PP: I get to the Elk's Lodge at 6pm to find that I am the FIFTH person on line for a show scheduled to start an hour later. This show was already sort of in trouble with Dixie's broken leg, and scuttlebutt is that Red and Quiet Storm have already cancelled themselves off the show so it's getting worse. Eventually the doors open and I make my usual Pavlovian mad dash for the balcony. For the second Friday in a row, I a) share a section with Mike Johnson (plus his merry gang of ROH bus-trippers) and b) have my head split open by a speaker five feet away from me. World's worst soundman DJ Anthony chooses to pump up the fans by playing techno remixes of your favorite 80s hits. BONNIE TYLER, DADDY! ROCK N ROLL! A quick head-count of the stands reveals maybe 80 people, including the myriad of local wrestlers in attendance. I was set to have a talk with WK Media and APW promoter Kevin Walters (resplendent in red B-Boy tracksuit, like he just got back from break-dancing for change in the Times Square subway) after he or one of his minions spammed everyone's email on the MB, but after getting a load of the crowd I figured he'd been punished enough. Steven DeAngelis is YOUR ring announcer.

RD : I leave from my office around 6 and end up getting off at the stop by the Elk’s Lodge about 6:40 and proceed to wait about 10 to 15 minutes to get served at the Wendy’s. I had a total of maybe four people in front of me. I thought it was called fast food for a reason. I get my food and make a run for the Lodge. Things looks sort of bad as by the time I get to the building, there’s nobody outside and I see three guys walking away from the building with suitcases, which make me worried that the show was cancelled. It just turns out nobody is here. I get a security check on that door. I kind of miss the point of frisking me when they don’t even bother to open up my bag which could contain 80 pounds of explosives. I figure out where Pete take my seat. I can’t figure out why Pete picked this spot because he always complains about sitting in front of the speakers and DJ Anthony is deciding to play his usual mix of “NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC Vol 50”. The downstairs has a weird set up as all of the chairs seem to be about 5 feet away from the railing. It was like this was Puerto Rico or something.

MATCH 1: DANNY DEMANTO/ WAYNE THE CONVENIENCE STORE GUY/TRUE BLOOD (?) vs. LIVE WIRE/DOCTOR ZERO/MR. VENDETTA
PP: Seconds after MKJ describes this show as "USA Pro without the ticket-sellers," they send this match to the ring. Live Wire looks like Brockcito Lesnar while one of his partners looks like Mini Roughhouse Rivera. Demanto hits the fat man's Shining Wizard on someone and hits his frog splash for the finish. They kept this short enough that it didn't go down too badly. Seems like something is missing here...

RD: When this match hit the ring, I was suggesting they had to get back outside and sell some more tickets. I tried to no avail to get Danny DeManto to tell me who his partner. I told him it was for the purposes of journalistic accuracy but I was ignored. Dr. Zero was the guy who looked like Rough House Rivera, but I’ve seen Rough House Rivera, and Dr. Zero is no Rough House Rivera. I’m sure he’s a much better Doctor (actually, he was rumored to be the guy from the state athletic commission who used to do the checks on the wrestlers before the shows before he moved on to becoming a manager and then a a wrestler) than he is a wrestler. This was there. It by far wasn’t the worst ticket sellers type match I have seen, but it wasn’t making any best of reels either. DeManto has “Chicks dig me” on his tights and had something funny in the same vein as part of his ring music. His shining wizard was closer to the Hurricane’s enzugiri styled one.

MATCH 2: BALLS MAHONEY vs. INFERNO
PP: Inferno comes out wearing tights with what appears to be the logo of the tape house I used to work for. DG Systems is in the hizzouse! Balls comes out with the chair but shockingly it never comes into play as he works a totally straight match here. Actually this will become a theme throughout the night. Inferno heels it up but he isn't... very... good... As the match is going on, I figure out what was missing from the first match and I yell down to DeAngelis, "They forgot a bell, didn't they?" He laughs and confirms it. Unbelievable. Balls wins with a tricked-out cradle back suplex.

RD: Boy, the fans really wanted to see Inferno get brained with a chair. Hell, I wanted to see him get brained with the chair. I still have not forgiven him for that super push in the ’98 or ’99 Super 8. Anyway, Balls did do a nifty take down into a knee bar and a cross armbreaker. If he continues to work the match like this, that match with Homicide might be fun. This wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It seemed like Ball’s had one of his ankles heavily taped, but it didn’t stop him from taking a bump over the top rope when he missed his leg lariat on Inferno out to the floor. The cradled back drop suplex was a nice touch. He still should have hit him with the chair.

MATCH 3: GHOST SHADOW & BEST-SELLING AUTHOR "LIGHTNING" MIKE QUACKENBUSH vs. WASTED YOUTH (DERANGED & INSANE DRAGON)
PP: It's so touching seeing the triumphant return of Wasted Youth less than a week after they had their fiery bust-up at the JAPW show. This is probably the match of the night for pure work as Quack and GS work heel and gel quite nicely as a team, at one point slapping dueling CerebroLocks on their opponents. I'd love to see Quack do a sort of sniveling puroresu smart mark heel gimmick like the he's Comic Book Guy of wrestling. Like I envision him hitting a Tiger Driver '91 and yelling what match he saw Misawa do it to Kobashi in. "Osaka Furitsu Gym, 1/20/97!" Quack wins with the Quackendriver on Dragon, who was barely in the match as he was apparently hurt last week in Bayonne.

RD: Actually, there’s something great about the heel team doing a lot of lucha submission holds to punk the young guys. As Pete pointed out, Deranged worked most of the match and for the most part, Wasted Youth were pretty reeled in so they didn’t do anything monumentally stupid. There were a few UN FOULES~! by the lucha rudos. I’ve noticed that Deranged’s flying spinning roundhouse has kind of been all over the place lately as at the JAPW show, I think either Lazaro or Lethal were blocking him high and he hit them in the stomach and I think Ghost Shadow took one in the back. I’m not sure if it’s by design or not. Dragon hit a tornado DDT that sort of looked like he was slipping off the ropes when he was going for it, but he he hit it. Insane Dragon ended up eating two finishers as Ghost Shadow hit him with his Mad Scientist Bomb, which is the powerbomb where he has the guy sitting on his upper back and then shoots them up into a regular lyger bomb followed by Quackenbush hitting the Quackendriver.

MATCH 4: DA HIT SQUAD (MONSTA MACK & MAFIA) vs. THE DAMNED (MAD DOG & DRAVEN, w/DEMONICA)
PP: DHS are your new gods as they decide to take it upon themselves to go out there and TOTALLY save the show's bacon from an entertainment standpoint. Monsta starts the match out by showing everyone what he learned in Japan, as he goes after Mad Dog with Fujiwara headbutts and Abby-style throat thrusts (complete with pose!). With Mad Dog down in the center of the ring, Monsta then hits the corner and waddles over to Mad Dog before hitting the SUDANESE MEAT CLEAVER~! By this point we're all howling with laughter, and Mafia has us falling out of our chairs as he screams like a little girl when Draven whips him to the buckles before hitting something. Later on Monsta and Draven are brawling on the floor while Mad Dog whips Mafia to the ropes, but he ducks Mad Dog's clothesline and hits a HUGE tope onto both guys on the floor. Demonica tries to interfere with some stiff whip shots, but Mafia cuts her off and spanks her with the whip. DHS win with their old "figure-four/frog splash" combo on Mad Dog, and Monsta regales us with a shirt-tearing Hulk Hogan impression post-match. Consensus in our immediate group is that DHS were worth the $20 admission by themselves. I can see how Tom fell in love with Demonica as she has a pretty face and doesn't have that skanked-out look you get with most women on the indy scene.

RD: I think the Hit Squad basically decided “fuck it, we’re going to have fun tonight” and took everything into stride. When they came out, Monsta did the babyface high fiving the fans around ringside to everyone who was by the railing and even was doing it on the empty side of the ring. Mad Dog ended up doing most of the stuff with the Hit Squad. There was some stuff like Monsta stopping a charging Mad Dog and trying to convince him “We don’t have to fight! No! We can pose!” and then starting going into an early version of his Hulk Hogan as Mafia snuck in and hit Mad Dog from behind. There was also the Monsta “fat guy doing the Ricky Morton rolling tag” at one point which will always score points with me. Draven did a dive prior to the Mafia top where he used a chair to vault off onto Monsta on the floor. Many jokes were made about Demonica using the whip on the Hit Squad on the floor, mostly jokes about normally having to pay to get whipped like that. The finish was more of a second rope splash than a frog splash, but it was close to their finisher. The post match pose down was funny as Monsta does the bit and then Mafia insists that he lose the shrit for it and then the rip off the shirt. As they were leaving the ring, the top part off the stairs came lose to the point that it popped up when Monsta was walking off of them. I’m not sure if it broke before that but Mafia was pointing and Monsta like he did it.

INTERMISSION
PP: DeAngelis announces that this show has made Elk's Lodge history. No, not smallest paid crowd ever... the earliest intermission ever. It's not even 8:30 when the show takes a break. I will give them all the credit in the world for keeping the proceedings brisk up to this point.

RD: I’ll take a show that’s on time and an intermission that actually lasted about 15 minutes rather than 45 minutes any day of the week.

MATCH 5: APRIL HUNTER/SERENA vs. VALENTINA/SIMPLY LUSCIOUS
PP: This was scheduled as April and Valentina vs. SL and Serena but it got switched for some reason. Christ on a pony, this was BAD. At one point I threw up my hands and turned my back on the match, only to miss the finish with heel miscommunication leading to the Valentina/Luscious win. Post-match, April and Serena turn on each other with Ref Hanson (who reffed all the matches) getting stuck betwixt the boobies. So that's how he got paid.

RD: In the early reports, I had this as a contender for worst match I’ve seen all year, then I realized that Ken Sweeney vs. the Masked Maniac where the Masked Maniac tried to give one of the security guards a hand job happened during this time frame too, so this might just end up being one of the top 5 worst matches I saw all year. April’s strikes just looked horrible, to the point I know I’m going to be dreading the inevitable footage from her NEO tour that Dean will send to me. I’m guessing they were going for a Chyna type person for their tour and boy, they must have gotten a Chyna like performance. Luscious spent most of the time in the ring for her team and she was trying, but I don’t think she’s at the point she can carry a match. I think there was a chair involved and a really Lance Storm level bad chairshot involved. Valentina got the pin on Hunter following a tornado DDT where I think she totally missed the ropes on the spin around. Many a joke was made about Hanson sporting wood following his trip to Silicone Valley.

MATCH 6: SLYK WAGNER BROWN (w/APRIL HUNTER) vs. DEVON STORM (w/SERENA)
PP: And in an amazing twist, both ladies come out with their respective beaus for the next match. The dynamic for the match is kind of skewed, as both guys seem to trade off working heel and face during the match. Devon wins with the Mindbender after about 45 minutes. Or maybe it just felt like 45 minutes.

RD: I think April hit one stiff kick during this match to Devon when he was down and we weren’t sure if it was laughing about it when he was selling on the floor. This match was sort of there.

MATCH 7: FOUR-WAY ELIMINATION MATCH, UNIFIED FLORIDA CRUISERWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: NAPHTALI (C) vs. THE STRYKER vs. XAVIER vs. BILLY FIVES
PP: With Dixie hurt and Red/Storm "no-showing" (they actually did show up with their gear before the show started but were apparently told to go home), they merged the originally scheduled Fives/Stryker match into this and added Xavier. DHS are back in the crowd in their street clothes and still yukking it up as Mafia runs over to shake hands with a bemused Xavier like a frenzied fan. Naphtali comes out to "Badstreet USA..." he has three belts with him, and this becomes a huge bone of contention with one of MKJ's buddies who asks, nay, DEMANDS to know how this chump could've won three belts. He looks like he should be playing bass for Obituary. The Stryker isn't in his Strykbu kit, but he does turn on Naphtali towards the end as all three opponents work over the hapless Florida worker until Xavier turns on Stryker and pins him... Fives turns on Xavier and pins him... then Naphtali hits a Rocker Dropper variation on Fives to retain. 20 minutes of nothing and three eliminations within as many minutes. Feh.

RD: There were lots of jokes about Naphtali from the crowd, though coming out to Badstreet USA will do that. Things he was called: Billy Goat, Redneck, Hippie and Jesus. In fact, I think the Hit Squad yelled “AIR JESUS!” when Natphali did his dive. A lot of this was everyone beating the crap out of Natphali, though it wasn’t Tough Enough Pete stiff pounding. Stryker has ditched the wave runner pants he used to have in favor of real tights. Which have Striker with a lightning bolt in the place of the ever changing Y/I in his name. Maybe he’s Strykzaam! Anyway, at one point we were trying to convince him to hit the running Misawa elbow, but I was denied. The eliminations were quick as it seemed like the 3 guys had decided they were just going to kill Naphtali. Stryker hits the overdrive, then Xavier puts him out with the X-Breaker. Then when Xavier gloats, Fives eliminates him with the schoolboy and a hand full of tights, then it’s down to Fives and Naphtali. I figured if they were going to do a switch, it’d go on Fives as both he and Naphtali work in IPW-Hardcore, but Naphtali ended up going over. It wasn’t really a great showing as pretty much all it was him getting his ass handed to him.

MATCH 8: NO DQ, NO COUNTOUT MATCH, BIG JAPAN JUNIORS TITLE: THE WINGER (C) vs. HOMICIDE (w/THE BOOGALOU)
PP: This match is very strange, as they don't do anything in the course of the match to make the stips mean anything. No weapons, no brawling in the crowd, no balcony dives. In fact they go the other way, as Winger FAKES A FOUL towards the end of the match to try to get Homicide disqualified. Where are we, Mexico City? It's almost like they used the stipulations to draw the hardcore fans in an attempt to sell some more tickets. Tomfoolery aside, this is an OK match as Homicide pulls out some cool matwork and Winger hits his great senton near the finish. Homicide hits the Cop Killer and wins the BJW Jr. title clean. As everyone is filing out, Monsta hits the ring and tells Anthony to play Naphtali's music for him. "Badstreet" hits and Monsta goes into a full Michael Hayes impression complete with the strut to the ring and the moonwalk. We salute you, Monsta.

RD: I saw some ladders out earlier in the evening and I get the impression that they might have gone more balls out crazy but ended up not doing it. I don’t blame them because I think Homicide is a good wrestler and I don’t really see the need for him to be killing himself doing whacked out New Jack style bumps like he was doing in Japan. I appreciate the effort, but I prefer guys he can wrestle rather than kill themselves and all it does in the long run is seem to ruin your body and your career. At any rate, the no dq thing was just sort of there, there wasn’t really anything that warranted the stip except for a few chokes by Winger. The goofy thing was it’s no dq and Hanson putting counts on for chokes a rope breaks. I think the funniest thing was the fact J-Train was in the balcony cheering on Homicide, and it was sort of like that “crazy lady in Knoxville who thinks it’s real” kind of cheering. It was funny as Winger is standing in the ring and just looking like “what’s his deal” as Hanson makes the international symbol for “he ain’t quite right in the noodle” motion. The senton was nice. Winger went for a second and Lou interfered so Winger nutted himself on the top rope, which eventually set up Homicide putting him away with the Cop Killer. The post show stuff with Monsta “PS” Mack was pretty great. He did a pretty dead on Michael Hayes, complete with the Strut, the posing on the ropes and even the moonwalk. I’m pretty sure he’s probably got like 20 hours of Freebirds matches on tapes to have gotten it that down.

PP: Rumor going around was that a certain wrestling promoter of a questionable sexual nature was attempting to sabotage the show by ordering Red and Quiet Storm to no-show it, possibly in light of the fact that said promoter wants to run the Lodge him/herself in early 2003. Then again, after seeing how tiny the crowd for this was it makes one wonder why he/she would even bother. Again, I will give APW all the credit in the world for running a fast, breezy show that gets me home by 11pm, but a total attendance of less than 100 illustrates the dangers of catering entirely to the Internet crowd. And where was the Playstation 2 raffle?

RD: Overall, the show did sort of feel like it was missing on some levels. In most cases, it was like most local indy shows as it had talent that always works the area except for maybe 2 guys from Florida and 3 guys from PA and Winger. The show does get points though in the fact that it ran for the most part on time, there were no 20 minute shoot angles that nobody cared about and they didn’t feel the need to make it a cast of thousands. There’s something to be said for not running into curfew problems. Other than that, the show was kind of there, I think if they had a really stand out match, it might have helped the overall feel. And I don’t know what Pete’s complaining about, he got a free bumper from Balls Mahoney’s frend or girlfriend’s band handed to him for free. That’s almost as good as a PS2, right? RIGHT?