Ah Dojo Wars. A subsidiary of CZW that has been running regularly for two years now, I can honestly say I've had my eye on Dojo Wars from day one. In the early days I was watching because the shows featured wrestlers working almost shoot stylish grappling exchanges, in a training school setting. Aside from the fact that it was literally the only American promotion where I could see such a thing, I also enjoyed this particular aspect of the early shows because it was the closest thing I'll probably ever get to 8mm footage of Verne Gagne's barn training camp.
As time went on I started to watch Dojo Wars both to take a look at some of the talent being developed in the CZW system, but also because the show became a place where you could see guys like Joe Gacy, Tracy Williams, or Drew Gulak go twenty plus minutes against each other or up and coming guys who wouldn't normally get that sort of opportunity. For several months now the promotion has been run by senior matchmaker Emil Jay, who also does ring announcing and commentary for the shows, and has ushered in an era of Memphis inspired storytelling without completely abandoning the other staples that have become associated with the Dojo Wars brand.
The promotion's 2 year anniversary show - Dojo Wars 75 - is available in full for free on YouTube (as are all of their shows since the end of January on this channel). I have been threatening to review one of their shows for a while, and as a mark for milestones this felt like the obvious one to go with. And so...here we are.
Dojo Wars 75
Conor Claxton v. Frankie Pickard
If I'm not mistaken the first Dojo Wars match I ever saw was these two in a sub-five minute grappling heavy bout, that came across like a sparring session that was getting a little bit out of hand. As a matter of fact I think that was the first match Dojo Wars ever ran period. In any case these guys are homegrown DW guys, and it was cool to see them open the show. I think both guys are really underrated, though Claxton is someone who's profile seems to have grown quite a bit in the last year.
I was expecting to see at least some of the grappling that had defined the early bouts I saw between these two, but instead they decided to lay each other to waste with strikes. It's not so much that the match was based around them, and not all of them looked brutal, but this felt more Futen inspired than RINGS inspired to the extent that it was shootstyle inspired at all. There were some vicious seated kicks in this, and a cool spot where Pickard did a kip up right into a brutal looking forearm, but my absolute favorite part was when things started to break down late and Claxton resorted to these wild forearms to whatever part of the downed Pickard he could hit. Dojo Wars has a tradition of time limit draws (they are the only promotion I can think of where that is a finish that is actually something that seems possible when any match starts), so it actually felt like a likelihood when Jay started talking about it on commentary, which made Pickard's last second win off of a coast-to-coast overhead belly-to-belly superplex a cool surprise. Clunky but enjoyable match.
Rayo v. Ace Austin
This match was set up as a way for Austin to avenge an arm injury that Rayo had inflicted to him on a previous show. I have seen Rayo twice before at Atlanta Wrestling Entertainment where he does a soccer player gimmick that is pretty much the perfect heel act for the AWE crowd to collectively shit on. For Dojo Wars he leaves his ball at home and he looked fine here, targeting the injury some, before tapping out to an Austin arm submission. Decent match, explosive in parts, and the babyface got revenge. It served its role on the card.
Billy Danvers v. Cannonball
Cannonball is a big dude, who I don't think had ever been knocked off his feet coming into this. Danvers looks like Trevor Lee's socially awkward little brother. The idea here was to recreate the 1-2-3 Kid win over Razor Ramon on the near anniversary of it, and it was effective in that regard. Yeah the moonsault press didn't exactly connect the way you would ideally want it to, but the reactions of Danvers, Cannonball, the live crowd, and Emil Jay to Danvers flash pin all made it work as a moment. I especially loved the camera shot of Cannonball's "Oh my god" face, and Jay scrambling to find out what the official time of the match was because he couldn't believe what he'd just seen. Fun.
Sozio v. Blackwater
I don't even know how to describe the Blackwater gimmick so I won't. Just google him, or better yet watch this show, because he's pretty much the epitome of a capital c wrestling Character. This wasn't even really a match. I think the intended angle was Blackwater burning Sozio with a fireball. Instead we got something that looked like Blackwater lighting his hand on fire and punching Sozio in the face. Now to some people that might sound lame, but I actually loved it because it reminded me of this kid in high school who scheduled a fight with a tougher kid who he knew could beat his ass. His master plan to offset the advantage was to wrap his hands in tin foil and set them on fire. The tin foil started melting into his flesh and his adversary had to come over and stomp out the flames, breaking one of his hands in the process. Blackwater stayed away from the tinfoil and fucked up Sozio just like he intended, leading to chaos in the Dojo, including referees and Emil Jay in full panic mode. For an angle that's execution was slightly off, this was well done.
Max Caster, Josh Adams, Robert Locke & Kit Osbourne v. Isaac Atrox, Lloyd Jameson, Alexander James & Laszlo Arpad
This was basically your 1997 Nitro match featuring random third tier luchadors where the crowd and Tony Schiavone spend a chunk of it focusing on the previous segment where the NWO smashed Jim Powers and Hugh Morrus with a leadpipe backstage. I don't mean that as a knock on any of these guys, but when you are coming after two big angles, and right before the marquee matches what are you gonna do? To be fair the crowd largely stayed with them as they stayed with everything all night, and I enjoy matches like this as a sort pro wrestling version of a Punk-O-Rama Compilation where you can get just enough of a taste to know that Millencolin is awesome and that you never want to hear The Humpers again. I won't say whether anyone in this was The Humpers of the match, but I am partial to Robert Locke as the Millencolin because of his hair and because he's a good carny who hustled me into buying a t-shirt for the tag team he was managing at the Smoky Mountain Cup. Good job brother. The best exchanges in this were between Adams and Jameson, and I think setting up a match with those two was really the point of this, so I'd say this did it's job.
Rory Gulak v. Curt Robinson
Robinson's boyish look is well complimented by his yellow amateur wrestling singlet which looks like the sort of thing that you'd have seen Corey wear if he'd had a rematch of his shoot fight with Vader's kid when he was an upperclassman. Gulak is doing the "Amazing" gimmick that he does with his brother on the CZW main roster. This was kind of a weird match in that the more difficult a spot seemed the better it seemed to be executed, while some of the seemingly simpler stuff felt a bit rough around the edges. I did like the finish a lot which was a Gulak Octopus stretch into a pinning combination. Post-match Curt snapped and put the female ref in the cross faced chickenwing. You could argue this was one too many mid-90s WWF tribute angles on the show, but I thought it worked well in furthering the Robinson character as we've all known a babyfaced, sore loser, jock, who reacts to personal failure by beating up women.
Joey Janela v. Penelope Ford
This was a surprise addition to the show as Janela - who has been trying to get a kiss from Ford for some time - had lost a Loser Leaves Town match some time back. Janela banters heavily with the crowd pre-match, at one point hamming it up so much that he falls off the ropes to the laughter of everyone, himself included. Emil Jay agrees to make this match, the stipulation being that Janela gets a kiss from Ford if he wins, and if he loses he has to leave town again. One could argue that there is something regressive about the stipulations, but a woman fighting to evict her stalker from the universe in which they are operating in, and avoiding his unwanted sexual advances in the process, is actually a story I can get behind at least on some level.
I honestly didn't know what to expect once the bell rang, but what we got was a match that saw Janela's "Bad Boy" act countered by the really dynamic and athletic spots of Ford. Usually when I use the term "gymnastics" in the context of a pro wrestling review it's as a pejorative, but here Ford's spots actually came across as gymnastic-y in a good way, as she was using her flexibility, athleticism, and body control to offset Janela's more direct heelish work. I thought her bridging back to avoid a clothesline and then hitting a headscissors came across about as good as I've ever seen that kind of spot come across which is a testament to both Janela and Ford. I also dug the battle over position for a suplex, the handspring elbow being teased early and delivered later as a comeback spot, and the bit on the apron where Ford fell into a split opening her up to a series of Janela kicks. There was also a brutal powerbomb spot in this and a really good looking strike exchange that somehow managed to not be uncomfortable while still looking violent. The finish was a bit abrupt, but the bridging roll up Ford won with looked completely believable as something that would keep someones shoulders to the mat for three seconds. Comedy, big spots, stiff strikes, and stakes behind it - this was a really good wrestling match and my match of the night.
Storm of Entrails & Joe Gacy v. Business Casual & George Gatton (NO DQ)
If you haven't seen Shlak's promo for this match check it out. The pre-match introductions here were really long but they also kind of set the stage for the absurdity that was to follow. This was a show that had already seen a man get punched by a flaming hand, so the standard for violence was really high. I was kind of wondering where they would go with this as a result, and where they went was a weird hybrid of comedy and savagery.
I'm not even going to try and do a play-by-play on this but in this match you saw dudes getting slammed on those little things that are filled with gun powder but look like sperm, an 8X10 of George Gatton stapled into someones flesh, a woman get attacked...with silly string, garbage cans, crutches, a Van Terminator tease that led to a man punching a chair instead, keyboard warriors everywhere symbolically demolished, and legos used as a legit weapon of mass destruction as we all know they most certainly can be. Business Casual and Gatton end up scoring the win and it is sold as a huge upset. That kind of made the match to me as I was able to project a certain psychology backwards onto the bout where Gatton and Business Casual were basically the Denver Broncos dragging the more skilled in the setting team of Storm of Entrails and Joe Gacy into their gutter and beating them on those terms like the Broncos did to the Panthers this year.
Brittany Blake v. Qefka The Quiet (2/3 Falls; Medal of Valor)
Blake is someone I am all in on as an up-and-comer, who I think could end up being really fucking good when it's all said and done. I think Dojo Wars has clearly helped her a ton and she entered this show with the Medal of Valor (the top honor in the promotion). Her challenger, Qefka The Quiet, is an insane looking mime character who had the grandest of all entrances on this show which I won't spoil.
Qefka took the first fall quickly with a schoolboy. I tend to think early flash falls are overdone in 2/3 falls matches these days, but this was actually executed so well that I thought it worked.
As I mentioned above, I am a Brittany Blake fan, and one thing I really liked about her in this match is that even after dropping a fall she still comes across as a rightfully cocky champion. She's defended the Medal of Valor a bunch of times, this is not a new game to her, and she isn't afraid. This is magnified by the fact that she is very small. Imagine Spike Dudley as a company ace who could back it up in the ring, and had gone broadway with Steve Austin to prove it (in this analogy Drew Gulak is Steve Austin in case you are wondering).
Anyway, back to the match. There was some really sharp stuff in the second fall including a sick knee from Qefka, and a really nice missile dropkick from Blake. The finish to the fall was especially cool as Blake hit a jumping knee off the top to the arm, and then locked on her Bad Omen hold for the submission.
The third fall opened with Blake immediately going after the mimes injured arm. Blake tries to finish him with is own submission, but Qefka is able to escape, and we end up getting some fun stuff built around the physics of miming, including a "spring loaded splash" and Blake countering an attempt to reel her in with miming with a superkick. Blake is able to get Qefka back in the Bad Omen, but the mime makes the ropes. I was hoping he would mime the existence of a rope and the ref would be forced to honor it, but this worked just as well. Blake goes to the top after this and ended up leaping off into...I'm not sure. I think it was a cutter of some sort, but in the most unfortunate of all possible endings to a show we don't quite see exactly what happens because of the camera shot. We just know it was enough to end Blake's run as the top dog at Dojo Wars.
Post-match Qefka The Quiet v. George Gatton for his first medal of honor match is set up, and matchmaking machine Emil Jay thanks everyone for coming out and says that they are going to keep Dojo Wars going forever.
There were no match of the year candidates on this show, the biggest star on it was probably Joe Gacy, and no more than 50 people were in the building at any given time. But in terms of presenting an efficient and effective show that made the most out of the talent available, paid off angles, and set up new ones, this was good stuff. The card was extremely well structured in terms of match placement, the commentary did a great job both providing context and calling the action, and the crowd stayed hot from beginning to end. Dojo Wars 75 was well worth the 2 hrs and twenty-two minutes I spent watching it, and for the price of zero dollars and zero cents, I hope others will give it a look.
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