and reversals. You can clearly see MJF is still early in development. There is a slight hesitation to some of the transitions, tiny pauses where modern MJF would already instinctively know how to bridge one beat into another. What becomes interesting is realizing how little of his greatness actually depends on athletic innovation. Even here, years away from becoming genuinely polished, he already understands movement and presence better than most wrestlers.

He especially understands retreat. Few modern wrestlers use leaving the ring as effectively as MJF. He slows matches down without killing them because his body language remains active the entire time. The annoyed pacing. The nervous stalling. The way he visibly talks himself back into confrontation. He turns cowardice into character progression rather than downtime.

There is a deeply CZW moment where Page drags MJF around ringside allowing audience members to slap him across the chest. It culminates with a giant man in a Bullet Club shirt delivering a huge chop before a small child takes a turn immediately afterward. That sequence honestly captures post boom CZW better than anything else in the match. The audience is not merely watching. They are partially responsible for the texture of the violence. Yet unlike older hostile crowd participation, the fans here almost seem nicer about it. The atmosphere is participatory without feeling truly dangerous anymore, which perhaps says everything about what CZW had become by 2018.

Commentary does tremendous work throughout. They frame MJF exactly correctly, not as a coward incapable of wrestling but as someone emotionally incapable of trusting his own talent. That remains the most compelling thing about the character all these years later. He does not cheat because he lacks ability. He cheats because he fundamentally cannot believe his ability alone will ever be enough. His villainy is rooted in insecurity rather than sadism.

Page unfortunately never fully rises to the occasion. For a veteran world champion anchoring the promotion he feels oddly inert. Slow in places where the match needs escalation. Passive in moments that require emotional control. It leaves MJF carrying most of the dramatic movement despite still being visibly unfinished as a worker.

The ending at least preserves the thematic consistency. MJF had demanded beforehand that no weapons be used. Naturally the second the referee loses control he cheats anyway and steals the victory. The important detail is that it genuinely feels like he did not need to. He probably could have won clean. But MJF matches have always quietly revolved around self-loathing. He cannot allow himself the vulnerability of simply trusting his own gifts. Watching now in 2026, that part of the character still has not changed.

Dalton Castle looks fantastic immediately. Main event Dalton Castle is one of my favorite underrated wrestling presentations of the last decade because he understands how to wrestle flamboyance without becoming soft or ironic. He peacocks around the ring and mocks Cody constantly but he does it with the relaxed confidence of somebody who genuinely believes he is the best athlete in the building. There is nothing desperate in the performance. He is not asking for attention. He assumes attention belongs to him naturally.

Early on Cody does that classic Rhodes family spot where he punches upward from his back and Castle immediately catches the arm and transitions into an armbar. Little moments like that make Castle feel like a thinking wrestler rather than simply an entertaining personality. Underneath all the posing he is a genuinely strong power wrestler with surprisingly nasty throws and hard punches that land with convincing weight.

Cody Rhodes meanwhile is once again proving the internet correct about one thing it has probably over repeated for years: heel Cody is still his most natural alignment. Babyface Cody often carries this visible burden of needing to embody importance while heel Cody gets to relax into what he naturally projects, which is entitled upper-class asshole energy. Every facial expression here feels lifted from some 1980s teen movie bully, all smug irritation and disbelief that anyone beneath him would dare challenge his authority. There are stretches where he channels the same mean rich kid quality Tully Blanchard embodied so well.

The Boys standing outside the ring fanning Dalton during the match is such a perfect touch because it reinforces the strange internal logic of the gimmick without pausing the wrestling to explain itself. Dalton Castle’s universe operates on the assumption that he deserves attendants, dramatic entrances, and theatrical admiration. Everyone around him simply accepts this as reality.

And then there is the Hammerstein Ballroom itself. Wrestling venues accumulate emotional residue over time and Hammerstein may carry more than almost any building in America including the old territory arenas. It is difficult to imagine a normal corporate event happening there. Even when ROH runs the room instead of ECW you still feel all the ghosts lingering around the balconies. The fans seem aware of it too. People watch wrestling differently there. Louder, more emotionally, like they are participating in a tradition instead of merely attending a show. Like the fans here and all the fans that have ever been here are witness this bloody, violent ritual together.

Castle eventually bloodies Cody and lets out this huge visceral scream toward the audience that briefly transforms the whole match. For a moment the peacock vanity disappears and he just looks primal and dangerous. It is probably the emotional peak of the bout.

Then unfortunately we get the inevitable referee bump because modern wrestling promotions remain physically incapable of trusting a straight finish in major matches. There is at least a nice payoff to it structurally. Cody is tapping while the referee lies unconscious which preserves Castle’s superiority without ending the match outright. Soon after Dalton catches Cody clean with the Bangarang for the win.

The frustrating part is that this feels much more like a very good television main event than the climactic centerpiece of the company’s biggest show of the year. Both wrestlers are good. The crowd is engaged. The performances are strong. But the match never deepens emotionally or physically beyond its initial setup. It arrives, entertains, and leaves before it really discovers another layer.

Still, there is something almost bittersweet now about watching ROH world title matches in Hammerstein featuring wrestlers this charismatic while the crowd fully believes the promotion matters. Even the imperfections feel tied to a wrestling ecosystem that no longer entirely exists.

CHIKARA and Lucha Underground both understood that wrestling works best when gimmicks are treated with total sincerity. That is why Power Pro Lucha interests me even when it does not fully work yet. It clearly wants to continue that lineage. Spectral Envoy, a new Colony , Tim Donst appearnaces. The problem is that at times it feels too consciously CHIKARA, like a cover band instead of inventing its own sound.

I watched some of their recap videos beforehand and honestly found them kind of confusing. Modern wrestling lives on YouTube now and there are independent editors making miniature documentaries that feel more coherent than some television wrestling. I kept thinking this promotion should just hire DropkickMV and let him explain the lore to people.

The match itself begins in the most CHIKARA way imaginable. Nemesis is apparently Matt Mako transformed somehow by the Spectral Envoy into this semi-supernatural figure. UltraMantis Black is outside the ring doing UltraMantis Black things, meaning he appears to exist half inside the match and half inside a Halloween haunted house attraction.

I have never really understood the persistent internet panic over intergender wrestling. Anyone who actually watches wrestling with regularity has seen this work dozens of times. The question is never “can this work,” it is whether the wrestlers understand how to structure the imbalance. Erica Leigh absolutely does.

Leigh immediately establishes the physical stakes of the match with hard sharp strikes that Nemesis partially no-sells. She carries almost all the emotional clarity here. Her bumping is excellent, her selling is grounded without feeling melodramatic, and she understands how to make simple offense feel painful. There is an armbar she applies midway through the match that genuinely looks like she is trying to separate his shoulder from the socket rather than merely transitioning into the next sequence.

Nemesis is more uneven. Matt Mako is a capable vet underneath the gimmick, but the supernatural character work never fully settles into a consistent internal logic. Sometimes he appears impervious to pain. Sometimes he seems confused by his own powers. At one point he misses a long rolling attack, collapses dramatically, then suddenly sits up in an Undertaker-style resurrection spot that does not really connect to what came before it. The performance feels less like a possessed being and more like a wrestler confused about the boundaries of the gimmick in real time. Still, there is something I admire about the attempt. Wrestling has become so terrified of looking foolish that even failed sincerity feels refreshing.

The match takes place at the Arlen Specter US Squash Center which may be the funniest possible venue for supernatural lucha storytelling. At one point the announcer says Arlen Specter is looking down from beyond and it genuinely made me laugh. I met Specter a few times and the utter confusion he would have about this delighted me.

Leigh continues carrying things structurally as the match progresses. She has a natural connection with the audience and understands escalation better than her opponent here. Her offense grows more desperate while Nemesis mostly remains conceptually static. Even when he wins it feels like she was the gravitational center of the match.

The finish itself is weak. Nemesis lands a single kick that does not look especially devastating and suddenly the match is over. After everything preceding it the ending arrives with surprisingly little force. But the post-match angle partially recovers things when Nemesis powerbombs Leigh through a door. Again Leigh’s selling does enormous work here. She makes the impact feel ugly and disorienting rather than cleanly theatrical.

The lasting impression of the match is not the lore or the supernatural angle. It is Erica Leigh showing herself to be very good in an environment designed to distract from ordinary wrestling fundamentals. That can sometimes be harder than having a great match in a serious promotion. Anybody can look competent inside realism. Holding together a semi-comic-book universe while still making the violence feel emotionally coherent is much rarer. Looking forward to more of her work.

I loved Kaientai as a kid. I loved them in a way you could love obscure things in the pre ish internet era without it being an indicator of insider coolness. I just thought these dudes ruled and Taka Michonuku’s brief run as European champion was a major attitude era highlight for me. TAKA felt impossible not to root for. He moved like somebody permanently trying to prove physics slightly wrong and for someone who had never seen much beyond WWE it was revelatory. Every dropkick looked angry. Every dive felt committed in a way that smaller wrestlers on American television often were not allowed to feel in 2000.

HHH enters the arena for an open challenge to the heavyweight title. “No Chance in Hell” kind of still slaps. Maybe this is just age damage at this point. Maybe the human brain permanently rewires itself once you hear that song enough times while eating microwaved pizza products during adolescence.

It is funny watching this now because modern wrestling discourse acts like open challenges were invented in approximately 2015 by John Cena. Raw in 2000 constantly stumbled into this kind of thing. Somebody comes out. Somebody else answers. Suddenly you have a world title television match featuring TAKA Michinoku and the crowd genuinely believes there is a microscopic chance history could occur.

Triple H at this point mostly succeeds through force of appearance. He looks cool. Wrestling underrates this because fans want everything to reduce to move execution or workrate geometry but “looking like the champion” is an actual skill and Triple H absolutely has it here. Huge body. Great posture. Leather jacket confidence. He carries himself like the building already belongs to him.

This is also the exact opposite of how WWE often books smaller wrestlers now. TAKA is not presented as adorable or quirky or “crafty.” He comes out throwing violence immediately. Tornado DDT. Fast strikes. Flying attacks. Near falls. He wrestles like he genuinely thinks he can beat Triple H and JR completely commits to selling that possibility. That matters enormously. JR’s greatest strength was never move-calling. It was emotional framing. He understands that the audience wants permission to believe.

TAKA’s punches here are great too. Hard little angry shots. He never wrestles deferentially. Triple H responds correctly by throwing him around like a dangerous object rather than a nuisance. The size difference becomes part of the texture of the match instead of the entire story.

There is an incredibly annoying section where Triple H starts arguing with Earl Hebner for basically no reason beyond Vince McMahon overbooking instincts. WWE in this era often seemed physically incapable of allowing a good wrestling match to simply remain a good wrestling match. Every segment eventually attracted extra humans like a porch light attracting bugs.

Still, structurally this thing is really traditional in a satisfying way. Babyface shine. Heel control. Comeback. The important part is that TAKA remains competitive throughout. Triple H never feels weakened by this. This is always the strange flaw in modern discourse around enhancement matches. A champion struggling with an underdog does not inherently damage the champion if the champion still ultimately survives and wins. Boxing understood this for decades.

Triple H is also pretty generous here in ways people rarely acknowledge. The Acolytes get loosely involved and Triple H stooges around for them. He takes bumps hard. He sells panic well. There is an interesting tension in Triple H’s career where his reputation as a political figure has almost completely swallowed discussion of what he actually looked like inside matches.

TAKA hits a moonsault and Triple H kicks out and the entire building suddenly jolts awake. Even twenty-six years later watching this alone you still briefly think: wait, are they actually considering this?

Of course the match becomes absurdly overbooked by the finish. Bull Buchanan arrives. Bossman arrives. Vince and Shane drift into frame. The ring slowly fills with ancillary late-Attitude Era management energy. Somehow it still works because the core emotional engine never disappears.

The match succeeds because both wrestlers possess extremely clear offensive identities. TAKA fights like an undersized man trying to overwhelm a larger opponent before reality catches up to him. Triple H fights like a heavyweight patiently surviving chaos until he can physically impose himself. Neither man ever abandons that logic. More importantly, TAKA never stops feeling dangerous. That is the entire trick.

HHH v. Goldust, WWE Raw, 10/2/03

Triple H is somehow even larger here. Not necessarily more intimidating, just physically inflated to an almost absurd degree. He has Ric Flair with him which at the time probably felt prestigious and now mostly feels like a reminder that Ric Flair’s final twenty years would become one long exercise in refusing dignity.

Apparently Goldust had recently been electrocuted in storyline. I am not researching this further because wrestling becomes healthier when occasionally accepted the way ancient people accepted weather patterns.

Goldust during this era is fascinating because he fluctuates minute to minute between hints of the old Goldust and just Dustin Rhodes wrestling a match. Sometimes both simultaneously. Triple H actually handles this contradiction fairly well. One thing he consistently does better than people admit is allowing outwardly unserious characters to physically overwhelm him for stretches without making it feel humiliating.

The punch exchanges here rule. Dustin throws punches real hard when he wants to man, nothing more clever to say than that. There is very little prettiness to them. Triple H responds with solid enough arm work and at least tries to structure sections around targeting the limb.

But watching this only three years after the TAKA match is striking because Triple H already feels noticeably slower and less dynamic offensively. The structure is still there. The instincts are still there. He understands pacing, escalation, placement. The actual execution has dulled. His strikes have less snap. The transitions feel heavier. He increasingly wrestles through positioning and memory rather than physical explosiveness.

Dustin is slowing down too, honestly. The match has this feeling of two well trained veterans phoning it in while still trying to produce competent television. Around seven minutes in both men already feel slightly winded and resigned to the shape of the thing.

That sounds harsher than I mean it. The match remains reasonably watchable because both men possess enough ring intelligence to keep dead air from fully settling in. Dustin especially still has little flashes of texture, the Rhodes uppercut punches from the mat, the exaggerated staggering movement, the sense that he might suddenly become bizarre at any second.

Still, compared to the TAKA match this feels noticeably colder. Triple H’s offense no longer defines him. It simply exists. The body is still impressive. The match architecture is still competent. The actual wrestling increasingly feels like obligation.

The electrocution storyline apparently leaves Goldust vulnerable enough for Triple H to land the Pedigree and mercifully end things. Honestly, despite all this, it is probably still better than most modern Raw matches. Which says less about this match than it does about Raw.

HHH v. Stone Cold Steve Austin, WWE No Way Out, 2/27/2000

The glass shattering remains one of the great involuntary emotional reactions in wrestling. I am forty-three years old and Stone Cold’s music still makes me feel like I can run through a brick wall. We have a three stages of hell match here on 2000 PPV.

People who reduce Austin to charisma or promos genuinely do not understand what made him great. Even at this physically diminished stage he moves with astonishing urgency. Everything has velocity and intention. His punches look hateful. His lariats arrive like car accidents. His takedowns are especially incredible because he wraps his whole body around opponents and violently redirects momentum instead of cleanly executing amateur technique. It feels feral and efficient at the same time. Anyway, this is technically supposed to be about Triple H.

Triple H is fine. Better than fine sometimes. He sells hard. He bumps well. He takes punishment willingly. There are moments where I genuinely cannot tell whether he is a great seller or whether I am simply surprised every time an infamous control freak allows himself to get annihilated on screen.

The match’s most interesting early section is probably the figure four sequence. Triple H absolutely cannot make the hold itself look convincing but Austin understands exactly how to emotionally structure the pain. More importantly, Austin never immediately lunges for the rope. He tries to endure it first. When the pain becomes intolerable he reverses the pressure instead, forcing Triple H to take the rope break himself. It is a small thing but it creates tactical logic.

Fifteen minutes in and these two have barely slowed down before Austin steals the first fall with the Stunner. The pacing throughout the first section is honestly remarkable. There is almost no wasted motion.

The street fight fall section continues the escalation. Triple H essentially wrestles the entire thing as a counter fighter. Austin dominates long stretches while Triple H survives through cheating, shortcuts, and sudden reversals. It is probably the smartest possible structure because Austin is so overwhelmingly charismatic here that trying to evenly distribute control would have hurt the match.

Austin bleeding elevates everything immediately. He takes one huge Triple H punch and flies backward over the announce table in a way that looks completely uncontrolled. Austin’s greatest gift may have been understanding how damage should alter movement. Once busted open he becomes slower, angrier, more desperate. Big moments stop looking like stored finishing sequences and start looking improvised.

Triple H, by contrast, increasingly sells individual moments well without accumulating damage effectively. He reacts properly to moves but seems emotionally and physically reset seconds later. Austin always feels like previous violence remains inside his body.

The second fall becomes is dramatically compelling through Austin spending huge stretches simply surviving. His best offensive moments are exhausted reversals rather than triumphant comebacks. At one point he escapes danger with a counter that looks like it consumed the last functioning reserve of energy in his body.

This match is honestly very fun and it leaves me in a strange place regarding Triple H. He never drags anything down. He contributes structure. He contributes presence. He contributes punishment and pacing. He clearly understands match construction at a high level. Yet almost every unforgettable moment here belongs to Austin.

The third fall inside the cage starts drifting slightly from exhaustion but fifty-minute blood feuds are allowed some physical deterioration. Austin now looks deeply damaged from the accumulated punishment. Triple H attacking him with the barbed wire bat still never fully feels dangerous though. That is one of Triple H’s limitations as a worker. His weapon offense usually looks safe first and violent second. Austin, meanwhile, can make a simple chair shot feel like the final motor reflex of a dying animal.

By the end both men look almost nonfunctional. The finish, where they simultaneously blast each other with weapons and collapse unconscious with Triple H accidentally draped over Austin, is actually perfect for the match. Neither man truly conquers the other. They simply run out of human capacity at slightly different angles. The final image of both men laid out motionless works because after fifty minutes the match has stopped feeling like competition and started feeling like mutual physical depletion.

This is apparently Body Count’s first match together and they immediately look like they were genetically engineered in a lab to stand inside small southern wrestling rings. Bull Buchanan is still Punisher here and both he and Rick Savage are so enormous they barely seem proportioned correctly for the space. They tower over the ropes and physically compress the ring just by standing in it. Across from them The Gangstas look perfect too, New Jack and Mustafa carrying themselves with that particular confidence that seems to grow below the Mason- Dixon line where they delight ion angering crowds with there presence and presentation.

The announcer initially threw me off because he sounds almost comically restrained. He calls the match like it is airing on AM radio at two in the afternoon between crop reports and semi-pro baseball. Then after a few minutes I completely fell in love with him. The guy is clearly a pro. He knows the scene, calls moves crisply, references territories and histories naturally, and carries the whole thing with this understated competence modern wrestling commentary often lacks. Half the announcers on television now scream constantly without saying anything. This guy sounds mildly concerned while delivering actual wrestling information like a history teacher trying not to wake somebody sleeping in the back row.

There are a shocking number of pauses in this match. Long pauses. Standing around. Staring. Delayed tags. The sort of empty space modern wrestling is terrified of. Somehow it completely works because all four wrestlers understand tension and physical presence. The match moves with this slow ugly rhythm where everyone seems aware violence could suddenly spike at any second.

New Jack especially is really interesting here because the mythology around him tends to flatten everything into “crazy guy with weapons and music.” He is doing actual wrestling through most of this match and doing it well. Good reversals, good holds, good smaller man struggle against these gigantic opponents pyschology. He fights like somebody unafraid to fight men three times his size. It is a useful reminder that New Jack absolutely understood wrestling structure even when he later chose to detonate it.

Mustafa looks solid too, especially because he never wrestles intimidated despite the size difference. He throws himself into offense against these huge men without hesitation. There is also a perfect little heel flourish where New Jack is easily within tagging distance but Mustafa still theatrically slaps his own hand before tagging out anyway, cheating for absolutely no tactical reason beyond the fact that cheating itself is cool. The Gangstas understood criminality as aesthetic. New Jack’s punches also have this huge exaggerated swing to them that somehow makes ordinary strikes feel dangerous.

The most interesting structural element in the whole match is Rick Savage taking almost fifteen minutes to properly enter. He keeps teasing it. Stepping in. Stepping out. Standing there looming. The announcer even starts openly explaining how little experience he has with tag rules because he cannot seem to actually commit to entering the match. By the time he finally gets in the ring the anticipation alone has made him feel important. Then he immediately starts clearing house and honestly it works. He is not especially dynamic, but wrestling has always had room for gigantic men who simply appear difficult to fight.

There are rough edges all over this thing. At one point Punisher blatantly delivers a low blow directly in front of the referee while neither the referee nor announcer acknowledge it in any way. Mustafa applies one of the worst camel clutches I have ever seen in my life. The finish devolves into brawling outside the ring, chair shots, a referee bump nobody really needed because everyone was already cheating openly, and then somehow a double disqualification while the referee is still unconscious on the mat. It feels possible nobody fully knew how the match was ending.

But honestly that confusion becomes part of the texture. This is not polished wrestling. It is regional indie wrestling at its purest, rough around the edges, stitched together from charisma and improvisation and atmosphere. There are probably only thirteen actual minutes of wrestling inside this eighteen minute match and I was still never bored.

The whole thing feels slightly unstable in a way modern independent wrestling often does not anymore. Not dangerous exactly, just uncertain. Like everyone involved understands the basic outline of professional wrestling but might accidentally drift away from it at any moment. Those old indie tapes often carry that feeling. The imperfections stop reading as failures and start reading as evidence that this happened in a real room filled with actual people.