Eddie Kingston Rides Around Trunk Full of That Funk Call it That Parliment

Eddie Kingston/Nick Gage/Justice Pain vs. Lufisto/Franky the Mobster/Kevin Steen/El Generico vs. Blackout (Robbie Marino/Sabian/Joker/Ruckus) CZW 8/12/06 - GREAT

PAS: This was a three team cage match (it was in the Cage of Death, but not listed as a Cage of Death match for some reason). I really enjoyed the early chaos, you had all 11 wrestlers recklessly brawling around the ring. We got a bunch of Eddie and Joker hitting each other hard which is always great, and Lufisto is really fun winging unprotected chair shots at peoples' heads. I was shocked at how much I dug Justice Pain in this, he isn't a guy I remember rating particularly high during the time, but he was taking crazy and athletic bumps into the cage and had a fun jacked meathead stand off with Franky the Mobster. The match really got very booking heavy at the end. When we got to the eliminations they came pretty quickly, which is always kind of the problem in elimination matches. There is a big standoff where everyone clears the ring and Pain sends Kingston (who had been turned on by Blackout earlier in the show) to face off with Ruckus to prove himself. Kingston is pretty much the perfect "I've got to prove myself wrestler" and the Ruckus section was good stuff. Steen had been bullying Lufisto, and she wins his Iron Man title by low blowing him and rolling him up (even though they were on the same team), Steen comes back and lays her out with a package piledriver, leaving her to be pinned by the H8 Club and Kingston. That is a really weird way for babyfaces to win a match like this, and H8 Club and Kingston were never in any particular peril, they just kind of ran through everyone. I think this ended up being lesser then the sum of its parts, although it had some really good parts,

Read more!

NWA Wildside Episode 18 Review

A real friend of the program uploaded a few old episodes of Wildside onto the internet, and I couldn't find any sort of dates on any of these. The earliest episode numbers I found were in the 60s, so these are like from that late 90s period that never got converted to DVD. Some people just have episodes of Wildside they taped off TV just sitting in a box at their parents house, where they possibly still live. Just as I have boxes of old APW gym wars tapes and unmarked tapes with Reckless Youth matches and poor video quality puro sitting in the next room as I type this (though thankfully I do not live with my parents, although many boxes of old Nintendo Powers and LPs still reside there).

And boy, if you wanted to show somebody a segment to let them know what Wildside was all about, the show starts with Jeff G. Bailey storming the ring and having Crowbar get rid of Onyx, then K Krush brings out a struggling body bag that contains the bound and gagged wife of Chance Williams (if not the owner of Wildside, then the "on TV" owner). Bailey makes fun of her, full on states - does not imply - that the three of them had their way with her right to Chance's face (as Crowbar holds him in a choke), says not to worry about her being pregnant because Krush used the rhythm method, and how they treated her good by giving her a pedicure, a manicure, even "a couple of facials". Oh my lord. I mean holy shit. The lead heels straight up kidnapped and gang raped the owner's wife as the lead angle of this episode. Where do you even go from there!?!?

After the show intro (Sanctioned by the NWA!) Chance calls out Bailey and makes a match for Y2Kaos (so this show must have aired in late 1999 if that was an edgy show title) where Bailey could gain control of the company for 30 days if he wins, but if he loses then AJ Styles gets a title shot against K Krush. Bailey tells him his first order of business as show runner would be to fire Styles and Chance, as then they'd have more time to "attend NAMBLA meetings and march in parades". My god Jeff G. Bailey.

1. Jorge Estrada vs. K-Krush

Estrada comes out to Orgy's "Blue Monday" if this doesn't feel like the late 90s enough yet. Orgy's album "Candyass" sold almost 2 million copies. Imagine how many hundreds of thousands of teens made their poor mothers buy them Orgy's Candyass CD for Christmas? How many poor mothers, who knew nothing of popular music as they gave that up years before, when they had children, how many poor mothers had to uncomfortably ask a person in a music store, or a Best Buy, or anywhere "Excuse me do you guys have Orgy?" "Did they specify which album? Is it Candyass?" "Oh....dear....I don't know, they just said Orgy...." How many poor mothers bought the WRONG Orgy album? And their 13 year old was a total shit because it wasn't the Orgy CD they wanted. I think many of our moms bought us something that was super well intentioned, but not totally correct. My mom once bought me an issue of a wrestling magazine that had Sable on the cover. I was not a fan of Sable, and there was nothing I ever said to one person that would make them think I liked Sable. But my mom knew I loved wrestling, and knew I liked girls, so she saw this magazine at the airport or mall or market and thought of me. And 18 years later I still remember it fondly and even though I have no clue where that magazine is I still love that my mom purchased a wrestling magazine somewhere (probably while wearing sunglasses since she would likely equate it to buying the raunchiest kinds of pornography). But the problem is that any kid who would have wanted Orgy's Candyass subsequently grew up to be an awful, unsuccessful human being who hated their life and parents and job. So they've never reflected on how nice their mom was to buy them Orgy's Candyass for Christmas. They are unthankful husks of human beings, probably.

Match was okay. You remember Estrada as the worst member of the Flying Elvises in TNA, and this was a few years earlier than that, before he developed all that ring polish. Krush took a nasty backdrop into the ropes. Bailey called Estrada "George" the whole match, until the end when he started calling him Jorge after hearing the other announcer say Jorge the whole match, which makes me think Bailey just thought his name was George. Estrada mistimes Krush's spin kick finisher so ends up running basically mouth first into Krush's butt, busting his lip open. Post match Krush humps the turnbuckles at some women who both laugh, blush, and pretend to wave dollar bills at him.

Al Getz cuts an awesome long promo, detailing how terrible his life has been for the last 12 years because he has no friends, and all he sees is darkness. This is all because 12 years ago he had only one friend in the world, a pretty girl at summer camp. And one night he brought her flowers and that jerk JC Dazz was kissing her. Getz was really great here, really stretched that promo out, told a great story instead of a wrasslin promo. Some blonde in the front (who he referred to as a fat cow) was screaming at him the whole time, trying to step on his story ("You don't even like girls you fag!") but Getz stayed the course and allowed himself to get embarrassed, brought out JC Dazz, and asked him to blast him with a chairshot. Dazz accepted and I saw Getz fiddling in his pocket, and I gruesomely thought he was reaching in for a blade for a post-chairshot gusher. But instead he pulls out some pepper spray and blasts Dazz with it when he raised the chair over his head. "That was pepper spray, and you're going to be blind for the next 2 minutes!" and then, because this is a great episode of wrestling TV, he calls out SHANK!!!

2. Shank vs. JC Dazz

Shank is really one of the more fascinating guys in wrestling history. He didn't work long, and he wasn't technically "good", but damn if I don't get excited and want to see every single thing involving Shank. He's a guy who is a mysterious, dangerous ex-con, who genuinely comes off like a crazy ex-con, or even present-con. He had really explosive violent offense, he just couldn't really bump or do a lot of the basics. But he had an incredible aura, and that offense really was violent. His clotheslines look the absolute worst to take, and when he lifts guys up on chokeslams and powerbombs and backdrops it looks like he can launch them 15 feet. Finish is a quality BS finish as Dazz kicks Shank low, leading to Getz getting in the ring with more pepper spray, but accidentally spraying Shank. Dazz punches Getz with Getz taking a rough bump into the ropes, then runs with Dazz chasing after. Shank is blinded and swinging wildly in the ring, and Dazz plasters him with a chairshot off the top. Good way to keep Shank strong in losing, have Dazz fight back against two men, and prolong the Dazz/Getz feud.

3. Hardcore Elimination Rumble: Ruckus vs. White Trash vs. Damien Steele vs. Toad vs. Q-Sick

60% of our competitors have either green hair or are wearing a sleeveless South Park shirt. And this was really disappointing. 1999 was a fun and ridiculously stupid time for hardcore wrestling, as every single hardcore indy wrestler wanted to show they were more hardcore than the hardcore "phonies" in WWF and WCW, except guys in WWF and WCW were actually doing some REALLY stupid and dangerous stuff in their hardcore matches. My point being, there were a lot of incredibly stupid things done in 1999 in the name of hardcore wrestling. But this just didn't have anywhere near the level of stupid stuff you'd want, certainly nothing close to approaching Dave Burkhead's weird and wonderful hardcore run on WCW syndicated TV during the same period.  White Trash took a couple of full body nasty bumps into guardrails, fans be damned. Q-Sick seemed like a better wrestling version of Darren Drozdov, Toad seemed practically untrained for a guy who would get several matches on WCW TV not long after this, Steele was better than a guy wearing a singlet and South Park t-shirt should be, definitely seeming like the most complete worker in the match. But this really just needed more stupid. It was somehow too orderly, somehow not violent enough, somehow too professional. That's good for them, but I am selfish and wanted some wrecked brain cells.

Not sure who found their old Wildside VHS tapes and converted them, but that person certainly added some extra joy to my 3 day weekend. I considered canceling an RSVP to a fun BBQ just to spend my day drinking in the house and watching 1999 Wildside. I went to the BBQ, had a blast, but also kind of thought about getting back home to the Wildside the whole time.  I *may* cancel some plans on the 4th to watch the rest of this little treasure trove...

Read more!

Rifling Through the Trash: The Unfinished Segunda Caida

We here at Segunda Caida all watch a lot of wrestling. We also start a lot of projects. More projects than we can ever ever possibly finish. We start watching something, write about it, don't finish writing about it, and there it sits. We have about 80 unfinished drafts dating back 4 years. Some of them may get finished some day (IWA-MS show reviews, WAR show reviews), others are kind of pointless to ever finish (old CMLL TV write-ups, reviews of WWE Superstars episodes). Still these write ups all took at least SOME time out of our schedules, and it's only fair that we get SOME use out of them. Tom used his best shitty tag team name from his "shitty indy name" rolodex AND made fun of RPGs in almost the same sentence.

The FINAL snippets from TomK's review of ROH's "Take No Prisoners":

Vulture Squad v No Remorse Corpse

TKG: Huh? Why? The bonus match from other show on ROH PPV is kind of a staple, but why this match? Did someone say “hey this show is missing a big moves workrate tag”? This whole entire card has been really well paced with every match being different than the one before, and matches ending without long finisher exchange sequences and excessive kickouts to protect the main event. There is a reason not to do a workrate tag with hot finisher train. The opening Ruckus v Rocky Romero mirror missed stuff was every bit as laughably bad as you’d expect. Where is Julius Smokes? Jigsaw without the mask looks like a guy who should have been on the second season of the Wire. Maybe not White Mike, but White Mike’s skinny cousin. When Ruckus eventually joins Eddy Kingston, I want a Smokes managed Jigsaw/Grim Reefer tag team. Is “Eight Myle” a shitty enough tag name? I also don’t think I’ve mentioned the shitty “pokemon” style tales of the tape that they’ve been doing before each match. I didn’t mind this when they used it for the Aries v Nigel main event as they where actually building the match around the idea that the two knew each others stuff. But really if these are the talking points, give them to the announcers to make. Putting it up on the screen really feels like someone is laying out the profile pages from a role playing game.

Notes for Phil: I think you liked this more than I did and thought the spike piledriver was a good finish and finish train wasn’t too long or something like that. You're wrong. But that's what you were arguing.

Phil reviewing IWRG 6/17/10:

Bombero Infernal v. Dr. Cerebro

PAS: This really felt like heavyweight professional wrestling. Just a pair of big guys throwing big bombs (indy lucha big, I am sure Dr. Cerebro is like 5'4). Infernal jumps Cerebro outside and whoops on him for the first fall. Cerebro has a really great looking trickle of blood rolling down his face. Cerebro fires back with some soup bones, including a spectacular elbow smash plancha which looked like the ghost of Misawa. Finish was decent, although the low blow finish is such a lucha cliche, I don't want to see it infecting IWRG.

Mickie Segura/Trauma I/II v. Los Gringos VIP

PAS: 2010 IWRG is so good that the baseline for an average match is pretty high. It will consistently put out solidly worked excellent matches with occasional flashes of brilliance, that it is kind of hard for a match like this to stand out. This was six very good wrestlers having a very good trios title match. We got a long first fall of mat work, it isn't normally what you expect out of the Lucha Libre VIP team (outside of Avisman, who is the guy who doesn't work the mat in this match), but they are pretty good at it. I especially liked El Hijo Del Diablo v. Trauma I, which was really a pair of powerhouse using their strength to move in and out of hold, Diablo is having a hell of a year. Second fall was rudo triple teams and brawling, which was done well, although there was no huge bump or blood or anything to distinguish it. Third fall was a traditional title match third fall, down to the step over toe hold comedy spot which you see a ton of in classic lucha (the spot which ends with the Technico wiggling in a pinning all three guys.) Good workman like lucha libre, which won't register when we look back at 2010, but is certainly well worth spending 20 minutes watching

Notes from EricR watching the 3/27/14 TNA iMPACT:

~Davey/Edwards vs. Magnus/Abyss: Wow Davey Richards is just a hilariously bad wrestler. I mean, not as horrid as Abyss, who seems to fight every natural way to take bumps and go against every body instinct to fall in the most ridiculous way possible. So Eddie Edwards always does a spit take bump in his matches, and here he took an elbow from Magnus and ended up accidentally spitting directly into Davey's (on the apron) eyes. And what's amazing is Davey sold it! He didn't just casually pretend another human being, his partner, didn't just accidentally spit directly into his eyes. He sold it. But he didn't sell it like a normal human would sell the indignity of feeling another human's warm spit hit your eyes and face, he sold it like Eddie Edwards was a Dilophosaurus and he was Nedry getting acidic mucous spit into his eyes. The goggles! They do nothing!!! He also later took the most hilarious back bump, where it looked like he was jumping up and landing back first on a big trampoline, just 11 year old me getting bounced higher and getting sick air, landing on my back. Or doing a cannonball into a swimming pool, with all the grace of a "mom watch me dive!" child.

Read more!