I gotta get this up while it's still somewhat fresh in my mind. Last night was very strange, to say the least. Actually, during the show, I took a hell of a lot of abuse (both physical and verbal), part of me was used as a weapon and the worst part of the night is that Danny Havoc might be seriously injured.
I ended up making it from Vincennes to Lafeyette in about 2 hours and 40 minutes. When I got there, I wondered if I was at the right place as I drove around looking for a place to park. When I saw Scrawny Shawny loading in barbed-wire boards in the back, I knew I was in the right place. The place was an old bar. The sound system wasn't that great and the lighting in there was absolutely terrible! I guess that's why the other company that runs there does their shows on Sunday afternoons. Once the sun went down, you couldn't see anything in there. When the show started, the crowd was VERY small, maybe about 75 or so, but as the night went on, more and more people showed up. In the end, I'd say there was maybe somewhere in the area of 150 or so there. I found my seat and believe it or not, in the row behind me was some local Lafayette "color"....pure white trash! There was about 5 or 6 of them and I believe there was maybe about 12 teeth between them. During some of the matches, they were too busy discussing if Shawn Michaels was going to beat the Undertaker at Westlemania. I kept thinking, "WOW....how did the NFW fan-base make it all the way up here anyway?" Another interesting fact about the show was that the whole thing was pretty much a convergence between CZW, IWA:MS and IPW as just about everyone (minus Ian Rotten and Brandon Prophet) who works for those companies were there, most of them working for the show. I saw a lot of fans that I've seen at so many shows before, people from IPW shows, IWA:EC shows, CZW shows.....even Luke Hadley was there (he's the guy got somewhat famous for doing backyard wrestling about 10 years ago and putting clips all over the Internet of him and his friends beating the crap out of each other, he was also a character in the "Backyard Wrestling 2" video game)! When they started the show, out came the ring announcer....DAVE PRAZAK!!!!! First of all, why wasn't he in Arizona for the big ROH shows and second of all, who would have ever thought he'd be working for CZW?
On top of that, he was also doing commentary with Mike Z, the guy who's does commentary on IWA:MS DVDs for the last few years. That was kind of surreal actually. Anyway, the first three matches were for "Wired!", CZW's TV show.
Jeremy Hadley vs. Bret Havoc
Hadley isn't the guy I was thinking he was, but I remember him from an IPW show I saw last Summer. Um...well, it was a short match! Hadley won....next!
Ashton Vuitton vs Chrisjen Hayme
Vuitton worked the "heel gay guy" role well (the trailer park all-stars behind me LOVED that too!). He looks like he's about 14 years old. I've seen Hayme several times now. He's a decent worker, but can be a little sloppy at times. The match wasn't too bad. Hayme took a nasty backdrop onto the bare concrete and landed with a nasty thud. Hayme got the win with a yoshi tonic off the second rope.
Apollo Starr w/ Rodney Rush vs Aaron Williams
Williams has a weird looking mohawk now. Apollo hasn't changed at all. Nothing really special happened in the match, but it was solid and both guys worked well. Apollo won with an exploder suplex. (I'm getting the names of these finishing moves from someone's Twitter....haha!)
They then took a quick intermission before the main show. During that time, they put barbed-wire around the ropes on two sides and brought out the barbed-wire boards. When they started the show, "For Whom the Bell Tolls" hit and out came Nick Gage! He got on the mic and did his whole "Who's da man?" thing, which always gets a crowd fired up. He looked as though he was absolutely trashed and could hardly open his eyes. He wasn't even wearing his ring gear, just a t-shirt, jeans and athletic shoes. he tried to pick fights with people in the crowd and then challenged anyone to come out. Out came xOMGX.
Nick Gage vs xOMGx (Barbed-wire match)
Gage pretty much beat the crap out of him most of the match. Gage was bleeding some, mostly from the arm and xOMGx was even bleeding through his mask. Gage got the win with a nearly-botched chokebreaker. After the match, Gage kept beating the crap out of him and then pulled his mask off. DJ Hyde then ran out to make the save. He threw Gage out of the ring and into the seats down the row from me. The next match was on:
Nick Gage vs DJ Hyde
They brawled some around the ring. DJ used barbed-wire to carve up Gage's forehead more. He also used several fan-supplied weapons, such as a thumbtack bat and a tennis racket with light bulbs on it. Somehow, Gage ended up getting the best of DJ once the match was in the ring and got the win. Gage then went back to beat on xOMGx some more. As he was about to do his boot scrape move, Ego Fantastico hit the ring, hopped up on the top rope and dropkicked Gage out of the ring. Azrieal then hit the ring and they started the next match.
Ego vs Azrieal
The match started off really hot. They were brawling around the ring while the crew was sweeping up the glass and garbage in the ring. Ego sat him up in his "run across the room and jump on him while he's in a chair move" and all of those kinds of things. Once they got the ring cleaned up, the match went into the ring. Both guys worked well together, but after all the insanity that had just happened, the crowd's heat kind of died. In the end, Ego got the win with a jig 'n' tonic. That whole series of events was crazy!
Greg Excellent vs Joseph Schwartz
Some people over on the CZW boards are already sh*tting on this match, but honestly, that was one of the best comedy matches I've ever seen....and I'm not really a big fan of comedy matches. Granted, the ending was quite disturbing though. Schwartz looks a bit different since the last time I saw him. He's gotten a bit fatter and now has the "Ceaser" haircut, which makes him look even MORE Jewish. Excellent was his usual, silly self. Granted, he's not that great of a wrestler, but the guy sure is entertaining. The funniest spot of the match was when Schwartz pulled out an airhorn and blew it in Greg's face. The thing hardly worked but Greg sold it like his eardrums had just popped. Then, when he got back into the ring, Schwartz grabbed a headlock and very obviously looked to be talking to Excellent, who then screamed "WHAT!?!?!" Schwartz did it again and Greg pulled away from him and screamed, "I CAN'T HEAR THE NEXT SPOT!!! OH, YOU WANT *ME* TO BUMP???" Which lead to a game of "rock, paper, scissors" to see who was going to bump next. Hilarious stuff....especially when someone near me yelled, "You're killing the business!" A little later, Excellent jumped out of the ring and grabbed two chairs and sat them in the middle of the ring, which led to a "barroom slap-fight"....Necro Butcher would be proud, I'm sure. Then later, Schwartz did a backflip move and ended up pulling Excellent's pants down. Man, that was more hairy, white man-ass then I ever, ever, ever, EVER want to see again! He left them down for the rest of the match too.....quite disturbing. He even did a tumble-weed roll onto Schwartz in the corner...YUCK! Excellent won with a bare-ass tiger driver. He then bowed to each section of the crowd and I made sure that my camera was turned OFF!!! Certainly not a great match, but fun none-the-less.
Zero Gravity vs A.R. Fox and Chip Day
Time to get serious and have some great high-flying stuff now. And that's what this match was! As I've seen Zero G do in the past, they completely won over the crowd with their high-flying insanity. Fox did some insane moves too, but ended up hurting his leg during one spot. Chip Day pulled off some cool moves too. In the end, Zero G got the win with a Tower of London/driving headbutt combo move onto Day. Great match!!! (If anyone from MECW was actually at the show, I hope they took notes!)
Next was intermission. I bought some stuff and just kind of milled around for a while.
Notorious Inc (Devon Moore and Drew Blood) vs Tyler Veritas & Adam Cole
Very solid match, but it seemed to go on a bit too long and there wasn't really anything special that happened. In the end, Cole got the pin on Blood with a corona kick to the head. After the match, Moore got mad at Blood, which teased a break-up between them. A good match, but not a very memorable one.
Ruckus vs Sabian (Jr. title match)
This is where things got interesting....at least for me personally! First of all, at this point, the sun was down and man, that place was DARK! It was getting hard to see anything in there. Anyway, Ruckus came out first and looked to be somewhat less-stoned then usual. He attacked Sabian as he came out. They brawled some down on the floor in front of us. Someone down the row from me yelled for Ruckus to do one move and he did. I believe at one time, he called it "sweet", back in the "fat Ruckus" days. It was a hand-spring/backflip kind of move. He pulled it off perfectly. Ruckus picked Sabian up and came over toward where I was. I got up to move, but Ruckus looked at me and said, "Put your foot up, man!" I sat back down and did. Ruckus then ran Sabian's head into the bottom of my foot. As part of his selling, Sabian ended up basically mauling me! HA HA!!! I grabbed my hat and put it back on (Oh joy...my bald head's going to be on the DVD now....yay for me!) and one of the security guys asked if I was ok. It all was pretty funny actually. I told the guys sitting next to me, "Well, that was a first! I've had that happen around me, but never actually TO me before." The match went on and it was pretty back and forth action. Ruckus actually looked really good and Sabian is really one of the most underrated guys in all of wrestling, in my opinion. In the end, Sabian won with a double-stomp off the top rope. Great match!
Masada vs Drake Younger
This was a match I've been waiting to see for a long time. Masada came out first and looked even more like a monster then ever before. He's slimmed down quite a bit. Younger was VERY over with the crowd! The match started off kind of slow, but picked up as they went. The match really got going when Younger took some wicked, unprotected chairshots to the head and was bleeding. They then went outside the ring and the brawl was on. They brawled all over the place. They made their way over to the stage and Drake did a dive from it. They then went to the other side of the place and at one point, a beer bottle was broken. I was running after then and don't know if it was broken over someone's head or not. Once they got back in the ring, the action was back a forth and man, was it stiff! During some of the submission moves the crowd's heat kind of died, but things picked up again when Drake hit Drake's Landing....and Masada kicked out! Drake hit another one and got the pin. Absolutely awesome match! After the match, Drake got on the mic and put over Masada and said, "This is the biggest win of my career." (How many times has Drake said that now anyway?) and said that whenever Masada wanted another match, he'd have it. The crowd showed Masada a lot of respect, which he deserves. Masada then hopped out of the ring and left through the wrong corner....which was my corner....he grunted out a "Move!" and knocked me out of the way! Ha ha!!
Next was a short intermission while they set up lighttubes and fan-supplied weapons for the main event. Prazak and Mike Z pretty much told us why the show got moved to 6P.M. I guess some rap group was going to do a show there at 10...oh joy. I'll thankfully miss THAT!!!
Cult Fiction (Brain Damage & JC Bailey w/ Billy Gram) vs Danny Havoc & Scotty Vortekz
Cult Fiction came out first. Brian Damage was walking around the ring, glaring at people. When he got to me, I stupidly stuck out my hand towards him (since I had met him once before at TOD and he was a really cool guy). He glared at me and I said, "Ok....nevermind." and sat down. He said, "Yeah, sit down, pregnant dog!" I cracked up and thought to myself, "Ok, I forgot you're the heel now....my bad!" The funny thing is that Damage really IS a cool guy when he's not in "heel mode". Havoc and Scotty came out and once again, the brawl was on. They broke just about every lighttube there was and everyone was bleeding heavily. So much was going on that I don't even remember most of it. At one point, Havoc climbed to the top rope and did a backflip onto (i think) Damage. He landed on his leg at an odd angle and was obviously hurt really bad. The reports I'm reading today are that he told someone in the front row that he had broken his ankle. He laid on the floor for the rest of the match. The match ended with Damage powerbombing Scotty onto lighttubes and Bailey getting the pin. Drake and xOMGx came out to help Danny to the back. Prazak then thanked us for coming out to the show and that was it.
I hung around for a little while. Most everyone from the show was milling around. I considered going up to Sabian and saying "Hey man, I'm sorry!", but in the end, thought better of it. Joe Bailey (JC's dad) was one of the guys tearing down the ring. After hanging around for a bit I just decided to head home. I got kind of turned around trying to get out of Lafayette, but somehow ended up back on 231 south and made it home. Overall, it was a great show. I think it would have been better without all the last-minute changes, but that really wasn't CZW's fault. I hope they run another show in Indiana someday, but are able to plan it out better. If they do it in that building again, I hope they just make it an afternoon show, so the lighting won't be an issue. Next CZW show for me is going to Tournament of Death 9 in Delaware!
I'll try to get my nearly 150 pictures posted as soon as possible.
On top of that, he was also doing commentary with Mike Z, the guy who's does commentary on IWA:MS DVDs for the last few years. That was kind of surreal actually. Anyway, the first three matches were for "Wired!", CZW's TV show.