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.