So, I guess I have one of these new-fangled blogs now.
I'm gonna be completely honest, this is something that i've considered doing off and on again for a couple months now and it's always eluded me because I thought "well, what if i'm not good at it?" I was always concerned about how other people would perceive my writing and, if I wasn't good at it, then surely it would never take off, right? Then, very late last night (as i'm writing this, currently it's 10/4/24) I kind of thought to myself.... "fuck it," and made the decision to do one anyways. It's not gonna be as good as other blogs like, say, Joseph Montecillo's or the dragonscrew blog ran by my good buddy Jom (shoutout both of them, you should go check out what they write), but as long as i'm having fun writing this then who really cares?
So, I figured to start things off why don't I make a post talking about a match featuring two of my favorite wrestlers that were an absolute mainstay on the independents for the past... 3 to 4 years, if I remember correctly. Daniel Makabe vs. Lee Moriarty from Southern Underground Pro's "Swing Of The Axe" event as part of the very... interesting 2020 GCW Collective. This match was actually my first real exposure to both of them as wrestlers when I watched the full show on IWTV in very early 2021, in fact, the whole show was my first real exposure to quite a few people on the card such as O'Shay Edwards, AC Mack, Jaden Newman, and I think Violence is Forever, but i'm not sure. Most of my exposure to the independent scene up until that point was generally things like CZW, House of Glory, and the odd GCW-related thing here and there, pretty much whatever I could find on YouTube that could entertain me while I was doing something else on my other monitor when I wasn't watching... i dunno, some Minecraft Youtuber shit or something. I had actually heard of both Moriarty and Makabe prior to this, but it was because of Total Extreme Wrestling, a game that i've been obsessed with for years, and still am! Now, I don't think there's really much background to the match itself since this was during the Coronavirus pandemic and shows obviously weren't being run so there's not much I could realistically go into there. Makabe is definitely the veteran going into the match compared to Lee, he's already worked for companies like WXW and Riptide alongside being a mainstay for 3-2-1 BATTLE! Meanwhile this is a few months before the real surge of bookings Lee would get all throughout 2021, and well before his AEW run during the latter half of said year. So how about we just talk about the match itself?
Something that I like about matches from both of these guys is that I never, ever go out of them feeling bored with what I just watched. There's never really a spot I see from them where I think "man, this is really uninteresting" or "man this is supper sloppy", even if it's a spot that's super simple they always have something in there that will illicit a positive reaction from me when I go back and watch it. This match, for example, is a very good case of that. It doesn't feel too rushed, and it absolutely doesn't feel like it's dragged out, which is one of the reasons why I enjoy it. It's that sweet spot. I know that I noted that it's something with no real background going into it, but this honestly feels like a match between two longtime rivals with tons of chemistry and a backlog of bouts spanning years which is especially crazy to think about when this is their first and ONLY singles match. It's very simple in it's overall narrative, the younger and less rusty Moriarty trying his best to outwork the veteran Makabe but I think it's a narrative that's done exceptionally well. Dan does a really good job making Lee's offense look good, while also holding his own throughout. Some of my favorite spots have got to be Lee and Daniel's struggle to get the Octopus Stretch locked in on eachother, with Lee being the successful one before Daniel manages to break out of it.... pretty much any time Lee targets Daniel's injured arm and shoulders... Daniel countering a big rollup attempt from Lee into an STF... Lee's La Mistica (I hope I pronounced it right)... that BIIIGGGG Avalanche Frankensteiner from Makabe... Hell, i'm just gonna say that the closing stretch of the match is probably my overall favorite part of the match because it's a really good tonal shift from the beginning of the match which starts slow and calculated. Both men trying to throw whatever they can at each other frantically until Makabe is the one who can truly outsmart Lee and get the win with a beautiful cross-legged Makabe lock.
I gotta say, watching this match almost four years later has gotten me to realize that, infact, this is still really fucking good. Like, holy shit. Go watch it on IWTV if you haven't. I don't wanna call it a "hidden gem," but it... probably could be considered this? It definitely got me hooked on both wrestlers when I first watched it, which in turn got me to check out more of their catalog, leading to my tastes in wrestling changing dramatically. Last little side note because i've been thinking about it since I started getting into writing this: How is it that NOBODY on the indies decided to book them in a rematch? I know they teamed in 5CC which I haven't seen (yet), and i'm not necessarily complaining or anything, but it's just crazy to think about how they have so much chemistry and, to my knowledge, never had another match. Oh well, it is what it is.
match rating:
★★★★★
★★★★★
Anyways, coming out of this: I don't know how often i'm gonna update this, I think what i'm gonna do is that if anyone out there WANTS me to review a specific match then you can pay me $10 on my ko-fi and either link it in the message there or link it to me on Discord (my username is emmoswrld) and I will try and watch + review it as soon as I can. Otherwise, i'll just write whenever I actually feel like it. Hopefully this doesn't completely blow up!
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