Timothy Thatcher

[Matt D]

GOAT note: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/28836-timothy-thatcher

 

Reviews from the GOAT Nomination Thread:

 

Might be way premature (although we have a long way to go) but I feel the best wrestler in the world deserves a look:

Timothy Thatcher:

(Reviews taken from WKO; all from this year)

vs Drew Gulak FIP 3/14
This is the MOTY. Long story short, after searching around a few particular websites I came to the conclusion that the only way I'd be able to see this match is if I pay the $10 for the VOD of the show. It was more than worth the money. Beautiful technique to begin with. Timothy Thatcher proved he's the best wrestler in the world by properly executing a headlock takeover. Vicious arm work done to Gulak's arm, and to Thatcher's leg, to which both guys sold wonderfully and it was played a big factor down the stretch. Everything was a struggle. Everything. When one of them gained some sort of positioning or slapped on a hold it felt like they earned it. Each transition felt organic and creative. As is the case with elite mat workers, tons of awesome little details were done to add to everything. Lots of stiff shots too. At one point Gulak had Thatcher in a leg lock and they were kicking each other in the head! All the near falls towards the end escalated the story of the match and I bought into every one. Some of the best mat work, selling, and overall work you'll see in North America. Maybe ever. Don't wait for this to pop up somewhere, because it probably won't. This is worth every penny. MOTY.

vs Drew Gulak EVOLVE 8/9

Well, they did it again. Starts off with the usual awesome mat struggles that only a handful of people in the world are doing right now which is pretty damn hilarious and sad at the same time. Thatcher gets ahold of Gulak's hand and tries to rip his fingers off. His base is incredible. He came from everywhere going after Gulak's hand/arm in devastating ways. Gulak was also doing some pretty awesome shit with leg submissions, like rolling into leg and ankle locks from outta nowhere like he was Volk Han. Thatcher became more of a snug, aggressive SOB as the match progressed, doing things like driving his elbow into Gulak's face to get out of an armbar. It's as awesome as it sounds. Sickest spot of the match was Thatcher getting ahold of Gulak's hand and doing his damnedest to dislocate his fingers. Gulak's selling was great. It really felt like 'grab the body part of your choosing and make that MFer tap' down the stretch. Must see stuff. These guys (along with Biff Busick) are blowing everybody right now, and this is another gem to add to the trios' resume. Timothy Thatcher is the best wrestler alive.

vs Biff Busick Beyond 4/13

(bucky's review)
This blew me the hell away. God I can't believe Cordeiro put this up for free. He is a good man but he cost himself five bucks because I was just about to buy this show. You gotta wonder why a million Thatcher matches didn't pop up online during his time on the east coast. I can't remember the last time an American match had such legitimate work in it. Thatcher's counters are so beautiful, the way he fights out of holds instead of resorting to fancy dumb shit. He's got more of a Battlarts feel to him than World of Sport. This was a lot like the 4/27 Busick/Gulak match in the way Busick had to fight for every inch, and that's probably the role Busick is best at. The way he went to strikes thinking it would give him the upper hand, but Thatcher just levels him with uppercuts. Then he decides his only hope is the reverse necklock and looks to grab the hold at any opportunity. Excellent work. Also the fact that they actually build to the strikes makes everyone else look silly when they go out there and immediately work an elbow exchange in the first 2 minutes. I loved this so much. I might add a paragraph here once I've had the chance to rewatch but yeah this is easily a top 5 match of the year.

 

Biff Busick vs. Timothy Thatcher - Beyond Wrestling 4/13

 

Well, this was a match. Let me talk about a few things. It was my first time seeing either guy. I actually know nothing about them.

 

I like Thatcher. I think there can be a mentality of deepening vs widening and he seems like a wrestler not afraid to go deep. He didn't do a lot of wide varied stuff. There was the matwork, the armwork, and the strikes, but he went pretty deep into each category. I'm not even sure I'd differentiate the matwork and the armwork because he honed in fairly early and he was suitably gritty and kept things interesting whenever he had the advantage. Some of the earlier twisting and bending was downright wince worthy, so good on both of them for that. I also thought he was particularly emotive, both when he was in a hold or putting on a hold and during breaks in the action. It was nothing too over the top, but the character work came through. He selling throughout the match was pretty damn solid too.

 

I wish I could say the same thing for Busick. I can't. Look, you can drop selling in certain matches. There are transitions between one part of the match and the next where you can drop selling without it mattering too much. It's just how pro wrestling works. If you don't it's a plus but if you do, it's generally okay. There are two times where I think you absolutely can't. The first is if you're going to spend some time making it the focal point of your offense, which I think Busick did very interestingly with his one arm strikes, or as part of important transitions (like the first time he tried to go to strikes). The second is if your opponent is going to keep going back to the limb as the prime means of attack. As I discussed, Thatcher DOES do that, to the point where his biggest "near-fall" of the match was the long fujiwara armbar towards the end. He basically started the match with that wrenching and grinding, went back to it repeatedly throughout the match, and finished still focusing on it, which is something I loved out of Thatcher. The problem was in how Busick worked the match, and again, I can't stress this enough. It was only a problem because of the specific match they were a part of. This isn't a universal thing.

 

I thought the early matwork was nicely competive without seeming collaborative. There were a few points in the match where it looked like they flubbed something, but they recovered well which is more important to me. Even early on I wanted some more arm/wrist selling from Busick, not necessarily because I thought it was structurally necessary (this was before I realized all of Thatcher's gameplan would be based around it), but because Thatcher's actual work on the arm looked so good, even from the get go. It wasn't until after the halfway point of the match and three or four various stretches of him working on it that Busick started to sell it, and when he did, he made it the focal point of the match. At that point, I was okay with it because he was doing a good job with it, but i found the ways he dropped it or failed to continue to sell it particularly frustrating: he used the bad arm, while in a hold, to press Thatcher into a near-fall; a lot of his comeback attempts were based on that chinlock, with the bad arm the arm used to put the pressure on the chin; after the one-arm fighting stretch, he followed it up with a backslide and then a dragon suplex, two moves that he maybe should have avoided considering; the maybe best, cleverest looking spot of the match, the dive off the top rope, forward roll, and the immediate chinlock again (which Thatcher sold like a king after getting out of) had Busick both rolling over his bad shoulder (right after another armbar) and then using that arm for the chinlock again. They went to the strike exchange immediately thereafter which, as bucky said, was pretty well built to and not something I had a huge problem with. It's not my thing though at least Busick only used his left for some body shot chops. Then the finish was a sort of side headlock/chinlock, which was well executed, except for the fact that the visual pressure was all on the left arm again.

 

To me a lot of the great work Thatcher was doing, really, the entirety of his excellent focused limbwork, AS WELL AS the really nicely-done one-arm comeback strikes that Busick had done were invalidated by the way that Busick worked the rest of the match. Again, it wouldn't have been a huge issue in a differently worked match, but because Busick tried to be clever in his selling at one, and only one point of the match, and then not only relied on the bodypart he had made sure to sell during that point for most of the rest of the match, without heavily favoring it, it became an issue.

 

All that said, there was a lot to like here. I'd like to see Thatcher against a different opponent and I think Busick showed a number of good things and a number of well-used tools and maybe it was just a lapse. It was a pretty big and frustrating one for this specific match. High effort marks though.

[BillThompson]

1) I'm glad you're giving Thatcher a chance.

 

2) This is my MOTY for 2014 so far. You make a lot of interesting points regarding Busick's selling. Admittedly I didn't see those things when I watched the match and I would be interested to see if I notice them next time I watch and if it changes my view of the match drastically.

 

3) The main reason I've become enamored with Thatcher are the talking points you used. His limb work is fantastic, he has a focus that very few wrestlers seem to have these days. He doesn't just lock on holds or quickly move through mat work. It's a struggle with him, a rugged exchange where every move matters and feels earned. I can't stress enough how I feel that is missing from the majority of modern wrestling, indie or otherwise.

 

4) I'm very interested in Thatcher moving forward in his career. To my eye he's found a definitive style, and works matches that I find deeply compelling. He works hard in his matches, and I think fans connect with him because they can sense how hard he does work. I don't think there's anyone in wrestling today who brings as much to mat work as Thatcher does. It's high praise indeed, but if he keeps moving on the trajectory he's on I have little doubt he'll wind up a GOAT guy.

[Matt D]

I liked how Thatcher MOVED around the ring too. There was sort of a "pug" element to it, if that makes any sense. It might not be the right word.

[BillThompson]

I get what you mean, sort of the bull in a China shop type of guy.

[MJH]

I'm torn on the Busick match. On the one hand, Thatcher does what he does very, very well. On the other... there's just too strong a cosplay element to it for me. Were he from Wigan, say, billed as the last of the Snake Pit lineage, that's fine. Doug Williams just about got away with doing the old World of Sport stuff because he's old enough to where he grew up with it. But anyone under 35, ie too young to have grown up with that style short of the vaguest of early-childhood memories sat on their (gran)dad's knee, it's too consciously nostalgic for me to truly buy it as being (in this case Timothy Thatcher). I mean obviously all guys ape the shit out of x, y, and z, but with old British stuff, it's too distinct from standard American wrestling and thus draws attention to its influence far more. Now, I've only heard his name in the last year or so, and were he just starting out I could take it as aping his idols before he finds his own style/persona/etc, but a quick Google search says he debuted in 2005? which makes him well past that point. To re-iterate, he's really studied that shit, and is really good at doing it, but it's another Quackenbush "we do Lucha now!" thing to me.

[Matt D]

I'm not sure I entirely saw a "cosplay" element to him but I have less experience with some of those older guys outside of Robinson. What I'll say instead is that the best way to avoid that sort of thing for me is to have it so everything feels like it's being done for a reason and it has consequence, and that's very much why I had such a problem with Busick's selling in the match, because it hindered that feeling of consequence considerably and then you're just doing things for the sake of doing them or because you think you're supposed to.

[Matt D]

Timothy Thatcher vs Chris Masters - October 12, 2012

 

So, hey, I wanted to see Thatcher vs someone who could sell, because that seemed like an awesome proposition to me. And I'm not entirely sure that there's a better seller in the world than Chris Masters. If anything he might focus too much on his selling given his role, especially on the indies, where he really stands out, which is to say that he could probably accomplish a certain job if he was less conscientious in his comebacks, if he was more Hulk Hogan. Which is a testament both to how good he is and also how "good" might not always be best.

 

Let's start with Thatcher. This was a beautiful performance. It's a twelve minute match or so which much lower aspirations. Shine, Heat, Comeback. Thatcher was a defending champ, chickenshit heel to start with a wonderful vicious streak. He was almost completely opposite from his performance in the Busisk match. He was refusing to lock up, was taking a powder and jawing with the fans (including a kid which was great), was rushing to the corner when they did lock up, was complaining to the ref about Masters' being greased up. He grabbed the hair to keep a headlock on and dove out of the ring after eating a shoulderblock off the ropes. Range is important to me and if you watched the two matches, you'd see similar qualities and know it was the same guy but he was coming at the two matches in completely different ways.

 

He was effective and appropriate on offense, first sneaking in a knee and locking on a cravat, and then, thank god, getting to show off the limbwork. I was worried it wasn't going to happen, but after ducking out of the ring again, and jawing with a couple on the outside, Masters grabbed his hair from the inside out (and the look on the faces of the fans he was jawing with was golden) and he draped Masters' arm over the top rope. What followed was exactly what i wanted from the match, a few minutes of wrestling beauty. Masters was such a pro at working from underneath, and would try to fight back with his good arm only for Thatcher to just find another interesting way to do damage to the bad one. I almost bet you that Masters was excited to be in there against a guy who could hone in so well. I especially loved the root rake across the arm. I don't think I've ever seen that done exactly that way. When it comes to his side of the equation, Thatcher seems very good at making a few minutes of limbwork really feel like it matters.

 

The comeback was just great, and maybe some of that was that this was a far simpler paced and structured match, but a lot of it was Masters too. When he finally powered up out of an armhold (timed perfect to get the crowd into it) and hit his inverted atomic drop, he sold both the leg and the arm. When he cemented the comeback it was with this picture perfect one armed powerslam. Mostly every wrestler alive, especially ones able to hide behind the look and name of Masters, would be lazily blowing through their comeback offense here. Not him, though. He sold not just in trying to put the Masterlock on but in the pose before the try. This let Thatcher slap on the Fujiwara arm bar again, but when Masters rolled through (on his good arm), he was able to slip that good arm through, hooking the Masterlock with it first and then bringing the bad arm around. A ref bump, low blow, and cheap roll up followed.

 

Really good twelve minute vulnerable but dangerous local champ vs travelling name match. Again, lower level of difficulty than what Busisk and Thatcher were trying to accomplish but it was really satisfying and Thatcher showed me far broader and entertaining character work than I was ever expecting out of him. It scratched totally a totally different itch than the last match but it did so extremely well.

[funkdoc]

i will say this much: i could easily see thatcher & his ilk coming off as the wrestling equivalent of fedoras & steampunk. nerds getting nostalgic for an era they never experienced at all, kinda like what MJH touched on.

 

i foresee him being one of the most divisive guys here, possibly...

[Tim Evans]

Matt you should watch Thatcher vs Blue Demon Jr. next.

 

I've seen Thatcher live twice. Once in a random 4 way and once vs shitty James Raideen at Evolve. I'm a fan but not as big as Bill. He can be a little dry at times but when he's on, it's real good. I like Gulak better.

[pol]

My biggest problem with the Beyond match was some of the more theatrical stuff (taking turns to strike each other while selling exhaustion) comes off as hokey in that kind of setting. In front of a big crowd that stuff is fine, in front of maybe less than 100 people in a tiny room not so much. I find Busick's facials and mannerisms kind of goofy too.

[Venegas]

To re-iterate, he's really studied that shit, and is really good at doing it, but it's another Quackenbush "we do Lucha now!" thing to me.

Thatcher is a legitimately skilled catch wrestler and helped instruct seminars alongside Billy Robinson.

[Goodear]

None of the kids are screaming at the moment.

 

Biff Busick vs. Timothy Thatcher - Beyond Wrestling 4/13

 

I have no previous experience with either guy and honestly that leads to an interesting two-fold dynamic. On one hand I don't know what to expect in terms of character work and if they are holding to theirs so, for example, it may be appropriate for Biff to focus on the rear naked choke so exclusively if being stubborn is a key part of who he is. On the other, anything that these guys do every match could happen without me knowing it. So if Thatcher European uppercuts a guy off the middle rope every time out, it may not seem as organic as it does here.

 

That being said, nothing here seems especially contrived in terms of setting stuff up. Thatcher seems very polished in terms of transitioning from hold-to-hold and spot to spot from a first watch which I would come to expect from a British guy. He's smooth but not too smooth in that he makes it look easy without it looking like Biff is cooperating with him which can hamper my enjoyment of Lucha matwork (as a broad generalization). I would have to somewhat admit that, like Matt, I would have liked to see the arm work pay off somewhere which it really didn't and think it could have made for more interesting work rather than the strike exchange.

 

Speaking of which, this did not seem like the match that warranted an exchange where they stood there and wailed on each other with Thatcher at least having the sense to cover up. I would also question why Thatcher won the strike exchange when he already won the mat exchanges, it would have set a clearer narrative for him to lose when things got rougher so Biff could build around that rather than getting the choke out of nowhere for the finish. As it stands, the striking stands out as a thing they decided to do because it was a thing to do. If there was some jawing or some aggression there to lead to the strikes, it would make more sense.

[MJH]

Well then fair enough - that's where a commentary track would have helped. The only info I was able to find on him was that he came out of APW in 2005 and uses "British Messiah" as a nickname, hence the presumption. An announcer billing him as "the final student of Billy Robinson" would've taken much of the cosplay feel out of it, though, as Poc said, I could also have done without the striking and the gut wrench into the buckles. I'll give the Masters match a go, but whereas Busick was playing along with him essentially, I think that gimmick would work far better against guys who don't just grapple with him: if Thatcher's heel, maybe a smaller, faster, more flying type; or Thatcher as a face against a more brawling-type heel who gets out-wrestled and then refuses to play ball with him.

[Childs]

He had a match with Finlay a few years ago, didn't he? Was it any good?

[BillThompson]

It's on my Watch Later file on YouTube, hoping to get to it sometime soon.

[Matt D]

That Finlay match is awesome.

 

It's a really, really good limb vs limb sort of match. If the finish built into it just a little more it'd be one of the best matches I've seen from the last few years. As it is, it was really good. Finlay is amazing at doing all the little things. He sells his arm consistently throughout. He is so good at little leverage moves. He'll grab a nerve lock just for a half second to immobilize Thatcher so he can lock on a chinlock again since that's what he was working. The way he reaches around to kick the leg out when he's trapped in the corner is such a small thing but it's almost breathtaking. And god does he grind down on everything. He does the broad things well too. Someone in the crowd asked him to work the knee, so he jokes about it and when he finally does go for it, there's a pop. Then the guy asks him to work the triceps and he tells him to shut up.

 

Thatcher plays his part too (he told the guy not to give Finlay ideas). i love how he never quite gets on the arm submission he wants. He sells the leg like a champ. When they're working holds, anytime Finlay hits a kick or something to loosen the hold, he does a great, realistic job of switching positions to prevent him from doing it again. I wish the camera view was closer so we could see him emote a bit more.

 

Anyway, they had some good parallel spots and so many of the small transitions were based around the limbwork and the selling. It only ever picked up a few times but they paced it extremely well, and the finish built off of previous spots (and character based ones in the corner) but not quite enough. I didn't get why he didn't go for the crossarmbreaker one last time after Finlay hurt his shoulder in the corner. Instead, hurt leg and all, he went up to the second rope and paid for it with the match.

 

Past that the thing was really enjoyable. Everyone should watch it.

[Childs]

I fell asleep while watching Thatcher-Finlay, which probably speaks more to my two small kids and workload than to the match. I will give it another shot. But I found the far away single camera a bad fit for the match, because I couldn't really see the small bits of struggle or selling that were likely going on.

 

I do have a question about this Thatcher-Gulak-Busick renaissance. And it really is just a question, because I haven't seen enough to judge. Are they guilty of fetishizing strong basic work a little too much? I mean, I love a well-worked hold or battle for leverage, probably more than the vast majority of wrestling fans. But are they capable of building from that to a great crescendo?

 

I'll be interested to find out.

[Phil Schneider]

I have liked most of the finishing runs of the matches, the most recent CZW match I thought was a little flat, but they have had some good stuff for sure

[FLIK]

Always happy to see Thatcher getting love since he's been the best guy we've had in Nor Cal for several years now.

 

But anyways, lots of mis information floating around now so just to clear up/point a few things out

 

1) he really is British

2) he was trained at Supreme Pro Wrestling out of Sacramento not APW

3) even though he was initially trained in the US he did go back over and wrestle & train in England later on in his career too

4) yes he can do more then the matwork style (i've seen him do everything from comedy to death matches) and he's great at it when he does but he's largely cut down on the other aspects over time. Unless really forced I wouldn't exspect too much variety out of him going forward since doing this style is what's finally gotten him to break out to any significant degree.

[BillThompson]

I fell asleep while watching Thatcher-Finlay, which probably speaks more to my two small kids and workload than to the match. I will give it another shot. But I found the far away single camera a bad fit for the match, because I couldn't really see the small bits of struggle or selling that were likely going on.

 

I do have a question about this Thatcher-Gulak-Busick renaissance. And it really is just a question, because I haven't seen enough to judge. Are they guilty of fetishizing strong basic work a little too much? I mean, I love a well-worked hold or battle for leverage, probably more than the vast majority of wrestling fans. But are they capable of building from that to a great crescendo?

 

I'll be interested to find out.

 

I think so, as I tend to really enjoy their finishes. I love their back to basics approach, and the way they work so simply makes simple maneuvers/holds/sequences very viable as big time finishes.

[dawho5]

Finally got around to watching Thatcher vs. Busick from Beyond Wrestling. One thing that's clear is that these guys watched their Japanese wrestling. It's a very Battlarts kind of style, but with less flow between the different genres. And that surfboard battle was reminiscent of Kawada/Kobashi/Misawa uses of the same. Not to mention the finish is a direct Minoru Suzuki ripoff by Busick. None of this was a problem because they did pretty good with it. Busick's selling of the arm was not there for as often as it was targeted. Thatcher had several points where he completely lost control of the arm during his chain wrestling and Busick didn't escape, but seconds later Busick would just pull his arm out of the hold into his counter. In a match worked like this that sort of thing should be avoided. It's not a huge point against the match, but it's something I noticed. The late strike exchange is pure modern Japanese wrestling and one of the aspects of it I hate the most. Not terribly executed, but I dislike the inclusion of it in any match. Busick's selling late is the biggest thing going against the match for me. I did like it, and I'm interested to see if they can iron out the kinks as they develop this style. It definitely has it's merits and I'll have to see more Thatcher for sure.

[goodhelmet]

Phil made the comment to me yesterday that he hopes Thatcher and Ishikawa mix it up soon since Ishikawa is in Canada right now.

[Matt D]

Matt you should watch Thatcher vs Blue Demon Jr. next.

 

 

Yeah, look Bill, you're way off base with this. Thatcher is totally wasted in these Indy Mat Style Whatevers. He's such a great dick heel and he can implement all of his holds and selling and what not while still bowing to the fans to piss them off and stalling outside of the ring and just being a total ass. He's wasted as the stoic whatever. The Demon match is so much fun. It's from this year too so he's still doing the dick heel thing when he's not stuck in gyms surrounded by Briscoes or whatever. I wasn't expecting Demon to give him much but he really did and it was great. There was maybe less of an overarching story to this than I would have liked. It was pretty back and forth and at times Thatcher actually looked a bit clunky on some exchanges (especially one into a crucifix pin and a few "spin me around" type moves) but in general, he moved in and out of Demon's stuff really well and had some great, hard-earned counters too. Tons of kids in the crowd which added to things as well, even if they were chanting MEX-I-CO to get behind Demon.

[BillThompson]

I like his dickish heel stuff too, for the record.

[BillThompson]

Wrote about Thatcher versus Masters at my blog, Thatcher/Masters.

 

Short version, great match where both men provide exactly what I want from my pro wrestlers, but the ending is terrible.