We’ve already seen the birth (or as close to it as is available) of Germany’s darling wrestling fed. Now let’s take a look at its growth and eventual brush against the 2020 pandemic. The title is no longer under weight class restrictions, and the company wasted little time in bringing in some skilled small fellas to give the belt some shine.
October 2, 2010 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Big Van Walter def. Zack Sabre Jr. {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From Hate’s F*ckin Birthday Party. That’s exactly how the show name is written on Highspots. The crowd chants Die Walter Die, but I assume since this is in Germany they simply mean The Walter, The. The audio mixing is terrible again, with the commentary blaring loud and the ring noise super quiet. This was shockingly unimpressive. Walter was far from what he’d become, doing little more than Vader stuff plus a couple of kicks. I was quite looking forward to this match and it amounted to some anemic back and forth wrestling and a finish that basically came out of nowhere. Walter hit the Jon Woo and a powerbomb for the win at 15:07. **¾
January 15, 2011 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Daisuke Sekimoto def. Big Van Walter {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From Back to the Roots X. This was also quite a bit different than modern WALTER matches (until the finish), but unlike the last match this one had a story and was a fun homage to BJW Strong matches. That means we saw escalating feats of strength from both guys, which got to be very impressive the closer we got to the finish. Walter through everything he had at Sekimoto, but none of it was enough to put the challenger down. Sekimoto came back with a pair of German suplexes for the win at 23:58. Walter won the title back a few months later at a BJW house show in Japan. The match was filmed and released but it’s very hard to find and I just wasn’t a good enough sleuth. ***¾
May 19, 2012 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
El Generico def. Big Van Walter {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From Dead End XII. Generico won the 16 Carat Gold tournament to get this shot. Generico was a great foil for this-period Walter. His selling was better than Sabre’s (a man of comparable size), his bouncy style worked better to emphasize Walter’s strength, and he was much better at this point in his career at conveying a comeback story. It was weird to see him absorb a few big chops before going down, but Walter chops aren’t the same as WALTER chops so that was really a matter of me getting over my expectations. The crowd was crazy jazzed to see Generico end Walter’s year-long reign, which made for a very satisfying pop to cap things off. Generico hit the big boot, the Half & Half Suplex, and a brainbuster to win at 17:04. ***¾
August 12, 2012 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Axel Tischer def. El Generico, Karsten Beck, and Bad Bones {wXw World Unified Championship Four Way Match}
From Fan Appreciation Weekend. The fans didn’t seem to appreciate the first of this match, standing silently as all four guys brawled through the building. They got more into it as Beck started cheating and the other three started finding ways to fight through his cheating. Bones and Generico did their best to give the action a sense of urgency. But mostly the match was just chaotic, disconnected moves. On the bright side, there were no lulls once things got back to the ring. Tischer hit Beck with a Death Valley Driver for the win at 16:37. **¾
June 1, 2013 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Tommy End def. Axel Tischer {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From Dead End XIII. Tischer hit an avalanche Death Valley Driver like thirty seconds into this match, which is wild. But then they spent a bunch of time doing boring stuff on the floor so my hopes of that insane pacing continuing throughout the match were dashed. After ten or so minutes of really boring stuff, they started doing what I assume would be the makeup of a Takeover match between them would look like. End locked Tischer in a dragon sleeper for the win and the title at 17:18. ***¼
July 27, 2014 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Big Daddy Walter def. Tommy End {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From Fans Appreciation Night. A nice jump in production occurred during End’s title reign. The ring looks a lot more professional and the video is far more clear and resolute. Resolved? The video resolution is better. This headlined over matches with a lot of Dragon Gate participation, so that’s nice for these two. Walter has dumped the singlet and is at what I believe is his peak chubbiness here. This was fun in the same way that all Walter matches are fun, and it didn’t stray from the formula that makes them work. Walter more or less destroyed End the whole match. End got a bit of a comeback but there was more drama around him surviving than him ever coming close to winning. He kicked out of a huge powerbomb and flipped off Walter, but then got clotheslined out of his boots and lost the title at 18:33. Walter is inevitable. ***½
January 17, 2015 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Karsten Beck def. Big Daddy Walter {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From Back To The Roots XIV. Walter had just wrestled in an eight-man tag street fight, after which he was confronted by new wXw investor Vince Russo. Russo brought out Beck, who goaded Walter into a title match. Even after the street fight, Walter almost puts Beck away quickly, but Russo and Sha Samuels interfere and Russo counts the pin after belt shot from Samuels at 2:19. I will never understand why companies with anti-WWE fans bring in guys like Russo or even why they do Russo era-inspired angles. ½*
August 28, 2015 – Hammerbrook, Hamburg
John Klinger def. Karsten Beck {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From Fan Appreciation Night – Hamburg. Klinger is Bad Bones. We’re not into the English commentary with Alan Counihan era of wXw. No more run ins from guys I can’t identify! I can’t hate on this match too much because the crowd was going insane for just about everything in it, so clearly they got what they wanted. But it was very long for the kind of work that went into it. This was a very basic heel being a heel and babyface being not much of anything kind of main event. Eventually, Beck’s crew cheated and got sent to the back, but Klinger still had trouble putting Beck away. In the end he caught the champ with a roll up for the win at 26:09. ***
August 29, 2015 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Karsten Beck def. John Klinger and AJ Styles {wXw World Unified Championship Triple Threat Match}
From Fan Appreciation Night – Oberhausen, the very next night. I wish people would stop saying that matches are “a main event anywhere in the world,” when almost nobody outside of Germany has heard of two of the three guys in the match. One star does not make a main event anywhere. Speaking of one star, Styles is notoriously religious and in the front row there’s a fan wearing a shirt that says “There Is No God.” Presumably the back says “And the Cage Wasn’t 30 Feet,” and if that’s the case I would like one please and thank you. Speaking of Styles, this is a guy known for having one of the most innovative triple threat matches of all time with Samoa Joe and Christopher Daniels in TNA and yet this match didn’t make use of any innovation. There was a lot of one-guy-down-two-guys-fight stuff and while the moves started being strung together more quickly, they involved all three guys so few times you could count the instances on one hand. In the end, Klinger knocked Styles to the floor and Beck snuck up and caught him with a piledriver basically out of nowhere at 17:12. It wasn’t boring and it wrapped things up in an appropriate amount of time, but damn if I already can’t remember a lot of it as I type this paragraph. ***
March 12, 2016 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Jurn Simmons def. Absolute Andy, John Klinger, and Karsten Beck {wXw World Unified Championship Four Way Match}
From the eleventh annual 16 Carat Gold. As the match starts, Alan says there’s no time for introductions. Then what were those long introductions I just sat through? Andy has wrenches on his tights but apparently his nickname is something to do with pliers? I know they’re similar, but that’s embarrassing. This was originally set to be Beck vs. Klinger and Andy, but Simmons connived his way into the match by saying that the triple threat would have been a handicap match against Beck. Was Russo still a figurehead? Because that’s flimsy as hell. On the bright side, it pays off because Beck’s heel-aligned compadre Simmons ends up taking the title from him. This built really nicely over the course of a standard sitcom runtime. It started with chaotic brawling, found its footing, and then cranked up the intensity of the bombs thrown as it went. Simmons hit a pair of Sick Kicks and a piledriver on Beck for the win at 24:44. This was far and away the best title change featuring guys the world isn’t all that familiar with. I’m glad I got to see Beck in at least one great match, as he tragically passed away last year. ****
December 10, 2016 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Marty Scurll def. Jurn Simmons and Adam Cole {wXw World Unified Championship Triple Threat Match}
From the 16th Anniversary Show. This was going along well enough, but then Scurll tried to roll up Simmons with a handful of tights but the referee wouldn’t make the count. There are no disqualifications in triple threat matches, so what the hell kind of bull is that? Then, Scurll seemingly begs the referee not to disqualify him. How would that work exactly? This is one reason why title matches, in my opinion, should be fought one-on-one. There’s another stupid moment where Cole has Scurll in a crossface and Simmons in a figure 4 leglock (that isn’t the stupid part; they made that bit work), and then Scurll gets to the ropes so Cole lets go of the holds on both guys. The commentators don’t even know what to make of that. There’s also a bit where the referee accosts Cole and Scurll for using foreign objects, but again that’s dumb as hell. In the end, Scurll makes Cole tap to the Crossface Chicken Wing at 21:09. I did not care for this at all. The action moved quickly but there were so many stupid moments that I couldn’t get over. **½
Axel Dieter Jr. def. Marty Scurll {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
Immediately after Scurll’s title win, Christian Michael Jakobi comes out and tells him that he’ll be defending his title immediately. Dieter attacks Scurll from behind. Scurll puts up a bit of a fight but Jakobi gets involved and Dieter makes him tap to the Crossface Chicken Wing at 2:23. Though it wasn’t at all made clear why Dieter was the chosen one to screw Scurll, for a Money in the Bank ripoff match this at least had a bit of drama. **
March 11, 2017 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Jurn Simmons def. Axel Dieter Jr. {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From the twelfth annual 16 Carat Gold. There’s more stupid main event crap right out of the gate here, as Jakobi gets wiped out on the floor so the referee stops refereeing the match to make sure he gets sent to the back. Why would a referee ever pay more attention to an injured non-wrestler on the floor than on what’s happening in the ring? So the interference can happen! So dumb. Ringkampf rushes in and brawls with Absolute Andy & Marius Al-Ani. Once the extras left the ring the idiocy left along with them. Simmons and Dieter had a hot crowd fuel their main event bomb exchange, and it more or less worked for me. The long term story arc of former heel champions who used piledriver finishers becoming babyfaces once more dastardly heels (Dieter in this case) emerged is one I like. Simmons’ second piledriver was enough to win the title at 23:23. ***¼
August 5, 2017 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
John Klinger def. Jurn Simmons and Ilja Dragunov {wXw World Unified Championship Triple Threat Match}
From Fight Forever. Dragunov won the 16 Carat Gold tournament to get this title shot and Klinger won the Shortcut to the Top, which is a Royal Rumble ripoff. Seems unfair to both guys to have them use their big wins at the same time in a three way. This one saved all it’s stupid for the end, which is really frustrating because they were having a great match until the last few minutes. They came up with so many interesting spots involving all three guys that I was ready to sing the praises of this match for a while. But then Avalanche ran out to beat up Dragunov and take him to the back. And then Klinger’s stable came out for an 8-on-1 beatdown on Simmons. The most frustrating thing was that they spent half the match building (quite well) to a table spot, but all the drama was sapped from the payoff when the spot ended up being a gang using it to attack Simmons. Klinger pinned the champ with one finger to win at 22:42. ***¼
March 10, 2018 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Ilja Dragunov def. John Klinger and WALTER {wXw World Unified Championship Triple Threat Match}
From the thirteenth 16 Carat Gold. This was supposed to be WALTER vs. Klinger, but somehow WALTER was able to add Dragunov to the match. Not sure why he’d do that, but then there’s a chance watching shows beyond those with title changes on them might help flesh things out. Oh well. WALTER and Dragunov (with some help from Avalanche) clear Klinger’s stable from ringside as the match begins. To the shock of absolutely no one, a match featuring Dragunov and WALTER is terrific. The icing on the cake is that Klinger was incorporated incredibly well into their strong style shtick. He had his bag of dirtbag tricks and they more or less teamed up to beat the crap out of him whenever it was convenient to do so. I’m really glad that Dragunov pinned the champion, because he’d already beaten WALTER in the finals of the 16 Carat Gold tournament the year before and didn’t have anything left to prove on that front. He hit Klinger with the Torpedo Moskau, the Burning Hammer, and another Torpedo Moskau for the win at 20:35.
This put me in such a good mood that I reviewed every WALTER vs. Ilja Dragunov singles match for this bonus popup review.
****¼
August 4, 2018 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Absolute Andy def. Ilja Dragunov {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From the fourth Shortcut to the Top. I haven’t mentioned this, but wXw has dubbed over every entrance with generic rock music. That is, except for during Dragunov’s entrance here, which is dubbed over with what sounds like an Ace of Base tribute band with a dubstep drop. What in the booger hell is that? And god help me, another Andy match. At the very least it looks like he’s adopted something resembling a personality in the intervening years. He won 16 Carat Gold to earn this shot. Working as a heel works better for him, as Dragunov can carry the drama of the match through his animated expressions. I dug a lot of this, though it was longer than it needed to be. They brawled on the floor a lot, but unlike most indie matches in which that happens they kept that brawling entertaining. The finish only half worked. It saw Dragunov scare the referee out of his way to hit a suicide dive, which was neat. But then the referee inexplicably disappeared for the final spot of the match, in which Andy blocked another suicide dive with a chair shot and then hit a Dominator for the win at 22:35. ***¼
March 9, 2019 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Bobby Gunns def. Absolute Andy {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From the fourteenth 16 Carat Gold. During Andy’s reign, he injured his shoulder and had to miss a three-way match against Dragunov and Shortcut to the Top winner Gunns. So they made that match an interim championship match between the challengers instead. After taking a couple weeks off, Andy beat Dragunov to reconsolidate the championship. And now this. The crowd was hot for this. But the massive fault in chanting fans vs. cheering fans is on full display here as there was always a lot of noise but the fans didn’t actually react to what was happening in the match. Rather than cheering for Gunns or booing Andy, they just loudly chanted the exact same thing throughout the whole match. It actually made the noise sound canned. The commentators treat it like a good thing, but it’s making the match less interesting to me. They did their best to give this an epic vibe, though Andy just isn’t an epic wrestler. The final minutes were starting to annoy me because they were so repetitive, seeing Andy dupe the referee into taking the title belt from him so he could hit low blows, only to be thwarted in various ways. But things came together in a fun way when Gunns blocked a low blow with his legs and injured Andy’s arm, and then later the referee blatantly ignored a low blow from Gunns (in retaliation for Andy’s poor treatment of him) and then Gunns wrapped things up with an armbreaker at 26:10. Annoying crowd crap aside, major points for creativity here. ***¼
May 10, 2019 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Timothy Thatcher def. Bobby Gunns {wXw World Unified Championship Match}
From the fifth World Tag Team Festival. The chants are back again, and they don’t even make any sense. They just sing Winter Wonderland but replace the word winter with Thatcher. Fucking why?! Luckily, the power of Thatcher’s babyface fire gets them out of chanting mode and into cheering mode. I want to see Thatcher as a babyface in NXT so badly now. Gunns busted him open early and he played up the panic of possibly having a broken nose perfectly. From there, Gunns switched between two techniques working for him: rabidly attacking Thatcher from different angles and mimicking WALTER. Thatcher responded with blocks and counters wherever he could find them, and his perseverance paid off as he was able to lock a choke in deep for the win at 25:13. This was pretty incredible. ****¼
December 14, 2019 – Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia
Bobby Gunns def. Timothy Thatcher, David Starr, and Ilja Dragunov {wXw World Unified Championship Four Way}
From the 19th Anniversary Show. This was originally going to be a three way between Thatcher, Gunns, and Starr, but wXw authority figure Beck worked out a deal with WWE for 2020 and one condition of that deal was Dragunov joining this match. Starr hates WWE and thus Dragunov, so there’s heat to start. I don’t know what the rest of the WWE deal was meant to be, but wXw started popping up on WWE Network, which is why I’m reviewing this title lineage at all. That’s kind of a fun note on which to end this review. Thatcher is wearing really nerdy board shorts while everyone else is in their signature speedos. Dragunov’s WWE era fitness is in stark contrast to how he looked when he was a wXw regular. This was a ton of chaotic fun. The match mostly focused on Dragunov and Starr going at each other, but Thatcher’s King of Babyface shtick brought a lot of energy to the match too. It must have been warm in that ring because everyone was working snug. The finish was a little goofy, as a bunch of heels ran out to distract Starr, which had the knock-on effect of Gunns being able to hit Thatcher with the Emerald Frosion for the win at 16:38. ****
wXw continued to run shows through the next 16 Carat Gold tournament in March 2020 before the pandemic swept the planet. At 16 Carat Gold, Gunns beat Starr in Starr’s second to last ever wrestling match before being chased out of the industry as a sexual abuser. From there, wXw produced Shotgun and We Love Wrestling, weekly shows in front of no crowd, and Catch Grand Prix, another crowdless show that streamed daily in the fall. They’ve also put on a couple of marquee shows, also in front of no fans, so I’d say they’ve done a solid job of weathering Germany’s COVID restrictions all things considered.
From Diamond Ring Kensuke Office Changes. They emphasize that Nakajima beat Dragon Gate wrestler Kenichiro Arai 
From Dynamite 131. This is a qualifying match for the Owen Hart Foundation tournament. Joe debuted at ROH Supercard of Honor, saving Jonathan Gresham from Jay Lethal (whose soul searching apparently led him to turn heel) & Sonjay Dutt after the main event. And now that ROH and AEW are the same thing, that seems worth mentioning. Caster’s pre-match rap was cute. This was real squashy, with Joe needing only two minutes to put Caster down with the Muscle Buster at 2:52. Lethal & Dutt pop up on the big screens and Lethal says he’d been trying to get a hold of Joe during his difficult soul searching time, and Joe never picked up. They have a present for Joe next week. N/A
From Dynamite 132. Jay Lethal & Sonjay Dutt were in the front row cheering on Joe. Sarcastically, probably, as they brawled with Joe at ROH Supercard of Honor XV. 
From Rampage 39. 
From Dynamite 137. 
From Dynamite 138. This is a 
From Double or Nothing. 
From PWF York Cougar Football Fundraiser. I didn't know that this match happened until over a month after the fact. This started out as a non-title match, but we'll get to why I've listed it as a title match in a moment. FTR have Mick Foley in their corner while their opponents have Bill Behrens. I’ve never actually seen Behrens do an on-camera gig before. He's holding a tennis racket, presumably as an Umaga to Jim Cornette. But it's confusing because there was actually a tennis player named Bill Behrens. They announce this match as having a 20-minute time limit. Only 11 minutes in, they say there are three minutes remaining. Until then, this was as run-of-the-mill as a modern FTR match gets. But the announcement snapped everyone out of their heat-on-Wheeler funk and forced them to go for desperate pins. They announce ten seconds remaining a couple of times, but no one can get the roll up pin they're looking for. The 20-minute time limit expires at 1
From NXT UK 183. McGuinness started by essentially saying that Fraser is going to pee or poo himself during the match. Unnecessary. Had Shawn Michaels been game to have a good match against Vader, this is what it would have looked like. Actually, a more appropriate and modern analogue is Brock Lesnar vs. Seth Rollins from SummerSlam. Much like that match, Frazer used quick strikes and avoided his larger opponent’s signature big move to stay alive. Here it was the powerbomb whereas there it was suplexes. Here, Frazer also successfully damaged WALTER’s knee, which slowed the big man down and made it hard for WALTER to hit the powerbomb. Unfortunately for Frazer, WALTER was able to bide his time and clothesline Frazer’s legs out from under him. An inevitable powerbomb followed and won the match for WALTER at 14:02. I hate to say this because I’m happy that he’s healthier, but the way WALTER has slimmed down has taken some of the magic away from his aura. At least for me it has. That said, dude can clearly still go as well as ever in the ring. ****
From NXT 659. Strong was feeling it here, which is thanks in large part to the crowd being maniacally loud from the get go I’m sure. His whole game was fast and devastating stick and move attacks. That worked pretty well, as WALTER was dazed from time to time. But as with all good WALTER matches (which is pretty much all WALTER matches), everything WALTER does is devastating here so it takes very little for him to take back control. And eventually he did just that and hit the powerbomb for the win at 9:46 (shown of 12:18). After the match, WALTER gets on the microphone and says that his name is Gunther now. I did not think WALTER would be a victim of the renaming curse this far into his run. What will they rename Strong?! ***¾
From NXT UK 185. Andy Shepherd helpfully announces from inside the ring that the reason for the stipulation is that the feud has gotten so violent that it wouldn’t be safe to have fans around. Devlin says during the match that it’s because he thinks Dragunov could only muster the energy to win if he had the crowd behind him. I like that explanation a lot more. The only real reason I could think of to do this without fans is that there was a scheduling conflict with one of the wrestlers for the regular TV taping date and they needed to get this thing filmed. We just had such a long stretch of empty arena NXT UK episodes that I can’t imagine anyone was dying to get another taste of it. This aired the day after Adam Cole vs. Orange Cassidy in a match that was also no disqualification and falls count anywhere, and this served up everything I felt was missing from that match. Now you might say, “Brad, Cassidy is not the same kind of character as Devlin or Dragunov, how could you expect the same level of violence or intensity?” To that I say, when Cassidy started his match by breaking his own sunglasses and rapidly punching Cole, he was indicating that level of violence and/or intensity. And instead the match was mostly wacky. Anyway, this was not wacky. It was stiff and intense and featured weapons that made sense and spots the didn’t take forever to set up. Dragunov got in trouble when his eye injury acted up. Devlin took control and beat the crap out of him. I wasn’t wild about how meek Dragunov was when Devlin was zip tying his hands, but I did like that in the end it turned out to be an error on Devlin’s part anyway because Dragunov’s finisher requires no hands. And indeed, a bound Dragunov jumped off the steel steps (which had been brought into the ring) and hit the Torpedo Moskau on Devlin for the win at 21:43. NXT UK is still sneaking in these dope matches that no one is watching. Y’all should watch them. ****¼ 
From AAA Triplemania Regia. FTR come out with Vickie Guerrero. This was supposed to be explained at an earlier AAA taping but FTR and Guerrero all missed them. AAA is notorious for having this kind of luck/being incompetent lately. FTR is also wearing Eddie Guerrero tribute tights, with American flags on one side and flames on the other, I suppose to pay homage to his Gringos Locos and Latino Heat gimmicks. This match mostly sucked, but one cool spot saw FTR tie Pentagon’s mask to the ropes and force him to unmask with his hands over his face to stop them from climbing the ladder. That would have been a very meaningful moment to lead up to the Lucha Brothers winning the titles back, but unfortunately instead it led into nothing. He just got his mask back and the match continued on in its lame, derivative way. At one point, Pentagon was the only man standing, but instead of climbing the ladder he grabbed a table from the floor. So the titles mean enough to him that he’d unmask to stop his opponents from winning, but not enough for him to get the titles when he had a clear path to do it? Vickie powered Pentagon, causing him to voluntarily jump through the table and Harwood grabbed the belts at 12:12. This was abysmal. *
From AEW Full Gear. Silver was hamming it up a lot more here than he was the year before in New York. That said, this had stronger just-a-match vibes than the aforementioned match. After Silver ripped out Cassidy’s pockets, Cassidy turned up the heat and these guys put on a middle of the row undercard match. Not bad by any means, but nothing memorable either. Cassidy hit the Beach Break rather out of nowhere for the win at 9:42. **¾ 
From the second Honor Reigns Supreme. The commentators sold this as Gresham getting a big shot against a top ROH guy after being an also-ran in the Television Championship division for a while. This was terrific. Both guys did a fantastic job selling their respective targeted limbs, and Gresham in particular played the role of the tenacious underdog perfectly. He didn’t just watch to see where Lethal would have trouble executing his finisher because of the damage he’d done to the former ROH Champion’s arm, he pressed the assault whenever he could, taking out the arm to make sure the Lethal Injection would never come. But what he couldn’t do was stop Lethal from battering his knee and ultimately winning with a Figure 4 Leglock at 17:54. ****¼ 
From the second Masters of the Craft. Columbus has way more Gresham fans than Concord did. That’s a neat little advancement to the plot, innit? They both went after the same limbs that earned them dividends in their previous match. And then they went ahead and built an incredible match out of that story. At first it seemed as though Lethal wasn’t going to be able to get Gresham’s leg to give out. But about halfway through the match, Gresham’s knee was in trouble. Gresham was able to escape the leglock this time by using the momentum of Lethal pulling him away from the ropes to shift to an armbar. But Gresham’s focus on the arm bit him in the ass. Lethal went for the Lethal Injection and collapsed again, but when Gresham went for a roll up after that Lethal cut back on it for the win at 18:27. This is one of the best American examples that I've seen of a match building on the match that came before. Rather than try to outdo the maneuvers from their first meeting for the sake of a big crowd reaction, they adjust their game plans in logical ways that, to me, were just as exciting. I think this match is slept on, by virtue of the fact that I’ve never heard anything about it before watching it. ****½ 
From ROH Wrestling 364. In real life, 
From Death Before Dishonor XVII. Gresham and Lethal had been teaming, but Gresham grew frustrated and started heeling. Ultimately, he turned on Lethal. It took them a little while to get there, but once they got into a groove this was exactly what I wanted from this match. It was back to their old tricks, with Lethal targeting the leg to set up for the Figure 4 Leglock and Gresham targeting the arm to block the Lethal Injection and set up for his Octopus. In the end, Lethal tried the cutback trick that worked for him in Columbus, but Gresham countered to a pin and then put on the gnarliest Octopus for his first win over Lethal at 17:20. This is the best kind of wrestling series. And none of it felt stale because it was a year after they’d wrestled last and because they found ways to energize the old tropes. And that’s not to mention Gresham busting out what I can only describe as a sumo-style assault. Gresham and Lethal make up after the match. ****
From ROH Wrestling 500. During the pandemic, ROH made the most of their empty arena shows by kicking them off with a tournament to crown a champion for the revived Pure Championship. Gresham won the tournament, and this was his fourth defense of the title. Lethal and Gresham were still allies here. In an interesting move, the other match on this milestone episode was two other partners fighting in Jay and Mark Briscoe. They cut to a commercial break about six minutes in, though the action didn’t get beyond (admittedly fast-moving) mat wrestling until the 10-minute mark. That had me thinking this was going to go long, but things took a different turn. Both guys had abused the other’s shoulders, and Lethal used that to his advantage best. He forced Gresham to use his first rope break to stop a pin, and his second to escape a crab. Then, he used the failed Lethal Injection to bait Gresham into a crossface, forcing the champ to use his final rope break. But he made the mistake of giving Gresham a breather and was quickly caught in a head scissor takedown giving Gresham the winning pin at 14:06 (shown of 16:40). For an empty arena match, this held my attention. It was totally different than their previous matches while still using a couple elements from the rivalry to elevate it just a bit. Not essential viewing, but if you’re working your way through their series you shouldn’t skip it. ***¼ 
