Cosmos

Maxim Apollo vs Jesse Zane, Catalog 1 - Muscle Boy Throwdown, and Maxim Apollo vs Viktor Patrovsky, Catalog 4 - Muscle Boys Dominate (MuscleBoy)

Maxim Apollo (5'7", 166#) plays the lead in my current fantasy of being stuck in outer space with an arrogant and pugnacious Russian cosmonaut. You haven't explored all the frontiers of wrestling fantasy until you've wrestled while weightless. My long-distance wrestling co-fantasist and I explored the angle a few years ago with different antagonists, but Maxim has the look and attitude to give the story the right touch of Soviet-era intrigue. Previous to this week, I had seen Apollo in action only once - his fight with fellow Russian skinhead Viktor Patrovsky in Catalog 2. This week, I picked up his latest MuscleBoy release, a rematch with Patrovsky, and his MBW debut against Jesse Zane back in April.

Never satisfied with a simple finisher when he can total an opponent three times over with a torture rack, a piledriver, AND a rear naked choke, all in quick succession, Maxim might be the very definition of a showstopper. He throws a savage punch, too, and his armbars are some of the feelingest ones I've seen. I like him against Zane (above), who's slightly smaller but, as he's proved elsewhere, surprisingly tough. Patrovsky (below), another obsession of mine, holds his own against Apollo better in part because he's bigger. A lot depends, though, on whether you would define "holds his own" to mean one hope spot in which Viktor manages mainly to rouse the compact буян 's ire and seals his own fate. Maxim knocks the big guy clean out and then unceremoniously showers him with sweat. Whatever camera-shyness might have held Viktor and Maxim back in their first go-around is well behind them now. 

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