Hell to Pay

Nick Justice vs Jacob Van Acker (Wrestler4Hire)

Nick Justice's brutish face is all we get of the man, the rest hidden under what looks like a wetsuit. But Jacob Van Acker's body is laid bare, but for boots, yellow knee pads, and blessedly skimpy red trunks. His humiliation and writhing vulnerability bone me up, in large part (pun intended) because of his pale yet beefy beauty. Kudos, too, to Justice for dismantling Van Acker while simultaneously declaiming his thoughts and feelings, often with hand gestures.

"You made me leave my dungeon for THIS?" he complains early on, while tormenting his prey against the turnbuckle. Justice chokes, bites, twists, jerks, stretches, jabs, and slams, careful not to leave a single inch of Van Acker's soft and sexy physique untouched. "You little prissy bitches! You always think that you can take me, but you can't": an observation he punctuates by scooping Jacob up and slapping him to the center of the ring. His most grandiose gesture (third shot above) accompanies his delivery of lyrics, spoken, not sung, from the 1993 movie Hocus Pocus.

Justice attacks Van Acker for no other reason than that it's there within reach. He doesn't take as much pleasure in his acts of destruction as, say, I would. He behaves less like a sadist than like a super-grouchy postal clerk. Too bad, because having young Jacob in my clutches would be hugely satisfying, I would think. He suffers expressively, both visually and aurally. And by the final third of the 22-minute whomp, Van Acker seems unable or unwilling to mount a defense, his inaction leading to a frankly glorious face-to-crotch figure-four choke.

Campy theatricality is W4H's house style. I prefer more visceral and less stagy matches. Yet Justice vs Van Acker wins on three or four counts: Van Acker's pliable physique, his expressive agony, and Justice's enormous playbook of tortures, including a sharp close-range knockout punch and imaginative use of the ring ropes.

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