When We Were Marks: Après le déluge, Dan

When We Were Marks
Après le déluge, Dan

Thoughts and results from NCW ChallengeMania 17

I help promote wrestling in Montreal. My relationship with IWS promoter PCP Crazy F’N Manny (and to a lesser extent with ISW promoter Mikhail Q. Rotch, Esquire) is more complicated, Manny is my boss (who never pays me), my friend, my burden, my editor, my enemy. I am sometimes his friend, his writer, his publicist, his indentured servitude, his sounding board, his SHILL~, but to over-simplify greatly I help Manny promote wrestling in Montreal.

With that responsibility comes terror: nightmares. For me there are three.

The first night terror is that no one will show up. This might be why I am so aggressive pre-selling tickets in a city notorious for having big walk-up crowds and for people showing up late or at the last minute. I know a promoter in Montreal who cancelled a show “due to a blizzard” of a measly three inches because only one paying customer showed up. I know promoters who put on shows with twelve people in the audience, seven of them comps; the locker room quite literally double the size of the audience. I have never been involved in a show quite that poorly attended thank God. But until I see the line at the door, I still worry.

The second fear that brings on flop-sweat is the no-show. A wrestler in Quebec famous for no-shows once promoted his own show and disguised a no-show by announcing that the third man in a Triple-Threat was “The Invisible Man” and booked T.I.M. to win the match. Quebec wrestling being the mutant that it is, T.I.M. immediately starting popping up at shows all over Quebec, usually in the audience. (According to experts, T.I.M. made his debut in a tag-team match against Cheech and Chong.) Like many itinerant wrestlers, T.I.M. eventually tired of Quebec and moved on, eventually landing in Japan.

I have had to deal with my fair share of no-shows. Manny and I were helping book the (now-defunct) CWA promotion for owner Andy Rosetti, when he decided against our advice to book ECW veteran Sandman. Fullingon made it as far as getting off the plane at Pierre Elliot Trudeau in Montreal before Customs took one look at his checkered legal past and marched him back on to the next plane heading back to the States. Similarly, I have a friend in Winnipeg who lost half his US stars when they started a food-fight on their plane and got thrown off in Minneapolis.

In Quebec, no-shows are such an epidemic that when Marc le Grizzly was running his seasonal Madness shows from 2004-2005 and brought in Samoa Joe for the first time for Mid-Summer Madness in 2004, he drove Samoa Joe from the airport directly to the NDR Centre and shot a video of Samoa Joe in the venue that he uploaded directly to YouTube to kill rumours Samoa Joe wasn’t coming.

Something I honestly should have thought of doing last Saturday May 30th, during the IWS Xth Anniversary, when we brought in Kevin Nash to fight PCO. I had people in line for the show spreading rumours that Kevin Nash wasn’t there. Even after I told them that I had seen Nash, spoken to him and shaken his hand; even after other people in line who don’t work for the promotion told them that they had seen him walk into the building, they still insisted that Nash wasn’t coming.

That said, Nash made it, but our former champion Viking, a man that we had put the IWS title longer than any man in the promotion’s history no-showed his appearance in the fatal four-way for the IWS title, turning it into a Triple-Threat match. That is normally what happens with no-shows. Steam pours out of your ears for a minute, then you shrug and re-book the card.

Like when we put on Un F’N Sanctioned 2007 with Necro Butcher against Viking and Azriel against EXesS. Necro slept in and missed his flight (to this day he still owes us a booking); Azriel made it to the border by car and was turned back by customs for legal reasons. We announced it at the door, but no one cared because Christian Cage DID make it. With both Viking and EXesS lacking opponents, we made them face each other which made sense story-wise since Viking had beaten EXesS for the IWS title six months before. And naturally, the match that happened by accident turned out to be the best match of the night and one of the best matches that we have ever done.

I have coping mechanisms for the first two nightmares, but the final one is the one that scares me the most, perhaps because it is one that I have never had to face. The fear is that you book a star for your main event of the biggest show of the year. Someone who will get you some publicity, maybe even some free TV. You incorporate him into your story-lines, you get the fans excited about the match, everything is going perfectly and then two minutes into the match the star gets hurt.

As I say, that is a nightmare that I have never had to face, but my friends at NCW have just recently during their annual ChallengeMania show.

I like NCW because they have the best wrestling in the province that I am not personally involved in. The NCW has its roots back in 1985 and this year had its 500th show, making it one of the longest lasting promotions in the history of Quebec wrestling. I also like NCW because in all the time that I have watched them they have had a very clear mission statement. Their booking philosophy is built around emulating the WWF from the day after Yokozuna pinned Hulk Hogan for the title (June 13th, 1993) until the moment that Bret Hart turned heel (March 23, 1997).

This was a period in the WWF where goofy gimmicks and serious characters walked hand-in-hand; where WWF wrestlers could be fat, muscled or skinny; and when the WWF was patient enough to burn off their feuds and stories slowly. It is a good period to emulate especially if you are a family wrestling outfit keen to avoid the excesses of the Attitude Era.

The best part of the gimmicks in the WWF of the period and of NCW now is that wrestlers lived their gimmicks; they inhabited their characters, knowing that the goofiest of gimmicks can be redeemed if the wrestler believed in his gimmick strongly enough.

Case in point, the first match from ChallengeMania 17 on May 16th, 2009.

NCW Tag Team Title Match: NCW Champions Project 13 (Jimmy Kraven and Guil Reno) vs. Anarchy Rulz (TNT and Adrian O’Ryan) with Anna Minoushka

For those who know nothing about Quebec wrestling, Project 13 is the goth team while Anarchy Rulz is the punk team whose manager is a former Russian Communist who looks like Obelisk’s twin sister.

Anna is a great manager who would make a great joshi if she didn’t punch like, well, a girl. When she originally debuted she screamed at the fans in French distorted by a thick and incomprehensible Russian accent. Someone foolishly decided that you should be able to hear Anna’s rantings and told her to drop the Russian accent.

Adrian O’Ryan has been doing a punk anarchist gimmick in the NCW since he started. He’s got a great look and he’s a smart wrestler despite being a semi-suicidal high-flyer who tends to crowd dive expecting scattering fans to turn into a crowded mosh pit. Adding TNT to the mix gives both guys a delightful edge. TNT has the look of a Dead Kennedys’ fan who got fat and got old; who has a 9 to 5 weekday job, but on Friday cranks the stereo with Frankenchrist and tells war stories about knife fights with Jello Biafra while sucking down a “Maudite” beer and having his first cigarette of the week. And he’s turned Adrian O’Ryan from a guy who always seemed like that the last guy at the party into a shameless brown-noser whose only real punk experience is listening to the nostalgic bullshit from TNT.

I was at the first NCW show when Project 13 debuted. It was the perfect idea for James Kraven whose only un-Goth-like trait is the intensity of his Gothness. On the first teaming, Guil Reno seemed uncertain about the idea of abandoning his gimmick as a Shawinigan street-fighting hick transplanted to Montreal, but this initial hesitation has worked in the team’s favour. Guil is still a Shawinigan street-fighting hick who has moved to Montreal and Jimmy is his Goth best friend who has slowly been introducing his friend to the urban Goth culture, some elements of which he has adopted with almost terrifying glee.

Project 13 are taking a page from “Rowdy” Roddy Piper’s match against Bad News Brown at WrestleMania VI when Roddy painted his whole body half-white and half-black to piss off Bad News Brown enough to give Roddy an advantage. Roddy always had a moral flexibility; not a racist, but willing to become one for a night if it gave him an advantage. The joke, of course, was on Roddy since he used water-soluble body paint, couldn’t wash the paint off and had to fly home still painted like a freak.

Or maybe Project 13 are swiping the Star Trek episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, as James Kraven has painted his face half-white and half-red, while Guil Reno has painted his face half-green and half-white in mirror opposite to his partner.

The match is a good brisk opener to get the crowd pumped up. There is one fantastic sequence where Guil Reno is acting the idiot - a useless face being herded back to his corner while his partner is getting double-teamed. Adrian O’Ryan pins James Kraven and realizing that the referee has his back turned, reaches over and rolls up the referee to force him to count the pin on James Kraven who kicks out at two because Adrian can’t hook the leg with the referee in the way.

Anna Minoushka gets involved in the match but before she has to try and break toilet paper with one of her crappy punches, Mary Lollipop, James Kraven’s perky goth cheerleader girlfriend, comes charging from the back at a full run and needs every bit of her momentum to spear Anna’s fat ass to the canvas and save her man. Project 13 win at 7:17 with a double pin on TNT.

NCW is really good at telling nice long slow-burn story-lines. The only downside is that every once in a while, things get a tad bit too predictable. Like the second match on the card.

Special Challenge Match: Black Eagle vs. Electrico
Black Eagle is long-time NCW veteran who used to wrestle hardcore matches waving a crowbar. For this match, he has decided to mock Electrico’s masked gimmick by dressing like a Sumo, emphasizing his gut and threatening Electrico with the power of his Fat Cobra Kung-Fu. And I know that that sounds AWESOME, but there is theory and then there is practice.

In practice, Black Eagle is a hardcore wrestler in name only, who comes from a wrestling family not one of whom could punch their way out of a wet paper bag, which wouldn’t be so bad if Black Eagle could do anything other than punch or kick.

If you had asked me before the match what the result was going to be, I would have said, “Electrico wins with a flippy move off the top in 7 and 1/2 minutes.” As it turned out the match lasted two whole seconds longer with Electrico getting the pin at 7:32. And that’s two seconds that I am NEVER getting back.

The benefit on the other side of being predictable is that sometimes you can give people exactly what they want and surprise them in the process. Cue third match.

If Pretty in Pink Loses They Must Split Up: Pretty in Pink (Gorgeous Mike & Kid Rock) vs. Handsome JF and Mystery Partner.

The Mystery Partner turns out to be Marvelous Jeff and I wonder if Kid Rock feels left out of the adjective war. So this is basically Face Ambiguously Gay Duo vs. Heel Ambiguously Gay Duo and there is a nice symmetry in the match with Handsome JF and Marvelous Jeff just coming together in heelish collusion as Gorgeous Mike and Kid Rock seem doomed to fracture in baby-face impotence. Especially when Gorgeous Mike gets injured and carried out after 3:30, leaving his partner Kid Rock to battle alone.

Kid Rock takes the mother of all beatings before making a miracle rally and diving for his corner just as Gorgeous Mike hobbles out - just in time to make the hot tag. Everyone performs their part perfectly up to and including Gorgeous Mike selling his injury while just barely being able to help Kid Rock perform their patented double teams to get the double pin on Handsome JF at 9:19.

A tremendously well-booked match that sucked the entire crowd of just over 500 people into believing that Pretty in Pink’s loss was inevitable, and then surprising the crowd with the ending that they really, really, really wanted.

I should probably mention NCW’s ring. Quebec wrestling veteran Sunny War Cloud considers it the best ring in the province and he is not wrong with one caveat. It has both the benefits and disadvantages of its size of 16 feet by 16 feet. Smaller wrestling rings have the benefit that they make the wrestlers look bigger and because the spring is so large compared to the surface of the ring, bumping is much easier as a result. (Not easy just easier.) The WWF 20 feet by 20 feet RAW ring is like bumping on a pallet of bricks by comparison. (Or so I am told.)

The downside to a ring that small is that it is hard to make submission wrestling believable because it seems like a wrestler should be able to reach the ropes from virtually anywhere in the ring. And of course, you have to be careful how many people you put in the ring. Any more than four people at a time and you run the same danger as organizing an orgy in an elevator. If everyone involved aren’t Olympic level gymnasts, who know EXACTLY what they are doing at all times, the whole thing quickly turns into a cluster-fuck.

Which brings us neatly to our fourth match.

4 Way Sudden Death - Winner is Number One Contender for the NCW Tag Team Titles: The Mansour Brothers vs. Los Elementos vs. Those Guys vs. Diablero and the winner of the Dark Match Battle Royal

For the record, doing a Battle Royal in the NCW ring is a phenomenally bad idea. Doing a 4 team tag match is not automatically a bad idea. Unfortunately, the number of Olympic level gymnasts in this match number exactly one: Heavy Maxx Fury, the survivor of the Dark Match debacle. In other words, the best man in the match is trying to herd cats in a closet for the second time in one night.

I can best illustrate Maxx’ night by pointing out something that only PCP Crazy F”N Manny initially noticed (out of a crowd that included me, Pat Laprade, Pat Lono and a number of other Quebec wrestling experts.) Maxx was going for a swanton, realized in mid-move that he was never going to be able to pull it off, made a course correction in mid-air for a splash, which while it was by no means the smooth as silk splash that Maxx would normally pull off was still within spitting distance of: that’s what I planned to do all along. And that sadly was the best move of the match, a saved botch.

Los Elementos are masked and sloppy while the Mansour brothers are Arab and Sidi the masked brother (who normally would be the second most talented guy in the ring) is having an even worse off-night than Maxx. Diablero (Maxx’ partner) is probably the least talented guy in the ring in terms of wrestling ability, but as usual is the most entertaining through sheer enthusiasm. He and Maxx have been partners only since Maxx won the Dark Match Battle Royal, so barely an hour, but when Maxx is double-teamed, Diablero throws a hissy fit that can be heard three metro stops away, putting to shame all of the other wrestlers whispering their objections when their long-time partners get bush-whacked.

And then there are Those Guys who are basically playing Jimmy Fallon and Will Farrell from A Night at the Roxbury. The midget Santino Italiano aka That Guy plays the midget Jimmy Fallon while some fat guy I don’t know aka This Guy plays Will Farrell. Their opening is bloody amazing, making them more stereotypically Italian in about thirty seconds than the IWS Italian team The Untouchables have managed in a year. The crowd loves their entrance; loves their team; and are delighted when they win the match with a double pin of Sidi Mansour at 10:28. I am just pleased that the sloppy cluster-fuck is over and that no one got hurt.

NCW emulates family-friendly WWF because the promotion attracts families including an inordinately high proportion of twelve-year old girls. Their squealing sometimes has its odd distortions on the NCW booking - NCW booker are nothing if not attentive to the desires of their fans.

Triple Crown Championship: NCW Triple Crown Champion Mark Andrews vs. Busty Love vs. Mr. Cobra vs. Urban Miles.

The Triple Crown Championship combines three defunct NCW belts: the (cable access) TV title, the hardcore title and the cruiser-weight title. Sadly the criteria for the title has nothing to do with being a cruiser, hardcore or telegenic.

Mark Andrews has been a favourite of mine since the time that I got Hannibal an NCW booking when he was home over the holidays from Calgary Stampede. Mark Andrews was the sacrificial lamb offered up for Hannibal to carve up like a holiday turkey with his bare hands. At the time, Mark was playing a cowardly, narcissistic pretty-boy “The Pokemon of Style”. A gimmick that died after the NCW crowd watched Mark Andrews take slaps to the chest so stiff that you could read Hannibal’s fingerprints from off Mark’s chest with the naked eye. Mark Andrews’ reputation as a cowardly heel died as he kept grimly picking himself off the mat, no matter how hard Hannibal was knocking him down.

His character has now turned full circle and he is a bad-ass narcissistic heel and a member of the Forsaken Four led by Cobra. Urban Miles and Busty Lover are midget heart-throbs with Busty being the taller and more talented midget, while Urban and his New Kids on the Block hat gets the lion-share of the squeals.

Cobra tries to cheat to give Mark an advantage, but runs afoul of fellow heel manager Phil Belanger, who hates Cobra no matter whether he wears white, black or gray boxers. Phil convinces the referee to toss Cobra before the match is a minute old. The match quickly turns into who is the bigger idiot as Urban and Busty send Mark to the outside rather than teaming to eliminate the Champion and with Mark out of the ring the two heart-throbs turn on one another.

At this point, Mark loses major points from me for not simply grabbing a chair from the crowd and sitting down to wait for Busty Love and Urban Miles to eliminate each other. Getting re-involved from choice is pointless, silly, out-of-character and in this case not even relevant as Urban Miles eliminates Busty Love at 4:11. I was convinced that this meant that Mark Andrews was going to retain the belt, because if they were going to pull the trigger on a title switch, Busty Love makes a much better choice as Champion in terms of talent. Then Urban Miles gets the flash pin at 8:45, the girls start squealing and I remembered who the true bookers of NCW are: the ones who buy the tickets.

NCW’s tertiary title is the Triple Crown Championship, but their secondary title is the Inter-Cities Title. (Speaking of emulating the WWF!) Going into ChallengeMania 17, the IC Champion was James Stone, feuding with the Forsaken Four all by himself.

Inter-Cities Title: NCW IC Champion James Stone vs. Jay Phenomenon

James Stone is your plucky hero despite having the name of a cranky arrogant misanthrope: James Stone. Jimmy Stone, on the other hand, would be a plucky underdog baby-face. Oddly and conversely, James Kraven is the name of an authentic goth hero, but Jimmy Kraven would be the name of a whiny goth poser. I am not certain why this is, might have something to do with the number of vowels in their names.

Jay Phenomenon is a wigger who used to team with Diablero. The Forsaken Four are Jay, Cobra and Mark Andrews plus Jeff Johnson who replaced Karl Briscoe in the Forsaken 4 when Briscoe got injured. During the match, Karl Briscoe dhows up to lend a hand, so the Forsaken Four become Five making it Five on One for James Stone No one can win against those odds and Jay Phenomenon becomes the new IC Champion after 9:40 with a bunch of help. An incensed James Stone grabs a chair and hands out five chair shots to fell the Forsaken Four Plus One.

In case, you were wondering what the Forsaken Four are like, imagine a French Quebecois version of the Four Horsemen started by the children of Paul Roma and Mongo McMichael.

One of the best parts about going to see NCW is that I get to see fat guys wrestle something that I don’t get to see much of in the IWS. With the possible exception of Dru Onyx, the IWS has never had much success with fat guys. (I say possible not because Dru Onyx wasn’t a success with us, he certainly was a success - a popular IWS Champion. No, I say possible to give myself an out for when Dru Onyx calls to yell at me for calling him fat.)

One of the guys who sadly didn’t resonate with the IWS fans, despite a fantastic introduction, was Tank. (He was introduced during Season’s Beatings 2003 when Dru Onyx gave the Green Phantom a Christmas present. The IWS Hardcore Hero opened the package and found to his surprise a toy tank which cued Tank’s surprise attack.)

Grudge Match: Tank vs. Samson (with Lufisto)

Tank is a fat Greek strong man who was “trained” by Jacques Rougeau Jr., which in practice meant that Eric Mastrocola and Kevin Steen did most of the heavy lifting. He has always had a great look and great charisma, but he is one of the wrestlers who are always trying to improve and get better and every year he does.

Samson is another Greek strong man although he is more of a rugged muscleman compared to Tank’s who channels the strength of the fat. If Tank is Volstagg the Valiant, the Lion of Asgard, than Samson is Hogun the Grim. Samson is accompanied by his beard Lufisto, who has become bat-shit crazy since joining SHIMMER. Her presence intensifies rather than eliminates the fan taunts of Samson being gay.
Samson carries a hangman’s noose to the ring and uses it to hang his opponents from time to time. He has the look, the intensity and the gimmick to succeed beyond Quebec. He has shown flashes of being able to make that leap, but what he really needs is experience with world-class talent and to become more consistent..

Tank wins after 11:41. Both this and the James Stone matches were good matches, but at ChallengeMania, wrestlers are expected to deliver great matches, something in short supply tonight.

The down-side to going to see NCW is that NCW is very protective of his veterans. This sometimes leads to ridiculous situations where veterans are being protected beyond all bounds of good sense. The NCW saga of Vanessa Kraven is the perfect example of this.

Vanessa had been partially trained by Ron Hutchinson in Toronto. When she came to NCW to finish her training, we started hearing stories of a 6 foot tall beautiful woman, built like a football player and strong enough to chop men so hard that they cried. When she made her debut at NCW, an extra 50 wrestling fans in the know showed to see if all that they had heard was true. And we are bitterly disappointed - not in Vanessa - but in NCW who promptly jobbed out the rookie to NCW veteran Julie the Red Fuxx who is almost literally half of Vanessa’s size.

Now respecting your elders and your veterans can be a fine thing, but there comes a point where you need to throw out the idea of making rookies pay their dues and recognize that there are things more important. Like say the principle of holding a ChallengeMania with the best matches possible as the card progresses rather than putting two of the most God-awful boring wrestlers in the world in your semi-main, just because they are NCW veterans.
Franky the Mobster and “Paranoid” Jake Matthews vs. Les Titans (Chakal and Bishop)

I suppose it is unfair of me to call Chakal boring. He is very talented technical wrestler. The problem is that he is so protective of his place and his position in NCW that he is completely unwilling to look ridiculous and you can’t really be a great heel unless you are willing to be humiliated. He is like a well-prepared meal that uses no spices.

Bishop, on the other hand, is completely and utterly God-awful. He is nowhere near as good as Chakal technically, being more a bland brawler, His complete inability to sell isn’t a huge detriment to a heroic unstoppable baby-face, but in a heel it is a huge handicap. I sometimes wonder if Bishop’s no-selling is through ego, through inability or because like other dinosaurs it takes him so long to process that he has been hurt, that it is difficult for him to properly express pain.

Jake Matthews is a shovel-wielding psychopath. While I wish he were more nuanced, Jake is capable of being in great matches and rising to the level of great wrestler even if he seems incapable of lifting others to that level.

Franky the Mobster is the Quebec Internet Wrestling Community’s choice for being the local guy who should be on their TV every week - starting right now. He does have the look and the intensity, plus he is one of, if not the best guy on a mike in the province. He has been in great matches and he can elevate others to great matches. Really, and it may seem like minor quibbling, the only problem that I have with Franky are matches like these where Franky is the best wrestler in a bad match.

The problem is that I sometimes think that Franky is content to be the best wrestler in a bad match. He will never be blamed for being in a bad match, but to me the difference between being a very very good wrestler and a great wrestler is the unwillingness to be in a bad match.

I remember watching Pierre-Carl Ouellet in his first match with the IWS at Un F’N Sanctioned 2003. A tag match that started badly and just sort of muddled along, until PCO got this look in his one good eye, a determination that he was simply not going to allow this match to continue sucking. That’s a look that I have seen in the eyes of Kevin Steen or El Generico, but never in Franky’s eyes. Not to say that Franky can’t have great matches, he absolutely can. I just don’t think he has the passionate unwillingness to not have bad matches that I have seen in the eyes of other wrestlers.

Of course, the other problem with this match is that the crowd desperately wanted Franky and Jake to murder the Titans, but the booking barely allowed them to muss Chakal and Bishop’s hair.

The ending comes when Chakal gives Franky a low blow and grabs Jake’s shovel to finish off Franky the Mobster. Jake steals his shovel back and takes Chakal out. He has a sure 3 on Chakal, but the Titans heel manager and pert-time NCW authority figure, Phil Belanger gets involved. Jake backs up Phil Belanger, but Bishop comes from behind for the ambush roll-up counted by Phil Belanger for the win at 10:56..

The one thing that NCW does better than any other Quebec promotion is slow-burn booking. They have shows every two weeks and hold big name shows about six times a year. The downside to this is that they have a tendency to train their fans that the important stuff happens at the shows that have a name.

The up-side is that when they set up a main event they do it with more and better build than just about everyone - take ChallengeMania 17’s main event.

NCW Title Match: NCW Champion Nova Cain vs. Sylvain Grenier vs. Dan Paysan

True to their obsession with that period of WWF, this match was built like an alternate dimension version of WrestleMania X’s main event only instead of Yokozuna, Lex Luger and Bret Hart, the three wrestlers contesting for the title are Yokozuna, Lex Luger and Shawn Michaels. For the purpose of this analogy Nova Cain is playing the part of Yokozuna with his manager Mr. Tolo playing the parts of both Mr. Fuji and James Cornette, Sylvain Grenier is playing the part of Lex Luger, and Dan Paysan is playing the part of Shawn Michaels. And of course rather than WrestleMania’s more complicated structure, they are just doing a Triple Threat match.

NCW built the match perfectly. Dan Paysan and Nova Cain had long standing issues, their confrontation at ChallengeMania a foregone conclusion, but when Dan signed the contract for the match, Sylvain Grenier showed up to sign on as the third competitor. Nova Cain blasted a distracted (by Tolo) Dan Paysan from the back and threw him out of the ring. Grenier waited for Nova Cain to turn to face him, then took the champion out. When Dan got back into the ring, he backed into Grenier and thinking it was Nova Cain or Tolo, spin-kicked the WWE Veteran right in the face.

Right there the roles are properly and perfectly established: Nova Cain is the fat champion with the evil manager who cheats to win; Sylvain Grenier is the arrogant muscle-bound (and not terribly smart) tweener who doesn’t cheat because he confidently believes that he doesn’t need to; and Dan Paysan is the good-looking hero who turns every woman (and some of the men) in the NDR Center into squealing twelve-year old girls and who will kick you in the face faster than a hiccup.

The follow-up is a good old-fashioned arm-wrestling match between Sylvain Grenier and Nova Cain. Grenier is winning until he is distracted first by a Dan Paysan video promo and then by Tolo hitting Grenier with the title belt.

The other benefit of Sylvain Grenier being added to the mix is that it puts the ending in doubt, because if it was just the baby-face Dan against the heel Nova Cain, you know that Dan is winning the belt because baby-faces always win in the main-event at ‘Manias. But Sylvain, as a Quebec TV personality, and mutiple-time WWE Tag-Team champion has the stature to be NCW Champion and as a tweener can go either fully heel or fully face during this match (and has already rescued Dan from Nova Cain and Tolo once before.)

The set-up is perfect, and then two minutes into the match, Sylvain Grenier is being helped to the back, grimacing and clutching his right arm. It can’t be an injury angle because they have already done an injury angle earlier in the show during the Pretty in Pink match. And this is the nightmare that I alluded to, Sylvain Grenier, your star who got you free TV to publicize the event, who helped you pack more than 500 people in to the NDR Center (which can only comfortably hold 400) is injured. As it turns out, Grenier has torn the bicep on his right arm. Earlier in the winter, Grenier tore the bicep of his left arm before his match with Abyss, but he was able to grit that one out, partly because the tear happened before the match rather than during it, but mostly because he tore the bicep on his non-working arm. Now with his working arm injured and his other arm still healing, Grenier is done for the night.

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So here we are at the crux of the crisis. Your star is injured. Two minutes into it, the match that you planned for is gone. What do you do? Well, if you are Dan Paysan and Nova Cain you go out and have the best match of the night, the great match that ChallengeMania are known for.
Nova Cain improvs smoothly throwing Dan out of the ring, grabbing the mike, announcing that Sylvain Grenier is done for the night and then starts challenging random fans in the audience to take Grenier’s place. Having explained what happened to Sylvain Grenier properly, Dan and Nova Cain settle down to have a great 15 minute completely improvised match.

Dan’s ability to do this doesn’t surprise me, He has been nothing less than a professional wrestler since he broke in with the N.E.W. promotion at 15 years old. I sometimes feel guilty when I advise wanna-bes to wait until they are 18 to start training, but Dan is sui generis, the exception that proves the rule. Like PCO, Steen and Generico he completely refuses to have a bad match. Like Tank, he is always learning, always improving. Like Urban Miles (only better) he drives the women bat-shit insane, He has the brain of a professional wrestler, the moves of an Olympic gymnast, the charisma of a movie star and sadly, perhaps, the body of a cruiser-weight. This may limit his future, but on this night, for this promotion he is everything that they need in a champion and a main-eventer. When Dan dodges a Nova Cain bull-rush that carries the champion into his manager Tolo and through a table, Paysan seizes his chance and shows impressive strength body-slamming Nova Cain who is close to twice his size and then climbing to the top for a flippy pin at 17:44.

Dan’s ability to lead this match did not surprise, but Nova Cain’s ability to follow his lead astonished me. I have a great deal of fondness for Nova Cain as a wrestler, He has been instrumental in the careers of many who pass through NCW. As an example, 2.0 currently touring in Japan for Chikara got their start in a team called Under Construction - Jagged and Nova Cain until Shane Matthews and Jagged betrayed Nova Cain and renamed the team Under Construction 2.0, eventually dropping Under Construction and keeping the 2.0.
Throughout his career, Nova Cain, like Diablero, has made incredibly goofy gimmicks work through sheer enthusiasm. Perhaps the best of these was his GYM (Get Your Muscles) gimmick, where Nova Cain thought he was God’s gift to women and an inspiration to men, because he hung around in gyms and lifted a few weights, despite sporting a 12-pack of donuts body rather than a six-pack.

I have seen Nova Cain as a serious face, as a goofy face and as a goofy heel, all with great success. The one role that I had never seen him pull off successfully was the serious dick heel, until this title run and most importantly until this match.

It was as though Nova Cain decided to make his last match his best match...

And in fact he did.

After the match, Dan Paysan announced that this was Nova Cain’s last match, led the crowd in applause for Nova Cain and played for him a surprise video tribute.

NCW always does these tributes well and this was no exception. My only objection to it (and this may seem odd coming from someone who just spent three months promoting a match that shredded kayfabe) was that I would have preferred having some fig-leaf for kayfabe, a clause in the contract that Nova Cain would retire if he lost.

What I come back to though is the most impressive match that I have seen this year, where the biggest disaster that could happen in a wrestling main event, happened before my eyes and the wrestlers involved absorbed the disaster, and not only met the challenge but surpassed it.

Does it reduce my own fears of something like that happening in the IWS some day? No, not really. I guess that I can only hope that it ever does happen, that there is someone in the main event with veins of ice-water, reflexes of an Olympic athlete, a brain for the business and a passionate refusal to be in a bad match especially in a main event at a big show.

Someone like Dan Paysan.

Louis XIV of France used to say, “Après moi le deluge” After Me the Flood, a great man fearing disaster when he is no longer present.

A lovely thought, but I would rather have a great wrestler like Dan Paysan, whose reaction to a disaster is to seize the reins and save the day,

Après le déluge, Dan

When We Were Marks: The Foul King

When We Were Marks
The Foul King
Retro Column February 2006

Where Llakor Got His Avatar: The Foul King

Those of you who stumble across this blog, may be asking yourself: Where did Llakor get his avatar?

It's from the greatest (non-documentary) wrestling film ever (prior to The Wrestler) a Korean wrestling movie called The Foul King.

(The runner-up is a Japanese film called The Calamari Wrestler about a Japanese (heel) wrestling champion who is challenged from beyond the grave by his ex-partner whom he betrayed in the ring (and then stole his wife/girl friend outside of the ring) This ex-partner died, but was then reincarnated as a Human/Calamari hybrid. Honest to God. I couldn't make this shit up. It's by the same director Minoru Kawasaki who did Executive Koala, about a salaryman who is also a Giant Koala, The Rug Cop, about a hardboiled Japanese cop who takes down crooks by throwing his toupee at them, and Kawasaki's only real mis-step The World Sinks Except Japan, a apocalyptic satire about the rest of the world being covered by the rising seas except for Japan and the weird chaos that ensues.)

The story of the Foul King is pretty simple. The main character is a mild-mannered banker who gets pushed around by everyone around him: his co-workers, the commuters on the subway with him, the punks who hassle him and mug him on the way home, and his disabled Dad who browbeats him at home.

(One thing about Korean and Japanese subways is that they are so crowded that there are subway employees called Push Men whose only job is to literally cram the passengers into the cars so that they are as filled up as possible. There is a hilarious sequence where our hero is trying to get out of the subway at his stop and literally can't partly because the subway car is too crowded, partly because the other passengers are being ass-holes and mostly because our hero is too damn polite.)

One night, our hero is running from the local hoodlums and ends up hiding inside a local warehouse which turns out to be a small wrestling dojo. Attracted by the owner's daughter and convinced that wrestling will solve all his problems, our hero tries to convince the old and cranky owner of the dojo to train him. This takes a lot of convincing because the owner is suspicious of someone who literally just stumbled in out of the rain.

The training is mostly done by the owner's daughter who naturally knows more about wrestling than any one in the country other than her Dad.

It turns out that the grouchy owner wrestled under a hood as the cheating heel Foul King. (Possibly also called Tiger Mask.) When the time comes for our hero to be finish his training and choose a gimmick, the owner's daughter conspires for him to become the new Foul King.

The thing on his chest is not just his wrestling symbol and a fancy chest protector. It is hollow and inside there are all the "international objects" as Gordon Solie used to call them that a cheating wrestler would want - powders, rope, but especially a fork. There is a great sequence when our hero is presented with his wrestling fork and all the wrestlers gather around in respect and someone says reverently "Abdullah" and all the wrestlers nod.

(When I originally saw it, at this point, I was literally dying with laughter and about 500 non-wrestling fans in the theatre with me at Fantasia were looking at me like I was some kind of mutant. I think the only other guy in the theatre who understood the reference was the film programmer who organizes the El Santos films and the Godzilla movies.)

The new Foul King does a tour of the Korean countryside and becomes more and more popular. At which point, the Korean Vince McMahon approaches the dojo owner and former Foul King to put his new Foul King into the main event of the big Seoul show for the year which will be a tune-up match for the Korean champion before the Tokyo Dome show in Japan.

(In and of itself, there is an interesting display of hierarchy here as the wrestling dojo is lower on the totem pole in Korea than the big Korean fed, which is lower on the totem pole than Japan.)

Naturally, the former Foul King is suspicious and protests that his student is not yet ready for the main event of a Seoul super-card, but he allows himself to be convinced.

Admiral Ackbar: It's a trap!

The Korean Vince McMahon's plan is not just for his champion to have a tune-up match before Tokyo, it's to settle some scores that he has with the old Foul King by humiliating his student and to kill the Foul King character dead Dead DEAD by unmasking him.

And we all know what happens when you try and unmask a masked wrestler. SOMEONE IS GOING TO DIE.





...

...

...

That was probably more information that you needed.

Point is Foul King is a fricking amazing wrestling film. Hilarious with all kinds of references and jokes that you have to be a wrestling fan to get, but at the same time non-wrestling fans aren't alienated.

I should point out that I saw the film three maybe four years before I originally wrote this review in 2006, possibly longer. It was the summer before I saw my first IWS show, when Jericho won the indisputed title, so 2001? I haven't rewatched it since, so I am writing this from memory. Now, okay admittedly I am the guy with the freakish memory a la Archie Goodwin, still for a film to engrave itself into my memory for me to be able to literally quote scenes from it - it has to be a fricking incredible film. There are films that I saw within the last month where I would have to search my memory HARD just to remember the title, but this film is as fresh for me as if I saw it yesterday.

If the film has a weakness/weaknesses there are two - one the film is filled with clichés and two the hero goes from trainee to main event waaaaay too fast. But to its credit, the film is aware of these weaknesses and does its best to address them. For instance, while the film follows the structure of the 98 pound weakling at the beach comic book ads, it does make it clear that the problem is not the hero's physique, it is his reluctance to use his size and strength, his refusal to be assertive.

In terms of the speed with which our hero goes from trainee to main event, the film does document the various steps that a wrestler has to go to to get from one stage to another. One of the standard techniques of drama is to compress events to heighten drama which explains the pace. And the film does make it clear that normally there would be a longer "paying your dues" process.

...

To answer the original question...

I use the Foul King avatar, because it's an amazing film; because it's an avatar about wrestling and I love wrestling especially masked wrestling; because it's an avatar about cinema and I love cinema especially foreign cinema and especially especially Asian cinema; because it's an avatar about Korea and I am rather fond of Korea even if I have never been there, the combination of Asia and Catholicism is irresistible to me; and finally, because I adore obscure pop culture references and you don't get much more obscure than a Korean comedy about a masked wrestler.

How's that for a run-on sentence? (And a run-on answer?)

When We Were Marks: Nash vs. PCO

When We Were Marks
Kevin Nash vs. Pierre-Carl Ouellet
The Cliq vs. Jean-Pierre Lafitte

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, welcome to Wrestle Court. Our case today is the Cliq vs. Jean-Pierre Lafitte or as it is sometimes known Kevin Nash vs. PCO. I am pleased to represent and defend my client Jean-Pierre Lafitte, better known to some as Pierre Carl Ouellet or PCO.

The prosecutor Kevin Nash has summarized the case against Jean-Pierre Lafitte here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFe9X6cOC2s&feature=player_embedded

Or here:
http://www.iwswrestling.com
Footage courtesy of RF Video.

PCO’s recollection of what happened can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3I3UvDTuPU&feature=channel


To summarize the serious charges levelled by Wrestling Prosecutor Kevin Nash, he accuses PCO of insubordination for refusing to job to Kevin Nash or as he was then: WWF World Champion Diesel; of conspiracy for being a member of the Canadian Mafia; of cowardice for refusing to fight Kevin Nash backstage in Quebec City; and finally and most seriously of all the charges, of being a mark in the first degree, the ultimate sin in wrestling: of being a mark for one self.

The facts of the case are these:

In March of 1993, Jacques Rougeau Jr was looking for a new tag-team partner. His brother Ray had retired a couple of years before. Jacques had had a good singles run as the Mountie, but that gimmick was limited by the fact that Jacques could only use it outside of Canada. (The RCMP had legally blocked him from using the gimmick in Canada.) During a tour of Puerto Rico, Jacques met Carl Ouellet, a strong, agile Quebecois. Jacques called Vince McMahon to arrange a try-out. Carl Ouellet became Quebcker Pierre (hence Pierre-Carl Ouellet.) and by September of 1993, he and Jacques were WWF tag-team champions, beating the Steiners for the belts.

Many tag-teams have worked on the dynamic of one guy with wrestling talent doing all the work and his strong-guy partner. The Quebeckers worked on the principle that Jacques pissed people off, PCO was the strong guy and PCO was also the worker. Their relationship as a team is probably best summed up by their finishing move, where PCO climbed to the top-rope, Jacques flipped his wrists and PCO jumped off the top rope with a cannon-ball.

After trading the belts back in forth with Marty Jannetty and the 1-2-3 Kid, followed by Men on a Mission, the Quebeckers lost the belts for good to the Head-Shrinkers. Jacques decided to retire in the fall of 1994. His retirement match in Montreal against PCO, a sold-out match at the Montreal Forum, out-drew the Flair/Hogan 1994 Halloween Havoc retirement match and received massive local press including full page stories in the Journal de Montreal. Framed copies of those stories can still be found in Montreal sports bars.

Jacques Rougeau Jr. and Pat Patterson wanted to follow up that success by booking Montreal’s Olympic Stadium for a show head-lined by PCO against Bob Backlund for the title, but the idea was shelved. Instead Vince asked PCO to take time off to grow out his hair and beard and come back as an eye-patch wearing pirate, playing off the fact that PCO only has one good eye, having had one shot out by a BB gun when he was twelve.

Before debuting this new gimmick, PCO made one final appearance as Quebecker Pierre at a Montreal Forum show when Shawn Michaels’ scheduled opponent was not available. Foreshadowing his later conflict with Kevin Nash, PCO did not want to job to Shawn Michaels in front of his home-town crowd while Michaels, having just won the Royal Rumble, refused any ending but a victory. They compromised on a screwy ending with Michaels getting the pin despite PCO’s foot being on the ropes.

It sounds like one of many ridiculous and failed gimmicks of the time, but PCO made the Jean-Pierre Lafitte gimmick work with his trademark intensity and goofy charisma. The Pirate had a nearly six-month winning streak of enjoyable squashes, ended only by a highly entertaining feud with Bret Hart started when the Pirate stole Bret’s trademark sunglasses and leather jacket. Many people consider their two PPV matches to be amongst the best WWF matches of the 90s.

In September of 1995, the WWF were doing a house show tour of Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto. PCO was scheduled to face WWF champion Diesel at each show. Before the Montreal show, road agent Tony Garea informed PCO that he was jobbing to Diesel cleanly and quickly. ( A finish that Nash had taunted PCO with six weeks before during a TV taping.) PCO refused to job despite immense pressure to do so from Diesel and Shawn Michaels. Instead the match in Montreal ended in a stiff double count-out.

In Quebec City, Nash objected to a badly-landed top rope leg drop from PCO. Egged on by Scott Hall and Shawn Michaels (yelling from the Quebec Colisee player’s bench) Nash started stiffing PCO in the corner before ending the match with his boot and power-bomb finisher. Tensions ran so high that a backstage brawl nearly broke out with the Kliq (Nash, Michaels, Scott Hall, Sean Waltman, Triple H and Aldo Montaya) on one side and PCO backed up by Sid Vicious, Bob Holly, and the Smoking Gunns. The card was rearranged for the Toronto show with Nash wrestling against Waylon Mercy and PCO facing Fatu (Rikishi).

Within a couple of weeks, PCO was demoted to jobber status and within a couple of months he was gone from the WWF.

In other words, while I am here to offer a defence for PCO’s actions, the truth is that he was tried by the Kliq, found guilty by them and sentenced to lose his push and his position. I would offer this as proof that PCO was never a member of any conspiracy. The only thing that Bret Hart and PCO conspired to do was to have good matches. In fact, Bret Hart wanted PCO to win the Inter-Continental title, but this never happened because the Kliq wanted Shawn Michaels to have that belt instead. The Canadian Mafia may sound like a good line; but it was an awfully ineffective conspiracy. Especially compared to the Kliq, who orchestrated who would get the WWF belts and when.

Consider what the Cliq did to Shane Douglas after they got rid of PCO. Rather than losing the Inter-Continental belt to Dean Douglas, Shawn Michaels vacated the belt, it was awarded to Douglas and the same night Scott Hall beat him for the belt, completely neutering Douglas’ character. Shane quit the next day.

The astonishing thing to me is that so many people, so many wrestling fans, so many so-called experts are completely prepared to believe Kevin Nash’s word that PCO did something wrong in Montreal. There are many, in fact who garble the story and would have you believe that PCO wanted to win the WWF title in Montreal. I will simply note that even Shawn Michaels and Kevin Nash never accused PCO of that. There is a world of difference between not wanting to be job and insisting on winning.

People say that PCO made the wrong choice. The truth is he had no choice. He could allow his heat to be stolen by the Cliq the way that Shane Douglas lost his heat or he could stand up to them and have them go running to Vince demanding that he be fired. PCO decided to stand up to Kevin Nash and Shawn Michaels. Despite Kevin Nash’s accusation, PCO is no coward.

Leave aside the fact that in professional wrestling there are few cowards. Consider two things about PCO. First, he pursued his dream of becoming a professional wrestler despite missing an eye. That is not the path of a coward, and a coward would never have acted as PCO did in the Brawl-For-All.

PCO was brought in for the first round of the Brawl-For-All against Dr. Death Steve Williams and was assured that their match would be a shoot. (Although obviously in a tournament designed by Jim Ross in an attempt to get his friend over as a legitimate tough guy, is it any shock at all that Dr. Death’s first match was against the guy with one eye?) Before his match, Road Warrior Hawk came to PCO with a message from Dr. Death. If PCO went down quickly, Steve wouldn’t have to hurt him. PCO’s response: “Tell Steve he can fuck himself!” Not the words of a coward, nor the actions of one later when PCO took the match to the limit before the refs called it just before the final bell.

So let’s dismiss cowardice and conspiracy off the list of charges, leaving insubordination and being a mark.

PCO did not want to lose to Kevin Nash in his home-town. Was this insubordination? Perhaps, but it was in defence of PCO’s career, of the Jean-Pierre Lafitte character and of the WWF. To understand why PCO was acting in self-defence of himself and others, you have to understand Montreal.

Jerry Lawler may revile Montreal as “Topsy-Turvy” but the truth is that Montreal is one of the few places where wrestling is still the right way up. Montreal is an old-school wrestling town, where the crowds pay to see their home-town heroes and most importantly to see their home-town heroes win. When Jacques Rougeau Jr. lost his retirement match to PCO, he was passing on a torch handed down from World Champion Yvon Robert, from one generation of wrestling hero to another, each of whom head-lined the Montreal Forum and sold it out. (Including Johnny Rougeau, Maurice “Mad-Dog” Vachon, Dino Bravo and Ray Rougeau.) Montreal wrestling fans do not pay to see their French Canadian heroes lose and especially to lose quickly, much the same way that they get cranky when their beloved Montreal Canadiens bow out of the hunt for the Stanley Cup early and ignomiously.

PCO knew that losing to Kevin Nash and especially losing quickly and convincingly would destroy his ability to draw fans in Montreal, especially in his Jean=Pierre Lafitte gimmick, a character that the WWF had invested time and money getting over. Most importantly, PCO knew that without a French Canadian star at the top of the card, the WWF would have a difficulty selling tickets in Montreal and Quebec City. (Which rather neatly explains why Sylvain Grenier won the WWE tag-team titles so many times.)

In the old school days of wrestling, the job of the champion was to keep the belt and to make the local guy look good. Old-time wrestling fans in Halifax still speak of Terry Funk, NWA World Champion, cheating to save his title when Leo Burke had him trapped in a sleeper hold after 58 minutes. (Funk spilled them both over the top rope for the disqualification.) Terry Funk kept his title, but the crowd was happy because they were convinced that their Leo should have won. Which allowed the local promoter to pack the place again the next time a World Champion came to Halifax with Leo fighting AWA World Champion Rick Martel to a sixty-minute draw.

No one is saying that Kevin Nash should have fought PCO to a sixty-minute draw, but he should have followed in the footsteps of Ric Flair and made the local guy look good while keeping his title. Isn’t the whole point of a house show to maintain the status quo while sending the home-town fans home happy?

If only there had been a man in WWF management who could have stood up for PCO!

Well, actually, now that you mention it, one of the people that Kevin Nash mentions who did not want PCO to job in Montreal was Pat Patterson. Most people think of Pat as the charter member of the “Kiss Vince’s Ass” club, but Pat was Vince chief booker for most of the Eighties and early Nineties. Most importantly for our purposes, Pat Patterson created and booked the Royal Rumble. (Heck, he still helps book the Royal Rumble to this day.) Beyond being a genius idea that sells itself and has made Vince McMahon millions of dollars, probably more money than any one individual wrestler has ever made for the WWF, the Royal Rumble is important because it was the match that made Kevin Nash a star.

Until the 1994 Royal Rumble, Kevin Nash had gone through a succession of failed mid-card WCW gimmicks, most with really bad hair: Steel (orange Mohawk), Oz (silver hair) and Vinnie Vegas (greaser mullet). With the WWF, he was getting some traction as Shawn Michaels’ bodyguard, Diesel, but it wasn’t until the 94 Rumble when he went completely bat-hit crazy and eliminated seven wrestlers in eighteen minutes that fans sat up and realized that Diesel was a bad-ass mother-fucker who would kick you in the face if you looked at him funny. To this day, people talk about the Diesel push. (Who is getting the Diesel push this year?) Some of those people have no idea that the Diesel that they are talking about Is Kevin Nash.

Would Kevin Nash have been World Champion without that Diesel push? Would he have gotten the big guaranteed money from WCW? Would the Outsiders have happened? Would the NWO have happened? Maybe, but Pat Patterson’s booking is what made Kevin Nash a star. So, when Patterson said that he didn’t want PCO to job in Montreal, maybe Nash might have wanted to listen to the man who made him a star rather than dismiss him as a member of the “Canadian Mafia”.

Because, we know how good Kevin Nash’s booking judgement is, especially when it comes to booking himself. Consider January 4, 1999. Kevin Nash is WCW World Champion having beaten Goldberg for the belt thanks to Scott Hall’s taser. Their rematch is the main event of Monday Night Nitro in a sold-out show at the Georgia Dome. Goldberg is the home-town hero, but instead of getting his rematch he is “arrested”, Hulk Hogan comes out, pokes Kevin Nash in the chest and covers him in the infamous Finger-Poke of Doom incident. In one night, as the booker, Kevin Nash burned the Georgia Dome as a wrestling venue, destroyed Goldberg’s mystique to his fans and began the “It’s Just a Prop” booking of the WCW World Title that turned the belt into a joke. Kevin Nash’s mistake was to misjudge the local fans’ affection for their home-town hero. A mistake which is awfully similar to the exact same error that Kevin Nash made in Montreal.

The problem, of course, is that Kevin Nash doesn’t believe that he made a mistake in Montreal, because he truly believes that he is a bigger star in Montreal than PCO is. The same way that Kevin Nash believes that he could have beaten PCO backstage in a shoot match back in 1995 and the way that Nash still believes that he could beat PCO today in a shoot match.

For politeness sake, let’s leave cowardice out of the equation and agree that both men are courageous. The fact of the matter is that every crime that Kevin Nash accuses PCO of, are crimes that Kevin Nash is guilty of: Conspiracy (the Kliq), Insubordination (ignoring the wishes of the WWF head booker and the man that made him a star) and most importantly being a mark in the first degree, because really there have been few wrestlers in the history of our so-called sport who are as big a mark for themselves as Kevin Nash is.

That is why Kevin Nash is coming back to Montreal on May 30th. Revisiting the scene of his crime. Looking to prove once and for all that he is a more popular wrestler, a more dangerous fighter and a better man than Pierre-Carl Ouellet.

I have presented to you the case of the Kliq vs. Jean-Pierre Lafitte of Kevin Nash vs. PCO, but the truth is that you can’t give PCO the justice that he deserves. The only justice that he will ever have is the justice that he takes inside the squared circle.

I am not going to sit here and convince you that wrestling is real, but let me ask you:

If someone had caused you to lose your dream job and had cost you millions of dollars in lost revenue and you had a once in a lifetime chance to punch that person in the face as hard as you wanted and not go to jail for it. Well? What would you do?

And most importantly, when he is given that exact opportunity, what will Pierre-Carl Ouellet do?

Yeah. I am excited to find out too.

*****

Kevin Nash vs. PCO will be the special attraction during the International Wrestling Syndicate 10th Anniversary show on March 30th at the Medley.

Other matches include:

IWS Title Match: Champion Beef Wellington vs. former champions Viking, Sexxxy Eddy and Franky the Mobster

IWS Canadian Title: Canadian Champion Shayne Hawke vs. Twiggy

IWS Tag Team Title: Champions The Untouchables (Dan Paysan and James Stone) vs. 2.0 (Jagged and Shane Matthews)
If 2.0 lose they can longer be a team in the IWS.

IWS Ten Commandments Death Match: The Green Phantom vs. PCP Crazy F’N Manny
Ten different hardcore weapons, one for each year of the IWS will be used in the match!

MMA Match: EXesS vs. Heavy Maxx Fury

IWS Veteran Battle Royale: Twenty man over the top Battle Royal with wrestlers from the ten years of the IWS.

The IWS proudly presents: X, Our Tenth Anniversary Show. Special guest is Big Sexy Kevin Nash! X takes place Saturday, May 30th, at the beautiful, downtown Medley, 1170 St-Denis, near the Berri-UQAM Metro. Montreal, Quebec, CANADA. Doors open at 7:30 PM, show starts at 9 PM. VIP tickets are $35, Regular tickets are $25. VIP ticket holders admitted first. No reserved seating. Tickets can be purchased online at http://www.ticketpro.ca or in person at the Medley box office. This is an all ages show. Card and times subject to change. For more information go to www.iwswrestling.com or write to Llakor@hotmail.com

First Post

Well, we will see how long and regular I can keep this up. CRZ has always said that I should keep a blog, if only to keep me from clogging up the-W with useless posts that he cares nothing about.

Fair warning, this blog will likely feature a lot of SHILL~!ing for the International Wrestling Syndicate for whom I have been head writer slash publicist slash SHILL~! since December of 2003, as well as for Inter-Species Wrestling for whom I am the Worst Ring Announcer in the Multiverse since 2005 and Commissioner since Rotchy and Twiggy randomly named me Commissioner during live commentary for Love Hurts in February of 2007.

I will also be talking about the YoungCuts Film Festival for whom I have been Festival Director since March of 2007.

In wrestling, my main claim to fame is that I am one of five people who can take credit for creating the El Generico gimmick, the most important being the man who wears the mask, a man that I am proud to call a friend.
(And yes, despite claims by some to the contrary, it has always been the same guy.)
I am also Kevin Steen's official biographer. I would say that I was also Steen's friend, except that Steen (from choice) has no friends with the possible exception of El Generico and Steen kicks his ass on a regular basis.

I sporadically publish a column about wrestling history called When We Were Marks, hence the blog title. When I get around to writing them, I always release these on Wednesday for obsessive reasons.

Wednesday is named after Odin, the king of the Norse Gods. (Thor's dad.) Perched on his shoulder are two ravens, Huginn "Thought" and Muninn "Memory". In Norse mythology, Odin sacrificed one eye to gain the loyalty of these two ravens who fly the span of the Earth every day and return to whisper into Odin's ears the things that he should know and, more importantly, the things that he should remember.

Note that this is ORAL memory and ORAL storytelling that we are talking about. Not the memory that we keep in books, but the memory that is passed from one storyteller to another. Memory that takes up certain forms and rituals to protect the information from twisting and changing as it passes from one set of lips to another set of ears.

John Ford's ode to Oral Memory
Many stories relate that Odin sacrificed his eye to gain Huginn and Muninn's loyalty. Few relate that he did so by gouging out his own eye and then feeding it to his Don't call them pets! ravens. Even fewer and darker are the stories which tell us that the price for Huginn and Muninn's loyalty was not one eye, but TWO!
One eye right away... and the other later.

When I do write my When We Were Marks columns, I am aiming for Odin. For that combination of myth, of personal sacrifice, of self-mutilation, of knowledge and oral memory represented by the combination of One-Eyed Odin and his ravens Huginn and Muninn. I won't promise to have a new column up every week, but I have enough old ones that I plan on rewriting and republishing that there should be something new up at least every Odin's Day.

The rest of the time, I will be talking about less serious wrestling stuff, about films, about comics and all the other pop culture junk that bounces around my empty skull. I will probably also post up some examples of films from the YoungCuts Film Festival from time to time. And I may even take requests.