Connecticut Championship Wrestling
"Showdown"
Knights of Columbus Hall
Fairfield, CT
2/29/04

Well I guess if they decide to make this an anniversary show, they'll only be able to have one every four years! Sorry, just a little Leap Year humor to break the ice.

CCW returned to the K of C with a good solid show that featured several outstanding matches. They appeared to have had a decent sized crowd for the [smallish] room and most people seemed to be vocally appreciative of the show. Very family oriented crowd with tons of kids, as is typical for an afternoon show. CCW seems to be pitching themselves as a product that is PG rated and family friendly without insulting the sensibilities of the older or 'smarter' fan. In other words, no blood but no circus clowns either.

This event was built around a tournament to crown the first CCW World Heavyweight Champion. I wrote last month that the Northeast Championship title currently held by Boogalou was the company's top belt. Obviously I was mistaken. They do however still recognize the Northeastern title and they had a #1 contender's match on this show to determine a challenger for Boogalou next time out. Boogalou himself wasn't booked as they kept the undercard fairly minimal, presumably to make room for the tourney. The show wound up clocking in at a nice trim 3 hours or so and they had none of the mass desertions that happened midway through the January event.

Participants in the 8 man tournament were Matt Striker [NY version], Mana The Polynesian Warrior, Hurricane John Walters, Latin Fury Luis Ortiz, Slyk Wagner Brown, Damian Adams, Supreme Lee Great, and Dylan Kage. More on that last one later. With these guys all in the same tourney it would pretty tough not to end up with some good matches.

Show opened with Joe LaChance, who plays kind of the Jack Tunney type role here, forcing American Idol Jay Fitch to come out and sing the national anthem as he threatened to do last month. The Mic will be glad to know that Idol is still sporting street clothes and what look suspiciously like bowling shoes. He has an American Idol t-shirt though. Idol comes out, actually gets a face pop [this crowd popped for everything all afternoon], and starts lip-synching really badly to a recording of the Star Spangled Banner. It got worse fast as the cd started skipping and the Idol was caught out big time. La Chance got upset and told Idol that there worthier competitors waiting to get into CCW. He ordered Idol to wrestle newcomer S.C.D.C Dave Cole right then and there, and if he lost, Cole would get his spot. Idol beat Cole with his feet on the ropes, so next month he has to sing a capella - and get the crowd to like it - or he's out. Again. I believe Cole is a recent grad of Connecticut's USA Pro Wrestling school (which is not affiliated with Frank Goodman's USA Pro Wrestling in NY).

At least Idol didn't sing "She Bangs".

The tournament got underway promptly with a first round match of Mana (w/Cindy Rogers) vs Luis Ortiz. Good battle between two competitors who were very well matched against each other. Ortiz played the heel throughout but the crowd, accustomed to cheering him, didn't really get it and basically treated both guys as faces. Mana KILLED Ortiz with some stiff chops. Ortiz won after knocking Rogers to the floor, then clocking Mana with two really hard looking chairs to the head while the ref was occupied with Rogers. Crowd started to get the idea that Ortiz was supposed to be the bad guy after that but they still popped pretty big for his win. This was only my second time seeing Mana in the ring and I am definitely starting to become a fan.

They went right into another tournament match with Damian Adams vs Hurricane John Walters. This was the best match I have seen in this building since, well, the last time I saw Walters here wrestling Xavier a year ago. Here at this show, Adams and Walters did a totally workrate oriented, Ring Of Honor type match that was easily worthy of being on an ROH show or main eventing anywhere. Just a ton of chain wrestling and lightning fast moves and exchanges. I gave up writing down the moves because my hand just doesn't work that fast. It would probably be worth getting a tape of this show to see this match. I was actually kind of surprised these guys went at it as hard as they but they held nothing back. Walters won with a sharpshooter.

One interesting thing I noticed during Adams/Walters was bunch of young kids yelling "Tap! Tap!" when one competitor had another in a submission. I know they probably pick it up from Benoit and Angle stuff in the WWE, but if kids this young are already educated to mark for a submission, it speaks well for the future of pro wrestling.

Mercedes Martinez & April Hunter defeated Alicia and Cindy Rogers in a women's tag. April and Mercedes were theoretically the heels and did the usual assortment of despicable heelish things during the match, but the crowd still preferred them to Rogers and Alicia. Alicia, who is an attractive girl but not a size zero, wore a belly shirt that was less than flattering and took some crowd jeers for it. It almost seems odd to see Martinez in a women's' match after watching her beat up the guys in ACW and on the last CCW show.

Striker won his first round match over Dylan Kage by forfeit. Strange deal here. They played Kage's music twice but he never came out. Finally LaChance ordered the ref to ring the bell and count him out. Striker told the crowd that he knew they came to see a fight, and he wanted to fight somebody, but nothing happened and he basically got a bye. Striker got on the mic, talked about what had happened last show, and said that Dylan had just done what he was told and he [Striker] was wrong and he was sorry that things had come to the point where Kage didn't feel safe wrestling him. Bulldog Blanski from ACW came out and made some shoot sounding comments about being sorry things had gone this way, stated that this was not an angle and even used his real name. I kept waiting for there to be some kind of sneak attack or swerve but it never happened. Everybody just went to the back and they went on to the next match. Okay, now I have NO idea if any of this is an angle or not. If it was, they didn't pay it off at this show. The only follow up was La Chance getting on the mic late in the show and saying kind of quietly that we don't need la Familia back and you wont see them on CCW shows any more. Based on this evidence, I assume that there was some sort of legit falling out between ACW and CCW. However I don't know what happened or was supposed to happen. You'd have to ask the respective promoters.

After this slightly confusing interlude it was back to wrestling with Slyk Wagner Brown (without April) vs Supreme Lee Great. Great did a nice job of heeling and was the first heel to really get the crowd to turn on him and boo the hell of out him. Slyk helped him out by trying to start a "Supreme Lee Gay" chant. Crowd didn't chant that very much, but they yelled just about everything else at Great. Slyk had nicknames for both his heel opponents today, a nice touch. Whoops, did I just give away the end of the match? Yes, SWB overcame the sneaky ways of SLG and won with a submission. The submission was a move I hadn't seen from Slyk before; he wraps the opponent's knee behind his head a la Brock Lesnar, then he leans across the man's prone upper body to lock in a crossface type hold over his opponent's face. Looks painful. I asked Brown after the show what he called the move (so I could get it right here), and he said he hadn't named it yet and told me to pick a name! Well I'm not sure I'm up to handling that much responsibility, but how about the Slyk Stretcher or the Slyk-O-Matic? Okay, so Slyk won with the Slyk Stretcher. [Which I think he mentioned as a possible name. My hearing sucks.] Great was sporting some nice welts from Slyk's chops after the match.

Intermission. Got a tape from Shanetorius' table of an old PWA show with Sabu vs Balls Mahoney on top.

First match back was a CCW Tag Team Championship match of The Untouchables [Anthony Michaels & Mark Gore] vs Scotty Charisma and Vic Devine. Devine was the same guy that wrestles as Vic Gun'R in ACW. Gore is a local favorite here in CT but the crowd was into both teams almost equally and once again didn't quite get that Charisma and Devine were the heels. The heels had the upper hand for much of the match, with Devine doing monster type power moves and Charisma hitting more speed/agility type stuff including the Ab Splash [similar to a Stinger Splash]. Michaels and Gore finally prevailed when Gore had one of the heels standing facing the ropes and Michaels came off with a dropkick on the heel into a rollup by Gore. Nice finisher.

Slyk Wagner Brown defeated Luis Ortiz [renamed "Latin Disease" for this match by Slyk] with the Slyk Stretcher. A slower paced, more psychology oriented match. This time Ortiz made very sure that everybody knew he was the bad guy by ripping on the fans and it worked. Another solid match. At this point I genuinely had no idea who was going to win the tourney. I'd kind of figured Ortiz for it since he is [I think] from the CT area.

Matt Striker defeated Hurricane John Walters with a Rey Mysterio Jr type double leg hook in the other semifinal match. Walters worked on Striker's wrist and forearm hard in the early portion of this match and Striker was selling it for the rest of the match, to the point that I wondered if it didn't 'really' hurt. No comedy or gimmicks from Striker in this one, just straightforward scientific wrestling, done pretty well. Whereas Walters' first match was all about speed and chains of moves, this one was more about each guy grabbing a body part and trying to wear it down. Nice to see a mix of styles throughout the tournament rather than having every match the same.

After that they went to the number one contenders' match for the Northeast title. This was changed around a bit due to Adams' being moved into the world title tourney in place of a weather-stranded Scotty Matthews. We wound up with J-Busta vs Abunia vs El Boriqua vs Wiqued. Thus was the kind of match that some people would describe as a "spotfest" with lots of top rope moves, dives to the floor, etc. Fun to watch. It started out almost like a tag team tornado match with Boriqua and Abunai teaming up against Wiqued and J-Busta before it eventually broke down to every man for himself. Abunai, the smallest man in the match, picked up the win. So somewhere down the line we should be seeing Abunai vs Boogalou. That's a potentially interesting contrast of styles between the diminutive high flying Abunai and the strong style approach of Boogalou.

In the last match before the finals, we had a grudge match pitting The Punisher and Bison Johnny Bravado [announced simply as "Bison" and subbing for a late dropout who I can't remember] vs Iron Eagle and mystery partner Bad Leroy Brown. Jeff "Hungryman" Harrison was appointed special referee. This decision turned out to be the Eagle's undoing. In a really funny comedy spot, Bison kept distracting the extremely rotund "Hungryman" with food. Every time the heels wanted to double team, Bison would throw a bag of potato chips or caramel corn in the ring. The heels would then wail away while Hungryman started hypnotized at the junk food that had been wasted by being spilled in the ring. I'm pretty sure I even saw Bison use a Hidden Foreign Object in there - only the sinister silver colored foreign object that he concealed looked suspiciously like it was not a pair of knux but rather a Three Musketeers bar. Well I don't think even the Hungryman will want it after it's been in THERE. The action eventually spilled to the floor and Brown found himself Irish whipped right through the door of the building to the parking lot outside as the door slammed shut behind him. The heels then distracted Hungryman by offering him a box of donuts. Well, the box of donuts contained not only donuts [mmmmm.....dooooooonuts] but also a brick, and they laid it upside Iron Eagle's head to win the match. Hungryman, confused by the sight of donuts, missed the whole thing but snapped out of it long enough to count the pin.

Before the last match they did the raffle drawing that they'd been hawking the whole show. Your faithful correspondent won.....an Albert action figure. No I didn't get to pick the prize. Maybe I'll take it home and stick pins in it and see what happens. They had the handicapped kid who was at the last show [and apparently comes to all their shows] pick the ticket for one of the drawings. That sort of says something about what kind of a company they want to have.

In the finals, Matt Striker defeated Slyk Wagner Brown (with April, for the only time on the show) to become the first CCW World Heavyweight Champion. Very good back and forth match that it seemed like either man could have won at any time. They did a lot of near falls and two counts. If you knew of Striker's genuine love of 80s WWF, this match had a few fun things to spot including Striker giving a very quick Superfly pose and at one point using a Tito Santana flying forearm, which as it turns out works quite well in a modern match. Crowd was split about evenly between SWB and Striker, if anything slightly favoring Slyk. Story of the match seemed somewhat built around Striker as the capable but not highly favored underdog. Striker finally secured the pin with a lungblower followed by what I can best describe as an inverted rocker dropper. [CCW's site describes it as a twisting leg neckbreaker.] Matt Striker wins what I believe is his first top singles title. Striker has developed into someone who can wrestle well in a wide variety of styles and situations and should make a good champion. After the win the two opponents shook hand and embraced and Slyk held up Striker's arm in victory. Striker got on the microphone and, pointing to some kids in the audience, said "This is what it's all about. This is what wrestling is all about. Families and kids." [I don't entirely agree with that statement, but that's a subject for another day.] Striker got in the ring afterward and took pictures with some of the kids in attendance, letting them hold the belt. I think I've figured out why Striker plays an 80s babyface so well: the man IS an 80s babyface. Congratulations, champ.

CCW has return dates in April, May, and June. Not sure what the exact date/place for April is yet. May 16 they will be in North Haven, CT for what was announced as a big benefit show with some major names. [Their words.] June they are back in Fairfield at the K of C. Check the DOI or www.ctchampionshipwrestling.com for details as they become available.