One Hundred and Ten Percent










Kid Karisma vs Lane Hartley, Ringwars 30 (BG East)

I won't name names but there are underground wrestlers who phone their matches in. They ride on their muscles, their cuteness, their glittery gear, their indie pro contacts, their star power, or their smack talk, but they don't throwdown like they mean it. Kid Karisma means it every fucking time. I suspect he means it every minute of his life outside of wrestling, too. When he faces a much bigger fighter like Lane Hartley, from the start you can see it in his eyes that he intends to drill holes through the guy.

I doubt Hartley likes a shrimp like Karisma getting the upper hand on him, but I figure he's grateful to get a good fight out of the guy, a memorable fight, a fight with grit. I'll be honest with you. A part of me groaned when I heard about this match. I thought these guys, always riveting to watch in action, might feel pressured to roll over and play dead for each other in a typical David and Goliath gig. I was happy to discover that such is not the case. Hartley is one of my favorite wrestlers. It pains me when I see him taking a bump that his opponent has not earned. Everything that happens throughout this match's 26 minutes is earned. Lane and Kid K put their hearts into this fight.

Karisma vs Hartley is the crown jewel of Ringwars 30. The other two matches are fine, but even if they sucked, this one match is sufficient reason to prize this DVD. K vs H belongs in the top ranks of the Ringwars series' history, alongside Vicious vs Cole, Exavier vs Hudson, Firestorm vs Naughton, and Colby vs Zander, matches I remember and replay in my dreams. Karisma and Hartley sell every second of their match. This is one case where a rematch would not be anticlimactic, where I wouldn't mind if the fight were three times as long as it is.


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