Dutch Harris: Welcome to Straight SHOOTIN’. Master of the Mat edition. I’m Dutch Harris, with Scott Kamura and Bryan Harris, and folks — the Pinnacle just hosted one of the longest, strangest, most consequential nights this company has ever booked. A new World Champion. A new Master of the Mat. A new Premier Champion. A new Empire State Champion. A new member of The DeMONSTRance. A daughter on the floor of the ring crawling over her father’s body. Misty Starks walking the ramp without saying a word. Indrid Calder’s feathers. Where do we even begin?
Scott Kamura: I came in with two notebooks. I filled three. Let’s do it in order.
Bryan Harris: My thesis statement wrote itself halfway through the second match. Roll the tape.
Master of the Mat Singles Final — Jamie Johnson def. Arthur Pleasant
Dutch Harris: The show opens with the Master of the Mat singles final. Jamie Johnson beats Arthur Pleasant clean. The Benchmark walks out of New York City as the Master of the Mat.
Scott Kamura: Two men, two preparations. Arthur spent the week telling everyone he didn’t need to win. Jamie spent the week in the building, in that ring, drilling. The man who needed it won it. That isn’t a coincidence. That’s the lesson.
Bryan Harris: I picked Pleasant. I was wrong. Doesn’t happen often. Jamie did exactly what he said he was going to do, which is itself a rarer skill than it sounds.
Dutch Harris: And let’s be clear: this was the FIRST match of the night, not the last. Pleasant didn’t lose because he was tired or because he was looking past Jamie. He lost because Jamie was better.
Scott Kamura: Backstage before the match with the Grappler’s Guild, Jamie said Arthur’s “I don’t need it” was the language of a man already imagining how the loss would feel. Jamie called it on a Tuesday and made it real on a Sunday.
Bryan Harris: Mark this match. Months from now we’re going to be pointing at this one and saying that’s where it started. That’s where the answer started.
Misty Starks walks the ramp without a word
Dutch Harris: Lights cut. Midnight blue washes the arena. The Tron lights up with a wolf, half flesh and half chrome. “Lachryma” by Ghost over the PA. The entire Pinnacle thought Thunderwolf had healed up early.
Scott Kamura: It wasn’t Thunderwolf. It was Misty Starks. Charcoal-grey skirt, wire-rim glasses, microphone in her hand. Walked halfway down the ramp, stopped, raised the mic, held it, lowered it, and walked right back through the curtain. Didn’t say a word.
Bryan Harris: That was a power move and I respect it. The wife came out, told a roster “I see you, I know you, I’m not even going to spend a syllable on you yet,” and went back through the curtain. The Kelser family is on the board.
Dutch Harris: With Thunderwolf still in a hospital bed for the next nine months, that’s a declaration of intent. The family is in the business of revenge and the family did the math on who they’re owed by.
Scott Kamura: NC-17, Chance, Hannah. Anyone who put a hand on Thunderwolf is now also on a list with Misty Starks’ name at the top of it.
Bryan Harris: NC-17 was in the main event tonight. So she has a lot of free time on her hands and a lot of opinions about how he spent his.
Tag Tournament Final — Hudson & Martin def. The World Warriors
Dutch Harris: Tag tournament final. X-Calibur and Michael Draven, the World Warriors. Josiah Hudson and Ignatius Albert Martin, 16 Chambers. The Chambers win. Pinned the World Warriors clean.
Scott Kamura: That’s a Hall of Fame tag team in their second go-round getting beaten by a team three months old. Three months. Embrace Black Excellence has been pushing IAM to find that drive he had in him for years. Tonight that drive showed up and tonight the World Warriors didn’t have an answer for it.
Bryan Harris: Wrong on this one too. Two for two so far. The Chambers came in hungry. The Warriors came in confident. That’s the wrong order on a tournament final.
Dutch Harris: We saw Ignatius before the show, sitting on a park bench across the street from the Pinnacle. He told EBE the door wasn’t a door, it was “the entrance.” Tonight he walked through it.
Scott Kamura: 16 Chambers is here. They’re not arriving anymore. They arrived.
Bryan Harris: Draven and X-Cal will get another shot. Or X-Cal will. Draven might be busy.
Aaron Dearinger, Josh Kaine, and Laney walk out of the picture
Dutch Harris: Backstage. Aaron Dearinger and Josh Kaine fighting door-frame to door-frame with a steel chair involved. AEGIS pulled them apart. Then Laney Dearinger, Aaron’s wife, the mother of his three children, walked into the shot. With Josh.
Scott Kamura: Worst kind of betrayal. The tag team partner. The man you trusted to have your back in the ring is the man you found in your bed. She told Aaron the truth she’s been holding: he was never married to her, he was married to the dream.
Bryan Harris: Aaron Dearinger fell to his knees in the hallway. Career-best moment for him, frankly. The man got a packet of photos at Zenith 016 and tonight the photos walked into the building wearing khakis.
Dutch Harris: Eryk Masters said it on commentary: not everybody gets the hero’s journey. The Moonshiners are done. The tag scene just lost a team and a man just lost a family.
Scott Kamura: Watch Aaron Dearinger over the next few weeks. A man with nothing to go home to and nothing to protect anymore is a dangerous version of any wrestler.
Bryan Harris: Or he becomes a hole at the bottom of the card until Josh Kaine gets bored and puts him out of his misery. Coin flip on which way that goes.
Holden Nobody def. Laura Seton
Dutch Harris: Holden Nobody, two weeks removed from losing Premier contendership at Zenith 016, called out Laura Seton there in the backstage hall. He got the match. He got the win.
Scott Kamura: I’m still figuring out what this means. Holden lost to Vito, then took a Seton he could beat. That’s not a build. That’s a reset on the cheap.
Bryan Harris: That’s an ego with a microphone. Same thing.
Dutch Harris: Either way, he goes 1-1 across the last two weeks and walks out of Master of the Mat with a winning ledger.
Bryan Harris: A W is a W, Scott. Holden Nobody is currently more credible than he was two weeks ago and Vito Valentino is currently a champion. Funny how that works.
The Darkspade, Charon, the Unholy Knight, and a sacrifice on the mat
Dutch Harris: This one is hard to talk about. The Darkspade vs. his daughter Charon of Death. Darkspade won the match. Then the lights cut.
Scott Kamura: The Unholy Knight came through a wall of fire. Massive, armored, silent. Conjured a sword from a blue flame and pointed it at Charon. Told the Darkspade, telepathically or otherwise, to put his own daughter onto it.
Bryan Harris: I had written down in my notes, “Darkspade does it.” Because Darkspade is the kind of man who does it. Everything in his career screams he was going to do it. He didn’t.
Dutch Harris: He threw Charon aside. Charged the Knight. Took the sword himself. The Unholy One was impaled on the blade that was meant for his daughter, and collapsed on the mat with her crawling over the top of him to shield his body from whatever came next.
Scott Kamura: He sacrificed himself. And then the Knight, the Darkspade, and Charon were all gone. The ring was empty. Blood gone. Like it never happened.
Bryan Harris: I have nothing funny to say here. Most disturbing match-and-segment I’ve seen in this building in a long time. Righteousness, Balance, Wickedness, the Final Gate — that was the chyron before the Knight came out. Whatever is coming, the Darkspade just paid for it with his life so his daughter wouldn’t have to. Hold that thought.
Madison Seton def. Michael Draven — and The Stranger comes home
Dutch Harris: Michael Draven returns to singles competition for the first time in eight years. Loses to Madison Seton. She spits at him post-match. He takes it personally.
Scott Kamura: Headbutt to the face. Madison crumples bloody on the mat. Draven crouches in the corner, setting up the curb stomp. The Indrid Calder curb stomp. The one that ended his career a decade ago. The man Draven swore he had buried, summoned by Draven himself, in front of 20,000 people in New York.
Bryan Harris: Funny thing about a curb stomp. You don’t set one up for an audience of one. You set it up because you know exactly who else is watching.
Dutch Harris: Lights out. Lights up. Madison unconscious in the center of the ring with a single raven’s feather on her face. Then hundreds of feathers raining from the ceiling.
Scott Kamura: The Stranger. Indrid Calder. The calling card. Draven sprinted under the ring, out of the arena, into a rental car, and drove off into the night without saying a word to X-Calibur or anyone else. The man saw a ghost he’s been waiting on for ten years.
Bryan Harris: I’d run too. Indrid Calder broke Draven’s leg with a cinder block in 2016 and Draven has spent every year since then quietly pretending the man wasn’t going to come back. He came back. Draven knew before we did.
Ricky Tenet def. Johnny Napalm — Empire State Championship
Dutch Harris: Empire State Championship. Ricky Tenet against the champ, Johnny Napalm. Tenet wins. The Iron Saint walks out of the Pinnacle as the new Empire State Champion.
Scott Kamura: Napalm cut a hell of a promo on the walk to the ring. The unrecognized monster. The gatekeeper. He came in cut out of granite. Tenet beat him anyway, and Tenet did it on the same night his father was defending the World Heavyweight Championship.
Bryan Harris: For about forty minutes, Corey Lazarus and Ricky Tenet were father and son champions in the same company at the same time. That’s a special thing. It almost lasted.
Dutch Harris: The moment right before the main event was Corey Lazarus buckling the Empire State title onto Ricky’s waist himself, in the hallway, with the AEGIS guards around them, and shouting that drinks were on the house at Xanax tonight. Ricky was crying. Corey was holding it together by a thread.
Scott Kamura: That’s the last time Corey Lazarus carries the World title as champion. He didn’t know it walking down that hallway. Ricky didn’t know it. We were all watching the last good moment of his reign in real time.
Bryan Harris: The hallway was the high point of Corey’s night. Forty minutes later he was on the mat eating a Question Mark kick to the jaw from a ghost.
Vito Valentino def. “Kamatayan” Izzy Sia — Premier Championship
Dutch Harris: Premier Championship. Vito Valentino against the champ, Izzy Sia. Vito gets it done. New Premier Champion.
Scott Kamura: Vito was the pick at this booth two weeks ago and Vito was the pick tonight. He delivered both times. The longest-reigning Premier champion in SHOOT Project history has the title back.
Bryan Harris: This is the only match on the card where everybody was right. We were right, the crowd was right, Izzy was right that she was in trouble. Clean title change.
Dutch Harris: The Premier is back where it belongs and Sia walks away with her credibility intact. Good match.
Bryan Harris: One clean title change on the whole card. Note that for later when we talk about the World.
Main Event — Pleasant wins the World — NEGLIGENCE joins The DeMONSTRance
Dutch Harris: Main event. Triple Threat for the SHOOT Project World Heavyweight Championship. Corey Lazarus defending against NC-17 and Arthur Pleasant.
Scott Kamura: Pleasant won. He submitted NC-17 in the middle of that ring. Clean. Decisive. New World Heavyweight Champion of SHOOT Project.
Bryan Harris: That’s the part nobody wants to talk about, so I’ll be the one to say it. Arthur Pleasant beat NC-17 in the middle of that ring on his own. No interference. No outside help. He sat in a triple threat with the World Champion and the most dangerous unsigned-to-a-stable talent on this roster and he came out the other side with a submission. Acknowledge that or stop watching.
Dutch Harris: And THEN, after the bell. After Samantha Coil made the announcement. After the celebration started. A hooded figure hopped the barrier and walked into the ring clean past AEGIS. Front kick on Lazarus, redirected into a Question Mark kick that put the now-former champion on the mat with his jaw hanging open.
Scott Kamura: Hood came off. Jaime Alejandro. The Saint. The man who made Isaac Entragian human a decade ago. Standing over Lazarus with a microphone, declaring himself NEGLIGENCE and pledging allegiance to The GODSEND. That isn’t how Pleasant won the title. That’s how Pleasant intends to keep it.
Bryan Harris: That’s four. The GODSEND, DEPRAVITY, DESTRUCTION, and now NEGLIGENCE. They lined up at the entrance ramp at the end of the night and they bowed. As a play. The whole show was a performance to them.
Dutch Harris: The triple threat itself was won fair. Everything after the bell was the warning shot. NEGLIGENCE didn’t take the belt for Pleasant. NEGLIGENCE is making sure nobody coming for that belt walks out of a feud with Arthur in one piece.
Scott Kamura: That’s the message. Arthur can win on his own. Anyone who wants the title back is going to have to go through the Saint just to get to him.
Dutch Harris: Two champions walked out of the Pinnacle tonight who matter to where this company goes from here. One of them is Arthur Pleasant. The other is Jamie Johnson. Everything else on this card is going to be filtered through those two men for the foreseeable future.
Scott Kamura: And let’s start by being honest about Arthur, because half this audience is going to expect us to dismiss him. He won the World Heavyweight Championship in that ring tonight by submitting NC-17 clean. No interference. No shortcut. He earned the gold. The man can wrestle when the bell rings and we are not going to insult anybody’s intelligence by pretending otherwise.
Bryan Harris: I’m going to say something I never thought I’d say on this show. Arthur Pleasant winning the World Heavyweight Championship is bad for SHOOT Project. Not bad in a storyline sense. Bad in a “this is going to poison everything it touches for as long as it lasts” sense. And here’s the brutal part: he didn’t cheat. He didn’t steal it. He WON it. Which means we don’t get to wait this out. We don’t get to tell ourselves the next contender will figure him out. This is a man who beat NC-17 in a triple threat for the World Heavyweight Championship in his very first reign.
Dutch Harris: So the poison isn’t the win. The poison is everything else. It’s what he IS. Arthur Pleasant told the world this week he wishes his own father were dead. Said it on a recorded promo, about X-Calibur. He calls SHOOT Project “The Lie.” He called Jamie Johnson’s family a cancer. That’s the mouth of the man wearing the top championship in this company now. And then there’s who he keeps. DeMONSTRance was three this morning. By the time the lights went out it was four. The next challenger isn’t walking into a match. They’re walking into a fortress with Jaime Alejandro at the gate.
Scott Kamura: And that’s where Jamie Johnson matters. Master of the Mat is a tournament. But what Jamie won tonight wasn’t just a trophy. He won the right to be the face this roster looks at when they need to remember what an earned win looks like. He beat Pleasant clean, in the first match of the night, with no shortcuts. He was the man who needed it and he was the man who got it.
Bryan Harris: I don’t trust hope. I never have. But if there’s a light at the end of this tunnel — and Pleasant winning the World tonight made it a long, dark tunnel — Jamie Johnson is the one holding it. He didn’t take a victory lap after the tournament final. He didn’t cut a promo about how he was coming for the World. He just won, and he walked back through the curtain with the Grappler’s Guild. That’s a man who already knows what’s coming and isn’t going to announce it.
Dutch Harris: Pleasant has the gold. Jamie has the trajectory. Those are two different currencies and one of them outlasts the other.
Scott Kamura: The reign starts tonight. So does the answer to it.
Bryan Harris: I picked Pleasant for the tournament and I picked Pleasant for the World. I was right about one and wrong about the other. Pay attention to which one I got right and which one I got wrong. There’s a lesson in there about which one of these two men is actually built to last.
Dutch Harris: That was Master of the Mat. A new World Champion. A new Master of the Mat. A new Premier Champion. A new Empire State Champion. A new member of The DeMONSTRance. And a roster that goes on Spring Break tonight knowing that when they come back, the company they come back to isn’t the one they left. For Scott Kamura and Bryan Harris, I’m Dutch Harris. We’ll see you on the other side.