Dark Match Legends: Vic Grimes vs. Erin O'Grady

Vic Gimes vs. Erin O'Grady WWF 1/20

ER: This is one of those legendary rare "both men get signed" tryout matches, two acclaimed APW students getting a dark match on a local Raw taping and tearing things down. Grimes and O'Grady had some great APW matches and this was a super condensed version of the best parts of those matches, two guys fully understanding all of the fireworks they could use to grab the attention of strangers. O'Grady had some mind blowing athleticism that was never present in this specific way once he became Crash a year later. He is so damn nimble here, and the way he moves in the first two minutes of this match are just as impressive as the first time I saw Low Ki or Amazing Red. He gets from point A to point B in surprisingly quick ways and has really impressive body control. There's this wild bump where he gets lifted high up in the Savage/Steamboat choke, thrown down hard on the back of his neck, but somehow just absorbs this concussion worthy drop and floats back up to his feet with a kip up. O'Grady gets to the apron and up to the top rope for a missile dropkick quickly that the crowd was buzzing just watching him leap to the top rope, before he even did anything OFF the ropes.  

Of course, so much of O'Grady's offense wouldn't be possible without the sincerely top drawer basing of Vic Grimes. Grimes caught huracanranas better than anyone, and O'Grady was athletic enough to effortlessly pull off ranas leaping off the top rope and a fly dragonrana that flipped him into the ring from the apron. These two were real dance partners, a west coast Reckless Youth/Mike Quackenbush. Grimes manages to steal the show away from O'Grady's athleticism and make it all about his crazy high slam offense and even crazier bumps. Grimes takes such an insanely huge bump on a missed avalanche, like Sgt. Slaughter's bump with 100 extra pounds, that the crowd takes to him like Jerry Blackwell in Minneapolis. Grimes' fall is so fast and dangerous looking, that the crowd hadn't even fully processed what had happened. As they're processing, as he staggering away from his own wreckage, he gets wiped out by a full sprint O'Grady springboard crossbody. Taka Michinoku as a crazy leprechaun. Grimes is more than bumps, and has strong attacks big and small. He can really level a guy with a well-aimed back elbow, but then do something extravagant like his sitout torture rack slam, something that looks skeleton shifting.

But, he is an all time lunatic death wish bumper. Grimes manages to outdo his earlier bump with one that should be every bit as legendary as Chris Hamrick's bump against 1-2-3 Kid. Vic sets up and elbow smashes O'Grady into a folding chair (after smashing that chair against his own head at ringside, a dark match gesture done only to entertain the dozens seated directly at ringside). When Grimes gets into the ring and runs into a head of steam off the opposite side ropes, you don't think there's any way you're about to see what you're about to see. No way. Grimes is too big and shaped like a larger Mick Foley. Grimes was a really nice man. He was a guy nice enough to drive up to be interviewed by me on my college radio show. He was really open about his dumbest bumps, and honest about the things he said behind the scenes that he shouldn't have said. This man proposed to Vince McMahon that he be brought in as Mick Foley's brother, a team of hardcore psychos pushing each other to bigger stunts. It's a great idea on paper, but imagine being the lunatic who pushes to the owner of the company that you should be immediately affiliated with one of the three biggest stars in the company. I love it. You should bring me in as Stone Cold's even more badass brother, Mr. McMahon!

But I get why he wanted to be associated with Foley, because he was as insane as Mick Foley. Grimes runs off the ropes and flings his surprisingly limber body to the floor, flattening the now O'Grady-less folding chair and giving a dark match crowd that was still filtering to their seats the likely biggest bump any of them had ever seen. They are completely in Grimes' back pocket. Later in the match Grimes climbs to the top rope with impressive balance, BACKING UP the ropes to the top, crashing and burning off a missed somersault elbowdrop. Grimes is great at bumping his opponent back to control, and O'Grady gets to show off in ways that even Juvy hadn't invented yet. Grimes shows off that base ability, taking a springboard tornado DDT, crazy flipping dragonrana from the apron, but catches the next one and tossing O'Grady into the air for a cutter. Grimes was a big fat Rupert Pupkin out there, showing up unknown and crushing every joke, catching every rana and sticking the landing on increasingly bigger and more dangerous spots. 

I'm lucky I got to go to a lot of APW shows in my formative teenage wrestling fan years, and this match deserves its legendary tryout status. They brought something new and different to an unsuspecting crowd. These people didn't know what to expect from Grimes and O'Grady, because none of them had imagined their style of match to be possible. 

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Super Dragon Ain't The One For a Punk Motherfucker With a Badge and a Gun

Super Dragon/Rising Son vs. TARO/Excalibur Rev Pro 7/21/00 - GREAT

PAS: It is hard to remember exactly how ground breaking this stuff was when it happened. This was a couple months after the Low-Ki vs. American Dragon Super 8 final, but for most of the 90s US Indy wrestling was a lot of Stone Cold Stunners and maybe a Mark Shrader suplex. Here you have four guys in a warehouse in the LA suburbs breaking out crazy lucha dives and armdrags along with sick All Japan headrops and unprofessional stiffness, it was a total outlier. This was pretty early for all of these guys, and any time you try such high wire stuff you are going to stumble a bit, but when they hit they hit. Really impressed with Excalibur in this, as he was working a lot like Super Dragon, mixing in some nasty potato shots with his highflying. At one point he just walks over and kicks Rising Son in the side of the head. Not every dive landed, but they were really going for it. Super Dragon blows a Space Flying Tiger Drop, but then hits a perfect tornado Asai moonsault. Maybe needed to slice five minutes or so to be an all timer, but it was without a doubt entertaining. Finish was as gross as your expected, both TARO and Excalibur must have had spines made of superballs.

ER: This match was the main event of the first Rev Pro show I ever traded for, and while I went to a few Rev Pro shows they had moved out of their tiny gym space by the time I made the trip, these tapes had a huge affect on still teenage me. My wrestling tapes were expanding quickly into lucha and Japan, and it felt like these guys were all trading for the same tapes that I was devouring as quickly as I could. Turns out, they all definitely were. What stands out most for me about these early Rev Pro shows were how willing to try EVERYTHING these guys were, and how generous they all were in letting each other try new shit. They had enough character to not come off like over cooperative dance partners, as they filled in gaps between spots with stiff strikes and spots that lead to late match callbacks. So you'd get something early in the match that seemed like a fun dickhead spot, like Dragon just low blowing TARO as TARO fumbled with a headscissors, only for it to turn into a big moment late in the match when TARO low blows Dragon. 

Dragon had this funny habit of using his friends and enemies as weapons, and we got some good moments of him not necessarily throwing Rising Son to the wolves, but of sending him through for the greater good of the match. I loved the awareness of Rising Son going for an Asai moonsault but Super Dragon shoving him back into the ring to stop a charging Excalibur, loved the humor around Dragon hitting nasty dropkicks while TARO and Excalibur were both tied to the tree of woe (with Excalibur constantly lifting himself out of the way so TARO keeps getting merked). The flying in this is pretty insane, with everyone trying multiple dives to the floor. A couple don't work, but most work great. Excalibur's dive was beyond nuts, like he was trying to spring right off Dragon and fly to the back of the gym. Excalibur was always the nuttiest bumper of all of these guys, and that's some painful company to keep. Dragon's corkscrew moonsault was amazing, and I can't get enough of their willingness to crash hard on everything. These early Rev Pro matches had the energy and daredevil-but-still-learning enthusiasm of the best backyard wrestling had to offer, with cool innovation and great taste, with ahead of their time skill. I remember watching these matches while on SoCal wrestling road trips with friends and all of us losing our minds, and how could we not?


Super Dragon vs. Vic Grimes APW 10/5/03 - FUN

PAS: Their match the previous week in LA was really awesome with a terrible finish, this match had a fine finish but never really came together in the ring. Grimes took a ton of the match with Dragon working below, which wasn't what I wanted out of this. Both guys throwing potatoes is rad, Grimes working over Dragon with generic big man offense is less so. Grimes had some nice looking stuff, but a bunch of it was all set up, no conclusion. There was a cool spot where Dragon ducked a running boot and put on a leglock with Grimes leg stuck in the turnbuckles, and Grimes took a nasty spill down some stairs, but I was hoping for another hidden gem, and this wasn't that.

ER: I thought this kicked ass, and didn't have the same problems with it that Phil did. I went to tons of Gym Wars shows and thought I was at this one, but a lot of this didn't seem familiar. This was Grimes recreating one of his big Falls Count Anywhere matches from early Gym Wars (think 1997, and all the major changes that happened in wrestling from '97 to '03) opposite Erin O'Grady/Crash Holly. The stip isn't on this match, but the spirit was there. The APW Gym in Hayward was TINY, enough room for maybe 50 fans (if the roll up doors were opened) and I loved how these two took advantage of that small space and made everyone scatter. The best parts of the match were definitely the first 5 minutes (this was a 20 minute match with nearly half of it clipped out for whatever reason), where they were stiffing the hell out of each other with strikes. Both guys hit real hard, and I let out a loud OOF when Grimes ran a straight leg into Dragon's jaw. That straight leg being played for the coolest spot of the match was a neat touch, as Grimes shows super impressive flexibility by missing a corner yakuza kick, leading to Dragon literally hanging off Grimes' leg like monkey bars. 

As Dragon worked over Grimes' leg some guy yelled "you already fell 40 ft, how bad could this be?" I'll always love a big fat guy hurling himself into danger, and Grimes was big, built like Scott Norton if Scott Norton stopped lifting but kept the same diet. He hits several cool leg lariat variations and a great diving clothesline off the apron that sent both flying through vacated chairs. Back in the day Grimes actually climbed that roll up door like a ladder and leapt off. That didn't happen here, but I like how the memory of it happening was used as a tease. He didn't fall off it, but he did still get rammed mouth first into that door. I would have liked seeing more fighting upstairs, but liked Grimes falling down that narrow Gym staircase (the one Roland Alexander would lounge on with his belly out during matches). Dragon was great at taking offense from such a massive opponent and I would be stunned if Dragon ever worked anyone larger. Him throwing his body into Grimes was the best. He had a couple sick double stomps and a major springboard spinning heel kick that crashed his whole body into the back of Vic's head and neck. I miss those days. I have no idea how I missed this match.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SUPER DRAGON

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Real Slow and Before You Know Super Dragon had a Shotgun Pointed in the Window

Super Dragon vs. Vic Grimes APW-LA 10/18/03 - GREAT

PAS: Vic Grimes was an APW trainee who had one match in WWF as Droz's drug dealer Kilo, was an ECW Baldie and went to XPW where New Jack tried to murder him in a ring. Perfect guy to have a nutso potato fest with Super Dragon. Grimes is a total bump freak, he places Dragon's head in a chair and then misses a legdrop off the apron landing tailbone first, Dragon isn't afraid to hit him as hard as he can. Dragon takes some big bumps too, including getting crucifix tossed into a concrete support pole. Both Grimes and Dragon hit really hard which kept this from just being a stunt show. Dragon hits a crazy senton from the top rope to the floor through a table, and then keeps double stomping Grimes in his ribs like he was trying to squeeze cake frosting out of a tube. Lame finish kept this from being an EPIC, Grimes hits a bunch of big moves and keeps pulling Dragon up at two (including an awesome fat guy top rope elbow) we have a run in from Adam Pearce (maybe, the video isn't pristine and there is no commentary), then Disco Machine and Excalibur run in and they fight with Grimes until Dragon rolls him up. The amount of punishment both guys took was pretty intense, the booker really let them down by booking such a dog's breakfast of an ending.

COMPLETE AND ACCURATE SUPER DRAGON

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