Spotlight: Michael Elgin

I recently returned to the land of independent wrestling after a rather long hiatus, because of reasons that don't matter because HI

Naturally my drug of choice is AIW, Absolute Intense Wrestling, otherwise known as The Only Wrestling In Cleveland That Matters. The show? Absolution 8.

Absolution is like AIW's answer to Wrestlemania, except with actual wrestling and less explosions and more mind-blowing twists. (Like last year, when #Nixon was revealed to be ERIC RYAN (And RSP, and Bobby Beverly, although you really kind of just expect Bobby Beverly to be involved with that sort of thing, and Duke) and then he threw a table at me. Well, not at me personally, he threw a table and I just happened to be in front of it. Admittedly it sure does beat having a GARBAGE CAN thrown at you, but I digress.

Needless to say, if you go to one AIW show, go to Absolution. (If you go to two, you should probably go to JLIT and save on your travel expenses.)

Anyway, the point I was trying to make here, is I went to AIW for the first time in the while and I'm a little bit out of the loop, because one of the most amazing, ridiculous, easily show-stealing matches of the night was between Michael Elgin and Josh Alexander, AKA two guys I had literally never heard of before that night.

I don't know what rock I was hiding under.

I really want to make a The Rock joke in there somewhere, but I'll refrain. I'm a professional, damn it. This post is supposed to be about Michael Elgin being badass.

Anyway, here I am at Abso8 and here is this match between dudes that I do not know. (Although I had been sitting in front of Michael Elgin as he was shilling shirts, and he definitely at one point said "Hey, those nachos would taste better if you were wearing an Elgin shirt" and I do not doubt the veracity of this claim.)

It looks like one of those matches that's going to be brawling and grappling, which is okay but not my favorite. After a while it's like "Okay if I wanted to watch MMA... I'd watch MMA!"

But here's this match. It's okay. Lots of grappling as I expected, but I'm not bored. Neither guy is really coming out as a heel or face so I'm not real sure who to root for. Then here is Michael Elgin, holding Josh Alexander upside down, straight up in the air. Which I've seen, we've all seen it. I'm not sure why being upside down makes it more effective but it looks pretty cool. It's impressive, I suppose, in the physical sense.

Michael Elgin held that move for something close to two minutes.

Any other time I've seen it, the guy holds it for ten seconds, maybe twenty if he's trying to be impressive (or if the opponent is smaller than he is).

But this guy, Michael Elgin, this guy right here, holds Josh Alexander, who is easily Elgin's size if not maybe slightly taller, upside down, straight up, over his head, for two minutes. Well, I didn't have like a stopwatch going, but I will comfortably say between a minute and a half to two. When the DVD comes out, we can time it.

(On an aside, kudos to you Mr. Alexander for being upside down for that long. I applaud you. His face was PURPLE, guys.)

And he suplexes Alexander and I'm like, "Welp! This guys has my vote."

The match goes on for a spine-melting thirty minutes of awesomeness. There were suplexes and powerbombs so massive I thought the ring was going to break. There were near-falls that had me clutching my hat in shock. There was at least one "This is awesome!" and "Holy shit!" chant. The room pretty much collectively lost its shit.

In the end they simply ran out of time. They ran down their thirty minute time limit, because that's how amazing they are. They each got on the mic, put each other over, and set a rematch.

Needless to say, I'm ready.


 Here's an MV of Michael Elgin vs. Davey Richards, because who doesn't also love a little Davey Richards am I right? It's not a match so much as it is a match cut and edited to music, but it's still pretty badass. Apparently Michael Elgin is in ROH which perhaps accounts for a bit of my cluelessness. I haven't followed ROH with any degree of consistency since they went off HDNet. It also turns out that Elgin is actually in contendership for the Heavyweight title.

Whoops.


Anyway, here is him vs. Brodie Lee. He does get the crap beat of him a bit but he puts on a heck of a good fight. Also, the announcer at one point uses the phrase "beating the cock out of", so there's that.


Here's one with him and Josh Alexander, from 2009, when they were but wee tiny babies. You can see a ghost of the awesomeness that will be them at Abso, especially around the 10 minute mark when Elgin goes "ALRIGHT I have had ENOUGH of your SHIT Alexander!"


A proper match between Elgin and Davey Richards. For whatever reason I enjoy these two together; I think it's because I find them to be similar. Not in movesets or anything -- Davey Richards is more like KICKS and FLYING, whereas Elgin is like "I WILL POWERBOMB YOUR FACE" -- but because you basically have to half-kill them to keep them down. Three-quarters in the case of Davey Richards. And maybe that aspect doesn't show so much in this match but in Abso8? Oh my goodness. I actually found myself rooting against Davey while watching this, which is rare, to say the least.

And one final time, here he is wrestling obvious crowd favorite Manabu Soya. In it you will find excellent of examples of Elgin just not staying the fuck down, and those massive powerbombs I mentioned earlier.

So, if you're a clueless noob like I am, apparently, I hope I made a good case for Michael Elgin and why you should definitely know who he is. I hope he does well in ROH with his title aspirations... just so long as he doesn't forget about AIW and the rematch he promised us!

Special Spotlight: CM Punk

Since it's been all but confirmed that this Sunday is CM Punk's last appearance with the WWE, whether or not he wins the belt (which, personally, I hope he does) I wanted to do a special look at this superstar. Love him or hate him or somewhere in between, you have to admit the term suits him.

Spotlight: Eddie Edwards

Since my last spotlight -- all of six months ago -- was for Davey Richards, and they have an epic, epic title match tomorrow, I thought I'd do the other half of the American Wolves, Eddie Edwards.

Spotlight: Davey Richards

In light of Davey's incredible performance at ROH's Final Battle last month and resulting injury, whether work or shoot, I believe we all need to take a closer look at this amazing athlete.

Davey has wrestled for numerous promotions, including PWG, Squared Circle Wrestling (2CW) and abroad in Japan, for New Japan Pro-Wrestling. He's currently under contract with Ring of Honor and is a former heavyweight and tag team champ, most notably with Eddie Edwards, where they are known as the American Wolves.

It's no secret that the man is one of the most intense players in the game. Watch just one of his matches and you will see it.

I have provided you with some. Check 'em after the jump.

Spotlight: Masato Yoshino

This week's spotlight is a new favorite of mine, Masato Yoshino, of Dragon Gate/DGUSA. I recently started watching Dragon Gate after some urging from a Twitter friend and I. AM. HOOKED. If you've never seen Dragon Gate... you need to start watching ASAP.

There's a lot of amazingly talented guys on the DG roster, all of whom I would really like to Spotlight, but I had to start out with Yoshino. He is simply fantastic.

Spotlight: Eric Young

A lot of people probably dismiss Eric Young as the comic relief. TNA doesn't quite seem to know what to do with him. Heel, face, tag team, X-Division, Super Eric, silly and stupid. Man's been -- and done -- it all.

But you know what? Behind all the silly (and occasionally really stupid) gimmicks, he's a pretty damn good wrestler.

Spotlight: AJ Styles

New blog topic. I've been meaning to do this for the past two Saturdays but have been too busy or too lazy to put it together.

So anyway, every Saturday (or so I intend) I will spotlight a wrestler and highlight some matches I think are worth your time to watch.

This week I picked someone easy, because we all should be watching him anyway. And he's not the #1 ranked wrestler in the PWI 500 for nothing.