Featured image by Gaia Micatovich Photography
This review was commissioned by Genking over on my Ko-fi account.
I wasn’t especially looking forward to this assignment. I have no real connection to the European indies, let alone a relatively smaller scene such as the Danish one we’re dipping into here. The first match in the series here between Eli Castle and Gabriel Castle didn’t give me much reason to change my opinion either. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but it’s filled with a lot of the kind of weightless, modern indie, super junior-inspired action that just does absolutely nothing for me. Kicks that seem to land a mile away, awkward reverse ranas, just a lot of stuff that’s Not For Me and made the prospect of a trilogy feel especially tedious.
Thank god for the second match then.
The second match is no beautiful thing, it’s hardly a match at all, but rather a fun choice from the booking team and the two talents involved. They make the clever choice to forego the sort of traditional workrate trilogy this could have easily turned into and steer things (mostly) in a different direction. Babyface Castle kicks off the match with a fiery babyface shine that gets cut off in minutes when Faust intercepts an attempted dive with a chair to the head. Sick! Great little twist, genuinely unexpected.
In principle, this is meant to turn the second into much more of a heat angle to get us invested in the big blow off in the third. In action, they do a little too much with it to be as effective as it could be. Faust’s initial attack and cut off are real good but Castle gets in way too much in the proceeding brawl for this to truly feel like something was robbed from him.
The third bout is a chain match. One might argue that perhaps the second match attack should have involved a chain to make this more sensible, but whatever.
Obvious things out of the way, it’s still a little too floaty to have any real oomph behind it. Lots of fancy sequences of feints and dodges, too many superkicks to make something like this work, and it does tend to drag in the back half. Also, no blood. Just a real unfortunate choice there given what they seemed to be going for after the second match, but perhaps there’s a limitation with the venues or some other thing that keeps them from doing that.
All that said, there’s a spark of inventiveness in the chain match. Faust, in particular, gets to do a lot of fun stuff here, specifically in the stooging department. Faust really does stand out through all these matches for seeming to not take himself too seriously despite the facepaint and overall demeanor. There’s an understanding there of what’s required of a heel, and Faust constantly puts himself in positions to be outshined and run from our conquering hero, and those moments often elicit the best drama from these matches that too often become just an exchange of moves.
The initial opening sequence to the chain match is especially fun. Faust gets thrashed and it’s delightful. Yanked around on the chain by Castle when he tries to escape, a big dodge in the ring turning into him getting jerked into a back bump, just lots of little things that can’t help but get a hearty cheer and chuckle from me to see this little bastard get his. One wishes they got to follow up on that with some real heat, some real brutality later on, but that babyface shine in the chains showed some better ideas than many better wrestlers have had in similar situations. Got to give them credit where it’s due.
Overall, this is harmless stuff, and even shows some potential if given the room to grow and develop. These two guys were 19-years-old at the time of the trilogy according to commentary and they certainly wrestle like it. Lots of youthful energy, and youthful inexperience too, but that just means there’s time yet to improve. Only way to go is up if they put their minds to it.
