Best Friends vs Santana/Ortiz - (AEW - 9/16/2020)

I'll actually second this. I watched it last year when I went on an AEW catch-up binge and thought it was shockingly fun. I'll just C&P what I wrote at the time:


This is another match that my dear beloved internet wrestling friends told me I would probably like. I have no use whatsoever for Chuck Taylor, haven't watched anything involving Trent Baretta in about 10 years, and I'm pretty sure the only time I've seen Santana and Ortiz was during that stadium match where one of them tried to drown Matt Hardy in a swimming pool. I also didn't have a clue about the feud leading up to this point (something about Trent's ma or whatever), so I was sort of apathetic going in, and yet in the end I thought it was stupid great. Like, easily the most I've ever enjoyed Chuck Taylor, and I guess Trent Baretta and the LAX into the bargain (the latter through lack of exposure more than anything). There was pretty much no nonsense in this and I appreciated that they just went for violence straight out the gate. At one point the Best Friends had Ortiz under the hood of a car and they were hitting somersault sentons, and the way Ortiz's leg was sticking out it looked like they were trying to stuff a cadaver in - fittingly enough - the trunk of a car. Basically everything looked brutal, from the overt lunacy like Trent getting powerbombed on the roof of one of the cars, to the more subtle nastiness like Santana getting his forehead split open by being thrown into a wing mirror. Trent was actually a maniac in this, taking a face-first slingshot into the bottom of a truck, blading his arm after spearing someone through a door, sliding down a windshield leaving bloody streaks, then taking a truly ludicrous double powerbomb through that windshield where his back got cut to pieces. There was even a bit where he smashed a plank of wood over Ortiz's back and a piece of it flew up and hit him in the eye. When you're having one of those days you're just having one of those days. The Chuck Taylor wheelie bin suplex is also is one of the only times I've seen a spot involving a wheelie bin in a wrestling match that felt properly brutal. I don't know what the deal is with Orange Cassidy appearing out the trunk at the end. Probably some daft shit that I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on and say fit with the feud, but I feel like the less I think about Orange Cassidy the easier my life is. That said, if you're going to do a comedy spot in a match that had been fully about the violence up until then, they at least reeled it back in when Cassidy immediately smashed Santana in the ear with a chain-wrapped fist. And the Strong Zero through the wood in the truck bed felt like a suitable finish to a match even containing this much wildness. Parking lot brawls are sort of a rarity, great ones even more so, but this one might be the best ever. Which is staggering considering William Regal v Fit Finlay and John Cena v Eddie Guerrero were things that happened, and neither of those had Chuck Taylor in them.

Wow, I wasn't expecting such high praise.  That's awesome.  Even Mick Foley made a video about how dope the match is.  

A lot of these listings need to be cleaned up. You don’t need to abbreviate “parking lot” or list a first initial or every wrestler in the heading. That’s info that can go into the article itself. ADHD and OCD going crazy when things aren’t in a nice/neat place.

Much