Beyond’s Battle of the Aces continued at their Americanrana show… as David Starr and Joey Janela battled in a barbed wire ropes match!
In Beyond, these two have had quite the feud – starting with a double count-out in 2016, all the way through to their last outing (technically) on New Year’s Day as the pair rang in 2017 with a Fans Bring The Weapons match. Although Janela won that one, David Starr refused to go away, nor reduce his claims of being the Ace of Beyond… so the ante’s upped in brutal style.
Barbed Wire Ropes: David Starr vs. Joey Janela
Okay, so when you’ve got ropes made of barbed wire, you bring a barbed wire bat and have your girlfriend bring wire cutters. This is going to get brutal quickly, eh?
Starr’s got a laser-like focus on Joey Janela from the off, but who the hell wears red jeans anyway?! Let alone to a barbed wire match? Meanwhile, Janela was claiming that this was going to be the final deathmatch of his career… while wearing a t-shirt bearing the image of Atsushi Onita. There’s a joke there somewhere…
Matt Tremont and Nick Gage are on commentary rather than the usual Beyond commentary crew, because why not? Ever considerate, the crowd chant “please don’t die” at the bell, and we start with… a knuckle lock? Starr knocks Janela down early before we get our first taste of barbed wire, when Janela grabbed it instinctively to avoid a German suplex. He quickly let go…
He’s quickly shoved back into the wire after Starr grabbed a kick, then rips off his shirt, which means that Joey’s gonna bleed. Janela’s taken into more wire as Starr pushes him into the barbs, before he teases dumping Starr across the wire. Instead, Joey rips off Starr’s shirt, and while chicken winging his arms, he tries to take the Product chest-first into the wire… Starr ends up getting shoved back first into the wire, then whipped into it as he realises that barbed wire isn’t as good for bouncing off of.
Oh, and that they’re a lot better for cutting you up… he says as he revisits lunch on the above screenshot.
A snapmare takes Starr out of the barb, Janela literally drew first blood before heading outside for a staple gun… and a Scott Steiner 8×10?! Big Poppa Pump is clipped to Starr’s head, and believe me, David was hollering… and we heard him as he was put into the Steiner Recliner! Somehow starr Stands up and backs Janela into the wire, trapping his skin between the barbs before he’s snapmared out… and I’m losing my lunch again!
Janela goes for his barbed wire bat as Starr tries the staple gun, as commentary broke down how staple guns don’t work at distance because they don’t shoot fast. There’s analysis I wasn’t expecting out of Gage and Tremont! The weapons are used on each other some more, causing Janela to trickle blood from his forehead as Starr heads outside for his own barbed wire bat.
Bigger boards with more barbed wire, eh?
Those boards are ground into each other’s heads, and I think I’m done taking screenshots as Starr’s sat down as a bloody mess. He’s able to rebound with a belly to belly, taking Janela into the wire, before he grabs the wire clippers that Penelope Ford brought out… and now we have loose wire!
AND CINDER BLOCKS?!
But first, Starr gets a barbed wire board and bridges it between the ring and the crowd barrier, after having freed one side of the ring from the wire. Penelope Ford hits the ring to disarm Starr, and she doesn’t back down… slapping away at Starr before backflipping away. She ends up backflipping into a barbed wire board in the corner, which sucked, but not as much as Janela’s landing, who took a Russian legsweep off the apron through that other board.
While ring crew clip Starr and Janela free, Penelope Ford’s still chilling against the board that’s left in the ring, while the referee is down from having been superkicked moments earlier. To their credit, the crowd alert ring crew to help Ford, as just about everyone is shocked and bleeding – and yes, it’s hard to watch as they finally cut Ford out.
Yet still they continue, throwing chairs and those cinder blocks into the ring… and it’s Janela who throws the first chairs, laying them in on Starr before he tries to push a kenzan into his head. I had to Google that – it’s a mini bed of nails commonly used in flower arranging, apparently. Starr ends up getting the kenzan and smashes it into Janela’s head, drilling it deeper with a Blackheart buster before he looked to go for the pin… but Steven DuMeng’s still out from that superkick.
A second referee’s out… but it’s Kevin Quinn – who’s had his issues with Starr in the past – and he instantly holds up his count, much to the disbelief of the bloodied Starr. Commentary doesn’t know what’s going on, but they do pop for a death valley driver onto some cinder blocks on a chair as Janela found his second wind.
Janela sets up a crash pad with some chairs, before cutting loose more wire to make it just a little more hurty… except he wraps the wire around him a la Sabu. It gives David Starr a chance to get back to his feet, and hit Joey with a low blow before he superkicks the ref. Well, it kept that part of the storyline going, right as Janela’s given an awkward Saito suplex into the chairs. Good grief!
Our first referee wakes up to make a slow two-count for Starr, who tries to up the ante by pushing together some cinder blocks in the corner. Janela gets up and package piledrives Starr onto a chair, but of course it’s not enough, and Janela ends up losing some hair as he tugs the wire out of himself. He takes Starr over to the cinder blocks for another package piledriver, but it’s escaped as Starr uses those chairs on Janela’s head, before hitting his Trapped Arm Bob Fossil package piledriver onto the blocks for the win.
Good Grief. That was another level of brutality, compared to New Year’s Fans Bring The Weapons match. I’m not a huge proponent of death match wrestling, as when it’s overdone it can so easily veer into the “weapon shots for the sake of it, and look we act like they don’t hurt” format. Starr and Janela made it look good here, making everything count – and making you believe that this wasn’t another quaint “let’s hit each other with baking trays” match with extra blood.
If you can stomach it, this match was as good as the weapons match from New Year’s Day – but this won’t be a match for everyone! ***¾