Something was in the air on Friday at the First Met Hall. I don't know what the hell was going on, but 365 Pro Wrestling put on one of their best wrestling shows in ages. Now, this is definitely not to take away from the very good run they've been on – they've been killing it and I love going to these shows. But Friday night had everything lining up in a magic manner from opening bell to the end. To use very specific wrestling speak – it was, by gawd, an absolute slobberknocker! Gonna have to start calling this shit Friday Night Heat if this is where we're headed on the regular. Let's get after it.

Damian Desire vs Inferno
Insane opener. First off, we gotta give a shout out to the wrestling boots of Damian Desire. Best boots in the PNW scene from what I've seen. Many stars of love. Both guys come out of the gate with bonkers speed, matching each other move for move. Leap frogs! Springboards! Simultaneous dropkicks! Simultaneous kip-ups! HOLY MOLY! Just two fan favs showing who know how to get a crowd revved up. If there's one thing the people love more than cheering a handsome muscle man who is quite good at wrestling, it's booing a handsome muscle man who is quite good at wrestling. And when it comes time to break the whole good guy vs good guy dynamic, Damian Desire steps into the role perfectly, turning into an absolute bruiser on a dime and battering the smaller Inferno. I love a dirty spinebuster and Desire smashes Inferno with one. Then a goddamn avalanche side suplex on the Flaming One. Inferno comes back with a devastating back rake. At this point I am having a very hard time taking my eyes off the ring to take notes. Holy shit, Inferno fucking powerbombed Desire. And wow, it was a picturesque powerbomb. Inferno wins with a Swanton Bomb. (I'm writing so much about wrestling right now that I just added “Swanton” to the dictionary on my word processor.) This match was very fucking good.

Damien Caines vs Steven Bradley

A battle of contrasting moustaches. Honestly, I missed taking any notes for the first half of this match because I was just so into it. It was so nice to have Steven Bradley back in Victoria and even nicer etting to CHEER FOR HIM this time. Everything about the guy says babyface (His gear has TASSLES for fuck sake) and having to boo him during his last couple of appearances made me kind of sad in my heart. Luckily he was against Damien Caines here and I can't think of anyone better in 365 to just flick that switch, “Oh we love this fucking guy and we hope he clobbers Caines” This was incredibly hard-hitting. Kind of classic wrestling stuff, making clotheslines the most exciting thing you've ever seen. Unfortunately for my heart, Steven Bradley lost this one after he went back to the turnbuckle to attempt what I presume was going to be another flying clothesline (The first one hit big, so why not?!) but Sadie Caines interfered with the process and Bradley got absolutely destroyed by a superkick from Damien.

Haviko cut a good promo about being a loser or something. All jokes aside, the promo was GOOD and I genuinely love the back-and-forth with this guy.

Josh Cadwell vs Mitty Tulips
This is Mitty Tulips first appearance at 365 and he couldn't have a better opponent. If you're a face coming to town for the first time, lining up against Josh Cadwell is ideal. Every time Cadwell comes out from behind the curtain, all I can think is “This guy fucking gets it.” Apparently Mitty Tulips is a guy who also gets it. He's got big, long garbage-scooping arms, a hella dope cape and a sweet moustache. It's a great look. We start with some excellent wrestle bollocks as Josh and Mitty disrobe their entrance gear to opposite reactions. Tulip's running European uppercuts are nasty! He's so fast. It feels like he gets across the ring in three steps. It's crazy. Cadwell dodges the third uppercut attempt, which results in Tulips smashing his face real good into the top turnbuckle. At one point Cadwell caught Tulips in the ropes with an insane-looking single-leg crab (The best crab!) and starts working the leg after the four-count. Mitty gets Cadwell's legs and does an airplane spin! YESSS! Pretty sure I hurt my vocal chords yelling at this. Perfect. Tulips' 365 debut gets spoiled when Cadwell wins. Honestly not sure what the move was that put Tulips away. Last I saw, Cadwell had blocked a fireman's carry from Tulips by putting his legs around the ref's neck. I looked down to take a note and BAM, this one was over. I could go back and rewatch this on the 365 YouTube channel, but I'm fine with not knowing what did it at this time. Big win against a new guy for Cadwell.

Intermission. These two would have been fucking fired in the 80s for breaking face/heel kayfabe like this.

Rogues (Elliot Tyler & Casey Ferreira) vs Moment of Truth (Sawyer Stein & Johnny Rostyn) – Victoria Street Fight
This is another one I didn't take a lot of notes for, because I was busy keeping The Rogues' ill-gotten tag title belts safe, and that didn't leave me with hands to takes notes with. I believe in the Rogues - even if everyone hates them, I will stand with them. If you've ever seen a street fight, you kind of already know what's happening. It's chaotic. There's lots of fighting outside the ring. This was a big story match, as the Rogues and MoT have been battling it out the last couple of weeks and really bolstering the tag division, which actually got an even bigger boost at the end of the match when Eddie Osbourne – one half of the actual tag champs, Guilty By Association – showed up out of nowhere with a chair and wrecked the dome of Elliot Tyler. After the chaos, Eddie grabs the mic and says that Krofton is back next week and they're going to shit-can The Rogues. Hell yeah. (For the match, not for the Rogues getting shit-canned.) We're getting Guilty by Association vs The Rogues next week for the 365 Tag Team Championship. I don't think my friends are going to like me very much when I'm fully on the side of the The Rogues for that one.

Lak Siddartha vs Garett Jones
Oh dear. Lak Siddartha is the “Lord's Warrior.” Well, he's gotta be the warrior for the Old Testament Lord because this was a savage, vengeful destruction. Siddartha absolutely pounded on Jones for pretty much this whole match. But Jones fought hard, showed heart and, quite frankly, kept this going longer than it probably should have. Although, some of that was Lak taking Jones to schoo' and stopping his own 2-counts so he could beat on Jones some more. Homie took like 3 F5s. F-15. Many deserved BOOs for Lak at the end of this one and a lot of well-deserved for cheers for Jones dragging himself out of the ring after the brutality.

Lak wailing on Jones. Please, Ronny, make it stop! Photo courtesy the powerful Jess Hickman.

Dash Dauntless (c) vs Becky Beech – Global Women's Championship
The crowd loves Becky Beech so much. We are all part of the Beech Club! This feels like Becky's time, but Dauntless has been on a pretty fucking great run with the Women's Championship and they're not going down without a fight. Becky brought everything to this one, hitting hard at every corner. Her running corner knee is fucking devastating and that low meteroa is cash every single time. But Dauntless just won't stay down, coming back with a series of very cool looking kicks and winning, kinda outta nowhere, with a running bulldog. The crowd seems kind of upset and confused. I think everyone thought tonight was Becky's night, but alas, Dauntless wins and Becky's chase for the Women's Championship continues.

Travis Williams (c) vs Judas Icarus – 365 Global Men's Championship
A friendly fade between two young legends. I don't know really know what to say about this. You should just go watch it on YouTube right now. For 365 fans, this was capital-s Special. If you're an indie wrestling fan in the PNW, really in North America, you've probably come across Travis Williams and Judas Icarus at some point. For a period of time, 365 Nation was watching both of these guys almost every month. Arguably two of the four faces on the 365 Mount Rushmore, watching their success and profile grow at an exponential rate has been a great joy for a lot of people 'round these here parts. For 25 minutes, we got to sit back and watch two wrestlers do what they do best and put on a wrestling clinic. We got incredibly technical matwork. We got some comedy – which is something both these dudes are sneaky good at. We got BIG moves. We got hard strikes. One of their fellow wrestlers came up to me after the show to praise the match. “That was incredible. It was so perfect. The footwork!” For 25 minutes, we got to watch evolution in action, while welcoming two friends back home, even if just for one night. Oh yeah, Travis Williams won with a crazy pin out of nowhere, because of course he did. Still champ. That was awesome.