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Braden Charron vs Mike Pitt, Big Boy Battles 2: Ring Beef (BG East)

The second installment of BG East's Big Boy Battles series opens with a showdown between Mike Pitt and Braden Charron and launches one of the best wrestling storylines I have seen. We see Pitt on his phone outside the ring room, assuring somebody that he's going to "destroy" the guy he's booked to wrestle. Ostensibly this is Pitt's first match, so we're rolling back a few years, and his opponent is Charron, who outweighs him and perhaps has more experience too, having first appeared at BGE seven catalogs ahead of Pitt. Cockiness like Mike's is a predicter of big trouble.

Inside the ring, Braden admires his reflection in the ringside mirror, typically the way the company's matches begin. Mike strikes from behind, but Braden dodges the punch and bludgeons the upstart's upper vertebrae with both fists before blithely turning his attention back to the mirror. Mike strikes again, this time targeting Braden's abs, unintentionally setting lose a shitstorm of blowback that leads to the give-and- take attacks that characterize most of the battle. The two big boys make the squared circle roar as they engage in a furious contest that eventually chronicles the origin of a heel.

What makes the match work so exceptionally well is its unexpected turns. Lily-white Mike presents himself as a villain hungry to make a reputation for himself, to hell with the rules of fair play. Ruddy strongman Braden shows a higher level of ferocity than I usually associate with him. Usually he's coolheaded, confident in his ability to crush his opponents, whoever they are. He's on defense here, an intriguing situation for the bodybuilder. Braden and Mike dispense with the shit talk that overwhelms most ring matches, mostly communicating physically, drawing upon the wordless language of dominance and debilitating torment.

This is my favorite of all Charron's and Pitt's matches to date. Braden is not yet the jaded heel, and Mike is still an unknown quantity; thus every turn was a surprise for me. The sexiness of manly aggression has seldom been so well represented.

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