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The W - Pro Wrestling - T.o.W. Quitte ou Double (Blainville 05/12/07)
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Llakor
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Since: 2.1.02
From: Montreal, Quebec, CANADA

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Results and Opinions for Top of the World Wrestling
Quitte ou Double
Saturday, May 12th, 2007
Parc Equestre Blainville
Blainville, Quebec, CANADA


Show put on by Marc Blondin and Pierre Carl Ouellet, the French announce team for TNA Impact on RDS, the French version of TSN.

Pierre Carl Ouellet needs no introduction. Marc Blondin for years was the French interviewer for the WWF. He would do stand-up interviews for WWF Superstars where they would cut promos in English and he would translate their promos into French.

Quick and Dirty results for the Ritalin crowd and then I will start ranting at length.

Quick and Dirty Results
Attendance: About 400.

Combat d’Ouverture
Gorgeous Mike vs. Guil Reno
Gorgeous Mike beat Guil Reno in 6:57 with a roll-up.

Combat par Elimination a Six Lutteurs
Player Uno vs. Stupefied vs. Alex Price vs. James Kraven vs. Deniss Sensation vs. Jimmy Stone
Deniss Sensation eliminated Jamea Kraven with a top rope splash at 5:37.
James Kraven hit a top rope 360 splash on Deniss Sensation then rolled Stupefied on top for the pin at 10:15.
Alex Price pinned Stupefied at 11:59.
Player Uno pinned Alex Price at 12:25.
Vanessa Kraven pinned both Player Uno and Jimmy Stone to win the match at 16:46.

Combat Par Equipe
2.0 with Vanessa Kraven vs. Beef Wellington and Raid
2.0 pinned Beef Wellington with the Sweet Taste of Professionalism at 10:23.

Combat en Simple
Bishop vs. Chakal
Bishop pinned Chakal after 8:56.

Combat Extreme par Equipe
Sunny War Cloud and Samson vs. Les Bouchard Simard de Marc le Grizzly
(Tank, Mad Dog, Tolo, NCW Security (Oz) and an anonymous Hot Girl (D-Vyne))
Mad Dog pinned Sunny War Cloud at 9:22 after Marc burned Sunny with a fire ball.

Combat en Simple
Dan Paysan vs. Max Boyer
Dan Paysan pinned Max Boyer at 8:52

Combat Triple Menace
Franky the Mobster with Josianne the Pussycat vs. Sexxxy Eddy vs. “Paranoid” Jake Matthews with Lollipop
Franky the Mobster superplexed Jake Matthews through a table. Eddy covered for the pin at 8:58.
Eddy pinned Franky the Mobster for the win at 15:58 with a surprise roll-up.

Combat Special TNA
Alex Shelley vs. Petey Williams
Alex Shelley tapped to the Canadian Crab at 16:23.

Combat Principal de la Soiree
Pierre Carl Ouellet with PCP Crazy F’N Manny vs. Rhino with Marc Blondin and CFL star Ed Filion
Rhino gored referee Fred la Merveille through PCO and a table set up in the corner. Marc Blondin counted the pin at 17:52

*****************************************

Combat d’Ouverture
Gorgeous Mike vs. Guil Reno
Gorgeous Mike beat Guil Reno in 6:57 with a roll-up.

In NCW, Sunny War Cloud and Guil Reno are a fairly popular tag team, but the ToW brain trust decided to spilt that team apart. Guil Reno has a gimmick based around his origins from Shawinigan, Jean Chretien’s hometown. He comes to the ring to the incredibly catchy “Shawinigan Boyz” and wears tape on his hand with “819” written on them, the area code for rural Quebec including Shawinigan. When Guil started this gimmick, Montreal promoters tried to pitch him as a heel, but it never worked, the more he ran down Montreal and boasted about how great Shawinigan was, the more people cheered.

Gorgeous Mike’s best move is a leg drop which he delusionally believes is a finisher. He counts along with his fingers with the ref and is always shocked when his opponent kicks out at two.

Gorgeous Mike did some really bad mike work after his entrance. Guil Reno got great face heat from the crowd and built on that with some good mike work where he mocked Mike’s high-pitched nasal whine.

Pointless IWS Digression

The Green Phantom joined me at booth side to bitch about not being booked for the show and to confirm that despite how terrifying his injury looked at the last IWS show that he was and is fine and will be ready to go at the next IWS show, even claiming that he could have wrestled the next day after getting thirteen stitches (three internally and ten externally.)

The youtube of that injury is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDC08_issBc

The running around makes us look a bit like idiots (maybe a lot like idiots.) We were caught off guard because the match was never supposed to happen, let alone be a death-match. Originally, Chris Bishop and Lionel Knight (Team Checkmate) were supposed to fight the Hardcore Ninjaz in a first encounter of those teams, while Player Uno and Stupefied (The Super-Smash Brothers) were scheduled to face the then IWS Tag Team champions, the Green Phantom and Sexxxy Eddy, in another first encounter. When Chris Bishop injured his hand going through a pane of glass at UWA Hardcore the night before in a stupid spot that makes the Phantom injury look like a minor scratch, suddenly the Ninjaz had no opponents leading directly to them being injected into the tag team title match and thus to the Phantom injury which caught a bunch of IWS staffers out of position all going, “Oh yeah, the Ninjaz and Phantom hate each other. FUCK! Should have been at ring-side just in case.”

End Pointless IWS Digression

When Guil Reno made a hop plancha with all the velocity of a diving tortoise, the Green Phantom observed that this is why he doesn’t do dives, he just can’t build enough velocity for it to look good. “Despite three obvious fuck-ups, the crowd is still into it and giving good heat,” said the Green Phantom as Guil hit his best looking move of the match so far - a leaping leg lariat, “Shows the difference between an indy crowd and an average crowd. An indy crowd would be shitting on this match to death.”

Guil Reno did a very nice Code Red which got roundly criticized by everyone in close proximity to me as being disrespectful to Petey Williams, since the flipping power bomb is too close to the Canadian Destroyer’s flipping pile-driver. (At the time, we all thought that Shelley/Williams was the next match, because that was what the program announced.)

As a follow-up, Guil Reno leaped from the top, got knees and Gorgeous Mike eventually won with a roll-up. The NCW referee either failed to see Gorgeous Mike’s feet on the ropes or noted that Mike was unable to actually get his feet on to the ropes until after the three was counted. The spirit being willing to cheat, but the flesh being too weak to actually do it.

A hum-drum sloppy match that benefitted from its placement on the card, but served its purpose to get the crowd warmed up and prepared for better wrestling to come.

****************

Most people writing about this show have been perhaps subconsciously kay-fabing the crowd up to 500 perhaps as much as anything to mollify the disappointment at a show that most anticipated would easily draw a thousand given that it had the holy grail of free TV advertising with Marc Blondin and PCO promoting the show non-stop during the French version of TNA Impact even going so far as to put their jobs on the line based on the results of the matches on the show and announcing various wrestlers as being on Team PCO or Team FUN (aka Blondin’s team.)

I counted a little over 350 based on the following calculation: There were ten round “VIP Tables” each with ten people at them. The parterre seats had room for just over 150 people and there were a little over 100 people in the stands. As the show went on the stands filled up a bit more, so I will be generous and credit them with 400.

On the other hand, drawing 400 for a first promotion is a good start.

On the gripping hand, Blondin and PCO were well placed to have the best first show of any Quebec show in history. Participating in the show were: PCP Crazy F’N Manny, the promoter of IWS; Sunny War Cloud, the promoter of the (defunct) CCW and numerous spot shows in rural Quebec; Fred la Merveille, promoter of MWF; Marc le Grizzly, promoter of the “Madness” spot shows that brought Samoa Joe, CM Punk, Roderick Strong and Austin Aries to Montreal; and Jake Matthews, who helped the (defunct) Gatineau promotion CPW promote shows in St-Jerome, the next town over from Blainville. Right there, you have one of the greatest collection of Quebec promoting experience ever gathered in one show.

The punch line is that I am virtually certain that not one of them was asked, even as a courtesy, to provide the benefit of their experience. Sunny went out of his way when he was writing about his participation to say that he was going only as a wrestler and that he had nothing to do with the success or failure of the show, which felt a little like Pontius Pilate washing his hands of Jesus. Understand, I do not always agree with Sunny, but I always make damn sure that I know why I am disagreeing with him, because if I do not have a damn good reason why he is wrong, he is almost always right. (And most of the places where I am right and he is wrong have everything to do with running shows in Montreal. In St-Pascal-de-Cul-de-Chien, County of Bum-Fuck, Quebec, Sunny is probably right and I am probably wrong.)

I know for a fact that no one asked for Manny and Fred’s input, which is bizarre because Marc Blondin took part in a red-hot IWS show Un F’N Sanctioned 2007 that packed the Medley. You would think that just being part of that atmosphere, you would want to ask the guys responsible for it how to recreate that magic. I think Manny and Fred suffer sometimes from the fact that it is easy to underestimate them. You look at the two, the eternal comedian unable to take anything seriously and the eternal adolescent trapped in a a Greek Fonzie impression and it becomes easy to believe that duplicating what they have achieved should be easy… until you pitch forward straight on to your face trying it.

I have no way of knowing if Jake was tapped for his intimate knowledge of promoting in the area, but I would bet money that he was not.

As for Grizzly, while his shows were always critically acclaimed, he is also easily the least successful promoter on the list in terms of drawing money and crowds or at least enough money to pay for the talent that he booked. (This is not to imply that Marc failed to pay his talent, just to imply that to pay for his talent he ended up dipping into his own pocket.) I do not know if Marc’s expertise was sought for the show although I do know that some of the people who helped Marc put on his shows, helped Blondin. I suspect that they were recruited for help because they helped put on Marc’s shows, but Marc’s advice was not sought. Which would be a little like asking me and DJ Stab Tony and Technical Difficulties to run a show without asking Manny for help.

(This actually happens to me on a regular basis. Money marks approach me to help them promote their show(s). I invariably say that they will have to involve Manny. They reply that they do not want Manny’s help, they want mine. This is flattering, but pointless. I am only good at what I do because of Manny. We may fight like cats and dogs, in fact we rarely even speak to one another the week after a Medley show, but SHILL~ing for Manny means that I am SHILL~ing for something that I know has a decent chance to be worth a good God damn. I could SHILL~ for shit, but it would still stink.)

At this point, the more perceptive amongst you might well be asking whether there is a certain amount of residual bitterness here built around the fact that they did not approach me for help either. Yup, they did not approach me for help. Yup, I am bitter about it. And Yup, the brain trust at ToW are idiots not to have asked any of the above for help or advice.

They did pick a nice location for the show though. According to rumour, Blondin’s daughter rides at the Blainville Equestrian Park and he got the location cheap. It has a big huge nice lobby, perfect for lining up crowds. Entering the Equestrian Park proper, there are rows of benches to each side of the doors as you walk in. In front of you is the arena floor where the horses ride. This had a large curtain to your left cutting a quarter of the arena off to use as a backstage. The ring was set up to your right. To the back of the arena floor, near the curtains was an entrance built to look like a giant ghetto blaster, with ring barriers set at a diagonal to the ring creating an aisle for the wrestlers. Surrounding the ring at three sides were about 150 chairs, about fifty on each side. The side without chairs being the side facing the stands. On each side of the chairs, at the corners and the side without chairs were a series of VIP tables each with ten chairs. The idea for these being that the tables were sold for $300 or $30 per chair, but you could not buy individual places only the table. I am not entirely certain what else the tables came with. I have heard that each person at the table got a free ToW t-shirt, free food and free beer, but that seems like a money-losing proposition especially in front of a Quebec crowd. (The only way to lose money worse on that kind of give-a-way would be to throw in free smokes.)

On your left as you came in was a square tent set up as the merchandise booth. I set up there with Pat LaPrade along with Pat’s Quebec Wrestling Almanacs, photos for Dan Paysan, videos and shirts for Lufisto and shirts for (naturally) shirt maestro Beef Wellington. The booth was also selling two different ToW shirts and two different PCO shirts: a PCO STYLE shirt that Beef designed and a “Deux Pieds de Bras” shirt which was nowhere near as nice as the Beef designed shirt. The booth was also selling a lot of car memorabilia, with flashy (literally) car-logo baseball caps and car models.

I quickly got into a conflict with the guy running the booth, because I (gasp) actually talked to potential customers and tried to figure out what they might be interested in. The source of his discontent was that most of the people coming over to the booth were more interested in the wrestling products than they were in his stupid car memorabilia. He seemed to think that I was stealing his customers, but I am not going to try and sell a model car when someone wants to buy LaPrade’s almanac. LaPrade actually told the guy flat-out, “Mike has been running the merchandise booth at IWS for years. You are better off just letting him alone. You will sell more that way.” I ended up stationed at the corner of his booth as he bitched about the fact that I hadn’t paid for a spot. Sure, I also was not actually selling anything that belonged to me or that I was getting money from. I was trying to sell almanacs for LaPrade, pictures for Paysan, shirts for Lufisto, Beef and PCO and DVDs for Lufisto.

(My one big parasite move of the day was to put flyers for the IWS on the chairs before the audience came in, but that was a tit-for-tat because we let Blondin do that at our show and he got more out of that than we did, because we had the bigger crowd and we actually announced his show during ours.)

Also, we let Blondin sell tickets to his show at ours, although typical of the Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight antics of ToW, the guy selling tickets set up at our booth right after the announcement for Blondin’s show was made, stayed for about five minutes and then dashed backstage to take part in an interview with Christian and never came back. Did not sell one. Naturally, as soon as he left, people came by looking for ToW tickets and since the moron had not left any for me to sell, I sold them IWS tickets instead.

At the risk of displaying yet more bitterness, the smart thing for the moron running the merchandise booth to have done was to encourage me to sell his products as well as that of the wrestlers. It probably would not have helped his sales any, since they were the wrong products for the wrong crowd, but it would have given him his best shot rather than leaving his apathetic teen in charge of the booth who basically ignored the customers all show long, while the guy running the booth rather than actually RUNNING it, spent the entire show wringing his hands over the fact that he was not selling anything.

Before the show, Rhino and Petey Williams came out and set up, Petey in the booth, Rhino just to the side of the booth in front of the Hummer on display and the wacky egg-shaped wheeled vehicle on display that later got turned into a demonstration event for how many strippers you could cram into an egg-shaped bicycle thingy. Rhino had a Polaroid instant camera and Petey had glossies. Rhino was charging people $10 a shot to have their picture taken with him and the polaroid signed. Petey was charging $10 for signed glossies. Rhino did way more business, opening three refills for the Polaroid each with ten shots and selling all of them. (This means that he either made $300 or $400 depending on whether the camera was loaded when he started or empty.) Petey probably sold five or six glossies. To the credit of both, they willingly signed for free anything else that was given to them like the back of ToW shirts and the program.

The program was a little odd since it gave the order of the matches. We were making fun of that because it listed Williams vs Alex Shelley as the second match. Me, LaPrade, the Green Phantom and Raiden were all mocking that decision until it became apparent that rather than it being a stupid booking mistake, it was a stupid printing mistake. Other than the main event, the opening match and (I think) the fifth match, the order of the matches listed in the program was completely wrong.

Hey two thousand plus words in and I have only talked about one match so far. That has to be some kind of record, even for me.

And if you were about to criticize my pacing of the writing of this article, that I should have split all this bitching between each of the matches rather than cramming it in between the first and second match, you know exactly how we felt as ToW played an seemingly endless series of promos none bad in and of themselves, although the decision to play an entire Hulk Hogan promo with Marc Blondin translating circa the Hulkster’s feud with the One Man Gang was a very odd choice.

This is probably as good a place as any to complain about the fact that for a promotion run by a wrestling announcer, the guy that he hired to announce the show was DREADFUL. He blew his voice ragged in the first match and had no understanding of crowd psychology. I mean he was trying to get the crowd to start a T-O-W chant which is hard to do in a promotion that has been around for a while, but simply pathetic at a promotion’s first show. I mean why are people going to chant before the very first match? And even after the first match, well, while well received that match was nothing to prompt chanting.

****************

Combat par Elimination a Six Lutteurs
Player Uno vs. Stupefied vs. Alex Price vs. James Kraven vs. Deniss Sensation vs. Jimmy Stone
Deniss Sensation eliminated Jamea Kraven with a top rope splash at 5:37.
James Kraven hit a top rope 360 splash on Deniss Sensation then rolled Stupefied on top for the pin at 10:15.
Alex Price pinned Stupified at 11:59.
Player Uno pinned Alex Price at 12:25.
Vanessa Kraven pinned both Player Uno and Jimmy Stone to win the match at 16:46.

This was more like it.

I had concerns going in that this match featuring NCW cruisers and IWS cruisers with very little experience with each other was going to be a total train wreck, but it came together quite nicely and was arguably the match of the night.

The match was fought Lucha Libre style with new wrestlers checking in as other wrestlers rolled out of the ring, or (more likely) were thrown out (or even more likely) dove out. Lufisto reffed with brisk energy in a ref bikini sports top and a ref skirt. The early star was Deniss Sensation given the ball and a chance to run with it, he did very well in the spotlight. Deniss brought the crowd to its feet early on with a SWEEEEET leaping lariat which might have seemed like a gauntlet thrown at Guil Reno’s feet, if Reno’s own lesser lariat had not happened about an hour before. Jimmy Stone made himself the heel of the match early on by grabbing Alex Price in mid-air to prevent a Price dive to the disgust of the crowd.

Stupefied got the better of James Kraven, but Deniss Senstation killed Stupefied and threw him out of the ring to give himself the chance to splash Jimmy K from the top for the pin and the first elimination.

The elimination of Mr. Toilet Skirt prompted a general dive sequence started by Deniss Sensation with a shoulder-first dive. Despite having prevented Alex Price from diving earlier on, Jimmy Stone shrugged and joined in the dive from the apron. Alex Price and Stupefied faced off in the ring, but decided to combine forces in a double dive.

Back inside, Deniss Sensation missed a splash and Alex Price threw him into the corner before Quebec’s resident Milton Berle (by which I refer neither to his influence on television, nor the size of his dick) hit Deniss with an OLE! Kick. The Priceless One went up top where he was quickly joined by Player Uno and Stupefied. The four fought up top until Lufisto yanked all four off to splat on the canvas to the cheers of the crowd.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GARP7sRzP8E

Poor sport James Kraven, who had been sulking at ring side looking for his chance, hit the already stunned Deniss Sensation with a 360 splash and dragged Stupefied on top for the pin. Stupefied built on that momentum against his Super Smash Brother, Player Uno with a Spanish Fly.

(This perked up the Green Phantom who got hit with it out of nowhere during the IWS show where he got injured Know Your Enemies 2007 and he never got a really good like at the move until the ToW show.)

Alex Price got involved in the Super Smash Squabble and eliminated Stupefied. Uno took offence and quickly disposed of Alex Price.

That left Player Uno and Jimmy Stone to fight it out and the crowd was solidly behind uno… Uno… UNO… UNO! who hit Stone square on the top of his pointed head with a Goomba Stomp, before throwing his elbow pad into the crowd. Jimmy rallied and went up top but Uno caught and crotched him. Both men were fighting up top and it seemed clear that we were building to a big finish, one that Jimmy Stone seemed destined to win since he had none of the pins in the match and it seemed to be one of those matches where everybody got a little something, something…

Then Vanessa Kraven hit the ring, killed both men and pinned the two of them before grabbing the mike to announce that it was time for Blainville to welcome some, “REAL MEN! 2.0.”

OK that really really really worked. Good use of Vanessa Kraven as a monster. Good way to introduce 2.0 as heels. Good way to transition from one match to another. (In the IWS, we call this ECW booking because one match organically bleeds into another and it was in ECW that most of us first saw this practiced.)

Combat Par Equipe
2.0 with Vanessa Kraven vs. Beef Wellington and Raid
2.0 pinned Beef Wellington with the Sweet Taste of Professionalism at 10:23.

Fred la Merveille was ref. I didn’t realize that he was going to be a ref and neither did LaPrade, Raiden or the Green Phantom so we shared a communal WTF? Moment.

2.0 are Shane Matthews and Jagged. They are awesome, but you knew that or if you did not you should. Beef Wellington is your most colourful wrestler in Quebec, your tasseled hero to kiddies everywhere and the greatest T-Shirt salesman ever to hit the squared circle. Raid is a NCW wrestler who is the latest in random partners that Beef has been saddled with in his battles with 2.0 over the years.

(Putting an IWS wrestler with an NCW wrestler in a tag team and trying to pretend that the pairing makes sense is right out of the Mark le Grizzly playbook. The Arsenal, to this day, complains about being forced to pair with Jimmy Kraven in a Madness show.)

Shane Matthews and Beef started. Shane tried to knock down Beef with a series of shoulder blocks, but kept failing. When he finally built enough momentum to threaten Beef’s vertical stability, Beef side-stepped and tripped him. Jagged tagged in and Raid gave him a series of drop toe holds from every conceivable angle. Shane, Jagged and Raid got involved in a three-way submission chain, until Beef grabbed hold of one end of the chain and turned it over to twist all three men to the delight of the crowd.

Beef and Raid started chopping (Jagged? checked yup Jagged!) silly. Beef chops loudly, Raid not so much. Ref Fred la Merveille was invited to take part in the chop-fest and he also chops much louder than Raid.

Shane Matthews got Beef in trouble and sarcastically began a “Beef” chant which the crowd picked up much to Shane’s disgust.

At this point, four strippers from the Saint-Pierre strip club walk in and totally distracted the crowd… and me. (Only in Quebec would a strip club be named after a saint.)

Raid saved Beef eventually and Vanessa Kraven came in to deck him. Raid took her off her feet with a hair pull, so Vanessa turned him into a Sopran-OH! by driving his nuts up into his throat for the lese-majeste. Vanessa exited the ring regally, but Jagged invited her back in to finish off the broken remains of Raid. Unfortunately for Vanessa, doing so made her a target for a Beef Wellington Ass Punch.

Beef’s victory was short-lived however as he got double-teamed with 2.0’s much copied Sweet Taste of Professionalism finisher for the pin.

In revenge, Raid gave after match Stunners to 2.0. Ref Fred la Merveille was eventually encouraged to give Vanessa Kraven a Stunner.

Blondin came to the ring with Maxime Boyer and Chakal as I am distracted by a rush of people looking for Beef shirts. They had been announcing the standings between Team PCO and Team FUN, but those announcements made no sense (they announced that the score was 4-2 after three matches and one of the three matches the six man had featured no members of either team.) and since I generally assumed that everything would boil down to PCO vs. Rhyno, I stopped trying to figure out the nonsensical scoring system.

PCO came out to confront Blondin. Boyer and Chakal attacked, but get chucked. Blondin threatened to attack PCO from behind, but got caught. Rhino charged in to make the save. The locker room cleared and we are treated to the bizarre spectacle of Alex Price begging Rhino not to attack PCO - to save it for the main event. Rhino glared at him and Alex tossed him the mike in a great toss/catch combo, like they had been practicing it for months.

Rhino on the mike, “PCO, I don’t give a damn about you. I don’t give a damn about Montreal. I came here to beat you and that’s what I do. After I beat you, you will need a job. I’ll put in a good word for you with TNA (Yay!} We need someone to sweep the ring. (Boo!} You think you’re special because you’re from Montreal. Well, Montreal SUCKS!”

Nice old school heel stuff here. It reversed the dynamic going into the show every one expected Blondin to be the face and PCO the heel, although you have to wonder about the wisdom of doing a heel-turn on your very first show.

Blondin brought out Ed Filion of the Montreal Alouettes to be his personal bodyguard, which is one of those mixed bag things. On one hand, Filion is an Alouette and thus beloved. On the other hand, Filion is the dirtiest player ever to wear the Als uniform, possibly ever to play in the CFL, so he is an automatic heel. On the gripping hand, if you need a bodyguard, you and he are automatic heels. And on the fourth hand, this should have been a big freaking red flag that Filion was not coming back next year and in fact he announced his retirement in Saturday’s Montreal Gazette a week after the ToW show. I wonder how much the timing of that announcement had to do with this show… if any.

According to my notes, “PCO sucks up to the crowd.”

And as if we haven’t killed enough time at this point they play this totally bizarre video promo with Blondin and Chakal where Blondin dropped Tobey Maguire’s name for no reason at all other than the fact that Spiderman 3 just opened.


Combat en Simple
Bishop vs. Chakal
Bishop pinned Chakal after 8:56.

As though the maybe there was a point there in-ring promo and the even more pointless video promo package was not enough to kill the momentum generated by the six man and the tag match, here come Chakal and Bishop out to suck out all the heat from the crowd like the oxygen being sucked out of an open door on the Space Shuttle. At this point, Chakal and Bishop have fought so often that even they are bored by the match.

To be nice for a tiny moment, I should say that both Bishop and Chakal are talented wrestlers. Talented, but so old school that they have to scrape dinosaur shit off their wrestling boots on the way to the ring, but still talented. The problem is that once you have gotten the crowd fired up with a great cruiser match and funny tag match, throwing these two guys out is like riding a skateboard down a hill straight into a patch of Super-Glue, especially when you sabotage them by killing the crowd before they come out. Really bad placement of the match.

My enthusiasm killed along with the crowds, I went to grab something to eat while Pat LaPrade took notes for me.

“Crowd = Dead. Chakal dominates match. Blondin throws in the towel because he was discouraged by all the two counts. (NCW) Ref stops the match. Blondin cause he’s the boss restarts the match. Bishop wins 8:56.”


Combat Extreme par Equipe
Sunny War Cloud and Samson vs. Les Bouchard Simard de Marc le Grizzly
(Tank, Mad Dog, Tolo, NCW Security (Oz) and an anonymous Hot Girl (D-Vyn))
Mad Dog pinned Sunny War Cloud at 9:22 after Marc burned Sunny with a fire ball.

I guess the reason that they broke up the Sunny War Cloud/Guil Reno team for this show was to give Sunny a slightly larger partner against his massive opponents. And I mean massive. Tank’s right leg probably weighs more than Guil Reno. Lufisto was ref and she had taken off her ref skirt in favour of black shorts.

Sunny War Cloud’s chief claim to fame is that (according to him) if his personal life had been less screwed up, he would have been Tatanka in the WWF. If you need someone to take a sick chair shot, Sunny is your go-to guy. The man has skin like leather. Oddly coloured, weirdly aged leather. Les Bouchard Simard seem to be inspired by Les Bougons who are basically a white trash Quebecois TV family doing a Trailer Park Boys riff in the original French. They did in fact hit Sunny with many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many chair shots. Samson briefly rescued his partner, but then foolishly dove out of the ring through Tank and a table. (Actually, I saw neither Tank nor the table. I saw Samson dive, heard the crunch, counted Bouchards and found Tank missing. Ring side witnesses later confirmed it.)

With Samson out of the way, Grizzly went all Memphis old school and hit Sunny with a fire ball. After being hit by more chair shots on the back than the Rock hit Foley with in their I Quit match, Sunny sold fire like death and Mad Dog picked up the pin.

The strippers from Saint-Pierre were there for a Bikini contest. Blondin took over the mike to announce them, and I thought that someone was stealing Sexxxy Eddy’s music for the strippers, but no! Blondin was being quickly booted by Sexxxy Eddy who lead a series of crowd cheers for the strippers who paraded around in bikini tops and so-tight they look like they were painted on jeans. Also, they all had Sunny War Cloud’s tan. Eddy refused to name a winner, and declared “On gagne toutes ce soir!”

Now right here, it would have made perfect sense for Eddy’s match to start with the strippers ripping Eddy’s clothes off, but instead they milled around waiting to double-dip, and totally distracting the crowd... and me... from the Dan Paysan vs. Max Boyer match, while they played the “How many strippers can you stuff into an egg-shaped bicycle thingy?” game.


Combat en Simple
Dan Paysan vs. Max Boyer
Dan Paysan pinned Max Boyer at 8:52
This match was just missing something, something. Perhaps because the crowd was not paying attention. Mostly, I think it was because both Max and Dan are faces in Quebec at the moment, and while Max was technically the heel in the match, he wasn’t heeling it up as much as he could. The match was competent and well executed, but lacked passion.

During the match, I was further distracted by Beef’s appearance at the merchandise booth who was thrilled to hear that he had sold a bunch of shirts. Beef was wearing an “I Love Taylor Rain” shirt and lamented that his obsessive reading of her blog had dimmed his romantic passion for her, although he still wanted “to do vicious nasty things to her for hours,”

Somewhere around here, Dan won the match, but I had no idea how.

Beef was distracted by the strippers and their tans.

Pat LaPrade had no idea, so I dispatched him to find someone who did.

While he was gone on this mission, the really bad ToW ring announcer tried to lead the crowd in a cheer for the ToW accountant. Seriously, WTF!?!


Combat Triple Menace
Franky the Mobster with Josianne the Pussycat vs. Sexxxy Eddy vs. “Paranoid” Jake Matthews with Lollipop
Franky the Mobster superplexed Jake Matthews through a table. Eddy covered for the pin at 8:58.
Eddy pinned Franky the Mobster for the win at 15:58 with a surprise roll-up.

Eddy was back with the four strippers. To Beef’s amusement and frankly our mutual awe, Eddy proceeded to grope each of the strippers in turn and to build a stripper pile finishing with Eddy tearing his pants off as the four strippers reached up to fondle his dick.

“You know it's hard out here for a pimp!”

Jake Matthews was out next with Lollipop, who for the first time that I can remember is actually sucking on a lollipop. The idiot announcer announced him as “Jacky Matthews”. Franky the Mobster is out with Josianne the Pussycat. Sadly, no “I want Pussy!” chants for Josianne like she gets from the twelve year olds in ALF. Franky was wearing the red bullet pants that he breaks out for special occasions. The idiot announcer called him Frank having used up his quota of “y”s on Jacky.

Frank and Jacky made an alliance to start the match, but Eddy took them both down with a rope flip splash. Eddy wanted to do a noggin-knocker, but Frank and Jacky were both too strong, until Eddy started stomping on toes. Eddy Irish Whipped Frank, Jacky, Josianne and Lollipop into the corner leading to a four-way orgy pile-up. While Frank and Jacky roll to the outside to regroup Eddy groped Lollipop and kissed Josianne. Frank and Jacky came back in, kill Eddy and then fight.

Possibly as an after-effect of the pile-up earlier, Frank grabbed Jacky’s ass, who retaliated by grabbing Frank by the balls. At this point, Lollipop and Josianne cleared the ring and started fighting. The NCW ref took off his ref shirt and handed it to Eddy who reffed the cat-fight. Lollipop won the match at 3:28 from the start of the match. Lacking two stop-watches, I have no idea how long the cat-fight was, maybe a minute.

Frank came back in and took out his valet Josianne with a lariat, while Eddy was humping Lollipop doggie-style. Jacky charged back in and after throwing both guys into separate corners and placing chairs over their faces, killed them both with charges to their corners. The crowd, scenting blood, began chanting “We Want Tables!”, but Jacky stopped the chants old school by murdering Eddy dead. Then killed Frank into a chair.

At this point, we were wondering if the ring was miked or something because the bumps sounded much louder for these guys than for any of the other matches to this point. LaPrade came back to report that no one actually saw the end of the Paysan/Boyer match. It either happened too quickly or everyone was too busy watching the strippers.

Back in the match, everybody spilled outside, giving Lollipop a chance to grab Jacky’s trusty shovel. Jacky set up a table in the ring and he and Lollipop put Eddy on it. Jacky went up top... to be crotched by Frank. Eddy, driven by some instinct of self-preservation, rolled off the table, just before Frank superplexed Jacky through the table. Eddy vultured the pin and we all thought the match was over until the idiot ring announcer announced that Jacky Matthews had been eliminated.

Well, if any of the matches on the show deserved overtime, this was the one.

Eddy was outside convinced that he had won, and he ate a Special Event Taker Tope from Frank. Eddy recovered quickly and threw Frank into the crowd. Eddy vaulted on to the apron for a pull-up ring rope sault, thought better of it and did his own Taker Tope for slightly more distance than Frank. Eddy began throwing chairs into the ring and eventually slid Frank in as well. Frank was playing possum though and he caught Eddy from behind with a wheelbarrow into a neck-breaker. Frank used Eddy’s chairs to build a fort and killed Eddy dead with a power bomb into the chairs, but he took too long celebrating and his lackadaisical cover only got Johnny ACE!

A disgusted Frank started an “Eddy” chant for shits and giggles. The crowd started chanting “Franky” - apparently not fooled by the ring announcer - so he roared, “You don’t understand! I’m the BAD GUY here!” While Frank was busy name dropping Scott Hall, Eddy recovered and grabbed Frank for a surprise roll-up and the win.

After the match, Frank killed the NCW ref dead.

That was pretty god damn fucking good.

One of the strippers came to the table at this point to admire Beef’s shirts. I was going to talk to her, but Beef literally appeared out of nowhere to take over.

Meanwhile, Alex Shelley had come to the ring wearing an IWS shirt and prepared to SHOOT!

“Let me tell you how my day has gone. I got up really early this morning to fly to this godforsaken place in a plane filled with chickens and crates to get to this dump where you don’t speak English at your (and I use the word loosely) International Airport who promptly lost my luggage. I am wearing Max Boyer’s tights and a girl, Lufisto’s, kick-pads (and an IWS shirt) and I have to fight some Canadian midget. Bring out the enhancement talent!”


Combat Special TNA
Alex Shelley vs. Petey Williams
Alex Shelley tapped to the Canadian Crab at 16:23.

Lufisto was ref. She had changed into a black skirt, because there is apparently some law that no Quebec joshi will appear in consecutive matches wearing the same outfit. I haven’t asked her if she has had her “Alex Shelley sweat on these” kick-pads framed or anything. I should. We got Japanese intros. As we watch the surprisingly loose and sloppy match, LaPrade reminds me that Dan Paysan beat Petey Williams in a match in Ontario last year.

Aside from the fact that Blondin presumably paid a lot of money for what was generously the fifth best match on the card, I object to this match for the exact reason that it was booked. It was advertised as a TNA match. Now, why would I spend money to go to a live show to see a match that I can see for free on TV? (Actually, I got in for free to T.o.W. too.) The philosophy of Quebec bookers has almost always been that if you are bringing in a guy like Petey Williams, you put him up against your local guy, like say Dan Paysan, because it elevates the local guy, hopefully the local guy learns something from the experience, and it gives the local fans a match that they would never see otherwise. Bringing in Petey Williams and Alex Shelley to do the same damn match that they have been doing for years at TNA is just a complete waste.

Plus, it really was not very good. It was not actively bad, but given the talent in the ring, it seriously failed to meet expectations.

Dan Paysan joined us at this point to try and sell some pictures. (He didn’t.) I asked him what the finish of his match was against Maxime Boyer was, but I get distracted by Fred la Merveille arriving to ref the main event. Hey! Fred’s in the main event! Good for him!

PCP Crazy F’N Manny was in PCO’s corner which made him a baby face... and that hurt my head. Manny cut an intense promo about having PCO’s back. The idiot announcer has been replaced but not by Blondin, It is obviously some other famous Quebec ring announcer who is actually, you know, good, but I have no idea who it is.

(DreNuke, a terser French version of me, only he actually knows stuff and can be at three shows simultaneously, tells me that it was Rodger Brulotte. This naturally should mean something. It doesn’t at least to me. )

“DrÉ says: the expos announcer
BONSOIR ELLE EST PARTIEEEEEE!!!”


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sy3xbA10ZUg

(Well, I feel stupid. Not a new feeling.)


Combat Principal de la Soiree
Pierre Carl Ouellet with PCP Crazy F’N Manny vs. Rhino with Marc Blondin and CFL star Ed Filion
Rhino gored referee Fred la Merveille through PCO and a table set up in the corner. Marc Blondin counted the pin at 17:52
The crowd was really into this match, and if the guys taping the match were competent at all, it will probably come across great on DVD, but like a Viking match. this match might as well have been sponsored by the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, because I COULDN’T SEE SHIT!

Which reminds me of a few more people whose talents did not get tapped and shaefully so for this show. First neither EXesS, Quebec’s most hated wrestler and arguably one of its most talented, nor Viking the IWS champion were on the card. The weird thing about that is that at the Medley show that Blondin was at Un F’N Sanctioned 2007, while he was waiting back stage to announce Christian Cage, the IWS crowd was going APE-SHIT for EXesS vs. Viking, the match of the night. If you were planning a big show wouldn’t you want the guys who caused that pandemonium to be involved?

IDIOTS.

Also, I have my doubts about the geniuses who taped the show. They had really expensive equipment, but that does not mean that they actually know how to use the equipment and being able to point a camera does not make you qualified to cover a sporting event let alone a wrestling event where part of your responsibility is protecting the wrestlers and the business. Naturally, no one asked Matt Fortune for his advice or his help.

I told Matt that the brain trust taping the show set up the hard cam on the ring entrance and then left no one to monitor it. I could hear his eyes rolling all the way from Ottawa.

While not watching the match or rather watching it and seeing nothing, I handed Dan my notes to write down the finish of his match, “Max tries a back suplex off the top rope but Paysan reverses it into a crossbody for the 1-2-3!”

Dan writes about himself in the third person. Good to know.

What I did see of the match:

PCO, one of the craziest high flying big men ever, did his cannonball out of the ring through something crunchy, presumably Rhino and a table. PCO signalled for victory by adjusting his “Dat Blue Ting” and took Rhino out, but the fact that PCO counted to five counted for nothing with Fred la Merveille hors du combat.

Blondin and Ed Filion got involved. Manny saved PCO from them, but paid for it by getting SLAUGHTERED by a blistering Rhino chair shot. I mean, I was feeling bad for Manny. Kudos to Rhino.

Poor Fred got used by Rhino as a weapon against PCO. I am guessing the fact that Blondin counted the pin will be used by PCO as justification why he should not lose his job.

For the record:
Team PCO wins
Bishop
Dan Paysan
Petey Williams

Team FUN wins:
2.0
Les Bouchard Simard
Rhino

So, the show was a TIE!?!
Ugh,

God knows there was some good wrestling here, but this could have been so much more. The problem with reinventing the wheel, is that if you don’t know what you are doing, you make all the mistakes that went into making the first wheel.

I texted Manny as a joke to ask when the next ToW show was. He, not joking, replied October.

That’s the problem with Quebec wrestling in a nut shell right there. Everyone has to be a promoter, No one can team together to make one big successful wrestling promotion. Everybody wants to be a Chief. No one is willing just to be a just a normal Indian.



"Don't Blame CANADA, Blame Yourselves!"
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----- DR: I was going by the two famous matches against the Briscoes from the Spectrum and from Madison Square Gardens. I guess Murdock and Adonis were defending the belts. DEAN.
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