Chris Hero/KENTA vs. Titus Alexander/Kevin Blackwood
West Coast Pro Monster 12/5
Hero continued his comeback in a “big stars come together” tag, which was a very different style then his more mat based battle last month against Timothy Thatcher. Alexander and Blackwood are two of the next generation of indy wrestlers, Blackwood has a kick and strike based offense clearly inspired by his opponent in this match, KENTA, while Alexander wrestles a more athletic style, like a young AJ Styles.
KENTA has been on a US Indy tour in the last month, ethering his children, last week I talked about him slapping the piss out of Dom Garinni, here he tries to kick Blackwood’s cheek bones into his soft palate.
I liked how the match started with Hero and KENTA clowning the kids and working them over. With the heels doing some Midnight Express style stooging early. Hero is a great mauler, at one point he removed his kneepad and just drove the bone of his knee right into the side of Blackwood’s jaw. Eventually the heels work over KENTA, cutting him off and leading to a big Hero tag where he served up elbows for everyone. I thought the section where KENTA and Hero started hitting each other was one idea too many, but otherwise this really delivered the beats you want from a match like this including Hero and Kenta hitting all their big moves to send the crowd home happy.
Eddie Kingston vs. Bryan Danielson
AEW Collision 12/2
The Continental Classic is a wrestling fan’s advent calendar. Delivering a Bryan Danielson and Eddie Kingston singles match at least once a week, the AEW section of this column will surely be one of those two guys match each week until this ends. Danielson opened his tourney against Kingston and it was what you would expect from the two best wrestlers in the world fighting with some real bad feelings behind it.
Danielson is really embracing the bad angels in his soul in this tournament, he has real contempt in his heart for Kingston and seems to take real joy in hurting and humiliating him. He goaded Kingston into a fight and then picking apart his weaknesses. Eddie hit him with some thunderous shots, chops which sounded like cars backfiring and a big punishing suplex on the floor, but Danielson chopped away at the parts of his body which had already been punished by Brody King the week before, knees, ribs, temples and you could see Eddie’s body failing to respond to what his heart was pumping.
The end of the match saw Eddie screaming “NO” as he realized he couldn’t withstand anymore, with Danielson drilling him and finishing him off. It was a fight full of heart, and then Danielson grabbed a sign from a fan that said “Eddie is a Bum” and paraded around the ring with it. Utterly disrespectful, and something which should turn the cold war between Eddie and Danielson which has been brewing for decades into a real shooting war.
This match put Eddie at 0-2, and I hope that leads him to a big come from behind story in this tournament. The top two Blue division points holders face off in the semi-finals, and Eddie going 3-0 from now on, getting Danielson in that semi, and paying him back for his disrespect is how I hope this goes.
Nathan Frazer vs. Ilja Dragunov
NXT 11/28
This was kind of a rough week for WWE matches, the four way main event of this show had
its
moments, but also had a lot of Johnny Gargano swing dancing. This in contrast was a bite sized bit of nasty violence, it reminded me of a killer Finlay WCW Pro match, with Dragunov laying a hellacious beating on a kid, but still giving him moments to shine.
The set up was Dragunov thinking that Frazer disrespected his family, and he laid in the kind of beating you would expect to lay on a guy disrespecting your family. As always Dragunov seems to be in a completely different promotion
than
anyone else in the WWE.
He starts with a running kick to the jaw and then some nasty chops, including several which floated up to Frazer’s mouth. Frazer got a moment, hitting Ilja with a jumping knee right in the jaw and cutting off an enzigiri with a superkick which Dragunov sold like a fish getting hit with a cricket bat. Frazer was also able to hit a moonsault scorpion death drop, but found the bottom of the pool on a phoenix splash, and Ilja caved his skull in with three straight diving forearms.
Give me something quick, explosive and violent over something bloated and overcooked anyday.