Featured image by Head Drop.
This exercise in patience was commissioned by Timothy R. Buechner over on my Ko-fi account.
I’m doing this as one article because I can’t imagine there’s much of substance to say about each match and also, Tim’s enough of a friend that I can afford to take the piss out of a commission meant to terrorize me to begin with.
This is one of those oddities that came out of late era BritWres that got a lot of hype before the Everything of 2020 happened. Even just sight unseen before going into it in depth, it reeks of the kind of vague “storytelling” that permeates the worst of NXT or WWE melodrama. In that sense, probably a real prescient look at what pro wrestling would come to be in the 2020s at some of the highest levels of the sport.
According to Cagematch, these two have wrestled each other a total of five times between 2019 and 2022, so let’s just this over with.
Ilja Dragunov vs. Cara Noir (PROGRESS Chapter 96: True Friends Stab You In The Front 10/13/19)
The thing with Cara Noir is that I’ve always considered him flash over substance. He’s got the pretty entrance and the classical music, then the bell rings and nothing ever really comes together for him. Mechanically, there’s a few things he does decently. The early chain wrestling is mostly fine as a way to build things, and then later he has some decent enough barefoot kicks to the chest and his Blackout Sleeper really does look awesome. But it’s all so incoherent, none of the elements ever really lead to the next thing. That early arm control doesn’t do anything, the Sleeper is a flash thing he catches Ilja with that’s not built up to at all, and then that’s about all he really gets demonstrate here.
But of course, Cara has all the goofy shit which is what I assume sticks out to people in this feud. Those longing glances, his stupid custom bell that’s “magic because everything he does is magic” (BARF), and then those pauses in between each segment of this match. A totally good faith read of what’s happening here is that Ilja finds himself intrigued by Noir’s more theatrical stylings. He’s fascinated by the custom bell, he can’t take his eyes off Cara, and he sort of indulges all of Noir’s mind games here. I don’t think it’s a stretch that there’s meant to be homoerotic undertones here. Noir caresses Ilja early on, then later in the match, he actually holds Ilja’s hand before Ilja continues his attack.
The main problem is that it’s all incredibly corny and eye roll inducing. Noir’s flirtations don’t inform any other part of his act. He doesn’t heelishly use them to make his opponent uncomfortable and open them up to attack, he doesn’t even really do them in a celebratory enough fashion to make it feel admirable as a babyface. They are intrusions, nothing that really feels like it comes from any real interiority of the wrestling character being portrayed, but just a little bit of glitter on an otherwise pedestrian BritWres match to work everyone into thinking it’s more special than it is. It’s just a thing he does in between wrestling like every other indie guy of the 2010s to stand out.
Rating: **
Ilja Dragunov vs. Cara Noir (PROGRESS Chapter 97: Sex Robots Will Eventually Be Capable of Murder 10/27/19)
There’s enough in this match to make me think that there’s genuinely a good match possible between these two. Structurally, they’ve got a lot more going on for them early on than in the first bout. There’s less of those boring staredowns, and more just getting right to the meat of the action. And for much of the first act, it’s very good action too. It’s a lot of really tight chain wrestling, working in and out of holds in a way that feels sensible and grounded.
That’s what’s so upsetting about what follows really. They clearly could just have good matches if they applied themselves, but it’s a carny business so there’s gimmickry necessary.
What this match really made clear for me is the tyranny of the moment in modern pro wrestling. What I mean by that is that so much wrestling feels preoccupied with capturing these certain moments, those immortal snapshots that last generations. Think the Rock/Hogan staredown or a bloodied Austin screaming in the sharpshooter. These images last, rightfully so, and there’s such a crazed attempt to capture that magic. What so many wrestlers fail to understand is that the image is meant to follow from the wrestling. Those famous images come as natural consequences of their matches instead of being carefully manufactured. The problem is that wrestlers consider it in those terms: an image, a snapshot. They see only the finished product without understanding the details in between that allows one to get there. So many wrestlers treat it like the end goal of each and every spot, and in turn only produce contrived dreck.
Take this clip, for example. It’s so obvious what happened here in practice. Cara and Ilja want to do their take on the stupid Ricochet/Ospreay superhero pose off. They have that final image in mind, that’s the impression they want to leave on the viewer. But they have no care for the practicalities of that moment. All they know is do a quick dodge of a move then shuffle into place to get that inevitable picture. Ilja’s especially egregious in this regard. He looks so stupid getting his hands up in the most inorganic way possible here, all after dodging the softest looking whiff of a kick I’ve ever seen.
Later in the match, they know that they want to be lying atop each other’s shoulders–again playing on the homoerotic tension scoring this entire rivalry–but they don’t really have any decent way of getting into position for that. They do it on a double down, shuffling limply towards each other just so that they can get into place for their money shot like grade school play actors trying to hit the mark their teachers placed on the stage. Even just sitting here I can think of an easier pitch: Cara Noir does a Rude Awakening neckbreaker. If he’d just hit that fucking move, they’d already be in an ideal position to get the same result. Instead, they go for a double down following Noir catching Ilja off the top with that neckbreaker so awkwardly that it’s not even entirely clear in the moment who got the worse of the impact.
And in spite of all of that, still somehow better structured and paced than their first bout. It’s less back and forth, utilizes heat segments better for a greater sense of narrative, and the finish feels a lot more impactful with Noir’s beautiful Blackout Sleeper actually getting the win this time.
Could have been good if they weren’t chained to the moment.
Rating: **1/4
Ilja Dragunov vs. Cara Noir (PROGRESS Chapter 99: With a Flake, Please 12/15/19)
Let me set the scene.
It’s 2019, the first year in a longtime that I made an active attempt to expand my wrestling viewing. It was in this time I became friends with the infamous Slack circle of writers and podcasters, and my taste was about to undergo a pretty radical shift as my horizons expanded. That being said, I was still coming out of a two to three year period of watching primarily WWE-branded wrestling. In that time in the late 2010s, I was one of the many head over heels for NXT, and I lent my voice to a lot of the hyperbolic praise that got thrown at 2018 in particular. I think I even handed out two different 5 star ratings that year, both for Johnny Gargano matches. In 2019, I finally got a taste for the European indies and Will Ospreay would end up on my year end video.
I say this, not only to humiliate myself for all your entertainment, but to contextualize exactly where my taste was. If there was ever a time for me to enjoy some NXT-ass bullshit, this would have been it.
Having seen the hype for the two out of three falls bout between Cara Noir and Ilja Dragunov, I went out of my way to give it a try.
I switched it off after the first fall.
Again: in 2019, at a time I consider my taste to have been far from developed or refined, I switched this match off and decided it wasn’t worth my time.
This is, putting it as kindly as possible, absolutely putrid dogshit. Every now and then, when I share a somewhat negative opinion online, there’s a whole host of people ready to call me pretentious, snobby, a navel gazer, and all that. I sleep well at night bearing those accusations when matches like this exist to demonstrate what it looks like when two wrestlers are so far up their own asses and high off their own farts.
Jesus fucking Christ, the ridiculous bullshit these two pull in this match. The first is the “finish” to that first fall. Throughout the entire rivalry now, there’s been the implication that Ilja Dragunov is not only intrigued by Noir’s theatricality (and at a deeper reading, perhaps Noir’s gender nonconforming personality) but actively aroused by it. Dragunov kissed Noir on the forehead in the last match, and he takes it a step further here by coming out with facepaint that mirrors Noir’s own. After a bland, impatient rope running sequence, the action comes to a grinding halt so that Dragunov can caress Noir’s face in the same manner that Noir had done to him previously. Only this time, Ilja also slaps the mat as a tap out, basically surrendering the first fall to Noir.
The idea here is that Noir is so baffled by the reversal of the mind games that it sends him into a rage that leaves him open for Dragunov to attack him and win the second fall. It’s deeply stupid, looks stupid, and I frankly worry that anyone who wasn’t paid to do so kept watching after that ridiculous finish. I’ve seen a lot of people say that the first two falls of lucha matches can occasionally feel “perfunctory,” but at least they aren’t THE DUMBEST FUCKING THING EVER.
Then in the third fall, just…fuck off.
There’s an initial story of Dragunov trying to wear down Noir’s neck after the blitz in the second fall. Great little moment too where Dragunov drops his full body weight down over Noir’s neck. But every other fucking minute is punctuated by some of the most vomit-inducing contrived trash ever committed to a pro wrestling ring. At one point, Dragunov enzuigiris Noir into falling into a La Pieta pose for some reason? The implication being that…Dragunov is the Virgin Mary? Cara Noir is our Lord and savior perhaps? Come to save BritWres by dying for our sins?
I’m being flippant there, but really, WHY THE FUCK. No practical or even thematic use for that bullshit other than to say HEY, LOOK, WE KNOW OTHER ART AND BY DEFINITION ARE ARTISTS ALSO.
And then in the end? Perhaps the worst variation of the “I’m sorry, I love you” spot ever and I mean fucking ever. The two run into each other ostensibly for a double lariat, but instead just hug. Ilja gives Noir a tender kiss on the forehead–something that can really only be read in hindsight as…blessing Noir? Passing the torch? Giving permission?–before Noir nails Dragunov with a Package Piledriver to win.
For fuck’s sake, just make out already! If there was ever an argument for safely exploring your sexuality without repression or judgement from society, it’s this stupid fucking match. Maybe if these two got busy boinking, they wouldn’t have had time to have such a bad match!
AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID AVOID. NO REDEEMING QUALITIES.
One of the worst matches ever.
Rating: DUD
Ilja Dragunov vs. Cara Noir vs. Kyle Fletcher vs. Paul Robinson (PROGRESS Chapter 101: Dalmatians 1/19/20)
This one’s all right actually. It’s an elimination four-way which means there isn’t really too much time to get into silly bullshit (though Ilja and Cara sure try). 90% of this is just a go-go-go all moves style four-way though. Inoffensive, but nothing really all that spectacular. It’s something of a rushed booking as well as Eddie Dennis was pulled from the main event, leaving this cobbled together four-way for a vacant PROGRESS Title. Again, most of it is just fine, I could even understand liking it if you enjoy moves all in a row. It comes down to Ilja and Cara for the final two and they have their silly moments–a big ole sloppy kiss and a weird “duel”-type set up–but the last stretch of this is really just an indie-ass bombfest. Don’t love any of it, but still mostly a relief after the last bout. Best match on here so far, or I guess the least annoying.
Rating: **½
Ilja Dragunov vs. Cara Noir (PROGRESS Chapter 131: 10th Anniversary Show 4/9/22)
So, it’s not perfect. Given the hype and reputation behind their 2019 series, there was always going to be references to that rearing their ugly head here. In this match, it manifests as the return of the hand raising pose, the double lariat into hug spot, and a general NXT undercurrent of Ilja being a little obvious about trying to get “the Cara he wanted” back out of freshly dethroned former PROGRESS Champ Cara. All those things do still break the immersion and some of Ilja’s sillier physicality and selling plague this at points.
But.
But.
And I say this with full-hearted sincerity and surprise: this is a very good pro wrestling match. I’d go as far as to say that if not for the issues I outlined above, this might have been a great pro wrestling match. Genuine thread match material reveals itself here in a way that hasn’t at all in their series so far.
For one, it is the match of theirs most committed to using the language of pro wrestling to convey their ideas. Throughout all of 2019, those character moments and contrived positioning reeked off trying to bring influences from other mediums into pro wrestling, neglecting the fact that pro wrestling itself is a rich and vibrant medium. As I mentioned above the story here is one of old foes coming together again after a long time apart–Ilja’s gone off to the WWE where he’s the UK Champion, and Cara Noir’s coming off the end of the longest ever PROGRESS World Title reign. And shock of shocks, they use pro wrestling to convey those ideas, using violence as a vehicle for their themes instead of suppressing the violence to shout their themes out.
And my god, if the change and improvement isn’t fucking tangible. Like, wow, if not for those awful references in the back half of the match, this feels like it’s wrestled by two entirely different people. Even when the more character-based moments arise, they’re so much more seamlessly incorporated into this. They stop feeling like ends in of themselves, and more like pieces of more traditional pro wrestling wisdom. For example, when Cara rises up to raise Ilja’s hand, it’s as part of his firing up to make a comeback after a long Ilja control segment. Not perfect, but certainly a lot more sensible than just stopping in their tracks to do some silly bullshit.
Importantly too, for all the talk in 2019 of the “theater of violence,” it’s this match in 2022 that actually delivers in violence. In his attempts to jar Cara back to himself, Ilja hits hard. He’s beating the shit out of Cara Noir here with meaty slaps, big chops to cut Noir down, and then really tight mean holds down on the mat. Their early chain wrestling work has always been good, but here the action is given the space to organically breathe and build on itself instead of being grossly segmented by cheap “story” beats. Here, Ilja uses the ground game to actually seize control, and he’s able to literally throw Cara Noir around, oftentimes dominating the entire space of the ring for himself. By the time Cara makes his comeback in the second half and is able to dump Ilja to the floor too, it feels like a truly earned reversal of fortune.
Wow, genuinely!
This is exponential levels of improvement, going from one of the dirt worst matches I’ve ever seen to a match that’s now just a little workshopping away from greatness. I can’t help but wonder just how valuable those three years apart for both men are. Even before the Cara series, Ilja’s propensity for greatness had already revealed itself through his wXw run and the battles with WALTER. But Cara Noir? That man must have picked something up in that post-COVID title reign because while he’s not a complete package, this is the first time I’ve watched him and thought, “Yes, that man has the understanding of how pro wrestling operates.”
A shockingly happy ending to this retrospective finding that sometimes, the flip really does switch for some people. It’s not always a perfect transition, and there’s always more room to grow, but good things really can come from where you least expect them.
Good on them, biggest shock of the entire project.
Rating: ***1/2