Anime Fantasy Realness Boy

Ethan Axel Andrews vs Tiko, Wrestling with Pride 2 (BG East/NewPro Wrestling)

Tiko returns to Wrestling with Pride this year, having won his match last year, but nary a one in the intervening 15 months. Since last year, the "Anime Fantasy Realness Boy" (credit to emcee Enoch Scott, I assume, for the fabulous epithet) has added an impressive new layer of muscle - that torso! those arms! that ass! - before taking on Ethan Axel Andrews, holder of the out-of-nowhere title of lightweight champion. In tried-and-true heel fashion, Ethan refuses to shake the challenger's hand, garnering boos from the crowd, and attacks Tiko with a forearm smash to the back of the head.

Ethan wants a knockdown drag-out fight and proceeds to clobber the mild-mannered Thai in the corner. Tiko's nifty reversal sees him whipping EAA to the opposite corner and dishing up a whirl of punches topped with a dropkick to the pecs. Ethan traps him in an elevated headscissors, holding himself aloft on the top rope; then he chokes Tiko against the rope. The ref forces a break. Tiko manages to land a retaliatory punch to Ethan's midsection, but Ethan barrels in with vindictive force. Both wrestlers bring a lot of brio to the exchange, dodging the bashful-heel-versus-bashful-face mess I was pessimistically half-expecting.

I could have saved myself the worry. Ethan exudes confidence in front of the crowd, and Tiko sells with more honest emotion than I remembered from his previous matches. The back-and-forth action tumbles out of the ring and onto the floor as champ and challenger duke it out. Tiko gets the upper hand in this fight, raising hopes of a title change. Back in the ring, he climbs the corner ropes for a flying assault of some sort, but Ethan intercepts, pulling the man's trunks down and exposing his butt to the appreciative fans.

An amazing series of reversals leads to the finisher, an honest-to-goodness piledriver. Awesome! The eight-minute fight is assured and irresistibly engrossing and, along with the two previous contests, cinches my impression of the second Wrestling with Pride as superior even to the first.

Photography by my pal Pete Carson

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