Chikara Tag World Grand Prix, Philadelphia, PA
From night three, and I figured while it was on my mind and while I had the shit at hand, I might as well watch this bad boy.
This is right in the period where everyone was trying to do some level of recreating the first Samoa Joe vs Necro Butcher match from June ’05, Necro cast as a traveling brawler to do Intriguing Matchups, while mostly still working the death match/hardcore style. We’ve talked about the Joe vs Necro rematch from Jan. ’06, and the Necro vs Low Ki match from Apr. ’06, both in IWA Mid-South.
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There was also Necro in the 2005 Revolution Strong Style tournament for IWA MS, where he faced Eddie Kingston, BJ Whitmer, and Chris Hero, another match with Hero in early ’06, IWA MS did Necro and Roderick Strong in March, and eventually, ROH brought him in because what he would do there is what he’d been doing in matches like that, bringing a hardcore/death match style and energy against opponents who weren’t necessarily hardcore/death match wrestlers. And he was really good at it.
Here, it’s Yoshiaki Yago, a big, hard-hitting kickboxer who was in Chikara for the weekend representing K-DOJO in the tag tournament, but had been eliminated by this point. Necro was also on hand, first portraying “CP Munk,” and then himself, also eliminated in the second round.
This is at the former ECW Arena, so the same building as the first Joe-Necro match, adding some more spice, plus Eddie Kingston’s on commentary. He is very excited about Yago using The Doors.
Necro out to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” Kingston brings up his match the prior November with Necro. Necro hitting himself on the apron, shouting at Yago, and Yago is not intimidated. Yago, again, a legit kickboxer.
Necro with a chop, Yago with a chop. They trade, Necro takes his shirt off, let’s lay it in! Yeah, there they go. Yago’s chops are two-handed, short but strong, Necro’s are wound-up classic style with the single hand.
Crowd chanting for both. They just keep hitting each other. Necro throws a headbutt! Yago staggers a bit, hits the ropes, and they just fucking collide like rams with their skulls. Yago misses a spinning heel kick by a ton and they try to say it grazed but nah. Necro doesn’t super sell it, but he goes out to the floor, where he eats a dropkick through the ropes.
Yago down to the floor with him now and throwing kicks and punches, Necro back with his punches, trying to go to the body, but Yago just absorbs it and drops Necro with a kick to the leg, Necro hitting the back of his head on the concrete floor.
Kick to the head from Yago. He sets up a chair and sits Necro down, then gets some space and runs in with a dropkick. Necro’s bleeding from the forehead just a bit, just scraped a bit.
“Magenta’s a weird color, man.” – Eddie Kingston
Back in, Necro whipped to the corner, and Yago hits a running knee. Thrust kick! Kick to the back, then one to the chest. Running kneedrop, right on point, Necro kicks at two. STF from Yago. Necro fights it and manages to get to the ropes, but Yago switches it over to a crossface and then the Rings of Saturn. Necro gets a foot to the rope and Yago breaks.
“I don’t think he enjoys the pain,” Eddie says of Necro. “It just doesn’t register to him as it does to normal people.”
Kingston has a tremendous respect for Necro that he’s really getting across. Golden Gate Swing-type move (a swinging fisherman buster, basically) from Yago for two. Yago with a full nelson, but Necro headbutts out of that. Lariat, but Yago eats it and fires back. They clothesline one another, nobody budging, and then Necro lays Yago out with a short lariat!
Both struggle back up, Necro hits a Tiger Driver once they are, and it gets two. They sort of stumble over in a messy moment, but recover fast and Yago is lighting him up with punches, chops, and kicks again, then Necro is firing back with his wild rights and lefts. Yago defending, though, and he comes back with clean shots that put Necro down again. Dragon suplay from Yago gets the win!
This isn’t the best of these type Necro matches; honestly, it may be one of the weaker. But it’s also one of the more forgotten and different, this is Necro against a 38-year-old guy who had only been wrestling a couple of years, and didn’t have a “pro wrestler style,” he was a kickboxer adapting his skills to pro wrestling, and he was pretty good at it.
Necro isn’t the guy to give you lots of clean looking reactions to kicks and stuff, though, so if you’re looking for something that resembles a standard Low Ki or KENTA match or something, that’s not here. He was all about absorbing blows and continuing to fight, and as often was the case in these matches, this is really the story of the match, and then he loses. It’s about being able to survive his clumsy backwoods brawling and otherworldly toughness and do enough to finish him off. He is quite often dominated or brutalized, all things considered, but you know he will return to fight another day, and you’ll want to see him do it.
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