Featured image by Chris Things, you can buy a print of this illustration and much more at his linked website.
Disclosure: I participated as a paid member of the pre-show promotion of West Coast Pro Whiplash.
With the rise of Netflix and other streaming services over the last decade or so, the binge watch model of entertainment has taken over how media is not only consumed but created. This has had an interesting effect on professional wrestling as well. Callbacks and learned psychology are obviously not new things in pro wrestling, that’s been around for decades now, but there’s something to be said about the amount of faith wrestlers can now place in their audiences to be tuned into smaller details and long running themes over a longer span of time. In this way, some matches function better as pieces of a greater whole instead of standing on their own.
Obviously, Chris Hero and Timothy Thatcher didn’t invent this idea. But it’s certainly something that seems to have played a role in how this match got structured and presented. Chris Hero’s return match against Timothy Thatcher functions much better as an end to their series than it does on its own.
To the match’s credit, it seems to have a very clear understanding of this. A lot of the match’s promotion heavily emphasized the history these two had together, and that aspect of the presentation continued via commentary. A lot of the classic threads that’s come through all those matches show up here–Hero’s more distracted by the crowd than Thatcher, Thatcher’s jaw seems immune to a KO loss, etc.
In a way, their history is its own form of smoke and mirrors to help compensate for a few things. Commentary was occasionally clunky, the sound mix was up and down especially with regards to picking up the sound of the strikes on screen, and also Hero’s coming back from over three years of absence so the ring conditioning isn’t entirely restored yet. The questions that have arisen about the possibility for ring rust probably do more to color one’s perception of Hero’s performance here than anything else. He’s mentioned in some of the interviews running up to this that cardio’s a struggle, and that probably brings any potential signs of fatigue into starker contrast. Perhaps the biggest question mark was reaching for a water battle to sip from about halfway through. Even then though, Thatcher gets right back on offense after this moment, leaving the question of it being legitimate exhaustion (likely) versus an exaggerated version to play into the match’s narrative (not impossible) up in the air.
What matters most though is that both men’s mind for wrestling is intact.
This match leans hard on an understanding of their rivalry up to this point because it is a richer experience for it. Much of the match plays out as Hero going back to strategies that had paid off for him in the past. Notably, he’s much more keen to grapple with Thatcher on the mat as had been so effective for him in their 2019 bout. This manifests as some early armwork that doesn’t linger too long, and then a much longer extended segment torturing Thatcher’s leg after Hero repeats the oblique kick from the 2019 bout. As with then, it’s the most that Hero’s able to keep Thatcher down for the count, actively working over the leg and hitting some truly gross spots that these two have yet to bust out in the past. Of particular note are Hero hitting a senton to the leg as well as the disgusting apron ankle smash between Hero’s feet. Gruesome stuff, and Thatcher’s selling feels just pitch perfect to match it as well–he doesn’t go back to it too often but instead allows it to nag at him as the match progresses.
On top of that, Thatcher himself remains in absolute top form. His mean mugging is great as it always is, but his selling really puts this over the top. At one point, Hero flattens him out with a big senton to the back, and the way Thatcher just crumples and seizes up on the canvas is beautiful stuff.
The match does lose a little steam when it goes to a standing position for me. Even in past iterations of this match up, those weren’t always my favorite aspects of them either. But these still find interesting ways to utilize it. For example, early on it’s Hero gritting his teeth through Thatcher boots instead of vice versa that get things going. Hero’s also a lot less repetitive with the use of the elbows than he was in some of the 2015 bouts. They’re all a little more measured this time out and it makes something like Thatcher going back to the headbutt cutoff on the Death Blow all the more impactful.
Perhaps the smartest thing about the match though is how they approach the finish. It’s helped by the angle that started this all, painting Thatcher as a far more vindictive and malicious force than in the past. It’s Thatcher wrestling with a certain spite here, and that becomes his undoing. Deep in the match, he starts focusing too much on nailing Saito suplexes and dropping Hero on his head. In the past, that had been an effective means to cut off Hero’s momentum, but Thatcher’s bread and butter had always been the Fujiwara instead. When Hero escapes the Fujiwara in the late stages of this match, it seems to get into Thatcher’s head to want to brutalize Hero instead.
As is the case in so many of their matches in the past, the loser goes down due to a certain inflexibility. Putting all their chips into one projected finish instead of staying fluid. Here, Thatcher goes all in on those suplexes that he never sees it coming when Hero rises from the dead to grab a flash Fujiwara and get the submission.
It’s feel good stuff, book ending the feud with a finish that directly reverses their first 2015 bout in WWN.
Like I said, the nitty gritty nuts and bolts stuff aren’t always running at full power here. Hero still needs to find time to get his reps back in, rediscover the rhythms of in-ring competition, and regain the conditioning that really only comes with regular ringwork. But the engine that runs the machine here has always been intangible, it’s the minds at play and the structure of the thing as a whole. There’s few better minds for this kind of stuff than Hero and Thatcher.
Rating: ****
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