Gunner Baer: 5'11, 220 Using the ropes to neutralize Gunner's muscle advantage, Lonza claws the face of his bound opponent. Lonza's onslaught wilts in the face of Gunner's power with a soul-sucking bearhug. Gunner looms as Lonza writhes weakly on the mat, clutching his back in pain. Bent and trapped on all fours, Baer suffers under Lonza's rope-assisted knee to his back. Gunner's thick bicep nearly rivals the size of his opponent's ego in the leadup to this bout.
Handsome Is as Handsome Does
Some may protest that Luke Lonza is too cute to be a heel, but Lonza begs to differ. Ridiculously adorable, the cupid-faced delinquent (even his dimples have dimples) lives to torment deer-in-the-headlights suckers like Gunner Baer. Luke finds Gunner working out with a resistance band and playfully fast-talks him into a pushup contest. "You think you can beat ME in a pushup contest?" asks Gunner in disbelief. He does have a point there. Even relaxed, Gunner's upper arm has roughly the same circumference as Luke's head. Cheerfully Luke offers to begin with ten pushups, with Gunner counting them off. Then he challenges Gunner to do ten too, but catches him in a camel clutch on the tenth.
Who didn't see that coming? Baer, that's who. Luke and Gunner play off each other like Tom and Jerry, Roadrunner and Coyote, Tweety and Sylvester, with Gunner ending up with a stick of dynamite between his teeth. Well, almost. Luke is looking pretty cocky as he cranks his opponent's head. His expression changes suddenly when powerful Gunner rises to his feet and hurls the rosy-cheeked punk against the turnbuckle and plies him with a trio of shoulder thrusts. "That all you got?" Baer taunts, punching Lonzo against the ring ropes. He then gives the trickster a taste of his own chin clutch, until Luke grabs the rope, forcing a break.
Lonza begs for mercy in a transparent attempt to get Gunner to lower his defenses. Again, the con seems to work like a charm. Luke slams Gunner face-first into the ring corner and then yanks him back with a standing wrist lock. Pushing Gunner's shoulders back into the corner, Luke twists the guy's arm around the top rope, a torturous move designed to drain the strongman of his strength. A standing hammerlock extends the torment as Luke continues to target Gunner's impressive upper-body for abuse. Then Gunner turns the tables on Luke, first with a Boston crab hold that Lonza vainly tries to escape by forcing another break, then with a series of prolonged and traumatizing attacks to the vertebrae, forcing Luke to tap out with an across-the-shoulders backbreaker.
Baer wins the battle, but the war is far from over. Lonza's craftiness commands the final two-thirds of the match. Rather than concentrating on the arms as before, Luke mounts an offense against Gunner's whole body, head to toe. Though he makes a big show of honoring the rules of fair play, namely by limiting his more vicious assaults to a five-count (which, with no actual ref in sight, he renders at a snail's pace), this wolf in sheep's clothing is attempting to destroy his big opponent utterly. Later, when he rakes the top rope with Baer's nose and mouth, he exclaims, all innocence, "Am I breaking the rules? Oh no." Gunner suffers Lonza's viciousness and contempt splendidly, but as Luke piles torment atop torment, it looks less likely that the strongman can regain his earlier advantage and give this pretty punk the comeuppance he so richly deserves. And yet anything is possible at BG East, though seldom does virtue triumph here when the force of evil is as tasty-looking as Luke Lonza.
Luke Lonza loves himself a little too much as he stares at his own reflection while choking Baer.
Baer is cornered and broken with a boot across the throat as he's stretched over the buckle.
Gunner shoulders the weight of the full-of-himself prettyboy as he taps in the torture rack.
Gunner bucks and writhes on the mat, a victim of a punishing boot to his crotch.
Gunner's impressive arm is stretched out, helpless to Lonza's crushing knee drop.
A wolf in sheep's clothing; the prettyboy looks to wrangle a submission with a crippling crossface.
Luke Lonza: 5'9, 185 Luke leaps high for a vicious elbow drop to the base of the skull of his doubled-up foe. Gunner carries Lonza up as he looks to plant him in the mat with a bodyslam. Gunner is dropped to his knees and sapped of strength, strangled with his own resistance band. Lonza turns Gunner's world upside down as he carries him up and over for a bodyslam. "Adorable", "cupid-faced", "tasty" are all apt descriptors of heel-in-waiting goldenboy Luke Lonza.
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