That’s as close to a promotion as most people in WWE get after they stop wrestling.
Hey, it worked out for Corey Graves.
Just a rumor at this point, but per a pal from another board who writes for the Wrestling Observer, Endeavour has decreed that Vince is no longer allowed to override Hunter on creative decisions.
Alright, DEFY recap time.
The Sun Dome was seriously undersold for this show. The place seats 6,000, but I doubt there were more than 1,000 in attendance. Not that I expected AEW numbers for a show that probably only weirdo wrestling nerds like myself would even have heard about, but I thought they’d sell more. They probably could’ve fit the crowd into their home venue at Washington Hall except that the ceiling in that place is too low to accommodate high spots. (Back at their very first show in 2017 I recall Cody Rhodes trying to superplex Swerve before realizing he didn’t have enough room to lift him from the top rope.) They had five rows of chairs set up around the ring, a lot of empty space on the floor, and two of the four stacks of bleachers were deployed. I’d say the floor seats were maybe 90% full, but the bleachers were sparsely populated, and despite this show being in a Hispanic-majority county and clearly designed to be marketed to Latino fans, I’d guess that Latinos made up probably less than 10% of the crowd. I don’t know how much money DEFY has for advertising, but considering that while I was in town I saw multiple TV commercials for a concert by the singer from Ratt and the drummer who got fired from Guns & Roses because he did too many drugs even by the standards of Guns & Roses, you’d think they could’ve bought some ad time on the local NBC affiliate. Also, as is often the case with older arenas, the acoustics weren’t great and it was nearly impossible to understand the ring announcer, and one of the two spotlights was shining directly in my face.
Aside from those gripes, the setup wasn’t too bad - they had a hard cam on the opposite side of the ring from me and were taping the show for Wremix, a streaming service that features indy wrestling from around the country. I should check it out sometime. The arena will probably look impressive on tape as long as they avoid any wide angle shots. There was no conventional entry ramp - they had a curtain set up at one end of the arena which the wrestlers entered through, then walked through the crowd to the ring. Commentary was set up in the soundboard area, where I could see promoter Jim Perry directing the show. The main referee for the night was Scarlett Donovan, who’s more or less taken Aubrey Edwards’ place as DEFY’s senior ring official and who last year had the privilege of being the first woman to ever ref a New Japan match.
The first match was a trios match with Juventud Guerrera, Super Crazy, and Guillermo Rosas (who’s from San Luis Potosi but learned to wrestle here in WA as a student of Nick Wayne’s late father Buddy) against Midnight Heat, who were the only wrestlers on the card to really get any boos, and had a valet named Tara who the crowd seemed to absolutely despise. Juvie came to the ring with his mask on but took it off before the fight started. He and Super Crazy are both still in top form - Super Crazy is definitely chunkier than he was in the '90s, but he can still move like a cruiserweight. Rosas was the one who got the pin for the victory.
Up next was a ten-man battle royal for Schaff’s Pacific Northwest Championship, the second most prestigious title in DEFY. (The reigning DEFY Champion, KENTA, was not at this show.) This match was done under modified Royal Rumble rules - they started with four men in the ring and added another every two minutes, with Schaff (who you may have seen as an enhancement talent in ROH and NWA) being the final entrant. Of course, DEFY doesn’t have a jumbotron to tell us when to count down, so it’s anyone’s guess if it actually was a full 120 seconds between entrances. I don’t know all the names of everyone in the match, but the Bollywood Boys (who are the reigning DEFY tag team champions) were there, as well as Curry Man (I.e. Christopher Daniels in a silly costume) and former DEFY Champion Artemis Spencer, and Canadian First Nations wrestler Sebastian Wolfe, who is a VERY impressive physical specimen. No eliminations happened until Schaff made it to the ring, and once he was in the eliminations started coming fast until it was down to him and Spencer. The two wound up brawling on the apron before Schaff knocked Spencer off to retain.
Up next was a tag match between four guys I don’t know. One team consisted of a guy who was dressed like L.A. Park but was definitely not L.A. Park, and his partner was wearing a Green Goblin costume. Their opponents were two identical-looking guys in blue, one of whom I think was named “Coyote”. Those two got the win. This match was decent, but I couldn’t really get invested because I had no idea who was who.
Next up was the sole women’s match on the card, featuring Vert Vixen (who was on Collision two weeks ago being squashed by Julia Hart) defending against former ECCW world champion Nicole Matthews, Karisma, and Liiza Hall (no relation to Scott). This was a fun match. Matthews had an impressive spot where she had Karisma and Liiza each tied up in a leglock, one on each leg, then intercepted a clothesline from Vert into a Perfect-plex and almost got the win, though Vert wound up retaining in the end.
Match 5 was something of a surprise - Masato Tanaka, former ECW world champion, against “the Bounty Hunter” Bryan Keith, an African-American fellow from Texas who uses a DDT as his finisher and dresses like a Wild West outlaw complete with poncho and cowboy hat. The two shook hands before the match started and the first half was the closest thing to technical wrestling on this card, with Keith pulling off some impressive mat work, before it turned into more of a slugfest. The two of them chained suplexes off one another about five or six times in a row, and Keith almost landed his DDT, before Tanaka countered with a headbutt and then delivered a devastating lariat for the win. Tanaka briefly stole Keith’s hat after the match, but then he returned it, they shook hands again, and then kowtowed to each other in a mutual show of respect.
Up next was Gringo Loco defending the new DEFY Primolucha Championship against Arez and Galeno del Mal. The Primolucha Championship is a new-ish belt that is defended strictly in three-way matches, much like the Impact X Division title used to be. Arez is a white guy from Mexico City who wears black and white facepaint that’s somewhere in between Danhausen, Insane Clown Posse, and Gene Simmons, whereas Galeno del Mal is a big mean father-stabbing-looking piece of meat, and Gringo Loco is a similarly sized guy from Chicago who looks and dresses like an outlaw biker. Arez is at least 100 pounds lighter than the other two and was working a high-flying style that benefited him at first, but Galeno and Gringo mauling the hell out of each other hoss-style was the meat of this match. There was a crazy spot near the finish where Galeno went up top for a dive, but the other two followed him and they brawled on the turnbuckle for what seemed like several minutes before Arez, now standing on Gringo’s shoulders, leapt onto Galeno’s and hit a Frankensteiner. Gringo would ultimately, however, get the win and retain his title.
Up next was the other trios match, featuring Sovereign vs. Ultimo Dragon, Nick Wayne, and “Classic” Cody Chhun, a slender Cambodian guy who’s been wrestling in DEFY almost since the beginning. Wayne was working face tonight despite his recent heel turn in AEW, though I did still heckle him a little about the time in 1998 when Edge beat his dad in a squash match on Raw. Sovereign did a great job of playing divide-and-conquer in this match, separating the face trio and working them three-on-one. Chhun got most of the offense in for the face team, while Wayne was more or less the Designated Whipping Boy. Ultimo looks GREAT for 56, but he was barely in the match for a minute and a half - he got the hot tag, cleared out the ring, and then got the pin. A little disappointing considering that he was the main reason I came out to Yakima for this show, but cool to see him live in the ring all the same.
The main event was Swerve vs. Hijo del Vikingo, in what I thought was supposed to be for the AAA Mega Championship but turned out to just be an exhibition match (more of my thoughts on that later). Swerve came out to his AEW theme, but sadly Prince Nana was not in tow. He still got plenty of pops from the audience, and a modified chant of “Whose dome? SWERVE’S DOME!” At one point the two took the fight into the crowd (which it turns out is profoundly terrifying when you’re in the second row and have a bunch of freshly autographed 8x10s tucked under your seat) and made their way to one of the empty parts of the arena, where Vikingo brained Swerve with a garbage can, then climbed up to the fourth level of the bleachers, dived, and hit a hurricanrana on Swerve onto the bare floor. Once they made it back to the ring, Swerve managed to get the win, and the ring announcer capped off the show by announcing the main event of DEFY’s next show as being Cody Chhun taking on IWGP world champion SANADA.
I wasn’t happy about the main event not being for the title - it’s my philosophy that the title, especially if it’s a world title, should ALWAYS be on the line when the champ is in a singles match, because being world champion means you’re the best of the best, and if you truly believe that about yourself you should be willing to stake it against anyone and everyone who challenges you. Granted, AAA was never in a million years going to let their world title change hands on a house show, but I fully expected Vikingo to win, and that would’ve been the sounder booking decision IMO.
Aside from Midnight Heat, nobody really got any heel heat - the crowd was pretty hot for everyone in all the matches and didn’t really seem to pick favorites. Jim Cornette would probably argue that that’s a failure on the part of the bookers and the wrestlers since they didn’t really give the crowd a reason to cheer for one guy and boo the other, but then again I don’t think Cornette would have enjoyed a lucha-centric show featuring the likes of Curry Man in the first place.
Overall, though, this was a solid show, a lot of fun, and it was cool to meet some of my favorites from my teens. I don’t make it to DEFY shows as often as I’d like, but if they make this one an annual event I’d be inclined to come back to Yakima next year.
having seensome of the wacky stuff daniels did when he was in the EWF (his wrestling school fed) he’s a trooper who does what needed or what he’s told to do without saying much he was “ninjaman” A couple of times when they needed a fill in … he did his match than wore this ninja Halloween costume they got from the local cable access they would appear on …of course we heckled him with a “your still daniels chant” and laughed when he flipped us off
One thing I forgot to mention. When I got my photo op with Hijo del Vikingo as shown above, he let me hold the AAA Mega Championship.
It was surprisingly light. Maybe 4 or 5 pounds. Considerably lighter than the X Division Championship was when I got to hold it at a DEFY show in 2017 (can’t remember if it was still TNA at the time or if they’d rebranded to Impact by that point). Even the replica Big Gold Belt I have at home is heavier. In addition to that, the plates looked cheap, like they were made of a base metal rather than the gold-plated steel most title belts are made of. Not sure if the belt is legitimately that way or if they give him a prop belt for photo ops so that someone won’t run off with it, but it felt a little kayfabe-breaking to hold it and find it not as impressive as it looks.
And I somehow forgot to include this in the recap, but the women’s four-way was for Vert Vixen’s DEFY Women’s Championship, which she’s held for almost a full year now.
As I understand it, Daniels is AEW’s liaison with DEFY and he scouts them for talents that are ready for the big time. I assume he was there to check out some of our local guys and figured it’d be fun to work the battle royal in his comedy gimmick.
What’d you say? “Edge squashed your dad! Edge squashed your dad!”
Sports Illustrated has the story on Vince being banned from creative - basically, Ari Emmanuel told him “You wanted to be Executive Chairman, so that means your job is to manage the board, not write TV shows.”
Nothing quite that pithy. It was something more like “Hey Nick, I was there when Edge beat your dad!” (I wasn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.) I tend to follow the Brendon Burns school of flowery verbose heckling, because I figure I’m doing it more to give the people around me a chuckle than anything else. If a heel wrestler gets a 2-count, I’ll often yell something like “Try arguing with the ref! That ALWAYS works!” If the heel is delivering an unsportsmanlike beatdown to the face, I’ll yell something like “Good sir, this is an EGREGIOUS violation of Queensbury Rules!” And if someone’s about to take a bump on the apron, I’ll do my best JBL voice and yell “Not the apron, Maggle, that’s the hardest part of the ring!” Stuff like that.
The only time I’ve ever actually gotten a wrestler to react to my heckling was at a DEFY show in Seattle back in 2017. The heel in the match was Mike Santiago, who hails from Tacoma, and in the spirit of playfully mocking Seattle’s next-door-neighbor I yelled “Go back to Tacoma!” at him from the front row, which prompted him to look directly at me and yell “SHUT THE HELL UP!” before continuing his beatdown of the face.
I predict Vince will own at least 51% of the whole shebang before long and resume doing whatever the hell he wants with it.
Before AEW, I got Alex Reynolds to react during a House of Hardcore (Tommy Dreamer’s promotion) show. He was ‘jerkin’-the-curtain’, and was playing the heel in a tag-team match, and I decided to react as if he was NWA champion Ric Flair. I think the level of the reaction caught him off guard.
In a similar vein, many, many moons ago, we took our daughter to a Medieval Times show. We decided to make France the heel, and would jeer and heckle the French knight whenever he got close. He picked up on this, and he and some other knights played into it whenever he was near our section.
I got reactions to heckling at small indie shows. Often the experienced wrestlers in the higher end promotions look at the audience with an unfocused stare that isn’t picking out anyone in particular and reacting to the general audience output. That may have changed though, haven’t been that close to the wrestlers in a long time.
Once at a small indie show in Indianapolis, I yelled at a heel wrestler, “You suck!” and he yelled back, “YOU suck!” hehe!
At the WCW Monday Nitro show I was at, I gave Scott Hall the Wolfpac hand sign when he won the U.S. Title in the four-way ladder match, and he shrugged at me as if to say, “Yeah, I know I’m cool,” and I shrugged back and grinned.
I went to a combination punk concert/wrestling show in Charlotte many moons ago. I remember the first match had a Undertaker’s American Badass knockoff. “The Eighties called,” I yelled. “They want their do-rag back!” That got the crowd going giving him shit. He deserved it for being such a wanker.
I also called Austin Theory “Austin Hypothetical” at a Progress show, then “Austin Corollary,” “Austin Postulate,” and so on. I easily amuse myself.
I ribbed the participants of a midget wrestling show, and one of them said “Shut up, Santa Claus!”
I doubt it. Endeavour owns 51% of the new parent company of WWE/UFC, with former WWE shareholders splitting the other 49%, and Vince’s ownership only amounts to 19% total. I can’t imagine Endeavour deciding to take the company they just bought and sell it right back to the guy they bought it from, and Vince probably can’t afford to buy that much.
More likely that he re-retires in a few months when he gets bored of not being allowed to play with his toys any more.
The Forbidden Door opens - CMLL’s Mistico, I.e. the original Sin Cara, will be taking on Rocky Romero this week on Rampage.
Sting’s last match forever and ever (we mean it this time) will be next spring at Revolution.
ouch that hurts in the "im getting old "dept…
I remember all 10 of Rick Flair’s last matches forever and ever (they meant it each time).
Impact Wrestling has now changed their name back to TNA.
This will not end well.