Joseph and Colette Discuss The Workhorsemen vs. Violence Is Forever

This week we talk about great tag teams, great tag team divisions, and the great sport of tag team professional wrestling.

CJ Downey

This week, Joseph and I watched a relative rarity in the great sport of professional wrestling: an indie cage match. Furthermore, it was a good cage match, which isn’t easy to do given how overbooked cage matches of just about every stripe became after the Attitude Era. Even crazier, it’s a good tag team cage match, which is just about impossible to do for reasons I outline in my essay about the match. Let’s get those links out of the way and dive further into Violence Is Forever vs. The Workhorsemen, which you can watch from DEADLOCK Pro Wrestling.

Violence is Forever vs. The Workhorsemen: The Cage is Not the End

The Workhorsemen vs. Violence Is Forever Works By Unsettling Your Expectation of a Tag Team Cage Match

Next Up: Our look at 2023 thus far continues. This time, we travel to St. Louis, where Mad Dog Connelly and 1 Called Manders square off in a match Joseph chose because I specifically asked to see some Mad Dog Connelly, who consistently puts up stars in Joseph’s year-long MOTYC thread. I don’t know anything about either wrestler beyond the hype, so I am approaching this crazy man vs. cowboy matchup as a clash between two of the best kinds of wrestler there are. Pumped!

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Joseph Anthony Montecillo
So this week's match is from Deadlock Pro Wrestling, one of the newest and most exciting independents coming up in America today. I wouldn't count myself as an expert on all things DPW but, this year especially, I've been keeping a close eye on them. Around late mid-2022 to now, their matchmaking began to really catch up with the other things they do so well which is production. I don't think there's a slicker, better looking product on the independent scene right now than DPW. You recently attended a DPW show live, so I wanted to ask if that eye for production translated to the live experience at all.

Colette Arrand
I think so! I went to an episode of Collision the night before, too, so I had basically the second most whizbang television product going in my head as a point of comparison, and the only thing that really suffered was my ability to take pictures on my beloved Game Boy Camera. The DPW guys cover the booking and production of major televised wrestling events every week on their podcast, and the level of detail they put into critiquing things like your run of the mill episode of Impact from the Hogan/Bischoff era translates into the slickest indie production I’ve seen live outside of ROH. Having worked behind the camera before, everything about the live experience feels very intentionally pitched towards both the fans who are there and the audience picking up the shows later through their proprietary on demand service. They don’t stream on IWTV or Fite, so they have to do something that sets them apart, and I’d say that the vibe at the Durham Armory is somewhat akin to a smaller televised production — like if WWE’s ECW had an authenticity to it. It’s a nice setup. More than that, the product they’re promoting feels unique. Their champions don’t feel like they’re just the current crop of hot guys on the indies, their women’s division is anchored by Emi Sakura, and their love and appreciation for tag wrestling is obvious.

Joseph Anthony Montecillo
It's a comparison that I and others have made in the past. I believe even Kevin Ku said something to the effect of DPW's shows have the look and vibe of a modernized 2000s ROH. If Gabe and co. had access to better cameras, lighting, and editing, then I imagine this is what ROH might have looked like. A part of that's the color scheme, of course. Black and orange is just a stone's throw away from red and black. But there's just a neatness to it all where everything's very professional and taken very seriously. It makes the whole thing so much easier to watch.