I rode down to wonderful Floyd County, Virginia, the home of hippie weed and moonshine, to get my boy Boogie Brown on Wednesday night. He has a bubble trailer, one of those old school silver deals, on the side of Buffalo Mountain down there on the edge of a national forest – propane power, no phones, cooler full of beer on a wooden pallet that doubles as the front porch – it’s a good place to get your head right for a weekend of senseless violence. It seems to me that wrestling, originally, which for me means in 1979, tried to simulate actual athletic competition, and yet consummate the professional violence of heel on face hatred through bloodletting. That is the basic tenet of the wrestling religion I believe. However, in 2003, you either get the workrate intense athletic aspect gone to the nth degree, or you get the bloodletting to the nth degree. The true spirit of the wrestling, again, only to me, contains all that. Hardcore and workrate wrestling seems to be fundamental branches of my religion holding onto just a few sentences instead of the whole book. But that’s all good. Wrestling is still wrestling and I have no problem enjoying on it.

Following that religion metaphor, the hardcore wrestling freaks are snake-handlers, except instead of the audience being willing to feel the spirit and handle the snakes, they just want to watch the practitioners destroy themselves. More on that later. The IWA King of the Death Match is the penultimate American indy “let’s destroy each other and get bloody” tourney going, and Boogie Brown and me were hyped for hopefully a good weekend of drunken furious nonsense. Goddamn, if we only knew…

Anyways, the drive out was disgusting, as it rained like a bitch most of the way and I, knowing I had like 8 hours of driving at top speed, refused to go less than sixty through the sheet of grey, hoping that bright red brake lights didn’t pop up in front of me all of a sudden. We made it to Clarksville, exit 4, and the scenic and dirt cheap Colonial Inn around dinnertime. Checked in for the weekend, found out the lounge opened in ten minutes, and it was on.

The Colonial Inn lounge was a Bukowski-ish thrill on Thursday night. Brown forgot his ID back in Virginia, so he ate a four dollar pizza while I drank a two dollar Budweiser, and watched karaoke. The only other folks in the bar were two guys in tank tops who I guessed were father and son, both with bad tattoos and that look to be wary of, some toothless old lady at a table by herself, and the waitress. The waitress kept doing all the karaoke songs, and she was good, especially with “Pour Me”, which doubled as cheap alcohol-buying shills for the five of us actually not at work, so the waitress gets props. The toothless lady sang a song too, I used the bathroom, which was down a carpeted hallway. The bar itself had all sorts of those thick glass cubes for non-see through windows, and Christmas lights were all over the place. It was dark, the carpet was held down with black gaffers tape, and it was perfect. But Brown didn’t have his ID, so we hit the liquor store.

The Keg is the officially supported liquor store of all my trips to Clarksville, Indiana. This time, there was an older fat guy working, and a younger ponytailed dude who looked like he should be doing fitness infomercials. Both would be staring up at the TV, even while ringing you up or bagging your alcohol. Fat guy was on the right, by the register, and fitness guy did all the packaging and keeping things in order. A couple of 30 packs of Old Milwaukee and a jug of tomato juice and it was on.

Big Jon Burr showed up from Georgia that evening, and we all drank on the porch. There were like four 1947 hot rods in our parking lot alone, plus others across the way at the Hampton Inn, plus driving all over the goddamned place. You see, the nationals of the street rod association or something was on, and there were TWELVE FUCKIN’ THOUSAND CUSTOMIZED STREET RODS FROM BEFORE 1949 riding all over the place. I rapped up a couple of the old dudes into that, they being very normal guys, and I always figure a dude that far into customizing cars probably used that about twenty years ago to replace his terrible alcoholism that would ruin his life eventually. I should probably look for like a rusted out 1948 Chevy pick-up somewhere real soon. Well, the car show was running all weekend like seven miles down the interstate. Chick at the front desk when I checked in had mostly a page of pink reserved rooms set up on her room flow chart thingy, so we were lucky to get a room for the weekend, although there was actually a guy with the exact same last name as me who had already reserved a room, and he was from Virginia as well. After much drinking, me and Burr again tried the lounge, but the only folks there were the same two dudes, the younger or which was now talking on the phone about being indicted, and the toothless old lady had been replaced by a toothless middle-aged lady. The waitress wasn’t karaoke-ing, and dude was packing it up, and middle-aged lady was nice enough to tell me last call wasn’t for a few hours, but fuck that. It was a rough scene to swallow without a karaoke singing waitress sugar-coating it all for me.

We ate at the Steak-and-Shake, which is the worst fuckin’ place on Earth to eat. Goofball high school kids bouncing rubber balls at us, and Travis Bickles’ nephew cooked our burgers. It ruined it to watch him. But Ashley the young temptress of a cashier had a sweet enough smile when I drunkenly flirted with her. I am such a dirty, dirty man. All this was on Thursday.

Friday, we drank beer at the pool most of the day, making friend with assorted drunks and teenage delinquents. Jon Burr, that fuckin’ pervert, was trying to get this chubby kid who said she was 17, but not a day over 13, to give him a massage. To her credit, she wore a necklace that said “KICKASS” and had confederate flag sculpy beads on it. Some dude who is a safety inspector for a water tower painting company joined us, and he found out I was a painter and we began to discuss how retarded and crazy painters are. It’s funny, because the internet has a really low bar for how fuckin’ bad ass you are, and I may seem like a drunken maniac online, but at the jobsite and back home, I’m pretty much a pussy compared to a lot of the dudes I’m around. That’s the main reason I hate the internet – it’s not nearly as tough and crazy as it pretends to be. We all laughed about how that big peach water tower just over the Georgia border in South Carolina looks like a giant ass, and we drank, and Burr’s boys Right Wing Ingram and Stu the Viking showed up. We had already worked over the previous couple of 30-packs, so a trip to The Keg was in order before the show, and the drunk couple in 108 were gonna ride, but me and Brown couldn’t find them. They had been drinking Millers all day, so we bought them a 12-pack and stuck it under a box by their door, only to run into them at the pool. The guy was disappointed because he had meant to get a 30-pack, but he was stoked when we told him his 12-pack was compliments of the state of Virginia. Filled the cooler with ice and beer, and it was on, motherfuckers.

Finally, at the motherfuckin’ IWA Arena, an industrious place to be sure.

Before the matches even started, Right Wing Ingram got all loud and Ian, on the mic, told him he could get his fuckin’ money and leave right now. I had feared Ingram’s loud ways, and it was amusing to see it come to fruition so quickly, but I didn’t want any heat on the crew. Oh well, fuck it. I was drunk, so was Ingram, and Ian probably would be too by the end of the night.

JERRY LYNN vs. JIMMY JACOBS

I dig the Barbaric Berzerker, even if he is like 5’6” and 120 pounds. A great opening match-up to get things started, and Lynn went over with the tombstone piledriver. Ian catches a lot of shit from smarts who “know” the business, as he’s supposedly a degenerate gambler exploiting his workers, and CM Punk’s recent internet interview certainly flamed that opinion, but give it to Ian – when he’s got a good young guy like Jacobs now and like CM Punk and Hero back a couple of years ago, he’ll bring in a good workrate name and put them in the ring with the young guy. It can only help, and people need to realize that. You show me somebody getting rich off promoting indy wrestling, and I’ll show you somebody using indy wrestling as a money laundering tool for something more illegal and lucrative.

MICKIE vs. HAILEY

When we came out for the TPI last fall, we secretly ogled Mickie all weekend long. She’s all beautiful, independent woman. I was bummed to see her longer dark hair traded for a chop cut dyed blonde, but whatever. She’s probably the first woman I’ve seen come to an IWA ring (other than crazy ass Delilah Starr) not dressed up as a slut. Her opponent was Hailey – the big, punk rock chick that the fans clown on. C’mon, she ain’t that big, and big women need loving too. This was Mickie’s first match after a long time in IWA school, setting up the ring, carrying off hurt dudes during matches, and getting licked by Bull Pain on the face during that Bull Pain vs. Ian Rotten angle last winter. I got the same thing from Hailey I did at TPI – she’s not very clean in the ring. After Mickie won, Hailey set up a chair and powerbombed Mickie onto it. Mickie’s neck went over the top of the chair, and it was probably one of the more uglier things all weekend long, which is saying something considering it was the fuckin’ King of the Death tournament.

MAD MAN PONDO vs. SPYDER NATE WEBB with Becky Bayless

Stips were it’s a High Impact Tables Match, meaning you could only get pinned after a move that put you through a table. Nate is awesome and generates fuckin’ enthusiasm. If the World of professional wrestling was right, he would be making himself and somebody else a lot of fuckin’ money on the television. Webb reprised his second beam on the wall splash from last year’s KOTDM match-up between these two, and it was seemingly over, but Lollipop came and started fighting it up with Bayless in the ring. Webb went to break up the damned fighting women, giving Pondo the chance to recuperate. After getting his ass kicked for like ten minutes, Pondo Mad Manned up and piledrove Nate Webb through a light tube table ringside, and pinned him.

MEAN MITCH PAGE with Jim Fannin vs. ROLLIN’ HARD

This was a Taipei Death Match, and continued the feud that’s been running steadily for a while now in IWA. My man Boogie Brown is not the biggest wrestling fan, but he’s a partying fan, and living on the side of a mountain with nothing to do but ride around in his Dodge Prospector pick-up and have a good time, he’s an excellent judge of people. Me and him use the word “loungin’” pretty fuckin’ often, mainly Brown, and when a dude looks like good peeps, Brown calls it. When Page came out in his dirty-ass shirt with that crazy grin and beard and shit, Brown looked at me and said, “That dude’s The Lounger.” I got to see the flaming karate chop, and they bludgeoned each other to my satisfaction. Fannin got involved by making Rollin’, and Page took the duke. The first two death matches were quick and screwy finished. This would be a theme.

BALLS MAHONEY vs. HORACE THE PSYCHOPATH

Barbed wire tables were in the corners and barbed wire baseball bat center ring. Horace came out first and got an Uncle Fester chant. It amazes me how many hardcore wrestlers have some sort of insane gimmick, but don’t really do anything with it other than wear a hospital suit. Horace was decent enough, but you’d have to be a fool to think Balls was going out in the first round. And he did, with an elbowdrop through a table. The barbed wire baseball bat was very barbed wiry and impressive in its destructive potential.

J.C. BAILEY vs. 2 TUFF TONY

Barbed wire tables and electrified light tubes match this was. Immediately, with J.C. Bailey, you are struck by how he’s a normal, decent-looking, youngster who could be doing half-gainers at the lake and clocking mad pussy. But he apparently doesn’t give a fuck and is all about destroying things, namely himself. He never even came out the locker room with a shirt on the whole weekend, the crazy bitch. And 2 Tuff Tony’s in-ring insanity has been proven time and again in the KOTDM. If he was more of a regular still in IWA, I would’ve assumed him to be a semi-finalist. Bailey is a bump machine, and was destroyed numerous times. He took Tony’s super devastating move through a barbed wire table, that reverse hook piledriver thing that looks like it would hurt on a regular ring, much less barbed wire from the ring apron. Tony pulled Bailey up at two though. I’m pretty sure Bailey got powerbombed through the first electrified light tubes as well. Tony was setting Bailey up to get that reverse piledriver thing from the top rope through the second electrified light tube gimmick, but Bailey sunset flipped him for the powerbomb instead. The beauty of it was slightly lessened as Bailey’s feet actually busted up the light tubes before the powerbomb was delivered, but it was still the most awesome death match of the night thus far. J.C. Bailey is one insane motherfucker.

I’m pretty sure there was an intermission here, and we met some folks from Milwaukee, including the dude with the hat and Hawaiian shirt and Bible. He was fucked up, even more so than us. Drinking seemed to be a prevalent theme in the parking lot. I should also make mention that I was expecting the bus trippers to really suck. Luckily, they had their own section, but one of them was sitting in front of us, and he was a pretty laid back dude. The guy sitting to my right had his two kids there and he was an awesome dude as well. Seems like most of the people we encountered were pretty cool there, both workers and non-workers.

SONJAY DUTT vs. ALEX SHELLEY

Every time I hear that “Wu-Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthin’ To Fuck Wit” song now, where ODB does his style that there’s no father too, I always think he’s saying “like Alex Shelley or um Beetle Bailey” now. Very very odd seeing Sonjay play a heel, as I usually just see him in Virginia being a good guy. Sonjay is a very good heel. This was match was cyber-speed and pretty good, with Shelley getting the win. Adam Flash came out and helped Sonjay double team up Shelley, until Jimmy Jacobs came out. It was awesome, as Jacobs and Shelley have pretty much worked each other into being minor indy stars across the eastern half of the country at least, and it was funny to see Jacobs come to his rescue, saying “If anybody’s gonna kick his ass, it’s gonna be me.” This set up a tag match for the following night. Jacobs and Shelley a tag team…I was stoked.

AXL ROTTEN vs. CORPORAL ROBINSON

I have slowly become a Corporal Robinson mark. Shit, just hearing his theme song got me up out my seat. This was a Fans Bring the Weapons match, and I had assumed, like many, that this year was gonna be Corp.’s year to take it all. Not so, as Messiah came in while Axl was knocked out ringside, and slammed Robinson through light tubes set up on chairs. Axl came to and got the pin, and went on the mic afterwards, saying he didn’t know what happened, and it wasn’t right. The crowd was chanting bullshit or something at this point, I think a lot of folks wanted Corporal to go all the way. Two things on that tip – one, crowds annoy the shit out of me, they are such marks for themselves either carrying signs in sports entertainment crap or starting chants at indy shows, crowds should not be marks for themselves like that, if it was about the crowd then promoters would pay crowds to be there and wrestlers would clamor for the opportunity to wrestle in front of crowds, but that ain’t how it works you dipshits, so shut the fuck up once in a while. Secondly, that being the case, Axl did a nice job of squashing the chant within context of the show by saying he didn’t see what happened and he didn’t think it was right how he won, which segued into Corporal vowing revenge. That’s why veterans are important. They’ve seen bullshit crowds and violent crowds and drunken crowds and silent crowds and know how to reel them in, if necessary. I had hoped Corp went off and beat up half the crowd before the weekend was over, though.

NICK GAGE vs. DYSFUNCTION

This was a 4 Corners of Pain match. I have never really enjoyed CZW that I’ve seen, which is all dated, so I tried to come into their matches with an open mind. But man, I didn’t get Nick Gage at all. I had the same feeling watching him live that I did on tape – he’s boring. I was hoping Dysfunction would win, but you had to figure with the whole CZW/IWA shit going on, that wasn’t gonna happen. Sure enough, Dys did the job with a  brainbuster into a pit of tacks. Dysfunction is not afraid to get fucked up in there, that’s for sure. And I guess that’s my problem with what I saw of Nick Gage; I can’t get behind a guy who doesn’t seem willing to take the same shit he wants to dish out. That’s what I saw of Gage, at least in this match.

MR. INSANITY vs. NECRO BUTCHER

Fans bring the weapons, and you know how I said all those hardcore insane gimmick wrestlers never really do a good job with pretending to be insane? That’s not the case with Toby Klein. He’s got this weird Hare Krishna on X look, and he does this awesome blank stare off into corners of the building. It was great to see Necro back in the IWA Arena, and even greater to hear him coming out “Helter Skelter” instead of that stupid Quiet Riot song. When we came out last fall, we got drunk with Necro all night one night, so we were behind him with full drunken rooting power. Mr. Insanity was great within the hardcore context, and I’d like to see more of this dude, but Necro was going over, and he did so with the Asiatic Spike. That rules. He won the shit last year with a sleeperhold and now he’s going over with the Asiatic Spike.

THE MESSIAH vs. IAN ROTTEN

This was an East Coast Thumbtack Death Match, and there was an obscene amount of tacks in the ring. It was a sagging silver pit, and there would be no way to do nothing. The Messiah’s thumb was still missing, and he was shirtless, always a plus in a hardcore wrestler. I explained to Boogie Brown how The Messiah was fucking a pornographer’s slut girlfriend and got his thumb cut off because of that, allegedly, and that’s why the crowd was making fun of him not having a thumb. It all seemed pretty twisted, and made me think of that scene in Caligula where they chop the pregnant lady’s belly off and I imagine our society probably has a politician doing that somewhere in some D.C. suite, right now, as we speak. It wasn’t too long into the match before both dudes had tacks sticking out of parts of their body, most obviously the head. At one point, Messiah had Ian down ringside, and took off his boots and socks. That was a sheer pit of tacks, and walking across that shit barefoot was nuts. Messiah had Ian up in the corner, teasing the superplex finale of super destruction, but Corporal Robinson came back out and slammed Messiah’s bare back into the motherfuckin’ pile of tacks instead. Ian got the win, and Messiah challenged Corp to a match for the CZW title for the following night.

Another intermission led to more drinking, this time with people from Illinois

CHRIS HERO vs. HOMICIDE

I had been pretty hyped for this as I had discovered how awesome Homicide was in recent weeks, and Hero is always technical money. This didn’t disappoint, and Homicide’s fuckin’ kidney kicks are evil. They were not afraid to knock the shit out of each other, without gimmicks, and it was awesome. Hero hit the Hangman’s Clutch once, teasing a finish, but Homicide made it to the ropes. A few minutes later, he got again center ring, and after that moment of tease where everybody was all quiet and shit waiting to see what happened, Homicide finally tapped. A great match, not as great as I expected, but that’s more due to my high in-head hype beforehand than any lackluster effort by both dudes. Well, after the match, more chicanery as Danny Daniels came out and clocked Hero with the belt, beat up the ref. Homicide came to Hero’s assistance, but then B.J. Whitmer came out and got involved too. Big fat pull apart, and all this set up Whitmer vs. Homicide for the second night, plus Ian reinstating Daniels, who had been suspended, and true to the story, actually sitting on the bleachers to my left most of the night. Little things like that go a long ways towards making wrestling believable again. Daniels vs. Hero in a Texas Death match on night two as well.

We went back to the hotel, and ate the worst greasy burgers I’ve ever eaten at Jerry’s J-Boy restaurant. The shit-talking waitress wouldn’t even get them to fix us some chicken livers, even though it was on the goddamned sign outside. And on the walk home, only one fuckin’ block, it started raining and lightning like a fat bitch. So bad so that the hotel room was almost flooding.

Woke up in the morning feeling good as hell, sleeping in a hotel sure beats a cell. That’s a slight rewording blatant bite of an old ass Ice-T lyric, which I think I listened to “6 ‘N The Mornin’” like 34 times on the ride out. Me and Boogie Brown headed out early to the classic car show, and while waiting in line, some complete lounger with ponytail and Kid Rock shirt and four kids in a late model Nova making wonderful rumble sounds pulled beside us as I dug up dollar bills for the parking and asked if we wanted some $3 off passes. Hell yeah. When you take it light, life takes it light on you. Dude ended up parking beside us upon the direction of listless teenagers holding long-empty Sunkist bottles, and he said, “You go to IWA shows, don’t you?” I had actually only been to one in my life, but I figured maybe he was there, so I was like yeah. Him and the crew of young ‘uns used to go too regularly, but he had to stop, as it got too expensive, even though they’d call up Ian and work out a deal since they had like 8 kids. He said it was like $100 each time, and that was with the discount. Again angry internet nerd, give Ian some props. Ol’ dude told us his mom was one of the old lady’s at every match and sat over by Patti by the door, and I was stoked. Dude also said another reason they stopped going was the kids were breaking all the light bulbs upstairs over each other’s heads, and the older two kids gave me those funny grins that kids give when their parents fondly remember how awesomely fucked up their kids are. Shit, we walked for miles at the damn Kentucky State Fairgrounds complex, and weren’t even near the gates I don’t think. I know this – in the coming weeks you could see both Hank Jr. and mother fuckin’ Alan Jackson at the Kentucky State Fair. Why does the blasted Virginia fair get weak shit like The Isley Brothers who aren’t still relevant or shit like that? We also were gawking at fuckin’ 1948 Chevrolet rollbacks in the damn parking lot.

Upon paying our nine bucks to get in, we realized it was gonna be overwhelming. There were TWELVE FUCKIN’ THOUSAND CARS THERE! All before 1949 make, and all customized and pimped the fuck out. Old school classics, complete restorations, future primitive pick-ups, cholo low riders, rat fink monsters, everything. And we wandered aimlessly, and actually got lost more than a few times. It got so bad we’d see cars, that were they in the I.G.A. parking lot in Scottsville, Virginia, I’d be like, “DAMN!” But here, in this environment, I was thinking, “That shit’s wack, fuck that guy, with his 1947 Cadillac with iridescent paint and barely discernible purple flames.” And we knew that eventually, we’d find the Supreme Loungin’ Ride, and figured a few more passes would work up enough post-drunken hunger to super destroy a Chinese buffet. Well, while spending like an hour trying to work our way out of the maze of parking lots full of just the show cars, we found this old flatbed pick-up, not painted up but primered and rusted, with some thing on the side that Polacko’s Towing – We Don’t Get Much Work Done. Front bumper was a piece of driftwood and a Dos Equis bottle wedged in it, plus bottle caps. Sides had empty pony kegs with gas caps welded on top mounted so as to look like gas tanks on a freight truck. The back was custom pieces of wood, making a bench and a table with a picket gate around the bed, and an umbrella, and every picket had a bottle opener mounted on it. Inside the cab – chandelier light and a grinning ghoul gearshifter with a bottle opener in its mouth, plus weird newspaper clippings of car wrecks glued to the top. This was easily the most amazing vehicle I’ve ever seen in my life, and I used to hang out a junkyard where they created hybrid cars when bored.

Anyways, we destroyed the Chinese buffet, went back to the hotel, met the dudes from Georgia again, Stu the Viking was drinking out a fuckin’ horn now, and guzzled what was left in the cooler as fast as possible, to prime us for the night, just like pushing that weed-eater button three times to get it ready to tear shit up. It was time to head for the liquor store and go see a second night of the real ultra-violence.

BRAD BRADLEY vs. STRIKER

We were still at the liquor store buying up the last 30 packs of Old Milwaukee they had left when I realized I left our tickets at the hotel, which was on the way and we were late as fuck. I didn’t see a second of this, and when we sat down, I asked the dude next to me with his two kids what I missed, he said this. I says, “Matt Stryker!?!?” He says, “Naw, some other Striker.” Me relieved I didn’t miss the best Stryker in wrestling, “Oh, cool.”

SONJAY DUTT & ADAM FLASH vs. ALEX SHELLEY & JIMMY JACOBS vs. SPYDER NATE WEBB & M-DOGG 20 with Becky Bayless

This was the rehashing of the previous night’s CZW/IWA shit, and it was funny seeing Shelley in HUSS trunks and hussing around with Jacobs. In fact, it’s funny seeing Jacobs huss around, like you’re watching Bruiser Brody’s 15-year-old kid run around the house. Spyder Nate came out in some snazzy outfit to interject himself in the match, and his surprise partner was M-Dogg, who we marked for because he was the secret superstar of the Ted Petty last fall. That guy ruled it. Nate had his one arm bandaged up, and the night before we gave him a beer in the parking lot and he looked at us all sad, because he couldn’t even open his own fuckin’ beer. His arm or hand or something was probably broke, but here was, wrapped up in blue gauze and ready to rip it. Mother fuckers who watch this shit and follow it online sometimes don’t realize just how much these guys do sacrifice themselves to wrestle, no matter the style – whether hardcore or strong style or whatever. An American indy wrestler, if lucky, doesn’t have to have a regular job anymore. He’s not getting rich. And whether you think Nate Webb jumping off beams and falling on light bulbs and running around the ring is awesome or not, I can completely dig on and respect mother fuckers like him who are doing something they enjoy, at least in the beginning, and running with that shit. There’s a lot of folks sitting behind computer screens reading about the fucking wrestling all goddamned day and night long who think they know what’s up, but they’ve got nothing like that in their lives. Anyways, this match was a great easing into the night for us drunkards, as they got all goofy, and everybody took turns diving off the crow’s nest, first five of the wrestlers, then Bayless, then Dave Prazak, then the referee, and finally Nate Webb. In the IWA KOTDM stage diving event of the evening, I’d have to give the gold to Sonjay Dutt, the silver to M-Dogg, and the bronze to Prazak because he was the only one wearing a tie. Shit, I wanted to go up there, with all those people down there to catch you, it looked like fun. Eventually, Dutt hit some sort of crazy insane super splash on M-Dogg and got the pin. No dance rules here, so that was it, and it morphed into Shelley & Jacobs continually challenging Dutt & Flash, and then other CZW dudes running in, then IWA dudes coming in, and it getting crazy as fuck and out of control and all sorts of people talking shit and making gay references and Balls Mahoney yelling at us for chanting “East Coast Bitches” and then talking shit on CZW and confusing me and it was all sorts of nonsense going down. The crux of it was, Corp was gonna fuck up Messiah, Ian hated the CZW guys, and some of these junior heavy matches in this feud might be pretty good if we get the fuckin’ matches without a million run-ins. Also, all this was funny because Homicide sort of stood in the corner the whole time.

BULL PAIN vs. JIM FANNIN with Mean Mitch Page

Fannin was dressed like Page, just clean, and came out confidently. When Pain came out, Boogie Brown got worried because at TPI he actually thought Pain had something go wrong in his brain and he was gonna kill people. And true to form, even though a face now, Pain said, “What better way to take part in the King of the Death Matches than to kill a motherfucker?” Bull Pain is awesome, and I bet he loves fat chicks in leather who give mean blowjobs. Fannin called Pain on fighting him one-handed, so Mickie tied a girl scout knot on Bull Pain’s right arm before the match, but even then, B.J. Whitmer hit the ring and he and Page and Fannin did the dastardly beat down of frustrating the fan into checking out the next match because we so want Fannin to bleed.

MAD MAN PONDO vs. AXL ROTTEN

This was a light tubes table match, and probably the one point this weekend where I worried about a dude in the ring most was when Pondo tried twice unsuccessfully to hold a light tube against Rotten’s ass under his crotch and kick it for the hardcore nutshot. Well, after it didn’t break twice, Rotten was turned sideways and Pondo just sort of upswung with the light tube real casually and it shattered over Rotten’s fuckin’ eyes and he was bleeding terribly immediately. I had visions of Mitch Page’s ear and Necro Butcher’s arm in my mind, but Axl kept going and eventually Pondo crushed him between two tables in the corner for the pin. Then he challenged Axl to come back when Axl didn’t have two broken hands, so they could do it up right.

J.C. BAILEY vs. NECRO BUTCHER

At this point, we started to notice how Rico the ring announcer seemed to drunk, and we all wanted to understand this match. After a drunken bantering where he flubbed it up, but acted like he didn’t and re-explained it, it was understood, sort of, that the giant plywood contraption in the ring was a coffin filled with light tubes and one guy would have to be put in it, the top closed, then the coffin destroyed. Me and the dude to my right, who seemed to be an IWA regular, looked at each other hyped, because goddamn, Bailey and Necro are two of the stupidest/insane/most hardcore mother fuckers in this thing and somebody might get burned up or killed or something. I also wish stupid Virginia law would allow for me to be buried in something like that in my backyard when I die. You can’t get buried on your own property in Virginia unless there’s somebody already buried there before like 1956 or something, to grandfather you in. Anyways, Necro took his shirt off since, of course, Bailey never even wore one out, and they busted each other up right good. Necro went in the coffin first, but got out after the lid was closed. Then Bailey got put in it, and the first hinge broke when Necro slammed it, but Bailey got out. Bailey put a tube in Necro’s mouth, and Bailey got under his chin and did that drop-down jawbreaker deal, crudely breaking the tube. Finally, Bailey got Necro in it, the second hinge broke, so the ref had to help Bailey sort of prop the top on there, and Bailey went to the top. We all cringed – dudes in there, two crazy fuckers, plywood jutting everywhere, light tube shards – this was gonna be ugly no matter how perfect it went. Senton, and the coffin was destroyed enough for the ref to call it a match. Bailey came out quick and waved for medics and said for somebody to call the ambulance like wack Busta Rhymes songs on the radio. But before they could as the medic folks got in the ring, Necro comes climbing out like a deranged maniac, going, “No, no, no,” calling off the bullshit attention. He was all good. A very sick match, and J.C. Bailey should be over as fuck with you by now.

I’m pretty sure there was an intermission here, and we talked up these three dudes drinking beer next to us who came up from Lexington, a few old truckers who talked shit with us, reminiscing back to the days of ICW when Randy Savage was cool and jumped off Coke machines and Miss Elizabeth was just a local stripper, and they told us about talking shit before where the one dude I was talking with had Patti come up to him to get him to sign a waiver and have a shootfight with Ian if he wanted to keep talking shit. That’s awesome. Somehow, the conversation morphed into cockfighting and dogfighting, and one dude swore that a good rooster would beat a dog as long as it wasn’t a pit bull and I had an Old Milwaukee in my hand and it was all mother fuckin’ good in the hood.

MEAN MITCH PAGE with Jim Fannin vs. NICK GAGE

Gage bores me, but he did more in this match than he did the first time. This one dude behind us had this old Nintendo covered in tacks that he kept hiding and saving, and goddamn we wanted that thing destroyed. He’d been holding back. In this match, finally Gage took the Nintendo and clocked Page with it, and Page followed that up by stapling like five bucks in ones to Gage’s head, and they were back in the ring and Page, the big lounger, was about to put the east coast dude away, but Rollin’ Hard comes in and nails Page with his move, and Gage got the win. Sucks. Fannin ran down Rollin’ for helping an east coast guy win during the big feud, and god there’s a lot of interference-induced endings in this shit this year, but Page had us rolling when he said, “But I don’t give a fuck. I’ll fight you on Friday, I’ll fight you on Saturday. Hell, you can call me on Sunday morning, I’ll be at the house.”

BALLS MAHONEY vs. IAN ROTTEN

The fans brought their homemade gimmicks to the ring, which was highly disturbing. I had planned on making a cream pie because I thought that shit would be funny to see a Three Stooges bit in the middle of a hardcore death match, but you know, beer plus too much hotel lounging plus car shows equals little motivation to actually do something like that. Balls took the Bible that the drunk Milwaukee dude from the night before had brought, and was like, “You are fucked up, dude,” then he blew his nose with it and wiped his ass. Ian took over and was defending the Bible, with them getting ready to do stupid shit, and it was hilarious because our boy Right Wing Ingram, who Ian had talked shit on at the very beginning the first night, was all keyed up to just ride Ian until he got kicked out or his ass kicked, one or the other, but just by Ian defending the Bible, he took an immediate beyond wrestling face turn with Ingram. Right wingers are hilarious, sitting there with all those fuckin’ drunken perverted degenerates in an industrial warehouse, worried about God. Anyways, they got rid of the more ridiculous gimmicks, thank goodness. The way I look at it is, say I had a shitty week at a shitty job and just found out the girl I loved was fucking this dude I hated and it was Friday night and I was gonna get drunk and get in a fight and somebody’s ass was gonna get kicked and whether it was mine or some random other dude’s ass was the one getting kicked didn’t matter as much as the violent release of stress that would take place. Now when it comes to hardcore wrestling, I’d like to think these guys channel that energy and go all out and that’s why they’re scar-covered “garbage” wrestlers – they can channel that frustration to get up to do this. Or maybe they’re sadomasochists. But whatever. I go into it thinking if I was gonna make a gimmick for them to use on the spot, I wouldn’t make anything I wouldn’t want to get hit with in that end of the shitty week at shitty job cheating women week. So it’s fuckin’ pitiful to me others don’t think that way. Anyways, they busted shit up, Balls tripped us out because he actually busted light tubes across his own face once during the match, and broke something else over himself as well. Axl Rotten was drinking beer at the end of the aisle next to us, and he introduced the two as his best partners and best friends. Later that night, at one point, I walked out the arena and the three of them were sitting on the trunk of a car, sharing a bottle of Southern Comfort, and singing Merle Haggard. Shit like that makes me happy to see much more than a Fan Q&A ever could. Ian won somehow, and when Balls sat up after getting pinned, he hit himself with another light tube. What a star!

NIGEL MCGUINNESS vs. “CLASSIC” COLT CABANA

There was another intermission, and we were drinking around the back end of a pick-up when this happened. The dude to my right told me the match I missed, and I cussed my alcoholic DNA because I dig Colt and have never seen McGuinness.

B.J. WHITMER with Jim Fannin vs. HOMICIDE

I’m sorry, I haven’t been able to get into Whitmer. That’s how I’ve felt, so I won’t run on and on and run dude down when I probably just haven’t seen the right shit. Homicide hit that running dive through the ropes that seems really insane to me because it wouldn’t be that hard to get your feet caught on the top rope and paralyze yourself. Homicide hit the Cop Killa thing and got the win.

CORPORAL ROBINSON vs. MESSIAH

This was for the CZW title, and I hoped Corp would win it and pawn it like New Jack threatened with the old SMW tag titles. The most indy wrestling thing that’s happened to me happened during this match. I’ve got this Special Power called Retardar which causes me to blindly stumble into the most amazingly bizarre scenes. Well, I had to take a piss, and drunk ring announcer Rico is in front of me, we’re behind the bleachers they’ve got now, not really able to see shit in the ring, and Rico’s holding the house mic and a Miller Lite in a coozy. We’re talking shit, mostly about me hitting him up for a beer, and he says, “Hold up, dude.” Cuts the  house mic on, “FIVE MINUTES HAVE ELAPSED IN THE MATCH…FIVE MINUTES.” “Yeah, man, the dudes in the back have hit me up hard already. God, I wish this motherfucker would hurry up.” J.C. Bailey comes over and bangs on the door real fuckin’ loud, this girl who was working the concession stand and is very skinny and young but attractive nonetheless because she’s WOMAN and I am DRUNK starts fuckin’ hula-hooping, no shit. The hula-hoop is a very sexy thing, and she was working it. Guy finally comes out, and I tell Rico I’d bang on the door if the match ended. “Try to see who won, too.” Hula-hoop chick follows up the hip hula with a neck hula, and then on one ankle, seductress leg outstretched, it was a really wild scene. I finally get to piss, come out, eye the nachos at the concession stand the Viking guy in our crew has been eating like a fool, and see Necro over there. He’s chilling, holding napkins on the hole in his face, telling me they were gonna have to cut his beard off to give him stitches, so he told them he’d try super-glue, drinking beer with a straw because he couldn’t open his mouth, I wander back off, but then the match comes to the concession stand. Corp sets up light tubes on chairs to cold fuck Messiah up, but then Nick Gage interjects his bald ass into the mix, and they Michinoku driver Corp off the bleachers through the set-up for the win. Sick bump, right there, hula hoop girl and all. Sometimes wrestling mother fuckin’ rules.

DANNY DANIELS vs. CHRIS HERO

At this point, I think Big Jon Burr and Boogie Brown disappeared to make it to the liquor store before closing time, and the rest of us were still in the lot when it started up. I couldn’t tell you who got what pin or what or how, but here’s how Drunken Raven saw it. I dug how Hero escalated the hatred of the match by not even trying to wait for the ten-count win after a pinfall and just picking Daniels back up to murder him some more. Hero hit a couple devastators, but kept bringing Daniels back for more. Then Daniels took over, and he dropped Hero on his head enough times in a row to get the win, also using the pick-up during the ten count method, so much so that I was sort of taken by surprise when the match finally ended. Hero had an ice pack on his neck and was helped out the ring. A good match.

J.C. BAILEY vs. IAN ROTTEN

Another fans bring the weapons match, and the Lexington old schoolers explained to us how Bailey’s dad ran Bad to the Bone Wrestling down in Kentucky, but they couldn’t even blade in Kentucky without the match being stopped (blamed on Ian by many), but Bailey bolted on his old man to start understudying the IWA style, and the Lexington old schoolers predicted that Bailey was gonna be Ian’s next superstar, his project, and over like a mother fucker. He don’t have far to go. This match had heavy blood, Bailey was already leaking from multiple wounds from the Necro match, and at one point, Ian was down on all fours right in front of us and no shit, the blood was flowing like a faucet. It was disgusting. I told the dude beside me, “It’s gonna be Bailey and Pondo.” He was like, “Naw, they’re gonna have one of those CZW dudes in the final probably.” I’m thinking to myself, no fuckin’ way should Nick Gage go that far. Maybe Messiah, or definitely Sick Nick Mondo if he came, but Nick Gage? Naw. Ian did the job, and the dude to my right looks at me, “Maybe you’re right.” And then we imagined all sorts of terrible atrocities that would be committed in a Pondo/Bailey match.

MAD MAN PONDO vs. NICK GAGE

This was a spiderweb match and bed of nails, and I’ve always thought Pondo was sort of reckless in the ring, more so than his opponent might like sometimes, but in this match, Gage dropped him on the corner of the bed of nails, rather than across the top doing the old carney trick where it spreads the pain. Hitting the corner couldn’t have felt good. So props to Pondo for being a tough, reckless son of a bitch in there with a dude who did what I feared Pondo might do to somebody. Pondo won, and we were stoked, and dude to my right and me high-fived because our imagined atrocities might come to fruition.

More drunkenness in the parking lot while they set up the terrible ending, and Axl Rotten was gonna come drink a beer until I said we had Old Milwaukee, and he’s holding a fuckin’ Coors Light telling me my beer isn’t good.

MAD MAN PONDO vs. J.C. BAILEY

So they wrapped barbed wire around the ropes, set up a cage, ran coping across the top and hung light tubes from them, and had all sorts of other implements of destruction in the ring. Bailey came out with a weed-eater, shirtless, and looked at the cage, selling the fear. Pondo came out too, also selling the reluctance at the impending violence. They got all sorts of fucked up. Pondo took a weed-eater shot to the back and Bailey took one to the nuts. I was super destroyed by this time, and I remember it seeming to be fast, but then again, dudes had gone through a lot already. Bailey got on top of the contraption, and we knew it was gonna be terrible, and Pondo shocked the cage with a taser. I’m not sure if that works electrically that badly, but it caused Bailey to flip off the cage through coping and tubes and all sorts of mean, nasty shit, and Pondo got the win. Props to both of these mother fuckers for taking a shitload of abuse, through the whole thing, but especially Bailey, because Pondo has always been crazy and you sort of expect it from him. Bailey is nuts, and good at the regular matches too.

A great fuckin’ show. That night, back at the wonderfully tragic Colonial Inn, shit, that’s another story in itself. Chris Hero came and chilled, and he’s a legit good dude, not judging us for being drunken degenerates, I was in full freestyle mode and found that Nintendo gimmick kid by the ice machine, who turned out to be with this backyard dude Granpa who grew up near where I did. We had common areas of the World, and I was in full drunken lyrical mode, battling Nintendo boy, then some metalhead came down, but he wasn’t a cool metalhead from back in the day but rather one of this new breed of short-haired metalhead dweebs who don’t smoke weed out of beer cans slightly crushed with holes poked in the indent and the type who thinks Cannibal Corpse was the first metal band to ever exist. I ended up harping on dude with the freestyle, trying to drive him away, old car cruiser in the room next to us brought a hooker home with him, some dudes upstairs smashed some shit and threw it off the balcony, we went to tell them to chill, Hero sees passed out chicks in the room, some dude in room smashes window out, cops show up, Ronnie Dobbs comes out and tells the cops he knows his rights and the cops say go back in the room and dude says he knows his rights and we watch three cops run full speed up the steps and bust him up, dude next to me is bitching at his girl because she went to the drink machine leaving the door cracked and the three-fifty or so in twentys on the floor went missing and he had told her to not leave the room empty like that and she was lucky dudes didn’t go in the dresser too or he’d really be pissed at her, and the sun came up and it all left me feeling very queasy about society in general.

On the ride home, me and Brown took the lounge path down 460 through the wild, rural ass end of Kentucky, with school buses customized into farm equipment and Chester’s Fried Chicken at the country stores and Ale 8, which saved both of us from throwing up. No, wait, Brown did throw up. When we came back from TPI, he had a reaction to ephedrine and I woke up on the side of the interstate with him telling me I had to drive because he was dying. At least this time all I had to do was pull over by a car wash and let him puke.

I felt pretty disillusioned about people in general, and wrestling in particular, after the weekend. I don’t know, wrestling fans kind of creep me out. And with the internet, you have all these people who follow it and take pictures and write down results to post and ride busses to strange towns, hoping to share a chicken wing with Balls Mahoney at the Hooter’s, and the person behind the internet persona is never close half the time. I dig the drunken road trips, and it was dope when Corporal Robinson had heard I was the Mack and I dig when I can give and get daps from dudes like him and Iceberg in Georgia and even young insaniacs like Chris Escobar in Virginia, because shit, if it wasn’t for dudes like them still caring about wrestling enough to be good and be a character, there’s no way I’d sit around all those chanting-ass mother fuckers and quiet respectful clappers because they watch Japan filtered through ROH all night long. But hey, what’re you gonna do. We’re all addicted to this stupid shit. Just like that passed out chick in the Colonial Inn, hanging out in that room with the super-gacked Ronnie Dobbs and the knucklehead who punched the window out, I’ll end up sitting next to some dude gacked up on joshi or some guy who introduces himself by his internet moniker and not his real name, and I won’t punch him in the face, even though I feel like it, because then I wouldn’t be there getting another hit of the wrestling. At least KOTDM 2003 was a hit of the good shit.