[2001-02-24-ECWA-Super 8] American Dragon vs Reckless Youth

[GSR]

Reckless defeated Mike Sullivan in making it to the semi-finals where he meets American Dragon, a matchup we saw several times in Memphis Championship Wrestling last year.  There’s a slow feeling out process, Dragon in control until Reckless is able to get a single leg and transition to an STF.  Following a snapmare Dragon kicks Reckless in the back and that sets the tone for the intensity levels to move up a few notches.  Reckless with a facebreaker from the top after having blocked the attempted monkey flip and sat Dragon upstairs.  Dragon floats over on the Northern Lights and lands a cool bridging fallaway slam for a two count.  Big Mafia kick and Reckless is up to his feet showing his fighting spirit.  Running forearm smash.  Reckless ducks the clothesline and hits a reverse DDT.  He blocks Dragon’s roaring elbow, countering with a rolling cradle for a near fall.  Dragon suplex at the second time of asking, a roaring elbow to the back of the head softening up Reckless sufficiently after he was unable to hit it first time around.  A belly to back dumps Dragon before a stiff clubbing clothesline folds him up double.  He’s too slow heading up top and although does fight off the superplex, Dragon still takes him to the mat with a flying Fujiwara armbar.  From there straight into the Cattle Mutilation, that hold giving Dragon his second submission of the night.

Go back one year ago and Reckless Youth was the Indy workrate darling, fast forward and he’s surpassed, as a wrestler, by Dragon.  It is astonishing to think where Dragon was twelve months ago compared with today and how quickly he’s improved.  There was a very Japanese flavour to this with how hard they were hitting each other, especially in the second half, which was nice to see, as I’ve said previously how Reckless almost seems a different wrestler this year.  Dragon brought the best out of him that’s for sure.  I did prefer the Spanky match over this though and it’s cool how they’re building the Cattle Mutilation submission with both of Dragon’s victories tonight coming from it.