Welcome to the first ever Ripper-Schneider-Rasmussen house show roadtrip triple-bank!  It's THREE POSTS! THREE POSTS! THREE POSTS IN ONE! WHIP ASS!

Your Guide to who wrote what:
PS=Phil Schneider. Addicted to any match with Ciclon Ramirez separating the shoulder of an audience member.
PR=Phil the Ripper. Addicted to any match involving a fire extinguisher.
DR=Dean Rasmussen. Addicted to any wrestling involving lumpy Japanese heavyweights who should actually be driving a forklift.

We all went to Sanford, NC Friday night and it was PHAT ASS night of total wrestling SWANKNESS as we took in the FANTABULOUSNESS of OMEGA wrestling the Michinoku Pro of the United States.  Phil the Ripper drove Phil the Schneider up to my Richmond party palace in the Ripper's new 1974 Chevy Monza (or something) and we eventually got to North Carolina.(1) (DR)

No thanks to Matt Hardy (2) whose directions consisted of using Burger Kings, the alignment of Jupiter and a roving herd of cows that led us no where.  Fortunately after using sixth grade applied knowledge we stumbled into Sanford. (PR)

Hangman Tim and Matt "Fat Ass Dave" Classic were hanging out by their car in the parking lot of the armory, busting on the giant stain on my shirt that I had just acquired when my what was inside my sub jumped out of its sub roll home and decided to partake in my ensemble. (DR)

In the previously mentioned parking lot, Tim and Dave informed us that Cham Pain wasn't going to be in attendance (3), we had already suspected this due to the Painless poster (4) we had seen at the Courthouse Grill which is where we went to lunch (5). I bitch and whine because Cham Pain is my single favorite Indy wrestler and was instrumental in my decision to skip work and come to the show. Dave shows us the great pictures he took at the Raw taping and we get ready to go and rock (6).(PS)

 A crowd consisting of the Sanford middle school, some obese, I mean obsessed Surge fans and a rather large Dick Trickle (7) fan was waiting for us. (PR)

Wolverine comes out as states that he won't be wrestling in the battle royal tonight due to an injury (8). (PS)

Otto Schwanz defeated Rambunctious Bobby Barnett.  It was...hoo-boy...clean, I guess. I feared for the Rambunctious ones life because Schwanz isn't quite ready to work this style and was as sloppy as I've ever seen.(DR)

This was unbearably bad, the Rambunctious one has a very happy AWA face look about him, and this match was deeply on the Rock and Roll Buck Zumhoff v. Boris Zuchoff on ESPN tip. They blow a monkey flip spot and Otto reaches a Steinerized level of dangerous sloppiness.  A very inauspicious start of the festivities.(PS)

Otto does an interview and the music for Cham Pain starts playing and we pop like little monkeys.(DR)

They announced that Cham Pain was out of town so his appearance was a surprise. I got totally worked I admit, but it served it's purpose. I was so exited for Cham Pain, it was like if El Hijo Del Santo was coming to the ring. He does a big interview with lots of machinations but all the nonsense leads to the next awesome match and Pain rocks on the mike
so I didn't mind in the least (PS)

Cham Pain and Venum had a truly gorgeous match with Cham Pain continuing to be the world's best redneck rudo.  He was REALLY not afraid to rule, hitting a super-bizarro armdrag that would have made Angel Azteca green with envy!  He also hit the superswank Corkscrew plancha. Venum is so good- being a legit heavyweight but able to sell all the lucha stuff that Cham Pain brings to the table and he has a great power arsenal and these two work fabulous matches.  This is why you travel six hours to an indie- plus you get to get out of the house and hang out with a bunch of fellow goofballs.  This match was great.  Best of the night.  Less than a clean ending, which was a drag,.but this match whomped ass six ways to Sunday.(DR)

The great thing about this match was it's legitimate psychology.  The gist of it was, that Cham Pain was too fast for Venom, as Venom kept missing his top rope stuff, but Venom was too strong for Cham as he kept reversing his flying stuff into Powerbombs and crap. The ending sucked as Venom uses a chair and gets DQ, in a match this good it hurts neither guy to have them job, the only flaw with OMEGA tonight was it's dearth of clean endings. (PS)

My only complaint was that Dean and I kept having to yell at Otto to move his German-via-East Brunswick ass out of the way.  Four sides of the ring and he picks the one right in our line of sight.  (PR)

Venom also broke out the move of the night - The Michinoku Diver (9) -as he busts out 4 in the span of a minute and a half. The move is then repeated about 8 more times by a whole host of other wrestlers each one filled with a whole lot of hurtyness. (PR)

Black Skull took on Kid Vicious- golly!  THAT'S a cool name. Black Skull has a weird homemade mask that I was digging. (10) This was pretty highspot intensive but kinda transitionless.  Still, for a couple of- I'm Guessing - pretty green guys, this was quite watchable.  Kid Vicious was actually more impressive in the Battle Royal, hitting a  Locomotion German Suplex, and in this match, it was pretty cool while they were hitting most of their spots but got a little ragged as they blew some spots as they went on, but I still enjoyed it.  It's OMEGA, everybody flies, so I love  it.(DR)

Kind of fun but you could tell that both guys had no idea what to do in between spots, there were some nice spots and all but nothing tying them together. Kid Vicious wasn't afraid to do some suplexes and Black Skull hits a nice somersault tope onto both Serial Thrillaz.(11) (PS)

T.C. Brimstone did a very thorough interview.(DR)

This was about six hours long with one good line (12). Give me wrestling or give me death (PS)

Brimstone is pudgy and just not good and he robbed me of 15 minutes of my life that I am never getting back. (PR)

Kid Dynamo and Joey Matthews had a very high-flying if goofy and so-very-unstiff-because-they-are-both-fourteen-years-old kind of way in this first round match of the Star Five LT HVYWGHT unification tourney. Kid Dynamo is all high-flying and so WAY over.  Joey Matthews - being surly punk teenager - plays the roll of surly punk teenager really well.  We all yelled at that rat bastard Duke of New York and  awaited him to get his comin-uppance!  Damn Yankee! This was like the match before this- really neato in spots and really sloppy in spots. I'm REALLY not so hip on the screwjob ending to decide a title though.(DR)

I smelled pre-mentioned screwjob a mile away too. The match started real great and super Lucha, but kind of dragged.  Both guys are going to be really great when they get hair on their nuts. Joey blew a kiss to a couple of 14 year old girls near us, getting them all moist. (13) Joey wins with his feet on the ropes. Taking the Tiger Beat title to go along with his Teen Beat title; next up a match with Christian York for the Bop! Lightheavyweight championship.(PS)

Intermission:  Hangman Tim tells us that he's found Bochichio so I force Schnieder to front me some money.  The Commissioner gets in a yelling match with a bunch of children under ten. (DR)

10 PM and they have a 20 minute intermission. Don't they know we have a 3 hour drive waiting for us. Damn you OMEGA (PR)

They had a 13 man battle royal, and it was as good as a battle royal can be- in that it, of course, sucked, but at least they did a whole bunch of spots, which you don't get in any other league. I was a little disappointed that Christian York wasn't there but I guess coming all that way just for a Battle Royal would be a waste of gas. The Duke of New York took his place in the most Southern of Southern booking and took his bumps like a man.  The ending was really cool as Kid Dynamo and Will O' the Wisp were the final two and I think they've worked together before because this was pretty great.  Dynamo does this bizarro Sunset Flip Powerbomb that looked just GREAT. (DR)

A lot of wrestling for a battle royal, the last little match was fun, but they should have ended in a pinfall. I dig Willow the Whisp. (PS)

The final match was the best worker in the group- Surge- against the quite capable-in-a-US-Prostyle-kind-of-way Mike Maverick. This was all psychologically sound and was keyed on Surge bumping his way out of being on the offensive, so the offensive to defensive transitions in the match were crystal clear.  Surge isn't afraid to take some pretty hellish bumps and isn't afraid to supply the state-of-the-art offense- so this was really good- but not as good as the Cham Pain/Venum match, since Venum is the best rudo in the indies and Maverick isn't close to him. There were two GARGANTUAN bumps at the end.(DR)

Surge is the real deal, and Mike Maverick was not nearly as bad as I feared, as he was eminently carryable. Surge took some real nasty bumps, including a suplex over the top where he just savaged his back on the ring apron.  The match ended with Surge hitting his top rope quebrada (14)  and getting a pin on Maverick, but before the end Kid Vicious runs
in causing the superfluous screw job. They then have the big killer spot at the end which was as crazy as anything you'll ever see and twice as crazy as that cause it was in front of 120 people.(PS)

See the fine military boys at the Armory wheeled in some big... thing. Let's just say that it was a big, steel box on wheels that was about 18 feet high.  So Surge was the first to exhibit the desire to be like Mike... Hickenbottom, oops, Shawn Michaels (15) as he is tossed to his impending doom by Maverick.  Kid Vicious saw Surge's spot and raised him
a table spot as he dove off and put Surge through a table in the process (16). (PR)

OMEGA rules the earth.  They need to have more clean finishes and they need to run in Virginia so I don't have to drive three hours to get there, but this ruled.(DR)

Rode in a car for 6 hours and I was rewarded with possibly the best house show I have seen and the urge to get me a clear vest just like Cham Pain.  (PR)

You can't not love OMEGA. They have it all, absurd acroynimic name (17), a weird hyper Lucha style for crazy redneck white boys and most importantly OMEGA is all about love of the sport. You got guys going out and killing themselves in front of 125 fans, because they love what they are doing. This kind of spirit is totally missing from 90% of the wrestlers in the WCW and the WWF who care more about keeping their heat and selling T-shirts, making shoot comments and backstage mutual masturbation, then whether what their doing in the ring is worth a shit. I had a great time and am going to come back as much as I can.(PS)

--------------------------------------------------------------------
ENDNOTES:

(1) We passed through Wade County, North Carolina which-judging from the massage parlors and Adult Video Stores- is the second coming of Sodom and Gamorrah. We had about as many juvenile, swanky jokes as you could imagine. You could live your whole life without ever hearing ANY them- trust me.  Unless you wanted to... We got there early so- before I decided to wear an Italian sub- we went to this Mexican market to check out the video collection to see if they had any Lucha Lire and AMAZINGLY they had the fer-reekin Antichristo tape!  I had no idea that there were any Lucha Commercial tapes and who could guess that the first one I come across is THAT one.  I would have rented it, but its a three and a half hour drive. They also had the tabloid with the picture of a guy who had just had his legs severed after they were run over by a train.  It was full color and who could possibly be ready for THAT image.  I said to myself, "WELCOME TO MEXICO, MOTHERFUC..."
(2) Mr. Hardy is OMEGA Heavyweight champion under the guise Surge.
(3) Evidentially Matt Hardy told Tim that Cham Pain was out of town, and that Jeff Hardy (who does double duty as Wolverine and Willow the Whisp) was injured and couldn't work. Both were big lies and I took great pleasure in the fact that the usually astute Tim Noel was totally worked.
(4) The two matches billed were the main event and the Battle Royal. Ask us about the crazy booking ideas we came up with for that card, if you dare.(PR)
(5) The Courthouse had a criminal justice motif, as the dishes were named after crimes and justice procedures, I think I had the Jail Breakout BBQ Beef sandwich as it felt like it  was trying to break out of my stomach all night, OOOOF.
(6) Those pictures included a maskless Aguila doing an asskicking somersault tope and MPRO undercard superstar Wellington Wilkins Jr. making an inexplicable RAW is WAR dark match appearance. Me and Tim argue about whether Wellington Wilkins Jr. is the same guy as Biff Wellington.
(7) Dick Trickle is a NASCAR veteran with zero career wins.
(8) This is evidentally a running joke in OMEGA as Wolverine is often too hurt to wrestle but Willow is always fine.
(9) Dean and I argue with Phil over whether this was a Falcon Arrow or not but in the end Mr. Michinoku wins.
(10)- Speaking of masks, I got an AWESOME <<<<SHOCKER!!>>>> mask from Internet Sex Machine Mike Bochichio who was also at the show. It's silver with Lavender lightning bolts!  AWRIGHT!!!  Schneider got the TRES SWANK professional-grade Black Warrior mask. Luckily for Los Fatboy, Fat Ass Dave got a Black Warrior mask also so Los Fatboy can sweat a whole lot in it while taping Wrestling Power 98!  KICK ASS!  The Ripper got the fully hooded La Parka mask and was stoked about using it to spice up some of the liaisons with his string of DC phillies. Bochichio had hundreds of masks and I wept that I couldn't also get the Fuerza Guerrera mask- which was as beautiful as you could imagine.(DR)We realize Schneider is never taking off his mask so we risk being arrested thanks to Virginia's crazy anti-terrorism laws.(PR)
(11) Yet another in the line of endless White Boy Hip Hop gimmicks. (12) The gist of this nonsense was a SHOOOOT interview, with T.C. breaking it down about the demise of New Frontier Wrestling, and the party habits of the Hardy brothers. The single good line was, "Lord knows how many little Hardy's their are out there"
(13) They spent most of rest of the card outside smoking cigarettes, cause Hell it's North Carolina. (PS) I can see it now. It some therapy session these girls will be recalling how they had their first sexual experience over Joey Matthews and they were alone at the time. Now THAT is North Carolina for you.(PR)
(14) Called the Megahertz, the most absurd move name of the night.
(15) Michaels took a similar fall through the announcers table at "Hell In The Cell" which possibly could not have been Match of the Year since it end with one of the participants dead brother coming down and ripping the door of the cage.
(16) Vicious overshot Surge, hitting him only with his shins so he preceded to nearly cripple himself in about 216 different ways.
(17) Organization of Modern Extreme Grappling Arts