Rare weekend with a wrestling show on Friday and no wrestling show on Saturday...next weekend will be open for me, so might as well get to it.
The St. Louis wrestling scene was in the media spotlight for an unfortunate reason this past week...I saw a news van at Pop's on Friday and it sounds like the reporters tried to interview some people about "The Future" Donovan Ruddick. While I did know him, others around here knew him better and I don't know if I'm qualified to speak on the situation. I knew him as a good guy and that was my main experience with him. Something similar happened with a WGNU talk show host who I once worked with...we were cool and we talked a lot about wrestling off the air. It's a shock when you know someone like that and then hear news like this.
I don't know when the next FIST Combat show will be...promoter Mike Gordon has been busy with his other ventures(particularly his Beach Bum Alcoholics band). Attendance was a bit down from the previous show but the fans were still energetic.
Billy McNeil won the tournament at the previous show and was retroactively named the FIST Combat Champion(though they don't have a belt yet). The setup for this show was another tournament with the winner to challenge Billy in the main event.
The tourney matches were shuffled a bit as the scheduled first-round matches were Ricky Cruz vs. Dave Vaughn and Dash Rando vs. Jonathan Gresham. It was changed to Cruz-Gresham and Rando-Vaughn. Tracey Smothers was originally advertised for the show but was quietly taken off the show listing.
The Juggalo-inspired Local Kingz attacked Poodoo The Cow & Dash Rando at the previous show...they were thrown out of the building and vowed to make another impact on this night. They attacked Poodoo at ringside during the Vaughn-Rando opener and then busted up the tag match between the Bumrush Brothers and the Hooligans. Not sure where this is leading unless some of them are training to wrestle...
The in-ring content was solid across the board, as expected from the people on the show.
Vaughn may have caught a break with the match change as his past luck against Cruz hasn't been the best. Travis Cook was conspicuous by his absence.
I honestly hadn't seen much of Gresham before this. He was usually in tag or schmozz matches at previous shows I attended. The size difference between him and Ricky was...very noticable, but they had a good match. Gresham did get up after the finisher and pin a bit quickly...just saying.
Dirden made ground beef out of Poodoo...bad night for Team Bizarro(even with the addition of C.J. McManus at ringside).
Some LWA Superfans were in the house for the rematch between Adam Raw and Alexandre Rudolph. Another good power battle ended with Rudolph evening the score between the two.
Really liked the tag match; the Hooligans worked heel which was a switch from other recent times I've seen them. Sounds like it won't be the last battle between them and the Bumrush Bros....I do not have a problem with that.
The four-corner match was set up with one face and three heels, but recent tag partners Dirden and Rudolph locked horns a few times(including the finish). Thought the match went well; any sort of multi-way schmozz can be tricky to execute with a good flow. Rudolph abused referee Jay King after the match...and then King had to officiate the main event so he had a long night.
EDIT: I forgot to mention something that happened during Rudolph's entrance for the four-corner bout...he got into an argument with Jake Parnell(who was attending the show as a fan) and slugged him. Between that and the Juggalo involvement, the audience doesn't seem to be a safe area at these shows...
The main event played out normally though Dirden had been in two prior matches while McNeil was fresh. McNeil escaped the Asiatic Spike setup but fell to the chokeslam...and stayed down well after the pin. Now that's how to sell a finisher.
Anywho, next weekend is clear. The rest of August looks like this:
Friday 8/9: SLA in Alton, IL
Saturday 8/10: SICW in Sauget, IL at GCS Stadium (MMWA is in St. Louis that night as well)
Saturday 8/17: SICW in East Carondelet, IL
Saturday 8/31: CSCW in Cahokia, IL
As always: #yaywrestling
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