Guide
AG - Anthony Gancarski
TKG - Tom Karro-Gassner

PROLOGUE
AG : Well, Mississippi Goddamn. Last Thursday I met a girl at a club and fell hard. We spent a lost weekend together, two parts 2 Live Crew and one part Dawson's Creek. Since she lived across the street, she snuck over and we had booty calls as regular as church bells. We drank enough Cisco and Guinness and smoked enough dope and, well, such, to find 1004 positions and to discuss marriage. Then things went freaky, in a Prince meets Sinead kind of way, and all talk of commitment and such was taken off the table.So it went. By the day of the show, I was still upset, and I listened to a mess of Joy Division and drained a flask before hitting the 2-lane roads in GA. Then at some point I realized I was going to a wrestling show, goddamn it, and that wrestling was more important than most things in my life.

TKG: I hop on greyhound round eleven PM Monday night. Try my hand at marketing my goods to the two Fisk sorority girls on the bus. They weren’t buying, but the 16 year old with the “True Love Waits” T-Shirt did seem to hang on my every word. Great conversation between drunk and a guy who played piano in hotel bar: “You play piano, do you play that Shakespeare stuff?” But essentially most people were trying to sleep, and I read the “Pure Dynamite”: ”Now, I’ve never taken liberties in the ring, even with people I don’t like.” I do get high score in Charlotte bus station Ms. Pac-Man machine despite mentally retarded guy next to me who kept on reaching across me pushing buttons while loudly “playing” “Street Fighter” (without putting money into his machine).

AG: I arrived in Columbus at 5PM, my revised ETA. Picked up tomk at the Greyhound station, where we gawked at the RAW poster and at the Aerosmith video game. Then we went and scored some mexican food, and then went to the
mall to score a disposable camera and to see if we could find a slattern or two to take to the wrestling show. We checked out clearance action figures and received a Columbus Welcome when the Nacho Berreraesque security guard came up to tomk and asked him to ask me to remove my bandanna.

TKG: “Could you tell your boy, he’s not allowed to wear a bandanna in this mall. It’s the rules. You have to put it deep in your pocket. It can’t show at all.”

AG: Then we went to the show, which was in a local Rec Center that looked capable of holding 300. As opposed to the usual thugged out vampire crowds in the Northeast, the audience was mostly family types. People you could leave your kids with. It was apparent that this would be a wrestling show, free of chants for puppies, tables, or tits.

TKG:  On the program it said clearly “NO PROFANITY OR BAD GESTURES PLEASE. ANYONE DOING SO WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE BUILDING.” This was very much a family show. Cool visual of guy yelling and pointing at heel, Danny Roland, with one hand while testing his baby’s milk bottle on other arm. I’d say center looked to be able to hold 600 and had an attendance of about 400-500. I’m not a great judge of size. They are reporting attendance of 800. We sat right up front next to ring. Ring was as solid as any ring I’ve ever seen. There was a big banner announcing “Welcome Mr. Wrestling 2” in front of arena. I was psyched!!

THE SHOW
AG: The event began on time, with Mike Jackson coming out and leading an invocation for Terry Gordy and his Freebird brethren. A moment of silence, a ten-bell salute. Jackson wiped a tear from his eyes and went to the dressing room, and then we heard ZZ Top's Sharp Dressed Man begin to blare from the soundsystem, as Chic Donovan came out of the dressing room for the first match....

Chic Donovan vs. Mike Jackson:
AG: Jackson was in incredible physical condition here, and he more or less carried this match in terms of "athleticism". Donovan is a solid hand, though, and despite his offense being slower than it was during the 1980s, both these guys know more about working a wrestling match than most anyone you can see on Raw. A lot of matwork here, which set the tone for most of the matches on the card. Unlike in so many matches you see nowadays, the matwork was not an excuse to sit on the mat and catch your breath. These guys worked a lot of hammerlock-type stuff, rarely sitting still, and in the end it was a ***, 12 minute match. Jackson is one of the best workers I've seen live in years, as his grasp of psychology and timing is pretty impeccable, and he struck me here [as well as on the tape I scored at the gimmick table] as a southern US version of Blue Panther.

TKG: Donovan looks like Methuselah in the BWA pictures. Live, Donovan looked much better. He’s in good shape and still has THE TAN~! He works heel here going so far as refusing to shake Tony’s hand. I was originally expecting a straight scientific match like the one Jackson had with Scott Armstrong two weeks earlier, but done well I like face/heel format a lot. And this was done well. Jackson is in amazingly great shape and moves really fast and is very over as a face. There is a Regal quote about it not being the move but how you do the move that matters. Regal is right.  Jackson drives his knee into Donovan’s elbow while holding him in hammerlock. This is a spot that I’ve seen done a million times. But Jackson does it with a level of conviction that I was “Ooh!!”ing every time the knee dropped. Great opening match.

Darren Kelly vs. Danny Roland
AG: I didn't see this match, as I was chatting with Jackson about the Knoxville territory and scoring a Sprite.

TKG: Pretty quick match.  A quick roll up by Kelly. Roland asked for a rematch, which he wins by count out. Kelly is taller than Roland and this caused a couple of awkward moments: somewhere in the middle Roland looked to have hit a stiff clothesline to just above Kelly’s nipples. But Roland looked very good to me. Good heel charisma combined with smart heel work and well executed power moves on the taller Kelly. I liked Roland’s work and the booking was solid. I’d seek out more Roland stuff.

Todd Fernandez vs. "The Lightning Kid" Jerry Reiner
AG: Fernandez is a raw-boned young guy with a Todd Champion kind of look, while Reiner is a whiny heel who echoes back to early Waltman and Corino. This match as a whole wasn't great, but they did some nice stuff, and are learning from some great old hands elsewhere on the card.

Scott Armstrong/Greg Brown vs. Superstar/The Wrestler - AUSTRALIAN TAG TEAM EVENT
TKG: Southern Tag Style is my favorite style of wrestling. IMO this was best match of night. This was high-level southern tag.

AG: Now, this was as 1981 as Pacman. Brown is in the Pez Whatley mold and had the least experience of the four, but was protected well by the structure of the southern tag, which allowed him to just come in and do things while Armstrong FIP'd and bumped for the Superstar and the Wrestler [who apparently is Bryant Anderson, though it has been said elsewhere that he is Ted Oates, Ted Allen, and Ted Danson respectively]. Armstrong took the biggest bumps of the evening, as the heels worked the match like a WTCG main event with loads of 70s offense, NWA tag psychology, et al. This and the Jackson match were the two best on the card, and both featured workers who have been in the ring
since the 1970s.

TKG: Scott Armstrong has always been my favorite Armstrong. Not as flashy as Steve or well rounded as Brad but still my favorite. Scott is good at connecting with the audience, does the goofy tricked out Saint matwork, and the quick superkick. Scott is one of the better face in peril tag workers around. He’s very good at throwing in little bits of offense, during the heat segments (something many “face in peril”  tag workers don’t do). Go rewatch the Armstrongs vs. Three Faces of Fear (Leslie, Tenta,and Sullivan) mini-feud to see how effective a FIP worker Scott can be…he makes those matches seem almost competitive and almost watchable. Tonight Scott played Face in peril and took the biggest bumps of night, getting thrown out of ring Ciclope style twice. Brown perfectly played the Fulton role to Scott’s Tommy Rogers. The Masked Superstar was so much better than I expected him to be. I figured Eadie is old and would mail it in, but no. Superstar worked the arrogant technical heel perfectly, making a big deal out of his clean breaks, etc. And Eadie bumped more than I have seen him bump in over two decades. He was paired up with The Wrestler who worked a surly bastard heel style. If Ganc is right and Ted Oates is under the Wrestler mask, Fuchi should grab Oates to compete for All Asia straps again. The Wrestler threw stiff strikes, leaned into every else’s strikes, brought the offense, and took Armstrong’s snap suplex.  The two heels did a really good job of controlling the space of the ring, cutting off tags, etc. I’ve seen so many three-ways and spotfest-tag-clusterfucks in small indy rings, that I had forgotten how effective the controlling space tag psychology works in a small ring. Also referee Bo Oates did a good job of never being in the wrong place (Hebner/Chioda  could learn a lot from young Bo).

AG: The “cutting off the ring”, or the forging of a Landrumesque No Man’s Land, is a hallmark of old-school tag psychology. Andersons. Funks. Briscos. Flair/Valentine. Stevens/Bockwinkel. A lot of “simple” work, concentrated feats of leverage and grappling dexterity, that works because the wrestlers make it look like it hurts.

TKG: This was super heated tag match. When Scott was being beaten on floor while refs back was turned, the old woman sitting behind me ran over to the brawling and started yelling at ref and saying that she wouldn’t come back if the promotion was going to allow cheating. At end of match when the arrogant Superstar left the ring he was confronted by a seven-year-old kid who told Superstar: “You cheated! You’re a cheater!” Masked superstar looked at the boy, put his finger to his lips and said, ”Shhh! Don’t tell.”

TKG: After brief intermission, there was a ceremony for Mr. Wrestling II. Wrestling II came out in a Hawaiian shirt and wearing his mask.  He received a plaque and gave a speech. He got a standing ovation and a “TWO!TWO! TWO!” chant started. I have been struggling over last two days to right something coherent about what it means to be a middle aged face. To write something about how II and Mike Jackson had mastered this art. Every time I’ve tried to write something it gets really incoherent and I get caught up writing autobiographical stuff mixed with a kind of Midrasch on both Biblical quotes and the Paul Bryant quotes that were drilled into my head as a kid. It’s going to take me awhile to get it clear enough that I can write something that makes sense. The WWF face heel structure with its adolescent power fantasy of all powerful faces and weak heels, has never appealed to me. The non-WWF face/heel structure was something very different, something more complex, something that appealed to me as a child, something spiritually nourishing.  I can’t really explain this well at the moment, but tonight’s wrestling was nourishing. Seeing Mr. Wrestling II and getting to shake his hand was part of that.

AG: I think a lot of the complexity of the southern face/heel dynamic is rooted in the fact that spirituality isn’t as moot a point in the south as in the NE. I talk about this in the Mike Jackson review in the latest DVDVR at some length. The idea that belief isn’t dead. The idea that life isn’t necessarily a parade of ironic non-sequitors. When I stop and consider how regimented the WWF presentation is, how crafted it is to get the bossmen over at the expense of the fieldhands and the houseboys who work dark matches or labor till run-in finishes in the dim lights of syndicated television, I find it watchable in small doses and anathemic to what I have been trained by years of NWA cards to believe; namely, that wrestling, as myth, has to have a point. Heroes and villains have to both be badasses, because if they aren’t, then there is no explanation for the coexistence of good and evil. Villains have to win, sometimes honestly, in a way that allows them to have credibility and the dignity of being fully human.

Road Dogg vs. Chris Stevens - CANADIAN LUMBERJACK RULES
AG: The heat for this was molten, and it was fun to see live, but Dogg wasn't in ring shape really. He blew up a lot, and Stevens really carried this.

TKG: Roaddogg was unadvertised and a replacement for Jerry Oates. All the other workers came out as lumberjacks and Mr. Wrestling II sat at ring table. Jerry Reiner and Mike Jackson were fun as lumberjacks as they had great facial selling to the action in the ring. “Blonde Bomber” Chris Stevens is the real deal. Him and Roland for me were the two cool new discoveries on the show. Stevens works heel, hits a great looking spinebuster, and builds the match up around Dogg’s big spots.  When Stevens had the advantage he would threaten Dogg’s brother, setting up for future card. Stevens gets thrown out in front of Mr. Wrestling II. Stevens leaned way into II’s knee bumped from it and then sold it like he had been shot with a gun. The crowd pop for Mr. Wrestling II’s knee was almost deafening. The face lumberjacks threw Stevens back into ring where Roaddogg pinned him.

AG: At which point Road Dogg readied himself for an even more important task: the hawking of Polaroids, $10 each, 20 picture limit. I dig Road Dogg paying his weed bill in this manner, and dig even more the shot where he lied down to be covered by a seven-year-old girl. Then again, that’s how Lawler met Kat, or so the insiders say.

EPILOGUE
TKG: The whole show more than lived up to my expectations. This was NOT a nostalgia show, not a reunion show. This was WRESTLING, booked and worked properly in 2001. This was very much in the present. (Exodus 12) Everything was booked well and cleanly. No one mailed in their work. If I lived within 3 hours, I would definitely go back every two weeks. I am not exaggerating when I say that Columbus Championship Wrestling is the best U.S. promotion around today.

AG: And as opposed to the NWA-FL tourney, which was so heatless that I could call the matches at ringside and be heard like the AJ Classics guy intoning over Brisco/Funk, this show had heat throughout the matches, which I take to be a covenant between the workers and the crowd. The lack of heat in matches is a hallmark of the new-school style that feels the need to sugarcoat increasingly implausible stunts with dated and equally ridicuous comedy. The deliberate flouting of kayfabe that we see in virtually every US promotion except this one – hey, dude, it’s sports entertainment – results in the exposure and erosion of spots, of workers, and of meaning. The constant reminders that wrestlers are just playing characters leads to crap like all those “I’m shootin, brother” promos that relieve wrestlers/performers of their gimmicks in favor of letting us see what they too often really are: roided-out white trash with little innate propensity for storytelling.

TKG: We drive to Jacksonville where I take the Greyhound back to D.C. I get into an argument with the crazy bus driver and almost get tossed off the bus, as he threatens calling the cops on me. I get back two hours late and miss the MCW show. But in the end the MCW would have probably been a letdown after CCW anyway.

AG: Though the Prologue girl got over, I’m working the circuit, scoring some pinfalls, and getting my heat back. God bless HGH.