FCPW in Bushnell, Florida, September 1, 2007
Many people in attendance here had what can be best described as "redneck noisemakers". They put either coins or BB gun pellets into a used soda or water bottle and shook it to make noise.
Only in Bushnell…
I was hoping to go to more than just the FIP shows in September, and last week I found out from someone that there was this First Class Pro Wrestling event going on in Bushnell, which worked great for me as the location of the show, "Jimmy's Country Shack" (you only need one guess to figure out what their average clientele is) is only 33 miles exactly from where I live, and plus I would be able to see Devin Dalton's last match before he leaves in a few days to go back to the Marines and be stationed in Okinawa, Japan for the next two years.
The drive to Jimmy's Country Shack was pretty much the same as the drive to the Sumter County Fairgrounds to see FIP run there, except that this time I actually got to drive through the town of Bushnell itself as the building was a few miles northwest of the Fairgrounds. I don't know what happened with FIP running there, but I liked having shows there as it meant a 40 minute or less drive and a less than 60 mile roundtrip for me. But alas…
I got there right around 7:10 and received some surprises. First, seeing a fellow Florida indy wrestling fan in attendance (I've gotten to know him the past few months) as I did not realize he would be attending. Some wrestlers were also in the crowd, such as Torcher (he did the commentary for the show! Honest. It wasn't open-mic commentary that the crowd could hear, Thank Christ… it has nothing to do with Torcher; it's my hatred of open-mic commentary), Barney Rumble, and two Florida Indies favorites, Nick Fame and Heater.
Also, like at the OWA (Orlando Wrestling Alliance) show I attended, another WG favorite, J.P. Ace was there, along with the controversial A.J. Gallant. I don't fully know why he has a lot of "heat" on him, except that he ran the FXE wrestling school, and awhile ago they closed. I almost thought-due to some of the veiled comments and threats that were made about him-he'd vanish a la David Babylon and never be seen at a show again, but I guess I assumed wrong.
The show actually started at around 7:15 with an interview segment concerning the main faction in FCPW, which is a group led by a "Texan" named J.R. Carrington*. It involved them talking to the new FCPW commissioner, a Mr. Collier who is from the area. You see, the "owner" of FCPW is actually in Atlanta, and… yeah, it's carny at it's best-I love it! Anyway, they do at least explain the main storylines involving Bonecrusher and Neil Faith, the two main guys in Carrington's faction. That was helpful for me, admittedly.
• I know the exact spellings as they had a free program that you could receive at the same time you paid for your ticket. Yeah, the program had some misspellings (although I've seen much worse) but at least it did offer a show lineup that for the most part was accurate and had space for various companies, such as "Dickey's Barbecue Pit", "Hungry Howie's Pizza", and "First Class Sports Nutrition", where you could buy a "libido enhancer"… that's probably a product that I should not try! I shudder to think what would happen if raging horndog Robdog tried a "libido enhancer"…
Remember the announcer (Not Norm McDonald) from the Fruitland Park show who I saw as a wrestler last weekend? He was an announcer here again, and he did the commentary with Torcher. Poor Torcher… he was still spazzy and annoying at times here, although he wasn't AS bad as in Fruitland Park, and the crowd of around 150 or so seemed to like his clowning around. Speaking of the crowd, I do believe it was around 150 and to quote the person I sat by while I was there, half of them seemed to be under the age of 12.
1. The Executioner defeated Brian Manson. Manson was apparently just turned face recently, so that's why the crowd did not really care about him when he wrestled The Executioner, or as he was announced once and it said on his tights, "The Executioner of Agony." How does this make any sense? Wouldn't it be a GOOD thing for an executioner to execute a bad thing like "agony"? Or is it that his executioning skills are agonizing… oh nevermind. But, that was more interesting than this ok bout with an older referee; both the older ref and the younger ref weren't that great. They couldn't decide how fast to count and clearly were not that great, although again I've seen worse at shit shows. Mr. Agony won by having his feet on the ropes.
2. Brandon Groom defeated Devin Dalton. Not Norm McDonald announced Devin as "D-Von Dayton"! I shit you not. Here, Devin was a heel as he wrestled against a guy I had never heard of who at least was well put-together and sort of reminded me of someone I knew in college at Illinois State University… speaking of ISU, they got upset by Drake on Thursday night, a team that doesn't even give scholarships to its players! They never should have lost to them, so I am miffed about that. Anyway…
Devin played a cowardly heel who stalled and did other nice tricks to incite the crowd, and boy it didn't take long for them to despise him, and they shook those redneck noisemakers. I thought this was a good bout, as Devin did some nice stuff in the ring and he mainly worked over the arm of Brandon. As Groom was on the defensive for the most part, I can't really say how good or bad he is, but Dalton made him look good, IMO.
3. Pepper Lewis defeated Jayson Taylor and Nooie Lee to retain the FCPW Cruiserweight Title. All three guys were faces, as far as I could tell, although Lewis displayed some heelish tendencies. Like at the FIP show in Arcadia, there were separate entrance ways for the faces and for the heels. All three games came from "the face locker room", so there you go. For you Florida Gator fans like Yapo (or Yappppppo, or whatever), Pepper wore some Gator-inspired tights that looked pretty cool. He was billed from Gainesville, so again, there you go. As for the match, it was fast paced and entertaining enough. Some parts were better than others, sure, but no way can you say that this was "bad". For the record, most of the matches had a 10 minute time limit, which was a bonus as it prevented most matches from being too long. Pepper got the win by pinning Jayson, I believe.
4. Cousin Dale defeated Pretty Boy Lloyd (w/ Luscious Lou) to win the FCPW Florida Championship. Here was a match that was more on the "bad" side. It was just random moves done at random times, with no pace or flow at all. Really, most of the match was one guy doing a few moves, then applying a chinlock. Then, the other guy would do some more moves, and you get more chinlockery, wash rinse then repeat. The ending came when Lloyd (who was NOT a pretty boy by any means; rather, he looked like a haggard chubby truck driver!) was accidentally hit with Lou's cane.
Afterwards, Lloyd got on the mic and stated that from now on he would be a face (I'm paraphrasing here) and he would be Roger "The Bull" Lloyd. After he laid out Lou, Roger bitched him out for, among other things-he was sometimes incomprehensible on the mic as he had a real Bushnell-esque accent-promising Lloyd that he would be in a film in Hollywood, but it proved to be an adult film! Then again, I'm not sure if it'd be a BAD thing to appear in an adult movie. Sure, I wouldn't want to see Roger "The Bull" Lloyd in any porno, but if *I* was in one… sure, no one would probably want to see it either, but at least I can say I was in one!
Anyway, Not Norm McDonald gets in the ring, pumps the crowd up… then gets told that now will be the intermission. Whoops. FCPW needs a lot of work on "cohesion" stuff like this, or some plot holes in their storylines. Anyhow, the intermission was around 20 minutes (rather than the 10 announced by NNMcD), as they had some guys come out from the back and sign autographs.
5. Lou Cypher (w/ Heater) defeated Benny Blanco. I was told that in FPWA, Lou and Heater are feuding with each other, which makes this amusing. Heater as a manager period is just odd to me. As you'd expect from a guy who is billed as 6 foot 9 (this guy IS pretty tall), he dominated most of this short match, which is for the best, I am sure. Heater also interfered by attacking Benny with a sledgehammer (yes, a sledgehammer)… only it was the end of the sledgehammer that was NOT made out of steel! It doesn't make a lot of sense, but hey, it's pro wrestling.
6. Blade Walker and Bone Crusher wrestled to a 20 minute draw. This was the continuation of their feud. J.R. Carrington was going to manage his charge, but he was literally given the choice of managing either Bone or Faith, but not both. Why… beats me.
As soon as I saw how this was paced and the fact that this was 20 minutes instead of 10 minutes, I had a feeling that this would be a draw. The heat for this was GREAT as the kids just loved Blade and it was very loud, but the match itself was not good at all. Again, there was no pace or flow to it, and it just seemed to go on and on and on. At least I was entertained by the audience, whether it came from their reactions (such as a few kids getting the shit scared out of them by Crusher when he slammed his hands on the timekeeper's table) or seeing them interact with each other. Thankfully the kids were not *too* bratty, for the most part. That's all that needs to be said about the bout, or the 5 or 10 minute micwork done by both guys to establish a match in the future.
7. The Russian Roulette (nee Russian Nightmares; w/ Sleezy Veezy) defeated The Dirty South Boys to win the FCPW Tag Team Titles. The program listed them as "Russian Nightmares", and they spelled their manager's name in that manner-who dressed like Jim Cornette, incidentally-but they were announced as "Russian Roulette" and they had on shirts that used that phrase, so that's what I'll go with. Oddly enough, they came out to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir", which is an awesome song to use as entrance music and I'm glad someone used it, but I'm not quite sure why guys from Mother Russia who were named Drago and Boris-no, really-would use it, or why one of them would bring out the old Russian Sickle red Soviet flag, although then again in Bushnell, some (or many) people may not realize that the Commies don't run Russia anymore! To heighten the hilarity, their music kept on skipping.
The match itself was fine, though, as at least it followed a regular tag formula where the good guys started off well and used their speed against the Russian dude who was large in size, only for said dude to use his size to his advantage… the ending came when the ref was distracted and one of the Russkies used one of the tag title belts-which looked rather cheap and shoddily made-to KO Remix, I believe it was. This got the audience rather upset, as you might expect, as they were very jingoistic and they loved The Dirty South Boys. Afterwards, the REF attacked Sleezy Veezy. Why, I don't know, but it only made me shake my head in befuddlement.
Right before the Face In Peril was able to tag out, there was an obvious resident of Bushnell who was not exactly pretty in any traditional way but she was a HUGE fan of the team… either she was family/friends with them or she's a little like the guy formerly known as Not Pat… she went apeshit when the tag was made and when they lose, she looked like her dog had just got run over! Yes, this is a reason why you have to love pro wrestling.
8. Neil Faith (w/ J.R. Carrington) defeated Victor Pain to retain the FCPW Heavyweight Championship. This match had an hour time limit, but all that I remember was that (aside from the match being alright) it lasted more than 10 minutes, and again I was distracted by the kids in the audience, whether it was by their cheering or jeering or how they acted around each other. The most interesting thing was that for the entire night there was a little girl who I'd guess as being between 2 and 3 years old. At random times in the night she would stare at me for awhile… I'd smile back. Finally, during this match, she handed me a piece of candy! It was from the concession area* and it was a concoction that was like a really tiny version of Jawbreakers. I did say "Thank you" to her. Oh if only women 18 and over paid me that much attention and gave me free candy… oh wait, what was I saying… oh yeah, Faith was able to get the victory; the audience seemed to be burned out so there wasn't as much cheering, although the jingoism was able to give this a decent amount of heat.
* Which was pretty nice. They did offer alcohol, but if you can believe it, I stuck with soda instead. Jimmy's Country Shack was a nice building for a show. I mean, it was large and roomy, was clean (I was fearing it'd be a real dingy and sawdust-filled dive bar), and aside from a ceiling so low that if most wrestlers stood on the middle rope, their head came real close to touching the ceiling, I can't complain about the building, nor the ring, which had some give to it but at least wasn't small and looked professional.
Overall, this 2 hour and 50 minute show was an event that was like the one I saw last weekend. It certainly wasn't as good as the cards I usually see, but compared to the shit shows that I mentioned in the introduction of last week's review, it's not that bad. I mean, I did not know what to expect from the last two shows, but I have to say I'm thankful everything was better than the awful shit shows I had to bare witness to in 2004 and 2005. Holy shit you had to see those cards for yourself to fully comprehend those horrors. OWA and FCPW were above that, at least from what I've seen. It was also nice seeing different wrestlers, not to mention seeing Devin Dalton's last matches for a few years.
I do not know when my next show will be, as Dynamite Championship Wrestling's show on the 8th in Orlando was cancelled. That's disappointing, as it was in a location not too far from downtown, which meant that afterwards I'd go out to a certain club… but I guess I'll have to find something else to do in Orlando before I head out there this upcoming Saturday! As for shows, nothing's going on that is something I'd want to see that isn't too far of a drive, so maybe it won't be until FIP weekend that I'll be at my next cards, but at least you know that within a week or so I should post a Ringpost Figure Four Review, Volume 33.
Only in Bushnell…
I was hoping to go to more than just the FIP shows in September, and last week I found out from someone that there was this First Class Pro Wrestling event going on in Bushnell, which worked great for me as the location of the show, "Jimmy's Country Shack" (you only need one guess to figure out what their average clientele is) is only 33 miles exactly from where I live, and plus I would be able to see Devin Dalton's last match before he leaves in a few days to go back to the Marines and be stationed in Okinawa, Japan for the next two years.
The drive to Jimmy's Country Shack was pretty much the same as the drive to the Sumter County Fairgrounds to see FIP run there, except that this time I actually got to drive through the town of Bushnell itself as the building was a few miles northwest of the Fairgrounds. I don't know what happened with FIP running there, but I liked having shows there as it meant a 40 minute or less drive and a less than 60 mile roundtrip for me. But alas…
I got there right around 7:10 and received some surprises. First, seeing a fellow Florida indy wrestling fan in attendance (I've gotten to know him the past few months) as I did not realize he would be attending. Some wrestlers were also in the crowd, such as Torcher (he did the commentary for the show! Honest. It wasn't open-mic commentary that the crowd could hear, Thank Christ… it has nothing to do with Torcher; it's my hatred of open-mic commentary), Barney Rumble, and two Florida Indies favorites, Nick Fame and Heater.
Also, like at the OWA (Orlando Wrestling Alliance) show I attended, another WG favorite, J.P. Ace was there, along with the controversial A.J. Gallant. I don't fully know why he has a lot of "heat" on him, except that he ran the FXE wrestling school, and awhile ago they closed. I almost thought-due to some of the veiled comments and threats that were made about him-he'd vanish a la David Babylon and never be seen at a show again, but I guess I assumed wrong.
The show actually started at around 7:15 with an interview segment concerning the main faction in FCPW, which is a group led by a "Texan" named J.R. Carrington*. It involved them talking to the new FCPW commissioner, a Mr. Collier who is from the area. You see, the "owner" of FCPW is actually in Atlanta, and… yeah, it's carny at it's best-I love it! Anyway, they do at least explain the main storylines involving Bonecrusher and Neil Faith, the two main guys in Carrington's faction. That was helpful for me, admittedly.
• I know the exact spellings as they had a free program that you could receive at the same time you paid for your ticket. Yeah, the program had some misspellings (although I've seen much worse) but at least it did offer a show lineup that for the most part was accurate and had space for various companies, such as "Dickey's Barbecue Pit", "Hungry Howie's Pizza", and "First Class Sports Nutrition", where you could buy a "libido enhancer"… that's probably a product that I should not try! I shudder to think what would happen if raging horndog Robdog tried a "libido enhancer"…
Remember the announcer (Not Norm McDonald) from the Fruitland Park show who I saw as a wrestler last weekend? He was an announcer here again, and he did the commentary with Torcher. Poor Torcher… he was still spazzy and annoying at times here, although he wasn't AS bad as in Fruitland Park, and the crowd of around 150 or so seemed to like his clowning around. Speaking of the crowd, I do believe it was around 150 and to quote the person I sat by while I was there, half of them seemed to be under the age of 12.
1. The Executioner defeated Brian Manson. Manson was apparently just turned face recently, so that's why the crowd did not really care about him when he wrestled The Executioner, or as he was announced once and it said on his tights, "The Executioner of Agony." How does this make any sense? Wouldn't it be a GOOD thing for an executioner to execute a bad thing like "agony"? Or is it that his executioning skills are agonizing… oh nevermind. But, that was more interesting than this ok bout with an older referee; both the older ref and the younger ref weren't that great. They couldn't decide how fast to count and clearly were not that great, although again I've seen worse at shit shows. Mr. Agony won by having his feet on the ropes.
2. Brandon Groom defeated Devin Dalton. Not Norm McDonald announced Devin as "D-Von Dayton"! I shit you not. Here, Devin was a heel as he wrestled against a guy I had never heard of who at least was well put-together and sort of reminded me of someone I knew in college at Illinois State University… speaking of ISU, they got upset by Drake on Thursday night, a team that doesn't even give scholarships to its players! They never should have lost to them, so I am miffed about that. Anyway…
Devin played a cowardly heel who stalled and did other nice tricks to incite the crowd, and boy it didn't take long for them to despise him, and they shook those redneck noisemakers. I thought this was a good bout, as Devin did some nice stuff in the ring and he mainly worked over the arm of Brandon. As Groom was on the defensive for the most part, I can't really say how good or bad he is, but Dalton made him look good, IMO.
3. Pepper Lewis defeated Jayson Taylor and Nooie Lee to retain the FCPW Cruiserweight Title. All three guys were faces, as far as I could tell, although Lewis displayed some heelish tendencies. Like at the FIP show in Arcadia, there were separate entrance ways for the faces and for the heels. All three games came from "the face locker room", so there you go. For you Florida Gator fans like Yapo (or Yappppppo, or whatever), Pepper wore some Gator-inspired tights that looked pretty cool. He was billed from Gainesville, so again, there you go. As for the match, it was fast paced and entertaining enough. Some parts were better than others, sure, but no way can you say that this was "bad". For the record, most of the matches had a 10 minute time limit, which was a bonus as it prevented most matches from being too long. Pepper got the win by pinning Jayson, I believe.
4. Cousin Dale defeated Pretty Boy Lloyd (w/ Luscious Lou) to win the FCPW Florida Championship. Here was a match that was more on the "bad" side. It was just random moves done at random times, with no pace or flow at all. Really, most of the match was one guy doing a few moves, then applying a chinlock. Then, the other guy would do some more moves, and you get more chinlockery, wash rinse then repeat. The ending came when Lloyd (who was NOT a pretty boy by any means; rather, he looked like a haggard chubby truck driver!) was accidentally hit with Lou's cane.
Afterwards, Lloyd got on the mic and stated that from now on he would be a face (I'm paraphrasing here) and he would be Roger "The Bull" Lloyd. After he laid out Lou, Roger bitched him out for, among other things-he was sometimes incomprehensible on the mic as he had a real Bushnell-esque accent-promising Lloyd that he would be in a film in Hollywood, but it proved to be an adult film! Then again, I'm not sure if it'd be a BAD thing to appear in an adult movie. Sure, I wouldn't want to see Roger "The Bull" Lloyd in any porno, but if *I* was in one… sure, no one would probably want to see it either, but at least I can say I was in one!
Anyway, Not Norm McDonald gets in the ring, pumps the crowd up… then gets told that now will be the intermission. Whoops. FCPW needs a lot of work on "cohesion" stuff like this, or some plot holes in their storylines. Anyhow, the intermission was around 20 minutes (rather than the 10 announced by NNMcD), as they had some guys come out from the back and sign autographs.
5. Lou Cypher (w/ Heater) defeated Benny Blanco. I was told that in FPWA, Lou and Heater are feuding with each other, which makes this amusing. Heater as a manager period is just odd to me. As you'd expect from a guy who is billed as 6 foot 9 (this guy IS pretty tall), he dominated most of this short match, which is for the best, I am sure. Heater also interfered by attacking Benny with a sledgehammer (yes, a sledgehammer)… only it was the end of the sledgehammer that was NOT made out of steel! It doesn't make a lot of sense, but hey, it's pro wrestling.
6. Blade Walker and Bone Crusher wrestled to a 20 minute draw. This was the continuation of their feud. J.R. Carrington was going to manage his charge, but he was literally given the choice of managing either Bone or Faith, but not both. Why… beats me.
As soon as I saw how this was paced and the fact that this was 20 minutes instead of 10 minutes, I had a feeling that this would be a draw. The heat for this was GREAT as the kids just loved Blade and it was very loud, but the match itself was not good at all. Again, there was no pace or flow to it, and it just seemed to go on and on and on. At least I was entertained by the audience, whether it came from their reactions (such as a few kids getting the shit scared out of them by Crusher when he slammed his hands on the timekeeper's table) or seeing them interact with each other. Thankfully the kids were not *too* bratty, for the most part. That's all that needs to be said about the bout, or the 5 or 10 minute micwork done by both guys to establish a match in the future.
7. The Russian Roulette (nee Russian Nightmares; w/ Sleezy Veezy) defeated The Dirty South Boys to win the FCPW Tag Team Titles. The program listed them as "Russian Nightmares", and they spelled their manager's name in that manner-who dressed like Jim Cornette, incidentally-but they were announced as "Russian Roulette" and they had on shirts that used that phrase, so that's what I'll go with. Oddly enough, they came out to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir", which is an awesome song to use as entrance music and I'm glad someone used it, but I'm not quite sure why guys from Mother Russia who were named Drago and Boris-no, really-would use it, or why one of them would bring out the old Russian Sickle red Soviet flag, although then again in Bushnell, some (or many) people may not realize that the Commies don't run Russia anymore! To heighten the hilarity, their music kept on skipping.
The match itself was fine, though, as at least it followed a regular tag formula where the good guys started off well and used their speed against the Russian dude who was large in size, only for said dude to use his size to his advantage… the ending came when the ref was distracted and one of the Russkies used one of the tag title belts-which looked rather cheap and shoddily made-to KO Remix, I believe it was. This got the audience rather upset, as you might expect, as they were very jingoistic and they loved The Dirty South Boys. Afterwards, the REF attacked Sleezy Veezy. Why, I don't know, but it only made me shake my head in befuddlement.
Right before the Face In Peril was able to tag out, there was an obvious resident of Bushnell who was not exactly pretty in any traditional way but she was a HUGE fan of the team… either she was family/friends with them or she's a little like the guy formerly known as Not Pat… she went apeshit when the tag was made and when they lose, she looked like her dog had just got run over! Yes, this is a reason why you have to love pro wrestling.
8. Neil Faith (w/ J.R. Carrington) defeated Victor Pain to retain the FCPW Heavyweight Championship. This match had an hour time limit, but all that I remember was that (aside from the match being alright) it lasted more than 10 minutes, and again I was distracted by the kids in the audience, whether it was by their cheering or jeering or how they acted around each other. The most interesting thing was that for the entire night there was a little girl who I'd guess as being between 2 and 3 years old. At random times in the night she would stare at me for awhile… I'd smile back. Finally, during this match, she handed me a piece of candy! It was from the concession area* and it was a concoction that was like a really tiny version of Jawbreakers. I did say "Thank you" to her. Oh if only women 18 and over paid me that much attention and gave me free candy… oh wait, what was I saying… oh yeah, Faith was able to get the victory; the audience seemed to be burned out so there wasn't as much cheering, although the jingoism was able to give this a decent amount of heat.
* Which was pretty nice. They did offer alcohol, but if you can believe it, I stuck with soda instead. Jimmy's Country Shack was a nice building for a show. I mean, it was large and roomy, was clean (I was fearing it'd be a real dingy and sawdust-filled dive bar), and aside from a ceiling so low that if most wrestlers stood on the middle rope, their head came real close to touching the ceiling, I can't complain about the building, nor the ring, which had some give to it but at least wasn't small and looked professional.
Overall, this 2 hour and 50 minute show was an event that was like the one I saw last weekend. It certainly wasn't as good as the cards I usually see, but compared to the shit shows that I mentioned in the introduction of last week's review, it's not that bad. I mean, I did not know what to expect from the last two shows, but I have to say I'm thankful everything was better than the awful shit shows I had to bare witness to in 2004 and 2005. Holy shit you had to see those cards for yourself to fully comprehend those horrors. OWA and FCPW were above that, at least from what I've seen. It was also nice seeing different wrestlers, not to mention seeing Devin Dalton's last matches for a few years.
I do not know when my next show will be, as Dynamite Championship Wrestling's show on the 8th in Orlando was cancelled. That's disappointing, as it was in a location not too far from downtown, which meant that afterwards I'd go out to a certain club… but I guess I'll have to find something else to do in Orlando before I head out there this upcoming Saturday! As for shows, nothing's going on that is something I'd want to see that isn't too far of a drive, so maybe it won't be until FIP weekend that I'll be at my next cards, but at least you know that within a week or so I should post a Ringpost Figure Four Review, Volume 33.