Brothers versus Brothers






I love this fight. Muscular Chris "The Shark" Andrews (6', 220#) and Sam Andrews (6'2", 165#) versus Pretty Marvelous (Dan "The PrettyBoy" Walsh, 6'4", 210#, and "Marvelous" Mark Walsh, no stats, but he looks like an even match for Sam). Pretty Marvelous are arrogant cheats. The Andrews brothers, babyface catch-wrestling technicians. All four good-looking and confident wrestlers. The eye candy would be plenty by itself (except for the video's poor lighting and focus), but the wrestlers breathe new life into a classic wrestling angle, making this title fight a five-boner instant classic.

Joel Redman (aka Oliver Cain) owns Devon Wrestling Association, the promoter of this event, which took place in Tiverton on 28 February 2010, just twenty-four hours after the Walshes seized the tag team championship from Team No Limits. (A note to the Walsh boys: Scrapbook those photos of you wearing the ten-pound belts for a day.)

The Andrews start with a bang*, diving into Pretty Marvelous before the bell sounds. The two teams trade chops outside the ropes. Dan and Sam reenter the ring, where Sam takes huge chunks out of "The PrettyBoy" before Dan flees to his corner, pleading with brother Mark to tag in. When Mark steps in, the crowd urges Sam to tag his beefcake brother in to square off against the stringy but devious Mark. 

Mark challenges "The Shark" to a pushup contest, which Chris wins, of course. The two lock up, and Chris effortlessly dominates the lightweight for the next three minutes, at one point catching him as he whips off the ropes to lift him in a gorilla press. When Dan sneaks up to attack Chris from behind, Chris unloads little brother on top of him. 

The crowd chants "Chicken!" as "Marvelous" Mark looks for excuses not to get back in the ring with Chris. When he does reenter, he scratches the blond bodybuilder across the eyes, and Chris slumps back to the corner ropes, temporarily blinded. Mark charges in for the attack, but his cheap tactic has infuriated Chris, who tenderizes the kid with body slams and stiff chops. 

Mark dodges one slap, but when he tries to pay Chris back, he busts his own hand against Andrews' rock-solid muscle. Chris finishes off young Mark, leaving big brother Dan no option but to reluctantly tag in and square off against Chris. The wrestlers lock up, but Chris twists Dan's arm and drags him over for Sam to dropkick off the corner ropes.

Sam musses up "PrettyBoy" Dan pretty definitively, who nevertheless refuses to submit when given the chance. Sam then tags his beefy brother back in. After some within-limits double-teaming, Chris gets just a two-count on Dan. So he trades him back to Sam. With a well-choreographed double assault, Chris and Sam nearly finish their opponent, but Mark sneaks in to stop Sam from getting the full three-count.

The Andrews brothers trade off again, but repeated outside interference prompts the ref to step out of the ring to penalize the perpetrators, switching the advantage to "PrettyBoy" Dan, who attacks Chris from behind. Mark sneaks back to double up and trade off with his brother against Chris and clearly finds exhilarating the chance to dominate the weakened muscle god. As Mark sidekicks the fallen Chris, big brother Dan roars, "Who's sexy now?"

But when Mark climbs up the corner ropes to dive on Chris, Chris revives enough to loudly land a flying dropkick to "Marvelous" Mark's pretty kisser. Both men in the ring are pretty bad off right now, so it's a question of who can tag in his waiting brother first. Chris gets to Sam first. The two lighter guys left alone in the ring provide some of the hottest action this match has yet seen, with Sam kicking Mark's ass with speed and relish.

Meanwhile, Dan engages Chris in  shouting match on the apron, stoking the flames for when the two big guys will get some uninterrupted alone-time in the ring (wait for it). This sideline distraction allows Mark to turn on Sam with such vicious intensity that at one point the ref has to manually peel him off the guy. The Walshes' strategy is to keep the ref looking everywhere but at their illegal attacks on a helpless Sam. Sam crawls to Chris, whose outstretched hand he cannot reach before Mark grabs his boot and pulls him back in. But when he does get the tag, the ref's attention again is diverted, and an eager Chris is pushed back to his corner.

In the last five minutes of the match, "PrettyBoy" Dan, now the legal man in the ring, gets Sam in a sleeper hold. The usual suspense of the raising and dropping of the victim's arm to determine whether he's still conscious has seldom been so splendidly overwrought. When Sam's arm stays up on the third try, the crowd is beside itself in cheering the underdog. He escapes and tags in his beefy big brother, who, to everybody's delight, starts "cleaning house." Just when it looks like the Walshes may be too much for Chris alone to handle, we get a four-man brawl, climaxing (in the final 30 seconds!) with the highly anticipated showdown between 220-pound Chris and 210-pound Dan.

For pacing, drama, and sweat, this match beats almost every other tag-team contest I have seen. And since the poor quality single-camera video robs us of a close look at these brotherly adversaries, here are some clean pictures of the guys to fill in the gaps in your imagination:

Mark and Dan Walsh
Sam and Chris Andrews
* Yeah, I figured most of you won't want to read my tedious turn-by-turn summary of the full 23-minute event, not when you can go to YouTube for the visuals, but I had to write all this down for myself, another way of involving myself in a match I consider top notch.

Comments

  1. The Andrews brothers are a great tag combo. Chris is magnificent. In recent times he looks like he could substitute for Chris Hemsworth as Thor. Very Viking!

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