It’s hard for me to exactly describe it but there’s something so surreal about seeing Reed Bentley, a person whose catalogue i’ve mostly associated deathmatches with due to watching mostly a lot of his ICW:NHB stuff, in a non-deathmatch (or at least non-deathmatch adjacent) environment. It’s not really a “new idea” mind you especially when Reed in specific had been a non-deathmatch guy for a few years to my understanding, nor am I saying this as a knock on him as a worker because I think he’s fantastic but whenever I see a match like this it just interests me heavily.
Reed at this point was a member of the stable White America, a stable that I don’t know much about but it consisted of himself, Tripp Cassidy, Adam Gooch, Trik Davis and Josh Crane. I'm a big fan of the difference in demeanors between both men during their entrances, with Hero clearly determined and focused to beat the shit outta Reed meanwhile is a cocky shitheel who actually comes out to Hero and Claudio Castagnoli’s old Kings of Wrestling entrance music. I’m not even gonna lie, things like that still manage to get an earnest pop outta me. I can’t help it.
Then you get to the match.
The first couple of minutes are spent entirely on the outside. Reed tried to force Hero to chase him on the outside and got met with a big boot, so Hero just fucking dogwalks him with some nasty sounding strikes. Like, seriously, Hero hits a shitload of elbows on this man in such a short period of time and it’s awesome. Every time Reed attempts to mount a comeback it gets thwarted, and he only gets some real respite by countering an Irish Whip attempt and tossing Hero into about four or five rows of chairs. They make their way back to the ring eventually, with Reed attempting to bring a chair he grabbed into the fold until Hero catches him and puts him in a Boston Crab while actually attempting to sit on the chair that Reed brought in, a spot that I immediately recognized from Hero’s 2007 Ted Petty Invitational match with Eddie Kingston.
If you wanted to make a counter on how many elbows both men do following this point, you’d almost assuredly lose count… because it’s a LOT. Reed manages to hold his own throughout the rest of the match, actually managing to take advantage by targeting Hero’s arm and his hand at points but Hero firmly knocks him loopy a few times in the midst of it. The best moment was Reed managing to hit a big combo of a Reed Awakening (*Pop Up Forearm, Thanks to Nick Maniwa for the correction) + Rolling Elbow and thinking he could get the win off of that before Hero pops up just BARELY before the 10 count to attack Reed with a great looking sequence of moves. This was a moment that genuinely had me for a solid minute, seeing the crowd’s reaction to it (which I'll admit, the crowd was pretty lackluster) added to the whole thing. Hero tries locking in a Stretch Plum only for Reed to bite the arm and move his way to the ropes for a break. Reed hits some awesome Saito Suplexes and a submission of his own, but that doesn’t work either. The two then just decide to go completely crazy with the strikes: Elbows, Kicks, Uppercuts… it’s just a total flurry of them man.
Near the end of the match, Reed ends up spitting in Hero’s face after Chris screamed at him to stay down which gives Hero an excuse to hit FOUR ROLLING ELBOWS IN A ROW GOOD GOD. Trik Davis tries throwing in the towel for Reed, but Hero grabs the towel and tosses it in the crowd. When Reed slowly gets up at the count of five, Hero not only hits ANOTHER elbow but stops the count to hit one more elbow AND THEN lock in a second Stretch Plum to make Bentley tap out. Good fucking god.
This match was great, a pure adrenaline rush from start to end. It’s entirely structured around both men earnestly beating the dogshit out of each other until one of them couldn’t stand anymore. Reed plays an excellent heel foil to the mega babyface in Hero, selling the offense particularly well while also managing to hold his own with some moments where I genuinely thought he could’ve had the win. If Redneck’s Kings Road is a term that could conceivably exist, this might be a good example of it although I'm probably being extra. I don’t know if I could definitively call it one of the QUINTESSENTIAL~!! Hero matches of the 2010s purely based on the fact that I have not seen every single Chris Hero match, but it’s definitely one that you should go out of your way to watch on YouTube.
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