Strongman Moves

Drew vs Chris Styles,  Proving Grounds Xtra (Black Wrestling Network)

Not many matches last 75 minutes. That's just six minutes less than Toy Story, seven minutes more than Duck Soup. Banging and rolling for almost the full 75 minutes, Drew and Chris Styles can play at my house anytime. My lust for Chris is purely physical; that minimalist heather-gray thong speaks to me. But it was Drew who was itching for this fight, originally booked for the BWN 21st anniversary pay-for-view Legacy. It is Drew whose mouthy taunts distract Chris from the toy crown he is playing with and pulls him into this fight.

The moves are fairly basic strongman moves, specializing in body locks and stretches. Two guys' rolling all over each other is maybe my favorite kind of man-to-man-ness. The fight climaxes with a cross-face neck crank that, at the end, flips the light switch off for one of these hunks. But up to that point, the match is a strenuous bumping of muscle upon muscle. The opponents grab and squeeze, maintaining holds for as long as they can, exerting more and more pressure, shooting for absolute domination. Neither is likely to roll over and play dead. The more they wrestle, the more they hunger for victory.

Moments of speedy rearrangement dovetail into long stretches of pulling and wrenching of powerful limbs. I'm rooting for Chris's big boxing-glove muscles, but I'm okay if Drew's streamlined scimitar of a body wins the day. It's been too long since my last visit to BWN, almost exactly a full year. I'm always confused by the site's busily interlocking matches - a bit like keeping up with twenty or so simultaneous storylines - but the payoff for me is those moments of sudden change and ultimately the icy touch of fate bringing it all to a sudden stop.

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