Meanies

Channing Travolta vs Dirty Daddy and Flash LaCash (Wrestler4Hire)

"No pleasure but meanness," The Misfit says towards the end of Flannery O'Connor's mordant religious parable "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Guido Genatto and Flash LaCash would concur. In this two-on-one match, the duo show off their bag of dirty tricks, making poor blond all-American whiteboy Channing Travolta writhe in agony for 21 long minutes, hardly a hope spot in sight.

It crossed my mind that this video would make a suitable entry in the "Pretty in Pain" series, which I have strung out over two years in these pages, most recently here. We get not only big crowd-pleasing kicks, slams, and punches, but some of the subtle closeup torments I appreciate - like detail work on the fingers and the ears. Flash and the Dirty Daddy work together and in tandem to wear Channing to a nub.

Channing has had a long run in the victim role at Wrestler4Hire. He's good at not anticipating (and thus not telegraphing) the villains' various assaults and reacts to them spontaneously and feelingly. He sells the gut punches, body locks, and general mangling, screaming his lungs out - but nothing turns Guido and Flash from their intended purpose to crush Channing's spirit and disassemble his body. For a potentially one-note angle like this one, all three succeed in sustaining the beating without letting it turn mind-numbing. Just the opposite, the series of events maintains its suspense to its chest-wrecking finish.

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