- originally written Feb 26th, 2011-
Boo-ya! February. Let’s get down to business. Down to eh- what’s it they say?- down to “brass tacks”, as it were. Plastic tacks would be too frivolous, I suppose. It’s the brass ones we’ll be wanting. Yes, brass tacks.
Not plastic.
Anyway. Moving on.
Show-wise, February kicked off with my first trip of the year to Scotland, and back to Aberdeen- the Granite City- for WrestleZone. They were running a show in the Liquid nightclub in Aberdeen city centre and- interestingly- it was gonna be an over 18s one. The flight over was grand, via Ryanair; early on the Saturday morning, but not that early. WZ guys Bill, and Bryan Tucker picked me up, and we headed to Liquid around one, or thereabouts.
The last show I did in a nightclub was for German promotion Alpha Pro Wrestling at the beginning of last year; the roof was fairly low, and the place a bit cramped. Amazingly, though, that itself paled in comparison to a place I wrestled in with IwW in 2009. It was a hotel in Birr, Co. Offaly. The two-and-a-half hour trip into the Irish midlands (up into the mountains) was disconcerting enough, but to arrive and find that I could touch the roof while just standing in the ring- and I’m all of 5’9”!- was something else entirely. It amazes me the lack of scouting people do for venues sometimes! That said, Liquid was a perfect venue: loads of roof height, plenty of floor space, a spacious changing area, and easy access to get the ring in and out with relative ease. All the boxes were ticked.
Pre-show, I did another training seminar with the WZ lads, including a few new faces I hadn’t seen before. The last time I’d been over in WrestleZone was last August, I believe, if memory serves. I was quite happy with this seminar, and felt it got better further into the session, and I hit my stride, as it were, cracking the proverbial whip. (Proverbial, mind you. Security would’ve confiscated my training whip in Dublin Airport, had I tried to pack it with my carry-on luggage. I speak from experience…) Nevertheless, great effort shown by the lads involved, which was cool to see.
My match was with Crusher Craib- WZ’s biggest guy- and allowed me to work the classic ‘big man/little man’ style match, which is enjoyable if done well, and it was, on the night. A lot of things just clicked, and I was very pleased with how it turned out, especially since I’d never worked with Craib before, apart from a brief exchange in a battle royal last year. When I asked him what his finish was, pre-match, I was very pleased to hear him say he used a variation of the Black-Hole Slam. I figured a nice finish- and a pretty impactful one- would have him counter my springboard crossbody with the BHS. Only problem? Actually hitting the springboard—I don’t think I’d hit one since last August sometime. Certainly not the running variant I use. That was the only potential problem I foresaw.
Crowd-wise, I was really pleased by the reaction we got. It was a different type of crowd I was used to working in front of. Generally, I’d tend to work family crowds—kids, and parents. The kids are just happy to see wrestling (in any form), and the parents are just there with the kids, for the most part. Kids are brilliant for making noise and getting involved, but they can be fairly fickle/forgetful, and oftentimes match story-telling may kinda go over their heads. That may be a crass generalisation, but it’s mainly from experience. You could’ve wrestled a great match, popped the kids, and thought you made an impression, but go out during intermission, and you’d often get questions like “when are you wrestling?” or “who are you playing?” Playing?! In short, sometimes they forget, and their attention-spans can be quite short.
The interesting dichotomy is that so-called “smart marks” would tend to have a greater appreciation for good wrestling and quality matches but are, at the same time, the most critical observers, and will slate things more brutally than children might. In truth, I enjoy wrestling in front of both types of audiences, but on this night in Aberdeen, I felt incredibly liberated getting the opportunity to let the wrestling- to let the match- speak for itself. With family crowds- used to seeing WWE, who don’t tend to do much crowd work- you have to stay on them, keep them clapping, and keep interacting with them, to ensure they’re involved and interested. I totally understand the importance of involving the crowd—it’s the lifeblood of actually entertaining people—but I was delighted that I didn’t once have to start a clap, or anything like that. I could just go out, wrestle, and know that those in attendance were there to see wrestling.
I was very pleased with the match and, moreover, the springboard finish- that I hoped would come off nicely- worked like a dream. Craib caught me perfectly as I came back with the crossbody, and drilled me with the Black-Hole Slam. Though the bump itself was pretty impactful, I struggled to conceal a smile; it was cathartic. It had worked, the crowd “ooh”-ed, as I hoped they would, and the match got over. I had received a “Crusher’s gonna kill ya” chant at the start but, by the end, I think they admired my spunk. (Figuratively-speaking! The finish wasn’t THAT cathartic!)
Straight after, we went out again for the battle royal on the show. It was good fun, especially doing my Superman Plancha onto all the other participants before the match began—like a big ol’ human crashmat! (I’m sure someone got a knee in the head, though! Oops.) Things boiled down to me and Craib—and a nice duelling chant got going, which was really cool. Eventually, Craib picked me up, with the intention- I would imagine- of powerbombing me not only to the floor, but THROUGH the floor, to the Earth’s very core. This was unacceptable to me, though, as my insurance wouldn’t cover an accident of this nature—what exactly would you file it under? I decided to protect my policy, anyway, and reversed his powerbomb with a ‘rana, sending him to the floor, as I celebrated my win, and vengeance. (Revenge, incidentally, is a dish best accompanied, shortly after, by tea and biscuit.)
This match truly felt like a restoration of my mojo, and like I was making some progress. For a fair bit of 2010, I felt in a bit of a funk. Jericho touches on it in his books as the ‘Jericho Curse.’ I’ve had stuff like that in the past, where certain venues would be cursed for me, as I would work there a few times, and not enjoy the matches—Neilstown, in Dublin, was like that for me for a while, until I broke the curse, after an enjoyable match with Vic Viper. For a while last year, though, I felt a general funk, and just unhappy with what I was doing in-ring. I may have been getting good feedback and reviews, but I’d know in my heart that I could do better, and was frustrated. I was stressing myself out a bit too, and this was manifesting itself in the form of tension headaches. I was feeling this throb/pulse sensation in the back of my head- just behind my left ear- every day intermittently, for a good five or six weeks, spanning December of last year and January of this. At the worst of times, it felt like my head was being squeezed in a vice, and it was making me really irritable, which concerned me.
The GutCheck thing at the end of last month really helped, surprisingly. I’m not gonna bullshit and say that I wowed the TNA agents and officials there, ‘cos that wasn’t the case. That said, I got very good feedback, positive comments and I, personally, felt that I made the impression I hoped I would, and I was happy. Pathetic as it sounds to actually need a bit of endorsement or validation to give me a renewed boost, I did. It gave me momentum, I carried that forward to WrestleZone, and was very pleased to still have that momentum and drive post-show. Jeah! (Along with that, amazingly, the headaches stopped shortly after the Wembley trip, and haven’t returned since. Weird…)
Post-show, there was an “after party” in the upstairs of the club, which we all attended. A live band (with a disturbingly androgynous lead singer) blasted out pop music, while I chatted/shouted to other members of the WZ roster, and swilled Red Bull. (Too many Red Bulls, incidentally. I wasn’t bouncing off the walls or anything—it was just affecting my taste buds!) In other highlights, a nymphomaniac stripper who had acted as a valet on the show was trying to get attention from every male on the roster, while a female OAP fan of the WZ product wandered around giving abuse to all the heels! She told one chap to “get to fuck.” Heh heh! Only in wrestling… Eventually, I headed back with Alan & Cara to theirs, and got a few hours’ sleep on their settee.
As Ryanair don’t operate Aberdeen to Dublin flights on Sundays, my itinerary was a tiny bit different going home. I got a train from Aberdeen to Edinburgh (watching ‘Father Ted’ on the way), and flew home from Edinburgh to Dublin via Aer Lingus. (My first time using Aer Lingus in donkey’s years. It was very comfortable.) I lunched in The Gathering in Edinburgh Airport, before my flight—mistake. I ordered a pepperoni pizza. Sounds pretty simple, right? Round bread, tomato sauce, cheese, pepperoni. Easy. Where a fuckload of rocket salad factors into the preparation is beyond my comprehension. The waitress comes out with the pizza, with a mountain of this green crap in the middle of it. Didn’t mention it on the menu, so I was staggered as to why the bloody hell they’d added it. I soon found out. It was- beyond doubt- the worst restaurant pizza I’ve ever eaten. Ever. Terrible sauce, bland as all hell, cheap-tasting cheese, and a base that could’ve easily been a frozen one. No wonder they were trying to mask the taste with this rocket crap. It was a fucking insult that they were charging 10 quid for this. Be warned, folks: if you’re tempted to have a pizza in The Gathering while waiting for a flight, do so at your peril! Heh heh. Crap pizza aside, it was a very enjoyable trip over.
My second show of the month took place closer to home. A lot closer to home. Twenty minutes away, actually. This was my first Irish show in about nine months or so, and was for Dublin Championship Wrestling, in East Wall, in the north of Dublin. I could attempt to do a detailed summary of the intricacies of the Irish wrestling scene, but I really don’t want to! Sorry. I know it might help to provide a useful guide, but it’s so monumentally fucked-up that I really wouldn’t know where to start, so I won’t! DCW itself is composed mainly of guys who used to be in Celtic Pro Wrestling (CPW), and Irish Whip Wrestling (IWW) or current trainees of Main Stage Wrestling (MSW). The day itself was quite a shock to the system for me, getting used to seeing guys and girls again that I hadn’t seen in quite a while- either working the show, or watching- like Brother Skelly, Vic Viper, The Ballymun Bruiser, Irish Dragon, Siren, Jennidee, and Keego Ward. It was cool catching up with them, even if it felt bizarrely like a time-warp back to 2006! Newer people I was meeting, too, were welcoming and nice; the atmosphere was grand backstage, and not quite as tense as I thought it might be.
I faced LA Warren in my DCW début. He & I had worked each other to death in IWW in 2008 and 2009 (heh heh), but hadn’t worked since I left Irish Whip. The match went fairly well, though the ropes were a little on the loose side. The springboard crossbody that had worked so effectively in my previous match with Crusher Craib wasn’t happening in DCW, and I had a minor slip on the ropes (though, thankfully, one which I recovered from immediately, and covered with a hurricanrana.) The crowd responded well, which was cool, and I was happy chatting away to the fans during intermission, some of whom had remembered me from seeing IWW back in the day. Post-match, I enjoyed a chat with The Ballymun Bruiser, who I hadn’t seen in quite a while. It was great catching up. A bit of company bonding had us all going back to a local pub for a few ‘scoops’, afterwards. (I was on the hard stuff- Club Lemon- as I was driving that evening.) It was a nice experience, and afterward, I picked up a pizza from Apache on the way home, capping off an interesting and mainly enjoyable day. I’m back for DCW at the beginning of March, and look forward to it.
That was it for shows, for February. Now for the miscellaneous stuff: got started on the Joss Whedon show ‘Dollhouse’ this month, and it’s fucking brilliant. Any fans of his previous work, like ‘Buffy’ and ‘Angel’ should love it… Some idiot hit my car the day after the DCW show, pulling into a space in a Tesco car park. No damage done, but I fucking let them have it, and gave ‘em a good ear-bashing. Fool be straight up-tripping, yo… Lifehouse put on a good show in Dublin’s Olympia Theatre this month, with good support from The Shoos, who impressed me. Though Lifehouse’s set list was a bit disappointing, and the show a little stop-start, it was a good gig… Corrupt gougers Fíanna Fáil (Ireland’s previous primary political party—try saying that ten times fast) have been ousted from Government. Considering the cronyism, greed, and incompetence they exhibited while in power, it’s only right they’re out on their arses. My sympathies, however, lie with those hard-working members of FF who have now lost their jobs, due to the inept machinations of the party’s management… decent horror film for fans of the genre: F. Suspenseful, and tense, and pretty damn creepy…
That’s all, folks, as the animated pig says. Thanks for reading, and take care ‘til next time.
Ballance.
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