To an extent, I've done that anyway...I accept that "what I like to see" and "what's good for business" are almost always two different things. My view of a wrestling product is really irrelevant if they're making money...it's a business at the end of the day. I always advise people to check out shows and judge for themselves...people have different tastes in wrestling.
St. Louis Anarchy has drawn pretty well for their shows lately and have built a dedicated audience. SICW had a slightly smaller turnout than their usual East Carondelet audience, but it was a "specialized" show with higher ticket prices due to the legends in attendance. Harley Race dislocated his hip last week so he was not in attendance.
At a CHIKARA show a few months ago, Matt Cage & Alex Castle(The Kentucky Buffet) were recruited by Gangrel and became "The Daywalkers". Now they're using that gimmick on a regular basis(though neither Cage nor Gangrel was in the house on Friday). Had seen Bu Ku Dao a few times on notNWA Anarchy's online TV show. Hadn't seen Travis Banks at all; he worked AAW a week or two ago and that was the only time I had seen his name. Castle and Banks(evil New Zealander~!) were the heels of the match while Dao was professing his love of America to establish himself as the face. Highlight of the match was the sick Gangrel-style elevated DDT that Castle used to eliminate Dao.
The intergender tag was...just odd. The first segment of the match consisted of the Big Owl/Lacey team delivering a lot of low blows...on Angelus Layne. The wrestling rule of thumb for women's selling of low blows seems to be "whatever's funny". :)
Yay for Dingo returning to the ring...looking forward to it.
I'm the first to tout the "size shouldn't matter" line of thinking, but some wrestlers are just NOTABLY small. Two of them were matched up against each other on this show: Jonathan Gresham and Jojo Bravo. Gresham seems to base his offense around strikes and that can be a tough thing to do at his size. With Bravo set up to feud with Dingo and also being the more established guy in the promotion, it was a slight upset when Gresham got the victory. Referee Tom Simon had trouble keeping up with these guys...heh.
Always good to see the Hooligans...had a feeling Dean & Solo would get the upset, though. Heard a while back that SLA might get its own Tag Team Titles, but hadn't heard anything about that lately.
With A.C.H. up 1-0 in the mini-series with Davey Vega, Vega was the favorite to even the score. Don't know if they're teasing a heel turn for A.C.H. with his post-match comments...
On the other side of things, they're teasing a face turn for Gerald James/Gary Jay as he didn't want his "family" at ringside for the match with Davey Richards. I've heard people say that Gary is one of the hardest hitters in wrestling...that covers a lot of ground and you wouldn't think that based on his appearance. Davey is a polarizing figure on the internets...there's not a lot of in-between as people seem to either REALLY like him or REALLY not like him. There were a lot of WWE rumors about him in the past year...even though WWE has been willing to recruit guys below their preferred size range recently, it'd still be odd to see him in that environment.
The rules of the table match stated that both team members had to go through tables for the other side to win. With the relaxed rules of the promotion in general and the match in particular, that left the door open for the "eliminated" parties to stick around and help their respective sides. Fitchett got insane airtime on his dives out of the ring...would like to see him more often at shows with more ceiling clearance.
The main event was a fun brawl with blood on both sides. Corbin took a sick brainbuster onto a set-up chair near the end of the match. I got an odd laugh out of the small package finish after all the plunder usage leading up to it...heh.
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Onward to SICW!
Didn't look up the admission price before going to the show so it surprised me a bit...good thing the ticket window took my debit card as I didn't have enough cash on me. I got there early enough that I could have made a quick run to an ATM, at any rate...
Ben Simon and Drew Abbenhaus split the ring announcing duties. The dressing room was on the far side of the stadium so the wrestlers had to be literally carted to the ring area.
Tony Raze surprised me by pulling off a second-rope moonsault...don't see that every day from a guy of his size.
The Grizzlies Grand Master Tournament seemed to be set up to establish a future title contender...with a heel champion, that meant Gary and Ricky were the favorites, but Flanagan was the winner at the end of the night. Very interesting...but then Ken Kasa has ticked off both faces and heels with the way he won the title.
I would call Shorty Biggs a tag team specialist as he's had a lot of different partners in his career. He's currently Dynamo Tag Champ with Outtkast and MECW Tag Champ with Chris Logan, but he's also teamed with Dice, Joker. C.J. McManus, Jackal, Sean Vincent, Gary Jackson, etc....now add Adam Raw to the list. Raw and Rudolph were the two guys that I saw at both shows this past weekend.
Ron Powers got the big entrance of the night on his motorcycle alongside his biker friends...he was the clear favorite in this heel-vs.-heel bout. Travis Cook offered him a "retirement chair" but he was having none of that. Kasa used more aerial offense in this rare case of being the smaller guy in the match...but it wasn't quite enough to get him the win. Vaughn was a bit late to save his manager from Powers' piledriver, so Travis was in a neckbrace later in the night for the main event.
Good false finish with Vaughn and Travis initially cheating to win, but the legends got the match restarted and Chaz got the real win. Chaz dropkicked Texan out of the ring and threw him over the guardrail to the lower deck, then teased a dive off the top rope(!) but Texan didn't get up fast enough for it to happen...aww.
Unfortunately the barber chair was too heavy to get into the ring so the deed had to be done at ringside, meaning it was tough to see unless you were right there...plenty of pictures were taken, though. Travis left without hair, without an eyebrow, and covered in shaving cream...
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A few notes from around the indy scene: Metro Pro Wrestling is reportedly going on hiatus, possibly for good. I'd heard nothing but good things about their group and product; hope they can restart down the line. Will need to pull up their TV episodes on YouTube sometime. Haven't seen full results yet, but it looks like Jeremy Wyatt regained the Heavyweight Title in the dog collar match with Adam Pearce and the Kobra Kai Dojo(Davey Vega & Mat Fitchett) teamed with Dingo to win the Tag Titles from The Commission(champions Evan Gelistico & Pierre Abernathy along with Gary Jay).
MMWA shuffled things around a bit on Saturday. A.J. Williams won the T.V. Title from Jimmy D and then forfeited the Jr. Heavyweight Championship he already held, resulting in Andrew Wilder defeating J-Mal Swagg for the vacant Jr. Title later in the night. Also, Mephisto won the Battle Royal Title previously held by Raphael King. Gary Jackson had a full evening as he worked both the SICW show and the MMWA show in the same night.
The rest of August looks like this:
Saturday 8/17: SICW in East Carondelet
Saturday 8/31: CSCW in Cahokia
As always: #yaywrestling
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