Featured image by Ray Urner

My thanks to Pacific northwest independent wrestler and friend of the blog, Parm Singh Mann, for capturing and sharing the footage of this match.

Elliot Tyler and Judas Icarus are two talents that I discovered late last year through their Halloween Hell 2019 death match. I’ve kept an eye on them since and they continue to develop as incredibly exciting talents on the Pacific northwest scene. They mostly work together as the tag team The Strays and even both got singles runs in 3-2-1 Battle’s G0! round robin tournament. But here in ECCW, they are blood rivals akin to Generico and Steen almost.

This match lives up to that expected violence as well with both men going for each other right at the bell. A lot of really snug, tight action that always feels urgent and hate driven. We get all your standard plunder too–chairs, thumbtacks, even a hammer. You always, always get bonus points for using a hammer.

There’s also a lot of unconventional body part selling here which is a plus as well. Early on in the match, Icarus attacks Tyler’s ear. That’s a constant problem for most of the second act of the match but it does start to wane a bit towards the finishing stretch. Luckily that’s compensated for by the fact that Icarus starts to sell his throat from a chop. This compiles with Tyler shoving thumbtacks into Icarus’ mouth towards the finish with the idea being that Icarus’ throat is so damaged that he can’t even say the words “I quit.”

This is great stuff, a lot of clever ideas backed up by great action. And a hammer. Don’t ever forget about the hammer.

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