Brett Lauderdale’s Game Changer Wrestling ran approximately twenty-two billion shows in the 2024 calendar year. Naturally, it can feel intimidating. Where do I start? What were the peaks? How many Blake Christian singles matches should I skip? (All of them.) If you only choose to dip a toe into GCW’s past year, this guide is here to show you where to do it. Trust me. I watched every fucking show.
Honorable Mentions
Oh, and before anyone asks, Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport: Bushido wasn’t promoted as a GCW show. You can go and look at any of the promo graphics and see for yourself.
Charles Mason, Tony Deppen, Kerry Morton, Griffin McCoy, Jack Cartwheel, and Broski Jimmy vs. Mr. Danger, Cole Radrick, Man Like DeReiss, Miedo Extremo, Cíclope, and Allie Katch (Jersey J-Cup 2024 Night Two, 2/10/24)
I’ve long held the opinion that the mid-to-late-2010s Battle of Los Angeles tournaments did more damage to the brains of American wrestlers than CTE and pinball put together. Even so, there’s one BOLA tradition that demands preservation: the wild multi-man comedy tag match. This match didn’t reach the storied heights of Jushin Thunder Liger angrily demanding that someone stick their thumb up his asshole, but it was a silly oasis within a very dreary, over-long Jersey J-Cup tournament. When it broke down into everyone doing their favorite Attitude Era finishers, the lack of seriousness was a breath of fresh air.

Abdullah Kobayashi vs. Matt Tremont (Ashes to Ashes, 3/9/24)
There are two types of death match. In one type, the wrestlers put on a show that they hate one another, and will go to inhuman lengths to not just win, but do their opponent lasting harm in the process. In the other type, death matches are a thing of joy. Tremont and Kobayashi both struggle to move these days, but they love death matches, and each other. Tremont hit a kenzan wrong and got it stuck into Kobayashi’s head at a weird angle; Kobayashi pulling it out was the most grotesque body-horror you’ll see all year. That’s real love.

Marina Shafir vs. Lindsay Snow (Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport X, 4/4/24)
There are many disheartening aspects to looking at Cagematch. One of the worst was seeing how low the inmates rated this. People called it “boring” while giving high praise to Nic Nemeth and Mike Bailey ending a worked-shoot match with a Zig Zag. It’s enough to make you wonder what planet people are from. This was a terrific grapplefuck, especially because it was plausible as a realistic MMA match. Marina Shafir and Lindsay Snow grappled, struggled for advantage, keyed in on weak spots, and finished it with a dynamic moment where one got cocky and the other mercilessly seized advantage.
Gauntlet of Survival: John Wayne Murdoch vs. Kasey Catal vs. 1 Called Manders vs. Microman vs. Shane Mercer vs. Jordan Oliver vs. Charles Mason vs. Nick Gage vs. Broski Jimmy vs. Joey Janela (Cage of Survival 3, 6/2/24)
The match itself dragged. There’s a long, rough stretch that was all Shane Mercer, Jordan Oliver, and Charles Mason. When the match climaxed, though, Brett Lauderdale showed that he’s the only one who can still nail 1990s ECW overbooking. There were multiple title change fake-outs in the space of minutes. There were something like five false endings to not just the match, but the entire show. Everything from Nick Gage’s surprise entrance onward had the crowd losing their minds. Complete chaos is hard to make work in wrestling, but when they can pull it off right, there’s honestly nothing better.
Matt Makowski vs. David Modzmanashvili (Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport XII, 11/24/24)
Everyone who watched this match came away excited by David Modzmanashvili. It’s a shame that performances like this one, where he mauled Matt Makowski like a bear throwing around a doomed hiker, are by their very nature going to be few in number. If Modzmanashvili decides to get into pro wrestling full-time, he’s going to learn all the habits of pro wrestlers: habits whose absence made this fight fresh and special. We’ve seen it happen before, with Matt Riddle. Perhaps all we can do is savor these true freakshow outings, knowing that their power violence is a fleeting, transient thing.

5.) St. Louis Street Fight: Mance Warner vs. 1 Called Manders (Project GCW, 3/1/24)
One of the most important stories in 2024 GCW was the psychopathy of Mance Warner. Warner turned his back on his best friends in the Second Gear Crew, and shacked up with Matt Cardona’s hated Deathmatch Royalty faction (alongside the likes of GCW’s most reviled man, “Broski” Jimmy Lloyd, and Mancer’s real-life partner Steph De Lander). This being professional wrestling, the separation of Warner and the Second Gear Crew was not an amicable or businesslike one. Warner wanted them to know that he had betrayed them, and to make it hurt them so much that they couldn’t stop his ascent.
Spoilers: Mance Warner ended up as GCW champion, but his matches on top have been inconsistent. They’re often a few minutes too long, or more than a few minutes too long. They sag in the middle and cool off halfway through, before trying to crank the burners back up at the end. If you want to see good Mance Warner matches, you have to turn to his bloodbaths with his former friends in the SGC. These ones never get a chance to cool off. They get ugly, and when you’re brawling with your former friends, ugliness is straight up necessary.
One of Mancer’s best skills as a wrestler is that he’s a terrific bleeder. In this St. Louis Street Fight, 1 Called Manders matched him pint for pint. Both of them wore grotesque crimson masks as they clobbered one another with stiff lariats, unprotected steel-chair headshots, and slams onto an uprooted guard rail. These two big boys had to keep upping the stakes to try to put one another down. There’s no way for a second-rope British Bulldog style powerslam can look graceful with this combination. Everything they did was nasty, and that’s why it was so watchable and compelling.

4.) Ultraviolent Title: 1 Called Manders vs. Rina Yamashita © (You Only Die Once, 8/14/24)
One of the easiest stories to tell in wrestling is to do a match where a big person faces off against a smaller person. The juxtaposition of these two body types is a ready-made kit that anyone with half a brain can assemble right out of the box, like a pinewood derby car. There are different ways to work it out, but it usually comes down to a variation on the basic premise. The big person has the raw strength, but the smaller person has the speed and dexterity. We’ve all seen some form of that match-up a hundred times.
So what if the smaller person is a death match psycho? What then? When Rina Yamashita and 1 Called Manders faced off during GCW’s tour of Japan, it started off with the expected comedy bits. Yamashita took a flat-back bump onto some chairs to prove her bravado, and then encouraged Manders to do the same, only to dive on him with a cradle. Yamashita worked a Testicular Claw like no one else in the business. The longer these two went at it, though, the more it turned into a display of mutual refusal to yield. Big vs. little faded away.
Manders had the size advantage, but Yamashita had masochistic fearlessness. This was a match that reached past the expected territory of “big throws little around” and “little chops big down to size,” and into a realm where Yamashita was the aggressor, the one whose violence was more potent and harmful. Yamashita was the one who brought one of those granite-hard Japanese tables into the ring. She’s the one who introduced chairs with cut-in-half aluminum cans glued to them. As much as Manders brought the raw power, they flipped the formula. Can beastly strength alone match a death match wrestler’s brutality?

3.) I Quit Match: Effy vs. Mance Warner (Joey Janela’s Spring Break 8, 4/5/24)
For the first half of 2024, the biggest and best feud in GCW was Effy vs. Warner. They were as close as brothers in the Second Gear Crew, and Mancer took special delight in how much cruelty he could dump on Effy. No one hurts you like family, after all. That phase culminated in a Cage of Survival match in June. I wish I could recommend it. It’s got some really bloody stuff in it, but an awful ending (Effy and Mancer have to wait in position for the final spot to be set up, for what feels like years).
Whiffed ending to the big match aside, the matches that got these two there are absolutely worth seeing. I know that I’m staring down a bleak and doomed prospect from the word “go,” trying to convince the fine readers of this website to drop what they’re doing and seek out a match featuring noted podcaster Effy. Effy’s a guy who leans into the stuff that “serious” wrestling fans don’t like, the same way that misguided DDT viewers complain about Danshoku Dieno. In DDT, Dieno transgressing the “serious wrestler” boundary is the point. In GCW, Effy’s just flat-out a main eventer.
You’ll just have to trust me that Effy can turn it on when he needs to turn it on, and that this is a match where he turns it on. The “I Quit” stipulation allowed for more storyline antics than other stips. Naturally, it came down to Effy being put in a classic babyface dilemma, forced to quit to avoid Mance taking a power drill to Allie Katch’s skull. None of that would mean anything if they hadn’t first been so violent with one another. The threat of the drill was never hollow. They did awful things to earn it.

2.) Cíclope vs. Rina Yamashita (Blood on the Hills 3, 10/19/24)
What is it that makes an otherwise capable pro wrestler choose death? We have to believe that there’s something about death match wrestling that appeals to them. Pro wrestling in general is a masochist’s game much more than a sadist’s. Even in a match that plays by the rules, throwing yourself flat-back on the mat hurts. It doesn’t do anything good to your brain to toss yourself around the ring. That’s still a far cry from the people who specialize in death matches, the ones who wear their masochism on the outside, as loudly as their gig-mark furrows are deep.
Still, it makes you wonder: are Rina Yamashita and Cíclope having more fun? Do they get some special kick out of shredding one another’s foreheads with gusset plates that they just can’t find in a match where they trade bodyslams and sunset flips? The way that these two went at one another in Los Angeles, you would think that they had slipped free of some invisible shackles. At last, they were both able to cut loose – in one another, they had their ideal opponents. Their fearlessness in taking punishment meant that they could be extra vicious in dealing it out.
This match was bodily abuse as spectacle, a junction point where agony and ecstasy cross over. Cíclope and Yamashita traded skull-on-skull headbutts until Cíclope kissed Yamashita on the mouth. It was a violation (and Yamashita punished it with a kick to Cíclope’s temple), but it was also the only horizon left. Cíclope and Yamashita didn’t hate one another. They did these things – spinebusters onto a puddle of thumbtacks, gusset-plate Testicular Claws, point-blank chair shots – because they cherish one another. The rest of us, watching from the sidelines, can only wonder what that kind of love feels like.

1.) Atlantic City Strap Match: Effy vs. Mance Warner (Ashes to Ashes, 3/9/24)
No, seriously. Stay with me on this. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why it is that Effy and Mance Warner have such unreal chemistry with one another. It’s the kind of perfect fit as opponents that I haven’t seen from either of them versus anyone else. Their feud throughout the first half of 2024 wasn’t a run of five-star Meltzer-ready workrate epics, but it was bloodthirsty and passionate in a way that you don’t often see on any level of wrestling, independent or otherwise. I’ve pondered how they found that, and I think it comes down to trust.
Every wrestling match involves trust. When another person picks you up to slam you down, you are trusting them with your safety and well-being. You might trust someone to give you a body slam, but would you trust them to take an electric drill to your scalp? Would you suffer for them? Would you trust them to beat you with a belt? Would you offer up your own back and encourage them to lash you as hard as they fucking can? That takes a special kind of trust, and Mancer and Effy have that kind of trust in one another.
This is a match that more or less started with Effy hoisting Mancer up and giving him a Burning Hammer into a door, and Mancer’s head and neck collided with that cheap wood at the most awkward and painful-looking angle it possibly could. The pro wrestling moves here didn’t look good, but they sure looked like they hurt. Asking for “realism” in a match where someone does a Muscle Buster is a foolish thing, but there’s no denying just how real all that blood was. These two trusted one another to take things to the absolute limit. So they did.
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