He’s married to Eddie & Vickie Guerrero’s daughter, so maybe he can come back as a Whitexican.
Oh my, I would not like to take that move. Heavy Machinery. One guy holds his victim across his chest, the other guy comes off the ropes, jumps on his back and they both land on top of the victim.
The Network put up some Mid-South episodes from the early 80s. There’s a lot of stars here before they made it big in WWE, including the first time Jim Ross called matches. He hadn’t developed the BAH GAWD scream yet, but he definitely had the detailed analysis down. The music is pure 80s synthesizer cheese.
Notable stars include:
Ted DiBiase before he was the Million Dollar Man
Junkyard Dog before he got fat
Proto Savages The Wild Samoans, managed by Skandar Akbar
Paul Orndorff before he shaved his body
A much more agile One Man Gang
Tully Blanchard before his ascension
Iron Mike Sharpe before he became a jobber in WWF
Bob Orton Jr, Randy’s dad
Jake Roberts before Damian
The beginning of the Figure Four Reversal move: the announcers were talking about how Bob Roop went around the world to study from the masters on how to counter the dreaded Figure Four Leglock that Dibiase had been winning matches with.
Time for another indy wrestling recap!
Tonight was “DEFY 2: Wolves at the Door”, the second-ever show by the hot new promotion that’s been taking the northwest by storm. This show, like the first one, was held at Washington Hall, an old lodge hall east of Pioneer Square. It was a sellout crowd, with something like 500 people in attendance. I had a front-row VIP ticket, so I got there early and got to shake hands with the promoter (Jim Perry, a little albino hipster guy) and the announcer (KISW Rock 99.9’s Steve Migs) before the doors opened.
Once we got inside, I got to meet and shake hands with TNA’s Davey Richards and Angelina Love (who are married in real life), got them to sign a show poster and an 8x10, and got a professional photo taken with them which they’ll send me a copy of in a few days. Jim Perry got on the mic while the meet & greet was going on and had to make an unfortunate announcement - Pentagon Jr., who was scheduled to main-event opposite Davey, had to cancel at the last minute due to a family emergency and was in Mexico with his loved ones. He said they’re working on getting Penta on a future show and announced that, as his way of saying sorry for missing the show, Penta would be mailing personalized signed 8x10s to all of the VIPs within the days to come. (Apparently, TNA actually promoted this show in some segment they do about what Impact’s stars are doing in the indies this week, so I blame them for Penta’s having to cancel.) In addition to the meet & greet, we got a free drink ticket, a glossy copy of the ring card, and a nifty tote bag to carry all our swag in.
Jeff Cobb (Matanza) was supposed to be in the opening match, but he wasn’t able to make it either - his flight from Hawaii had gotten cancelled and he apparently wasn’t able to catch another. Instead, Tacoma’s Mike Santiago (who made Ethan HD leave Seattle at the first show) came out and demanded a match. Steve Migs conceded and called out the guy who had been scheduled to fight Cobb - Darby Allin, a new wrestler who’s been working mostly in Evolve. Allin has a very interesting entrance - a man in hospital scrubs with a crazed look on his face drags a body bag out to ringside, which he then unzips and Allin emerges from Deadman-style. They had a really solid 15-minute opening match that ended with Allin getting the win.
Up next was a Mexican-rules intergender tag match - Los Sexi-Mexis, “the only undefeated tag team in the northwest, weighing in at a combined 912 Tinder matches”, vs. the team of Batboy (basically a lucha version of the Weekly World News character) and La Avispa, “the only luchadora in this area”. Really good fast-paced lucha libre match. There was a funny little bit at the beginning where one of the Sexi-Mexis challenged Avispa to an arm wrestling match, she accepted, and then won, with the ref even acknowledging the victory. Towards the end of the match, Batboy started to turn on Avispa, pushing her into the way of a move to save himself and so on. The Sexi-Mexis got the win and Batboy attacked Avispa afterwards, which lead to the Sexi-Mexis making the save and putting her over after the match.
This was followed by the clash of the WWE jobbers - “the Persian Prodigy”, King Khash (pinned by Enzo Amore), and “the #1 cat enthusiast in the Pacific Northwest”, Radical Nick Radford (flattened by Braun Strowman). Radford wears a singlet with rainbow stripes and a cat face on the back, and was getting chants of “HEY, WE WANT SOME PUSSY!” before the match even started. Khash, of course, is an evil Iranian with curly-toed boots who plays the Iron Sheik gimmick to a tee. This was a shorter match - after some high-flying early on, Khash took control and managed to give Radford a backbreaker, suplex him, and MAKE HIM HUUUUUUMBLE with a camel clutch. Radford tapped out and Khash refused to break the hold, earning a reprimand from the ref.
He eventually broke the hold and offered to shake Radford’s hand - and when Radford accepted, Khash pulled him and gave him a piledriver. The ref had the bell rung again and Migs announced that the ref had reversed his decision and that Radford was now the winner by DQ. Khash cut a post-match promo about how Matt Cross wasn’t here tonight because he broke his leg at DEFY 1 (Cross actually did break his leg off a moonsault during that match and then went another 10 minutes), that he just broke Radford’s neck, and that he’s going to be the first DEFY Grand Prix Champion (to be decided in a tournament set to conclude at DEFY 5).
The last match of the first half was Tacoma’s Shane “Swerve” Strickland (Killshot) vs. Lio Rush, who competes in ROH, CZW, and Evolve. This match tore the roof off the joint. This could easily have been a main event match in any promotion in the world. Both guys were over massively with the crowd and they put on a clinic that ran 20-25 minutes. By the end, it’d gotten to the point that they’d both taken so many finishers and power moves that they were staggering around punch-drunk, struggling to even throw a punch, barely managing to answer 10-counts. There was a spot where Shane was setting up to AA Lio off the top rope which had the crowd going bananas - unfortunately, they couldn’t actually do it, because Lio would have put his foot through the ceiling in the process. Shane eventually got the win off a top-rope kneedrop. Shane cut a post-match promo about how happy he is to be wrestling in his hometown, and that from now on, you’re not from Seattle or Tacoma - you’re from Swerve City. He and Lio did his dance together after the match, though Lio was still selling and acting like he was too banged up to dance.
Steve Migs announced that they were going to have an intermission, but before they did, he called Shane back to the ring for a special announcement - At “DEFY 3: Swerve City”, Shane would be main-eventing against John Morrison!
As I was making my way past the merch tables to the bathroom, I bumped into Jim Perry again, shook his hand, and told him it was a great show so far, which he thanked me for. I was about to walk away when he cupped his hands and shouted “YO, EVERYONE, WE’VE GOT TICKETS FOR DEFY 3 ON SALE AT THIS TABLE RIGHT NOW!” I got to officially be the first person to buy a ringside ticket for that show. I also managed to catch up to Shane Strickland and congratulate him, and he signed an 8x10 for me. (I wanted to ask Nick Radford what it was like being in the ring with Strowman, but I couldn’t find him.)
After the intermission, Steve Migs had another big announcement to make. He repeated the sad news that Penta wouldn’t be making the show, but he announced that he would be coming to Seattle at DEFY 4 (date TBA), and he’s bringing Fenix with him!
The next match was Eddie Van Glam vs. “Simply the Best” Shane West. West got some of the most heat I’ve ever seen a wrestler get - the crowd was booing and chanting “FUCK YOU SHANE!” before he even hit the ring. He came out accompanied by his tag team partner “the Sage”, to a cover of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” with the lyric “You’re simply the best” changed to “I’m simply the best”. Eddie Van Glam, of course, is a hairstylist in Wallingford, Seattle by day, who by night becomes an ‘80s rocker known as “the King of Thong Style” and enters to "Livin’ On a Prayer" (which most of the crowd sang along to). He was wearing a set of trunks that was half neon and half fishnet, exposing one cheek.
West worked dirty. The referee kept pulling steel chains out of his boots and trunks and wristbands while he was checking him for international objects, and he was making a point of hiding other chains from the ref every time he found one. He was constantly going for low blows, eye-gouges, and the like every time the ref was distracted, and at one point blinded the referee with a mouthful of stuff, allowing Sage to get in the ring and help him deliver a Shatter Machine to Eddie. Eddie was eventually able to recover with a series of butt strikes, including one point at which he peeled down his trunks to hit West in the face with his thong-clad rump. (Eddie actually wears two thongs under his trunks - a standard thong to keep his junk in its place, and a gimmick thong with stretchy straps that he can pull up over his shoulders like the world’s tiniest singlet.) Eddie finally got the win off a top-rope butt-drop, and survived a double-team attempt afterward, celebrating to “Don’t Stop Believing”.
Up next was a women’s triple threat match - Kate Carney, Su Yung, and Angelina Love. Carney, from Bellingham, is “the Queen Midas of wrestling” and wears an all-gold costume, throwing wreaths and confetti into the crowd when she enters. Su Yung, of Seattle, is a former FCW talent (known there as “Sonia”) who now wrestles as “the Undead Bride”; she comes out in corpse-paint and a white wedding gown over her ring gear, with blood oozing out of her mouth, and is billed as hailing from “Off the Grid”. She’s managed by Derek Drexl, a Rob Zombie-looking guy hailing from Camp Crystal Lake (who Kate Carney pinned at DEFY 1). Angelina is, of course, a six-time TNA Knockouts Champion.
During Angelina’s entrance, however, the wheels fell off the train. Out of nowhere, the music stopped, strobe lights started flashing, and the fire alarm went off. There was a bit of confusion as nobody knew if this was legit or part of an angle, and a chant of “DELETE!”, but soon the ring security started yelling for everybody to evacuate the building. We all found ourselves standing in the rain for about 15 minutes, joking that this was the most elaborate ring entrance in the history of the sport, before a firetruck pulled up, a couple of firefighters went in to check things out, and determined that it was a false alarm and the smoke machine had triggered a smoke detector. The fire department actually got a pop when they showed up, along with chants of “FIRE DEPARTMENT!” “THANK YOU FIREMEN!”, and “FUCK THAT FIRE!” I ran into King Khash on the sidewalk and cut a promo on him accusing him of starting the fire on behalf of his Iranian masters. He said “No. What, just 'cause I’m brown?” and laughed it off.
Eventually they let us back in and Migs got on the microphone, saying “We’re all friends, right? We’re amongst friends. So go ahead, be honest; who was smoking weed in the bathroom? 'Cause that’s the only explanation I can think of for that.” They had, in the meanwhile, opened up all the windows to get the smoke out of the room, so it was now a chill high-50s in Washington Hall.
The ladies got back in the ring and the match started. Mostly, it was Angelina and Kate working together against Su. Drexl got involved several times, mostly going after Kate owing to their beef from the last show, and took some crazy bumps from the ladies. There was an impressive spot where Angelina was looking to superplex Su, Drexl grabbed Su’s foot to block her, and then Kate got in and superplexed them both, as well as a spot where Su had Kate in a figure-eight and Angelina then put Su in a crossface. Angelina eventually got the pin on Su. Drexl and Su attacked Kate after the match and laid her out, after which Drexl proceeded to lick her chest and dry-hump her to chants of “YOU SICK FUCK!” before Angelina made the save.
The cooldown match before the main event was another clash of the WWE jobbers; Carl “the Catch” Cunningham vs. Jorel Nelson, both of whom have had the honor of being smooshed into a pancake by Braun Strowman. Someone yelled “WE WANT STROWMAN!” during the match, which lead to boos and a chant of “FUCK THAT GUY!” Carl is a local guy who appeared in the four-way match at DEFY 1, while Jorel hails from Florida. This match was alright, but it was hurt by the fact that the show was running late due to the fire alarm (it was past 11PM at this point), and it really felt like it should have been lower on the card. Jorel won and cut a post-match promo where he acknowledged a friend of his in the crowd who’d recently beaten cancer (cue a chant of “FUCK CANCER!”), and brought her up to ringside for a hug.
Finally, it’s almost midnight in a show that started at 8, and it’s time for the main event. Davey Richards comes out, followed by his opponent - Jeff Cobb! (SWERVE) Turns out he was working us with the stories of missing his flight, and got promoted from the opening match to the main event in the process. Davey is the hometown boy and was billed as being from Seattle (he’s actually from Othello, a town of 5,000 on the other side of the Cascades), but he worked as the heel here, whereas Jeff got a heroes’ welcome. For a fight between two heavyweights, there was a lot of technical wrestling in this match - lots of chain wrestling, holds, counters out the yin-yang. Jeff is not only a technical wrestler and a bruiser, but he’s a high-flyer to boot, and managed some very impressive top rope spots. Davey ultimately forced Jeff to tap to an ankle lock.
After the match, Angelina got in the ring and Davey dropped to his knee, imitating Cena/Nikki at WrestleMania, and said that he had a very important question to pop to her - “Next year, can we move to Seattle?” She said yes, and someone threw a Mariners cap into the ring which she put on. Davey put over Seattle and closed the show by saying that this is our opportunity to make Seattle into one of the major scenes in pro wrestling today - “Fuck Chicago, fuck LA, fuck Florida, we are DEFY, let’s do this every month”.
Fun show, even if it ran a lot longer than I was expecting and it had that unfortunate interruption. This promotion is definitely building momentum and has the potential to become the Northwest’s answer to PWG. Their first show from back in January is now available for streaming online ($5 for a rental, “defyondemand.com” if you’re so inclined, this is not a paid endorsement) and this one will hopefully be up before next month’s show happens.
Definitely looking forward to the next show.
Mauro Ranallo is apparently finished with WWE. Lots of people are blaming JBL for bullying him into sparking is depression again.
To wit: Jonathan Coachman wishes to no longer cover WWE until JBL is gone.
I wholeheartedly agree.
That DEFY show sounded epic. Particularly the “most elaborate entrance in the history of the sport”.
It was a lot of fun. When you’ve got a venue of that size, full of smarks, in a city that’s known for having loud and passionate sports fans, it’s pretty much a guarantee for a good time. They’re just starting out, but they’ve definitely got significant capital for a brand-new indy promotion, a locked-in fanbase, and a plan to build on it and get some name recognition outside the immediate area.
Also Paul Ellering when he wrestled; by 1983, he was managing the Road Warriors and (IIRC) King Kong Bundy in Georgia.
They also had the Iron Shiek, presumably right before he went to WWF, won the title from Backlund, and then lost it to Hogan a few weeks later; I remember Dick Murdoch accepting his weights challenge on the old WTBS Saturday shows with Gordon Solie and Ole Anderson.
I love that Jim Cornette shirt. He looks like he’s about to make a smartass comment and thoroughly enjoy doing so.
They mentioned Ellering, but I hadn’t seen him in a match yet. He also managed Jake Roberts in GCW, but the Road Warriors were his mainstays.
Many stars got their start in Mid-South. The Freebirds started when they were teenagers. They were the Enzo & Cass of their day. Buddy Landel was also in a few matches, before he bleached his hair. Murdoch and Killer Karl Kox were longtime members. I remember Ken Patera, Stan Hansen, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, and Magnum TA also made their way through.
It’s based on a still from a shoot video Cornette did somewhere around 2000. He sells the shirt on his website.
It got me a few compliments from the other smarks in the front row. I found myself chatting with the guy next to me about how I disagree with Cornette on a lot of things but I love listening to him rant about things that make him angry, and him being amazed that he’s only about 5 or 6 years older than the guy that he used to watch on TV when he was a kid.
He’s in the second-earliest show, having just come off of an injury of some sort, although he may not actually wrestle until the third one. He was involved in the Iron Sheik’s Persian Club challenge. I don’t know what impressed me more…
Ellering doing 50 reps, or Sheik doing 100I saw him do something similar on the old (pre-WWF) GCW show, where he did a chair-step exercise (set up a folding chair; one foot up on the seat, then the other, then the first foot back down, then the second foot down, then the first foot up and down in place, then the second foot up on the chair, and so on) for an entire hour (supposedly - he could have taken a break during commercials, although I think the crowd would have reacted).
I remember that episode. He kept ranting the whole time while stepping. That’s kind of awesome, considering that he had to keep a breathing cycle going at the same time.
Ric Flair was reportedly kicked out of a bar in Ft. Wayne Indiana for being obnoxious.
Funny for a few different reasons:
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Flair doing Flair things
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Ft. Wayne is my hometown, and the bar he got kicked out of is a place I’ve taken multiple girls on dates, so I know exactly where he was when he got kicked out.
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Why he was in Ft. Wayne I’ll never know…
Geez, Apollo Crews moves to RAW but doesn’t get an appearance.
Half wanted a brief cutaway to catering, where he’s picking some food with his back to the camera saying “I can stand in catering on RAW too if that’s all they’ve got for me.”
I’ve been digging Mid-South. It’s cool to see guys like Jim Duggan as they were starting out and finding their identities. The show is so low key compared to today’s WWE. Maybe 5-10% of the show is used up by promos and video recaps. If somebody wins a title, they don’t take up too much time in the aftermath and go direct to commercial break.
Head booker Bill Watts is conservative, so he doesn’t let anybody get overly emotional for long. He prohibited moves off the top rope, which actually saves time and keeps the action flowing. What’s also cool is that the last match is usually between two jobbers for TV time remaining. It’s not filled with fluff and pointless recaps and promos.
What a weird show last night was. I was expecting a more formal “draft-day” type shakeup, but instead we just got random people walking though the curtain.
I’m assuming the same thing will happen tonight? At least it looks like (for now) that AJ is staying on SD which is absolutely the right decision.
So we’re not getting Miz v. Nakamura after all?
Presumably. The name I hear tossed around the most concerning being moved to SD is Charlotte, which would explain her loss last night.
There’s got to be some big names on the Men’s side moving… with Bray, Miz and Dean going to Raw. Nakamura and Dillinger getting called up to SD helps offset that, but that doesn’t seem enough.
Kevin Owens would make sense in a lot of ways as there’s now a title imbalance. I was guessing Balor, but since they teased Bray/Balor that doesn’t make sense. Maybe Seamus/Cesaro? Enzo & Cass?