Southern Indie Spotlight Take Four - Another Kyle Matthews Match PLUS Capitalizing On Anthony Henry Buzz

Twitter is on fire right now with people talking about Anthony Henry's match and performance tonight v. Tommaso Ciampa at tonight's PWX show. Since I am behind today due to an internet outage last night, I will release the entry I originally planned for today tomorrow, and capitalize on this buzz by linking to the first Anthony Henry match that really made me jump out of my chair and take notice. The match is from August of 2013 and features Henry going up against perhaps the most consistent wrestler of the last ten years, Kyle Matthews. It was not their first match together, or even the first match between the two that I had seen, but it was the one that fully convinced me that Anthony Henry was someone I should be keeping a close eye on.

I have included the review of the match I wrote upon seeing it below. You will note that it almost exclusively talks about Kyle Matthews who had a hell of a year that year, and who I was advocating for as a top tier worker on the planet as noted in the last sentence of the review. That said, the old email I found the write up in also had a note below the review that said "Henry could be a legit indie star emerging in the South." I say that not as a way of squeezing in an "I found him first!," but rather to illustrate that this was a great performance from both Matthews and Henry.



Aside from one offensive spot toward the finish that I thought was a bit much, I thought this was awfully, awfully good. In general I think Matthews is infinitely better as a face, but this was a really strong heel performance from him as he came across as a guy befuddled that he was being outwrestled, willing to resort to anything to take over and then desperate, punch drunk, and scared shitless when on the ropes. Lots of spots in this that I thought looked really good and/or were worked to make them feel like a big deal and not just some flashy sequence for the sake of it. I loved the spot with Matthews clinging the canvas to stop a German suplex, breaking it, and turning right into a Northern Lights Suplex. Really loved the big spots off the top right before the finish too and I dug the clean tap out as it seemed like they were building to that and by the time this was over you wanted to see the little shit quit. This was really, really good and combined with the [KT]Hamill match bumps Matthews back into my top ten.