Mike Reviews Indy Wrestling — page 2

Greetings Friends!

This week we’re going back to On The Mat, an NWA affiliated show from New Zealand that was mostly built around “Maniac” Mark Lewin. I enjoyed it well enough last time and the episodes are only half an hour long, so it’s not like it’s going to eat into too much of my time.

If you’d like to watch along you can do so by clicking right HERE

Wow, I think even the SEGA Saturn had a more successful launch over here in the West than the European Super League did!

Brother brocore suggested this one in the comments a couple of weeks back so I decided to give it a go. I’m not sure on the exact date of this show, and I’m not sure the uploader even is either, with 3^rd of August being a guess on their part. Dave Newman has already had a bash at reviewing a show from this company, and you can read what he thought of a show from June 1986 by clicking right HERE

I’m not entirely sure on the backstory of CCW, but this features Rocky Johnson and Jimmy Snuka, so it at least has some star power if nothing else.

Anyway, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling

Hello You!

Chael Sonnen’s Coke Dealer suggested giving this a go in the comments section last week, so I had a search over on YouTube and picked a show at random. You can watch along with me if you like by clicking HERE.

Southwest Championship Wrestling was based out of San Antonio and run by Joe Blanchard (The father of Tully and grandfather of Tessa). Southwest was apparently the first ever promotion to get a slot on the USA Network, but Vince McMahon ended up bring an end to that by flashing his nickers at USA and getting Southwest dropped for All American Wrestling.

I have no idea what to expect here, so let’s watch some chuffing wrestling and find out!

I wasn’t really feeling All Japan this week, so I decided to try something different. We might go back to it, we might not, I’ll see how I feel in a few weeks.

This week we’re going for something a bit different, in the form of Continental Wrestling, which was a territory operating out of Knoxville and Dotham that ran from the 50’s to the 80’s before finally going out of business in 1989.

The main reason I chose this particular episode is that it has a young Mick Foley working in one of his first territories, and I believe it was in Continental that he invented the famed “Nestea Plunge” bump off the apron, which of course led to him taking it night after night for a while, because wrestling.

He was also in World Class/USWA around this time as well though and I haven’t sat down to re-read “Have A Nice Day” in a while, so he might have invented it there instead, but he was still young in his career at this stage at any rate, so this should hopefully be an interesting time capsule.

If you’d like to watch along with me you can do by clicking HERE

Hello You!

Happy Easter if you’re into that sort of thing

Something new this week as I review an EVOLVE show for the first time. I decided to do this one because it’s got an interesting premise of an 8 man tournament where every wrestler supposedly brings a different wrestling style to the party, which should hopefully mean we get some fun contests as “styles make fights” as they say.

I’ve actually watched this show before but that was a LONG time ago and I honestly don’t remember who even wins the tournament, so it will hopefully all be fresh for me again. It also features Brodie Lee and I felt like watching something with him involved because I miss him and his wild marauding ways.

For those not au fait with EVOLVE, it was created in 2010 by Gabe Sapolsky after Gabe had left ROH. The early days of the company had more of a classic UFC feel to them, as everyone entered to the same entrance track and there was more of a focus on shoot styled grapplers like Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly.

My friend and I were actually going through a period where this was “our” company when it first started up, as we’d both hopped aboard the ROH train once the company had already been around for a year, so we decided that we’d be with EVOLVE from the very start just in case it happened to become the “new” ROH. We of course fell off that waggon after a couple of years and I haven’t personally watched an EVOLVE show since something like 2013, and the company itself was actually bought by WWE in 2020 after a few years of being a feeder promotion for it.

Anyway, let’s set the way back machine to 2011 and enjoy ourselves some Style Battle!

Hello You!

Back with more Classic British Wrestling, as we take a look at Joint-Promotion’s excursion to Wembley in 1981, featuring a match a lot of you may have heard off. If you fancy watching along then you can do so by visiting the website itvwrestling.co.uk and heading to the 1981 section. The matches for this taping were split across multiple Saturdays, so I’ll make sure the required dates are present so that you can seek out the induvial matches if you wish. It’s better to do it that way rather than post each one individually and possibly get the blog in a spot of bother with the Google overlords.

I’ve also got to give a shout out to wrestlingheritage.co.uk as well, as it proved invaluable in finding information on some of the wrestlers.

So without further ado, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

Last week I looked at some classic British Wrestling and today we’re going to look at some from New Zealand. I stumbled across “On The Mat” by accident on YouTube, and from doing some digging around I’ve found out that it was an NWA affiliated show that aired on the channel “TV2” between 1975 and 1984.

Seeing as the episodes are under 30 minutes I decided I’d have a bash at reviewing one of them just to have something new to watch. It’s essentially your typical studio wrestling shoot, ala Mid-Atlantic or Memphis, except sometimes the venues aren’t traditional TV studio’s and instead in things like sports halls and YMCA’s. The presentation is similar though. How can that not be good eh?

If you fancy watching the show, you can do so by clicking HERE.

So let’s head over to the other side of the world and watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You! (Or should that be “Greetings Grapple Fans”?)

I decided that I’d finally get around to reviewing some classic British wrestling, especially as there’s loads of it up on YouTube.

I’ve had this one in the can for a few weeks (I’m being shockingly productive at the moment) and in the meantime Dave Newman has started looking at some classic British Wrestling on the Blog as well. I didn’t mean to step on his toes but it’s just kind of turned out that way. You should give his features a jolly good reading if you haven’t already done so. The link to his archives is right HERE.

I was going to do a collection of random matches, but then I found that a full show had been uploaded and decided to watch that instead as it’d probably be an easier entry point for newcomers. If you fancy watching the show yourself you can do so by clicking right HERE.

Due to World of Sport wrestling being so different from regular wrestling, I’m not sure whether the usual 5 Star System will work with it, but I’ll give it a try this time out and if I feel it doesn’t really make sense then I’ll try something else if I ever do anymore of these.

Wrestling was a big part of Saturday Afternoons in the UK during this time period, so I’ve decided this will fill my Saturday slot this week. Next week we’ll stick with an international vibe when it comes to what I review, but you’ll have to wait and see what that one is going to be.

Big thanks to the Wrestling Heritage website as well, as it was one of the few places I could actually find some information on some of these wrestlers. Give the site a visit if you fancy learning some more about classic British Wrestling by visiting wrestlingheritage.co.uk!

Anyway, without further ado, let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

I’ve had this DVD in my collection for a while but never given it a full watch, so I decided to watch it in aid of having something fresh to write about, seeing as I’ve never done an FIP review before. The Main Event is a match you might have either heard of before or seen some clips from, especially for one particular spot in it, so it should be fun to review it hopefully.

For those not au fait, FIP is a company based out of Florida that operated for quite a while as a sister promotion to ROH. The FIP Title was even defended on ROH shows sometimes, with Roderick Strong in particular having an impressive reign with it.

Most of the people on this show will have turned out for ROH, TNA or even WWE in some cases, so I’m hoping that it will be an enjoyable enough show to watch.

Let’s watch some chuffing wrestling!

Hello You!

Back to working my way through my Smart Mark Video On Demand splurge from a couple of years back, as we take a look at Tournament of Death 16. I really have no idea why I purchased this as Deathmatch wrestling isn’t really my thing, but I can only assume that it was because I felt like broadening my horizons a little bit and taking myself out of my comfort zone.

There’s really only one Deathmatch styled show I’ve ever watched in full and that’s the King of the Deathmatch tournament from 1995, which featured Cactus Jack, Terry Funk and Terry Gordy. I liked that show well enough for what it was, but that may have mostly been down to the fact that I’m a big Mick Foley fan and also because they broke up things up with non-tournament matches so it wasn’t just a cavalcade of people doing Deathmatch spots.

I may not particularly enjoy this, but I’m willing to give it a go because I am somewhat interested in the whole Deathmatch scene as sub-genre within the wrestling business. I really do ponder sometimes why the guys put themselves through this pain, especially as most of the time there doesn’t even seem to be a backstory to explain why. I get doing a big brawl with blood and weapons if it’s to blow off a long running and hate filled feud, but to just do it for the sake of doing it seems to fly in the face of wrestling logic (It’s why I didn’t really dig that Omega/Janella match as much as others did because they were doing stuff that could really mean something in a heated blood feud but were burning it off on a thrown together match for YouTube).

I’ve decided that giving these matches actual ratings probably isn’t going to work because it’s very difficult to actually rate them on any sort of scale because this style of wrestling is so niche and unusual, so I’ll just give my thoughts on each match and leave the stars at home for today.

Hello You!

Back again with more of my Smart Mark Video On Demand “watch pile”, with a show that I bought for two reasons. Firstly it’s the inaugural CHIKARA event, so I decided to pick it up to see what CHIKARA was like back in the day. In addition, the show also features CM Punk in the main event, and I found the idea of him being part of all this very amusing, so decided to buy the show to see what sort of shenanigans he would get up to in a CHIKARA ring.

For those not au fait, CHIKARA is a company out of the Tri State area that mostly deals in family friendly Lucha Libre inspired wrestling. The best thing I could compare it to would be a comic book movie where the fight scenes are replaced by wrestling matches. As a result CHIKARA can get pretty silly sometimes, but there’s a joviality about it all that I really enjoy and I was a semi-regular viewer of the company’s major shows up until about 4 years ago or so when I fell out of touch with the product.

I’m not expecting much in the way of amazing wrestling here, but every company has to start somewhere and this show certainly has its fair share of the tropes that CHIKARA would go on to be known for.

Hello You!

Back once again to my Smart Mark Video On Demand haul, as I watch a show I actually remember buying this time! I think I bought this just to see what super early CZW was like, and seeing as we’re very close to this show being nearly 20 years old, I felt I’d write up a review for it as it felt timely.

For those not au fait, CZW (Combat Zone Wrestling) is a company that was first formed in 1998 by John Zandig, a man who is perhaps more known for yelling “Jeeeeeezus” on Botch-a-Mania these days rather than being a wild garbage wrestler in his own right. CZW’s main selling point over the years is that they provide high flying Junior Heavyweight styled wrestling alongside their patented brand of garbage wrestling called “Ultra Violence”, which essentially means light tubes, chairs, tables, barbed wire, weed whackers etc.

I should stress that the company has had its fair share of good wrestling over the years as well, with guys like Alex Shelley, Adam Cole (Bay-Bay), Jimmy Jacobs, Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli all being counted amongst the promotions alum. However, I’m not sure just how much good wrestling we’re going to find on a 1999 era CZW Show, so I wouldn’t get your hopes up too highly.

Anyway, let’s brace ourselves and take a journey into the world of Ultra Violence!

Hello You!

Women’s wrestling (Most commonly of the Japanese variety) is quite popular on this here Blog, so this show seemed apropos as it features nothing but women’s matches. This was one of many shows that I bought from Smart Mark Video On Demand a while back during a splurge and I’ve never actually had a chance to watch it. I can only assume that I thought the main event looked intriguing and that’s why I gave it a go.

SMASH Wrestling is a company based out of Toronto that quite a few big indie names like Johnny Gargano have passed through over the years. Seeing as it’s based in Canada, it makes sense that they’d have a Canada Vs USA styled competition, as that’s always easy heat. This show is all women’s matches but SMASH does also have men wrestling for it as well. It’s nice they have a whole show for just the women though. I kind of wish WWE would bring back that concept as I enjoyed the Evolution Pay-Per-View.

ECW Hardcore TV is coming on Wednesday (Just need to type up my written notes) but to fill a bit of a gap until then I thought I’d review this match. This came about because I read in the daily update over the weekend that Impact wants to main event a show with Eli Drake Vs Tessa Blanchard in an inter-gender match (Although apparently Eli isn’t up for doing it according to his Twitter)

I saw it mentioned that this match was an especially good example of an inter-gender match done right, so I decided to give it a look seeing as WrestleCircus have officially uploaded it to their own YouTube channel.

I’m not an especially big fan of inter-gender wrestling, mainly because I don’t like watching blokes beat up women. Call me old fashioned if you will, but I’m off a generation that was taught that hitting women just isn’t cricket, eh what, and I find it a tad uncomfortable when big burly blokes batter much smaller women whilst crowds roar along. Just seems a bit Roman Coliseumish to me.

I don’t really subscribe to the argument that it isn’t especially realistic for a woman to compete with a man in a wrestling contest, mainly because any suggestion of size really destroying immersion was done away with when Rey Mysterio Jr became a big star in the 90’S.

If Rey can give up to 150-200 pounds on some of his opponents and still have a good match, I can’t see why a smaller woman can’t then hang with a bigger man if the match is structured correctly. The weight difference in this match seems frankly ridiculous however. It’s one thing for Blanchard to trade moves with a guy Dave Crist’s size, but Cage is an absolute monster in comparison. Still, I’ll go into it with an open mind. There’s no doubting that both are more than capable of having a good match, so hopefully that translates here.