After making our debuts for the promotion, with that initial show in Capitol Hill being such a success in February 2014, we were told that the goal was to have monthly shows going forward although those plans never materialized and we found ourselves having to wait over 10 months until the next trip to Seattle for a 3-2-1 Battle! show. In the interim, we took part in a couple of big backyard shows - one in Cooperstown, NY (NYE4 - those shows having become somewhat legendary in certain circles) as well as hosting our own big show in Greater Vancouver - in a Catholic Elementary School Gymnasium in Burnaby, BC to be exact. At that point in my life, matches were few & far between for better or worse; in total I only 10 matches all year in 2014 - a far cry from the 68 I had in 2019 (my most active year of wrestling ever) or even the 16 that I had in 2024 as part of "The Year Daniel Makabe Broke." With all that being said, it was nice to finally get the call that 3-2-1 had found a promising new venue and were looking at getting things up and running again.
This time around, the show was going to be at a newly found venue in the South Lake Union neighbourhood of Seattle, directly underneath the "Black Lodge", an underground venue that I had been going to see punk/hardcore shows at for years at this point. Funny enough; years later (2017) - one of my favourite bands at the time Self Defense Family were playing at the Black Lodge the same night that I was working for another promotion who would sometimes rent out the venue, CPW. I convinced them to put my match on much earlier than they had planned, giving the excuses that it would give me a head start on my long drive back to Canada when in fact I was actually just going to go upstairs to watch SDF that night. In a particularly memorable moment (for me), they closed their set with a cover of the German Krautrock band Can's 1968 classic "Yoo Doo Right" which I would subsequently play an approximation of in a promo upon my first trip to Germany to wrestle for WXW years later. But alas...
The new venue itself was called Evolv Fitness and to say that I was not aware at the time of all the important moments that would take place in that building over the next 5+ years is a pretty massive understatement. Besides the 3 shows held at the legendary Showbox at the Market (4/20/18, 4/19/19, 7/12/19) and 1 show at an outdoor tattoo convention/street festival (8/19/17); every match discussed in this blog from here on out took place within the confines of the newly christened "Battle Palace", a multi purpose fitness/martial arts gym that went through numerous make overs throughout the years as 3-2-1 Battle! shows became bigger, the quality of the product got better, production values improved multiple times over, etc.
This match was stemming from the aforementioned tag encounter 10 months prior (see: last week's post) and continued the ongoing issues between The Rain City Coalition: Myself & Drew Sarian and Fur & Loathing: Scott Henson & Kaden Talbain. In all reality, these shows were still just getting off the ground and the majority of the roster had significantly less (in some cases; no?) training, nor were they nearly as polished of workers as we were. So in our own self interest/selfishness, we outlined a series of matches between the two teams to the 3-2-1 Battle management at the time in order to continually feature us on the shows but keep us somewhat segregated from the rest of the roster.
Scott and I had known one another since meeting at a local independent show in Surrey, BC in the summer of 2001; bonding over our mutual love of Puroresu as well as our patronage of the Death Valley Driver Video Review message board. Having done the painstaking research last summer when he passed away, I can confidently say that there's no one else on earth that I've wrestled more than him - if you account for both backyard & pro matches, he was involved in 19% of all of the wrestling matches I've ever had in my life. Not only that but for a period of time, if you account for both backyard/pro matches combined, we were involved in a match with one another at least once per year, for 19 consecutive years (2001-2019); You can thank Covid-19/the 2020 pandemic for ending that streak but alas, all in all - we were involved in wrestling one another both directly and indirectly for literally over half of our respective lives.
This is actually a pretty good match as we always had very good chemistry with one another and rarely had bad matches together although some of them have definitely aged better than others; thankfully this one holds up quite well upon re-watch. This match came at a time that I made a deliberate decision to narrow my offense down to moves that I could do to basically anyone, something that for the most part I tried to maintain until the end of my career. However at first, I thought it would be interesting if I was hyper focused in doing so, specifically challenging myself to exhibit a move set that predominantly consisted of Dropkicks, German Suplexes, various submission holds and that's it.
It was also the beginning of me lifting a lot of cheeky British (*cough* Zack Sabre Jr) inspired spots as well as the continuation of our previously mentioned NJPW aping. My shine here is pretty fun - a couple of neat transitions into submissions that also incorporated some tail based comedy, something I would shy away from in later years. All that's to say that the early stages of this match didn't land with most of the crowd as the noise in the room is pretty tepid to begin with save for the odd "Use His Tail" chant, entirely too many Canadian puns/made up move names from live play by play announcers Cody Von Whistler and Murray Grande as well as the constant murmur of generic radio rock music playing in the background.
In addition to loving ZSJ, I was a big Tetsuya Naito fan at the time (pre Los Ingernobles de Japon), often starting my babyface comebacks in a similar manner to him with a flying forearm off of the ropes although in this instance, Scott's heat actually begins with him cutting one off with a pump kick in mid-air. Speaking of that heat - Scott had a fairly consistent move set over the years and having wrestled the man as often as I did, I grew very accustomed to taking all of his signature moves: a big bodyslam followed by a running somersault senton, a Shinsuke Nakamura-inspired knee lift to the midsection while hung up across adjacent top ropes in the corner and Roderick Strong's Fireman's Carry to a Double Knee Gutbuster which we've always referred to as the "Kablammo."
Tyger Tyger, Burning Bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
The back half of this match mostly consists of me trying to wear him down with a plethora of submissions; a well built to Abdominal Stretch, a move that I particularly favoured at the time, as well as a big flying armbar (a spot we absolutely lifted from that year's G1 Finals), all in hopes of neutralizing his arm in order to hit my patented Arm trap German Suplex for the pin. Scott would fire back with his litany of feline inspired maneuvers; The Cat's Cradle (a pump handle small package) in addition to Mitsuharu Misawa's famed Tiger Driver. It's during a fairly sloppy fish out of water sequence that begins with me narrowly avoiding a grounded lariat as well as one of the first diving apron Dropkicks that I ever hit (inspired by another PNW stalwart, Kyle O'Reilly) that the crowd finally comes to life; reacting accordingly to each subsequent false finish.
There's also some real nerd bait selling on the back half too with a couple of neat little details/bits of selling that I've always loved from Scott: him asking some nearby fans "What'd he say?!" after I covered his ears and had instructed them all to move out of the way in preparation for the diving dropkick on the floor as well as him pointedly having to adjust which arm he throws his lariat with in the later stages of the match due to its injured status. All that plus one of the more precisely executed finishes we would ever hit - not to spoil things but you try dropkicking someone's arm as it's being thrown in a Hansen esque fashion in the direction of your face with the meanest of intentions; I assure you it's not that easy, especially when you have Hansen esque vision as I do (ie blind). While I do think we would go on to have better singles matches against one another over the next few years (namely our 2018 & 2019 encounters), this still holds up about as well (or better) as anything from this early run in 3-2-1 and was a good starting point for my tenure in a building that would prove very important as the years went by.
The week that followed this match was actually kind of an busy one. A few days later we found ourselves at The Rio Theatre here in Vancouver for a screening of Tommy Wiseau's cult classic "The Room", which at this point we had made a habit of attending on a few occasions decked out in our finest suits/tuxedos with football in tow; a reference to maybe the most absurd scene in cinema history. This time around was even more eventful as a) the power went out mid screening and we found ourselves in a cavernous theatre in East Van in complete/total darkness and b) afterwards, we met Greg Sestero who plays Mark in the movie and was present for that particular screening.
A few days later; Scott, Kelly (Kaden Talbain) and myself were off to Los Angeles to go to PWG's "Black Cole Sun" show as well as going to Universal Studios Hollywood the following afternoon. It was the first time I had been there in 17 years and had every intention of riding Jurassic Park that morning to make up for the fact that 13 year old me never got to due to a 3+ hour long wait back in 1997 when the ride had just recently opened. We would make a handful of trips along these lines between 2013-2016 where we would attend a PWG show in Reseda, piggybacking these weekends with more standard tourist activities: various theme parks, beaches, sight seeing + restaurants we didn't have here in the PNW. As thankful as I am for how much I got to travel in the later years of my wrestling career, there's something about these trips in our early 30s that were so much more casual, less stressful and invariably more fun. While I do believe that I likely missed out on a few more prime years of my independent wrestling career - I have so many more amazing memories of when things were a whole lot less complicated and I could remember what it was like to be a wrestling fan alongside my friends; the entire reason I became a pro wrestler in the first place.
Watch:
Daniel Makabe vs Scott Henson [12/6/14]
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