Up for Grabs

Yesterday saw a new download from Krushco, spotlighting the eternal struggle between Krush and Lucien. It's a tight sequence of rounds of real submission wrestling from two years ago, with the boys getting testier as the battle starts to wear them down. 

Krush and Lucien are always well matched, and in some cases, like this one, Lucien is able to keep up with Krush for a consistently close fight from beginning to end. Lucien finds a way out of some of Krush's most paralyzing holds and keeps the give-and-take action exciting and the victory up for grabs. Krush continues to loom large as the Everest of underground wrestling, hence the current line of young ambitious wrestlers hungry to test themselves against him and make reputations for themselves.

The 22-minute video contains no dialogue--just a grunt of exasperation every now and then. But the match is far from silent. The struggle is punctuated by groans and gasps and heavy breathing and the thud of bodies in collision against each other and the mat. It's clear that this is an athletic competition, not a grudge match of some sort, not make-believe pro wrestling. Still, the competition is intense, both wrestlers expending every ounce of energy in their bodies against each other against the stark black backdrop.

We also have a camera in motion (i.e. a cameraman, not a stationary long take from a tripod). This gets us closer to the action and to the strain and emotion on each wrestler's face, and it frees Krush and Lucien to concentrate on each other, rather than having to check the status of the camera every minute.

"Classic Krush" can mean a number of things. For me his numerous matches with Lucien are the defining ones, and this one represents the best that these two wrestlers bring up in one another.