The Death Valley Driver Video Review

LUCHA! from JAPAN! LUCHA! from the STATES! LUCHA! from MEXICO! The MMA YEAR IN REVIEW! SUPER 8 2003! RYUKI UEYAMA! CHUCK E SMOOTH! SUPER DRAGON! A FORGOTTEN ROYAL RUMBLE! MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS!!!

WELCOME TO THE DEATH VALLEY DRIVER VIDEO REVIEW #144!

Oh Yeah. This is going to kill some trees when you print it out. Some reviews are older than others. Everything brings the funny. And then you will bring the hate. And we will all bask in the wrestling discussion. Oh, who to leadoff this week... hmmm..... What About Raven?

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OMLL - 10/11/03 - Chicago, Illinois
(by Raven Mack)
TIME PAGE vs. WIZZAR
Unfortunately, the beer-drinking I do accompanying these reviews is not a work; I am actually that stupid. I state that as a preface here because I am about to dip my little drink-happy eyeballs into what translates as the Organization of Mexican Lucha Libre that has been running in a brick building in Chicago for a few months now. I can tell you, daylights savings time alterations gave me an extra hour of sleep, it is a rainy Sunday afternoon, I hate any job in general and my job in particular, I have immense fears about being the primary breadwinner of a soon-to-be four-member household, we’re gonna need some more firewood pretty fast, considering the old wives tale of you getting as many big snows in the winter as you got heavy fogs in August foretold we’re fucked by the white stuff real soon-like this year, and I’m just generally uneasy about everything globally and locally, from Syrian/Israeli escalations of world wars that are basically a derivative of the second world war as that crazy Hitler created a completely fucked over Jewish group that the World felt bad enough about to create a safe haven for, in the midst of crazy brown men, and that’s been percolating over top of valuable oil fields ever since, all the way down to the stupid power plant the local supervisors railroaded through a few years ago down the road starting to crank up it’s power-generating evilness for the northeast in a few months, and a couple of those shitty supervisors on the take from the Tenaska Corporation running for meager things like the Fluvanna County Treasurer, and I ain’t giving them the satisfaction. Shit, I scared my friends’ kids one night while drunkenly threatening to take a chainsaw and cut down the playground over by the library when I found out Tenaska “donated” it to the community after the brouhaha over them coming to our area, polluting it, producing power, and sending it off to other people and not us. We get the coughs and weakened bone structure from living in the midst of giant powerlines, and fuckers in New Jersey can run their bread machines and computers and DVD player and washer and dryer and oven and heat pump all at once without any blinks in their service when they plug in the camcorder to videotape little Mikey Junior putting on his dad’s jean jacket from back in the day and a red bandana and playing electric guitar on a tennis racket while The Boss is singing about everybody having a hungry heart. So I can assure you, the wonderful back alley stylings of authentic lucha libre by way of the heavy Hispanic tinge of Chi-town, is just what the doctor ordered, and will probably trigger heavy binge-drinking by me here and now, to push all those normal man fears and worries down for a few hours. And isn’t that what the fuck the professional wrestling is supposed to be about anyways? Time Page is a skinny white guy who establishes his rudosity by spitting water on the crowd as soon as he walks in from whatever the other room might be. I imagine it to be small, with some alley-score couches, and lots of graffiti on the walls, with a cooler full of Tecate in the cans. Holy fuck, his opponent is Wizzar, who carries a silver ball on a stick and has a grey beard and longhair and holy shit. This is the greatest wrestling match ever. Grey and white facepaint and outfit, complete with glitter adornment, makes for the perfect tecnico for a crowd of midwestern drunken latinos. “Una pregunta, what the hell are you man?” says Time Page, a gringo loco, and all Wizzar does is start clapping his hands and stomping his foot – he is obviously the super-holy offspring of a Jimmy Valiant on-acid encounter with a Chicago-land groupie in the late ‘70s while Hawkwind still had Lemmy and they were locked in hallucinogenic love battle with Doremi Fasol Latido as the soundtrack. Time Page is stalling and refusing to wrestle this freak, obviously influenced by CM Punk’s local heel work. Wizzar stomps around and gets the love of the children, and NAILS THE HIPTOSS MOTHERFUCKER! Time Page is the King of the stall, and Wizzar is oblivious to the stifling and trifling ten-count nature of this World we call home. They do a couple of normally fast familiar lucha segments, but they do it amazingly slow, only for Time Page to take the upper hand and put a squash to that with a wicked clothesline. After a missed senton legdrop by Wizzar, Time Page goes to the top and nails the weak-looking senton for the curtain-jerker victory, since this was A UNA CAIDA. No, wait, it’s not. We’ve got more action, with Wizzar doing the greatest Boogie Man epileptic seizure selling of a beatdown seen in a wrestling ring in years. Time Page quickly takes the second fall too, and that is that. The door they go to the back through has a giant hole knocked through it and scribbling all over it – the sign of quality indy wrestling. God Bless America and it’s wrestling and the wonderful influence of our foreign neighbors to the South who come here for prosperity and all they get is playa hated by the White Man and accused of all sorts of mean, nasty, vile activities, yet they do their job and enjoy their soccer and want their very own wrestling style to be here in their new home – they are the true Salt of the Earth, and I love them. Working construction sites again has been nice for many reasons, but one of them is being around the Simple Man lyrical nature of the working class Mexican outlaw immigrant. The first Mexicanos I ever worked with were these two brothers, Javier and Chino, and Jav was a straight-up player, loving on all women, and Chino was probably the most genuinely nicest guys I’ve ever known in my life. Well, they had family in Chicago and tried to talk me into going with them for a week-long visit, telling me about the wonderful Latino part of town and how much I’d love it, but I couldn’t do it. Bullshitting on the job site with a couple of Mexican dudes was one thing, but my taking my limited Spanish-speaking ass to a strange city, and I feared finding myself in a room full of fifteen guys easily speaking a language I was struggling with, and I could see joints dipped in strange liquids being passed around and my leg starting to twitch pretty bad and me thinking I could hear my heart beating too fast and looking up, in that state, and fifteen dudes laughing and roto-toto-totoing at me, and it, in my paranoid mind, could’ve gotten real ugly. Javier married a chick who opened a Mexican restaurant in Richmond, so he always has sponsorship for his rec-league soccer team now. When his youngest brother finally flamed out in Mexican minor league futbol, Jav got him a job painting with the old crew in Richmond, to have his brother closer and to have a ringer for his soccer team. That particular crew I worked with was run by upstate New Yorker white dudes who moved to Richmond, and they had a softball team, and going to their softball game, with a bunch of “yo”s and beers and garish women who were supposed to be fawned over by any red-blooded male, shit, that paled (no pun intended) in comparison to Javier and Chino’s soccer games, which were like a block party. Stupid white people, compromising their soul for wealth.

VIENTO MAYA vs. EL TIGRE
“Jump” by Van Halen cranks up and out comes El Tigre. Mask? Check. Tassles? Check. Tiger stripes on trunks? Check. What color motif? White and black, simple yet elegant. His opponent is Viento Maya, who sports a mighty beer gut and a nifty little mask of his own. Both men have hair coming out the back ends of their masks, suggesting they are loungin’ motherfuckers. Tigre is your tecnico, being an indy version of El Felino, who must have friends to the left of the handheld I’m watching, since he points and postures that way very often. Viento Maya looks as though he knows his way around a barroom fight, and the thing that strikes me about this show, two matches in, is it’s just like CMLL lucha, the same slaps into the ropes and armdrags and whatnot, but two steps slower. I guess with no minor league lucha to really compare CMLL to, except AAA’s nonsensical sports entertainment bullshit, you don’t realize how fuckin’ awesome CMLL is. Maya gets way the fuck up in the air for an nice spear kick to the tiger gullet. These OMLL guys had Scorpio Jr. in one time, and I’m a huge Scorpio Jr. mark and it’s wonderful to imagine him in this sleazy little den of wrestling. Tigre takes the first fall, and again I’m confused because they play the entrance music of the winner after each fall. Viento Maya attempts to lure El Tigre out the ring, but he ain’t having it. I wonder if El Tigre has “Jump” as his music because he’s a huge Art Barr fan, or because he legitimately is all about old Van Halen? Either way is good by me, and I imagine a great documentary could’ve been made if in 1989, you put David Lee Roth and Art Barr on a school bus converted into a travel sleeper recreational vehicle, gave them plenty of per diem to abuse things with, and filmed the whole escapades with the promise of never showing it to the public until all statute of limitations ran out or they both died, whichever came first. Powerbomb into a Monterrey crab by Viento for the submission ending second fall. And he’s on El Tigre with the Mexican whip, but instead of bouncing back, Tigre goes over the top rope, all while holding his back, completely legitimately selling the enduring agony of that submission maneuver. There are also some sweet brown honies against the far wall, watching the action. I love brown-skinned women. My wife’s dad claims to be all-white, but he has some Mediterranean blood of some sort in him, which gave him the soul to be a touring big band horn player during the sixties, but also gave his daughter that wonderful sun-baked complexion that has helped cause me to fill her belly with babies two times and counting. AWESOME! Viento starts to bust out a couple lucha-kooky submissions, and I love him even more. Tigre ain’t afraid to play that game too, but wait, Tigre is untying the mask of Viento in very untecnico-ey fashion. If TV wrestling has taught me anything, I imagine this will lead to a sudden third fall disqualification of El Tigre somewhere further in this match. Ahh, trickiness, as Viento hits a sit-down powerbomb, but his mask comes off in the process, so rather than hold on for the pin, he is forced to struggle to keep his mask on, and when he does it get back on properly, he covers for the final fall. Very odd finish to that one, but more importantly, beer gut beats out tassles in the battle for wrestling supremacy, at least this time. Wait, there’s that Time Page bitch, attacking El Tigre post-match, giving him the ringside beat-down, just like a white man.

LANCER 2000/DISCOVERY vs. EL MOSCO/REY AZTECA
This here next match is Lancer 2000, teaming with some dude named Discovery, who is all swank in his light purple get-up, and they face off against El Mosco, who is wearing ski goggles over his mask, and Rey Azteca, with proper mariachi entrance music and bad upper arm tattoo and weird mask style which hybrids popular design styles of both today’s post-Gen X days and '80s skater movie stereotype pre-zubaz. Discovery and El Mosco start the festivities, which makes me believe fuckin’ Lancer Dos Mil and Rey Azteca are gonna destroy the World here in a few minutes. I love the spry springy pep in the ring that betrays the beer-gutted physique of your average luchador; it gives me hope of still being able to land a moonsault off the toolshed on something other than my brain. Discovery is actually pretty awesome within the brick backroom context of this match. Here we go, Lancer and Rey Azteca, and it’s a quick lucha-style mat-based stand-off, until Azteca accelerates the rudoness and cheats to win, or at least take advantage. Severely botched jumping rana off the top rope by Lancer, but obviously Rey Azteca is a vet, because rather than sell the botch, he grabs one of the legs and acts like he meant to turn it into a legbar. Lancer actually goes for a pin, and has to tell the ref it’s a pin so count, then dropkicks Azteca out the ring and hits a running senton off the apron for our first ringside diving carnage of the evening, consummating the lucha. Discovery and Mosco are back in, and again, like the earlier matches, they’re doing interesting lucha pieces of spots, but way slower. It’s weird. Rey Azteca is back in, trying to get the handshake with Lancer, and the crowd yells “NON! NON! NON!” but Lancer gets sucker-punched anyways. Mosco gets in a nice punt kick to the back of Lancer, and…well, this is getting nice. Discovery gets stiff with Mosco, who falls out to allow Rey Azteca in the ring and they do the center ring chop the shit out of each other on the chest deal, with Lancer winning, and he nails a wicked stepover armbar submission for a minute while Lancer dives on Azteca and then works on some leg thingy, and first fall goes to los tecnicos, motherfucker, and Discovery is the goddamned king to Rey Azteca’s minor league Dr. Wagner Jr.-flavored evil. Shit, I ran out of Old Milwaukees, and rather than open that dreaded 12-pack of Miller High Life, I dug two wayward bottles of Natty Light out the back of the fridge that had gotten concealed by the jar of pickled beet eggs. Lancer Dos Mil is operating on all cylinders, high speed high impact, to start the second fall. Top rope plancha to the outside by him, seals the insanity. Once Discovery gets in after that, he is the victim of brutal heel teamwork, and Rey Azteca slaps an awesome crab on Discovery, and El Mosco basically holds Lancer’s arms behind his back, and the ref sort of calls an end to the segunda caida even though Lancer is sitting there looking around like a little girl is holding his arms. Again, Discovery is suckered by Rey Azteca’s handshaking offerings, this time on one knee with one hand behind his back, and while he does that, El Mosco runs in and grabs Discovery, leading to vicious chest-smacking of a rudo variety. This third fall is getting sloppy and convoluted as shit, but Rey Azteca slaps a camel clutch onto the young Lancer 2000, Discovery comes in, stands there looking at it for a good twenty seconds, then dropkicks Azteca in the face. Basically, this third fall has worked like this – one guy beats opponent, slaps him in a weak-looking submission hold, submittable guy’s partner comes in the ring, stands there for about fifteen seconds until the ref sees him, then goes and kicks the holder of said submission move, repeat sequence, until all guys have cycled through twice. Mosco and Discovery are kicking each other in the thighs ringside, and your ref has lost all control. Now they wickedly slap each other in the face, and I knew this would get cool again. You can’t have four dudes dressed like this and it not get totally motherfuckin’ awesome again. Again, they stand there and smack the fuck out of each other’s heads, only for Discovery to end it with brutal kicks to the kidneys. Discovery is so goddamned cool it’s ridiculous. But then, again, we’re back to that ridiculous cycle thing. AWESOME! Lancer throws out Mosco, then Discovery does the whip your partner into the ropes then throw him over the top dive move. Discovery gets Azteca in a submission hold, ref asks him to submit, but nothing comes of it, so, no shit, without making any motion to any bell ringer or time keeper or announcer, the ref just gets out the ring and goes to the back through a side door, and your announcer just sort of announces that the tecnicos won the match. I’m not sure if they actually booked the finishes, or just sort of winged it.

AGUILA DEL AMERICA/PRINCIPE FRANKY/EL DORADO vs. PODER BORICUA/MALEFICIO/AMERICA SALVAJE
Let’s see here – the lights are out, strobes are going, Quiet Riot is playing on the P.A. – all this can mean only one thing – IT’S TIME FOR YOUR GRAN LUCHA ESTRELLA EN RELEVOS AUSTRILIANOS! These guys running at each other pre-match, in strobe light only, it’s like a terrible terrible hallucination, or wonderful, depending on your pre-existing emotional state. Okay, let me run through the guys in this main event trios match. On team A, first announced dude is the most amazingly wonderful masked man I’ve seen since the first time I ever saw Dakko Chan – Maleficio. You take a fat dude with George Steele-like back hair, slap him in an orange outfit complete with an ultra-motherfuckin’ swank mask with twisty horns, and you do that in your mind, and I bet, with your imagination stifled by television and computers and video games, you ain’t got shit up there in image compared to the real deal Maleficio. He is partnered with a guy I’ve actually seen on the Mexican wrestling on the satellite, Poder Boricua, as well as some dude called America Salvaje, who is supposed to be a famous rudo from Triple A. Team B has Aguila del America, who ironically has MEXICO on the ass end of his trunks, some non-descript unmasked dude named Principe Franky, and that dastardly asshole El Dorado, with his freshly shaved head, being he lost his hair to Fuerza Aerea the week before. According to the announcer description, Maleficio is some sort of witch, which makes him even more awesome. Hopefully, he’s in cahoots with Wizzar and they’ll perform some terrible centuries-old pagan spell to cause Triple H and Stephanie to have a child, if Triple H’s steroid-shrunken gun can still fire, born with a Santo mask who takes control of the WWE through santeria, which all the top luchadors of any era rely on, and instead of the shit we have now, and Wrestlemania Triple X is headlined by an El Hijo Del Santo vs. Ric Flair, who by then will be younger due to experimental drugs, in a mask vs. hair match, where Dr. Wagner Jr. throws a fireball in Santito’s face to cause him to lose his mask, and Wagner Jr., a re-younged Ric Flair….wait, never mind. I was interrupted mid-tangent by the realization that the already dominating style of Maleficio is further compounded by his wrestling gear featuring four, count ‘em, four tridents, including two crossing each other on his chest. Holy shit, it would be impossible for me to describe what just went down there for a few minutes, but it involved aspects of comedy wrestling, high dives, arm drags, and it was all controlled by Principe Franky, who even though he looks like a fuckin’ dork, just skyrocketed up the charts in my mind into probably one of the Top 100 wrestlers still living. He looks middle-aged and fat, yet closes out his king-sized sequence on the other team with that running flip dive over the top rope that I don’t know the name of because I’m not Joey Styles or Mike Tenay onto Poder Boricua. They do a post-caida celebratory comedy bit on Maleficio involving him getting triple atomic dropped, and then kicked in the hiney; it was great. Aguila del America does all these weird little dance moves to showboat, and is wearing what I’m guessing is a soccer team shirt that has Corona emblazoned across the back and Coca-Cola on the front. He also starts the second fall by getting brutalized by America Salvaje, only to take back over and he is your comedy lucha superstar, and I think this is the greatest motherfuckin’ match ever on handheld, and El Dorado hasn’t even played a part in it yet. Until he and Poder Boricua get into it, with the local promotion's fat and shaved star, El Dorado, kicking ass on the muscularly cut mid-range superstar from Puerto Rico by way of Mexico, Poder Boricua, the match isn't complete. Maleficio and Principe Franky are in together and Franky hits like thirty-seven continuous armdrags, and then dropkicks Maleficio out the ring. Poder Boricua knocks the shit out of Franky ringside, then posts him, and I can only hope he is tasting the sweet sweet blade for my enjoyment right about now. Boricua with a Puerto Rican powerbomb on El Dorado for the second fall, and the rudos immediately turn their attention to working Principe Franky the fuck over. I’m drinking the shitty Miller High Life now, which sucks, much like Parrish Smith I cannot stand Miller. Back a few years ago, I started a cheap beer can collection, of full beers, and every time one changed their design, I’d buy a new twelve pack, but set one aside. I had like 30 of them at one point, including some shit we don’t get around here like Blatz and National Bohemian, and plus Milwaukee’s Best changed their can right after I started, so the old one quickly looked bizarre and ancient. That’s the beauty of American culture, old shit doesn’t have to be that old to be completely retarded looking. It wasn’t too long ago the Denver Broncos had orange jerseys, but you show that shit now and folks think it’s an NFL films tape from 1977. Anyways, the point of this is the Miller beer has a new can, and some dumb bitch riding a crescent moon ain’t fooling me, this ain’t no champagne of beers. Boricua and Franky are again brawling ringside, and this trios match is obviously headlined by their mutual hatred. Franky is slumped over in a chair, and Boricua mocks him. Rudos are running things in the aught three right now, with the good dudes taking turns getting triple teamed. Boricua lays some nice sounding chops onto El Dorado, but finally he ducks one, and all hell breaks loose. We’ve got men fighting everywhere, and women grabbing their kids, and slaps galore. Dorado throws Maleficio into the brick wall far side, and Boricua and Franky resume their hatred for each other near side. All this thing really needs is a couple of creepy midgets and a chair-throwing riot. Dorado with the tope onto Maleficio ringside. Wait, what the fuck. Aguila del America is low blowed by America Salvaje while ref is distracted, but then Salvaje falls to the ground clutching his nutsack, and the ref gives the third fall to the rudos, even after asking the emphatic kids ringside who say it’s bullshit. Maleficio properly covers up the ref’s ears so he can’t hear the truth after that, and I’ll drink to evil witchery adorned with tridents. Wait, there’s post-match shenanigans; Aguila del America is still, five minutes later, slumped over in the corner of the room selling the complete pain of getting kicked in the balls. Finally, the heels leave, and in what is the most amazing culmination of the low blow foul I’ve seen in lucha, Principe Franky and El Dorado get Aguila back in the ring, he lays down, Franky pushes his legs up in a squat type thing, and El Dorado uses his hands to put pressure on Aguila’s stomach. Apparently, this is the proper way to recover from the low blow, as Aguila del America is finally able to stand again on his own power, and I’m assuming, again able to make more children, which is important to all men like him and me, simple, yet empowered by their overwhelming numbers in the face of the money-hungry white man’s impotent ruling class. According to the end of this tape, they run every Saturday, as of now, on Armitage in Chicago, and if you love the wrestling and live there and don’t go once a month, then you don’t really love the wrestling, you just make it your identity to separate yourself in a weird way from your other goofy friends, sort of like me slugging half a beer to them doing that dumb shit to help Aguila del America recover from getting kicked in the dick.

EPILOGUE
FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: Principe Franky. One of the many things I love about lucha libre is how a guy who, upon first viewing, just looks like your average non-descript stocky fucker with a bowlcut. But then he’ll bust a fuckin’ move like you’d never expect, and rule the goddamned squared circle encased world like Ric Flair on PCP, south of the border. That was Franky. He was awesome.

SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: Discovery. Ditto the Franky commentary, except seeing Discovery’s outfit, I fully expected him to rule; he just ruled it in a different direction than I was expecting.

THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: Maleficio. The guy’s outfit is awesome, and if that Sam Hayne pentagram-covered guy is still wrestling for Mid American Wrestling, I think he and Maleficio should form an unholy alliance to torment all false metalhead short-haired bitches who dabble in indy wrestling appreciation throughout the midwest for months to come. Maleficio’s mask is probably one of the top ten all-time most-awesome masks I’ve ever seen, and I can really appreciate the fact more and more people are digging on the lucha libre and interjecting it’s classic styles with their modern artistic interpretations, though this OMLL authentic latino appreciation seems more healing to my afraid-of-the-future soul than goofy white kids doing flips on each other and calling it lucha libre.

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ECWA - 04/05/03 - Wilmington, Delaware
(by RAVEN MACK)
Why would I bother to review something that is the smart mark’s Starrcade, with people making pilgrimages from up and down the east coast, to feast their pasty, fat faces on the new bumper crop of homoerotic professional wrestling posterboys? Shit, everyone and their cousin has seen this, half of them were there live. I would imagine more than a few people show this tape to their friends who think The Undertaker is bad ass, to try and convince them that indy wrestling is a purer form of the grown men in shiny clothes pretending to beat the shit out of each other. Well, I review it because I’m stupid, and also, have long loved the Super 8. The one-night tournament is a great gimmick that’s been played the fuck out in indy wrestling in the past couple years, but I still enjoy the ECWA one, because ol’ Jim Kettner (who’s been a promoter for decades upon decades, going back to the first seven Super 8s, which were all won by Danny Hodge) tries to out-smart the smarts and bring in somebody you never heard of really, and mix in some dudes getting ready to collect some WWE developmental money, and refuse to allow anybody who’s been in it before of note to ever come back again in the actual tournament. I can dig on that. You could, at any point, pretend whoowrestling.com still existed and had it’s top 50 indy workers list going strong, and randomly pick twelve names off it, throw in four homegrown promotional superstars in training, and there’s your Random Indy Tournament To Ride A Bus To that you usually get. God Bless ECWA for not following the mimicked formula built from the success of the Super 8. Immediately, a screen says this is dedicated to our troops in the Middle East, and everybody barks at Pavlov’s whistle, and I would so love for Prince Nana to come out and rag on the American imperialism in the Middle East, and proclaim himself a devout Muslim. More wrestling should involve the crowd fighting wrestlers, which in turn, would make wrestlers tougher and bigger so as to defend the honor of the sport, and we’d all benefit, because there’d be more believable wrestlers dropping each other on their heads, and less goofs trying to chant at every other fuckin’ spot they see. Every year, I tell myself I’m going to go to the Super 8, but then I always get overwhelmed by my fears of what it’s actually like – a weird D&D style masked markfest – which is not to say I’m too good for that, but when I’m surrounded by Observer subscribers and can’t sit near the 40-something black guy explaining to his kids that the bad guy is allowed to spit on the floor but they can’t, or can’t keep an eye on the drunk old white guy getting ready to fight the heel managers and following them through the curtain, well, I get nervous and sweaty and then end up having to go out to the car to hit the cooler, during a match, and I’d lose my seat to two teenagers from Pennsylvania in Super Dragon masks who came down on a pre-paid bus trip, and damn…I know my limitations and avoid bad situations. They announce all the competitors, and they all wear bright yellow t-shirts, and I know there’s got to be more than a few of those in Delaware Goodwills. I dig when thrift stores color-coordinate their t-shirt racks, and I also dig how pretty Brian Kendrick is. He’s the prettiest wrestler in the face since a freshly unmasked Juventud Guerrera. DJ Paul really needs to do a Star-Spangled Banner remix, because really the only hip one you can play is the Jimi Hendrix one, and that’s played the fuck out like one-night indy tourneys.

FRANKIE KAZARIAN vs. CHRIS SABIN
Frankie Kazarian vs. Chris Sabin is your opening first round match-up, and Sabin is young and ultra-successful already, making me hope he turns out to be the Tommy Rich of his generation. Kazarian is part of the indy blue-blood of the West Coast that I never don’t enjoy and wish I saw more of. I love how so many wrestling outfits through the ages have suggested the wearer is somehow electrically charged. Sabin’s live wire motif on his ass has a deep point center trunk that goes down to his anus, and I think somebody must’ve been ribbing him when they sewed that together. They work to an armbar, AND PEOPLE CLAP! Sabin plays the good boy to Kazarian’s tournament-style respectful orneriness. Kazarian gives Sabin an awesome boot to the motherfuckin’ face, and crowd claps and cheers, and he yells, “I am the coolest person in the World,” and I drink to the Future keeping his heel heat from these assholes. Kazarian cockily dominates, and does a nifty roll over of a roll over, picks up Sabin and does a sidewalk slam backbreaker doohickey. Props to Kazarian for the braided ponytail as well; that’s the one thing I hate about having stupid nasty ass dreadlocks now, is I loved to kick the braids, sometimes the double Willie Nelson bearded Pippy Longstocking style when I felt a big ass chip on my shoulder and was looking for fights. Hey, the Future won, and here I was waiting for him to lose. I’m glad I had screwed up my memory of what happened in this thing; it gave me the tape watching pop of forgetting how a match was gonna finish and it going the other way, much to my surprise as well as my rooting benefit, so hell yeah.

BRIAN KENDRICK vs. CHRIS CAGE
Spanky is sooo cute. He takes on Chris Cage, and I am always distrustful of guys like Kendrick with that super pretty boy look. I mean, even Ricky Morton had that sort of fucked up look that showed he’d experienced life in ways that made him one of us; but then again Kendrick’s unscarred fresh face probably makes him one of us, the majority, and my tattered skin is on the outside of that. I hate my stupid parents for breeding me poor and making me think things like big titties in tank tops on summer days at cookouts with plenty of potato salad (with hard-boiled eggs as an ingredient, of course) and two sets of horseshoe pits is Heaven. Actually, I don’t hate my parents for that, but it leaves me lost a lot of the times. Like this house we’re painting at now, it’s this big million dollar farm in Orange County that’s run down as shit, and I find my lot in life there as two days ago, the sort of middle class, sterile white guys, who are cool but not dangerous at all, who have their own carpentry/drywall thing going on, one of them says to the other, “There’s this new video for Outkast, and the band is all dressed up like those fifties bands with the sweaters and suspenders and all that, and it’s hilarious.” And yeah, it’s hilarious, but goddamn, it’s kind of goofy too. Then today, the crazy alcoholic forty-something black dudes who are redoing the shingles, one of them says as the song comes on the pop station, “This is a crazy motherfuckin’ video. You know that Andre dude from them Ms. Jackson dudes? He’s every motherfucker in the band, and they all got some old ass Ike Turner hair…” and we all laugh like fools trying to ignore our shitty jobs, and then the main talker flips it into a story of some guy being stupid because he bred his pit bull with that pit bull’s own daughter and one of them dogs bit a kid last weekend and fuck that dog, he’d shoot his ass, even if it was on the chain. My biggest problem in life is I find dumb shit like that satisfying, much more so than money, and me and my wife used to call it folks being too white, since Charlottesville where we live near is whitebread as any place, and pseudo-liberal to boot, but we shouldn't call it being white because a lot of white people have soul; it’s more a case of being sterile. That’s why guys who look like Kendrick tend to piss me off, because they have that sterile face of a kid who grew up without struggle or without at least a desire to taste the chaos. “You can see the weakness of a man right through his iris,” said the RZA before his glare was posed and he was shucking and jiving to get the soundtrack deal to an overblown Tarantino hodge-podged thievery of foreign cult cinema classics. I bet Tarantino’s little bitch ass didn’t use a real corpse to show why Uma Thurman had to wear an eye patch. Which, the whole squeaky clean look is probably why I like to say how cute a guy like Kendrick is, because in my underclass upbringing, being able to fuck a man against his will is the ultimate alpha male action, pure animal jailhouse shit, and saying he’s cute suggests I’d try it. But I wouldn’t. Were I gay, I could never get involved with a wrestler, showing his ass all the time to all those other guys, never being home, forgetting to call on the anniversary of our first date – it wouldn’t be gratifying. Cage clocks Kendrick with a superkick, and the crowd is way behind Spanky. This Chris Cage is Canadian and not bad. Spanky is stiff with the foot and fist, and I imagine wealthy Saudi Arabian perverts masturbating to Super 8 DVDs. This is very weird though, the crowd hates Cage because he’s not Spanky and their smart mark dreamboat. He’s really done nothing to warrant hatred – no cocky tomfoolery or stretching of the accepted rules of engagement. Kendrick flips out of a powerbomb attempt to hit a blockbuster off the ropes for the pin, and two teenage girls and thirty-seven twenty something guys squeal in delight. Kendrick is so much the subconscious Lazz gimmick, it kills me. Hey, out comes Simon Diamond, I’m sure to talk about how motherfuckin’ killer ECWA is and how it made him the wrestling superstar he is today, except he’s not a wrestling superstar yet. And I can dig what’s going on, but let me tell you, should anybody ever decide to do any sort of touching tribute to a dead me in any way whatsoever, using Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll – Part 2” as the soundtrack would be fuckin’ wrong, very very wrong. On the negative side, it makes me think of Glitter sexually abusing Thai boys he purchased for decades, and on the best side, it makes me want to go get another beer at a minor league hockey game; I don’t think Jeff Peterson is being honored either way. You know, I dug Jeff Peterson, and I dug the Road Warriors, and I think it’s awesome how many people Stu Hart trained to be dope-ass wrestlers, but we are way too overdone on dead wrestler worship. Motherfuckers die all the time, and yeah, a lot of wrestlers die young, but they know the road lifestyle, complete with painkillers and alcohol and sex with loose teenage vixens, is gonna eventually catch up to them. Shit, any Bob Seger record will teach you that. It kills me how half the wrestling world complains about how shitty Hawk is for years, how he won’t sell or is out of shape and not up to his Road Warrior image, and then when he dies, everybody loves him and wants to say “R.I.P. Hawk, I loved the Warriors, they were the best, chief.” Fuck that. I always liked Animal better, and I hated that “what a rush” bullshit Hawk did, and I thought Jeff Peterson was an awesome wrestler in that Super 8 he was in, but those American flag motif outfits he wore were fuckin’ stupid. God Bless a motherfucker tragically dying young at age 21, but also don’t fuckin’ put Gary Glitter over his tribute. At least pick some corny acoustic guitar segment by Justin Hayward or something, and have the highest of high spots Peterson ever did in super slow motion like a Tijuanan neck injury style replay. If we do die and go to a place where we ethereally haunt the places our bodies used to fuck around at, I think Peterson would’ve appreciated it that way.

SEDRICK STRONG vs. CHANCE BECKETT
Sedrick Strong comes out to the worst song on the first Nappy Roots record, and he’s against Chance Beckett, who’s tiny and cut and a shithole of an attitude. The crowd is reluctantly behind Strong’s Honda Civic with platinum wheel covers ass, just because Beckett comes out like an asshole so easily in appearance and style. I dig this Beckett kid, at about the same time the fickle crowd turns and chants “Chance! Chance! Chance!” which probably owes as much to Strong’s boringness as it does to Beckett’s rulingness. Though Strong does take a self-inflictive bump jump to the outside, and Beckett is all sorts of scuffed up on his chin. But he gets the duke.

ALEX ARION vs. PAUL LONDON
Next up in the festivities is Alex Arion vs. Paul London. London is an indy superstar and everybody loves him. Arion is the Golden Greek, and I would’ve rather enjoyed Maverick Wild in this spot, but maybe next year. Arion gives London a couple of nice forearm blows to the spine at one point, and London hits a rana but Arion stumbles on the ropes and forces his own self out and it looks hokey. Were I a clueless WWE writer, I’d so have London in a jean jacket on TV, being a Scott Baio style heartthrob completely unaware he’s two decades out of style. One thing that sucks here is there’s this Maverick Wild vs. Alex Arion match I really dig from NECW a year or two ago, and Arion is doing a lot of the same spots he did in that match. They have a nice little super-counter in the corner segment that looks like it was botched, but I don’t think so, where London gets flipped into the turnbuckle but lands on the second rope, fakes a dive, then hits a moonsault onto awaiting knees, and nobody cares, proving you can overthink these things. Keep it simple. And they do, with some saliva-rattling forearms. The ending, with London winning, was rather sudden and anti-climactic, but this is the first round, so I’m game.

JOSE & JO-EL MAXIMO/STRIKER vs. PRINCE NANA/MEGA/ACE DARLING
The Maximos suck and Striker is not the Matt Stryker I’d pay money to see, and they face Ace Darling, an ECWA perennial, and I don’t really give a fuck who Mega is since he’s a second to Prince Nana, who is my absolute favorite indy character in all of the tri-states area, it means I support Mega. Had ECW not grown at all and wrestling remained stagnant, I would imagine we’d have had some wonderful Cactus Jack vs. Prince Nana feuds involving all sorts of run-in characters. I so loathe Los Maximos and I so am all about Mega and Nana and I’m so uncaring about the Striker/Darling tag team drama at play. Hey, there’s a botched move, and this sucks. Even Nana’s comically wonderful selling of offense by hitting his big bulging white glare behind his dark-complected face can’t make the Maximos seem good to me. Mega holds up one of the Maximos, and the Maximo actually is leaning up towards Mega’s ear to chat about what to do. This is ridiculous. NANAMANIA! Man, I can’t explain it intelligently, but Nana is so motherfuckin’ awesome in a Paul Jones Army sort of way. Darling does the Brian Christopher missed legdrop in Brian Christopher pants, and Striker gets the hot tag, but beats up his own partners. Stupid sports entertainment chicanery. The Cheetah Master runs in with short hair and I realize I’m way behind on ECWA info. I bet the rats cried for weeks when Cheetah’s hair got chopped.

FRANKIE KAZARIAN vs. PAUL LONDON
It’s time for Kazarian vs. London nonsense, and Kazarian has switched trunks from his previous blue to some white joints, but even more snazzily, he’s also switched his braided hair tie from blue to white as well. You don’t notice little attention to details like that, but they make a sub-conscious difference in how you view the dude. Wow, these two get all rapid fire maldonado with the forearm-laced sequences and I’m stoked. Kazarian does that mighty double kick boot to the face of the sweet London, and I motherfuckin’ love on that giant boot kick move. London throws off Kazarian on a top-rope rana attempt, and after Kazarian is just barely not paralyzed, he rolls into spot for the shooting star job. London is in the finals, and we get the respectful handshake nonsense. Crowd chants, “One more win!” Fuck the crowd.

CHANCE BECKETT vs. BRIAN KENDRICK
Chance Beckett is out, looking disgruntled and abusive towards women, and then Brian Kendrick comes out, looking naïve and unabusive towards the advances of older men. My friend Crazy Jai one time, while living in San Francisco, met some old Russian dude at a library who said he had some crazy Chekhov shit or something, and they ended up in the dude’s apartment, drinking vodka, and Crazy Jai said the dude was trying to molest him, but Crazy Jai played it off and kept drinking till the dude passed out, and Crazy Jai jumped off the fire escape. Oh yeah, dude locked the door or some shit. Crazy Jai always seemed to find himself into these terrible unwanted literary-based homosexual encounters. Spanky is so sexy that I hope Chance beats him to a bloody jumble. Hey, Spanky takes a ringpost shot, a rather nice bouncing one, and hopefully is tasting the sweet blade of violence’s consummation – hard to tell with all that hair though, the fuckin’ hippie. The crowd boos a Spanky comeback, and I can understand why wrestlers hate the smart crowds. At least with a stupid crowd, they have a set guy they hate. Smart crowds switch allegiance mid-match, and it makes it hard to do face-like comebacks or heelish dominations through the slow acceleration of rule-breaking. Beckett wins with a lucha submission teasing into one of DDP’s seven thousand ways to end a match.

THE ECWA SUMMIT
A great heel tactic would be to become commissioner or something and say every time the crowd chanted, the wrestlers could leave the ring and not get counted out. It would make for great heel stalling. I don’t know who this small dude is, but I also wondered why Mr. Ooh La La is not in the Super 8 this year. If anybody deserves a shot, he does. Mr. Ooh La La’s ring stripping is so motherfuckin’ great because he’s a fat man who’s from Delaware, not France, and people pay money to sit in a building and watch him do that. God Bless the Goddamned Wrestling. The Japanese Poolboy is next, and I can tell you, being married to a liberated women with many liberated friends, and me having two turntables now, when we have parties and I get to drunkenly pretending I’m Z-Trip or some shit, Abba gets the women into lovely dancing masturbatory fantasy scenes more than anything. For real. This is comedic stupidity, yet Japanese Poolboy is my favorite guilty doofus pleasure since the pre-porn girlfriend pill-diet Blue Meanie was getting jiggly with it to that DJ Kool song in ECW dance contests. Some young, hot kid comes in and gets clotheslined and booted to the snout by Ooh La La. That ruled. However, this here ECWA Summit is shitty, even by battle royal standards. Wait, Mega is out to princify the shittiness of this thing, and immediately Mr. Ooh La La gets eliminated, because some shitty Euro monarchy crap can’t compare to old school pan-African animism. Oh no, the fat fake Vader from Delaware is out next to counter Mega. Some stripper chick is in it now, and her ass ain’t even as penetrable as Kendrick’s. That’s pathetic. NANAMANIA! But he slaps Mega for not throwing out the woman, which won’t work well in tonight's summit, stretching the strength of their partnership, but in the overall scene of things, he taught Mega a valuable lesson that he should’ve already knowed. The Cheetah Master is the Hulk Hogan of small-town Della Vegas. He’s over like red clover and in like Flynn in those leopard tights. Wait, he lost. And after some quick wrapping up of this thing, the Japanese Poolboy won the summit.

CHRISTOPHER DANIELS vs. THE JAPANESE POOLBOY
And he gets Christopher Daniels right away for the ECWA title, and the crowd goes smart-crazy chant-happy, and I wish Balls Mahoney was there to drunkenly set half of them on fire in the name of Iron Maiden. This Poolboy/Daniels match is a weird reverse psychology anti-smart Morton vs. Flair face-off in the midst of the smarts’ den. I also really love how Poolboy is playing the Spike Dudley role, and whenever he gets over for a move, Daniels clocks him to regain control. Even greater is it makes the crowd sympathetic to Poolboy, but they’re afraid to love on a goofy disco ball on a stick gimmick, so they sit there silently. The Japanese Poolboy is indier than fuck, yet every time it becomes remotely interesting, rather than cheer, the crowd remains quiet. This is an awesome match, for the match itself, but also for the weird uncomfortableness of the crowd. Daniels wins though, because he’s not a goofball gimmick – well, if you overlook the fallen angel priest bald-headed bullshit. Maybe Kettner will lose his mind this spring and put over the Poolboy in Super 8 2004. Daniels grabs Poolboy’s ass post-match hug, and I dig the retardedness of it all, though Brian Kendrick is much hotter than all these guys.

CHANCE BECKETT vs. PAUL LONDON
Whatever happened to Chance Beckett? Is he in Puerto Rico? Everyone loves a London and Beckett is an asshole. RF Video production pales in comparison to the Best of Boogie Woogie Jimmy Valiant, which I’d guess uses the same editing machine. RF VIDEO – FOR GOD’S SAKE, DON’T BE AFRAID TO USE THE STAR OR DIAMOND SWEEP! Beckett is awesomely maniacal on the leg of London in this thing. In fact, Beckett is possessed at destroying the leg, and London fights as best he can, using his other leg for kicks and stabs. London’s leg is so beat down and sold, he struggles to get up the ropes, leaving him prone to Beckett shenanigans. This match is awesome, motherfucker. Wow, Beckett is out with the three arm drops submission deal for the loss, and Paul London is the Scott Baio of the smart marks’ pin-up dreams. The non-dead Haas brother comes in with a giant trophy for the victor, and everyone is there to be happy and sell the competition because they all watched Super J-Cup ’94. Time for group picture. They hug and love on each other and wrestling sucks dick, wrestling sucks dick, wrestling sucks dick. I wonder about Paul London’s living situation, now being in the WWE, and I wonder about that Super 8 trophy. Is it in storage? Is it a gimmick he didn’t even get to keep? Is it this monstrous thing on this coffee table in his small living room/dining room/futon guest room place in his Louisville apartment? Or is it at the Goodwill with the yellow t-shirts, and some Deep Purple eight-tracks?

EPILOGUE
FIRST STAR OF THE TAPE: Chance Beckett. He’s unknown, disappeared ever since then, and was completely awesome with his busted chin.

SECOND STAR OF THE TAPE: Paul London. Hey, he’s in the WWE now, which he makes a decent paycheck to completely compromise his morals; I’d rather be broke.

THIRD STAR OF THE TAPE: The Japanese Poolboy. He is the bestest gay gimmick since Lenny Lane and Lodi, which wasn’t really that great a gimmick, but it was fun to see Lane pretend to be Chris Jericho so as to defame him upon his WWE arrival.

~!~