![]() ![]() By the time it devolves into headbutt exchanges I'm in love. They're really smart about pacing them out so they still feel strong, and throwing in the missed shots at the right time to give Destroyer a chance to go back in control. There are not many things I like more in wrestling than Abby dropping elbows, I love the way he angles his elbowdrops, love the degree they land, love when he charges in and misses his big killshot sliding elbowdrop, love them all. He's really smart at leaving those kind of breadcrumbs in a match. I love early on how he takes this big (but safe and smart) bump to the floor, Abby chucking him down the length of the ring and Destroyer bumping out to the apron to the floor later on Abby does something similar and Destroyer grabs the ropes at the right time to effectively stop it. He has a bunch of his own Finlay type moves, the kind of things that come off so natural but obviously must be way harder or else we would see them more often. ![]() ![]() It's a lame observation, but I just love the way he moves in a ring. Destroyer is a guy who has been criminally underwritten by us, and I'm not just saying that because he passed, but because he's clearly a guy who is as much as Segunda Caida Guy as anyone. That this vivid image, a bloody yet valiant mess of a masked man choking out an absolute monster with a chair, is now how I am going to remember the Destroyer is simply a testament to how great he was at so much else.ĮR: I must point out that Phil sent me a text saying we were writing this match up WELL before news of Beyer's passing, which would have felt like a coincidence if he hadn't also been sending me a bunch of Airwolf texts the past several weeks. This is Abdullah in AJPW in 1980, so obviously it devolves further, but it does so with blood and metal and escalation. There's one headbutt where he staggers Abdullah, which is as good a comeback moment as you'll see. It's not at all what you'd expect and it's at times unrelenting and triumphant. I'm pretty certain he loads the mask in there to even the odds, but regardless, the two of them just go at it. The back-half, however, is a straight-on headbutt war. The first half of this match has him trying to solve the problem of Abdullah, and more power to him because he decides the way to go is with repeated figure-four leglock attempts. He was a wrestler who was exceptional at his craft, just a wizard on the mat, but that was also so confident in his own abilities and his presence that he allowed himself to emotive and even comedically vulnerable in a way that added to the match and did not detract from it.Īnd here we get an entirely different side of him. There is generally a joy to Destroyer matches, a sort of whimsy. I'm glad for the kismet even if saddened by the overall situation. MD: I've been pushing this one for a while and it just happened to work out that it was at the top of the list the day after Beyer died. Not a ton of Destroyer bloody brawls, but when it breaks down, he shows he can hang in this atmosphere just as well as he can on the mat. Destroyer keeps getting battered and bloodier, until he says fuck it and goes to war and we get a double count with Destroyer chocking Abby with a chair. I really loved the push and pull of this match, Destroyer want's to wrestle a Destroyer match, lock ups, a big butt drop on the knee to set up the figure four etc., and Abby wants to drag him into an Abby match with blood, bumps into chairs and head severing elbow drops. Destroyer is such a legend, that any new chance to see him wrestle is a treat. PAS: This match had been on the schedule for a while, and it obviously has larger significance with the Destroyer's passing yesterday.
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