Uncharted Territory results & review: I can’t look away

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It’s Wednesday night, so that means we take a look at Beyond Wrestling’s shiny new webseries on IWTV, Uncharted Territory! As always, our format is a hard-hitting triple threat, results followed by the best of the show and the worst of the show, with a nautical theme because that’s how they’re branding it and I decided to roll with it. On with the show!

Land Ho!

1. With the assembled roster in the ring, Chris Dickinson comes out to start to the show and talk about winning Lethal Lottery and calls Josh Briggs out for a match!
2. Chris Dickinson over Josh Briggs by submission with an inverted figure four leglock. Post-match, Dickinson puts Briggs over for coming back so fast off his hip injury before saying he wants the biggest challenges possible on his way to wrestling Daisuke Sekimoto at Americanrana, so he wants Eddie Kingston next week!
3. “Big Bacon” Brad Hollister gets an interview ahead of his Discovery Gauntlet match where he talks about how Thomas Santell mentored him as a kid
4. Thomas Santell over “Big Bacon” Brad Hollister by pinfall with a banana split pin. (Discovery Gauntlet) Post-match, to the delight of the crowd, Santell goes and gets a jar of Ovaltine to celebrate with and gives it to the crowd!
5. Eric Corvis, Johnny Cockstrong, & Nicholas Kaye over Chase Burnett, Jefferson Saint, & Zane Silver by pinfall with an avalanche Air Raid Crash into the turnbuckles from Cockstrong on Silver. (Warehouse Rules Match)
6. Joey Janela over Matt Cross by pinfall with a package piledriver.
7. Orange Cassidy (c) over Jordynne Grace by pinfall with La Casita to retain the IWTV Independent Wrestling Championship.
8. A video package featuring some kind words from a variety of Beyond stars present and past celebrating the 10th anniversary follows.
9. Chuck O’Neil interrupts our main event intros and cuts a promo but honestly I can’t hear him over the boos of the crowd and Rory Gulak runs him off in full-on Little Mondo style.
10. Rickey Shane Page over Eric Ryan by pinfall with an avalanche piledriver through a barbed wire door. (Deathmatch) Post-match, RSP puts Ryan over as one of the best deathmatch guys on the planet and talks about what an honor is to be considered one of the co-founders of Beyond Wrestling.

X Marks the Spot

• Josh Briggs is back!: Briggs kept it slow and steady early, clearly not wanting to aggravate the freshly recovered hip but Dickinson doesn’t abide that for long and the match becomes a more back and forth affair with Chris going to work on that injured leg and Josh bringing his power to bear in return. I tend to run a little cold on Dickinson’s work, but this is a great match and I’m sold on Chris looking for the biggest challenges Beyond can offer on his way to Daisuke Sekimoto and Americanrana.
• Banana split!: So the mentor/student story established right before this week’s Discovery Gauntlet colored the match in a very nice way, giving the slow and steady feeling out a bit more depth and just generally making every bit of offense and counter Big Bacon (excellent nickname) got in feel like it meant that much more. His frustration at just not being able to get Santell down no matter what he did boiled over, and then it being Santell that squeaked the win out with a flash pin... pitch perfect, the Discovery Gauntlet just gets better and better.
• You still got it!: The throwback tenth anniversary trios match appealed to me right from the jump what with my appreciation for both wrestling history and wrestlers who might be considered hidden gems, and these guys all brought it hard. This match was tight, fun, and I know Cockstrong is still pretty active, but all these other dudes are welcome to show up anytime as far as I’m concerned. Special shout-out to Chase Burnett not only took a WICKED bump in the corner, but then proceeded to hit one of the wildest moonsault double knee drops I’ve ever seen.
• Freshly squeezed: So, Orange Cassidy’s formula works and it works really well with almost anybody, but against somebody like Jordynne Grace who’ll spend the whole first half of the match trying to figure out what makes him tick before steadily escalating into the drama section of the match, well, it’s just about perfect.
• Death is not the end: This match. THIS MATCH. Deathmatch wrestling is tricky to enjoy sometimes— there’s no denying that the ultraviolence isn’t for everyone, and done poorly, it’s little more than the barbaric spectacle that its detractors portray it as. But this match, with its crescendo of horrifying violence, where you think to yourself “okay, that’s the maximum number of times a man can be stabbed with a fork in one wrestling match” only to find that THERE ARE MORE TIMES YOU CAN BE STABBED WITH A FORK... This was a perfect encapsulation as to why I love deathmatch wrestling. It was beautiful, and I couldn’t look away. You see, the secret to great deathmatch wrestling is that the things that make it great are the same things that make vanilla wrestling great— callbacks, repetition, escalation— and all of those things were here in spades. If you have the stomach for it, I implore you, please watch this match.

Walk the Plank

• Dreams can turn out just okay sometimes: Janela/Cross was a good enough match and I’m glad it finally happened, but it didn’t grab me nearly how I hoped it would. I will say I think part of it is it didn’t really develop or escalate like I might have hoped, so hey, maybe a second round will change my tune!
• More Mantaur than Road Warrior Hawk: Eric Ryan, buddy. That haircut. I almost don’t want to make fun of it because I’m worried you’ll hunt me down and stab me with a fork, but I got a format here and I can’t use the Undertaker joke anymore, so please be understanding.

On the Horizon

Announced for next week, Chris Dickinson vs. Eddie Kingston, Butcher and the Blade vs. Bear Country, John Silver vs. Brandon Thurston, and Alex Reynolds vs. Jay Freddie! Plus Thomas Santell returns as the Discovery Gauntlet rolls on!

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