Kyle Matthews

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[Dylan Waco]

I eventually want to write a long piece about the art of list making, the process of it, et. and I may come back to this thread then to expand upon this point more - Matthews is a worker more people should know about. He is a guy who has toiled away in Southern indie promotions for years, working hard every night against a huge variety of opponents. He is one of the most consistent wrestlers of the last decade. I have watched dozens of his matches and can think of maybe one or two I would call "bad" neither of which was his fault. He is the master of the "good" match in the sense that he can and does deliver quality wrestling matches almost every time out regardless of circumstance. The promotions he works for are not super indies, so he doesn't get the hype of others and they tend to book around more traditional models where he sells his ass off as an underdog (which he is great at) and then makes his comeback. As a result he's never booked to deliver a "classic" but he almost always reaches the expectations I have for him. He is a good traditional style mat worker, has good timing, works great underneath, is one of the best I've ever seen on the indies at consistently getting the crowd into his matches, and he is a rock solid bumper. He bridges the gap between "new school indie" style and "old school southern" style better than any other wrestler I can think of sans Goldust.

 

The knocks against him are that some of his offense can be really "indie" and he lacks the sort of blowaway great matches you ideally want out of someone for a list like this. But he's the sort of person I WANT to include, and when there are only so many HAVE to include spots I could see squeezing him in with one of my last two picks. That last point is something I will write about at length later.

[goodhelmet]

Never heard of him.

[Dylan Waco]

Never heard of him.

Best argument I've seen yet for reopening the "Comments that don't warrant their own thread" thread.

[goodhelmet]

Hahaha

[Exposer]

Matthews is great. I'd like to find a spot for him, but I'm not sure I can. He's not showing up as often for personal reasons I think which is a shame because he had a MOTYC with Rush at Empire's Crazy from the Heat last year. I've never seen a bad Matthews match. And I've been to probably 15-20 live shows where he's worked including another 10-15 or so on tape. He can have a good match from the bottom of the card to the top of the card. He has a great formula that he mixes up in his matches, particularly as a babyface (similar to Christian in a lot of ways), that makes for some interesting results. He's good on the mat, is great at selling, does counter sequences as good as anybody, and can work a crowd better than almost anyone on the Southern Indie circuit. He's got great matches with Shaun Tempers, KT Hamill, Tommy Penirelli, Jimmy Rave, Rush, and other random Indie guys. I'd like to check out some of his early stuff that might be hanging around online. He's got one or two MOTYCs under his belt so maybe I can find a spot for him. It will be very tough. I will consider him though.

[Dylan Waco]

You have seen him live more than me, but I have seen way more of him on tape than you. I think he's kind of the anti-Ace Rockwell in that Ace is a babyface that has the handful of transcendently great singles matches you ideally want out of something like this but lacks the consistency where Matthews lacked those matches but had the consistency.

 

Until last year.

 

Kyle missed some time last year because of the birth of his fist child but the stuff he did that made tape was really great. I am the biggest Jimmy Rave booster on Earth, but I strongly believe that if Kyle had worked a full schedule last year he would have been right there with Jimmy as a best in the world contender. His best five matches last year were probably as good as anyone's best five matches and that's without the Empire War Games match being available

 

v. Talon Williams in a match build all around compelling limb selling against a solid and hard working opponent, but one who rarely works singles bouts

 

v. Brandon Collins in a match where he worked as a redneck maestro for the first half, then went into peril, and they went long in a very strong match against an improved but still greenish Collins

 

v. Fry Daddy from NWA Atlanta in a brilliant match that was as good a high octane indie match as I saw anywhere on Earth last year, against a guy who has never had a singles match near that level

 

v. Jimmy Rave in the best match to take place in the great AWE promotion, and a match I had rated in my top ten on Earth for the year

 

v. Rush in the aforementioned Street Fight, which brought out a totally different side of Kyle, and was my number 3 match of the year (and my top match of the year involving males).

 

I also thought his triple threat match v. Jimmy Rave and Fry Daddy was a great match worked under that stip and he had several other matches last year I would rate good or better.

 

The Rush and Rave matches mean a lot to me when it comes to a GWE ballot because in the past he hadn't really had the matches that felt like big deals within their respective universes even when I thought they were legitimately great (i.e. other Rave matches he's had, v. Tempers, v. Hamill, et.) with the exception of the eight man elimination tag from DSCW several years back where he was just one of many guys. To me those two matches take him from being a guy I really wanted to rate with my last spot or two but I wasn't sue I could justify, to a guy who I feel much more comfortable about rating.

 

Still not an absolute lock for me, but I think last year strongly helped his case.

[Rah]

I don't want to sound hyperbolic, and I've only followed Matthews for the last three years or so, but has he had a bad performance in that timeframe? I've not seen it.

[Dylan Waco]

I've seen maybe one or two bad Matthews performances and I've watched pretty much every taped match he's had over the last seven years or so, and many more from the years before that. He's the closest thing to a guaranteed good match I've ever seen in wrestling.

[Dylan Waco]

I watched a few of his matches I hadn't seen the other night, and after seeing them I'm fairly confident he's going to squeeze into one of my last few spots. I was really impressed the Fred Yehi match from 2012 that I watched because this was very early in Fred's career and yet the match was really good, maybe even great. They went over 20 minutes and at no point would you have guessed the age or experience level of either guy. Very good stuff.

 

Then I watched a four way match from Rampage back in 2010 with him v. Jimmy Rave v. J-Rod v. Daniel Bryan and it was pretty amazing, especially the last section with Matthews v. Bryan. Really great stuff, with Matthews not looking out of place at all against a world class talent. Watching it really convinced me that Matthews could have or could go now to one of the "name" indies and immediately fit in and be one of the top guys there.

 

Probably the most underrated regularly working indie guy in the World over the last ten years.

[Troyvang]

I just watched the 1/29/15 match with Rave and it was awesome. Just a super tight 16 minutes with a lot of great spots, back and forths and a really good finish with Rave getting the tap out. 5 stars for me.