The Sixer: Matches I Saw Live, Vol. 1

The Sixer is its own regular feature, obviously, and I’ve decided to add another particular sub-series with looks back at six-packs of matches I was able to see live.

I haven’t been to, like, a billion wrestling shows or anything, but I’ve been to a fair few over the years. I’ve seen some great matches! I’ve seen some not so good matches. I’ve seen some memorable moments and some weird ones, too.

In this batch:

• Chris Hero vs Homicide (IWA Mid-South - May, 8, 2004)

• Lacey vs Daizee Haze (IWA Mid-South - June 11, 2004)

• New Jack & Corporal Robinson vs 2 Tuff Tony & JC Bailey (IWA Mid-South - January 15, 2005)

• Austin Aries vs KENTA (ROH - June 24, 2006)

• Zack Sabre Jr vs ACH (Evolve - March 30, 2017)

• CM Punk & FTR vs Samoa Joe, Jay White & Juice Robinson (AEW - June 17, 2023)

Chris Hero vs Homicide

IWA Mid-South: Meeting of the Minds
May 8, 2004
Lincoln Center - Highland, IN

IWA Mid-South had been running Highland for a bit, though this was my first time going down, because a friend and I got the “going to wrestling bug” real good after ROH’s debut show in Chicago (Ridge) on April 24. This show had Bobby Heenan in attendance, meant to manage but he wound up doing commentary on one match.¹

This was also not the main event of this show; that was Petey Williams defending the IWA MS title against B-Boy. But this was the match I was most excited to see.

Dave Prazak and Eddie Kingston are on commentary. Pretty standard Hero match of the time period, really, and Homicide’s a nice opponent for him. Homicide can do the technical wrestling in the style Hero liked, and both were fantastic at turning up the heat and laying in the shots. Hero was really starting to up his striking around this time, not quite to where he’d go later on, but he was in the middle of making that stylistic adjustment and evolution.