Pro Wrestling Supershow: Wrestling Revival!
Brockton, Massachusetts! Home of boxing champions Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler, and also a race car driver from the 1930’s named Bumpy Bumpus! I am not making this up! Anyway, there was no boxing or racing on the agenda on June 26: just wrestling, as Pro Wrestling Supershow presented The Wrestling Revival at the VFW post! I was unaware wrestling needed reviving, but I’ve learned not to ask questions about the names of wrestling events. I was just glad there were no itinerant preachers involved!
(The hall was down a long, wooded driveway and completely invisible from the road, and I know Green Room wasn’t filmed there, but if you had told me it was, I would have had to look it up. Fortunately everything about the experience was far more benevolent and pleasant than Green Room.)
We kicked off the show—well, actually the show kicked off with a pre-show “dark” match, a practice that continues to baffle me, between Danny Cabral and Logan Machina. The match was in progress when we arrived, fifteen minutes before the announced bell time, so we didn’t catch much of it, but Machina lost to Cabral. Suggestion: Machina’s finishing move should be, of course, Deus Ex Machina. He calls for the finisher, and every time a different wrestler comes out to pin his opponent.
Too niche?
Anyway, the event proper kicked off with the always acrobatic and entertaining Dustin “Flash” Waller taking on Nico Silva. Despite what appeared to be the agility advantage, Waller lost, and Silva took the mic to proclaim his greatness, but then a wrestler I wasn’t familiar with came out of the crowd and whacked him with a chair! Several times! As the under-10 crowd screamed “One! More! Time!” Wholesome family entertainment, people!
Next up, Matt Magnum took on Brett Mettro, who won this reporter’s heart by entering to Lemmy covering Queen’s “Tie Your Mother Down,” which we did not even know was a thing. Unfortunately my admiration for his musical taste was not enough to carry Mettro to victory, and Magnum got the win. It was a good night for the heels in Brockton!
Next up, a tag team match featuring Waves and Curls, who did not enter to the strains of “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” as they did when I saw them in Rhode Island. They were announced as hailing from “your baby mama’s dreams,” which I can’t personally inquire about as my baby mama is no longer with us, but perhaps some of my readers can report if this is, in fact, where Waves and Curls reside. Traevon Jordan taunted the crowd with a Knicks championship shirt, which drew the ire of the crowd. (I still retain my affection for them for the Whitney Houston entrance. Let the New Yorkers have a championship every 50 years or so, I say!) They took on Jason Daniels and Mike Russell, and Waves and Curls never lost an opportunity to cheat or behave in otherwise cowardly and underhanded fashion, so of course they won. Clearly they have a future in politics if this is where their ambitions lie.
Next up we had a 2 out of 3 falls match. This kind of match was standard in the early days of American Professional Wrestling but has rarely been seen since, so kudos to Pro Wrestling Supershow for kickin’ it old school! This featured Erik Chacha vs. AJP. Chaha entered to Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper,” and once again our affection was won immediately. Fortunately for Chacha, this time our appreciation for his music did carry some weight, and he won the match 2 falls to zero! Highlight of the match: AJP knocked the ref to the mat, and Chacha launched himself off the ref’s back to hit AJP in the corner!
The final match of the first half was a trios match for the New England Heavyweight Championship featuring Bret Ryan Gosselin (man, those kids from Jon & Kate Plus 8 sure grew up fast!), who entered to the “Sweet Victory” song from the best Spongebob episode ever (“Band Geeks,” Season 2, Episode 15, and we will not be taking questions about this) and once again our hearts were won by music. Gosselin faced off against TK O’Ryan and the champ, perpetually damp DJ Powers. Livyah was in the building, but she and Powers kept their hands and mouths off each other, much to their credit and the audience’s relief. Also, credit where it’s due: either Powers has upgraded his spray tan or he’s sporting a real tan. Either way he looked far less orange than usual, which is good because orange spray tans are frankly triggering at this point. TK O’Ryan, despite being announced as being from the Cape, entered sporting some sort of American Flag serape and a Clint Eastwood Man With No Name hat. Did he also enter to the theme from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly? He did not, sadly. It was a fast-paced, high-energy barnburner of a match, a match so entertaining that we couldn’t even be mad that Powers retained the championship. (okay, maybe a little mad).
After the intermission, we got Ichiban, the man with the Japanese name, the Mexican mask, and the apparent inability to speak more than two words! (“number,” and “one,” for the record) versus Staxx. Ichiban did his trademark flying and high kicking and even pulled off a 619 at one point. To Staxx’s credit, at one point had Ichiban on the mat and performed a death drop onto him, which was physically impressive, and also: more drag show moves in wrestling, please! Anyway, Ichiban won despite the death drop.
Next up was Livyah vs. Gabby Forza, Your Homie The Gnomie. Now, you will never catch us rooting against Gabby, but when Livyah entered, a gaggle of young girls attired in her t-shirts, which came down to mid-calf on them, reached for her hand, and she jumped around with them to her music, with big, joyful smiles on everyone’s face, and it was incredibly wholesome and delightful. Gabby did not bring any conical hats, which was disappointing, but she did lift Livyah above her head and military press her body, which was awesome, but not awesome enough to carry her to victory as Livyah got her in a submission hold, and Gabby tapped out!
The main event was a tag team match featuring Channing Thomas and Anthony Greene—no, wait a minute, Greene was injured, so he took the mic to announce that Bear Bronson would be subbing in for him as they took on Vincent and Dutch, a.k.a. The Righteous, who looked pretty spectacular in their white suits. (Though Vincent is a white guy with dreads, and, um, white folks: are we still doing this? Because I kind of thought it was over.) It was a brutal match that escaped the bounds of the ring quickly as the competitors chased each other through the crowd and abused each other a mere hair’s breadth away from fans! Indeed, they got so close that a security guard had to yell at some young fans to get out of the way of the action lest they be crushed by a wayward 300-pound man. Vincent at a couple of points did a little dance where he was leaning over and snapping in an apparent tribute to West Side Story. We could not figure out why, but apparently the benevolent spirit of choreographer Jerome Robbins guided The Righteous to victory!
Overall, it was a very entertaining event. Shoutout to Turnbuckle Times for helping me relay the names of the competitors correctly, as once again a guy shouting unfamiliar names at high volume into a not-exactly-top-notch PA system proved very hard to understand!
