Wrestling Grab Bag: November 2025 Thanksgiving Edition

Because I have no real immediate family to celebrate this year’s Thanksgiving with and nothing to really do at the current moment, I am choosing to start a new (hopefully) monthly project in which I am tentatively calling “Wrestling Grab Bag,” where I write about some random wrestling matches with no real correlation to the next, most of which were recommended to me at one point or another by different people. Happy Thanksgiving!

If you’d like to read MORE writing by me, but not on this blog then I recently contributed to the Death Panel over at the Violent People blog, which you can go read here.

John Wayne Murdoch vs. Reed Bentley vs. Nick Depp vs. LuDark Shaitan - Home Run Derby Light Tube Fence Match - IWA:MS King of the Deathmatches (05/20/2017)

**suggested by ptotime of violent people

This match is another notch in the list of reasons as to why I love The Rejects. John Wayne Murdoch and Reed Bentley just have loads of chemistry together no matter the role they’re playing. This is a gruesome chaotic fourway match, with almost a central theme of Nick Depp (who i’ve literally never heard of before this) getting violently abused as much as possible till roughly about halfway through the match when he gets eliminated. Lots of gruesome spots in this one. Reed caves in Depp’s head with the stand of a CRT TV, the same TV which Depp also takes a Spiked Tombstone from both Rejects through a few minutes after it’s brought out. That spot in particular is just the highest point of the match, man. Also gotta give props to LuDark in this because she puts up a good fight, outsmarting her male opponents in the beginning stretch in an almost comical sense and making it all the way to the end as one of the final two. The giant blowpop that LuDark uses also got a big pop out of me, admittedly. The finish is disgusting looking, with JWM suplexing LuDark through the chair and a pool noodle with toothpicks that almost nearly falls off.

Vampiro & Pierroth Jr vs. Negro Casas & Shocker - CMLL on Televisa (06/04/2004)

**suggested by jom

Jom gave me two matches I could watch and I ended up choosing this one because I don’t watch as much older Lucha as I realistically should. Shocker immediately wins the vibes contest for coming out to “In Da Club” by 50 Cent, alongside TWO valets AND Kemonito. Vamp and Pierroth immediately jump the tecnicos before the match can begin and just start smacking them around, getting a lot of heat. Negro Casas has some amazing selling during this. Shocker and Casas have a comeback which leads them to get the first fall after Shocker’s Lion Tamer on Vampiro AND a big splash from Kemonito. The rudos quickly take over after that, getting DQ’d when Vampiro turns Negro Casas’ silla into a turnbuckle nutshot and gives what looks like a Styles Clash to Shocker. The biggest most dastardly move of the whole thing being Vampiro’s piledriver to Kemonito after the match!! Really fun, more people should watch old CMLL matches for the soul, myself included.

Kazunari Murakami & Mitsuya Nagai vs. Carl Malenko & Yuki Ishikawa - BattlArts (10/01/2000)

**suggested by Cameron aka unmasked_taro

I fully admit that I’ve always been interested in BattlArts as an entity but for some reason have never decided to dive more into it than I should outside of the occasional Ikeda or Ishikawa bout. This is a really, really solid tag match. Definitely feels like a vehicle to showcase how much of a bastard man killer Murakami is, he’s the real star of the whole thing. Ishikawa in particular sold really really well for his offense, probably because Murakami was legitimately beating the shit outta him. Carl Malenko is also an interesting case in the match because he does some decent looking holds and also sells pretty well for both Murakami and Nagai. Murakami knocking out Malenko for the finish and the post match scuffle between him and Ishikawa which led to multiple wrestlers coming between them looked great. Don’t know much about the “lore” and Cagematch doesn’t necessarily help me but I do hope this led to some kind of big match between the two because that’s what it felt like.

Daniel Makabe vs. Brett Ison - TWE Nightmare on Dayton Blvd (10/23/2021)

One of my favorite sub ten minute matches to ever exist, should honestly be talked about in the same reverence that KENTA vs. Ricky Marvin (which I’ve reviewed) has because I think this is just as good, if not better. Makabe’s one of those wrestlers that I never feel like I see the same match twice out of, it’s a personal goal in life to watch and write about every match of his that has ever made tape now. The match is centered entirely around the clear difference in styles both men exhibit, Brett Ison’s brute strength and Daniel Makabe’s technical genius and its class. Brett clearly does not have ANY of Makabe’s submissions and counters out of all of them, even just telling him to get up when Dan clearly is trying to bait him into something. Brett’s facewash getting countered into some kind of leglock is genuinely something that I don’t think I've ever seen done before and I'm quite honestly shocked I haven’t seen anybody else pick that up? Go out of your way to watch this if you have some time to kill, it’s definitely worth it.

Erick Stevens vs. Myung Jae Lee - C4 Underground Championship - C4 A Fistful of Dynamite (09/19/2025)

This is one of Erick Stevens’ first matches back since going on hiatus again in 2022, and he’s going against a guy who I’m kinda hoping starts to break out in the States someday soon in Myung Jae Lee. It’s a really solid veteran vs young guy bout, with Stevens getting to play a decent old man bully and drop him on his head a few times. Myung Jae Lee also shows a lot of heart in this as well and I love the visual of him being busted open at the mouth(?) during some really good looking comebacks. The commentators definitely fanboy over Erick, and, by extension old school ROH but it doesn’t really get annoying at any point. Love the finish of Erick’s Sarasota Screwdriver getting countered into a Small Package rollup, too. The younger wrestler getting to outsmart an old grizzled vet and whatnot. Dunno how long this Erick Stevens run is going for, but i’m a fan of how much he’s been able to mesh well with the current indy generation from what I have seen. Hope I get to see him live one day before it’s over.

Assorted ICW:NHB Matches

Gonna open this post by giving full credit to the reverseviperhold blog, aka @secretwrestlin1 on Twitter because I basically took the formatting (of watching assorted matches and reviewing them) & naming convention of this article entirely from them. I’m sure they’re not THE ONLY PERSON to have done this before but I felt like it should be necessary to credit them. And also you should just check out their blog anyways.

Meng vs. SHLAK - ICW No Holds Barred: Volume 8 (11/14/2020) - ***.90

God, I really did forget that this ever existed. An incredibly fun pandemic era ICW:NHB match between SHLAK and Meng, in spite of the mediocre no-contest finish. It’s entirely just both men beating the living dogshit out of each other with no real “spots” occurring at all, but to be quite honest, did this really NEED anything special? It’s hilarious how Meng for the majority of the match chooses to just continuously either laugh or make some kind of noise. I might be talking right out of my ass here, but the match earnestly feels like some of the old Memphis style brawls, especially with that nose biting bit. Holy fuck the nose biting was soooooooo cool. The no contest was definitely a disappointing result and what brings it down slightly for me, but regardless it’s a real hidden gem of a brawl.

Low-Ki vs. Masashi Takeda - ICW No Holds Barred: Volume 1 (01/04/2020) - *****

Wrestling fucking rocks, dude. This is maybe one of the most uniquely wrestled and overall BEST ICW matches I have ever seen. Takeda and Ki don’t really wrestle a traditional deathmatch style and choose to go for what I can basically describe as what Takeda’s match with Gresham from Bloodsport a few years prior to this would look like on steroids. AbsoLUTELY intense shoot-style heavy bout with a smidge of brawling in the crowd where Ki basically fucking murders Takeda a shitton. When Takeda does manage to get an advantage on Ki by basically kicking him in the nuts, it’s really fucking fun. Ki tying Takeda’s arms behind his back with his gi in order to nearly break his neck by giving him a Warrior’s Way off the top was especially brutal, and made him look like a million bucks going into a potential Nick Gage match that… unfortunately never happened and that fact makes me depressed. Nonetheless, it’s matches like this that help me realize no matter how weird or funny Low Ki is as a person, he’s still an amazing wrestler.

Reed Bentley vs. Lil Sicko - ICW No Holds Barred: Volume 75 (05/03/2025) - *****

Absolutely brutal match that blew me away on the first watch, and does it again on the rewatch only five months later. The whole story of the match was basically centered around Reed “By Gawd” Bentley’s lack of respect for the IWA Deep South mainstay Lil Sicko, not believing he should even be in the ICW chains, and Sicko himself trying to not only earn the respect of Reed but also the crowd themselves. It is an absolute trial by fire for the clown and weeellllll lemme tell you brother, it works damn well. Bentley’s offense is both disrespectful and hard hitting, with some great moments like him doing a sitout tombstone through a chair on the concrete, dropping Sicko right on his fucking HEAD into some light tubes or even sitting on Sicko’s head with one of the chairs from the crowd. I should also mention one of the commentators mentioning a video about a woman defecating on somebody’s car in regards to the latter moment if only because it was so not something I was expecting to be used as an analogy in a wrestling match ever, cheers to the man whose name I unfortunately forgot. The crowd also help this match as well because they go from being mostly into Reed (save for a woman in the crowd who I believe might’ve been his girlfriend) to coming around for both men by the end of it. Just an amazing match, purely vicious and diabolical, it’s what turned me onto Lil Sicko in the first place and is another great notch to a great guy like Reed Bentley.

SLADE vs. York - ICW No Holds Barred: Volume 32 (09/10/2022) - ***

This was good. A really solid SLADE sprint where he basically gets busted open the hard way very easily in the match and starts bleeding from just about every part of his body. If it were possible, his feet could probably bleed too. He’s that damn good. York is not somebody i’m familiar with at all prior to watching this match by virtue of me having never watched any Australian Deathmatch Wrestling, but he gives a fun showing in this match with some good looking sentons and the big sidewalk slam off the platform through some barbed wire light tubes. The visual of SLADE getting up and pulling the gusset plate that York smacked onto his back like a horror movie villain looked very very cool. I also am a fan of the finish where SLADE just chairshots the living shit out of York in the head till the referee stops the match. Good clean(?) fun.

Justin Kyle vs. Krule - ICW No Holds Barred: Volume 21 (01/22/2022) - *** 1/2

Justin Kyle was one of those early-ish ICW:NHB guys who I saw a lot of but has just completely fallen off the map as far as I know. Same with like, Bruce Santee. Does anyone know what happened to him? He was really fucking cool! He doesn’t have a Cagematch page and so I have no idea if he still even wrestles. If you’re a reader of this and know, please inform me because I would love to know! Anyways, a fun hoss vs hoss bout. It’s very brutal in a “dudes rock” kinda way because there’s not any kind of real intricate spots going on, no sort of real grappling, just two big as fuck freaks throwing nuclear bombs at eachother and trying to get the other one to stay down. Again, Justin Kyle in particular was really fucking cool during this match with multiple great looking spears to Krule. There’s a moment in particular where Kyle powerbombs Krule through two chairs and like, damn man. It’s so fucking cool… Outside of Krule’s finisher being kinda goofy in my opinion, this was pure freak vibes and I liked it.

A Review Of A Kinda Halloween Lucha Underground Episode.

* This review was made at the recommendation of my friend @maybejom, who runs the Dragon Screw blog, check him out! He’s good people.

Lucha Underground is a promotion that I definitely have interesting feelings about. While I think I should maybe do a full rewatch of the company’s history (not any time soon mind you, with the IWA:MS project on the horizon) it’s definitely got some really fun stuff like being the promotion to give Marty “The Moth” Martinez, somebody who has brought some of my favorite TV heel work ever purely by being a disgusting freak ass pervert, a top guy position, alongside some incredible violent performances with matches like Penta vs. Vampiro and Dante Fox vs. Killshot. I’ll fully admit here that the fourth season was when I was pretty much tapped out of the company at the time of it airing, the only thing I really know about it was the reveal of Wade Barrett at the end of the season which never went anywhere due to the company straight up dying not that long after the end of the season, but since it’s Halloween I figured why not try and cram some themed reviews in at the end of the month? I’m mostly focusing on the two marquee matches on this episode because I’m gonna be honest, I skipped through a lot of the in-between stuff due to a lack of interest. Except for the Worldwide Underground segment, if only because I completely forgot that Johnny Mundo/Hennigan/TV/Elite/Blackcraft had a faction involving Taya Valkyrie, Jack Evans, and PJ Black/Justin Gabriel. Real neat stuff.

Mil Muertes (w/Catrina) vs. The Mack - Haunted House Steel Cage Match - ****

I’m not ashamed to admit that this was the whole entire reason why I wanted to watch this show to begin with, and goddamn this match didn’t disappoint me at all. The concept of a promotion such as Lucha Underground, which typically runs more “serious” match concepts like Grave Consequences or Hell of War, putting on a “Haunted House” match amuses me quite a lot to be quite honest. The whole presentation with the objects strewn across the ring and cage… shout outs to the tables with things like “SPOOKY!” written on them, very funny, and the pre-match graphic feels like something you’d see on either a late 80s/early 90s WCW Halloween Havoc, or a low-level American promotion like Smokey Mountain Wrestling. It’s out of place for sure, but it’s out of place in the best way because this is actually FUN. These two just beat the shit out of each other, man. Mack does a really good “babyface in peril” when he gets his shit kicked in by Mil, his selling throughout this match in general is genuinely really really good and it helps Muertes look like a genuine monster. Big fan of Muertes spearing Mack through the wall of the cage twice. I love cage spots like that where there’s a bit of struggle  instead of the wrestler going clean through a cage wall. Mack getting stabbed in the head was the right amount of goofy mixed with looking incredibly cool with, again, how he sells it and also how he looked after getting busted open. The best spot was quite obviously the finish with Muertes giving Mack a Flatliner off the top of the cage through the “Haunted” table, Muertes doing the Flatliner has always been great. Overall just an incredibly campy and fun steel cage match, Mack and Muertes show a ton of really good chemistry here to the point that I wish they actually had more matches. Go out of your way to watch this, honestly.

Pentagon Dark © vs. Cage - Last Man Or Machine Standing Match, Lucha Underground Championship - ***

This match was…. okay, I guess.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m coming off of watching the prior awesome campy Muertes/Mack match, or if it’s because a Brian Cage World Title Match™ really doesn’t move me all that much to begin with but there was nothing particularly all that great or horrible in this. Cage is just one of those guys who I honestly feel like is always stuck in the wrong era of wrestling, with the type of moveset and look he has he just SCREAMS late-stage WCW Power Plant graduate turned Natural Born Thrillers member but realistically there’s nothing he’s done to make himself stand out compared to other big men with good athletics. I LIKED what Cage does in the story for the match, being the unbreakable monster that Penta hasn’t broken, and, in turn, getting broken by the champ. Cage does also manage to pull off an actually decent looking suplex off the ropes through some tables on the outside… but that’s really about all I can say. It’s mostly a fine Penta carryjob, with the finishing stretch of Penta basically dominating with a Packaged Piledriver through some chairs, snapping both of Cage’s arms and then giving the stomp through a cinder block being pretty fun. The match went a little longer than I think it should have but that’s probably because of me not liking Cage all that much, if you shaved some time off this and gave it to Mack & Muertes (and also maybe made that the main event) I probably would’ve liked it a little more, but i’m not sure by how much.

That One Time Vader Wrestled Necro Butcher

(credit to Indy Wrestling Flashback for the cover image, they also uploaded the match!)

This is something that, honestly, I never thought I would see in my life. A match that I had no clue it even happened until it randomly popped into my YouTube recommendations the day i’m writing this, and even then I had to double take because I absolutely thought it was some random person’s 2K simulation. But it’s real! I just knew I HAD to watch this.

The match itself comes from “Pro Wrestling Superstars,” a North Carolina based promotion that, according to the very base-level research I did, has not been active since maybe about 2012. I say base level because the only evidence of this company’s existence is its Cagematch page and a Facebook account that has barely posted anything since 2009. Hey, they did have Hulk Hogan be a special guest referee for… something! It’s on the level of House of Hardcore, Northeastern Wrestling, really any low tier fed that mostly books legends/ex-WWE talent looking for a weekend payday alongside whatever mildly popular indie talents are making the rounds at that moment in time. Both men at this point are definitely not in their physical primes at their current moment, which is unfortunate really. Necro’s still getting decent bookings in mostly JCW, with some odd popups in CZW and IWA after leaving ROH during the start of the HDNet era two years prior. Meanwhile I'll admit that I haven’t seen a whole lot of Vader’s post-WWF run outside of some odd NOAH & AJPW bits and the incredibly funny Will Ospreay match. However, in this instance, what they do against each other is… not terrible, to be honest? If both men were in their prime then I'm sure this would be a lot better than it actually was, but here it’s mostly just a fun, decent little Vader squash match that you probably would’ve seen on some WCW B-Show taping. Necro doesn’t really get any kind of big moves in on Vader, pretty much of the offense he does get in amounts to punches, kicks, and elbow strikes. But he does a good job in trying to make a 56 year old Vader look rather impressive for what it’s worth. The commentary also helps reinforce the idea of it being a squash match with Shane Douglas and some man I'm not really able to identify mostly focusing on Vader, his comeback, how devastating he is, etc etc. I’m giving it a solid *** on my personal rankings, if mostly for the wonder of seeing two people who are basically some of my favorite wrestlers of all time facing each other. If you have like… five minutes to spare then I think you should give this match a look, definitely a fascinating one. As a small extra note: I would like to find more interesting matches like this, so if anyone knows of any that I can find then please reach out to me through my usual social media channels and I may try and feature more for the blog.

An Introduction To The (Ian) Rotten Archives, I Suppose.

It’s about time that I dust this off once again. I have to apologize really, my 2025 has been all over the place and while I meant to do more with this I earnestly kinda forgot about the blog for a while. That’s on me, that’s my fault. I plan on doing more with this blog whenever I can, especially as I actually do the thing I've been meaning to do for ages and put more focus on wrestling for my now-main YouTube channel. I wanna try and actually get at least one or two videos out on my YouTube before the year ends (because to be honest with my mental health, this year's probably a wash in terms of content), and then hopefully in 2026 I'll be able to really lock in I guess.

Anyways, it’s time for me to introduce a new project.

I’ll be completely honest in saying that I don’t really know a terribly massive amount about IWA Mid-South, a lot of my experience comes from the latter half of the promotion’s existence (2020-2022) which includes the moment where Jake Crist burned their World and Light Heavyweight Championships due to multiple instances of not getting paid by Ian Rotten, that also led to IWA hopefully ceasing operations for good, and in general learning about a lot of the various other incidents that have happened over the years that i’m not really go over here, (Really, with how infamous Ian is, it would probably take a simple Google search to find at least most of them) PLUS some various matches sprinkled in such as Eddie Kingston vs. Chris Hero from 2007 which is quite honestly one of my favorite matches of all time. So, because I have severe problems and I love turning anything at all possible into content, I've decided to start a project I'm currently calling The Rotten Archives. The name is a work in progress, obviously, but is inspired partially by snowboiiii’s 2005 watchproject where he watched every single wrestling show that occurred in the year 2005, and also by @MarilynOfDeath who is watching every CZW show ever. I also want to give a quick shoutout to Tom Green for his video on the 2004 Ted Petty Invitational (which you should check out, he’s really cool) as that was part of the inspiration for why I went with IWA. I will choose a completely random year of IWA:MS to watch and review every single show that has made tape that I can even FIND, talking about what I do and don’t enjoy from it in hopes of… well, to be honest, I don’t really have much of a goal with this. I guess you could say to fully understand the “lore” and “mythos” around IWA Mid South, but honestly I thought it would be funny to do this one night and it’s stuck around in my brain like a mildly catchy song. I’m still really trying to figure out how I'm gonna format this, there’s a high possibility that once I finish a year I might make a big YouTube video compiling everything within the year and talking about it but it really depends on how I'm personally feeling. There’s also a high chance that I could expand this into other indy companies if I get bored of just doing IWA:MS, hence why the title isn’t an “official” one. Hell, everything’s kinda just a complete crapshoot work in progress and I won’t fully know what I'm doing till I really get into the whole meat and bones of it, soooo…. I mean, I dunno, I hope you guys can understand?

To decide WHAT year I’ll exactly be watching I put a bunch of years that were available on the “Sugiura Holdman” VK channel (IWTV does not have a complete archive, I also do not have IWTV currently) on a wheel and spun to find out that i’ll first be watching 2005. A year featuring both a mildly interesting TPI lineup (some of the members pictured above) AND an interesting KOTDM lineup, AND Samoa Joe vs. Necro Butcher, AND a War Games match from the vague look I had on Cagematch! It’s honestly probably not the WORST choice I could’ve gotten? I will begin this project very soon, in the next couple of days and posting updates alongside hopefully gifs/clips of my watchthrough progress on Twitter and Bluesky (@emmosWRLD/@emmosfunnywrld respectively).

There's a total of four shows in January 05, most of them being over two hours so i'm gonna have a crapload on my plate. I hope you guys will be as entertained as I will be with this. Hopefully I'll have the fuller details of what ENTIRELY I wanna achieve with this soon.

Match Review: Jeff Hardy vs. Abyss, Full Metal Mayhem (TNA - February 13, 2005)

 

have this funny jeff hardy image because what the fuck would i put here?

This match was suggested to me after I asked snowboiiii on his Twitch stream today what match I should review for here, and he grabbed his recommended matches list, asked his chat to pick a random number, and picked a match from that which was actually available to watch on YouTube. That being Jeff Hardy vs. Abyss in a Full Metal Mayhem match from TNA's Against All Odds 2005. Now, I have no real idea why I chose to do this, but I did. So that's what you're getting.

For those unaware this is the second match in a series of bouts Hardy and Abyss would have from late 2004 all the way to Bound For Glory 2005, which also featured Rhino and Sabu in it for whatever reason that I am seriously forgetting right now. Yes, they'd go on to have matches in the 2010s but I've never watched those matches before so I'm personally not counting them. I did not watch any build up to this so I'm willing to admit that there's probably a lot that I'm missing out on, but the commentators explained that Abyss made his return to TNA after some period of absence, attacked Jeff Hardy and.... we have this match now! But you see, gracious emmo blog viewer, the real point of confusion comes with the added stipulation by authority figure (I forgot what the fuck his actual title was even though they said it) Dusty Rhodes. The match is not just a Full Metal Mayhem match (basically TNA's equivalent to a TLC for those who have never seen TNA before), but is also a #1 contenders match where the winner will face NWA World Heavyweight Champion (JeffJarrettLOL) on a future episode of Impact, but ALSO alongside the #1 contendership contract there is... an empty envelope! The wrestlers have to basically guess which envelope has the contract and which envelope has nothing in it.

Look. I'm not gonna say that the way that TNA will change or add a stipulation in a gimmick match is HORRIBLE, like how I vaguely remember a lot of the talk about TNA and their gimmick matches were from at least a solid core of wrestling YouTubers back then (no disrespect to any of them, ofc) because I do find certain instances of that like, say, The King of The Mountain match to be pretty enjoyable honestly. But I would be lying to myself if I didn't say that I heard this information be delivered to my ears by the commentators and actively paused my watching of this match to stop and think about who thought it'd be a necessary addition to the match and why. Another side note, I absolutely fucking love Abyss' presentation here. The entrance, the theme, the big ass chain he carries with him. It's all insanely good and tells me he is definitely gonna be a future subject on my Wrestlers I Like series. Jeff Hardy's theme here is... a TNA Jeff Hardy theme. It exists. Definitely nowhere as good as Another Me, but still.

Now, if you want my HONEST opinion on the actual match itself?
I don't hate it... but I'm also not sure if I really like it.
It would be simply untrue to call this match bad because there are some really good and nasty looking spots in there like Jeff's Poetry In Motion off a chair very early on, the ladder catapult spot where Jeff springs off the top turnbuckle and lands on one of the ladders to send the other end of it flying into Abyss' face. Hell, I even found enjoyment out of BOTH times that Abyss sent Jeff flying into a stack of tables, even if the second one was WAY more scuffed than the first one, let's be real. However, in general the match just felt... slow. They spend a lot of time setting up tables, setting up ladders, brawling on the outside... there's a part during the match after the first big Jeff Hardy Table Bump™ where, after slamming Jeff's face into the entrance way, instead of grabbing a ladder and actually trying to WIN the match, Abyss chooses to grab a table and set it up on the entrance way. Genuinely, I was internally fucking SCREAMING at my screen like "GET A LADDER!!! YOU HAVE ENOUGH OF AN OPPORTUNITY TO WIN!!!" Real shit, nobody in the match actually tries to use one of the ladders to attempt to grab the envelopes for like... I wanna say 14 minutes out of a nearly 16 minute match? Which is insanely goofy to me. I'm not sure if it's just a me thing but it always bugs me when a ladder match has barely any attempt to grab the item that's being held up. Anyways, obviously, the table was set up for a big Jeff Hardy stage dive that in terms of all the big Jeff Hardy dives that I've seen in my life was... just kinda middling to me? I think it was mostly the height of the dive which... wasn't very far even if the cameras and commentators really tried to make you think that it was a big deal. Like, I dunno, I suppose AT THE TIME it was a big deal because I'd imagine Jeff had not done anything like this in TNA yet, but looking back at this in nearly 2025 after already seeing that big iconic Bound For Glory 2005 dive off the stage it didn't give me the reaction that it was supposed to give. That's kind of the big thing with this, if you have not seen any of their other work then I think it would be understandable to say this match was good, but as someone who has seen as such.... I just think about how much I could be watching those other, BETTER matches right now. It's the room temperature water of Jeff Hardy and Abyss matches. Not bad, but you could have literally anything else at this current moment. But hell, I can give the match credit, I'd rate it over probably anything that 2024 TNA Jeff Hardy has done. Last little note is that the post match part where Jeff just gets extremely angry at the stack of tables he went through is incredibly fucking funny and everybody on the planet should see this.

match rating:
★★★.15

Wrestlers I Love: Mad Dog Connelly

(photo taken from Mad Dog's Twitter, unsure of who took it. please dm me and i will properly credit if needed.)

Wanted to start this off real quick apologies to my cumulative seven fans for the lack of actual writing that has been seen in the past couple of months, easiest explanation that I can give is that I've been dealing with a combination of Being Super Fucking Busy™ and also my general mental health being super erratic for reasons that i'm honestly not gonna get into here. Anyways, I wanted to come back to blogging with something of a start to a potential hybrid-blog-and-Youtube content series, which i'm currently dubbing the very simple title of "Wrestlers I Like", an idea that was slightly inspired by both Tom Green's "Why They Rule" series where he goes over why certain wrestlers are really good in the span of 60 seconds and also in a way that is hard for me to explain at the moment, my good friend Hiten Mitsuru's Yap Session videos where she talks about numerous different things usually having to do with art or video games, you should check them out if you like content about that type of stuff. She's really cool.
I'll probably explain how I actually wanna RUN this series of content at a later date, but to put it simply on how this will work: I'm basically going to rant and rave about wrestlers that I really really like. I'll talk about how I found out about them, how good I think they are, along with some blurbs about my favorite matches from them because I am absolutely super fucking autistic about professional wrestling and if you don't like it... well, why are you reading a wrestling blog anyways?

So I figured the best way to start off a series like this is to talk about a wrestler who, genuinely, is somebody I could consider as THE wrestler of the year. If not at the very least in the conversation of top 3.... Mad Dog Connelly.

I got into Connelly, funnily enough, this year, after watching his dog collar match against Demus at ACTION Wrestling's DEAN~!! event during WrestleMania 40 weekend all the way back in April.

I had heard about him vaguely in 2021-2023 but for whatever reason never actually bothered to check out his matches there despite him wrestling in places that I was absolutely watching around that period. Namely Saint Louis Anarchy and Paradigm Pro. Genuinely I don't think I have much of a proper explanation for not knowing about him before this match, but lemme tell you, after watching the match at DEAN~!!... I was absolutely fucking hooked on Mad Dog. Same thing with Demus, somebody who I also need to do a "Wrestlers I Like" entry on at this point, don't you fucking worry your soul.

Now, to answer the question: Why do I love Mad Dog Connelly?
It's very simple.
He's one of those wrestlers whose matches you watch and afterwards go "hell yeah."

Let's be honest. There's a demographic in modern wrestling of guys such as Lee Moriarty, Alex Shelley, Jon Gresham, hell even possibly Danielson and many others that I could easily spout off as examples who give a "cleaned up", smooth and crisp presentation of wrestling in their matches, with Mad Dog you don't get... well, any of that. He's not smooth, cleaned up, or crisp. BUT THAT'S WHAT MAKES HIM SO UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING AWESOME. His work is some of the grimiest, grossest, absolutely mauled in filth shit in North American wrestling today. Pretty much all of his matches have some kind of spot where he's trying to murder his opponent in some form or fashion, every time I go into each one expecting an absolute spectacle and they deliver to the upmost degree. The aforementioned dog collar match with Demus, his series of matches with Steve Manders, hell, even his 2022 no disqualification bout with Jake Lander from ZERO1 USA are some of examples of the closest that you could possibly get to a modern recreation of the old school "southern-style" brawls of the 1980's. It's incredibly difficult to compare Mad Dog to literally ANYBODY else that's active nowadays because the style that he presents is in a completely different universe from basically anybody else in the United States. Literally, I fucking dare somebody to find any wrestler in the US that's on the level that Connelly has been on for the past while. You can't. Literally anybody who comes close to that would be working on the Mexican independent scene right now, one of the reasons why ACTION booking Demus/Mad Dog back during WrestleMania weekend was such a stroke of genius but that's something I'll have to fully elaborate on when (not if) I end up writing about that match in specific. In a lot of ways what makes Mad Dog compelling is definitely the same thing that made dudes like Buzz Sawyer, Atsushi Onita, Necro Butcher compelling in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Another thing that I like about his matches is that they all last the right amount of time. Most likely due to the chaotic nature of his matches, but i've not watched through one of them thinking "man, they really need to wrap this up" or "y'know I wish this lasted longer..." Personally, if you can hit that peak, ESPECIALLY when it comes to modern wrestling where.. admittedly there's a lot of matches that go on for longer than they realistically should, you are one of my favorites. Not to mention his promos are also amazing. There's way too many that I could pull up as examples so if you really need to go scroll his Twitter and you'll be bound to find some but with each promo I watch it feels like I'm witnessing a man grow more and more inhuman and insane as each second passes. They easily captivate me and feed into the notion that when I go into his matches I'm going to expect an absolute car crash spectacle which, again, COMPLETELY deliver each and every time. He's a fucking total package. Expect me to make match edits of him when I actually have the time and ideas for songs to match up with.

To cut things short.
Do yourself a favor today. Sit down, watch one of the many Mad Dog Connelly matches on YouTube (or IWTV, if you have that), have fun, and....
Live Your Truth.

( P.S: SOMEBODY out there in the world better book Mad Dog in the fucking Zona 23 Junkyard. I would actually, genuinely pay money to see footage of it. )

personal quick recommends list:

• vs. Jake Lander | ZERO1 (04/30/22)
• vs. Gary Jay | NWP (05/07/22)
• vs. Eric Dillinger vs. Nate Matthews | NWP (01/14/23)
• vs. Jordan | Timebomb Pro (08/10/23)
• vs. The Luminary | ZERO1 USA (08/19/23)
• vs. Matthew Justice | Paradigm (11/03/23)
• vs. 1 Called Manders | Saint Louis Anarchy (01//26/24)
• vs. Demus | ACTION (04/04/24)
• vs. 1 Called Manders | Saint Louis Anarchy (07/26/24)
• vs. Erron Wade | Scenic City Invitational (09/07/24)

*matches that i've watched of his that should all mostly be available on YouTube currently.