Fans Bring the Weapons, Necro and Toby Bring the Punches
It tickles me to imagine innocent basketball games played by middle aged men trying to get their weekly exercise in at the Oolitic Community Center. The rhythmic thudding of footsteps back and forth on the hardwood floor, accompanied by the sharp squeak of expensive branded sneakers that likely caused arguments with the wife at home when she saw the price tag. Perhaps at night, the teenaged children of those same parents sneak into the community center to get up to their own chicanery of smuggled beers and stolen kisses.
On June 25th, 2004 though, the Oolitic Community Center plays host to the annual IWA:MS King of the Deathmatches tournament instead. A ring gets propped up over blue tarpaulin meant to catch the stray bits of broken glass and pointed metal that make up the twisted playthings for one of the most anticipated nights of gore on the wrestling calendar.
Main eventing the first round, a rematch from last year's tournament. In 2003, Toby Klein threw a VCR right into the Necro Butcher's head. In likely taking away a few memories from Necro, Klein instead created one that lingered in the collective consciousness of Smart Mark Video patrons. Even now, the moment remains forever memorialized in that ever prestigious online medium, the GIF. Scroll along wrestling Twitter long enough, and one is bound to see it again. Even without sound, one can picture the grotesque clank of metal as it smacks into the Butcher's skull.
Nothing in the 2004 sequel reaches quite the iconic status of the VCR, but it's not for lack of trying. It's a Fans Bring the Weapons match which means there's a whole host of ridiculous instruments of torture scattered across the ring for these two to play with. Among those that leave the largest impacts on the match are a dummy thicc computer monitor that likely never ran anything more powerful than Windows XP that Necro flings at Klein in the opening moments, a rolling pin lovingly studded with thumbtacks for Klein to grind against Necro's face, and even another VCR which Klein again uses against Necro. That last one speaks to the most unfortunate quality of this match, which is to say that it all kind of lives in the shadow of the 2003 bout. Perhaps due to the weaker nature of the spot here or the fans in attendance just not having that long of a memory, but the reprise of the VCR doesn't even garner that much of a reaction from the fans in attendance.
Fortunately, what this match may lack in the same high peaks as their previous bout, it more than makes up for in the actual meat and potatoes of the action. In particular, perhaps even more compelling than all the glass and metal, the punching.
It really does feel like the world stops at the end of the Necro Butcher's fist.
The punches are heart-stopping, even for the viewer, one can only imagine the effect they might have had on Mr. Insanity. Perhaps most impressively, Necro deploys them in ways that feel so beyond traditional pro wrestling logic. Sure, they come in the moments that you expect them to--he eats three to drop Klein with one, he cuts off Klein with a big body blow, they trade punches when kneeling face to face--but the physicality of it transcends the sort of limp strike exchanges that plague the 2020s and even the more traditionally appealing punch outs of the 80s. Simply speaking, they feel more real, almost certainly because they might be. When Necro's fist lands, it's always with this disgusting smack of flesh that screams "It's fucking real!" As important though is Klein's selling--a questionable word here if he actually is just eating fists to the jaw--coming through in a crazy variety. Sometimes he'll be rocked and tough through it, other times he'll flop near dead to the ground. It ensures each shot has an air of unpredictability around it that lends a sense of chaos to the action as a whole.
Amidst all the gimmickry and weapons too, there's a lot of classic pro wrestling going on here, just with lighttubes added on tap. I don't even mean Workrate Necro busting out ranas and big dives deep in the match, but smaller things like Necro grabbing on an Asiatic Spike and Klein's panicked attempt to throw anything at him to try and break the hold. Even the ref bump and Klein needing a thumb to the eyes to cut off a punch exchange speak to an old school heel sensibility that manages to feel cheap and infuriating in the hardcore setting. In a match that's meant to prove who's tougher, Klein instead resorts to the cheapest means of seizing an advantage before then laying in two of the grossest far chair throws I've ever seen and a big ole death valley driver through another chair to get the win.
That's exactly what one can expect from these two. In between all the carnage and blood, there's still that simple thread of who can get it done in the end, and the how of a thing meaning much more than the what. It's not quite the explosion of violence that their 2003 bout was, but it's still some great goddamn pro wrestling.
Rating: ****