"Fired Up" 1/25/04
Knights Of Columbus Hall, Fairfield, CT
Since Sean is probably already writing a detailed review of the show, I'll talk more about how I (and the other fans) liked the matches and the show rather than recap things in detail. Here goes:
Out of 3 shows I've seen in this building so far, CCW had the largest and hottest crowd by far. 100-150 or so people may not sound like much, but it's about all the room can hold as every seat was filled by the second match and they actually had to bring in a few extra chairs. The crowd seemed to know most of the wrestlers and for the most part seemed to be very into the product. There were even a bunch of "CCW" chants. The negative was that about 60% of the crowd left at intermission and never came back, which hurt the rest of the show. I don't know if people didn't like what they saw - though it sounded like they did - or if it was because so many attendees were families with kids in tow. I'm guessing the latter but who knows.
Show overall was your typical Connecticut indy show and I found it enjoyable for what it was. I think CCW is making the smart play by keeping the budget reasonable and pushing names that the limited local audience is familiar with rather than making the mistake of PWA or Xboku and bringing in high profile, high cost names that, in this area at least, won't necessarily draw a lot more people. [Wow, that was almost a Meltzer-esque run-on sentence.] For whatever reason, wrestling in ANY form just doesn't draw well here outside of a small base of hardcore supporters and families with small children looking for something to do together. Even the WWE and ROH don't do that well here in the southwest corner of the state. The guys CCW did bring in from out of state were well chosen in that they were somewhat lesser known talent who are very good at both the in-ring wrestling and working a crowd, such as NY Striker, Crazy Ivan, and The Solution. Some of the out of state guys got over and some didn't. but all performed solidly and the stuff that didn't work for the most part could be fixed easily enough by tweaking the booking here and there.
The show was scheduled for a 2PM start and got going somewhere between 2:15 and 2:30. I didn't think to check the time when it was over but at ten matches it felt just a little long. I think that may have been part of the reason for the mass exodus at intermission; after roughly two and a half hours maybe some fans just felt like they'd had their fill for the day.
CCW had a separate entranceway rigged for the wrestlers in the back of the room. This was a big improvement over the setup ECPW used in the same building where they actually had fans and wrestlers alike coming in through a common door. The sound system allowed voices to come through clearly enough. In this room you barely even need a PA in the first place.
Show started with ring announcer Joe LaChance saying that due to incidents on the last show (unseen by me) he had been appointed head of Security or something like that, and introducing Bill (?) Brown as tonight's announcer. Brown does some announcing and reffing in ACW and did an unobtrusively good job here. I think there was maybe one name all night all night that I didn't understand clearly, a far better average than usual for most any indy ring announcing. While we're on the ACW subject, there was a fairly substantial crossover of talent from ACW on this show and the two promotions are running some sort of a cooperative angle with ACW lead heels La Familia 'invading' CCW. Nice to see a couple of companies apparently working together instead of cutting each others' throats.
Show started out with a 10 man royal rumble in which the final four guys would go on to have a 4 way ladder match to determine the first CCW Northeast heavyweight Champion, the company's newly created top singles title. Got to admit it's a little refreshing to find a company that's not trying to tout its #1 belt as a "world" title when said world consists of one state or maybe just a small corner thereof. The entrants, in order, were American Idol Jay Fitch [Fitch works around the state but the "American Idol" gimmick was new to me], Spider, Nocturne, J-Busta, Abunai (sans mask), Wiqued, Boogalou, Azreal, Genesis, and David I-Dunno-His-Last-Name. Last four left were Spider, J-Busta, Azreal, and Boogalou, who are the four I probably would have chosen myself. Spider and J-Busta have feuded all over the state and know each other well, Azreal is probably a fresh face to most CT fans, and Boogalou is the token veteran in the mix. I'd think working with him would be good learning experience for the younger guys. Of course once it got down to the last 4 finalists, the guys didn't want to stop fighting and multiple Security people came in to break it up, led by new head enforcer Black Dragon.
Bad Leroy Brown beat Donnie Rotten with Manager I Didn't Know. Okay match that got a decent crowd response. Brown looks a lot like D Lo Brown, hence the gimmick no doubt.
Next announcer "Hungryman" Harrison [I think he's the company owner as well] did an interview with Iron Eagle talking about his return after being taken out some time ago. Eagle's opponent for the night GQ Smooth came out and tried to play nice before predictably leveling Eagle. The Punisher appeared to make the save only to beat the crap out of Eagle with a chair and vow to take him out of wrestling. Punisher and iron Eagle do a variation on this angle on every show I see in this state regardless of what federation it is. Only time I don't see this deal is at Jason's ACW. Maybe a Punisher/Iron Eagle feud is included free with ring rentals? Both are hometown boys from Fairfield which is more likely the real reason they did this angle but I've definitely seen it throughout the state. Black Dragon made the save again.
Kidd USA [no relation to the NY Kid USA] vs Matt Stryker [the NY one - confused yet?] went to a no contest when La Familia hit the ring and assaulted both men. Shortly before this happened Stryker took a fall out of the ring and appeared to land badly and hurt his knee. Refs and helpers came out and it looked like they might take him away but he finally rolled into the ring and then heels hit almost immediately thereafter. Wound up in what the late Gorilla Monsoon would call a pier six brawl between La Familia (Dylan Kage, Avil Graves, Mercedes Martinez and manager/leader Mike E Milano) and a bunch of CCW faces including Scotty Matthews, and Scotty Charisma. Stryker got mad at Dylan Kage for attacking him when he was injured and challenged him to a shoot (he used that word) at the next show. I might have bought it all if it hadn't been for 'on the next show' part, prior to that I was wondering if Striker really got hurt. For all I know he did, but the first rule of wrestling is of course that if it happens in front of a crowd, it's a work. Striker basically played a straight up babyface with no comedy and he was pretty good at it. La Familia now includes Jason Knight's son Avil Graves, who last I had heard was still a face. He must have turned and joined the heels on that last ACW show that I missed.
The actual match of Striker vs Kidd USA was nothing to write home about, but I don't think that was Striker's fault. The match was mostly there to set up the angle anyway.
Mana and Molsonn, doing a not-that-great Headhunters/SST ripoff, beat Johnny 'Bison" Bravado and El Boriqua when the 300+ pound huge gutted Molsonn hit a BIG FAT SENTON BOMB for the pin. Scary as hell in ways it probably wasn't supposed to be. It was crazy just to see him go to the top for what I assumed was a splash. When he went for a senton I was sure I was about to witness at least one death and possibly several. I'll give him credit: he pulled it off. Whomever put that ring together obviously did one HELL of a job as it survived too. Bison and Boriqua were amusing heels in this one. ["YOU get in there!"] The senton is a heck of a move for a guy that size and shape, but I have to wonder if it wouldn't actually look a lot more devastating if he hit a simpler top rope splash where his whole huge body crashes onto the opponent rather than just having his head glance off. During this match some guy behind me yelled at Bravado "Hey Bison, how many tickets did ya sell to be in this match?" I can't imagine who that could have been. Must have been some rude person from New York LOL.
In the ladies match Mercedes Martinez beat Cindy Rogers. Never seen Rogers before but she seemed pretty sharp in the ring and was more athletic looking than a lot of woman wrestlers I see around here. Because LF were at ringside, Molsonn and Mana stayed out there as Rogers' insurance policy. Don't ask me what happened in most of this match as I had Molsonn standing in front of me eclipsing the sun and several planets, not to mention 80% of my view of the ring. What I could see of the match looked good. Molsonn didn't look so good.
La Familia members Dylan Kage, Avil Graves and Mercedes Martinez w/Mike E Milano beat Scotty Matthews, Scotty Charisma, and Scotty, er, Vic Gun'R when Martinez pinned Charisma. I suppose this is as good of a time to say to any disgruntled JAPW fans reading this that Milano's La Familia has been using this gimmick name for well over a year so they preceded JAPW's totally unrelated La Familia. Match was okay but went about 5 minutes too long . Martinez plays the Chyna role where she's not afraid to go in there and mix it up with the boys, except that when one of the faces goes to hit her she begs off and switches to scared-little-girl mode to throw them off until her team can get the advantage again. Good heel tactic that worked in this match. Kage was hitting pretty crisp superkicks on everything that moved for a while. Matthews did a lot of goofy comedy, such as starting a "this is boring" chant at himself (!), that didn't seem entirely in place for this context since the two teams were supposed to be deadly enemies.
Intermission. Three quarters of the crowd leaves...and never comes back.
Show started back up after about 15 or 20 minutes with maybe 50-70 people left in the building. The crowd that was left was fairly vocal but just too small to really get anything going with, plus at this point people were getting tired. First match back is the tag title match with The Untouchables [Anthony Michaels & Mark Gore] vs The Solution w/John Shane vs All Money Is Legal. Solution came out first and heeled it up big time but had trouble getting much response out of the crowd. Shane rips on the town of "Fairview, Connecticut" repeatedly to rile the remaining people up, but it doesn't work as most people think he really doesn't know the name of the town he's in and rather than being insulted, just don't react much at all. He tries again by ripping on Fairfield Prep for losing a high school football game. NO reaction at all. Hey, I went to the school for a while [back in prehistoric times aka the 1970s] and even I don't care about this. Big props to Shane for doing that kind of homework in the first place though. That's the trouble with Connecticut: no major local sports teams to rip on to get that quick heel heat. Next time at least ripping on the public school instead of the private one - which the townies probably hate anyway - might help. Then again, being placed on the card prior to the mass exodus at intermission REALLY would have helped. AMIL come out to about the same non-reaction and didn't seem over at all. Local boys Michaels and Gore at least get a little love, and eventually also get the duke after a Solution/Shane miscue. Okay match that wasn't as good as I'd hoped. Solution worked hard here and did a good job with what they had. Had this match been placed earlier on the card I think they would have gotten 10 times the response.
Iron Eagle beat GQ Smooth. Your usual Iron Eagle match. As the hometown favorite he got a pretty decent response even from this small and tired crowd.
Crazy Ivan beat Ron Zombie. A real disappointment. This was advertised as a 'hardcore grudge match' but it was fought as a straight wrestling match without any hardcore elements except some use of a chair, which the ref actually tried to take away from the participants. I can definitely understand not wanting to do a crazyass hardcore match in this particular building with an audience of mostly kids and older people, but then don't bill it as a hardcore match. Both wrestlers are pretty skilled so taken on its own merits as a regular wrestling match this wasn't bad at all. It just wasn't what I was expecting to see. I would love to see a rematch where they REALLY let these two go at it. That would be something to see. [Also, when oh WHEN is somebody gonna book Low Life Louie vs Ron Zombie in a NY vs New England hardcore streetfight? Anybody? Pleeeease?] Ivan played more the comedy heel and didn't do the racist stuff much if at all but he was still great. Ivan is really very good at dialing the gimmick up or down depending in the crowd. During his entrance he went over to a severely handicapped child in a wheelchair who'd been watching and digging the whole show and said "I'll beat you up too! I don't discriminate! I'll beat you up!" Kid visibly got a kick of being included and treated like everyone else and so did his dad. I'm really stating to come over to Zevon's side on the whole "most underappreciated wrestler" thing vis a vis Ivan.
Boogalou won the 4 way ladder match over J-Busta, Spider, and Azreal to win the CCW Northeastern Championship. Lots of SICK bumps and abuse in this one, unfortunately the crowd was pretty dead by this time. I hate to see guys kill themselves like this for such a low reward. Match was basically a crazy spotfest but enjoyable on that level. Spider in particular took some hellacious bumps and ladder spots. Out of these 4 Boogalou would have been my choice to win it also. Crowd didn't seem to react to him at all though. Next time maybe they need to give him some mic time and some storyline stuff to help the people understand why they should care about him. Once the bell rings he's great so if they just set him up okay with some out of ring stuff I would think he'd get over well.
No return date announced yet, but so far CCW has been running every other month so I'd look for something in March. Look here and at www.ctchampionshipwrestling.com