Featured image by @ura_mot10
First reviewed here.
I can’t help but compare this to Mox’s other big hardcore spectacle of the year. With Hangman, there’s a certain intimacy to the animosity there. It’s such a personal issue, and that sort of boils both characters down to their inner cores, creating something really rich and fulfilling to gain from that particular match and rivalry. Even though Mox and Despy have wrestled before, and even had a real great bout the night before in a build up tag, they don’t really have that built-in emotional tie. Smartly though, these are two workers who are skilled enough to draw drama from somewhere else.
In this case, it’s from a sense of scale and significance. We’re naturally a little more emotionally drawn to Desperado in this match. This is his home promotion after all, his mentor Jun Kasai is at ringside, and in a way this can’t help but feel like a natural next step for Desperado. In 2022, he defeated Kansai, getting past one of the icons of Japanese deathmatch wrestling. Here in 2023, he’s up against something much more immediate. Jon Moxley is an indomitable force in pro wrestling, across many different genres. The fact that he’s one of the top stars of a major North American TV company doesn’t stop him from also being a truly intimidating figure in a deathmatch-leaning setting.
What that produces is perhaps the best individual Moxley performance of the year. Moxley feels huge in this, immense as a persona and opponent. Much of the first half of the match is dedicated to a Moxley control segment where he beats the living shit out of Desperado with such violence and glee that it gets the heart racing. Really, watch him at work, it’s sort of masterful all the little tricks and methods he uses to get the most out of each prop they bring into play. The stand out is the fork, Mox has perfected the art of the fork in pro wrestling. It’s the speed with which he jabs, the different angles he finds to stick it into Despy’s wounds and into his mask. It’s fucking disgusting and it rocks so goddamn much. But there’s also the guitar which he swings with such force to smash it, only to then use the jagged edges of it to stab Despy in the throat. Hell yeah.
What Despy brings to the table here is more of a traditional underdog babyface performance, perhaps even more so than his Kasai match last year. Moxley really makes him work for the comeback, and when Despy’s able to dodge and send Mox crashing into the barbed wire board, it feels like such a massive moment. It’s really easy to rally behind him and it adds a little more fire and tension to standard things like a strike exchange or the double skewer spot. Desperado doesn’t exactly get close to a win here but Mox does give him a few key kick outs that really put over Despy’s determination.
It’s such a great match, one that feels less celebratory than Kansai/Desperado from the year before, and more like a genuine struggle for one’s place in the business.
Rating: ****1/2
