Match 125: Three-Way Dance: Black Dragon vs Joker vs James the Never Give Up Kid (Review)
I don't know what UCW is up to, but I think they have entered into whole new territory here.
This three-way match, UCW-Wrestling's first, features a lot of lucha-style clowning around, what with Joker's typical badgering of his opponents--harping on Dragon's green-card status and still whining over an earlier match lost (or, if you believe him, not lost) to quiet, methodical James.
Black Dragon catches an early lead by pitting the two Americans against each other--dividing and conquering--and then walloping one while the other is busy catching his breath.
How long does it take Joker and James to team up and, through cooperation, take down this ambiguously foreign masked man? Pretty much as long as it takes Dragon to get overly confident in his ability to outsmart two of UCW's wiliest competitors. Which is to say, "Not long at all."
Then a new question emerges: How long until the Americans' egos tear them apart again? Each claims responsibility for taking the foreigner down, and in no time they are fighting each other over which one gets to dish up the squashing that Dragon has coming to him, at which point the match turns into a pissing contest--to the tune of "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better." You can probably guess where the action goes from there.
Or maybe not.
Early in the match, Joker grabs James's head to his shoulder and turns to the audience in TV-land and says, "This is how you treat a bitch. This. Is. How. You. Treat. A. Bitch. Y'grab'm like this. Y'grab'm like this. Okaaay? And then you drop to your knees like this." Then as James groans in agony, every bone in his vertebrae jangling, Joker shows off his muscles to the camera--and, trust me, you've seen bigger bulges on the dried bubblegum under church pews. Your appreciation for moments like this will depend entirely on how much Joker's usual antics crack you up. I was laughing my ass off and holding my nuts through a good one-third of this match, which lasts a full 45 minutes!
This fight has all the energy and bounce of the bedroom roughhousing of boys half the age of these guys. That's not at all a bad thing, mind you. It's a blast, in fact. A man would have to have no soul at all not to want to kick off his street shoes, grab a pillow, and leap into the pile-on in the center of the mat, taking and giving licks with dumb, reckless abandon.
But this fight takes such roughhousing up to a wholly different level. "Surreal" is a word that comes to mind.
But nothing is going to prepare you for the rest of this match.
James, who, along with Dragon, is a fight trainer at UCW, gets to shine in this free-for-all. James has always been kind of UCW's quiet Beatle, "George," to Axel's "Paul," Klown's "John," and Joker's "Ringo," but he really gets to strut his stuff against Joker and Dragon here. Handsome hairy James regularly and gamely takes it on himself to try to battle both opponents at the same time. A failed but oh-so-close attempt to pin the two simultaneously is something you just gotta see for yourself. And, given the firepower the two direct back at him, you certainly come to understand why he's been dubbed the "Never Give Up Kid."
Black Dragon impresses, as well. His comically sinister chuckling--not exactly mwa-hah-hah-hah, but pretty damned close to it, establishes him as the baddest of the bad guys here, though probably more in a league with Snidely Whiplash than The Undertaker. Here's another fighter I have been underestimating all these months. The guy has moxie, and he pulls off some ridiculously over-the-top moves with panache and sells the realness of several equally ridiculous wrestling holds you're unlikely to see anywhere else this side of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
But it is Joker, again, who steals my heart. How can I deny a guy who's willing to use his own tucked-in-pink-lycra nads as a maul--and then look genuinely surprised at how much it hurts to do this! Chee-rist, this guy is all carbonated, fruit-flavored testosterone and no ... fucking ... brain ... at all! Minutes later he knocks himself out headbutting James; then shaking the cobwebs out of his head, he deadpans to the camera, "Not one of my brighter ideas."
No shit, Robert Downey Jr.
Some choppy editing here and there hurts the fight's continuity, but the action proceeds at a brisk and entertaining pace. It's almost as if Bodyslam and the guys decided to get together, roughhouse, and put on a show for the camera, knowing nobody's ever going to believe this, much less take it seriously. These guys have definitely been sniffing glue while watching Saturday morning cartoons, after spending all night watching Japanese puroresu--and you can't help but love and kinda envy the three wrestlers for throwing themselves into this slapstick slaparama heart and soul.
If you, like me, think you might actually enjoy watching a three-layered sleeperhold, a cross-and-cover pin attempted on one guy while applying a figure-four leglock on another, a grown man screaming at the top of his lungs for his mommy, and two or three wrestling holds that look like simulated anal penetration, then this is definitely the match for you.
P.S., in case I haven't made myself perfectly clear, you have never seen anything like this!
Black Dragon catches an early lead by pitting the two Americans against each other--dividing and conquering--and then walloping one while the other is busy catching his breath.
How long does it take Joker and James to team up and, through cooperation, take down this ambiguously foreign masked man? Pretty much as long as it takes Dragon to get overly confident in his ability to outsmart two of UCW's wiliest competitors. Which is to say, "Not long at all."
Then a new question emerges: How long until the Americans' egos tear them apart again? Each claims responsibility for taking the foreigner down, and in no time they are fighting each other over which one gets to dish up the squashing that Dragon has coming to him, at which point the match turns into a pissing contest--to the tune of "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better." You can probably guess where the action goes from there.
Or maybe not.
Early in the match, Joker grabs James's head to his shoulder and turns to the audience in TV-land and says, "This is how you treat a bitch. This. Is. How. You. Treat. A. Bitch. Y'grab'm like this. Y'grab'm like this. Okaaay? And then you drop to your knees like this." Then as James groans in agony, every bone in his vertebrae jangling, Joker shows off his muscles to the camera--and, trust me, you've seen bigger bulges on the dried bubblegum under church pews. Your appreciation for moments like this will depend entirely on how much Joker's usual antics crack you up. I was laughing my ass off and holding my nuts through a good one-third of this match, which lasts a full 45 minutes!
But this fight takes such roughhousing up to a wholly different level. "Surreal" is a word that comes to mind.
James, who, along with Dragon, is a fight trainer at UCW, gets to shine in this free-for-all. James has always been kind of UCW's quiet Beatle, "George," to Axel's "Paul," Klown's "John," and Joker's "Ringo," but he really gets to strut his stuff against Joker and Dragon here. Handsome hairy James regularly and gamely takes it on himself to try to battle both opponents at the same time. A failed but oh-so-close attempt to pin the two simultaneously is something you just gotta see for yourself. And, given the firepower the two direct back at him, you certainly come to understand why he's been dubbed the "Never Give Up Kid."
Black Dragon impresses, as well. His comically sinister chuckling--not exactly mwa-hah-hah-hah, but pretty damned close to it, establishes him as the baddest of the bad guys here, though probably more in a league with Snidely Whiplash than The Undertaker. Here's another fighter I have been underestimating all these months. The guy has moxie, and he pulls off some ridiculously over-the-top moves with panache and sells the realness of several equally ridiculous wrestling holds you're unlikely to see anywhere else this side of a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
But it is Joker, again, who steals my heart. How can I deny a guy who's willing to use his own tucked-in-pink-lycra nads as a maul--and then look genuinely surprised at how much it hurts to do this! Chee-rist, this guy is all carbonated, fruit-flavored testosterone and no ... fucking ... brain ... at all! Minutes later he knocks himself out headbutting James; then shaking the cobwebs out of his head, he deadpans to the camera, "Not one of my brighter ideas."
No shit, Robert Downey Jr.
Some choppy editing here and there hurts the fight's continuity, but the action proceeds at a brisk and entertaining pace. It's almost as if Bodyslam and the guys decided to get together, roughhouse, and put on a show for the camera, knowing nobody's ever going to believe this, much less take it seriously. These guys have definitely been sniffing glue while watching Saturday morning cartoons, after spending all night watching Japanese puroresu--and you can't help but love and kinda envy the three wrestlers for throwing themselves into this slapstick slaparama heart and soul.
If you, like me, think you might actually enjoy watching a three-layered sleeperhold, a cross-and-cover pin attempted on one guy while applying a figure-four leglock on another, a grown man screaming at the top of his lungs for his mommy, and two or three wrestling holds that look like simulated anal penetration, then this is definitely the match for you.
P.S., in case I haven't made myself perfectly clear, you have never seen anything like this!
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