Matt Riddle v Tracey Williams (Evolve 52, 11/7/15)
I got the urge to watch some modern indy wrestling. I don't really know why. Folk have been hyping guys like Riddle and Fred Yehi for a minute now though, so I wanted to start with one of those two. My intention was to watch Riddle v Chris Hero from Evolve 57, but I couldn't find it online in the 45 seconds I set aside to look for it and don't know where to find it past two pages of a google search. This popped up though, and it was an 11 minute file so at least if it sucked it wouldn't be a total waste of time and turn me off all wrestling for another month and a half. I've never seen Williams before, though I've read about him on Segunda Caida and PWO and Dylan Waco's twitter. Riddle I remember from the UFC where he got fired for his penchant for smoking weed and pissing off Dana White. He had some beef with Kevin Randleman a few years back and I think Randleman threatened to fuck him in the pussy or something. This was alright for about six minutes. I was pretty impressed with the glance at Riddle. He spent the majority selling and he was good at it. He took one strike a couple minutes in and had this great KO sell, and he made it look like he was struggling to regain his bearings for the next few minutes. When he did he let loose with a few nasty looking kicks and his forearm smashes weren't crummy. Some of Williams' were. He doesn't do the Roderick Strong "slap your own thigh while throwing a strike" thing, but instead he uses his free hand to slap Riddle's chest as the forearm connects. It was kind of goofy. He was also very "modern day professional wrestler" in this. Remember when Tommy Rogers or Rick Martel would hit a cross body and they'd get pumped up like "fuck yes I loved that!" and the crowd would go apeshit right along with them? Well Williams hits a cross body and immediately - to mild applause - gets up and roars like LeBron after he dunked on KG. Everyone is so angry these days, yo. Such is the world we live in. I think I'd like Riddle a good bit if I watched him get some more time. I'm not sure about Williams, but it's tough to condemn a guy based on six minutes of footage. I mean, once upon a time I compared Nick Bockwinkel to Edge, so I'm not immune from being a total fucking spastic.
