Hot Sauce

Tracy Williams vs Conor Claxton

If WWE is where pro wrestling goes to die, Beyond Wrestling is where spermatozoa speed-race to the wrestling ovum. The company is a mixed bag of wildcat ideas about how best to use the squared circle. BW encourages experimentation and invention. New ideas sometimes include, as here, radical returns to old ways: i.e. two rugged men in solid black trunks working each other till one can't work anymore.

I'm talking about the second match of last April's show When Satan Rules the World (click the link up top to watch it for free on YouTube). Hot Sauce Tracy Williams and Conor Claxton are so manly that one piledriver can't take them out. It takes two. Along the way, great pains (yeh!) are taken to ensure every joint in the two men's bodies is worked like it knows where to find Liam Neeson's daughter. I'm squarely in Tracy's corner, the guy with the shorter hair, Amish beard, and hairy chest and stomach, but Conor is neck and neck with him the full 8-minute match. The contest plays out like the bastard child of MMA and golden-era pro rasslin'.

Can it be as sweet as I make it sound? You bet. The only thing that would make me like it more is to stretch the time limit to 30 minutes--oh, heck, make it an hour. These guys can handle it. Regular visitors to this blog probably know that what gets me going is a wrestler's attention to detail. Why bust an arm when you can crack a finger? There are ten of those to play with. And check out that sixth screen cap: not even Kathy Bates hobbles a man so efficiently. Hot Sauce doesn't need a mic to show his attitude. The guy carries it in his swagger, his growl, his gritted teeth.