Maine's masterpiece Daniel Garcia vs. JD Drake 28.08.2021

Welcome to Maine, the spookiest state there is. All I know about Maine is Stephen King so I can only assume the streets of Lewiston are full of vampire and inter-dimensional killer clowns. And today we have a scarily good match.

Maine was a semi relevant place for the WWF to run in late 70’s early 80’s however these shows either produced no matches worth talking about or we simply don't have footage of them. Maine was left pretty much untouched by the major promotions in the year since leaving us with a state dominated by indies, the most prominent being Limitless Wrestling. Limitless Wrestling has produced plenty of great matches many of which coming from one Daniel Garcia whose Limitless wrestling title reign saw him put away a who's who of 2021 American indie wrestlers such as Kevin Ku, Lee Moriarty and Jake something. But today we find him facing a challenger he's already beaten, JD Drake. 

Stipulation for this match is that Kevin Blackwood who has been cheating on the behalf of Garcia throughout his reign has been banned for ringside and in return if JD Drake loses he can not challenge for the title while Garcia is champ. Quickly into the match JD Drake jumps over Garcia and comes down clutching his previously injured knee, he's effing and jeffing, the ref puts up the X and the medical team come out. Now I did not watch this match, in fact I watched it in the context that people thought it was a great match so I knew that the match was going to continue. Even if i watched it live i think i would be able to tell this injury wasn't real, something about Garcia's shit talking makes it clear this injury is a work. However what i was expecting was JD Drake would soldier on and we could get a match of Garcia working over JD Drake. So the reveal that this was all a trick from JD in order to get a surprise attack on Garcia and the following attack still got the desired pop out of me. 

What follows on from this is the best part of the match: an exchange of kicks, punches and chop on the outside of the ring; everything connects well and feels meaty. The involvement with fans in the crowd adds to the frenzy atmosphere. Once both wrestlers get back into the ring we start to see both wrestler strategy for the match, JD Drake essentially has none he just trying to go for big hits and big moves to try and put Garcia down, Garcia wants to target the arm, the mid section and the previously mentioned Knee in order to set up the Garcia lock. This does mean that the parts where Garcia is in control are far more interesting with him putting on a technical wrestling clinic in how he transfers from 6 to 8 elbows into punches to JD Drake’s mid section perfect.

This is not to criticise JD performance in the match but especially during the closing minutes it becomes very big move, KICKOUT, big move, KICKOUT when I know both wrestlers are capable of something more interesting. The worst moment being when Garcia hits a tree of woe suplex which JD drake immediately gets up, no selling it to attack Garcia while he hangs off the post. The finale moments are thankfully more submission work from Garcia and the red death is flawless in how he gets Drake into the Garcia lock. Winning the match by submission