Steve Maclin vs. PCO
In a weekend full of wild brawls, the main event of Impact Wrestling’s Under Siege was the wildest. Steve Maclin won the title when Josh Alexander was forced to vacate it due to injury. and is a super solid heavyweight wrestler. He isn’t necessarily going to blow you away with any one thing but doesn’t have big holes in his game either. And he is (apparently) perfectly willing to cut himself way too deep on a blade job, sending jets of blood all over the ring canvas.
This match, though, was a PCO showcase.
What a bizarre and awesome story PCO is: Here is a guy who started his career in 1987 as one of the Super Bees, held the WWF tag title in 1993, and retired (at least for a bit) in 2011. His first world title shot was in 1995 against Diesel in Quebec and now 28 years later, at the age of 55 he is taking some of the craziest bumps in wrestling while fighting for the Impact title.
The match opens with PCO hitting a Cactus clothesline and sending Maclin and him flying recklessly to the floor. PCO then hits a running cannonball tope con hilo, with a ton of force, and a super dangerous landing where he rotates at the last minute to avoid breaking his neck.
Maclin took control with some weapons shots, and then sent PCO flying to the floor with an absolutely psycho bump where he basically does a tope con hilo with no one catching him and him landing full speed on his old spine, there are so many different ways to take a bump to the floor, and PCO picked one of the most reckless. Maclin then followed up with a tope but went full force into a cookie sheet which was a pretty wild bump himself. The champ then followed that up by nearly carving his own scalp off spraying blood like a bar soda gun all over the ring.
I am not a big fan of geek show spots, don’t normally like skewers or needles or staple guns, but I do have to admit that Maclin stapling PCO’s mouth shut, and PCO needing pliers to pull out the staples, was a pretty great sideshow geek spot. PCO seems pretty creative with out there garbage spots, he seems to frequently come up with good ideas on the fringes of pro-wrestling (in a previous match with Maclin, PCO dislocated his shoulder in a clearly planned but truly gross spot) .
Maclin also broke a concrete slab on PCO’s back with a sledgehammer and sent him crashing hard on a bunch of cinderblocks, before finishing him with a DDT onto a cinder block. This was a prime Cactus Jack bumping performance from a guy only two years younger than Foley is now.
PCO’s gimmick is that he is the French-Canadian Frankenstein, and this was some undead shit.
Ilja Dragunov vs. Dijak
One of things that make a brawl truly special is intensity, that unchained junkyard dog feeling where a wrestler would rather die than release his teeth from his opponents throat. No one in wrestling is more intense then Ilja Dragunov and he brought that spirit into his hellacious Last Man Standing match with Dijak at NXT Battleground. I think DIjak’s Sylvester Stallone in Cobra gimmick is kind of silly, but I do appreciate how he has carved off all of the extraneous bullshit from his game. No more cartwheels and kip ups, he is just trying to kick his foot through someone’s head.
WWE gimmick brawls are pretty formulaic at this point. You know you are getting tables and chairs and dramatic faces, but Dragunov especially just pushes all of those tropes to 11. You want a table? How about when Dijak grabs it, I’ll break it in two by diving headfirst through it before he can set it up. You want a chair, how about we forget all about Chris Nowinski and brain each other CTE-style. You like a crazy face, how about I deliver some of the most unhinged faces you will ever see, “William DeFoe in Boondock Saints“-level overacting, so over the top that it actually works.
The weapons shots in this match were nasty stuff, but it was the flesh on flesh shots which really made this special. Dragunov’s body was one giant livid purple bruise from Dijak pounding on him, and every Dragunov shot landed just as hard. At one point Ilja dove off of the steps directly into a Dijak upkick that filled his mouth with blood.
I love how the WWE has just ramped up the stiffness, with guys like Ilja and Gunther you are seeing the kind of hard hitting wrestling you used to only see in BattlArts or WAR or if Greg Valentine, Finlay or Ronnie Garvin got a bee in their bonnet. Last Man Standing matches often live and die on their finishes and Dragunov coming off the top rope to crush Dijak’s skull with a diving forearm into a chair was a hell of a finish. Smart move for Dijak to send his kids to the back rather than have them watch this match, he probably forgot their names after that head trauma.
Anarchy in the Arena
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kq8KG_8knY
Last year’s Anarchy in the Arena match was a real contender for best AEW match of all time, the sequel was a lot of fun, but didn’t really reach the symphony of violence of last year’s edition. That had an ugliness, Kingston and Garcie fighting for their life, Matt Menard nearly bleeding to death, Kingston and the gas can. This was more of a series of wild spots, then a gutter brawl, but what was a series of wild spots!
Lots of easter eggs throughout the match, I dug the shout out to last year with Wild Thing playing throughout, although the choice to have it played by a guy in blackface was an odd one. They need to just have Onita sing the song for the 2024 version. Bryan Danielson ripping off Justin Roberts’ coat was a fun callback to the Nexus invasion which got Danielson fired from the WWE years ago, and the barbed wire poker chip was a neat homage to Moxley debuting at the first Double or Nothing. Matt Jackson isn’t exactly Buzz Sawyer when it comes to two fisted brawling, but he seemed to have the wildest ideas, getting giant swung into a garbage can on the concourse, piledriven into the bed of a truck, hitting the exploding super kick and then getting a bare foot full of thumbtacks, he clearly had a notebook full of insane shit and just checked off the list.
I am not sure the finish needed a run in, and turning Takeshita heel is an interesting choice, we will see how that plays out in the future, although I dig the idea of using Okada in a wild brawl for Forbidden Door, if that is where it is going. Fun time and the highlight of a PPV which needed a big highlight.