RCW Rise of Legends
Night 2, October 15th, 2011
Glengarry Community Hall
The show began with Big Jess Youngblood making his way to the ring with the RCW Championship belt and a birthday cake. He explained that it was his birthday, and invited a little girl from the crowd who was also celebrating her special day to join him in the ring for cake. Evan Inferno made his way to the ring and promptly ruined that moment by shoving the cake into Youngblood’s face, thus maintaining the wrestling tradition of food not being able to be involved in a show without ending up all over somebody.
RCW Mid-Heavyweight Championship Match
Kato © vs. Ronnie “The Greaser” Angel
Kato hefts "The Greaser" for a suplex. Emphasis on "hefts." Greaser also describes the content of most of Angel's meals.
Ronnie “The Greaser” Angel is basically a poor man’s Deuce ‘n’ Domino. As his name implies, he’s doing a ‘50s “greaser” gimmick, complete with slicked hair and comb. He came out and cut a brief promo about taking the Mid-Heavyweight belt back to America and King Obama, at which point I loudly informed him that he doesn’t understand how politics work. He then proceeded to take off his white t-shirt (a greaser staple) to reveal a completely nonsensical black singlet top with zebra striping down the sides. Uh, what? He also managed to visibly screw up pretty much every one of the opening spots until Kato hit him with a springboard clothesline, which was not an auspicious start for “Greased Lightning.” After a little bit of back and forth, Kato hit a scintillating somersault plancha over the top to the floor, which made it very clear that moving the front row back about five feet from it’s location during the previous show a very, very good idea. They went for a bunch of “catch the high flyer” spots, which only worked really smoothly once, with Angel countering a cross body into a fallaway slam. Kato retained his title after a relatively short bout with a frog splash from the top turnbuckle.
Winner: Kato via top rope frog splash.
The winner shall consume an entire cow. Who are we kidding, so will the loser.
Barricade vs. Andre Williams
Andre Williams was working a French Canadian gimmick, which is a pretty good way to get heat from a Western Canadian crowd. He also drew laughs because he was a “French” guy with an English name who yelled at the crowd in “French.” Which was basically composed of French words jammed together in nonsensical ways and pronounced with a cartoonish French accent. He and Barricade had a pretty solid “big guy” match, which began with an irresistible force/immovable object sequence of shoulder tackle attempts which ended when Barricade finally overran his “French” foe. There wasn’t anything particularly flashy in terms of offence, but the two behemoths had good chemistry and put on a good, meat and potatoes type of bout. Barricade pulled out the victory when he squashed the wind out of Williams with a running big splash after thumping the Frenchman in the corner with an avalanche.
Winner: Barricade via running big splash.
RCW Tag Team Championship Match
Complete Impact © vs. C-Block w/ Officer Gordon
The second of three championship matches began very strangely, with Officer Gordon coming out on his own looking very concerned. In a pantomime conversation between Gordon and the official, Gordon indicated that he couldn’t find C-Block (Slammer and Ugg), which I believe makes him the worst cop in town, as it’s pretty tough to lose two 200 plus pound monsters in a community hall dressing room. Complete Impact (Steven Styles and Bucky Briggs) entered, despite somebody forgetting to turn on their theme music, at which point Styles got in Gordon’s face about the absence of Slammer and Ugg (whose celebrity couple name, for those of you wondering, is “Slugg”). C-Block were quick to solve the mystery of the missing maniacs, as they rushed the ring to mug the champions from behind. Slammer caught Steven
The impact of Briggs on the mat will be complete. Several of his internal organs will not be.
Styles by surprise with a devastating DDT on the hardwood floor, which painted a rather nasty picture of Bucky Briggs’ future. C-Block continued to paint that ugly picture, but in a less metaphorical and more kick-y fashion. Styles attempted to save his partner from being thrown around like a small child, but each attempt to return to the apron was met with a boot to the head. Briggs showed amazing resilience in kicking out of C-Block’s devastating side slam/yakuza kick combination, but it seemed like the end was near until Slammer’s attempt to keep Steven Styles out of the ring got fouled up, resulting in Slammer being sent sprawling to the floor and Bucky Briggs managing to get the hot tag. Styles hit a series of clotheslines on the cons then, for no explicable reason, sank to his knees and crawled around until Slammer had returned with Officer Gordon’s riot helmet in his possession. A big wind-up and a dull thud later and it was Ugg, not Steven Styles with a helmet-shaped dent in his forehead, much to Slammer’s dismay. Shortly after Slammer was forcibly ejected out to the floor, Styles covered Ugg for the pin to retain the titles.
Winner: Complete Impact via helmet shot.
“All American” Steve Rivers vs. “Hotshot” Danny Duggan
The second “America is better than you” gimmick of the night belonged to “All American” Steve Rivers, who returned from a suspension to take on the Wunderkind from Winnipeg, “Hotshot” Danny Duggan. Steve Rivers holds the dubious honour of possessing the rattiest, most hilariously ghetto kneepads I’ve ever seen. The rectangular chunk of foam that made up the pad itself looked like a pillow stuffed into a case three sizes too small, and every time he took a step his pads slid down his legs revealing a second pair of kneepads, which really just led to further questions.
Danny Duggan can't fly, but he is so pretty that it blurred my camera. I don't know why I let him write this caption.
Oh, right, there was a match. Danny Duggan got himself jumped from behind for doing unacceptable things like “walking to the ring,” which is apparently offended Evan Inferno. Rivers distracted the referee, then nearly scored the pinfall within seconds of Duggan being rolled into the ring. Duggan managed to kick out, but that just led to further bludgeonings at the hands of the All American. Duggan eventually used youth and ability to overcome age and treachery, somehow not killing Rivers with a flying knee drop from the top rope. Shortly thereafter, Duggan blasted Rivers with a punch that took the All American out of his kneepads – literally, the foam in one of his kneepads rocketed up into the air and out onto the floor. The bout was ruled a draw shortly thereafter due to a double count-out. Evan Inferno returned to help Steve Rivers work over Danny Duggan, then the heels raised their arms in victory… with Rivers holding his kneepad foam in his other hand, which made it look like the single worst trophy in the history of awards.
Winner: Draw. Double count-out.
Intermission
Teddy Hart & Team Impact vs. “Pistol” Pete Wilson, Keishi & Danny Nightmare
The fact that there are two tag teams with “impact” in their name on the same card is straight-up indy wrestling, as is the fact that by far the worse of those two teams holds the gold. I have no idea what the names of the individuals comprising Team Impact are, but they wore really badass entrance masks. They looked like ROH’s Briscoes with white versions of the Demolition entrance masks. Wilson, Keishi, and Danny Nightmare, on the other hand, may have been the least intimidating trio in six-man tag team history, unless Hornswoggle teamed up with the Swagger Soaring Eagle and a coat rack at some point that I’m not aware of.
While there was some mat wrestling to begin with, including Teddy Hart and Pete Wilson doing a whole bunch of rolls, spins, and counters that seemed to include every submission hold that Hart knew being applied briefly at some point. But what you really want to hear about is when things escalated into everyone throwing as much cool shit out there as possible. I got a bunch of it on video, so I’m going to just let you guys watch that instead of trying to explain it all. Teddy Hart picked up the victory to the surprise of nobody, but the fact that he did so by pretty much murdering Danny Nightmare was pretty shocking. Now, I make a lot of jokes about guys getting killed by brutal looking moves, but in this case I was seriously concerned for Nightmare’s health, because Hart didn’t seem to do much to protect the guy, and it took him an uncomfortable amount of time to get moving again. Scare at the end aside, this was a very exciting match full of really interesting spots, even if the psychology was largely absent. One thing I don’t think I caught in the video was one of the members of Team Impact kicking every member of the opposing team in the face in a different fashion in a span of about five seconds, all of which sounded like somebody got shot.
Winner: Hart & Team Impact via hammerlock piledriver.
RCW Heavyweight Championship Match
Big Jess Youngblood © vs. Evan Inferno
At this point in show it was finally pointed out to me that Evan Inferno was wearing Iron Man themed gear, which actually looked really slick. There were little Iron Man heads on the hips of his trunks and on the front of his kickpads, and his entrance vest was designed to look like Iron Man’s torso armour, complete with the big reactor on the chest (which served as the clasp). Fashion commentary aside, this was another solid if unspectacular match. This particular bout served as a bit of a palate cleanser after the insane spot-fest, as it was more traditional match with only a few high spots.
After things spilled out onto the floor, Evan Inferno snuck over to the merchandise table where he grabbed an Uberfist (foam Hulk hands with cup holders built into them) and tried to cheap shot the champ with it, but he made too much of a show winding up and Jess blocked his punch, then disarmed him (semi-literally) and waffled him with the delightful yet mighty mitten. Despite the fist being obviously made of foam, Inferno reacted like he just got smashed with a chain or brass knuckles or something, which was really funny. Big Jess retained his championship after splattering Inferno all over the mat with a running powerbomb out of the corner.
Winner: Big Jess Youngblood via running powerbomb.
Demolition vs. Supreme-Adonnas
The Supreme-Adonnas entered first to jeers from the crowd, then got on the mic, which only increased said jeers. Heavy Metal and “Mr. TLC” Tommy Lee Curtis took turns berating Demolition for continuously ducking them, then claimed that Ax and Smash were only in the building because the Supreme-Adonnas had sent their personal limousine to pick them up from the airport to ensure their presence. The Gurus of Shampoo then brought out “Demolition” – two skinny guys with dreads who looked like Juggalos with their faux-Demolition make-up. The Supreme-Adonnas feigned being terrified, then beat the tar out of their face-painted patsies, hitting a double superkick on a kneeling “Smash” before cutting down “Ax” with a superkick-into-flapjack thing. Then actual Demolition came out and it became an entirely different story. Instead of reading it, why not just watch it in full on my YouTube page? Yes, of course you want to do that.
Winner: Demolition via Hart Attack.
Spot of the Night: The ending of the six man tag, while it appeared to be absurdly dangerous, featured the highest ratio of “holy shit” moves per second. Kato’s dive to the floor in the opener was also pretty impressive, and didn’t kill anybody.
Match of the Night: Supreme-Adonnas vs. Demolition. Was it a technical masterpiece? Nope. Was it fun, solid, old-school wrestling? Yep.
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