BEER ONE: You know, I’m full of hate. It’s not a fuckin’ online gimmick or any shit like that. I drink a lot, have a shitty job, and watch stupid fuckin’ wrestling all the goddamned time. Well, not really, but oftentimes while I’m wasting time in what I call my studio, which is actually a shitty room with shitty fake wooden trailer-style paneling, no fuckin’ heat, and a giant shred of an American flag that got all ripped up during a punk percussion protest of the Presidential Debate in Richmond, Virginia a few elections back. I hate my fuckin’ job, but I make $12.50 an hour, and nowhere else in this cock-sucking fake-ass closet racist white liberal town of Charlottesville is offering more than goddamn $9 and you have to have a Master’s Degree in some bullshit just for that. I spray weird dangerous cancerous chemicals on polycarbonates and liquid mount fuckin’ giant photographs on them, of great bullshit like prescription drugs or similak or biosolid reactors or crap like that. Trade show exhibits. Fuck trade shows and fuck corporations. Fuck America and fuck war stimulating our economy which is not a proven fact ever since World War II in fact it does the opposite. And fuck wrestling fans. You motherfuckers are goddamned annoying. I wrote a thing a long time ago on Wrestling Sucks about how wrestlers are pussies. And a lot of them nowadays are. But goddamn, who can blame them when they spend all their fuckin’ energy trying to entertain a pack of half-witted “smart” fans who think they know every fuckin’ thing because they’ve read every stupid fuckin’ biography in the wrestling section of the Barnes & Noble superstore? Motherfuckers who sit around and think about wrestling all the fuckin’ time, fantasy booking and compiling lists and thinking somebody cares. Goddamn. You know what? I know nobody gives a shit about this. I’m basically just writing to waste my fuckin’ night so that I can pass out drunk, wake up tomorrow and pretend like I fuckin’ “created” something last night when I’m hating my shitty job. That’s all. And what do I create? Not a fuckin’ thing. Goddamnit, this Mid American Wrestling better be good, because me and beer are tag teaming the fuck out of anything. If I misspell too much shit, sorry, it’s like 2 degrees in this room, and I don’t have any fingerless hobo gloves. I am, however, kicking the crusty hobo style of poking holes for my thumb to go through on the end of the sleeves of my black hoodie. All I need is to safety pin a homemade Misfits patch on it and I’d be cool and get invited to all the high school parties. And then I’d become ever more hateful because some supposed punk rock chick driving her mom’s Benz and wearing a fuckin’ Reese’s peanut butter cup t-shirt from the Goodwill would look down on me for drinking Old Milwaukee. Goddamn you, you fuckin’ whore! WHOA! This rocks, it’s on a baseball field and there’s like twelve people in attendance, the camera is unsteady, and your ring announcer has the same creepy glasses and dark hair look that all older wrestling geeks get, though he covers it up with a bad dye job. To sort of explain it to you, one ringpost of the ring is roughly where second base would be, with the opposite one around the pitcher’s mound. The camera is from the bleachers, which I guess is where all the folks who only felt like paying five bucks have to sit, and two guys are making wisecracks within soundshot of the handheld already. I am feeling the hate ebb and the love of bizarre indyness warms my fingers. Shooter Scott Marciano is out, he’s a shootfighter. His opponent is…The Mean Green Pecker. Yep. Holy shit, it’s a dude walking like a chicken with green feathers all over. Gotta be the baseball team’s mascot. Just like that, the wrestling calmed my hatred, like it should. I feel better, though I’m sure the fat slugs of Old Mil didn’t help. Wait, the Pecker is actually wrestling AND HE FALLS FACE FIRST AND WALLERS LIKE A HURT CHICKEN! And one of the wiseasses yells “HEY, SESAME STREET!” And then a “KFC! KFC!” chant breaks out. MEAN GREEN PECKERRANA but only for a two-count. Pecker is laying in the chops, and two dudes on the baseball field are trying to line up a three-way with some blonde whore. Man, the Pecker rocks; they’re ringside and he’s fuckin’ slammed beak first into the post. They do a suplex on the dirt and both guys are covered in it now. It’s turning into a shootfight style thing, which is great considering one guy is WEARING A GREEN CHICKEN OUTFIT!
BEER TWO: Marciano strangles the Pecker, and of course a “Choke the chicken!” chant breaks out in the bleachers. The Pecker chickens up but he gets caught with a spinkick off the ropes. Fuck, the Mean Green Pecker gets hit with a terribly painful looking top rope backbreaker turned kidney buster, but he kicks out. Tilt-a-whirl into a Russian legsweep by the chicken. You can hear cars driving by real fast. Chicken goes for a reverse neckbreaker, gets elbows to the back of the head instead, Marciano reverses and nails a DDT and throws a submission armbar thing on the guy, and the Mean Green Pecker taps out. I hate shootfighter gimmicks in wrestling. Some big dude with indy wrestler/’80s metaller longhair comes out and raises the chicken’s arm, and since he’s tall, he does a chokeslam on him. His name is Mitch Paradise. He’s cut, and has longhair, and I bet he gets blowjobs galore from Midwestern chicks because heavy metal is still alive out there, and not the fuckin’ frat boyish rap metal shit either. Real metal motherfuckers, the type of shit Lemmy could get drunk on his houseboat to. Yep, Paradise’s opponent has a black leather jacket and stocking hat with Danzig skull imagery all over it. When you wear a leather jacket with a giant skull spray-painted on the back, you are metal. In true metal athletics fashion, he wears cut-off jeans and a black tank top. If you’ve ever played pick-up basketball with athletic metal fans, you know what I mean. That’s their work-out uniform. Hell, I used to wear that shit when I was 15; who am I kidding? Mitch Paradise is big enough to have jobbed on TV multiple times by now; how come I’ve never heard of him? And the other guy, Steve Stone, I bet he loves Stormtroopers of Death. I always used to wonder if “Hey Gordy” was about Terry Gordy. I also used to think it was really gay for Billy Milano to sing “step into the Milano Mosh” like he had his own style pit or some shit. That seemed pretty pretentious. The metal guy has no hair at all, which makes him less metal and more punk to me, and his name is Steve Stone, so he sucks. Crazy baldheads. He’s also really slow and lethargic in the ring. It’s fun watching folks in the front row swat bugs out their faces. Crazy Baldhead goes to the top, and they don’t call it high risk for nothing, as Paradise brings him crashing down to the mat, and Stone loses. Of course, “Paradise City” cranks up, and a tall guy with longhair in a wrestling ring in the middle of a baseball field heels it up and is King. I drink to that, because I can understand.
BEER THREE: Motherfucker, I can understand. The creepy wrestling fan announcer is hyping another card the next night with a cage match. Mr. Announcer, please stop saying “special” and “official” all the goddamned time. This next guy is the Pope of the Midwest, an underwear model, and he puts the ex in sex or some shit. He is Eric Priest, and he is gyrating sexually against the ringpost. HEY! IT’S THE ANNOYING GUY IN THE BRUINS JERSEY FROM MY IWA MID SOUTH ROAD TRIP IN THE FRONT ROW BEING ANNOYING AGAIN! He’s talking shit and putting double middle fingers in the face of Priest because he knows he can get away with it. You see? Wrestlers are pussies. Somebody should kick that guy’s ass one time, just because. HOLY FUCK! Yes, metal is alive. Evil guitar riffage and a hot chick carrying two giant torches leads a guy named Sam Hayne to the ring. Mr. Hayne is wearing a Bam Bam Bigelow style flame outfit, with an extra evil Psichosis style mask, plus he carries a martini glass filled with some sort of red liquid, which I can only assume is blood from the freshly slit throat of a blonde-haired blue-eyed virgin. I can tell you, there is nothing I hope to see more than Sam Hayne setting that annoying guy in the first row on fire after getting the adrenaline rush you get from drinking human blood. When I was a kid, we lived in a place called Rice (small town outside of Farmville in Virginia). We lived on the edge of a farm in a cinderblock house that had a lot of mice. I wasn’t allowed to play in the field because sometimes there’d be big fires down, way down in the field, and it was Satanists. I know I know, there were all sorts of Satanists back in those days, it was a popular scare thing. But these were real people who fancied themselves Satanists. I know because my dad ended up selling weed to them a few times and we went down to their house down the road. Anyways, this one Satanist chick, Margaret, she recovered or escaped or whatever. She ended up being the live-in girlfriend of this drunk perverted redneck Gary who used to run with my dad because they both liked vodka, weed, and playing horseshoes. I remember my dad telling my mom he had a babysitter, they were going out. Margaret showed up, and my mom freaked. “Charles, you can’t leave our kids with a fuckin’ Satanist!” But he did, because she wasn’t no Satanist anymore. Looking back, it was a bad move on my dad’s part. But Margaret was cooler than fuck. She played with my sisters and I was like, probably like 10. She was a great artist and was actually drawing her own set of Tarot cards. She showed me a couple of the cards, and I had listened to Ozzy Osbourne already, I was willing to be hip to what was up. She kept it sort of on the down-low, I guess after the big Mama Mack freaking out over her kids getting left with a known occultist thing going down earlier, but she showed me some of the cooler cards. The thing was, years later, only a few years later, me and my dad were over at Gary’s house, and he was a criminal, been in and out of jail all the time I’ve known him, with more tattoos each time he comes out, but he lived on a farm his mom had. She had cancer and was missing her hair but she’d go out and kill a chicken and tell me I had to stay because she was making chicken, and she’d be wringing the fuckin’ neck right in front of me. No shit, this used to happen. Anyways, one time, my dad and Gary were sneaking out to get high so Gary’s cancerous mom and Margaret the former occultist wouldn’t know because they disapproved of Gary being high all the goddamned time considering he hadn’t had a job outside of stealing firearms in like three years; well, Gary showed us this shed, one of the smaller ones (they had like 17 sheds) and it was fuckin’ full of all these weird twisted ass paintings that Margaret had done but didn’t want to throw away even though she didn’t like them anymore. They were fucked up, shit that Jack Kevorkian would freak out over (have you ever seen some of Kevorkian’s paintings? Man, he’s a fuckin’ psychopath). Anyways, Margaret was awesome, and there’s still a nice waterfall Bob Ross painting she did in the living room at my mom’s house, and she was a hot little Filipino and as I hit puberty I must’ve masturbated thinking about her a shitload of times, what with all the hotness factor combined with the babysitter thing and evil painting skills. To this day, I pass little freaky Filipino chicks and I wonder if it’s Margaret. They are, by far, my favorite of the Pacific Rim flavor of women.
BEER FOUR: Sam Hayne has an inverted cross incorporated to the spelling of Hayne on the back of his outfit. Anda red pentagram on the front. And 666 on his ass. I’ve had 666 on my ass all my life. Wait, that martini glass didn’t hold blood, it held flammable alcohol for him to blow fire with. And good fuckin’ god his evil valet is not your normal shitty skinny beauty but a buxom blonde about to bust her fuckin’ studded leather top. Sam Hayne does some evil thing real quick with his arms outstretched and the match starts. So a big masked Satanist is the babyface here? Sam Hayne does a tope, complete with feet getting caught on the second rope, slowing his impact, and causing the ringpost humper to fall backwards over metal chairs in the basepath of a baseball field. And they’re taking it to the infield. “Light ‘em on fire,” yells somebody in the crowd. Fuck yeah, my man, fuck yeah. I just noticed the Priest part of the heel’s last name, as he caught Sam Hayne with a missile dropkick from the top rope. This is great; this match is tricking people into being evil, much like the Filipino Margaret did with me. Priest hits a chokeslam; and that’s two on the card already. Evil valet has big hot tits and claps her hands and sweetly yells, “C’mon Sam,” taking all the evil out of his character. Hayne gets a reverse chinlock on the Priest guy, and the camera closes ups and you see that Hayne is wearing gloves with finger bone motif on the outside and the fingertips cut off. That’s class, pure class. They do some shit and Eric Priest wins, which sucks beyond suck. How can the Devilish babyfaces keep losing like this? The announcer says, “How about a great hand for Sam Hayne?” as he lays in the ring a loser. They stop by the fence, and set the torches down, and Sam Hayne puts forearm spikes back on, and his valet has giant tits that may or may not be fake but I don’t care because she’s slightly pudgy like Taija Rae the hottest of all porn sluts and I love her – meaning Taija, the evil valet, and Margaret the evil babysitter as well. I used to fuck a chick that worked at the dollar cinema and she had to dress like a flapper for her job because it was an ol’-timey theater, and it rocked because she’d come over to my house dressed like a flapper and smelling like buttered popcorn and we’d have sex. She was loud and sweaty; I like girls that sweat a lot during sex for some reason. Another guy humps the cornerpost, but on the inside against a turnbuckle this time. It’s XXXplicit Content. Their opponents are The Furies, who are in black pants and red t-shirts, rather bland after Sam Hayne and his big-tittied valet. Oh, they’ve got face paint on as well, and an Eagles entrance song, so they’re doing the Baseball Furies thing rather pitifully. They do paper, rocks, and scissors to see who starts. Okay, Furies will be longhaired guy and crewcut guy. Crewcut guy is starting. The XXXplicit gay dudes will be the blonde guy and the black-haired guy. The blonde guy is starting. Wait a second, these weird gimmicks are actually wrestling. Camera pulls away from match to some bald-headed black dude pointing at the ring in a “Bada Boom” t-shirt. The Furies hit a legsweep by the crewcut guy followed by a legdrop to the back of the brain by the big Brian Lee in Alabama haired guy.
BEER FIVE: Evil gay guys with tassles on their trunks keep cheating and making non-tag switches as ref valiantly holds back good guy Brian Lee in Alabama guy in baseball fury face paint. Furies win, and out comes that black dude, aka Skullcrusher and his partner “Too Phat” Jason Dukes. They wreak havoc, along with the gay team. Jason Dukes wears the largest fanny-pack I’ve ever seen, and forms the greatest team ever – a tall muscular black guy and a short fat white dude. Brian Lee in Alabama in Face Paint ON THE FUCKIN’ MIC! He declares he wants a title match against Skull & Dukes tonight, and the annoying guy in the front row jumps up and cheers. I think one time I was riding around with Jason Dukes and Skullcrusher looking for Skullcrusher’s cousin, Cleon, to buy a dovesack from. I was driving actually, but it was Jason’s car. He kept playing shitty Flaming Lips. Nobody really likes that shit, not in real life. Carmine DeSpirito comes out, a big greasy sleazy Italian guy who runs this promotion. He looks as disgusting as you’d expect a wrestling promoter to look, sort of a cross between Boomer and the big half of Penn and Teller. Annoying guy is talking shit to Carmine, and Carmine just watches him talk shit. Some old guy who I can’t remember the name of is the Commissioner, even though it was during the other tape I reviewed. Stupid beer, killing my brain things. Carmine is smoking a cig as the Commish guy talks, and Carmine flashes a devil’s horns at somebody in the crowd. That’s why Evil Guys are Faces. They hype tomorrow night, which sucks, because I’m watching tonight. However, they announce Bull Pain and he comes out and he cusses like he always does and he is El Duce of the Mentors long-lost brother. “Making us pay for our women, making us pay for our rides to the building…SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Ahh yes, nothing is better than Bull Pain on the micro. Some shithead ringside talks shit to Bull Pain, and Bull Pain says, “I’m in the ring, I’m getting paid.” Dude is ready to fight Bull Pain, which is great, but stupid. Annoying Guy talks at Pain, who disses Annoying Guy and crowd in bleachers claps. Bull Pain loves saying the crowd has a third grade education and is retarded. Now, Corporal Robinson comes out with a cigarette and no camouflage. He talks about how he’s been on top of the IWA for four years, and I fear this is more IWA/MAW feudery. Well, I knew it was, but I fear more long monologues on the mic by guys who are better served rolling blunts and cracking skulls than talking out loud on a live microphone.
BEER SIX: Intermission fading, and the announcer shows back up but nobody is in their seats. Seriously, there’s one old chick in camera shot. Chuckie Smooth comes out, and he’s great and he makes people clap and he has a Hardy Boyz beard going on. Weird, I’m used to him lapdancing with guys and wearing fur and looking 12 years old. His opponent is CM Punk, and though Punk is a stupid straight edger, I excite myself towards beer-drinking in this match-up. Punk is talking shit to some young dumbass in a visor and a basketball jersey. Punk should always be heel and wigger kids should always have fights started with them because wrestling show wiggers are the stupidest wiggers of all. They don’t smoke pot and they think wearing a Larry Johnson Charlotte Hornets jersey is killer. Punk makes fun of some guy, he’s sitting by himself, and Smooth calls on chicks to go sit with the dude. “What? You’re gonna call me fat? Look at you, you’re an oval. Hunh? You rotund fucking fat bitch.” Man, I’m all about this type of nonsense, especially when the bleachers break out a “What a whore” chants. Punk and Smooth are tripping the fuck out. But they’re gonna do it “old school style” says Punk. Somebody bangs a hammer on a frying pan and the match starts. Some chick pulls her top up and bounces her tits around in the crowd. God Bless American and it’s Indy Wrasslin’ Mother Fuckers. Of course, the crowd chants “One more time!” and she hugs her boyfriend while smoking a cigarette and he walks off, probably in disgust, so she pulls her top up one more time. Then again for a cameraman, then she walks off. And Chuckie Smooth starts a “Tits! Tits! Tits!” chant. Punk gets ranaed outside, then catches a jumping Smooth, holds him forever and smashes him against opposite ringposts, and then mocks the crowd. Hahaha, he’s a straight edger but he has a Pepsi logo tattooed on his arm. That shit’s funnier than fuck.
BEER SEVEN: Smooth gets pushed into some chairs onto the dirt. They get back in the ring and Punk hooks up what looks to be a Sting leglock thing, but he picks Smooth up and swings him around in that precarious held position. Then Punk drops him, holding that position. Chuckie Smooth tries to rally himself to the ropes by slapping the ring and the ref calls it a tap-out, like the words on Tito Ortiz’ ass. What a shitty ending. The Furies are back, with that Eagles song again. “Somewhere out there on that horizon…” or whatever. I bet that damned Brian Lee in Puerto Rico haired guy picked this song. Their opponents are the Old School Express – Skullcrusher and “Too Phat” Jason Dukes. Man, some skinny dude in a shiny vest leading big tall black Skullcrusher and short fat white Dukes to the ring is like some guy leading folks into a Penthouse Letter. Short fat Jason Dukes is twelve times better than I ever could’ve expected. They double pound the crewcut Fury, and have color-coordinated outfits to boot. Dukes & Skull are great together, oddly enough. Crewcut fury gives the super-hot tag to Brian Lee in SMW wearing Fury-ous Facepaint. He nails all sorts of clotheslines and boots and fists and the tides turn. Chicago’s Brian Lee accidentally clotheslines the ref, and I foresee chicanery of an unbelievable magnitude. You can hear somebody start their motorcycles up behind the bleachers and drive off, real loud, Harleys, and I can only hope Sam Hayne’s valet is driving one of them. Did I tell you how much I love her? I think that chick showing her tits in the crowd is her cousin. Wait, somehow the Furies won, and Annoying Guy is excited as fuck. I bet they lost them back the next night. More motorcycles leave. Some fat dude comes out and they do a real long “we’re-all-getting-ready-to-turn-on-each-other” thing while the fat guy on the mic holds the heel nonsense together. Out with the new, in with the old. Suplex on shitty guy in vest by fat-ass Jason Dukes, followed by big evil frogsplash by black dude. “The NEW Old School Express,” says the new manager in a strange twist of wording. Three-way dance for the MAW title. “Sexy” Ace Steel is first out, intense as always. You know, I’ve never seen a Steel/CM Punk match, but I’d bet anything that Steel trained Punk, because I can see the similarities. Here comes Colt Cabana, with his red visor upside down and backwards. I hate me some Colt Cabana. Carmine leads out Dysfunction. I am drunk. I think I have failed to mention in this review how Carmine DeSpirito looks a lot like Boomer, who has fallen off the face of the Earth. Again. Ace Steel and Carmine are having a great antagonistic confrontation thing where the stupid evil manager says dumb things to get the crowd all riled up like Pavlov’s dogs. Where’d that tit girl go? Annoying Guy is making his front row presence be felt again. I hope Carmine throws a fireball on him. Dysfunction takes a seat on the dirt beside some wigger kid as Steel and Cabana await his entry into this 3-Way Dance, for the Mid-American Title no less. Didn’t Dutch Mantel used to always fight Buddy Landel for that thing? Steel and Cabana are wrestling, while Dys sits ringside being full of tomfoolery. I kind of dig Dysfunction not being in there, because Steel and Cabana can do the great technical shit, yet one can be the good guy and the other can be a dickhead. Dys will just add goofiness to it. Then again he lets them knock the shit out of him center ring for a while, and this kid seems very sadomasochistic, which should carry him far in professional wrestling, if he starts using “enhancements”.
BEER EIGHT: Basically, the match has settled into Cabana & Steel double teaming Dysfunction with an array of scientificalness. I expect this to disintegrate into nastiness any second though. I love how Ace will lick his hand before giving the big fat evil chest-reddening slaps in the corner. I also love how Dysfunction will moaningly groan after moves. It’s like a quality worked snuff film in the foreplay stages. Yep, there goes the disintegration, as Cabana has Dysfunction up and Ace dropkicks Cabana in the leg. Dysfunction is a long fuckin’ word when you’re drunk and cold. The crowd chants “We want blood!” because they have been sitting in a baseball field in Wisconsin for two hours and nobody has bled yet. They’re back to double teaming Dys, and he’s gradually getting more naked, going from t-shirt to singlet and now the straps are down. Ace and Colt, I’m a first-name basis ya know, they push each other off at one-counts on the kid, then start punching each other. I guess this is one of those only one pinfall deals that seem like such a rip-off. Actually, no it’s not, as Ace just pinned Colt Cabana, and it’s down to two guys. Maybe they both just let their egos get the best of them in that heated MAW Heavyweight title moment where Dysfunction would’ve been eliminated. It’s understandable, that’s the most prestigious wrestling belt in the stage of Wisconsin, and maybe Chicago as well. Ref bump, Ace pin where Colt counts. Dys goes to the top, and nails a missile dropkick that sloppily causes Colt to go into the corner. Colt figures it was Ace being a dick with his back turned, so he fucks up Ace, Dys hits a flying legdrop, and the bald ref wakes up. What a screwball ending; but then again it was a two-day thing and this is the first day, so I guess on what I’ll never see, Colt Cabana and Ace Steel have an 8 and three-quarters star match. Steel chases Cabana around the dirt infield now, then into the parking lot out of vision. Hahaha, Colt just did a weird Scooby Doo scared run into the bathroom that served as dressing room. Shit, that’s all she wrote, with half a beer left.
EPILOGUE: FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: This was a tough decision, but I have to go with Sam Hayne. He had pentagrams, 666, a goblet of flammable liquid, a hot valet with big tits in a leather top, he wore a mask, and he was a babyface. Quality like that is hard to deny. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: The tit girl. I know I know, it sucks that when guys like CM Punk and Ace Steel are busting ass, great workers, masters of the professional wrestling and all for meager scraps of money if they’re lucky, why would I choose a drunk whore showing her tits? Because I would much rather meet a drunk whore showing her tits than any of those guys. Magnum T.A. vs. Tully Blanchard in the cage at Starrcade, I-Quit match, is probably my all-time favorite match, and I could be watching that for the first time ever after getting amnesia but remembering that I was a wrestling nerd, and just getting into it where they’ve gone all bloody on each other, and if a drunk whore showed her tits, I’d cut that shit off forever. What I am saying is that real women showing their tits is better than wrestling. Now there’s some confusion in this equation for me. Let me explain further. Highly produced pornography is creepy, siliconish, and as despised by me as the WWF. It’s gross and unnatural and lacks emotion. I would watch a good Ace Steel vs. CM Punk match rather than watch a highly produced porn, which I would rather watch than a WWF program. Well, I might watch the porn, even if highly produced before the Steel/Punk match if I hadn’t masturbated in a few days. But then it would only take me like fifteen minutes, and that’s if I was trying to be romantic with myself, you know, gradually getting the pants off and shit. But an amateur porn would always beat out the indy wrestling. Period. Then again, sometimes not, like if I’ve masturbated three times at work and me and the ol’ lady were trying to have another kid as well. But mostly. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: CM Punk. The guy is a great wrestler, but he’s also jaded as shit, which makes him the perfect heel. I think any promoter that makes him try to be a good guy is a fuckin’ idiot, especially considering most indy crowds are drug-addled alcoholics anyways. A straight edge guy is the perfect heel.
Saturday, May 10
Thursday, May 8
12-Pack Review: CWF 09/28/02
BEER ONE: Man oh man, have I been slacking on finishing this tournament of reviews of things. Then again, it’s basic modus operanid de Confederate Mack to have a million great ideas and never completely execute any of them. It’s why I’m sitting in front of an old computer in a shitty room with no heat (stupid baseboard heat), wearing a fuckin’ jacket and an Uzbeki terrorist crocheted contraption on my fuckin’ dreadlocked head. Keepin’ it real, baby. (“Keepin’ it real” is a way many folks justify how fuckin’ pathetically stupid their life is, and count me in.) Anyways, I got a couple of tapes of the Carolina Wrestling Federation out of North Cackylacky from Statmark Video today. Statmark is the shit, nice nice viewability, and the dude is cool. It took me two or three tries to finally get my money together and put the right name on the check or whatever, but the man came through. If you’ve ever wanted to dip into the seedy indyness of North Carolina, from the glory days of the Hardy Boyz getting out of their backyard, all the way up to now, Statmark is the man for it. Remember now, before ECW’s rise in the mid ‘90s, which gave a rebirth to the northeastern indys, North Carolina was the preeminent indy place in America. Back when WCW and WWF were strong, relatively speaking, in the early ‘90s, and indys were few and far between, North Carolina would have a couple of indy shows EVERY FUCKIN’ WEEKEND! But that’s to be expected, because wrestling is religion, with Ric Flair the Jesus figure of true believers, and North Carolina is God’s country, wrestling-wise, dirt track-wise, and otherwise. Anyways, the CWF, I think was started up by Don and Rocky Kernodle, the latter being a Mid-Atlantic jobber and the former making it all the way to NWA World tag champion back when those straps actually meant a shit. When I think of Don Kernodle, I always think of those shiny tag belts, and Ricky Steamboat tricking Kernodle into tearing his own jacket to shreds. Man, that was some great TV back in the day. Anyways, we have a wonderful card entitled Triumph from the CWF, in wonderful Graham, North Carolina, where if the pattern holds true, the factories have wonderful plywood windows and there are a lot of check cashing joints on the main strip. Pawn shops, too. And strip mall churches. There is nothing more impoverished American than the strip mall church, because only old half-empty strip malls become cheap enough for a church to afford, or resort to, and that means sharing a strip with a mom-and-pop video store, some sort of five-and-dimer with “Dollar” in the title, and, if you’re lucky, a Mexican restaurant with Atlanta Braves posters on the wall. Your ref looks like Thalmus Rasulala’s little brother, and comes out to the theme to Good Times. Automatic class, which brings drinking, which makes the review better on the measuring stick we use here.
BEER TWO: Ahh, sweet delicious beer. It’s snowing LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER outside, which means no work tomorrow, though it is payday, so maybe I’ll wreck my car again trying to pay the electric bill. The United Nations of Devastation, which is a fat black dude with a Canadian flag and weird hair and a blonde kid with a Swedish flag, and their partner is a really fat white dude with an evil redneck beard and electrical tape around his wrists called Corey Edsel. The Southside Playas, who spell their name $outh$ide, but I won’t, because I never bothered to give Too Short the same credit, so why should they get it, come out. Their music gets glitched on the cheap CD player and everybody has a laugh. Then their partner, The Bounty Hunter, musclefies his way out to Mystikal, and we have a six-man tag match featuring four black guys and a Swedish dude and some fat white guy. Man, I love North Carolina indy wrestling. Some hick in a farm hat is holding up a piece of construction paper that says “$outh$ide Playas is the best. We love you.” And the Playas hold it up and motherfuckers who always say the South is racist need to recognize that where different races have been together, and poor a lot of the time, for a long time, they get along a lot better than they do in fucked-up sterile white places like Ohio and Indiana and south Jersey. I would assume the UN team and the big guy are bad because any red-blooded country fellow is gonna distrust a UN type. Remember John Birch, brothers and sisters. Yep, The Bounty Hunter gets love from the crowd in the top turnbuckle, arms outstretched position. Edsel throws in the Swedish kid and The Bounty Hunter calls says, “Looks like some lunch meat to me.” My grandma would understand, which is something most wrestling can’t do for her anymore. When wrestling turned it’s back on old ladies who wanted to believe, it started to suck. The Swedish kid is outclassed by The Bounty Hunter, who is pretty good thus far. One Playa press slammed by Bounty onto heels outside, no one budges, heels smile, second Playa is press slammed and the walls come tumbling down. I love that bit. The fat black guy from Canada tries to call a 20 second time-out using the NCAA ref signal for it, which is a nice touch on the heel calling a time out thing. The Playas take the fat black guy and flapjack the fuck out of him,and I wonder how he found a Raptors shirt in his size. Evil redneck foreman Corey Edsel is in now. Actually, upon closer look, I’m not sure if the fat redneck is a redneck at all, him being of a PN Newsish complexion. He is big as fuck. This is a fun opening match, with not much incredible seriousness about it, preparing the crowd for a family night of wrestling fun. I can’t complain. Wow, Bounty Hunter got a rocket launcher style bodyslam of Edsel from the corner; even if Edsel launched his own 300 plus lbs. into the move, Hunter was strong enough to hold the weight long enough for it to look convincing. That’s a big dude that evil Corey Edsel. The black Canadian half of the UN of Devastation has some of the weirdest hair I’ve ever seen, wispy curls just on top, shaved clean on sides and back, giving him this weird garden patch on top of his head. Bounty ducks an errant Swedish elbow off the ropes and the Swede almost kills himself in the ropes. The Southside Playas are calling the ref Dolomite now. We’ve got six-man chicanery going on now, and I imagine this will end in some dastardliness. Bounty ducks! Fat black guy hits fat other guy with Canadian flag! And Bounty Hunter scores the pinfall over Edsel! Good wins! Good wins! PA plays Mystikal! The Man Right Here! The Man Right Here! Okay, enough exclamations. The UN tries to explain it was all an accident, so Edsel beats them down, I guess turning face since the crowd cheers. Wow, I just watched two really big fat guys do a sit-down powerbomb sequence. Props to the black Canadian and Corey Edsel on that athletic prowess. BOOO! Fuck the United Nations of Devastation. BOOO!
BEER THREE: Some little dirtbike racing kid comes out and grabs the mic, and he has a Carolina twang, and this little dude is calling somebody out. The show won’t go on, he promises, until they get to confront each other. Ahh, the dirtbiker is Mikael Yamaha, who rules, I’ve seen him before. His nemesis is Sexton Tyler, accompanied by the lovely Brandi Alexander, who awakens the milfhunter in me. The commissioner is called out, and you can always tell an indy commissioner because they wear dark dress shirts with ties and are fat. Yamaha says, “And speaking of high, I’m fixing to put my foot high up in your rear end,” and the crowd OOOOHs. God, I love North Carolina. Yamaha and Tyler have a locker room emptying pull-apart. You see, they absolutely hate each other. The only way to settle their differences is a grudge match, inside the squared circle. Your second red comes out to “Welcome to the Jungle” and is short and smiley. Whoa! El Hijo del Willow the Whisp exists! He’s got some guy in a shirt that says Slacker as his partner. Their opponents are a pair of volleyball players. I kid you not, that’s their gimmick. They have glasses and a volleyball and come out to “California Love”. Willow Jr. and his partner are heels, and I am so fuckin’ prepared to root for Willow Jr. Wait, wait, I just rememberied I looked up the match listing. Ahh, the volleyball players are the California Swat Team, Zack Lee and Ben Black. Kenny James is the slacker, and the Kamikaze Kid is the son of Willow the Whisp. I hope Kamikaze spikes these California boys into the fuckin’ concrete, motherfucker. I hate the California Swat Team. I hate them. They look like the bad guys of every skating movie made in the 1980s. Wow, these guys are working on a speed three times as fast as that first match. The volleyball players aren’t too bad, but I still hate them. NO ONE HAS TAGGED IN THE KAMIKAZE KID YET! Tag! So far, he’s gotten tossed around and done some Mulkey-ish flips to sell things, which is great. Here we go, he takes control after some comedy shit. He tags out, though. Fuck that, don’t come in the ring wearing some Ultimo Dragon Fear This Style mask and not flip on your fuckin’ brain. The volleyball guys are wrestling in those new-fangled velcro sneakers that look like robot socks. I hate those fuckin’ type of shoes. Everything was better in my day, even when I was wearing Rose’s brand bobo Jordan knock-offs. And Rustler jeans. I hate Kid Rock for even pretending that Rustler is cool. That shit caused many a fight back in the day, having to wear fuckin’ Rustlers. Hey, Kenny James hit an actual arm around the head bulldog on a volleyball fucker, but only got a two-count. Fuck, volleyball team does a double roll-under-the-clothesline off-the-ropes, then jump and superkick the fuck out of a guy move. It was double tough. Thalmus Rasulala’s brother is back out, followed by Slick Ric Converse, complete with shiny jacket, Nelly band-aid, gold chain, hooker girlfriend in punk rock style studded belt, and goofy manager in a Hawaiian print shirt. His name is Special K, and he works at a video store for shitty pay because he thinks he makes up for it in free rentals of video games, which he plays at the house he shares with his girlfriend and they smoke a lot of weed. Sometimes he works construction, too, if times get tough. Converse’s Carolinas Cruiserweight belt is very stiff, like many indy titles, and leads me to believe they should be buried in the back yard for a while to get that used looseness that a good title belt has. American Steel Ninja had me for a second, looking like a ninja, and while I drank beer, he took off his head thing, so now he’s just a white guy in a black karateman suit. How can Converse win, when the other guy is trained in the motherfuckin’ Stealth Art of Invisibility, which is not so much actually being physically invisible, as it is misdirecting your enemy combatant’s vision. I know this, because I train ninjas. No shit. Let’s see, one guy has a Nelly band-aid and pleather shorts on, the other is a fuckin’ NINJA. I guess I’ll root for the ninja. He’s actually not bad, either.
BEER FOUR: I think I accidentally drank two beers without changing the bold lead-in, but there’s no way to truly tell. It’s just my word vs. his word, so I’ll leave it as is. Evil Ric Converse is in control at this point, thrust chopping the ninja in the throat. The ninja’s shirt is now undone, so he looks like a guy fighting after a high school dance in the parking lot now. Being a ninja, he does a lot of kicks. Perhaps I’d like Low-Ki more if, instead of being some pouty-faced little Mongoloid he was a Puerto Rican ninja. I imagine Puerto Rican ninjas could fuck some shit up, and have little tiny PR flags, complete with tiny gold tassles, hanging from their rear view mirrors. The crowd is chanting, “Ninja! Ninja! Ninja!” This match is competent enough, but it lacks that something extra, namely excitement. It’s like going through the emotions. Both guys are good and all, but the crowd’s not into it seuper-heavy…wait, the Ninja is doing the Karate Kid kick. He got him! Botched ending as ref has to break at two on a kick-out even though he was supposed to go over to interfering manager. Chick is on apron. Converse hits some crazy running lucha thing, and wins the match. But Converse makes a point to go around the ring and talk shit to one fan in particular, a black kid in the first row. That’s quality heelmanship, and I’ll drink to that. Some fat chick in stylish clothes comes out with that same pot-smoking video store manager. Wait, she’s talking shit to a volunteer firefighter in the front row, and the PA speakers are crackling. The fat chick is named Gee Star. This match is for the FWA World Women’s Title, a 3-way. Brandi Alexander is the mother I’d like to fuck who was with Sexton Tyler earlier. She is very hot, like Sherri Martel without all the weird major wrestling corporation plastic surgery, a real look and real hot. I love her. Amber Holly is your defending champ and has on motorcross style pants and a cut-off top. I might love her more than Alexander, but I’m not sure. It’s like partying at some place, and the cool friend of the mom and the hot daughter. The hot daughter is probably hotter in a purely physical sense, but she’s not gonna “party” like the friend of the mom. The Commish guy in the dark shirt comes out again to kick Hawaiian print shirt dude from ringside, and Sexton Tyler too. Alexander and Gee Star have formed an evil moon alliance against Amber Holly, who’s breast are natural and bouncy like a real women should be. There is something to be said for a woman in motorcross pants and a cut-off top. You know, I’m trying to not make this completely sexual, but I am a human male, and pretty much all I think about when I see human females is sex. It’s really true. Women sometimes think they can guilt men into not thinking sexual shit all the time, but it’s our nature. Women would be better off accepting that and instead of trying to brainwash us into stifling it, accept it and encourage us to control it. That old “you can’t contain it, you can only hope to control it” shit. Man, Amber Holly just threw some of the worst punches I’ve ever seen on Gee Star. Gee breaks up her evil alliance with a clothesline on Alexander. They just had an awesome thing where Brandi never got tagged in, Holly rolled up Gee, got the two-count when Brandi broke up with a roll-up on Holly, and the ref didn’t count, saying she never got tagged in. That’s quality three-way refereeing right there. Sexton Tyler sneaks in, accidentally KOs Gee Star, Holly kicks him, all sorts of shit is going on. Brandi Alexander hits the spinebuster and legs pulled over the shoulders ultra-sexy pin on Amber Holly, and that was great for a women’s match, which unfortunately to me, is like being a great special ed teacher. I’m a pig, but it’s all good, because I can cook and I treat my wife like a queen, orally pleasing her regularly, and my daughter’s bed has a “IN GODDESS WE TRUST” sticker on it. Sexton Tyler comes out, with a shiny shirt over his black tank top. Shiny shirt syndrome, plus DMX theme music, it’s the dark side of North Carolina.
BEER FIVE: Mikael Yamaha comes out, full throttle, full motocross style, and he’s very good. The great thing about North Carolina indys is these guys look MTV cool, then you hear them talk and it’s straight Carolina. I wonder if Vince ever sent the Hardys and Hurricane Helms and Shannon Moore to speech classes? Matt Hardy still has that twang slightly, if you listen. The one thing that always amazes me about wrestling is a good guy can tolerate the barely bearable pain of an abdominal stretch when stuck in it regular style. But when the bad guy reaches over to grab the ropes for extra leverage, it causes immense pain and the good guy screams like a little girl having a dream about a monster building a brick wall in the doorway to her parent’s bedroom. Hahaha, Tyler goes in the first row and throws some dude in a camo shirt off his chair, and while he grabs it, the chick sitting next to him grabs the chair too to cause difficulty. That’s Carolina. Brandi Alexander is out, and she smashes Yamaha with her title belt. The groggy well-bumped ref comes out and counts, but they don’t get all the way. Where is Amber Holly? Then Tyler gets a clean victory, which is weird for a bad guy to get in a grudge match. HEY! Here comes Amber Holly, and she’s throwing more bad punches onto the lovely head of Brandi Alexander. “That’s alright. You got something comin’ to you,” yells Holly in the sweet twang of the Southern girl that makes me fuckin’ crazy in the mind. Holy fuck, it’s Otto Schwanz, who is a personal favorite of mine. He was the best Dupp brother ever, and I’m glad he’s a fake German again. He’s big and scary and muscular and probably has weird personal problems that have held him back, “politically”, in the wrestling business. And holy fuck again, it’s Pat Cusick working as a good guy. He’s always been the perennial heel in Virginia, maybe a tweener at best. Now here he is against the ultra-evil Otto Schwanz, shaking hands with old ladies in the first row. Cusick is good, I’ve always thought him to be quality wrestling entertainment, even with his shiny cargo pants. They do a great collar-and-elbow, great enough to remind me how nobody really does a good collar-and-elbow start to a match anymore, with guys dropping to one knee, back up, dropping, pushing around, in the ropes, breaking, do it again type shit. This is a great slow building match so far, with Cusick staying on top for the most part. Of course, Schwanz can’t make a clean break in the corner, and he takes the lead, long enough to get it turned in a high backdrop off the ropes momentum turner. This is a very old school match. Wait, fat volunteer firefighter pushes Schwanz ringside and Otto does a complete roll backwards. Either that was worked or Otto’s a fuckin’ champ for putting the fan over like that.
BEER SIX: Some chick in the crowd keeps yelling, “Otto! You like Frito’s?” Schwanz can sell like a motherfucker. By the way, whatever the fuck happened to Joey Abs? He used to be Venom in Carolina and had these awesome singlets that said “GOD FEARS VENOM” which is something I always knew, from the first time I heard “Black Metal”. Shit, I found that other beer, over by the stereo, half-finished.
BEER SEVEN: I really don’t understand why Otto Schwanz is not bigger in wrestling. He’s a great seller, a great offensive guy, great at working with the crowd to get some cheap heat, which is something most people can’t do. Guys tune out the crowd a lot of times, but when you incorporate the crowd, it just makes them feel more a part of things and get even more psyched to boo or cheer you. Umm, this match is great, but Cusick powerbombs Schwanz and his trunks come down and he’s got a g-string style going now, no shit, and he finishes the match that way. I’m sure he wanted to, to show off his physique, as he came out with his straps down like a pissed off Jerry Lawler to start the match. No, he pulled his trunks back over his ass cheeks as confronted Thalmus Rasulala’s brother over slow counts. Cusick controls the thing now, as I pay attention. Otto Schwanz and Dirty Money would make the perfect indy heel team; all they’d need is a hot valet/manager. Hey, fuck, Schwanz stole a victory real quick, using the damn ropes for leverage. Schwanz is also great at selling how tired he is after his struggle of a match, which is something most workers overlook. Make the shit seem exhausting, motherfuckers. The final event is the Indy Rumble – 30 dudes coming out at 45 second intervals. Slick Ric Converse is first; and Brad Bain is number two, or at least I think that’s what they said. I saw this guy on the worst wrestling show I’ve ever seen a month back or so. I think the next guy was Brad Attitude, which would be a terrible name, so I hope I made it up. Somebody has an airhorn, giving things a Puerto Rican feel. I expect El Bronco to be next out. Instead it’s the Kamikaze Kid. I got a better look at Converse’s finisher as he just dropped Kamikaze on his brain, and it’s a nice finisher. Kenny James is out at the #5 spot. He fights his own partner, and nobody has been eliminated yet. #6 in: one of the Southside Playas. Holy shit! First guy out is the Kamikaze Kid, who tries a ho train into the corner but gets flipped and takes an insane bump to the floor. He just earned his fucked up mask, and I apologize for my earlier negative comments. #7 in: American Steel Ninja, who apparently has some unsettled business with Brad Attitude. Fuck, I think Attitude just broke Ninja’s knee. Man, this is probably the best indy royal rumble I’ve ever seen, already, with like 23 guys still to come. #2 out: Karate Kid kick by the white ninja eliminates Brad Attitude. #8 in is the Swedish guy. People are getting eliminated and shit, so forget my whole who’s coming in and out attempt. I’m gonna just try and hold on till the end. Wow, Iceman somebody or another cleared the ring. Nite-stic Eddie Brown comes out next, with only Converse and the Iceman guy in the ring. Nite-stic rules. My sister’s ex-boyfriend is in next, in his baggy pants, and I’m sure he’s got Yngwie Malmsteen CDs in the back to psyche himself up to. Hey, Gee Star, that fat chick, is in next. This adds a new dimension to this nonsense.
BEER EIGHT: Some dude comes in, and Converse holds him while Gee Star lays a couple of bows to his face. Very nice. Wow, some hard-punching uber-redneck comes out next – a Dutch Mantel for the indy year 2002, complete with confederate flag tattooery. He punches the chick and eliminates her. It is a battle royal, even by royal standards, so all sorts of shit is going on that one camera can’t follow, much less a drunk man watching the viewpoint of one camera on tape. Carolina Mantel is grizzled and thirtysomething and screams at the camera. Corey Edsel is in the ring, destroying everybody. When will the indy stars stop coming out? Hey, it’s Amber Holly, she can battle my royal any day. Seriously, all sexism aside, she’ s cuter than fuck. Nite-stic leaves Edsel and Carolina Mantel to each other, and he goes for Amber Holly, with much lamping. Wait, no, they both stand there as Edsel and the Uber-redneck smack the loving shit out of each other, center-ring. Now, they punch each other, and it’s beautifully perfect. Edsel drops some little dude on his brain, and I realize that the six-man match was not a good place for Edsel, as he’s pretty fuckin’ good for a Big Pun-sized motherfucker. Sexton Tyler enters, and we’re up to six men at once, though he immediately tosses Amber Holly, so now it’s five. I hate to be the Gorilla Monsoon of this thing, but there’s no way any three of these guys are gonna toss Edsel over the top rope. I’m sure the black Canadian isn’t in this thing because he couldn’t take an over-the-top toss. Mikael Yamaha enters, and springs off the Uber-redneck’s shoulders to destroy Tyler, getting his come-uppance for his earlier shenanigans in their one-on-one match. The little dude is the perfect Spike Dudley bumper to Corey Edsel’s immenseness. Johnny Blaze, not the Method Man, is in next. Little dude is tossed. And people still come out, some little spitfire redneck to “Brass Monkey”, looking like Henderson, North Carolina’s answer to Jamie Dundee. Most importantly, the Uber-redneck is still in there. THE LUMBEE WARRIOR! NORTH CAROLINA’S ETERNAL INDY INDIAN! You can tell he’s a Native American because he wears lots of tassles on his ring gear. “Crazy Train” brings out a big, fat guy with a mullet. Yamaha gets gorilla-slammed by the big mullet guy. God, he chops the fuck out of some small dude; this big guy is mean and vicious and would murder me in a bar fight. I love small-town North Carolina, with signs on all store windows saying you can’t take guns inside. Shit, the black Canadian comes out. Now we’ve got 3 immense figures in the ring, tow of which will have to get tossed. Lumbee Warrior is tossed, just the latest chapter in the sad sage of his people. The black Canadian has a mighty boot to the neck of the Uber-redneck. That fuckin’ Canadian, he tossed the Uber-redneck through the second rope to the outside. Fuckin’ cheatin’ ass Canadian. Wait, no, he’s not eliminated. This ain’t Toronto, fat boy. Wow, the big mullet guy hits a clothesline on the fat Canadian black guy and he does this nifty sideways Mulkey spin to sell it, pretty nifty for a giant guy. The Bounty Hunter is out, and he has to be the last guy, he has to.
BEER NINE: YES! UBER-REDNECK BODYSLAMS GIANT BLACK CANADIAN IN A HULK HOGANESQUE MOMENT! And he does a redneck stink face, and guides the big man from north of the border over the top rope. Some tall skinny guy enters in a 1000% Guapo shirt, so he’s got to be good people. Enough time has passed that I think this is it for participants. We’ve got seven or eight guys left. Shit, Uber-redneck and the big mullet guy are both tossed in rapid sequence, leaving me little to root for in this thing. I guess I’ll pull for the skinny fucker in the 1000% Guapo shirt. Nite-stic kicks the fuck out of The Bounty Hunter, who is very Booker T-ish in a good way. Eddie Brown and The Bounty Hunter against each other is great, and deserves to be on my TV more in-depth. Bounty Hunter gone, leaving skinny guapo guy, Corey Edsel, Eddie Brown, and the fourth guy just got tossed, so three guys, yeah. Eddie Brown was tossed as well, so it’s just this skinny guy in a 1000% Guapo shirt and the behemoth Corey Edsel. Oh hey, that’s the Gemini Kid, who should not be trying a reverse rana from the corner off the apron because, yep, Edsel flung the Gemini legs from around his neck and the Gemini Kid goes brain first to the floor and Corey Edsel is your Carolina Rumble champion. Pot-smoking video store manager comes out to hype him, and Edsel slobbers him with a boot to the face. That was pretty fuckin’ cool. And I’ve got half a beer left.
EPILOGUE: FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: I gotta get Statmark to tell me who that old school Uber-redneck guy was, because he fuckin’ ruled, and I think I’d drive at least a couple hours if I could see him and Preston Quinn knock the shit out of each other in a town that had a bar next to the hotel. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: Otto Schwanz. The motherfucker is good, and has the steroids physique, complete with acne on his back. Why can’t he get another shot at the big time? Goddamn that Paul Heyman and his stupid Dupp brothers gimmick. Mike Maverick, Otto Schwanz, and Cham Pain were all Carolina superstars, with their choice of nubile young rats, and Heyman’s northern ass was threatened by that, so he turned them into inbred nose-pickers and ruined it all and put a scar on all three’s wrestling resume for the rest of their lives. And now Trevor Rhodes is getting caught up in it as well. It’s a fuckin’ shame. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: The American Steel Ninja. Though he should wear some face-concealing swankness, the Karate Kid kick, twice in one night, is fuckin' dope.
BEER TWO: Ahh, sweet delicious beer. It’s snowing LIKE A MOTHERFUCKER outside, which means no work tomorrow, though it is payday, so maybe I’ll wreck my car again trying to pay the electric bill. The United Nations of Devastation, which is a fat black dude with a Canadian flag and weird hair and a blonde kid with a Swedish flag, and their partner is a really fat white dude with an evil redneck beard and electrical tape around his wrists called Corey Edsel. The Southside Playas, who spell their name $outh$ide, but I won’t, because I never bothered to give Too Short the same credit, so why should they get it, come out. Their music gets glitched on the cheap CD player and everybody has a laugh. Then their partner, The Bounty Hunter, musclefies his way out to Mystikal, and we have a six-man tag match featuring four black guys and a Swedish dude and some fat white guy. Man, I love North Carolina indy wrestling. Some hick in a farm hat is holding up a piece of construction paper that says “$outh$ide Playas is the best. We love you.” And the Playas hold it up and motherfuckers who always say the South is racist need to recognize that where different races have been together, and poor a lot of the time, for a long time, they get along a lot better than they do in fucked-up sterile white places like Ohio and Indiana and south Jersey. I would assume the UN team and the big guy are bad because any red-blooded country fellow is gonna distrust a UN type. Remember John Birch, brothers and sisters. Yep, The Bounty Hunter gets love from the crowd in the top turnbuckle, arms outstretched position. Edsel throws in the Swedish kid and The Bounty Hunter calls says, “Looks like some lunch meat to me.” My grandma would understand, which is something most wrestling can’t do for her anymore. When wrestling turned it’s back on old ladies who wanted to believe, it started to suck. The Swedish kid is outclassed by The Bounty Hunter, who is pretty good thus far. One Playa press slammed by Bounty onto heels outside, no one budges, heels smile, second Playa is press slammed and the walls come tumbling down. I love that bit. The fat black guy from Canada tries to call a 20 second time-out using the NCAA ref signal for it, which is a nice touch on the heel calling a time out thing. The Playas take the fat black guy and flapjack the fuck out of him,and I wonder how he found a Raptors shirt in his size. Evil redneck foreman Corey Edsel is in now. Actually, upon closer look, I’m not sure if the fat redneck is a redneck at all, him being of a PN Newsish complexion. He is big as fuck. This is a fun opening match, with not much incredible seriousness about it, preparing the crowd for a family night of wrestling fun. I can’t complain. Wow, Bounty Hunter got a rocket launcher style bodyslam of Edsel from the corner; even if Edsel launched his own 300 plus lbs. into the move, Hunter was strong enough to hold the weight long enough for it to look convincing. That’s a big dude that evil Corey Edsel. The black Canadian half of the UN of Devastation has some of the weirdest hair I’ve ever seen, wispy curls just on top, shaved clean on sides and back, giving him this weird garden patch on top of his head. Bounty ducks an errant Swedish elbow off the ropes and the Swede almost kills himself in the ropes. The Southside Playas are calling the ref Dolomite now. We’ve got six-man chicanery going on now, and I imagine this will end in some dastardliness. Bounty ducks! Fat black guy hits fat other guy with Canadian flag! And Bounty Hunter scores the pinfall over Edsel! Good wins! Good wins! PA plays Mystikal! The Man Right Here! The Man Right Here! Okay, enough exclamations. The UN tries to explain it was all an accident, so Edsel beats them down, I guess turning face since the crowd cheers. Wow, I just watched two really big fat guys do a sit-down powerbomb sequence. Props to the black Canadian and Corey Edsel on that athletic prowess. BOOO! Fuck the United Nations of Devastation. BOOO!
BEER THREE: Some little dirtbike racing kid comes out and grabs the mic, and he has a Carolina twang, and this little dude is calling somebody out. The show won’t go on, he promises, until they get to confront each other. Ahh, the dirtbiker is Mikael Yamaha, who rules, I’ve seen him before. His nemesis is Sexton Tyler, accompanied by the lovely Brandi Alexander, who awakens the milfhunter in me. The commissioner is called out, and you can always tell an indy commissioner because they wear dark dress shirts with ties and are fat. Yamaha says, “And speaking of high, I’m fixing to put my foot high up in your rear end,” and the crowd OOOOHs. God, I love North Carolina. Yamaha and Tyler have a locker room emptying pull-apart. You see, they absolutely hate each other. The only way to settle their differences is a grudge match, inside the squared circle. Your second red comes out to “Welcome to the Jungle” and is short and smiley. Whoa! El Hijo del Willow the Whisp exists! He’s got some guy in a shirt that says Slacker as his partner. Their opponents are a pair of volleyball players. I kid you not, that’s their gimmick. They have glasses and a volleyball and come out to “California Love”. Willow Jr. and his partner are heels, and I am so fuckin’ prepared to root for Willow Jr. Wait, wait, I just rememberied I looked up the match listing. Ahh, the volleyball players are the California Swat Team, Zack Lee and Ben Black. Kenny James is the slacker, and the Kamikaze Kid is the son of Willow the Whisp. I hope Kamikaze spikes these California boys into the fuckin’ concrete, motherfucker. I hate the California Swat Team. I hate them. They look like the bad guys of every skating movie made in the 1980s. Wow, these guys are working on a speed three times as fast as that first match. The volleyball players aren’t too bad, but I still hate them. NO ONE HAS TAGGED IN THE KAMIKAZE KID YET! Tag! So far, he’s gotten tossed around and done some Mulkey-ish flips to sell things, which is great. Here we go, he takes control after some comedy shit. He tags out, though. Fuck that, don’t come in the ring wearing some Ultimo Dragon Fear This Style mask and not flip on your fuckin’ brain. The volleyball guys are wrestling in those new-fangled velcro sneakers that look like robot socks. I hate those fuckin’ type of shoes. Everything was better in my day, even when I was wearing Rose’s brand bobo Jordan knock-offs. And Rustler jeans. I hate Kid Rock for even pretending that Rustler is cool. That shit caused many a fight back in the day, having to wear fuckin’ Rustlers. Hey, Kenny James hit an actual arm around the head bulldog on a volleyball fucker, but only got a two-count. Fuck, volleyball team does a double roll-under-the-clothesline off-the-ropes, then jump and superkick the fuck out of a guy move. It was double tough. Thalmus Rasulala’s brother is back out, followed by Slick Ric Converse, complete with shiny jacket, Nelly band-aid, gold chain, hooker girlfriend in punk rock style studded belt, and goofy manager in a Hawaiian print shirt. His name is Special K, and he works at a video store for shitty pay because he thinks he makes up for it in free rentals of video games, which he plays at the house he shares with his girlfriend and they smoke a lot of weed. Sometimes he works construction, too, if times get tough. Converse’s Carolinas Cruiserweight belt is very stiff, like many indy titles, and leads me to believe they should be buried in the back yard for a while to get that used looseness that a good title belt has. American Steel Ninja had me for a second, looking like a ninja, and while I drank beer, he took off his head thing, so now he’s just a white guy in a black karateman suit. How can Converse win, when the other guy is trained in the motherfuckin’ Stealth Art of Invisibility, which is not so much actually being physically invisible, as it is misdirecting your enemy combatant’s vision. I know this, because I train ninjas. No shit. Let’s see, one guy has a Nelly band-aid and pleather shorts on, the other is a fuckin’ NINJA. I guess I’ll root for the ninja. He’s actually not bad, either.
BEER FOUR: I think I accidentally drank two beers without changing the bold lead-in, but there’s no way to truly tell. It’s just my word vs. his word, so I’ll leave it as is. Evil Ric Converse is in control at this point, thrust chopping the ninja in the throat. The ninja’s shirt is now undone, so he looks like a guy fighting after a high school dance in the parking lot now. Being a ninja, he does a lot of kicks. Perhaps I’d like Low-Ki more if, instead of being some pouty-faced little Mongoloid he was a Puerto Rican ninja. I imagine Puerto Rican ninjas could fuck some shit up, and have little tiny PR flags, complete with tiny gold tassles, hanging from their rear view mirrors. The crowd is chanting, “Ninja! Ninja! Ninja!” This match is competent enough, but it lacks that something extra, namely excitement. It’s like going through the emotions. Both guys are good and all, but the crowd’s not into it seuper-heavy…wait, the Ninja is doing the Karate Kid kick. He got him! Botched ending as ref has to break at two on a kick-out even though he was supposed to go over to interfering manager. Chick is on apron. Converse hits some crazy running lucha thing, and wins the match. But Converse makes a point to go around the ring and talk shit to one fan in particular, a black kid in the first row. That’s quality heelmanship, and I’ll drink to that. Some fat chick in stylish clothes comes out with that same pot-smoking video store manager. Wait, she’s talking shit to a volunteer firefighter in the front row, and the PA speakers are crackling. The fat chick is named Gee Star. This match is for the FWA World Women’s Title, a 3-way. Brandi Alexander is the mother I’d like to fuck who was with Sexton Tyler earlier. She is very hot, like Sherri Martel without all the weird major wrestling corporation plastic surgery, a real look and real hot. I love her. Amber Holly is your defending champ and has on motorcross style pants and a cut-off top. I might love her more than Alexander, but I’m not sure. It’s like partying at some place, and the cool friend of the mom and the hot daughter. The hot daughter is probably hotter in a purely physical sense, but she’s not gonna “party” like the friend of the mom. The Commish guy in the dark shirt comes out again to kick Hawaiian print shirt dude from ringside, and Sexton Tyler too. Alexander and Gee Star have formed an evil moon alliance against Amber Holly, who’s breast are natural and bouncy like a real women should be. There is something to be said for a woman in motorcross pants and a cut-off top. You know, I’m trying to not make this completely sexual, but I am a human male, and pretty much all I think about when I see human females is sex. It’s really true. Women sometimes think they can guilt men into not thinking sexual shit all the time, but it’s our nature. Women would be better off accepting that and instead of trying to brainwash us into stifling it, accept it and encourage us to control it. That old “you can’t contain it, you can only hope to control it” shit. Man, Amber Holly just threw some of the worst punches I’ve ever seen on Gee Star. Gee breaks up her evil alliance with a clothesline on Alexander. They just had an awesome thing where Brandi never got tagged in, Holly rolled up Gee, got the two-count when Brandi broke up with a roll-up on Holly, and the ref didn’t count, saying she never got tagged in. That’s quality three-way refereeing right there. Sexton Tyler sneaks in, accidentally KOs Gee Star, Holly kicks him, all sorts of shit is going on. Brandi Alexander hits the spinebuster and legs pulled over the shoulders ultra-sexy pin on Amber Holly, and that was great for a women’s match, which unfortunately to me, is like being a great special ed teacher. I’m a pig, but it’s all good, because I can cook and I treat my wife like a queen, orally pleasing her regularly, and my daughter’s bed has a “IN GODDESS WE TRUST” sticker on it. Sexton Tyler comes out, with a shiny shirt over his black tank top. Shiny shirt syndrome, plus DMX theme music, it’s the dark side of North Carolina.
BEER FIVE: Mikael Yamaha comes out, full throttle, full motocross style, and he’s very good. The great thing about North Carolina indys is these guys look MTV cool, then you hear them talk and it’s straight Carolina. I wonder if Vince ever sent the Hardys and Hurricane Helms and Shannon Moore to speech classes? Matt Hardy still has that twang slightly, if you listen. The one thing that always amazes me about wrestling is a good guy can tolerate the barely bearable pain of an abdominal stretch when stuck in it regular style. But when the bad guy reaches over to grab the ropes for extra leverage, it causes immense pain and the good guy screams like a little girl having a dream about a monster building a brick wall in the doorway to her parent’s bedroom. Hahaha, Tyler goes in the first row and throws some dude in a camo shirt off his chair, and while he grabs it, the chick sitting next to him grabs the chair too to cause difficulty. That’s Carolina. Brandi Alexander is out, and she smashes Yamaha with her title belt. The groggy well-bumped ref comes out and counts, but they don’t get all the way. Where is Amber Holly? Then Tyler gets a clean victory, which is weird for a bad guy to get in a grudge match. HEY! Here comes Amber Holly, and she’s throwing more bad punches onto the lovely head of Brandi Alexander. “That’s alright. You got something comin’ to you,” yells Holly in the sweet twang of the Southern girl that makes me fuckin’ crazy in the mind. Holy fuck, it’s Otto Schwanz, who is a personal favorite of mine. He was the best Dupp brother ever, and I’m glad he’s a fake German again. He’s big and scary and muscular and probably has weird personal problems that have held him back, “politically”, in the wrestling business. And holy fuck again, it’s Pat Cusick working as a good guy. He’s always been the perennial heel in Virginia, maybe a tweener at best. Now here he is against the ultra-evil Otto Schwanz, shaking hands with old ladies in the first row. Cusick is good, I’ve always thought him to be quality wrestling entertainment, even with his shiny cargo pants. They do a great collar-and-elbow, great enough to remind me how nobody really does a good collar-and-elbow start to a match anymore, with guys dropping to one knee, back up, dropping, pushing around, in the ropes, breaking, do it again type shit. This is a great slow building match so far, with Cusick staying on top for the most part. Of course, Schwanz can’t make a clean break in the corner, and he takes the lead, long enough to get it turned in a high backdrop off the ropes momentum turner. This is a very old school match. Wait, fat volunteer firefighter pushes Schwanz ringside and Otto does a complete roll backwards. Either that was worked or Otto’s a fuckin’ champ for putting the fan over like that.
BEER SIX: Some chick in the crowd keeps yelling, “Otto! You like Frito’s?” Schwanz can sell like a motherfucker. By the way, whatever the fuck happened to Joey Abs? He used to be Venom in Carolina and had these awesome singlets that said “GOD FEARS VENOM” which is something I always knew, from the first time I heard “Black Metal”. Shit, I found that other beer, over by the stereo, half-finished.
BEER SEVEN: I really don’t understand why Otto Schwanz is not bigger in wrestling. He’s a great seller, a great offensive guy, great at working with the crowd to get some cheap heat, which is something most people can’t do. Guys tune out the crowd a lot of times, but when you incorporate the crowd, it just makes them feel more a part of things and get even more psyched to boo or cheer you. Umm, this match is great, but Cusick powerbombs Schwanz and his trunks come down and he’s got a g-string style going now, no shit, and he finishes the match that way. I’m sure he wanted to, to show off his physique, as he came out with his straps down like a pissed off Jerry Lawler to start the match. No, he pulled his trunks back over his ass cheeks as confronted Thalmus Rasulala’s brother over slow counts. Cusick controls the thing now, as I pay attention. Otto Schwanz and Dirty Money would make the perfect indy heel team; all they’d need is a hot valet/manager. Hey, fuck, Schwanz stole a victory real quick, using the damn ropes for leverage. Schwanz is also great at selling how tired he is after his struggle of a match, which is something most workers overlook. Make the shit seem exhausting, motherfuckers. The final event is the Indy Rumble – 30 dudes coming out at 45 second intervals. Slick Ric Converse is first; and Brad Bain is number two, or at least I think that’s what they said. I saw this guy on the worst wrestling show I’ve ever seen a month back or so. I think the next guy was Brad Attitude, which would be a terrible name, so I hope I made it up. Somebody has an airhorn, giving things a Puerto Rican feel. I expect El Bronco to be next out. Instead it’s the Kamikaze Kid. I got a better look at Converse’s finisher as he just dropped Kamikaze on his brain, and it’s a nice finisher. Kenny James is out at the #5 spot. He fights his own partner, and nobody has been eliminated yet. #6 in: one of the Southside Playas. Holy shit! First guy out is the Kamikaze Kid, who tries a ho train into the corner but gets flipped and takes an insane bump to the floor. He just earned his fucked up mask, and I apologize for my earlier negative comments. #7 in: American Steel Ninja, who apparently has some unsettled business with Brad Attitude. Fuck, I think Attitude just broke Ninja’s knee. Man, this is probably the best indy royal rumble I’ve ever seen, already, with like 23 guys still to come. #2 out: Karate Kid kick by the white ninja eliminates Brad Attitude. #8 in is the Swedish guy. People are getting eliminated and shit, so forget my whole who’s coming in and out attempt. I’m gonna just try and hold on till the end. Wow, Iceman somebody or another cleared the ring. Nite-stic Eddie Brown comes out next, with only Converse and the Iceman guy in the ring. Nite-stic rules. My sister’s ex-boyfriend is in next, in his baggy pants, and I’m sure he’s got Yngwie Malmsteen CDs in the back to psyche himself up to. Hey, Gee Star, that fat chick, is in next. This adds a new dimension to this nonsense.
BEER EIGHT: Some dude comes in, and Converse holds him while Gee Star lays a couple of bows to his face. Very nice. Wow, some hard-punching uber-redneck comes out next – a Dutch Mantel for the indy year 2002, complete with confederate flag tattooery. He punches the chick and eliminates her. It is a battle royal, even by royal standards, so all sorts of shit is going on that one camera can’t follow, much less a drunk man watching the viewpoint of one camera on tape. Carolina Mantel is grizzled and thirtysomething and screams at the camera. Corey Edsel is in the ring, destroying everybody. When will the indy stars stop coming out? Hey, it’s Amber Holly, she can battle my royal any day. Seriously, all sexism aside, she’ s cuter than fuck. Nite-stic leaves Edsel and Carolina Mantel to each other, and he goes for Amber Holly, with much lamping. Wait, no, they both stand there as Edsel and the Uber-redneck smack the loving shit out of each other, center-ring. Now, they punch each other, and it’s beautifully perfect. Edsel drops some little dude on his brain, and I realize that the six-man match was not a good place for Edsel, as he’s pretty fuckin’ good for a Big Pun-sized motherfucker. Sexton Tyler enters, and we’re up to six men at once, though he immediately tosses Amber Holly, so now it’s five. I hate to be the Gorilla Monsoon of this thing, but there’s no way any three of these guys are gonna toss Edsel over the top rope. I’m sure the black Canadian isn’t in this thing because he couldn’t take an over-the-top toss. Mikael Yamaha enters, and springs off the Uber-redneck’s shoulders to destroy Tyler, getting his come-uppance for his earlier shenanigans in their one-on-one match. The little dude is the perfect Spike Dudley bumper to Corey Edsel’s immenseness. Johnny Blaze, not the Method Man, is in next. Little dude is tossed. And people still come out, some little spitfire redneck to “Brass Monkey”, looking like Henderson, North Carolina’s answer to Jamie Dundee. Most importantly, the Uber-redneck is still in there. THE LUMBEE WARRIOR! NORTH CAROLINA’S ETERNAL INDY INDIAN! You can tell he’s a Native American because he wears lots of tassles on his ring gear. “Crazy Train” brings out a big, fat guy with a mullet. Yamaha gets gorilla-slammed by the big mullet guy. God, he chops the fuck out of some small dude; this big guy is mean and vicious and would murder me in a bar fight. I love small-town North Carolina, with signs on all store windows saying you can’t take guns inside. Shit, the black Canadian comes out. Now we’ve got 3 immense figures in the ring, tow of which will have to get tossed. Lumbee Warrior is tossed, just the latest chapter in the sad sage of his people. The black Canadian has a mighty boot to the neck of the Uber-redneck. That fuckin’ Canadian, he tossed the Uber-redneck through the second rope to the outside. Fuckin’ cheatin’ ass Canadian. Wait, no, he’s not eliminated. This ain’t Toronto, fat boy. Wow, the big mullet guy hits a clothesline on the fat Canadian black guy and he does this nifty sideways Mulkey spin to sell it, pretty nifty for a giant guy. The Bounty Hunter is out, and he has to be the last guy, he has to.
BEER NINE: YES! UBER-REDNECK BODYSLAMS GIANT BLACK CANADIAN IN A HULK HOGANESQUE MOMENT! And he does a redneck stink face, and guides the big man from north of the border over the top rope. Some tall skinny guy enters in a 1000% Guapo shirt, so he’s got to be good people. Enough time has passed that I think this is it for participants. We’ve got seven or eight guys left. Shit, Uber-redneck and the big mullet guy are both tossed in rapid sequence, leaving me little to root for in this thing. I guess I’ll pull for the skinny fucker in the 1000% Guapo shirt. Nite-stic kicks the fuck out of The Bounty Hunter, who is very Booker T-ish in a good way. Eddie Brown and The Bounty Hunter against each other is great, and deserves to be on my TV more in-depth. Bounty Hunter gone, leaving skinny guapo guy, Corey Edsel, Eddie Brown, and the fourth guy just got tossed, so three guys, yeah. Eddie Brown was tossed as well, so it’s just this skinny guy in a 1000% Guapo shirt and the behemoth Corey Edsel. Oh hey, that’s the Gemini Kid, who should not be trying a reverse rana from the corner off the apron because, yep, Edsel flung the Gemini legs from around his neck and the Gemini Kid goes brain first to the floor and Corey Edsel is your Carolina Rumble champion. Pot-smoking video store manager comes out to hype him, and Edsel slobbers him with a boot to the face. That was pretty fuckin’ cool. And I’ve got half a beer left.
EPILOGUE: FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: I gotta get Statmark to tell me who that old school Uber-redneck guy was, because he fuckin’ ruled, and I think I’d drive at least a couple hours if I could see him and Preston Quinn knock the shit out of each other in a town that had a bar next to the hotel. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: Otto Schwanz. The motherfucker is good, and has the steroids physique, complete with acne on his back. Why can’t he get another shot at the big time? Goddamn that Paul Heyman and his stupid Dupp brothers gimmick. Mike Maverick, Otto Schwanz, and Cham Pain were all Carolina superstars, with their choice of nubile young rats, and Heyman’s northern ass was threatened by that, so he turned them into inbred nose-pickers and ruined it all and put a scar on all three’s wrestling resume for the rest of their lives. And now Trevor Rhodes is getting caught up in it as well. It’s a fuckin’ shame. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: The American Steel Ninja. Though he should wear some face-concealing swankness, the Karate Kid kick, twice in one night, is fuckin' dope.
Tuesday, May 6
12-Pack Review: IWA-MS 07/13/02
BEER ONE: Time to dip back into this madness, and drink some beer to approve or disapprove of the insanity of the wrestling inside my little 13-inch Orion TV set. Just got the dope hook-up on both nights of the IWA’s King of the Death Match tournament from this year, with the added bonus of having half the tape be Sid & Marty Krofft kids’ shows, plus a second bonus tape of all Krofft kids’ shows. That’s the type of tape trading this world needs more of. Motherfuckers get all hung up on getting their tape in two days time and having match listings and all sorts of dumb shit like that. If I have to wait and get some tripped out early ‘70s Saturday morning TV programming like Sigmund the Sea Monster, then fuck it, I can wait. To the guy who sent me this shit, I ain’t giving no shout-outs, but you’re a good weird fucker. Sorry I never send shit in return. I’m a lazy weird fucker. What can I say? There’s just too much porn to look at on the internet. By the way, I started clicking on fat women links on the bookmark sites I frequent, and you know what? Most of them aren’t fat. They look like the type of women you could actually pick up at a bar, with a beer belly and bad tattoos on their back right shoulder. It’s great. Masturbation hasn’t been this reinvigorated in my life since I first found out about Big Naturals. Anyways, I’m gonna watch and drink to night two of the Death Match tourney, because it promises lobsters. I’ve never in my life actually eaten any lobster, not even when I was in Maine working on a blueberry farm and they actually had McLobster sandwiches at the McDonalds (no shit, that’s true). So, me being the masochistic type I am, want to see grown men beat each other with something really expensive that I’ve never been high class enough to eat, not even at a McDonalds. Smart Mark Video is the greatest. I don’t actually buy things from them, but every tape I’ve gotten sent to me from them has been great. Wow, first thing is a chick in a pink bikini, acting sort of regular. I love America; I really do. You don’t see no bitches walking around in bikinis right before two dudes beat the shit out of each other in a halfway staged bloodfest in Kazakhstan. Dysfunction comes out, led by Carmine DeSpirito, who looks a shitload like my boy Boomer. There’s glass on his fist already, meaning Taipei nonsense is about to ensue. CM Punk is on commentary. Corporal Robinson is the opponent, and let me tell you, the one thing I learned from seeing IWA live is Corp has some serious Abdullah the Butcher style forehead scar grooves going on. It looks like knuckles trying to bust out his head like a mid-‘80s thrash metal album cover. “If there’s any vegans out there watching, I apologize,” says CM Punk. That right there is why it’s good to have punks in wrestling; you just don’t have enough vegan references in the pro wrestling. The crowd is bringing the Milwaukee hate, as Dysfunction, who is fourteen, and his manager DeSpirito are from the Cheese State. If Corporal Robinson is an actual corporal and still enlisted with the National Guard, I do not fear any fuckin’ terrorists. CM Punk is great on commentary, snide, smarmy, yet intelligent. Rollin’ Hard is in the booth, which means at the table, as well right now. Thumbtack whiffle ball bat to the top of Dysfunction’s head, and Carmine hits Robinson with something. Holy fuck, I can’t believe how much that Carmine guy looks like Boomer. I would’ve felt more comfortable if that time Boomer was yelling at an alley full of crackheads while me and him were on sugarcubes of acid he had actually been as big as Carmine DeSpirito. Luckily, those crackheads were on crack, and didn’t want to fight to beer bellied acidheads at four in the morning in a Richmond alley. The Boulevard is a major thoroughfare in Richmond if you’re staying there. If you ever happen to drive it, I can guarantee you that no matter what time of day it is, within five blocks of your car when you’re sitting at a light, there are people shooting up, smoking up, forcing women to fellate them, and wearing guns inside the waistband of their pants, at all times. It’s great. “I don’t care how much pot you smoke, you’re not gonna pin somebody with a cover like that.” CM Punk, against his own personal philosophy, is causing me to drink with his quick-witted condescension.
BEER TWO: Carmine won’t quit interfering during pinning predicaments, so finally Corporal goes off and puts the Taipei fist to his head, then carves a little ditty on the fake Boomer’s forehead with a piece of glass. Dysfunction pulls something out his trunks and knocks out Robinson for the victory. That’s great. A hardcore death match ends with some old school Alabama style chicanery. I think more so than any human being on Earth, Corporal Robinson scares me. And I mean that. Really. Hey, there’s a chick bringing out light bulb shits to plug in, and it’s the same chick I was ogling at the IWA Sweet Science 16 tournament. That night, she was wearing jeans that had that deal where it looks like the top of them got torn off, so it was frayed, and low cut, and made you want to have sex. I love that look. Electrified light tubes. 2 Tuff Tony…Ian Rotten…madness. What I love about IWA the most is how most all these guys look like the folks I used to end up getting high and drunk with down at Eugene’s shop in Cumberland County, before he died. It was at a crossroads, a major backroads crossroads, meaning folks avoiding the cops always went that way, and folks would stop and go regularly. Three hours down there and I’d bump into the guy I first smoked weed with who lived down the road on disability and watched Soap Operas all day, the guy who used to date my youngest sister, and some kid I sold his first hit of acid to. It was great. IWA often makes me think if, say Balls Mahoney or somebody moved down to the end of Duker Road and started a wrestling school down in Cumberland, we’d end up being IWA. It’s fuckin’ simple and beautiful and perfect and hard to understand, but fuck you. A thousand years of analysis can’t equal one hour of experience. I guess that’s why actual wrestlers always say dudes who don’t wrestle can’t make a list of the best wrestlers, which is a bullshit thing to say, but there’s some truth to it.
BEER THREE: I think folks who love the wrestling and dedicate all their free time to enjoying it deserve respect for voicing their opinion, but at the same time, it’s like letting drunks decide the best winemakers. Or something. Then again, I think folks who bitch at people who take the time to make such a list are even lower on the social ladder than the guys who aren’t workers who make the initial list. This drunken tangent was brought to you by the Death Valley Driver Video Review. Ian Rotten is putting his actual belt on in the ring, not the title belt, but the belt that holds his jeans up. Ian’s smiling during the intros, having a good time, hamming it up. This’ll be great, I’m sure. I’ve got three beers open, awaiting the nonsense. Ian’s doing a little comedy to start with, and 2 Tuff plays along. Hey, Tony wears a bandana because he’s balding early. And he gave his bandana to a retard. Fuck! The weird guy who was sitting in front of me at the Sweet Science tourney just gave Tony a dollar bill. That guy was fuckin’ scary, wearing some wackass Penguins jersey the second night.
BEER FOUR: They’ve actually wrapped barbed wire around the electrified light tube things. Ian does a Kentuckian legsweep on Tony and they both hit the light fixture. Nice close-up of Tony carving Ian’s head. Thank you again, Smart Mark. Wow, he carved a gusher on Ian, and blood is rolling heavy and quickly. THERE’S A BARBED WIRE BASKETBALL! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, 2 Tuff Tony is actually bouncing a basketball wrapped in barbed wire as he makes his way over to Ian Rotten to do damage. And now they’re using a plastic toy schoolbus just like the one I bought for my daughter from Big Lots. I never noticed Ian Rotten’s Grinch in a Santa suit tattoo before. Ian gets suplexed onto another electrified barbed wire light fixture. 2 Tuff Tony has a pair of leather pants with his own name going down one leg, so he automatically wins, style-wise. I can’t tell you how much I need a pair of leather pants with RAVEN down one side and MACK down the other. Powerslam of Tony into yet another light fixture. Tony drops Ian right on his fuckin’ head onto the last electrified light fixture, and holds his legs for the pin. That was sick. I dig Ian and Tony hugging, showing the mad crazy love for being mad crazy fuckers. Ian is about to preach, so shut up. Ahh, he puts over the younger guys in IWA. Mean Mitch Page is like Ian Rottens’ evil twin, same hidden singlet, same tattooed arm, same wifebeater shirt, same frosted surfer hair. I love the IWA Arena door with no doorknob entrance spot. Necro Butcher comes out to Quiet Riot, and fuckin’ Necro, at the time this happened, was only a month removed from an injury that had hospital doctors threatening to amputate his arm. Rollin’ Hard is ringside for this match, holding the barbed wire basketball. I bet Rollin’ loves Nappy Roots. “Those Caribbeans and their spider webs,” says CM Punk. Again, this straight edge fuck is making me drink.
BEER FIVE: CM Punk is killing me with the commentary. Killing the idea of a tarantula death match because he wouldn’t want to see the cute little things die, an urban legend death match where you find the guy with the hook hand…fuck. Sobriety can make you funny sometimes, I guess. Necro gives Page a pass with the basketball to the mid-section. Necro’s a bloody mess, with plasma dripping from his beard. So, you see, Carmine DeSpirito is managing Mean Mitch Page. So Necro Butcher takes a FUCK CARMINE sign from the crowd, and a staple gun, being this a fans-bring-the-weapons match, and staples the sign to Page’s back. Necro just gets backdropped onto a row of chairs, in one of those haphazard ways that makes for great TV. Necro is taped to the ropes, and gets a light tube and then a barbed wire bat to his left arm. I appreciate the way they work the arm a guy doesn’t have tattoos on and most likely doesn’t write with. You look back at old Pro Wrestling Illustrateds and there’s Dusty Rhodes, with a big, fat, scarred left arm, and a spotless right arm. Necro is bloodier than fuck. The Rollin’ Hard/Mean Mitch Page tag split is teased, as Rollin’ almost hits Page with his Kill Whitey sign. Mean Mitch Page loses to a sleeperhold? Page and Hard do some talking and teasing and angle shit for a while, but I can’t care because I have to piss off the porch in the rain. My mother-in-law, who’s an uptight British lady, no shit, a schoolteacher to boot, she’s sleeping on our couch, which sucks because it means we have to run the baseboard heat in there all night long, which is gonna run the light bill right the fuck up, and she thinks me liking wrestling means her buying me a plush Kevin Nash doll at Big Lots is cool, anyways, she’s in there. And we don’t have any working light bulb in the hallway, so I’d have to bump into the door to open it, since, like the IWA entrance door, it doesn’t have a knob, you reach in the hole and lift up and pull out, and it creaks. I don’t want to wake her Mary Poppins ass up, so I have to piss off the porch. I don’t have the baseboard heat going in here, so I’m cold, and I left my boots on the porch since I was tromping through septic mud today and they stink, so I have to walk out in my socks and piss off the porch. Top that off with the fact the stupid ass people across the road seemed to have gone to sleep with their floodlights still on, and I’m pissing into the rain and a bright light. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Nate Webb. He’s great. A skinny, young kid who’s been Pondo’s sidekick for a while, going up against him now in a death match. Pondo is expecting Nate Webb to lay down and lose. Webb’s wearing a BEER CITY shirt. “I am a death match hardcore king,” says Pondo. Webb says he’s not laying down and wants to wrestle. This is awesome; this is stand-upnish; this is fuck you Mr. Bully. Nate lays down, and Pondo puts the hand down, but Nate kicks out at 2, and nails Pondo with Pondo’s own signature stop sign. Pondo on a barbed wire table. Webb does a flippetty legdrop. Nate gets clipped with some hedgeclippers, then tossed into the second row of chairs. Nate Webb is the Mulkey Brothers of hardcore wrestling; he flips in a selling manner better than anybody. Pondo, being the genius he is, puts a log cabin of light tubes onto four chairs, rips off Webb’s BEER CITY shirt, and chokes him with it. Barebacked superplex into the stack of gimmicks. I cannot explain the beauty of CM Punk’s commentary regarding Pondo throwing a trash can into the ring. So Pondo takes two chairs, bridges a steel chair across it, stands a trash can on top of the chair, and puts four foot light tubes into the trash can.
BEER SIX: Pondo’s arm is bleeding nicely. Webb is looking up the wall and Pondo is bleeding from everything. He’s wearing a crimson armband. Webb has a table that’s covered in barbed wire beside a table covered in light tubes, and he takes Professor Pondo over and lays him out. Ahh, it comes together. Pondo on barbed wire table, stacked on top of light tube table with the help of people strong enough to lift a table covered in Pondo, and Webb lives up to his Spyder nickname and climbs the fuckin’ wall, no shit, to an exposed metal beam, and, well fuck, he climbs to the next beam up, HOLY FUCKIN’ FUCK! Nate Webb wins, and Nate Webb is king. You know what I said about Corporal Robinson? Fuck that. Mad Man Pondo is way scarier than Robinson, with his ape-like eyebrows and evil Samson-like mullet rattail. Excellent slow motion replay of the dive from multiple angles. Dysfunction is in the ring, and Nate Webb staggers out for his second match in a row. This is a barbed wire canvas match, where barbed wire is strung across the canvas. Nate Webb is the fuckin’ king of bumping. It’s been raining forever outside my house. Nothing like a match where you need wirecutters. Nate does his moonsault Van Terminator into barbed wire shit, you know, the regular shit, and wins.
BEER SEVEN: They clip the wire off of Nate and he’s your winner, and into the finals. Log cabins of glass match, 2 Tuff Tony’s in the ring, and Necro Butcher is coming out, still bloody from the last match, the shit’s all crusted up. “He’s wearing his crimson mask with pride,” says CM Punk. To 2 Tuff’s credit, he never took the thumbtacks out his head from his previous match tonight. Tony writes his name on the wall with Necro’s blood. And there’s a barbed wire tennis racket brought into play. CM Punk talks shit about the ECW fans-throwing-chairs-in-the-ring thing, and then fans start throwing chairs in the ring. “Wherever I go, riots follow,” says Punk.
BEER EIGHT: Butcher gets the sleeperhold win again. Maybe he did; to be honest, I was looking at a copy of Hustler’s Hometown Girls while the match ended. North Carolina seems like a great place. “Longhaired Country Boy” is Tracy Smothers’ theme music. At one point in my life, I had a hip hop group where we played that live at one show with a guy called Boxhead. Our DJ had two copies of that record because we used to scratch “a drunkard wants another drink of wine” during one song. It was the best moment of my life, legit. I watched Boxhead dive through the back windshield of a car one time to try and kill a guy at a party while we were all tripping. I ain’t never seen no hardcore wrestler do that shit. I hate Colt Cabana, for real. He is everything that the Confederate Mack is not. Kick his ass, Tracy. Nidia Nyce is good enough to get her drunk. Three-way dance elimination match for the title that Chris Hero wore to the ring, god bless quality three-way dances. Tracy Smothers is fast passing Tommy Rich as my favorite fucked up dude in wrestling. I imagine Tracy has a lot of skeletons in his closets. You know why Tracy is the greatest? He cusses out the crowd and give them the finger, then makes them clap for the death match participants, then goes right back to making fun of the crowd. Everybody gets their shot on the mic, but Smothers is the best. He ain’t wearing no pussy-ass t-shirt and he ain’t cutting no shorts on the micro either. The match is going and I’m not commenting on everything, but Hero is great in the weird little transition shit he does. I love how post-ECW’s FBI, Tracy always does little hip gyration things to heel himself up during a match. Hero hits Hero’s Welcome on Cabana, but Smothers pulls him out the ring to get the pin on Classic Colt. So, now it’s Chris Hero and Tracy Smothers and Old Milwaukee. Another Hero’s Welcome and Smothers loses. Smothers takes the mic and talks about how he’s old and how IWA is the best ever he’s ever seen. Well, the main event is up with Nate Webb vs. Necro Butcher, with all sorts of shit going on in the ring, light tubes, light bulbs, barbed wire, glass, everything.
BEER NINE: I am drunk. Yep. There’s a live lobster bath on one side, but I know Necro told me the water got changed on that shit, so the lobsters were long dead by this match starting. Ian Rotten does the introductions for the main event, which is a nice touch. Necro hits a backbreaker, and the thing about him is he can actually wrestle. I mean, the guy was trained by Black Bart, one of the best scientific wrestlers from Texas who wrestled in Florida through the ‘80s. The lobsters are dead, but Necro gets one out the cooler, and slaps Nate in the head with one of them. Necro puts a lobster up Nate’s shirt, smashes it with a chair, Nate selling the lobster’s aliveness. Then Necro picks up another lobster and bites it. That’s good shit. This is probably the third match, but this ain’t like getting pussy in the woods behind the school during second lunch. Well, fuck, I can go to bed finally. After I finish this beer right quicklike.
EPILOGUE: It’s the next day and I’m not entirely sure what the fuck I was talking about there at the end. I do know I had a good, healthy drunk going though. FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: Spyder Nate Webb. That motherfucker is insane, and looks an awful lot like my sister’s old boyfriend, Stephan. The Spyder got booked for that WWA tour of Europe I read, which is good. I’m all for young, crazy motherfuckers getting to travel on somebody else’s credit card. Maybe he’ll get to get high with Sabu. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: CM Punk. You know, a lot of times when guys work as announcers, ever since Jesse Ventura, the guys try to be funny. 99 times out of 100, they’re just stupid. CM Punk had me cracking up all night. I mentioned a few on here, but he had so many funny-ass things I didn’t even bother to mention. Like threatening to give a fan a fractured skull. And apologizing to the vegans out there. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: Necro Butcher. He’s just a weird fucker, biting a dead lobster like that. You can’t teach a mind to be twisted, life just makes it that way. Like I said before in the beginning about all that analysis and experience shit. Yeah.
BEER TWO: Carmine won’t quit interfering during pinning predicaments, so finally Corporal goes off and puts the Taipei fist to his head, then carves a little ditty on the fake Boomer’s forehead with a piece of glass. Dysfunction pulls something out his trunks and knocks out Robinson for the victory. That’s great. A hardcore death match ends with some old school Alabama style chicanery. I think more so than any human being on Earth, Corporal Robinson scares me. And I mean that. Really. Hey, there’s a chick bringing out light bulb shits to plug in, and it’s the same chick I was ogling at the IWA Sweet Science 16 tournament. That night, she was wearing jeans that had that deal where it looks like the top of them got torn off, so it was frayed, and low cut, and made you want to have sex. I love that look. Electrified light tubes. 2 Tuff Tony…Ian Rotten…madness. What I love about IWA the most is how most all these guys look like the folks I used to end up getting high and drunk with down at Eugene’s shop in Cumberland County, before he died. It was at a crossroads, a major backroads crossroads, meaning folks avoiding the cops always went that way, and folks would stop and go regularly. Three hours down there and I’d bump into the guy I first smoked weed with who lived down the road on disability and watched Soap Operas all day, the guy who used to date my youngest sister, and some kid I sold his first hit of acid to. It was great. IWA often makes me think if, say Balls Mahoney or somebody moved down to the end of Duker Road and started a wrestling school down in Cumberland, we’d end up being IWA. It’s fuckin’ simple and beautiful and perfect and hard to understand, but fuck you. A thousand years of analysis can’t equal one hour of experience. I guess that’s why actual wrestlers always say dudes who don’t wrestle can’t make a list of the best wrestlers, which is a bullshit thing to say, but there’s some truth to it.
BEER THREE: I think folks who love the wrestling and dedicate all their free time to enjoying it deserve respect for voicing their opinion, but at the same time, it’s like letting drunks decide the best winemakers. Or something. Then again, I think folks who bitch at people who take the time to make such a list are even lower on the social ladder than the guys who aren’t workers who make the initial list. This drunken tangent was brought to you by the Death Valley Driver Video Review. Ian Rotten is putting his actual belt on in the ring, not the title belt, but the belt that holds his jeans up. Ian’s smiling during the intros, having a good time, hamming it up. This’ll be great, I’m sure. I’ve got three beers open, awaiting the nonsense. Ian’s doing a little comedy to start with, and 2 Tuff plays along. Hey, Tony wears a bandana because he’s balding early. And he gave his bandana to a retard. Fuck! The weird guy who was sitting in front of me at the Sweet Science tourney just gave Tony a dollar bill. That guy was fuckin’ scary, wearing some wackass Penguins jersey the second night.
BEER FOUR: They’ve actually wrapped barbed wire around the electrified light tube things. Ian does a Kentuckian legsweep on Tony and they both hit the light fixture. Nice close-up of Tony carving Ian’s head. Thank you again, Smart Mark. Wow, he carved a gusher on Ian, and blood is rolling heavy and quickly. THERE’S A BARBED WIRE BASKETBALL! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, 2 Tuff Tony is actually bouncing a basketball wrapped in barbed wire as he makes his way over to Ian Rotten to do damage. And now they’re using a plastic toy schoolbus just like the one I bought for my daughter from Big Lots. I never noticed Ian Rotten’s Grinch in a Santa suit tattoo before. Ian gets suplexed onto another electrified barbed wire light fixture. 2 Tuff Tony has a pair of leather pants with his own name going down one leg, so he automatically wins, style-wise. I can’t tell you how much I need a pair of leather pants with RAVEN down one side and MACK down the other. Powerslam of Tony into yet another light fixture. Tony drops Ian right on his fuckin’ head onto the last electrified light fixture, and holds his legs for the pin. That was sick. I dig Ian and Tony hugging, showing the mad crazy love for being mad crazy fuckers. Ian is about to preach, so shut up. Ahh, he puts over the younger guys in IWA. Mean Mitch Page is like Ian Rottens’ evil twin, same hidden singlet, same tattooed arm, same wifebeater shirt, same frosted surfer hair. I love the IWA Arena door with no doorknob entrance spot. Necro Butcher comes out to Quiet Riot, and fuckin’ Necro, at the time this happened, was only a month removed from an injury that had hospital doctors threatening to amputate his arm. Rollin’ Hard is ringside for this match, holding the barbed wire basketball. I bet Rollin’ loves Nappy Roots. “Those Caribbeans and their spider webs,” says CM Punk. Again, this straight edge fuck is making me drink.
BEER FIVE: CM Punk is killing me with the commentary. Killing the idea of a tarantula death match because he wouldn’t want to see the cute little things die, an urban legend death match where you find the guy with the hook hand…fuck. Sobriety can make you funny sometimes, I guess. Necro gives Page a pass with the basketball to the mid-section. Necro’s a bloody mess, with plasma dripping from his beard. So, you see, Carmine DeSpirito is managing Mean Mitch Page. So Necro Butcher takes a FUCK CARMINE sign from the crowd, and a staple gun, being this a fans-bring-the-weapons match, and staples the sign to Page’s back. Necro just gets backdropped onto a row of chairs, in one of those haphazard ways that makes for great TV. Necro is taped to the ropes, and gets a light tube and then a barbed wire bat to his left arm. I appreciate the way they work the arm a guy doesn’t have tattoos on and most likely doesn’t write with. You look back at old Pro Wrestling Illustrateds and there’s Dusty Rhodes, with a big, fat, scarred left arm, and a spotless right arm. Necro is bloodier than fuck. The Rollin’ Hard/Mean Mitch Page tag split is teased, as Rollin’ almost hits Page with his Kill Whitey sign. Mean Mitch Page loses to a sleeperhold? Page and Hard do some talking and teasing and angle shit for a while, but I can’t care because I have to piss off the porch in the rain. My mother-in-law, who’s an uptight British lady, no shit, a schoolteacher to boot, she’s sleeping on our couch, which sucks because it means we have to run the baseboard heat in there all night long, which is gonna run the light bill right the fuck up, and she thinks me liking wrestling means her buying me a plush Kevin Nash doll at Big Lots is cool, anyways, she’s in there. And we don’t have any working light bulb in the hallway, so I’d have to bump into the door to open it, since, like the IWA entrance door, it doesn’t have a knob, you reach in the hole and lift up and pull out, and it creaks. I don’t want to wake her Mary Poppins ass up, so I have to piss off the porch. I don’t have the baseboard heat going in here, so I’m cold, and I left my boots on the porch since I was tromping through septic mud today and they stink, so I have to walk out in my socks and piss off the porch. Top that off with the fact the stupid ass people across the road seemed to have gone to sleep with their floodlights still on, and I’m pissing into the rain and a bright light. What was I talking about? Oh yeah, Nate Webb. He’s great. A skinny, young kid who’s been Pondo’s sidekick for a while, going up against him now in a death match. Pondo is expecting Nate Webb to lay down and lose. Webb’s wearing a BEER CITY shirt. “I am a death match hardcore king,” says Pondo. Webb says he’s not laying down and wants to wrestle. This is awesome; this is stand-upnish; this is fuck you Mr. Bully. Nate lays down, and Pondo puts the hand down, but Nate kicks out at 2, and nails Pondo with Pondo’s own signature stop sign. Pondo on a barbed wire table. Webb does a flippetty legdrop. Nate gets clipped with some hedgeclippers, then tossed into the second row of chairs. Nate Webb is the Mulkey Brothers of hardcore wrestling; he flips in a selling manner better than anybody. Pondo, being the genius he is, puts a log cabin of light tubes onto four chairs, rips off Webb’s BEER CITY shirt, and chokes him with it. Barebacked superplex into the stack of gimmicks. I cannot explain the beauty of CM Punk’s commentary regarding Pondo throwing a trash can into the ring. So Pondo takes two chairs, bridges a steel chair across it, stands a trash can on top of the chair, and puts four foot light tubes into the trash can.
BEER SIX: Pondo’s arm is bleeding nicely. Webb is looking up the wall and Pondo is bleeding from everything. He’s wearing a crimson armband. Webb has a table that’s covered in barbed wire beside a table covered in light tubes, and he takes Professor Pondo over and lays him out. Ahh, it comes together. Pondo on barbed wire table, stacked on top of light tube table with the help of people strong enough to lift a table covered in Pondo, and Webb lives up to his Spyder nickname and climbs the fuckin’ wall, no shit, to an exposed metal beam, and, well fuck, he climbs to the next beam up, HOLY FUCKIN’ FUCK! Nate Webb wins, and Nate Webb is king. You know what I said about Corporal Robinson? Fuck that. Mad Man Pondo is way scarier than Robinson, with his ape-like eyebrows and evil Samson-like mullet rattail. Excellent slow motion replay of the dive from multiple angles. Dysfunction is in the ring, and Nate Webb staggers out for his second match in a row. This is a barbed wire canvas match, where barbed wire is strung across the canvas. Nate Webb is the fuckin’ king of bumping. It’s been raining forever outside my house. Nothing like a match where you need wirecutters. Nate does his moonsault Van Terminator into barbed wire shit, you know, the regular shit, and wins.
BEER SEVEN: They clip the wire off of Nate and he’s your winner, and into the finals. Log cabins of glass match, 2 Tuff Tony’s in the ring, and Necro Butcher is coming out, still bloody from the last match, the shit’s all crusted up. “He’s wearing his crimson mask with pride,” says CM Punk. To 2 Tuff’s credit, he never took the thumbtacks out his head from his previous match tonight. Tony writes his name on the wall with Necro’s blood. And there’s a barbed wire tennis racket brought into play. CM Punk talks shit about the ECW fans-throwing-chairs-in-the-ring thing, and then fans start throwing chairs in the ring. “Wherever I go, riots follow,” says Punk.
BEER EIGHT: Butcher gets the sleeperhold win again. Maybe he did; to be honest, I was looking at a copy of Hustler’s Hometown Girls while the match ended. North Carolina seems like a great place. “Longhaired Country Boy” is Tracy Smothers’ theme music. At one point in my life, I had a hip hop group where we played that live at one show with a guy called Boxhead. Our DJ had two copies of that record because we used to scratch “a drunkard wants another drink of wine” during one song. It was the best moment of my life, legit. I watched Boxhead dive through the back windshield of a car one time to try and kill a guy at a party while we were all tripping. I ain’t never seen no hardcore wrestler do that shit. I hate Colt Cabana, for real. He is everything that the Confederate Mack is not. Kick his ass, Tracy. Nidia Nyce is good enough to get her drunk. Three-way dance elimination match for the title that Chris Hero wore to the ring, god bless quality three-way dances. Tracy Smothers is fast passing Tommy Rich as my favorite fucked up dude in wrestling. I imagine Tracy has a lot of skeletons in his closets. You know why Tracy is the greatest? He cusses out the crowd and give them the finger, then makes them clap for the death match participants, then goes right back to making fun of the crowd. Everybody gets their shot on the mic, but Smothers is the best. He ain’t wearing no pussy-ass t-shirt and he ain’t cutting no shorts on the micro either. The match is going and I’m not commenting on everything, but Hero is great in the weird little transition shit he does. I love how post-ECW’s FBI, Tracy always does little hip gyration things to heel himself up during a match. Hero hits Hero’s Welcome on Cabana, but Smothers pulls him out the ring to get the pin on Classic Colt. So, now it’s Chris Hero and Tracy Smothers and Old Milwaukee. Another Hero’s Welcome and Smothers loses. Smothers takes the mic and talks about how he’s old and how IWA is the best ever he’s ever seen. Well, the main event is up with Nate Webb vs. Necro Butcher, with all sorts of shit going on in the ring, light tubes, light bulbs, barbed wire, glass, everything.
BEER NINE: I am drunk. Yep. There’s a live lobster bath on one side, but I know Necro told me the water got changed on that shit, so the lobsters were long dead by this match starting. Ian Rotten does the introductions for the main event, which is a nice touch. Necro hits a backbreaker, and the thing about him is he can actually wrestle. I mean, the guy was trained by Black Bart, one of the best scientific wrestlers from Texas who wrestled in Florida through the ‘80s. The lobsters are dead, but Necro gets one out the cooler, and slaps Nate in the head with one of them. Necro puts a lobster up Nate’s shirt, smashes it with a chair, Nate selling the lobster’s aliveness. Then Necro picks up another lobster and bites it. That’s good shit. This is probably the third match, but this ain’t like getting pussy in the woods behind the school during second lunch. Well, fuck, I can go to bed finally. After I finish this beer right quicklike.
EPILOGUE: It’s the next day and I’m not entirely sure what the fuck I was talking about there at the end. I do know I had a good, healthy drunk going though. FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: Spyder Nate Webb. That motherfucker is insane, and looks an awful lot like my sister’s old boyfriend, Stephan. The Spyder got booked for that WWA tour of Europe I read, which is good. I’m all for young, crazy motherfuckers getting to travel on somebody else’s credit card. Maybe he’ll get to get high with Sabu. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: CM Punk. You know, a lot of times when guys work as announcers, ever since Jesse Ventura, the guys try to be funny. 99 times out of 100, they’re just stupid. CM Punk had me cracking up all night. I mentioned a few on here, but he had so many funny-ass things I didn’t even bother to mention. Like threatening to give a fan a fractured skull. And apologizing to the vegans out there. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: Necro Butcher. He’s just a weird fucker, biting a dead lobster like that. You can’t teach a mind to be twisted, life just makes it that way. Like I said before in the beginning about all that analysis and experience shit. Yeah.
Sunday, May 4
12-Pack Review: NECW 05/10/02
BEER ONE: New England Championship Wrestling I dig, in a way one can only dig on indys. They have a roster of guys who’ve I’ve never seen anywhere else, and those guys are pretty competent. My man Dan in Massachusetts hooked me up with some more goods from Yankeeland, and I’m not supremely stoked, like I would be say I was about to pop in a big IWA Mid South or Wildside tape, but I’m confident that Sheldon Goldberg’s NECW will at least hold my interest. The indytastic intro is full of nu-metal and nicely clipped highlights, and it looks like rather than the art theater the last show I saw was held in, this one’s in an actual gymnasium of some sort. And of course, electricity is running through their logo at the end of the intro. First match is Aaron Morrison vs. Tarzan Taylor. Morrison is pudgy and wearing shootfighter gloves. He has a supremely healthy beer belly; you can tell a beer belly from a regular fat-ass belly because the beer belly is more rock-n-roll solid and doesn’t flab around like regular fat. I just got in a big argument with my wife, well a minor disagreement would be more appropriate, because I’m proud of the beer belly I’ve cultivated, and she thinks that’s absolutely ridiculous. Man, women, they sure do have a pussy, don’t they? Tarzan Taylor is a hair metal God warped into the year 2002. He is Youth Gone Wild and stomps his foot and slings his long straight hair in metalhead power mode to rally the crowd for the opening match, ending his stomping routine in a maniacal double footed bouncing stomp, hair slung back and forth to some inaudible double bass drum super morbid rhythm that only he is privy to. Tall and skinny Taylor vs. short and pudgy Morrison, this is like a children’s book about dogs. I bet one drives a green car and the other a red one. Morrison dropkicks the ol’ knee, and look at that, actually stays on that limb, working it, and making this seem like an actual athletic contest. What the fuck is wrong with him? Shouldn’t a stripper be ringside, or somebody pretending to be an R&B singer interfering with fake sledgehammers or some shit? Tarzan’s metal buddy manager is smacking the ring and rallying up a “Tarzan! Tarzan!” chant, and he appropriately rallies back with a lanky missile dropkick, but only gets the two, which, following the normal old school procedure, allows for Morrison to eye rake his way back into dastardly control. Tarzan bust a move though, must be his finisher, because he got the quick one-two-three. Two good wrestlers, seemingly, but the match lacked any intensity. Justin Powers is a dorky heel nerd athlete type, and his opponent is a shitty MTV-style punk rocker with terrible hair called Tim Fury. Powers is great as the heel who just doesn’t get why the fans hate him, giving the thumbs up, trying to get some cheers, then looking all pissed and confused when they boo. He pulled his hamstring trying to kick the ropes, great heel comedy.
BEER TWO: Tim Fury is way too amped and way too skinny and needs desperately to lose a hair vs. hair match. They start slow, feeling each other out, as a match between two high-speed lightweights should start, to make the later speed seem even more amazingly faster. Man, this Powers kid is a great comedy heel, absolutely great. And the funniest thing is, every time Fury outsmarts the hilariously stupid Powers, he just latches on a headlock again. Nothing is more old school than a fifteen minute time limit draw with lots of headlocks by the face on a heel who just can’t seem to cheat the right way; old school don’t always mean good. Tim Fury is competent enough, but he doesn’t sell his pain well, and doesn’t transition well either. Basically, I hate him, and it’s all because of that stupid hair. When I worked at Kinko’s, this punk rock guy told me what a great flick SLC Punk was, and I watched it and hated it and was that Gary Busey’s stupid son, I can’t remember, anyways, that movie sucked and reminded me of why I hate the so-called punk scene, because it’s three-quarters a bunch of pussy fucks running away from their mommies and daddies and trying to be hard in an urban sense. Fury makes me think of all that. I guess he’s not so bad, it’s just his selling, with his skinny-ass body, seems so exaggerated and stupid, like a high school style Saturday Night Live skit. Powers hit a German suplex, and I think was supposed to roll over to hook the leg with his legs, but went sideways, and the ref was forced to break the pin count. How will they recover from this, me wonders? Hurricanrana from the top rope on Powers by SLC Punk and Powers, in comedy heel mode, does an extra roll-over from the momentum. As Fury closes in for the kill, Powers sweeps his legs, goes for the pinfall and puts his feet on the top rope for super-extra leverage. I love this skinny little fuck Justin Powers. Fuck you SLC Punk, you lost; now go back to running your friends’ zines off during the second shift at Kinkos. Ahh, the evil Brits, Zachary & Evil Trance Springate, are talking crap now. Zach is the true Brit in the team, and he does the standard saying “bloody” a lot and saying America was kicked out of the United Kingdom. Their opponents are the All-Knighters who look like two kids ready to do drink some V-8 Splash and watch a marathon of Jack Samurai on the Toon network. When did all wrestlers get so small and young? Goddamn, I know I turn 30 in a few months, but goddamn. Zachary Springate is perfect both in ringmanship and in his evil British ways; he should be immediately signed as William Regal’s younger brother. Better yet, Regal should get released from the WWE for breaking one of Steph’s fake tits, and then Regal could take bookings on the indy circuit working a team with Zachary Springate. Yeah, fuck indy guys getting signed, I’m all about corporate guys getting dropped. British accents just sound dickish. I mean how many Brit faces have there been, other than Chris Adams in Texas? Sure, the British Bulldogs, but I don’t remember them talking at all except for a few words here or there. Fuck, this was during the “every wrestling crowd does the ‘WHAT?’ thing from the Steve Austin promos of the time” period of indy wrestling. I am completely disturbed by this All-Knighters entrance. Hold on, let me finish this beer, take a piss, rewind and try this again, because I’m kind of confused.
BEER THREE: Yup, they came out, bouncing around like freaks, clapping their hands way over their heads way too enthusiastically, to some gay ass dance music and one guy has a teddy bear strapped to his waist. I think they’re wearing pajama bottoms. Please, lord oh lord, please tell me this is not a tag team with an all-night sleepover gimmick. Please. All Knighters do a bunch of hyping the crowd on all four sides to decide which segment of the crowd gets the teddy bear thrown at them. Fuckin’ weird. Actually, as Kid Trance Springate is outside the ring, I see this is not a gym but some sort of restaurant with group tables or some shit. Or a bingo hall or something. Wow, as bad as their gimmick is, the All Knighters don’t suck. But everybody’s so small. Don’t they have creatine or GNC stores in New England? Drinking a fuckin’ wheat protein shake or some shit. Now, I’m no Vince McMahon expecting you to look like Rick Steiner on steroids (redundant?), but damn, when guys are smaller than the kids watching their mom’s table full of Beanie Babys at the flea market on Saturday mornings in Scottsville, fuckin’ lift some weights or something.
BEER FOUR: The crowd is chanting, “England sucks!” You gotta love a wrestling crowd.
BEER FIVE: Speaking of limey heels, I was listening to the Tony Bruno Show this morning on sports radio, as I love that show. It’s hip, yet user friendly, and not the world of cooler-than-thou fratboy hipsters who were too fuckin’ white to be good at sports that the Jim Rome show is. Anyways, they were making fun of Terrell Owen pulling the Sharpie out his sock in the end zone after that touchdown on Monday Night Football, and Tony Bruno started ragging on the WWF for not having foreign objects, guys would pull out tables and chairs and stop signs “that just so happened to be under the ring” but no more foreign objects. “The old days were classy.” Tony Bruno is great, to be an old bald white guy who’s hip to wrestling history and rap lyrics and porn starlets, great shit. Anyways, the next caller says he had flipped there for like two minutes on Raw (yeah right, and that cock pump is for a friend, right?) and mentions William Regal and how he pulled some brass knucks out his trunks and they called it a foreign object, too. Bruno was glad, and specifically went through the old pulling it out the trunks bit, saying whether it was a roll of pennies or a pencil, they always called it a foreign object. Thank God while I remembered that, the tag match with the kids ended. Now we’ve got Slyk Wagner Brown vs. Bob Evans in a grudge match. Both these guys I enjoyed on the last tape, but Bob Evans is one creepy motherfucker, tall bald and elderly looking. He is Jacey North’s alcoholic uncle. Slyk Wagner Brown tests my stereotyping, as usually I’d rather drink PBRs with college kids while watching a Beverly Hills 90210 marathon than give props to a brother with a blonde-dyed crewcut. But Browns is dope, and I’ve seen in the nerd pages that he’s even been doing shows in England lately. Brown is the type of guy I completely imagine being in ECW as a mid-carder right now had it continued to exist. Some white chick with giant fake tits is Slyk’s second for this match, to watch his back. To her credit, she has a nice ass, but then again, a lot of asses that aren’t that great look great in those thin tight stretch pants. It’s like advertising for sodas, even if you don’t want one, it’s flashing in your face so much, eventually you crave it. There’s a chick at work like that, she doesn’t really have much of an ass, but she’s always wearing shit that’s real tight with a thong (speaking of a thong, fuck that shit, either wear underwear or don’t wear underwear, don’t bring that half-assed shit around me, or is all-assed?) and I’ve looked at it so much, especially with her always finding a reason to bend over to show it to me, that I now would fuck her, except I’m a happily married man. Used to be, even if I was single and drunk, I wouldn’t fuck her, just like Pepsi, I used to never drink that shit. Fuckin’ advertising, man, they flash it in your face and you react like the idiot you are. These guys should have a reverse hair vs. hair match, whether whoever loses couldn’t cut their hair for six months. Bob Evans is a maniacal demon in the ring, not like an evil Sabu or Adbullah the Butcher type, but a regular looking white guy who wants to maim limbs. I can dig on that.
BEER SIX: Slyk has been getting old school heeled out, but he rolls out of the way of a lanky moonsault by Evans, and has flipped into control here, not afraid to pop loud punches on Evans’ face. Fake tit girl jumps up and down and claps after Brown hits a rolling neckbreaker, and her tits do not move at all; that right there is why I hate fake tits. Fluidity, motion, chaos, eternal change – it is the way of the World. Unyielding rigidity is frozen death, and I won’t put my lips, or my five dollar bills, upon it. Wow, she jumped in the ring to take care of Evans’ evil manager, and she has thick thighs that did that whole upper thigh and ass cheek solid wobble that a perfectly crunched fine ass will do. And Slyk executes a full nelson into a sitdown powerbomb for the victory over Mr. Evans. Decent enough match, like most of these, but heat seems to be lacking. Where’s the hatred, the animosity? Where’s the pure violence as told through the semi-legitimate athletic confines of professional wrestling? Not hardcore nonsense or anything like that, but old school wrasslin’. That seems to be what they’re bringing in NECW, but where’s my motherfuckin’ intensity. Hey, it’s Sumie Sakai vs. Mercedes Martinez next. I know absolutely shit about joshi, except it’s women wrestling and I really don’t care. Sure, the Jap ladies knock the shit out of each other, but so what? I can’t understand the announcers. This is to crown the first ever North American Women’s Champ, and let me tell you, Mercedes Martinez is dope in the looks department. Dudes online are always creaming over these Jap chicks, but they’re all too scrawny for me. And they have that weird hipbone shape thing going on, too. The wispy little pubic hairs are cool though. They made up a pretty nice looking belt for this here match, better than most indy title belts. That makes me think it’s a present for the Sakai chick and she’s guaranteed to win. Sumie Sakai comes out first and looks so sweet and innocent and like a normal woman, smiling as she asks which corner is hers. Hard to believe she’s gonna be flipping on another woman and faking punches and shit in a minute. Martinez is hot and needs to make porn with me. Some whore bodybuilder named Lisa Lopes is ringside and comes in with poufy blonde hair and a bustier style leather thing, which is to trick most guys into ignoring the fact she’s a hideous looking muscled freak of a vagina. Works for me, but I am a pervert. And thinking about Mercedes Martinez; what a sweet smile. One thing I do love about the joshi is the ring outfits; they are just so odd and swank. Martinez is a lot bigger than Sakai, but not nearly as fluent in the ring. You gotta think about the differences – Martinez sits around hoping that the local indy will book one woman’s match each show, which is maybe monthly if she’s lucky. Sakai can work regularly and weekly in Japan. It shows. Wow, this is not a good match. But Sakai keeps yelling crazy Japanese talk, and Martinez has a big ass inside of vinyl pants. Ooh, Sakai warmed up and just nailed a missile dropkick to the fuckin’ chin on Martinez off the top rope; very sick. Ref bump, meaning female chicanery is about to go down. Ah, that Lisa Lopes amazon bitch is beating down Sakai ringside. You know there’s a whole subculture of cats who are all about big muscle chicks, and they pay to be carried around by the muscle chicks. Muscle worship it’s called. There’s even flicks where bodybuilder chicks kill guys with leg scissors using those thick steroid masculine legs. Mercedes gets the cheap victory, wins the belt, and is the object of my affection. I think I’ll send her some flowers or something. Maybe some butterscotch candies and a couple of sonnets. Tag team mayhem up next, with those sucker ass Egomaniacs, and the greatest indy tag team in America today – One Night Stand, Ronnie D. Lishus and Edward G. Extacy. Johnny Idol and Mike Steele are the yankee fratboys in the Egomaniacs. I bet they played lacrosse in high school. Both teams are heels, which is confusing.
BEER SEVEN: I’m very bored with this match, and would normally fast forward, but I’m not like that. One, it might bust out good all of a sudden, and two, fuck that, it wouldn’t be fair. All the other tag teams seem to be ringside for some reason, something must have happened while I was daydreaming about Mercedes Martinez. At this point, every time somebody goes for the pin, the other partner breaks it up. Idol and Extacy are chopping the fuck out of each other in the ring, and Lishus and Steele are battling ringside. It is building. High risk tag team maneuver on Extacy, but some longhair jumps on the ring apron, and now tag team chaos has broken out. Everybody was forced away from ringside by a loud voice on a microphone, perhaps Zarathustra, and Idol is gone and One Night Stand is punching beers all over Mike Steele. And he threw a tray of chicken wings at him. No shit, he did. On to the main event, for the NECW Heavyweight title, between Maverick Wild and Alex Arion. Maverick Wild, in front of a brick wall, “I’m feeling more than 50%. I’m feeling better than 100% tonight. I’m feeling 200% strong, I’m feeling 200% skilled, and I’m feeling 200% ability.” That’s the type of thing I would tattoo in small letters on my leg if I had a tattoo gun. Really, it is. Strange booking, as the last match was two heel tag teams against each other, and this is two babyface singles guys going for the title. I think the crowd is lethargic because they are sitting at tables, and that’s what’s hurt this show. Two guys in trunks with boots and knee pads and wrist tape – old school. We’ve got armbar switching, and a fireman’s carry. This is fuckin’ great; I love a good quality technical face vs. technical face beginning. Of course, it will degenerate, if history holds true. Arion comes away with the slight advantages early on, which foreshadows the Maverick Wild heel turn later on. Wild has a full nelson on Arion and lifts him for one of those ass slam things, but Arion kicks his legs sideways and does a weird hiptoss thing without having his feet planted. Arion keeps working the same arm, and Wild sells it by slapping it awake on moments he gets the upperhand. Yup, Maverick Wild wouldn’t make a clean break in the corner, which accelerates the match, as is the standard for face/face matches. Then he gets in the first dirty tactic which leaves Arion laid out ringside. Wild goes out after him, how unsportsmanlike of him. And he slaps his own arm back into life.
BEER EIGHT: Wow, wicked fuckin’ forearm shot by Wild into Arion’s skull. Maverick Wild is now clapping in respect for his own maneuvers, upping his heel quotient. Man, even in this great match, the crowd is despondent at best. Fuck a Somerville, Massachusetts, wrestling crowd. There’s people in camera range talking amonst each other at the tables, not even caring about the match in the ring. Why the fuck did they come? Was it a free show at a buffet? What the fuck? Man, Maverick Wild is not afraid to throw the vicious forearm. He hits this crazy clothesline into the corner where he flies over the top rope and lands in the first row, visually making his lariat all the more wicked, especially combined with Arion’s lifeless thump face first into the canvas. Good wrestling is hard to come by, much less two guys doing it together in the ring in front of a crowd that doesn’t really care. Fuck move by move commentaries; suffice it to say, they are doing some good shit in the ring there, that Maverick Wild and Alex Arion. Including Wild going for the nonchalant lean back across the chest pin attempt, but Arion counters with a vicious leg scissors on the head combined with an ankle hold meant to submit out of nowhere. Wild gets the other foot on the ropes though. Fuckin’ great. Arion finally rolls Wild up and gets the pinfall. That was probably the best match I’ve ever seen where fat Puerto Rican guys sat at tables in the front row and ate food completely oblivious to the fact there was a wrestling ring with wrestling going on in it like five feet from his fat ass. Wild didn’t go heel enough that Alex Arion won’t offer the handshake afterwards, but fuck that displays Maverick Wild. He splits. Card over. Finish beer. Yeah.
EPILOGUE: FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: Maverick Wild. From the looks of him, I’d hate him, but he was top-notch. Top fuckin’ notch. Better than a hundred Low-Ki vs. American Dragon matches. I get so sick of that same style of shit all the time. Internet fans are a fuckin’ bunch of sheep. And not real wrestling fans at all. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: Zachary Springate. William Regal’s longhaired younger brother is so over with me. The only thing he could do to be more over is have an Andy Capp tattoo. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: Edward G. Extacy. He’s the fat guy in One Night Stand, and I’d like to put them both here, but I couldn’t do that because of self-imposed standards, so the fat guy is the one. They rule, and should be ruling it all over the World, but no, the World’s got to be all fucked-up and shit instead.
BEER TWO: Tim Fury is way too amped and way too skinny and needs desperately to lose a hair vs. hair match. They start slow, feeling each other out, as a match between two high-speed lightweights should start, to make the later speed seem even more amazingly faster. Man, this Powers kid is a great comedy heel, absolutely great. And the funniest thing is, every time Fury outsmarts the hilariously stupid Powers, he just latches on a headlock again. Nothing is more old school than a fifteen minute time limit draw with lots of headlocks by the face on a heel who just can’t seem to cheat the right way; old school don’t always mean good. Tim Fury is competent enough, but he doesn’t sell his pain well, and doesn’t transition well either. Basically, I hate him, and it’s all because of that stupid hair. When I worked at Kinko’s, this punk rock guy told me what a great flick SLC Punk was, and I watched it and hated it and was that Gary Busey’s stupid son, I can’t remember, anyways, that movie sucked and reminded me of why I hate the so-called punk scene, because it’s three-quarters a bunch of pussy fucks running away from their mommies and daddies and trying to be hard in an urban sense. Fury makes me think of all that. I guess he’s not so bad, it’s just his selling, with his skinny-ass body, seems so exaggerated and stupid, like a high school style Saturday Night Live skit. Powers hit a German suplex, and I think was supposed to roll over to hook the leg with his legs, but went sideways, and the ref was forced to break the pin count. How will they recover from this, me wonders? Hurricanrana from the top rope on Powers by SLC Punk and Powers, in comedy heel mode, does an extra roll-over from the momentum. As Fury closes in for the kill, Powers sweeps his legs, goes for the pinfall and puts his feet on the top rope for super-extra leverage. I love this skinny little fuck Justin Powers. Fuck you SLC Punk, you lost; now go back to running your friends’ zines off during the second shift at Kinkos. Ahh, the evil Brits, Zachary & Evil Trance Springate, are talking crap now. Zach is the true Brit in the team, and he does the standard saying “bloody” a lot and saying America was kicked out of the United Kingdom. Their opponents are the All-Knighters who look like two kids ready to do drink some V-8 Splash and watch a marathon of Jack Samurai on the Toon network. When did all wrestlers get so small and young? Goddamn, I know I turn 30 in a few months, but goddamn. Zachary Springate is perfect both in ringmanship and in his evil British ways; he should be immediately signed as William Regal’s younger brother. Better yet, Regal should get released from the WWE for breaking one of Steph’s fake tits, and then Regal could take bookings on the indy circuit working a team with Zachary Springate. Yeah, fuck indy guys getting signed, I’m all about corporate guys getting dropped. British accents just sound dickish. I mean how many Brit faces have there been, other than Chris Adams in Texas? Sure, the British Bulldogs, but I don’t remember them talking at all except for a few words here or there. Fuck, this was during the “every wrestling crowd does the ‘WHAT?’ thing from the Steve Austin promos of the time” period of indy wrestling. I am completely disturbed by this All-Knighters entrance. Hold on, let me finish this beer, take a piss, rewind and try this again, because I’m kind of confused.
BEER THREE: Yup, they came out, bouncing around like freaks, clapping their hands way over their heads way too enthusiastically, to some gay ass dance music and one guy has a teddy bear strapped to his waist. I think they’re wearing pajama bottoms. Please, lord oh lord, please tell me this is not a tag team with an all-night sleepover gimmick. Please. All Knighters do a bunch of hyping the crowd on all four sides to decide which segment of the crowd gets the teddy bear thrown at them. Fuckin’ weird. Actually, as Kid Trance Springate is outside the ring, I see this is not a gym but some sort of restaurant with group tables or some shit. Or a bingo hall or something. Wow, as bad as their gimmick is, the All Knighters don’t suck. But everybody’s so small. Don’t they have creatine or GNC stores in New England? Drinking a fuckin’ wheat protein shake or some shit. Now, I’m no Vince McMahon expecting you to look like Rick Steiner on steroids (redundant?), but damn, when guys are smaller than the kids watching their mom’s table full of Beanie Babys at the flea market on Saturday mornings in Scottsville, fuckin’ lift some weights or something.
BEER FOUR: The crowd is chanting, “England sucks!” You gotta love a wrestling crowd.
BEER FIVE: Speaking of limey heels, I was listening to the Tony Bruno Show this morning on sports radio, as I love that show. It’s hip, yet user friendly, and not the world of cooler-than-thou fratboy hipsters who were too fuckin’ white to be good at sports that the Jim Rome show is. Anyways, they were making fun of Terrell Owen pulling the Sharpie out his sock in the end zone after that touchdown on Monday Night Football, and Tony Bruno started ragging on the WWF for not having foreign objects, guys would pull out tables and chairs and stop signs “that just so happened to be under the ring” but no more foreign objects. “The old days were classy.” Tony Bruno is great, to be an old bald white guy who’s hip to wrestling history and rap lyrics and porn starlets, great shit. Anyways, the next caller says he had flipped there for like two minutes on Raw (yeah right, and that cock pump is for a friend, right?) and mentions William Regal and how he pulled some brass knucks out his trunks and they called it a foreign object, too. Bruno was glad, and specifically went through the old pulling it out the trunks bit, saying whether it was a roll of pennies or a pencil, they always called it a foreign object. Thank God while I remembered that, the tag match with the kids ended. Now we’ve got Slyk Wagner Brown vs. Bob Evans in a grudge match. Both these guys I enjoyed on the last tape, but Bob Evans is one creepy motherfucker, tall bald and elderly looking. He is Jacey North’s alcoholic uncle. Slyk Wagner Brown tests my stereotyping, as usually I’d rather drink PBRs with college kids while watching a Beverly Hills 90210 marathon than give props to a brother with a blonde-dyed crewcut. But Browns is dope, and I’ve seen in the nerd pages that he’s even been doing shows in England lately. Brown is the type of guy I completely imagine being in ECW as a mid-carder right now had it continued to exist. Some white chick with giant fake tits is Slyk’s second for this match, to watch his back. To her credit, she has a nice ass, but then again, a lot of asses that aren’t that great look great in those thin tight stretch pants. It’s like advertising for sodas, even if you don’t want one, it’s flashing in your face so much, eventually you crave it. There’s a chick at work like that, she doesn’t really have much of an ass, but she’s always wearing shit that’s real tight with a thong (speaking of a thong, fuck that shit, either wear underwear or don’t wear underwear, don’t bring that half-assed shit around me, or is all-assed?) and I’ve looked at it so much, especially with her always finding a reason to bend over to show it to me, that I now would fuck her, except I’m a happily married man. Used to be, even if I was single and drunk, I wouldn’t fuck her, just like Pepsi, I used to never drink that shit. Fuckin’ advertising, man, they flash it in your face and you react like the idiot you are. These guys should have a reverse hair vs. hair match, whether whoever loses couldn’t cut their hair for six months. Bob Evans is a maniacal demon in the ring, not like an evil Sabu or Adbullah the Butcher type, but a regular looking white guy who wants to maim limbs. I can dig on that.
BEER SIX: Slyk has been getting old school heeled out, but he rolls out of the way of a lanky moonsault by Evans, and has flipped into control here, not afraid to pop loud punches on Evans’ face. Fake tit girl jumps up and down and claps after Brown hits a rolling neckbreaker, and her tits do not move at all; that right there is why I hate fake tits. Fluidity, motion, chaos, eternal change – it is the way of the World. Unyielding rigidity is frozen death, and I won’t put my lips, or my five dollar bills, upon it. Wow, she jumped in the ring to take care of Evans’ evil manager, and she has thick thighs that did that whole upper thigh and ass cheek solid wobble that a perfectly crunched fine ass will do. And Slyk executes a full nelson into a sitdown powerbomb for the victory over Mr. Evans. Decent enough match, like most of these, but heat seems to be lacking. Where’s the hatred, the animosity? Where’s the pure violence as told through the semi-legitimate athletic confines of professional wrestling? Not hardcore nonsense or anything like that, but old school wrasslin’. That seems to be what they’re bringing in NECW, but where’s my motherfuckin’ intensity. Hey, it’s Sumie Sakai vs. Mercedes Martinez next. I know absolutely shit about joshi, except it’s women wrestling and I really don’t care. Sure, the Jap ladies knock the shit out of each other, but so what? I can’t understand the announcers. This is to crown the first ever North American Women’s Champ, and let me tell you, Mercedes Martinez is dope in the looks department. Dudes online are always creaming over these Jap chicks, but they’re all too scrawny for me. And they have that weird hipbone shape thing going on, too. The wispy little pubic hairs are cool though. They made up a pretty nice looking belt for this here match, better than most indy title belts. That makes me think it’s a present for the Sakai chick and she’s guaranteed to win. Sumie Sakai comes out first and looks so sweet and innocent and like a normal woman, smiling as she asks which corner is hers. Hard to believe she’s gonna be flipping on another woman and faking punches and shit in a minute. Martinez is hot and needs to make porn with me. Some whore bodybuilder named Lisa Lopes is ringside and comes in with poufy blonde hair and a bustier style leather thing, which is to trick most guys into ignoring the fact she’s a hideous looking muscled freak of a vagina. Works for me, but I am a pervert. And thinking about Mercedes Martinez; what a sweet smile. One thing I do love about the joshi is the ring outfits; they are just so odd and swank. Martinez is a lot bigger than Sakai, but not nearly as fluent in the ring. You gotta think about the differences – Martinez sits around hoping that the local indy will book one woman’s match each show, which is maybe monthly if she’s lucky. Sakai can work regularly and weekly in Japan. It shows. Wow, this is not a good match. But Sakai keeps yelling crazy Japanese talk, and Martinez has a big ass inside of vinyl pants. Ooh, Sakai warmed up and just nailed a missile dropkick to the fuckin’ chin on Martinez off the top rope; very sick. Ref bump, meaning female chicanery is about to go down. Ah, that Lisa Lopes amazon bitch is beating down Sakai ringside. You know there’s a whole subculture of cats who are all about big muscle chicks, and they pay to be carried around by the muscle chicks. Muscle worship it’s called. There’s even flicks where bodybuilder chicks kill guys with leg scissors using those thick steroid masculine legs. Mercedes gets the cheap victory, wins the belt, and is the object of my affection. I think I’ll send her some flowers or something. Maybe some butterscotch candies and a couple of sonnets. Tag team mayhem up next, with those sucker ass Egomaniacs, and the greatest indy tag team in America today – One Night Stand, Ronnie D. Lishus and Edward G. Extacy. Johnny Idol and Mike Steele are the yankee fratboys in the Egomaniacs. I bet they played lacrosse in high school. Both teams are heels, which is confusing.
BEER SEVEN: I’m very bored with this match, and would normally fast forward, but I’m not like that. One, it might bust out good all of a sudden, and two, fuck that, it wouldn’t be fair. All the other tag teams seem to be ringside for some reason, something must have happened while I was daydreaming about Mercedes Martinez. At this point, every time somebody goes for the pin, the other partner breaks it up. Idol and Extacy are chopping the fuck out of each other in the ring, and Lishus and Steele are battling ringside. It is building. High risk tag team maneuver on Extacy, but some longhair jumps on the ring apron, and now tag team chaos has broken out. Everybody was forced away from ringside by a loud voice on a microphone, perhaps Zarathustra, and Idol is gone and One Night Stand is punching beers all over Mike Steele. And he threw a tray of chicken wings at him. No shit, he did. On to the main event, for the NECW Heavyweight title, between Maverick Wild and Alex Arion. Maverick Wild, in front of a brick wall, “I’m feeling more than 50%. I’m feeling better than 100% tonight. I’m feeling 200% strong, I’m feeling 200% skilled, and I’m feeling 200% ability.” That’s the type of thing I would tattoo in small letters on my leg if I had a tattoo gun. Really, it is. Strange booking, as the last match was two heel tag teams against each other, and this is two babyface singles guys going for the title. I think the crowd is lethargic because they are sitting at tables, and that’s what’s hurt this show. Two guys in trunks with boots and knee pads and wrist tape – old school. We’ve got armbar switching, and a fireman’s carry. This is fuckin’ great; I love a good quality technical face vs. technical face beginning. Of course, it will degenerate, if history holds true. Arion comes away with the slight advantages early on, which foreshadows the Maverick Wild heel turn later on. Wild has a full nelson on Arion and lifts him for one of those ass slam things, but Arion kicks his legs sideways and does a weird hiptoss thing without having his feet planted. Arion keeps working the same arm, and Wild sells it by slapping it awake on moments he gets the upperhand. Yup, Maverick Wild wouldn’t make a clean break in the corner, which accelerates the match, as is the standard for face/face matches. Then he gets in the first dirty tactic which leaves Arion laid out ringside. Wild goes out after him, how unsportsmanlike of him. And he slaps his own arm back into life.
BEER EIGHT: Wow, wicked fuckin’ forearm shot by Wild into Arion’s skull. Maverick Wild is now clapping in respect for his own maneuvers, upping his heel quotient. Man, even in this great match, the crowd is despondent at best. Fuck a Somerville, Massachusetts, wrestling crowd. There’s people in camera range talking amonst each other at the tables, not even caring about the match in the ring. Why the fuck did they come? Was it a free show at a buffet? What the fuck? Man, Maverick Wild is not afraid to throw the vicious forearm. He hits this crazy clothesline into the corner where he flies over the top rope and lands in the first row, visually making his lariat all the more wicked, especially combined with Arion’s lifeless thump face first into the canvas. Good wrestling is hard to come by, much less two guys doing it together in the ring in front of a crowd that doesn’t really care. Fuck move by move commentaries; suffice it to say, they are doing some good shit in the ring there, that Maverick Wild and Alex Arion. Including Wild going for the nonchalant lean back across the chest pin attempt, but Arion counters with a vicious leg scissors on the head combined with an ankle hold meant to submit out of nowhere. Wild gets the other foot on the ropes though. Fuckin’ great. Arion finally rolls Wild up and gets the pinfall. That was probably the best match I’ve ever seen where fat Puerto Rican guys sat at tables in the front row and ate food completely oblivious to the fact there was a wrestling ring with wrestling going on in it like five feet from his fat ass. Wild didn’t go heel enough that Alex Arion won’t offer the handshake afterwards, but fuck that displays Maverick Wild. He splits. Card over. Finish beer. Yeah.
EPILOGUE: FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: Maverick Wild. From the looks of him, I’d hate him, but he was top-notch. Top fuckin’ notch. Better than a hundred Low-Ki vs. American Dragon matches. I get so sick of that same style of shit all the time. Internet fans are a fuckin’ bunch of sheep. And not real wrestling fans at all. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: Zachary Springate. William Regal’s longhaired younger brother is so over with me. The only thing he could do to be more over is have an Andy Capp tattoo. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: Edward G. Extacy. He’s the fat guy in One Night Stand, and I’d like to put them both here, but I couldn’t do that because of self-imposed standards, so the fat guy is the one. They rule, and should be ruling it all over the World, but no, the World’s got to be all fucked-up and shit instead.
Friday, May 2
MNZ: Harper's Magazine March 2008
Well, my stupid subscription ran out, but I didn't really care because I found Harper's to be annoying and pretentious at times. But then I found this in the free bin and remembered how great that oddball section up front always was. This one included excerpts from an interview with a Chinese mortician, and you can imagine how the hilarity ensues with that. I was all set to be like, "Harper's sucks except for that one part," but then there was a long-ass piece about these crusty punks trying to build a homemade boat to float down the entire Mississippi River from Minnesota to New Orleans. It was a great read, and really a good example of how, as anti-authoritarian as crusties are, they need regular society to pilfer off of and go back and beg, borrow, or steal from. If we were all crusty punks, we'd all probably be really fucking hungry. Although Colt 45 malt liquor would probably be enjoying a PBR-style resurgence in sales.
12-Pack Review: PWF 06/09/02
BEER ONE: Premier Wrestling Federation has impressed me, because usually northeast indys are just flippity floppity shit by itself, with maybe Prince Nana or King Kong Bundy thrown in for good measure, plus some hardcore Jersey style bullshit garbage matches. But the PWF brings the southern respect, due to Corino cutting his teeth and his forehead down in North Carolina early on in his career. North Carolina is God’s Country, and at one point, was the most fertile ground for independent wrestling. In the early ‘90s, you couldn’t fuck throw an empty RC can out the window of your Maverick without hitting a telephone poll with a wrestling poster staple gunned to it. To me, that’s good shit. You should be afraid some redneck is gonna kick your ass in the parking lot after a wrestling show, just because you look funny. That type of fear keeps us honest, and maintains that natural beast in us, that doesn’t get all egofied nerdy and proud to know some dumb shit about something that most people could give a fuck less about. That’s wrestling. Most people could give a fuck less about it. You say wrestling, and people laugh and think of a Hulk Hogan cartoon, not Low-Ki and American Dragon, or even Beautiful Bobby Eaton and Sweet Stan Lane. To mainstream America, wrestling is a fucking joke. I don’t know what I’m getting at, but there’s this tape, and I expect it to be great, because Steve Corino is behind it, and he understands the nerd, and he understands the redneck, and he understands working stiff and working the crowd, and you need all of that to make wrestling bonafide quality wrestling. At least, how I see it, you do. Anyways, let’s watch some wrestling. On the agenda is the Lockdown in Pottsdown, and wrestling in buildings with ceiling tile always rules. They’re bringing out all these guys who are small and gonna be in an elimination match for the Jr. Heavyweight title later. Quiet Storm looks like a pizza delivery guy, and Red is so fuckin’ young looking, I imagine he’s NAMBLA’s favorite wrestler. And I don’t know who he is, but I’m rooting for the guy with the shirt that has a mouse with big ears on the front and in home-done spray paint on the back “ABSOLUT LATINO”. And hey, there’s an old guy in a cowboy hat there talking to people, plus fat bald guys on the other side of the ring. This is a true wrestling crowd here in Pottstown.
BEER TWO: Joey Matthews and Christian York, eternally looking like the 16-year-olds they are not, along with Donnie B., who is best described as an evil Nova in appearance. And there is nothing more glorious than being billed as “former WWF developmental talent”. Donnie B. is great; there just aren’t enough shitty heel managers in this World, especially ones wearing Hawaiian print shirts. The PWF tag champs, the S.A.T., come out, and we have a top-notch curtain jerker between two top-notch indy tag teams. Matthews & York look like kids with alcoholic parents, hanging out in the parking lot of the Hardee’s, pimping a Dodge truck with 20-inch chrome knock-offs, listening to Tupac, talking shit to the same stupid bitches every weekend, every Friday and Saturday night, trying to get some free six dollar burgers out of the deal. This is a two out of three falls match, and Donnie B is rubbing oil on Joey Matthews, to bring the everhating homophobic rage of the crowd. That is old school, and there is not a thing wrong with it. The 16-year-olds hit a double burning hammer on one of the Super Crazy Jr.’s and wins the first fall. I don’t mind the S.A.T. so much when Red’s not around, he just looks too young. Maybe he should go out west and work a program with Vic Grimes and get some scars or some shit, maybe some facial tattoos. Then, even though he’ll look twelve still, he’ll be a bad ass looking 12-year-old. The thing I hate about wrestling now, is this is a decent enough match, but it lacks something, notably HEAT. I don’t care because the crowd doesn’t care, and they don’t care because the workers don’t care. It’s all fine and dandy they want to be great athletes and bust some innovative wrestling moves, but if it doesn’t fall under the context of either pissing off or pumping up the fuckin’ fat asses in the seats with gin on their breath, it doesn’t mean shit. I’m all about workrate, but I’m not gonna appreciate workrate for workrate’s sake, because it’s just one part of the whole formula. It was neglected for so long in sports entertainment fake reality that nerds have mistakenly thunk it’s the key ingredient. Somewhere, I missed the second fall, but the S.A.T. took the third fall with the Spanish Fly on York. Some ugly chick with thick glasses is marking out for the S.A.T. and it makes me happy, as that’s wrestling. Ugly chicks who are way into Journey (that’s dated by my days as a youngster hating my weird aunt’s choice in music, I imagine today’s ugly chick is way into something like P.O.D. instead of Journey). A little kid is mocking Donnie B. as they go back through the dressing room door.
BEER THREE: Billy Bax comes out and he looks like a volunteer firefighter whose job is landscaping at the local college. Landscaping is a great word for cutting grass. Holy fuck, there’s a giant fat guy with all sorts of bad tattoos, and Road Warrior Hawk hair styling, coming out. He’s jawjacking, and fuck, the Straw Hat Guy is there in the crowd talking shit, I hope the fat dude, Super Slam is his name, beats the fuck out of Straw Hat Guy. Fuck famous fans. The old cowboy hat guy talks shit, too. I love when the crowd hates a fat guy with tattoos. Billy Bax is outweighed by two riding mowers, and is leery of entering the ring. Super Slam rules; he’s like the missing link between Vader and Bastion Booger. Slam wins the tattoo war, as Bax has that same goofy tribal design that kids get from temporary tattoo machines at K-Mart on his upper spinal chord. Slam has some drippy ominous shit all over his upper arms, very pro-Metal Church looking. Super Slam wins, and then some fat guy in the front row runs up and exposes his belly to Super Slam, and Slam teases a Greco-Roman lock-up, then points at the guy and calls for security. I love heels. That makes me fucked up, because you’re supposed to hate the heels. Rapid Fire Maldonado comes out, and he is all evil Latino. The announcers say he superkicked a fan a few months ago and got suspended. Maldonado talks some pro-brown shit, and Julio Dinero rushes out with his long hair to defend the babyfaceness of Hispanic people everywhere. Julio Dinero is a recurring theme in my life, being the guy who was “the Freakin’ Puerto Rican” heel at the Chesterfield County Fair when I took my pregnant wife to go see wrestling, and the crowd chanted “Taco Bell” at him and some little girl in front of us on the hay bale bleachers was stoked to be getting five bucks off her pops to get an autographed Polaroid of “Taco Bell”. And then when he got in my face at the NWA Virginia show at a bar in Harrisonburg, which probably wasn’t a good idea, but luckily, I’m a sport, and when he made fun of my name Raven, I said, “Thanks, Mr. Corino,” things went downhill from there. He wanted to mock me, and he did, and the 14-year-olds with replica ECW belts laughed heartily at me, but they weren’t old enough to drink beer and they didn’t have a wife with big titties to suck on at home either. Life works out how it’s supposed to if you let it. Or something. So Maldonado and Dinero are getting outside the ring ugly on each other, and the crowd of drunk whites are chanting “BORING! BORING!” because there’s no white people in this match.
BEER FOUR: Dinero is sanchezing up and hits a sunset flip, but Maldonado is not to be dominated. They are doing the back and forth thing, where they try and elbow the fuck out of each other, turn by turn, just a little tough man trading shots thing going on. I hate the high clotheslines and elbows heels do when the face is supposed to duck. Motherfuckers should do that shit like you normally would and it should be up to the face to duck low enough or get fuckin’ clobbered. Dinero yells “Come on!” and nobody responds. Maldonado has a loaded boot, and hits an enziguri. Man, I can’t get enough of a loaded boot gimmick. The Commissioner character brings out the kid who got superkicked by Rapid Fire a few months ago and is demanding an apology. The kid is Red’s older brother, I bet. Hahaha, of course, Rapid Fire attacks the kid, and is picking him up and slamming him like a maniac. Small people bump well. Old cowboy hat guy is all riled up over Maldonado’s evil tactics. “One half of the Northern Rednecks, Matt Vandal” says the commentator. Let’s see, handkerchief bandana? Check. Upper arm tattoos, including barbed wire? Check. Pleather pants? Check. His opponent is Platinum Mike Preston, who is way too cocky to be a face, with his shiny pants and dyed blonde hair, yet there he is, slapping hands with fans. Wait, I had the heel/face structure backwards, as I wrongly assumed a guy who was part of the Northern Rednecks would be a heel. I forgot, this ain’t Brooklyn, it’s Pottsdown. You know, the North is just one big place I don’t want to have to drive through to me. Platinum Preston stopped the standard hiptoss thing off the ropes by Vandal, then instead of doing some crazy reverse, or anything you’d expect, he punched him in the stomach and hit a neckbreaker. That rocked. Preston hits a schoolboy for the win, and Lou E. Dangerously is great on the color commentary, like Cyrus, just not quite as good.
BEER FIVE: It is my nemesis, Biggie Biggs, who is Dusty Rhodes mixed modern with hip hop. Any guy wearing an upside down visor should get beat down by drunk clowns, in my opinion. Biggs’ partner is Lance Erickson, and their manager/second is Simon Rothschild. Biggie Biggs has a t-shirt tan, and is out of shape, which makes his hip hop gimmick even goofier. I would assume it was him trying to be a cheap heel, but I’ve seen him do the hip hop thing as a face before live, so he thinks it’s real. The Damned comes out, and they wear black and face make-up, but more importantly, they have a hot valet in black. I think they said her name is Demonica, and her black t-shirt has a skull on it. This is pure indy, with fat guys and bald guys and longhaired guys in black and former strippers and guys how used to referee in ECW, all in one match. If I wanted to create pain for myself, I would form a Virginia indy tag team of Biggie Biggs and Shorty Smalls and they would come out to some shitty Jay-Z song. Luckily, I don’t have power like that to torment myself, so I just sit here and get drunk and watch wrestling. That’s not painful at all. God, I’m a fuckin’ loser. Then again, this match sucks, which I’m sure has me questioning my motivation to do these 12-pack reviews, and in turn questioning all the dumb shit I write, so it’s all Biggie Biggs fault. Fuck him. The Damned wins, and that is over, thank God. But The Damned talks shit on the mic afterwards, for a while, and this leads to police sirens, which means Mafia and Monsta Mack come out and beat the fuck out of everybody. I like the Hit Squad, because Monsta Mack looks like he ain’t afraid to get goofy and smoke a joint with his cousin’s girlfriend, and plus Hit Squad makes me think of E.P.M.D.’s crew, which makes me think of “The Headbanger”, which makes me think of Redman’s debut where he acts like he’s rhyming like a someone who’s retarded. “Give it up for beer, helping people have sex since 1893,” say Lou E. I’ll give it up, Sign Boy.
BEER SIX: Next match should fuckin’ rule it, as Jonny Storm, with his corset waistline, goes up against Jody Fleisch. Unless you are Chris Adams in Texas supplying cocaine to Kerry Von Erich, you cannot have a British accent and actually talk and be a good guy in wrestling on American soil. Fleisch I’ve never seen as Fleisch, and only as Dakko Chan in Michinoku, but he’s out of control insane. Out of control insane. He’s skinny and young and will almost smash his brain on the floor, I am sure of it. Fleisch is fast as fuck as the match starts. Holy fuck, that was fast and great and the best nobody-can-get-the-upperhand-because-they-know-each-other-too-well thing I’ve seen in a while. Fleisch is so lanky, plus spastic in his movements, it makes all his nonsense more luchariffic. Storm is outside the ring, which means…YES! Springboard shooting star press to the outside. Storm hits a spinkick from the top rope, and for the first time, Fleisch chills the fuck out and is not moving around like a white crack baby half-grown up without his Ritalin dosage. Fuck, out of nowhere, Storm drops Fleisch on his brain in a Michinoku piledriver. Fleisch is outside the ring, and Storm waves the ref aside and does a double jump senton nonsense all sloppy like, but hits it. Storm clocks Fleisch with a chair. Storm hits a Reversensteinter, to drop Fleisch on his face. Storm wins with some crazy backwards hurricanrana thing that looks dangerous as fuck, and was spot-tastic, yet served its purpose at dropping jaws, thus opening them up for alcohol. A yes yes y’all. Rockin’ Rebel comes out, the other half of the Northern Rednecks, a guy who was in ECW during it’s non-popular days, along with guys like Tommy Cairo and J.T. Smith. Rebel is a goomba fuckwad who couldn’t become a cop because of his juvenile record. “That alfalfa crackhead…” says the Rebel, which was a great line, but I still hate him. There are kids in the crowd and the Rockin’ Rebel is cussing and talking about sex and all sorts of shit. So Rebel is fighting Danny Rose, in a match that’s like The Sandman had a big cookout in the park for his son’s thirteenth birthday, and Rebel and Rose are the two drunken uncles/cousins who get to fighting over by the monkeybars, yelling “FUCK” in front of three-year-olds, all because they are mad and can’t control themselves.
BEER SEVEN: The super ten-man elimination junior match is starting up, with Red and Quiet Storm as the suckers who drew the 1 and the 2. Quiet Storm is great, but again, he’s like five foot five. I don’t care how much you jump around real good-like, if you’re shorter than my sister who started smoking at age 13, then you suck as a wrestler. The third guy in the ring is Adam Flash and both of the other guys are a foot shorter than him. Flash holds up Red on a long time suplex Candido style, and I bet it’s great working a munchkin like Red or Storm, where you can pretend you’re super-strong and hold a guy up in the air. Chi Chi Cruz comes out and is the fourth man in this elimination match. Cruz is the Absolut Latino, which means he’s my fave in this exhibition.
BEER EIGHT: Some dude Striker comes in next. Rob Eckos is the sixth man out, and Adam Flash does a nice plancha off the top rope to the outside. Some hick named Jack Miller is the seventh dude out, and nobody has gotten pinned yet. Gino Giovanni comes out to join the melee, and somehow Adam Flash is eliminated. Chris Devine enters as the ninth man, with only Jay Briscoe awaiting entry. As far as I remember, the only person out is Flash. Last man in the match – Jay Briscoe. I’m not really paying attention to this match, just sort of hiding out, like Quiet Storm and Red are doing. I think Briscoe just paralyzed Striker, but it wasn’t as cool as you degenerates would think when I say he was paralyzed. Red pinned Briscoe with a top rope vicious sunset flip. It was sick and hardcore and fucked-up all at once. So the first two guys are the last two guys, and hopefully they’ll wrap it up fairly quickly as I don’t care. Simply Luscious comes in and her big ass is hanging out her blue go-go shorts and I can dig on that. Except it has nothing to do with the match at hand. Gratuitous ass. Quiet Storm wins the match, and Simply Luscious has a masculine ass, but that’s okay because she’s a woman. The cage is up, and six dudes are gonna get all fuckin’ ill on each other. Coming out first is Guillotine LeGrande and Jack Victory. Guillotine on the stick fuckin’ rocks. Chris Hamrick and Dylan Knight, more importantly with Candi, come out next. I like Knight testing the cage, that’s what you’re supposed to do when you come out for a cage match, and be in awe of it. Hamrick is an old redneck in shiny leather. The third team is Steve Corino and C.W. Anderson, old school as fuck and ready to cause trouble. God Bless Corino, who has built up tremendous scar tissue on his forehead, considering nobody really does that anymore. He truly is Old School, like Wahoo McDaniel.
BEER NINE: C.W. is great for a small bald guy, but he really needs to not do that hand thing. Corino and Knight start up outside the ring, Hamrick and Anderson get involved, and Jacko and LeGrande hang loose inside the cage, being the sneaks. Once the others hit the ring, it’s punch time with Jack Victory and Guillotine LeGrande. This is a bonafide old school cage with the mesh and poles, none of that goofy super-designed shit you see on the WWF. The worst cage ever was that type the WWF used back in the days of the Hulk Hogan/Paul Orndorff war, with the giant squares that was more for climbing than maiming. Cages are for maiming. Speaking of which, Corino maims Victory camera side into the mesh, and follows it up with some bites. That’ll be blood in a second. Hamrick and C.W. are rubbing each other in the cage; in goes Corino face first NWA style. Hamrick goes in face first, and Corino again. It looks like Corino is starting to bleed, and Hamrick has a crimson mask already, a bloody mess. Corino is as well now, that scar tissue not taking long to spurt the money red. C.W. Anderson pins Dylan Knight which means the lovely whore Candi has to leave ringside. Holy shit, Corino is not afraid to blade a fuckin’ gusher. Victory goes face first into the cage, and this cage is not gonna hold together I think. It’s rattling apart worse than that shitty Mexican one that Psichosis dove off of and they used that burning baseball bat on Leon Negro. Hamrick hits Confederate Currency off the top rope onto LeGrande, and the Guillotine is eliminated. Hamrick is bleeding more than Corino right now, and that’s a shitload. Holy fuckin’ shit, Chris Hamrick climbs on top of this raggedy cage and drops the giant Confederate Currency legdrop from the top of the cage, for the loving eyes of the 30 people in attendance. You got to love that. His reward? C.W. spinebusts and pins him. Then Victory pins C.W. rather abruptly, leaving just Corino and Victory to finish this match. Jacko is bloody now, but not the sick mess of dyed hair and plasma that Corino has become so adept at. Mr. Old School hits a DDT for a quick victory, and this match had all the makings of a great one, but the pins came rather fast at the end, and the fans didn’t seem to really care. Lou E. Dangerously nails Corino with the PWF belt afterwards, then Hamrick nails C.W. Victory, Dangerously, and Hamrick whip Corino and Anderson with a belt inside the locked cage, of course. All the other workers come out to do the attempt to climb the cage gimmick, but most of them just stand there watching, as everybody seems unsure of attempting to scale this haphazard structure, which makes Hamrick’s top of the cage legdrop all the more nuts. The top of C.W.’s bald head is bleeding. That’s always nice. Corino recovers to get on the mic and challenge Victory to a lumberjack match where the lumberjacks have straps. Nothing like a good whippin’ being promised at the end of the night. I got half a beer left.
EPILOGUE: FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: Rapid Fire Maldonado. In this day where fuckers want to be cool to the crowd even if they’re a heel, it’s nice to see a guy just being a complete asshole around the ol’ squared circle. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: Chris Hamrick, even though it’s kind of creepy to see an old guy like him wear that shiny leather shit. If Hamrick’s been wrasslin’ for 20 years, where the fuck was he back in the late ‘80s? I don’t remember seeing him around back then. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: Donnie B. That guy is money in his Hawaiian print shirt and white suit and slicked back ponytail; a modernized hip Sir Oliver Humperdink. He should get somebody who blows mist from the Orient to do his evil bidding. Too bad Tajiri’s in McMahon’s La La Land.
BEER TWO: Joey Matthews and Christian York, eternally looking like the 16-year-olds they are not, along with Donnie B., who is best described as an evil Nova in appearance. And there is nothing more glorious than being billed as “former WWF developmental talent”. Donnie B. is great; there just aren’t enough shitty heel managers in this World, especially ones wearing Hawaiian print shirts. The PWF tag champs, the S.A.T., come out, and we have a top-notch curtain jerker between two top-notch indy tag teams. Matthews & York look like kids with alcoholic parents, hanging out in the parking lot of the Hardee’s, pimping a Dodge truck with 20-inch chrome knock-offs, listening to Tupac, talking shit to the same stupid bitches every weekend, every Friday and Saturday night, trying to get some free six dollar burgers out of the deal. This is a two out of three falls match, and Donnie B is rubbing oil on Joey Matthews, to bring the everhating homophobic rage of the crowd. That is old school, and there is not a thing wrong with it. The 16-year-olds hit a double burning hammer on one of the Super Crazy Jr.’s and wins the first fall. I don’t mind the S.A.T. so much when Red’s not around, he just looks too young. Maybe he should go out west and work a program with Vic Grimes and get some scars or some shit, maybe some facial tattoos. Then, even though he’ll look twelve still, he’ll be a bad ass looking 12-year-old. The thing I hate about wrestling now, is this is a decent enough match, but it lacks something, notably HEAT. I don’t care because the crowd doesn’t care, and they don’t care because the workers don’t care. It’s all fine and dandy they want to be great athletes and bust some innovative wrestling moves, but if it doesn’t fall under the context of either pissing off or pumping up the fuckin’ fat asses in the seats with gin on their breath, it doesn’t mean shit. I’m all about workrate, but I’m not gonna appreciate workrate for workrate’s sake, because it’s just one part of the whole formula. It was neglected for so long in sports entertainment fake reality that nerds have mistakenly thunk it’s the key ingredient. Somewhere, I missed the second fall, but the S.A.T. took the third fall with the Spanish Fly on York. Some ugly chick with thick glasses is marking out for the S.A.T. and it makes me happy, as that’s wrestling. Ugly chicks who are way into Journey (that’s dated by my days as a youngster hating my weird aunt’s choice in music, I imagine today’s ugly chick is way into something like P.O.D. instead of Journey). A little kid is mocking Donnie B. as they go back through the dressing room door.
BEER THREE: Billy Bax comes out and he looks like a volunteer firefighter whose job is landscaping at the local college. Landscaping is a great word for cutting grass. Holy fuck, there’s a giant fat guy with all sorts of bad tattoos, and Road Warrior Hawk hair styling, coming out. He’s jawjacking, and fuck, the Straw Hat Guy is there in the crowd talking shit, I hope the fat dude, Super Slam is his name, beats the fuck out of Straw Hat Guy. Fuck famous fans. The old cowboy hat guy talks shit, too. I love when the crowd hates a fat guy with tattoos. Billy Bax is outweighed by two riding mowers, and is leery of entering the ring. Super Slam rules; he’s like the missing link between Vader and Bastion Booger. Slam wins the tattoo war, as Bax has that same goofy tribal design that kids get from temporary tattoo machines at K-Mart on his upper spinal chord. Slam has some drippy ominous shit all over his upper arms, very pro-Metal Church looking. Super Slam wins, and then some fat guy in the front row runs up and exposes his belly to Super Slam, and Slam teases a Greco-Roman lock-up, then points at the guy and calls for security. I love heels. That makes me fucked up, because you’re supposed to hate the heels. Rapid Fire Maldonado comes out, and he is all evil Latino. The announcers say he superkicked a fan a few months ago and got suspended. Maldonado talks some pro-brown shit, and Julio Dinero rushes out with his long hair to defend the babyfaceness of Hispanic people everywhere. Julio Dinero is a recurring theme in my life, being the guy who was “the Freakin’ Puerto Rican” heel at the Chesterfield County Fair when I took my pregnant wife to go see wrestling, and the crowd chanted “Taco Bell” at him and some little girl in front of us on the hay bale bleachers was stoked to be getting five bucks off her pops to get an autographed Polaroid of “Taco Bell”. And then when he got in my face at the NWA Virginia show at a bar in Harrisonburg, which probably wasn’t a good idea, but luckily, I’m a sport, and when he made fun of my name Raven, I said, “Thanks, Mr. Corino,” things went downhill from there. He wanted to mock me, and he did, and the 14-year-olds with replica ECW belts laughed heartily at me, but they weren’t old enough to drink beer and they didn’t have a wife with big titties to suck on at home either. Life works out how it’s supposed to if you let it. Or something. So Maldonado and Dinero are getting outside the ring ugly on each other, and the crowd of drunk whites are chanting “BORING! BORING!” because there’s no white people in this match.
BEER FOUR: Dinero is sanchezing up and hits a sunset flip, but Maldonado is not to be dominated. They are doing the back and forth thing, where they try and elbow the fuck out of each other, turn by turn, just a little tough man trading shots thing going on. I hate the high clotheslines and elbows heels do when the face is supposed to duck. Motherfuckers should do that shit like you normally would and it should be up to the face to duck low enough or get fuckin’ clobbered. Dinero yells “Come on!” and nobody responds. Maldonado has a loaded boot, and hits an enziguri. Man, I can’t get enough of a loaded boot gimmick. The Commissioner character brings out the kid who got superkicked by Rapid Fire a few months ago and is demanding an apology. The kid is Red’s older brother, I bet. Hahaha, of course, Rapid Fire attacks the kid, and is picking him up and slamming him like a maniac. Small people bump well. Old cowboy hat guy is all riled up over Maldonado’s evil tactics. “One half of the Northern Rednecks, Matt Vandal” says the commentator. Let’s see, handkerchief bandana? Check. Upper arm tattoos, including barbed wire? Check. Pleather pants? Check. His opponent is Platinum Mike Preston, who is way too cocky to be a face, with his shiny pants and dyed blonde hair, yet there he is, slapping hands with fans. Wait, I had the heel/face structure backwards, as I wrongly assumed a guy who was part of the Northern Rednecks would be a heel. I forgot, this ain’t Brooklyn, it’s Pottsdown. You know, the North is just one big place I don’t want to have to drive through to me. Platinum Preston stopped the standard hiptoss thing off the ropes by Vandal, then instead of doing some crazy reverse, or anything you’d expect, he punched him in the stomach and hit a neckbreaker. That rocked. Preston hits a schoolboy for the win, and Lou E. Dangerously is great on the color commentary, like Cyrus, just not quite as good.
BEER FIVE: It is my nemesis, Biggie Biggs, who is Dusty Rhodes mixed modern with hip hop. Any guy wearing an upside down visor should get beat down by drunk clowns, in my opinion. Biggs’ partner is Lance Erickson, and their manager/second is Simon Rothschild. Biggie Biggs has a t-shirt tan, and is out of shape, which makes his hip hop gimmick even goofier. I would assume it was him trying to be a cheap heel, but I’ve seen him do the hip hop thing as a face before live, so he thinks it’s real. The Damned comes out, and they wear black and face make-up, but more importantly, they have a hot valet in black. I think they said her name is Demonica, and her black t-shirt has a skull on it. This is pure indy, with fat guys and bald guys and longhaired guys in black and former strippers and guys how used to referee in ECW, all in one match. If I wanted to create pain for myself, I would form a Virginia indy tag team of Biggie Biggs and Shorty Smalls and they would come out to some shitty Jay-Z song. Luckily, I don’t have power like that to torment myself, so I just sit here and get drunk and watch wrestling. That’s not painful at all. God, I’m a fuckin’ loser. Then again, this match sucks, which I’m sure has me questioning my motivation to do these 12-pack reviews, and in turn questioning all the dumb shit I write, so it’s all Biggie Biggs fault. Fuck him. The Damned wins, and that is over, thank God. But The Damned talks shit on the mic afterwards, for a while, and this leads to police sirens, which means Mafia and Monsta Mack come out and beat the fuck out of everybody. I like the Hit Squad, because Monsta Mack looks like he ain’t afraid to get goofy and smoke a joint with his cousin’s girlfriend, and plus Hit Squad makes me think of E.P.M.D.’s crew, which makes me think of “The Headbanger”, which makes me think of Redman’s debut where he acts like he’s rhyming like a someone who’s retarded. “Give it up for beer, helping people have sex since 1893,” say Lou E. I’ll give it up, Sign Boy.
BEER SIX: Next match should fuckin’ rule it, as Jonny Storm, with his corset waistline, goes up against Jody Fleisch. Unless you are Chris Adams in Texas supplying cocaine to Kerry Von Erich, you cannot have a British accent and actually talk and be a good guy in wrestling on American soil. Fleisch I’ve never seen as Fleisch, and only as Dakko Chan in Michinoku, but he’s out of control insane. Out of control insane. He’s skinny and young and will almost smash his brain on the floor, I am sure of it. Fleisch is fast as fuck as the match starts. Holy fuck, that was fast and great and the best nobody-can-get-the-upperhand-because-they-know-each-other-too-well thing I’ve seen in a while. Fleisch is so lanky, plus spastic in his movements, it makes all his nonsense more luchariffic. Storm is outside the ring, which means…YES! Springboard shooting star press to the outside. Storm hits a spinkick from the top rope, and for the first time, Fleisch chills the fuck out and is not moving around like a white crack baby half-grown up without his Ritalin dosage. Fuck, out of nowhere, Storm drops Fleisch on his brain in a Michinoku piledriver. Fleisch is outside the ring, and Storm waves the ref aside and does a double jump senton nonsense all sloppy like, but hits it. Storm clocks Fleisch with a chair. Storm hits a Reversensteinter, to drop Fleisch on his face. Storm wins with some crazy backwards hurricanrana thing that looks dangerous as fuck, and was spot-tastic, yet served its purpose at dropping jaws, thus opening them up for alcohol. A yes yes y’all. Rockin’ Rebel comes out, the other half of the Northern Rednecks, a guy who was in ECW during it’s non-popular days, along with guys like Tommy Cairo and J.T. Smith. Rebel is a goomba fuckwad who couldn’t become a cop because of his juvenile record. “That alfalfa crackhead…” says the Rebel, which was a great line, but I still hate him. There are kids in the crowd and the Rockin’ Rebel is cussing and talking about sex and all sorts of shit. So Rebel is fighting Danny Rose, in a match that’s like The Sandman had a big cookout in the park for his son’s thirteenth birthday, and Rebel and Rose are the two drunken uncles/cousins who get to fighting over by the monkeybars, yelling “FUCK” in front of three-year-olds, all because they are mad and can’t control themselves.
BEER SEVEN: The super ten-man elimination junior match is starting up, with Red and Quiet Storm as the suckers who drew the 1 and the 2. Quiet Storm is great, but again, he’s like five foot five. I don’t care how much you jump around real good-like, if you’re shorter than my sister who started smoking at age 13, then you suck as a wrestler. The third guy in the ring is Adam Flash and both of the other guys are a foot shorter than him. Flash holds up Red on a long time suplex Candido style, and I bet it’s great working a munchkin like Red or Storm, where you can pretend you’re super-strong and hold a guy up in the air. Chi Chi Cruz comes out and is the fourth man in this elimination match. Cruz is the Absolut Latino, which means he’s my fave in this exhibition.
BEER EIGHT: Some dude Striker comes in next. Rob Eckos is the sixth man out, and Adam Flash does a nice plancha off the top rope to the outside. Some hick named Jack Miller is the seventh dude out, and nobody has gotten pinned yet. Gino Giovanni comes out to join the melee, and somehow Adam Flash is eliminated. Chris Devine enters as the ninth man, with only Jay Briscoe awaiting entry. As far as I remember, the only person out is Flash. Last man in the match – Jay Briscoe. I’m not really paying attention to this match, just sort of hiding out, like Quiet Storm and Red are doing. I think Briscoe just paralyzed Striker, but it wasn’t as cool as you degenerates would think when I say he was paralyzed. Red pinned Briscoe with a top rope vicious sunset flip. It was sick and hardcore and fucked-up all at once. So the first two guys are the last two guys, and hopefully they’ll wrap it up fairly quickly as I don’t care. Simply Luscious comes in and her big ass is hanging out her blue go-go shorts and I can dig on that. Except it has nothing to do with the match at hand. Gratuitous ass. Quiet Storm wins the match, and Simply Luscious has a masculine ass, but that’s okay because she’s a woman. The cage is up, and six dudes are gonna get all fuckin’ ill on each other. Coming out first is Guillotine LeGrande and Jack Victory. Guillotine on the stick fuckin’ rocks. Chris Hamrick and Dylan Knight, more importantly with Candi, come out next. I like Knight testing the cage, that’s what you’re supposed to do when you come out for a cage match, and be in awe of it. Hamrick is an old redneck in shiny leather. The third team is Steve Corino and C.W. Anderson, old school as fuck and ready to cause trouble. God Bless Corino, who has built up tremendous scar tissue on his forehead, considering nobody really does that anymore. He truly is Old School, like Wahoo McDaniel.
BEER NINE: C.W. is great for a small bald guy, but he really needs to not do that hand thing. Corino and Knight start up outside the ring, Hamrick and Anderson get involved, and Jacko and LeGrande hang loose inside the cage, being the sneaks. Once the others hit the ring, it’s punch time with Jack Victory and Guillotine LeGrande. This is a bonafide old school cage with the mesh and poles, none of that goofy super-designed shit you see on the WWF. The worst cage ever was that type the WWF used back in the days of the Hulk Hogan/Paul Orndorff war, with the giant squares that was more for climbing than maiming. Cages are for maiming. Speaking of which, Corino maims Victory camera side into the mesh, and follows it up with some bites. That’ll be blood in a second. Hamrick and C.W. are rubbing each other in the cage; in goes Corino face first NWA style. Hamrick goes in face first, and Corino again. It looks like Corino is starting to bleed, and Hamrick has a crimson mask already, a bloody mess. Corino is as well now, that scar tissue not taking long to spurt the money red. C.W. Anderson pins Dylan Knight which means the lovely whore Candi has to leave ringside. Holy shit, Corino is not afraid to blade a fuckin’ gusher. Victory goes face first into the cage, and this cage is not gonna hold together I think. It’s rattling apart worse than that shitty Mexican one that Psichosis dove off of and they used that burning baseball bat on Leon Negro. Hamrick hits Confederate Currency off the top rope onto LeGrande, and the Guillotine is eliminated. Hamrick is bleeding more than Corino right now, and that’s a shitload. Holy fuckin’ shit, Chris Hamrick climbs on top of this raggedy cage and drops the giant Confederate Currency legdrop from the top of the cage, for the loving eyes of the 30 people in attendance. You got to love that. His reward? C.W. spinebusts and pins him. Then Victory pins C.W. rather abruptly, leaving just Corino and Victory to finish this match. Jacko is bloody now, but not the sick mess of dyed hair and plasma that Corino has become so adept at. Mr. Old School hits a DDT for a quick victory, and this match had all the makings of a great one, but the pins came rather fast at the end, and the fans didn’t seem to really care. Lou E. Dangerously nails Corino with the PWF belt afterwards, then Hamrick nails C.W. Victory, Dangerously, and Hamrick whip Corino and Anderson with a belt inside the locked cage, of course. All the other workers come out to do the attempt to climb the cage gimmick, but most of them just stand there watching, as everybody seems unsure of attempting to scale this haphazard structure, which makes Hamrick’s top of the cage legdrop all the more nuts. The top of C.W.’s bald head is bleeding. That’s always nice. Corino recovers to get on the mic and challenge Victory to a lumberjack match where the lumberjacks have straps. Nothing like a good whippin’ being promised at the end of the night. I got half a beer left.
EPILOGUE: FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: Rapid Fire Maldonado. In this day where fuckers want to be cool to the crowd even if they’re a heel, it’s nice to see a guy just being a complete asshole around the ol’ squared circle. SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: Chris Hamrick, even though it’s kind of creepy to see an old guy like him wear that shiny leather shit. If Hamrick’s been wrasslin’ for 20 years, where the fuck was he back in the late ‘80s? I don’t remember seeing him around back then. THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: Donnie B. That guy is money in his Hawaiian print shirt and white suit and slicked back ponytail; a modernized hip Sir Oliver Humperdink. He should get somebody who blows mist from the Orient to do his evil bidding. Too bad Tajiri’s in McMahon’s La La Land.
Thursday, May 1
MNZ: Sports Illustrated Commemorative Edition The 50th Running of the Daytona 500
I bought this for the pictures, but also for some of the stories of olden days in the Nascars. It's funny to me how it used to be drunken fuckers (there was someone they talked about who raced like two races with a monkey in his car) and now it's these effeminate-voiced clean-shaven fruits. I don't get Nascar at all anymore, and find it disturbing how much useless shit they are somehow able to sell people. I have also been mind-boggled lately as I went to my aunt's trucker boyfriend's funeral and he had Jeff Gordon flower arrangements. I have always operated under the impression the salt of the earth are supposed to hate privileged California go-kart boy Jeff Gordon, but I guess not. I have also become bothered by some of the dork websites I used to frequent and how there's like big Nascar fans by guys who live in cities and never drive much less own a car. That's weirder than fuck to me.
Anyways, this was fun to look at for about twelve minutes, but I wish I had dumpster dove it instead. And it needed more Curtis Turner.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)