Hello my name is Iwan Mackenzie and I’m here with something a bit different.
You see as many know, I love going to live pro wrestling shows and normally I bring individual reviews of said shows (don’t worry, I’ll still be bringing some individual reviews for them shows) but what I decided to do after it was suggested to me by Rox Blackburn was give you a run down of all the stuff that I’ve seen this month as July has been a particularly excellent month of pro wrestling on the live side of things.
I’m gonna be bringing you the best matches, best moments and any funny antidotes that I’ve picked up over the last month or so.
- WEEK ONE – RIPTIDE AND SOUTHSIDE
So my month in live wrestling started with RIPTIDE’s Point Break event in the Brighthelm Centre in Brighton, a show that meant more to me than usual as I was looking for a pick me up after the shocking and saddening news that my favourite wrestler Charlie Morgan had to retire from wrestling really left me shell shocked and I needed a reason to fall in love with wrestling again. It didn’t start off great as we got more shocking news that Jack Sexsmith’s ACL injury was worse than first seemed and that the damage was irreparable, this was utterly shocking news to hear, thankfully it wasn’t as emotional as Charlie Morgan’s as Sexsmith had a good humour about it and his career as a whole, it was the best way to send off Jack Sexsmith in a promotion he called home for ages surrounded by the fans that cared about him most.
After a bit of a shaky start to it, Point Break did get better and better as it went on and had some great matches in the form of Chuck Mambo vs Jordon Breaks, TK Cooper vs Kyle Fletcher, and Ashmore vs Connor Mills, however the main event is what is most talked about from this show. The set up was cult hero of RIPTIDE “The Black Swan” Cara Noir was set to face a mystery opponent who had been billed as a big time star, so a lot of people were predicted from Bobby Gunns to Mike Bailey to Dave Benson Phillips!
Who we actually got was “The Bastard” PAC! who got a triple pop, one for the R.E.D call effect, one for his music and the one for him actually showing himself, the crowd erupted, the roof came off the place, all the superlatives you could possibly use happened as nobody could believe before their eyes that the actual PAC was in the Brighthelm about to face Cara Noir. For 23 minutes after the bell rung, the two men had this masterpiece of a match, which had theatrics, high-flying and an incredible story throughout, it was quite honestly my match of the year in any promotion, you know when your just watching art unfold in front of you, its gonna be very hard to top this match for me.
We then had Spike Trivet desend a level of ultimate bad guy in RIPTIDE as he attacked Noir afterwards and threatend to harm MC Rosa Rose if he didn’t get his No.1 Contenders match which was promised against Sexsmith. Noir then faced him in a 10-15 minute match that honestly had you believing that Noir was pull the upset but Trivet put him down to become No.1 Contender and next in line to take on ultimate babyface champ Chuck Mambo. Despite him losing twice, in just about forty minutes of wrestling, Cara Noir became a mega star of British wrestling on this night, one of the best wrestlers we have, the next big star of British wrestling for my money.
On the Sunday of that weekend I took my first trip up to Bedford for Southside’s “Chop Gunn 2: Chop Harder”, though I’d do this instead of RevPro that day as it had more variety to it overall, and it was a really good show throughout. Kanji and Charli Evans added another brilliant match to their great rivalry, Sugar Dunkerton and Gene Munny knocked lumps out of each other with pillows in a Softcore rules match which sounds bizarre and believe me it was, but my highlight of the night was BT Gunn vs Shigehiro Irie in a hard hitting match for the Southside title that if given a more prominent venue and crowd, people would be raving about it. Well that was my main highlight, my other was singing Ho Ho Lun’s name to the tune of “Magic” by Pilot.
- SECOND WEEK – UNLADY LIKE AND TRIPLE L
Moving onto the second week of July which featured two smaller shows than the last couple of weeks but they were both highly entertaining in their own ways. On July 11th, it was the book launch free show of Unlady: A Guide to Professional wrestling, which I should say having read through a fair majority of it, is a great book that I’d recommend buying and reading as its’s a really fascinating story about author Heather’s path into professional wrestling, certainly not a conventional one for sure. But the show itself was really fun and different from what I had seen recently; there was a big theme of experimentation on display in this show as all the performers were clearly given free reign to do what they wanted and to trey new things, like an open mic night at a pub, and it all largely worked.There was a fun opening tag match featuring four of the top stars of the all-female promotion Burning Hearts, a great Lucha Chaos match from Lucha Britannia that featured a humanoid plant killing machine, the king of the spiders, a dancing devil amongst others, you know pretty normal stuff, but in all seriousness this was a great match that left a real impression on me.
We then got the tag team known as Big Dick Energy comprised of Little Dick and Big Dick, two female wrestlers who were playing male typical like-geezers in a brilliantly funny satire, this was the experimentation aspect I was speaking about earlier, I’d never really seen something like this done in wrestling before but it was freaking hilarious, they had a pretty good match against Skye Smitson (One of the London wrestling scene’s most underrated performers) and Kayla Fizz. We then had our main event of Darcy Stone vs Rebel Kinney which used the actual book itself as a part of the match which was quite gut busting-hilarious, it was actually a really good match as well.
The second smaller show was London Lucha League’s “Like a Rolling Stone” show on July 14th which was my personal favourite LLL show to date that I’d been to, it had an amazing Lucha Chaos match to open the show with two particular performers breaking out in that match, Evan Lee United member David Wreckham who is one to keep an eye out for in the future, and Scotland’s Craig Anthony who was making his debut in England, another great highflyer to keep an eye out for, he could potentially be one of next years breakout stars.
I do want to talk about this amazing tag team match though that took place on the show between reiging LLL Tag Team Champions The Feather and Funk Connections consisting of Bruno Brown and Le Lechuzza taking on the team of “The Heavy Hitter” Malik and “The Prince of Pace” Callum Newman; this was up there with any great tag match that I’ve seen this year, it went absolutely balls to the wall and had so many great near falls in the last ten minutes of the match, these four are four of the best on the London wrestling scene and all of them deserve the attention they deserve; this is one of the very best I’ve seen all year, well worth checking out.
We had a great main event between resilient face challenger Darcy Stone who is one of the League’s most popular characters against dastardly heel Kosta K who came out to the Chariots of Fire theme as his entrance music in a great piece of arrogance by him; This match had a great story of Darcy fighting with all these quick moves at the beginning really looking like a star but Kosta tearing down her injured knee and focusing on that, despite a brave fight from Darcy, Kosta was able to win with the Figure Four Leglock thus cementing himself as the top heel of Triple L, he really stepped up here and looked like a world class heel.
- WEEK THREE – GOOD AND KAMIKAZE
The next week provided three shows in two days, hurrah! My first trip was to Wolverton (which is just outside of Milton Keynes) for GOOD Wrestling’s GOODstock double header; I’d only been to one GOOD show in the past but that really good (no pun intended) and I’d been meaning to head up to another one so when this double header was announced, this seemed like the perfect chance.
The first show as very varied in matches and had more of a laid back vibe to it, highlights including the hard hitting opener of the very underrated Warren Banks against Kurtis Chapman, Beano and Big Grizzly building tension towards their title match later in the evening in a victory over the always impressive NIC; Charli Evans vs Rickey Shane Page was the highlight of Show One for me, as RSP threw her all around but Charli kept coming back and eventually got the win.
Now because this was a double header, the good folks at GOOD but on some extra curriculum activities including a Mexican food van, a live podcast of Love the Graps and WrestleFest on the SNES to play, none of that went to plan though as the Van failed its M.O.T, they couldn’t load WrestleFest up and the microphones wasn’t working on the front bar to do the podcast; instead fans went around Wolverton to get food, there’s plenty of it (I had Pizza myself), we had Street Fighter instead and instead of the podcast they said they’d be holding a mystery fatal-four way match.A lot of us thought they were bullshiting but as I sat on the pub bench eating my pizza, Chris East (one of the promoters) was trying to gather a crowd together and said I could bring my pizza, so hey I was in!
We got about 20 or so people in for this mystery four-way match between Josh Holly, Tim Lee, The OJMO and Owen Charles; Josh was the only one to bring his gear, the other three just had what they were wearing and we only there to either watch the show or help out but got thrown in to this random match. Fair play to these lads though because in about 10 minutes or so, they put together this all action, comedic brawl that went all around the pub and had plenty of crowd popping moves in the ring as well, its honestly worth a watch just to see the insanity, they all put on a great match for these 20 or so fans.
But we finally go onto our evening show that kicked off in intense fashion as it was student vs teacher as Brendan White finally got his match against Mike Bird; even though this was a excellent wresting match, its big highlight for me was the storytelling aspect as Brendan despite being a heel was gunning for Bird’s respect, after Bird finally put his student down with a cradle piledriver and then shook his hand afterwards; this was my favourite Brendan White match to date and despite being a nasty prick heel, everybody in that room gave him respect that night for his performance. We got some other really fun matches like the all Aussie affair between Charli Evans and Shazza McKenzie, Rickey Shane Page trying to convince Eugene Munn (Gene Munny’s GOOD Alter-Ego) not to retire in a triple threat match alongside Spike Trivet and Canadian’s Gisele Shaw and Jody Threat captaining opposing teams in a Survivor Series type match.
But I must talk about the double main event because they were the two best matches of the day and two of the best I’ve seen all year. First of all was GOOD Grand Prize Holder Beano defeating Big Grizzly to retain the title after a 20-25 minute match full of drama, storytelling, and hard hitting action that felt like a title match in that the title actually felt important to the match; Grizzly was almost digging into his old nastier persona at points but Beano tried to sway him away and just have a civilised match but Beano knew he had to bring out the big guns to put away the big man from Wales. It was honestly incredible to watch and I urge people to check it out.
Our official main event though was the final of the Gift of GOOD Tournament as Charli Evans fought Mike Bird in a super intense strong style influenced match that was super hard hitting as both wrestlers dropped each other on their heads various times as well as big chops and such; best part of the match was when Bird hit the Steiner Screwdriver but Charli was able to kick out just after 2 in a brilliant show of defiance. Bird eventually won but both wrestlers came out better because of this match, it was a real reminder to me about how good these two talents are, utter brilliance from the two. I then fell over the ring skirt in excitment finding out Kanji won the Queen of Southside title and then sung Christian’s 2009 theme with Gene Munny, lets move onto the next day!
Next day I headed back to Euston to get a train to Coventry a bit half dead but excited none the less to check out Kamikaze Pro’s “Fallout 2” a show that wasn’t as stacked as previous Kami shows I had been to but did have some new faces that interested me in going. The first two matches were absolute bangers for different reasons as MK McKinnan def. Carlos Romo in the opener in Romo’s best match to date, it was incredible and stole the show before it could even begin; Kay Jutler def. Ender Kara in a fast paced match that never really let up and was an incredible showcase for Kara who is one of the hidden gems of the scene at the moment.
Worth mentioning as well are the last two matches that were great in their own way as Kanji successfully defended her newly won Queen of Southside Title against 15-Year Old Chantal Jordan in a match beyond both competitor’s years, it was hard hitting and fast paced and played to both wrestlers strengths. I could see this match being a big draw somewhere down the line for a major promotion. Finally the main event was a really fun chaotic brawl as newly crowned Kamikaze Pro champ Sean Kustom teamed with Dan Moloney and Deriess to defeat the Bled combination of Clint Margeera, Luke Douglas and The Eliot Jordan Experience to send the crown home happy…or so we thought…
You see because Clint threatened to break GM and Ring Announcer Colin Russel-Ames’s neck if he didn’t agree to a match with Clint under No DQ Rules at the next Kamikaze Pro show which Ames agreed to to protect his health, eventually Kustom/Moloney/Deriess all came down to chase them off as the Bled fled the arena. A great angle and I’m looking forward to the batshit insanity that the No DQ match promises to deliver.
- WEEK FOUR – IWL, Fight Club Pro, Sendai UK and TIDAL
My next show was only four days later on the hottest day of the year in the UK and it was in, let me check my notes………..THE RESISTANCE GALLERY, OH MY GOD I ACTUALLY MIGHT DIE but I’m writing this so I didn’t die of heat, ah man that’s a relief.
But yeah it was IWL’s most stacked show to date as they presented “Untitled II”. Excellent show top to bottom, plenty of variety in content and every match had its own story to it which is what I like to see in my wrestling shows; Danny Black and Carlos Romo opened the show in excellent fashion in a highflying battle, Spike Trivet was the right heel to gather sympathy for the once hated David Francisco in a great storytelling match, Chris Brookes returned from Japan to face Charli Evans in an another excellent match between the two of them, OJMO and Billy Haze had the sleeper hit of the night in my opinion, and Connor Mills was able to keep ahold of his IWL title in a fierce battle against TK Cooper in one of the best IWL matches ever.
Next day myself alongside close confidant Dave Lovell travelled up to Wolverhampton (in a packed train its fair to say) for the first day of a 3 day northern weekender for Fight Club: Pro’s “Return of the Sendai Part 2”, a show that was threatened to be forgotten about due to the Sendai show the next day but this was an excellent show top to bottom from an epic opener between Mark Davis and Shigehiro Irie that might have been better than their ATTACK! match, ELP returned to FCP in full Bullet Club guise as he put down Wolverhampton, Fight Club: Pro and Travis Banks in a savage heel promo whilst also complaining about being scramble matches and he ended up being in one against Travis Banks, Rickey Shane Page, Omari, Jody Threat, Lucky Kid and the debuting Cara Noir who made me and my mate Kyle jump up and down in excitement, match itself was excellent as well.
We also had the fun visual of an 8-person tag pitting The Medusa Complex (Charli Evans and Millie McKenzie), YUU and Chirhiro Hashimoto against the Anti-Fun Police consisting of Chief Deputy Dunne, Los Federales Santos Jr, Leigh Obstruction and standing in for the night as Jim Obstruction’s replacement Garda Reserve Martina Obstruction in a hilarious set-up. Very fun match that also had a face off between Hashimoto and Santos, there’s a match you never knew you wanted. Dan Moloney and Jordan Devlin had an intense battle for the No.1 Contendership to the FCP title in a match that had boxing vibes to it, really great and physical match though.
The main event was utterly fantastic though, one of the best tag team matches I’ve seen all year as Chris Brookes and Kyle Fletcher of Schadenfreude successfully defended the tag team titles against the Sendai Girls team of Meiko Satomura and Dash Chisako in a tag match that was built up in a classic 80’s style fashion but had modern workrate to it and an insane ladder spot with Dash Chisako that needs to be seen to be believed.
I ended up taking myself to bed earky that night once I had a very nice 6-inch Subway as it was the only thing open at 12am in Wolverhampton, fair play to the two women who were still pretty cheery and friendly despite the time of night, you guys rock!
Next day, me and Dave joined by Martin Bentley started the day right by getting ourselves a proper breakfast in the Premier Inn bar that filled us up for the morning and set us up for the day as we discussed the show the night before and the show that evening which was the long awaited UK debut of Meiko Satomura’s Sendai Girls Pro Wrestling. Chris Lawson and Kyle James soon joined us as it was Kyle who was taking me, Chris and Dave to Manchester instead of us lot getting the train.
We set off just after noon and shared many laughs down to the road to Manchester from sing a longs of Lady Gaga songs, playing Who would you rather as well as other assorted stories and antidotes being shared. We got into Manchester itself around 13:45pm and we saw a Burger King which had Halloumi Burgers which I’d been wanting to try for a while and Kyle felt really hungry so we pulled into the car park and all enjoyed something, the Halloumi Burger gets a solid 10 from me and that’s coming from somebody who is really fussy about Halloumi. After that before we left in the car again, we decided to take a picture outside an abandoned Blockbuster that was across the road from Burger King, it still had the old gear in it like a massive fuck off TV that went out of date in 1998, old phone and computer as well, it was truly our Ark of the Convenient and it made the day memorable in many ways.
Eventually got into main Manchester and decided to park ourselves up in the Brewdog for a bit before heading to the Meet and Greet Line; very nice pub was this Brewdog, really roomy, friendly and it played great music.
We walked over to the Meet and Greet queue and after a bit of umming and arring we finally got in where we were given a poster to get signed on entry that all the Sendai Girls signed who were out, this included Satomura, Chisako, Hashimoto, YUU, Medusa Complex and Aiger who was in full character which is still cool to find in this day and age. The Sendai Show itself was amazing, it felt like a authentic Sendai experience throughout and had a ton of variety.
The opening four way match between Viper, Jody Threat, Gisele Shaw and Isla Dawn was a really fun spot fest to warm up the crowd, Martina vs Aiger was one of the funniest matches I’ve ever seen live, it needs to be seen to be believed; Kay Lee Ray and Dash Chisako battered lumps out of each other in a brutal No DQ match, Valkryie had a star making performance against the invading Chris Brookes who was the replacement for Killer Kelly, this was all to play into the Schadenfreude vs FCP storyline.
Medusa Complex put on their best match to date in a great strong style tag match against Hashimoto and YUU, and finally Toni Storm and Meiko Satomura had a match of the year candidate in the main event putting a cherry on top of a perfect show, possibly my UK Show of the year.I should mention that I ended up front rowing as well as one of the guys mates hadn’t shown up so there was a free seat that my mate Martin Dean told me about which made the experience even better for me personally.
I was able to see Kay Lee Ray and Viper again after thinking Queendom II was the last I was gonna see of them for a while, which really made my night. I also met and got pictures with Satomura, Chisako, Brookes, and Dawn. We all drove back to Chris’s house as we were staying there the night and had Pizza Hut and then prominently passed out as we were all very tired. Perfect day.
My final shows on this Northern weekend was the next day, as Kyle and Chris headed to Camden for PROGRESS, me and Dave headed to Leeds for our first visit to the Temple of Boom for a TIDAL double header. The Temple of Boom is a very unique venue itself, its very out of the way from anything else and you have to go down a flight of stars to get to it and then when you do, its separated into two buildings, one with the bar (which had a variety of soft drinks and they only cost £1 each!) and toilets, the other with the actual venue and a Vegan kicthen (which itself was really nice, I had the Mac n Cheese Balls and a Big Moo burger, both come very highly recommended); the venue itself was pretty small but had enough space to roam around, for the first show we decided to sit down, our seats were next to the ring which meant I was right up close and personal with the action.
Afternoon show as an all-womens shows that got better as it went on. Highlights include Kanji and Natalie Sykes having a very good opener and gelling pretty well as opponents, Viloet O’Hara and Gia Adams having a really good big/small dynamic in their match, Chakara and Candyfloss put forth their best match to date and one of the best matches of the day, and finally Roxxy sucsefully defending her TCW Women’s championship against Debbie Keitel after much sechanary with Tea and Coffee.
Main show, I decided to go and stand on the other side with my Northern mates, the Ogden brothers, Ben Corigon, Andrew Campell, and Athers as well as fellow Londoners Martin and Dylan. I had a very nice chair to sit on for the first half of the show and decided to take the wooden stairs for the second half. First half was very good including a great showcase for Jack Turner and JJ Barker in the first time I’d seen both men, Candyfloss and Roxxy had a great submission’s match that was almost to the level of the Candy/Chakara match earlier in the day and Rampage Brown and Brady Phillips smashed it out of the park in the first half main event.
Second half highlights included Rhio getting the unpoular win over HT Drake to win the TCW Open Championship in a really good story bout, Will Kroos picked up the shock victory over Joe Nelson to win the TCW Heavyweight Championship in a scene that shocked the crowd to no end as this was Joe’s first title defence having only won it the month before, and finally Crashboat won the tag team championships over Crown of Thornes and Lion Kings in a crazy streetfight match where they fought outside in the rain, there was a suplex on a flight of stairs, a crossbody off a transit van and an Attitude Adjustment onto a bin as most fans spilled to the outside to watch it whilst others like myself watched from the inside looking out; it was a perfect way to end the weekend in crazy fashion.
Afterwards me and Dave shared a drink with the Northern crowd just outside Leeds station before finally getting our train back and passing out when we got in. Day after, we finally got back to London after 4 days away from home, I was that tired, I feel asleep on the train. This was all the end of a crazy weekend and a mental month of professional wrestling.
So yeah like I said at the top of the review, this was different for me to write and if you read all of this, you deserve a cookie, but yeah thank you for reading through a crazy month of proessional wrestling all over the country.
Iwan’s Reccommened Matches of the Month
- PAC vs Cara Noir
- Toni Storm vs Meiko Satomura
- Malik and Callum Newman vs Feather and Funk Connection
- Charli Evans vs Mike Bird
- Connor Mills vs TK Cooper
All the matches I talked about though are worth a watch, trust me you’ll have a fun time doing so. But yeah like I said thanks for reading and if you enjoyed it, let me know because I may make this a monthly piece.
You can follow me on Social Media at @IwanMack
Thanks for Reading Iwan Mackenzie
