Joseph and Colette Discuss Necro Butcher vs. Toby Klein
Sometimes you get a computer monitor thrown at your face and it doesn't make for a better wrestling match.
The first time I saw Necro Butcher in person, it was kind of sad. This was before he'd won the lottery or was charged with domestic battery or been diagnosed with cancer or discovered politics — he was a normal dude who'd driven a couple hundred miles to a show he wasn't booked on to ask for a match. After being told "no thanks," he took a show-long nap on a pew outside the gym the show was running out of, woke up just as the final bell rang, and left. He was wearing a suit for some reason. It was wild.
Later, when he worked a show I did commentary on, someone goaded me into asking Necro for one of his pre-match beers. I think they thought it'd be funny to see me squirm — I was nervous around most wrestlers/people at that time in my life — but once you see a wrestler opt to snooze outside a venue because they got Dennis Stamp'd, they're basically just another dude, so I did, and we got along as well as any one-night stunt booking and third-string play-by-play person could. He told me about planning a shit-hot match against Papi Chulo for a syndicated WWF C-show that was cancelled at the last moment by a producer, told me who I'd need to kiss up to for an ROH tryout, how much he liked shooting The Wrestler, all of which I took in eagerly.
Then he went out and wrestled, and he wasn't just a dude anymore. This was 2013, well and truly post-peak, but he was a violent, terrifying force of nature come to life, like a tornado that happened to touch down specifically in a beat-to-shit Cleveland rec center. Thrilling. Sick. I've told this story a few times, probably a few too many if we're actually friends, but I can't help but think of it every time I watch a Necro Butcher match. A lot of wrestlers have a switch that flips them from normal guy to Professional Wrestler, I've seen it get flipped dozens of times, but never quite so drastically as with Necro, who is almost inhuman when he's wrestling. This is great when I'm watching something truly outlandish of his, like the Necro/Joe ECW Arena match or the first Necro/Klein match Joseph and I covered back in 2023, but when the match is a little underwhelming, I end up thinking about the dude's handshake, or sleepy-time Necro in his suit. That's what ended up happening here for me, though your milage may vary.
Up Next: Rematch month concludes, not with a Triple H/Undertaker whimper, but with a Crush Gals explosion! Lioness Asuka! Chigusa Nagayo! 2/26/87! Let's goooooooo!
Colette Arrand
Colette Arrand
This match is the only true rematch of Rematch Month, as the other matches I chose for us to tackle took place out of chronological order from what we’dve seen covered in the past. It’s the same guys, the same promotion, the same stipulation, and with the same stakes, pride and revenge aside, IWA-MS’ King of the goddamn Deathmatch. Ian Rotten has every reason to want to run this one back, but I wish that he hadn’t, or that the stipulation was different, or if this happened in the second round. On the one hand saying that this match is living in the 2003 match’s shadow feels generous — I know we live in a corner of wrestling culture that cares about deathmatch wrestling, but it’s a small corner — but both of us reached this conclusion in our pieces, and given how thoroughly referenced the first match is in Punk and Prazak’s commentary, several choice weapons, and the approach of Necro and Klein, it’s clear that this had a lot to live up to. Based on the reading I’ve done since posting my piece, it genuinely seems like it met and exceeded that bar for most — IWA ranks it higher in the countdown that gave us both YouTube videos, and when Cagematch users aren’t confusing one VCR match for the other, they prefer this one, too. That’s weird, right? Like, sorry to ask the dumbest possible question up front, but the first match blows this one away, the gulf between them is the one between good matches and great matches, and yet I feel like saying “eh, this wasn’t as good as the first” is cause for minor controversy. Are we out of touch? Or, more likely, am I?
Colette Arrand
Joseph Montecillo
I really don't know what the wider consensus on these two are, I'd always just sort of assumed that the first match held the special place in people's hearts for the VCR spot. When I pulled this bout up on stream, my chat seemed to also agree that while it's a real great time, it generally doesn't live up to the first bout's punchy runtime and iconic moments. There is perhaps a shifting of the tide in consensus here, but I couldn't say for sure. I do agree though that the gap between them is significant enough to where I don't think it's especially close.
Joseph Montecillo