Hello my name is Iwan Mackenzie and you may know me as that dude at wrestling shows who you recognise as ‘That Dude’
I’m back with another review, this time taking down a trip down to Brighton for Riptide’s first show of 2019. Riptide for the last year has become one of the best promotions in BritWres due to its combination of hate free setting in the home of love and acceptance Brighton, fantastic storytelling and combining various stars of the BritWres scene together for unusual pairings but pairings that work.
Going into this show, the top matches were Brighton Champion Chuck Mambo defending his title against the debuting Mark Haskins , #1 Contender for said title TK Cooper facing off against Riptide favourite Candyfloss as well as debuts for Ashmore and Rocky Mac.
I set off to Brighton early afternoon on Friday, heading down there with my mates Andy, Nick and Dave getting there about mid-afternoon. I finally got to try a Greggs’ Vegan Sausage Roll which I can say are pretty great before we had a pre-show Nandos, met up with my mates AJ and Simon in the Hope and Ruin before heading inside. I managed to spot Man Like Beano in the crowd, who I said hello to as I headed to my usual spot.
Our first match was a pre-show match between Rob Lias and the surprise debut of Giesele Shaw. Rob’s character in Riptide is that he hates the Intergender wrestling of the promotion (an aspect that Riptide is very well known for) and refers to it as ‘Intergender Bollocks’. Giesele who I had seen at a Kamikaze show a couple of weeks ago in an impressive showing against Veda Scott also shined here against Lias. A good back and forth contest that got the crowd hyped the rest of the evening, Shaw took the pinfall win to a good reaction and Lias had to suffer the “HA!” point of shame from our section afterwards as well as the classic football chant of “You’re Sh*t and you know you are”.
After that we had owner Josh come out just to run through the ground rules of the promotion before introducing guest ring announcer Kid Lykos who did a good job. However, he didn’t have much in the way of banter that at point we could have done with.
In our first official match, we had Brighton’s own Jordan Breaks battle Keyboard Warrior Kurtis Chapman. A very good technical back and forth contest that eventually became a striking contest which neither men held back from. Breaks took the pinfall win following a Chaos Theory. Breaks is primed for a big year this year and with performances like this will help that fact, Chapman is very underrated when it comes to his actual in-ring work as most people judge him by his character in RevPro which pales in comparison to his great heel work in Riptide. People should give him another chance.
Next up we had #1 Contender TK Cooper battle Candyfloss. TK came out not with his signature dungarees as he had more or less retired them in an excellent promo which can be found here https://twitter.com/PureTKC/status/1096122159448145920 because my words will not do it justice. When this match first started I wasn’t into it fully as they went for more of a technical start which we had just seen with Break/Chapman, and it also felt a little awkward to begin with but once they found their flow, the match became a good one and became better as it went along. The best parts of the match were TK pulling off aerial moves that I hadn’t seen him hit in ages but the absolute highlight of the match was an insane Spanish Fly from the top that sent the crowd into a meltdown. TK took the pinfall win after Candyfloss initially kicked out of a piledriver after a one count before TK hit with another big move to finish the job, a finish that may have rubbed AJ up the wrong way but I didn’t mind it personally. Both TK and Candyfloss performed excellently here and created one of the best Intergender matches that I have seen in while.
Following that we had Jack Sexsmith face off against Money-vs-Everyone’s Damon Moser and boy does this have some history behind it. Allow me to explain. So since the start of Riptide, Jack Sexsmith and Spike Trivet have been at logger heads with each other and has become of one of the defining aspects of Riptide’s existence. Back at Point Break, Moser turned his back on old friend Sexsmith and joined up with Trivet which was the start of the Money-Vs-Everybody stable which also includes Chris Ridgeway; Sexsmith asked for a match against Trivet at the last show but Trivet stated in a promo video that Sexsmith has nothing to offer him so he sent Moser in to face him instead. The match had a fast and furious beginning starting with a JOHN WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! dropkick from Sexsmith before some crowd brawling between the two with Moser being thrown through a ton of chairs, but Moser was able to comeback and started to target Sexsmith’s leg which was the focus of the match for the most part. Sexsmith was able to mount a comeback but Moser eventually kicked Sexsmith right in the Ding Dings to take a DQ loss. The low blow wasn’t the most obvious and confused the crowd. Moser afterwards cut a promo where unfortunately he stumbled over some of his words but the general message of the promo was to establish himself as a dangerous man and not be made to look the weakest in the MvE stable.
In our final match before intermission, the debuting Ashmore battled the recently turned fan favourite Cara Noir. Cara has become a sweetheart in the fans eyes due to his great performances at Riptide especially his match against Speedball Mike Bailey at the last show which was amazing. Ashmore interrupted Cara’s entrance which incensed Cara to where Cara attacked Ashmore as soon as the bell was rung. The whole match as a result was wrestled at a fast and frantic pace which I really dug, Ashmore hit a massive rolling death valley driver to the ring apron before taking control of the contest. Our section gave Ashmore some stick referencing to him looking like Uncle Albert from Only Fools and Horses before Ashmore asked if there was going to be anymore chants so we decided to sing a rendition of Baldy Baldy over there. Noir mounted a comeback with some smooth moves which has become a signature of Noir’s workrate. Ashmore went to go for his finisher but Noir hit a massive Canadian Destroyer which was gnarly looking. The finish of the match came with Ashmore going up to the second rope looking for a big move but Cara followed him up and looked for a big move himself but Ashmore was able to hit a super version of the Hack-Knees Backbreaker which elicited a scream from me which I never do to secure Ashmore the pinfall victory.
This was absolutely my favourite match of the night and is my recommendation to watch when this show is released; Noir is thankfully becoming one of the more recognised great wrestlers of BritWres with performances like this and Ashmore is one of the most underrated wrestlers in the whole of BritWres to hopefully 2019 is the year that he breaks out.
We then went into our interval where I spoke to Ashmore and Noir about their great match and picked up my first Cara Noir T-shirt which is very stylish indeed and spoke to Giesele Shaw who was very nice to speak to. I also picked up a couple of cans of the Riptide themed beer for my step-dad.
Coming back from interval, our next match was a tag team match with the ruthless combination of Chakara and Paul Robinson who gave my mate Nick shit during their entrance against the debuting Rocky Mac and fan favourite Session Moth Martina. Before the match Martina demanded Rocky for her Valentines Day presents and Child Support money as Rocky apparently is the dad of 20 of Martina’s 84 children. Rocky prayed to god who weirdly lives in the Brighthhelm centre’s balcony and presents appeared for Martina, presents included some window screen liquid, a car air freshener (which Martina promptly put down her tights) and a can of Bants beer which was especially made for this event. That wasn’t all as Rocky asked the house band to hit it and he started to sing a rendition of the Carpenters “Close to You” before Robbo and Chakara attacked them which led the keyboard player hitting a tragic note with perfect comical timing.
This was a very heated contest although it did have some comedy moments as well, both teams have very good chemistry with one and another; one of the best spots of the matches was when Robbo went to dive onto a standing Mac but Mac caught him with a stalling suplex. I had seen the spot at a Clash show once before but it still looked impressive and the crowd gasped when Mac caught Robbo with such ease. There was a scary moment where Chakara had Rocky in a gory bomb position waiting for Robbo to hit a diving double foot stomp but when Robbo came down Chakara took a lot of weight onto her neck and she looked seriously hurt when the match finished (I did speak to her afterwards and she said despite it being sore, she’ll be fine). This outside of Noir/Ashmore was my favourite match of the night, it had a bit of everything and was different from anything else on the card.
Post match whilst staff attended to Chakara, Robinson decided to mock the crowd going round and getting in everybody’s face so much so that some old woman decided to jump in the ring to attack him but the staff were on hand to stop her, that woman was later revealed on Twitter as Vicky Haskins Aunt! Jinny made a surprise appearance to confront Robinson about his attack on her tag partner Jimmy Havoc at the last show and set up the tag team match of Robinson and Chakara vs Havoc and Jinny at the next show before Jinny left him lying with a massive forearm shot. This may have been one of my favourite Jinny promos: she had some much rage and passion in her delivery and had some very cutting lines which popped the crowd huge.
Following all that was our penultimate match of the night as Wild Boar faced Spike Trivet. As covered on this website already, there was a section of the crowd that were very pro Spike and they wanted the whole room to know it whilst, at the same time chanting at Boar “You’re just a Sh*t F***ing Rhyno” which I was more offended at their timing and tune more than anything. Even Spike had to shut them down which was the right thing, although there was someone who in our section shouted “The only thing that’s worse than a Smark, is a right-wing Smark!” which was really funny. Unfortunately this was my least favourite match of the night, a little slow and plodding for my liking and with only the story that Spike was going to do to Boar what former PM David Cameron did to a pig being entertaining. Well that, and Spike’s associate Shay Purser on the outside who was very entertaining as a smug prick. Spike picked up the victory by pinfall, no one submitted during this show…
Now our main event, Kid Lykos announced that unfortunately there had been a change but he was going to bring both men out to explain it, first out was Brighton Champion Chuck Mambo and then Mark Haskins who came out in his own clothes being supported by a crutch accompanied by his wife Vicky Haskins. Mark explained that he thought Riptide was great and that he was looking forward to wrestling here but he’s been taken out with a calf injury courtesy of Marty Scurll at a ROH show, he also reiterated that he thought the world of Chuck Mambo and said that his opponent will still be great, Mambo turned his back for one second whilst he thanked Vicky and Mark attacked Mambo! He had faked still being injured and took the fight to Mambo but Mambo fired up and took the fight right back.
Riptide seems to be the place where Mambo is at his best as the fire and desire he shows in all his matches for the promotion make him stand out even more. This was a great main event with my personal favourite spot of the match being a double springboard outside dive by Mambo to Mark; the finish came where Mark accidentally speared Vicky and Mambo took Mark out with a Bad Burrito and Frog Splash to win the match, retain the title and stay undefeated in singles matches.
Post match, TK Cooper announced Mambo as the winner and called Mambo his best friend and told him to not get too attached of the title ahead of their championship match at the Riptide Rumble in April. Mambo sent the crowd home happy with a small speech and Haskins got a please come back chant but threw up the bird instead.
Post show, I spoke to Mambo, Spike and Robbo and all got pictures with them, then I had a kebab and went to the Hope and Ruin for the post show where I spoke to my mates Gadge and Grainger who had been to RevPro about how the show was and got to congratulate Jimmy Havoc on AEW.
So overall, this was a great show with a mostly great crowd and a lot of variety in its matches. I was speaking to my mate Karl in the pub and he explained that he thought every match was great and had something for everybody, and you know it’s hard to argue with that. My personal highlight were Noir vs Ashmore and the tag team match, defiantly ones to check out when the show is released on VOD.
If you want to support Riptide Wrestling then you can head to their merchandise store: https://riptidewrestling.bigcartel.com/, Their On-Demand service is https://riptidewrestling.pivotshare.com/home and their next show in April 12th and tickets can be found at https://www.tickettailor.com/events/RIPTIDEwrestling
You can follow them on Twitter and Instagram @RiptideWres
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram @IwanMack
Thank you for reading.
