By Arya Witner
(If you just want the results, scroll to the bottom)
Hello from Vegas.
So what happens when you take one amazingly awesome transgender woman from the state of Massachusetts and stick her in the epicenter of professional wrestling for 48 hours? You get the tale of the SEVEN shows I watched. Before I begin, it’s important to remember that I am used to being in the Eastern time zone. I have lived in Pennsylvania, New York, Florida and now Massachusetts, all in the same time zone. While I have traveled to the Central and Pacific zones before, it’s not something I do regularly.
After getting into town late-Wednesday night I crashed in my hotel pretty much right away. Thursday morning I decided to go get some breakfast, walked out the door and immediately saw the Little White Wedding Chapel, which was the location of the 1999 storyline wedding of Triple H and Stephanie McMahon. Speaking of which, did everyone else forget to get them something for their 25th?
I quickly realized I could make it to DEFY at 11am, which I went to and results can be read elsewhere here. From there I stuck around at The Palms Resort & Casino for the WrestleCon Supershow, headlined by Minoru Suzuki vs Butterbean with Dan Severn as the guest referee. To me the match was an amazing experience and honestly was exactly what it was always meant to be. You may hear others calling it the worst match ever, but let’s be honest, it was never going to be anything but what we got. Plus, in case you were annoyed by that match, they actually ended the show with a fantastic 6-man tag where Zack Sabre, Jr, Bad News Tito and Shane Haste defeated Flip Gordon, Hechicero & Michael Oku. Among the highlights of the rest of the show was a match with Matt Riddle vs Matt Makowski, which degenerated into chants for “Matt” and the two Matt’s arguing over who we were actually cheering for. Mickie James interrupted her match with Maki Itoh to announce randomly that Dave Meltzer never put her over, so after a chant of “Meltzer sucks”, Mickie and Maki had a sing off, which was won by Maki and it wasn’t even close.
From there I skipped over to the Cox Pavillion for TNA Unbreakable. This show had a lot of strong points. They had a hot crowd of around 2,000 people, who were really into it and Chris Bey’s return was one of the most emotional things I’d ever seen. The issues came from the booking of the show. The show had an advertised start time of 7:00pm, however when I showed up a little after 6, Laredo Kid was already in the ring wrestling a local. What ended up being a series of dark matches between mostly locals took us to 7:00 and half the crowd wasn’t even there when I showed up. While I disagreed with AJ Francis being in the International Title match, if they were going to have him in it, Eric Young and Steve Maclin were the right two people for him to be wrestling. That match should not have followed the Barbed Wire Massacre. That was an insane spectacle (not the last time I’ll say that) and the crowd was down to around 500 by the time they took all the barbed wire accouterments down and got the 3-way in the ring.
Back to The Palms for PROGRESS at 11:59pm, which regardless of timezone is the latest show I’d ever gone to. Out of a weird bout of adrenaline, everyone was still pumped and excited for this show. Among the highlights of an excellent night of wrestling was a group of us really getting behind Nina Samuels’ tiny hat, with chants specifically designed for it. Elsewhere Mike D. Vecchio absolutely destroyed his opponent, Kuro, which he did so impressively that the crowd couldn’t help but get behind. Actor Paul Walter Houser walked away with the PROGRESS Proteus Championship and, in this highlight of his career, met me while I was waiting for a Lyft.
Fast forward 6 hours, I was awake again and headed to the FSW Arena for Ed In San Antonio’s PoderMania~! Now anyone who has subscribed to the Observer site over the last 20 years knows Ed has gone from a goofy guy who originally organized what became the annual F4W Vegas Convention to a wrestling promoter, with this being his 7th such event. It was here I watched Nina Samuels and Nicole Matthews wrestle again and realized I was not the only person to get little sleep on Thursday night. Plus, I got to see my friend Leva Bates channel her inner-Von Erich as she Iron Claw’d her way to a win over Ricky Tenacious. I remember 10-15 years ago, some people thought Ed’s love of women’s wrestling was a little weird, especially since this was before women’s wrestling took off in mainstream US, but what this shows is Ed was ahead of the game and if I know one thing it’s that this show was full of future WWE and AEW stars.
Next up I went to see DDT and Joey Janela’s Spring Break, which I will cover at the same time. Now, I bought a ticket to Spring Break knowing I am not a fan of GCW and deathmatch wrestling in general. I went for 2 reasons: The Senior Scramble, where 5 legends over the age of 60 would do battle and Sabu’s retirement match. Plus, since I was already going back to The Palms, I went to see DDT first and that leads to some issues.
Neither show was booked to create a proper flow. Both shows had a lot of very good wrestling. Actually both shows had 4 good wrestling matches. DDT actually had the best match I’ve seen so far with Konosuke Takeshita vs MAO. However, the issue with DDT, first, is that they focus heavily on comedy. Four of the eight matches were either flat out comedy matches or had heavy comedic influences. The semi-main event match, before the aforementioned Takeshita-MAO match, was Minoru Suzuki vs blow-up doll Yoshihiko. I imagine Minoru was happy to get paid to basically do nothing for 10 minutes and if anyone could make beating up a doll interesting, it’s him. However, having all this comedy on the show makes it hard to get into and enjoy the serious matches because I kept waiting for the nonsense to start. Timothy Thatcher vs Shinya Aoki had similar issues. There was one humorous (to me) incident with a Michael Jackson impersonator named Santana Jackson, who came out to Smooth Criminal. The only thing wrong with that was he used Alien Ant Farm’s version of it instead of Michael’s. However, I think I was the only person to notice.
From there, Spring Break started with the “wrestling” portion of the show before we turned to the death match portion. That wouldn’t even have been bad had they kept it that way. However, two standard matches, Masha Slamovich vs Suzu Suzuki and the Senior Scramble, were surrounded by all the weapons matches. Before I get to the main event, another issue was the finishes of two matches. The first was Minoru Suzuki vs Matt Tremont. While they never explicitly said it was a hardcore match, the pre-match video had nonstop footage of Tremont bleeding and being hit with stuff. However, the match just ended after 5 minutes when Minoru randomly piledrove the referee. Then came the Senior Scramble, where after a minute, Kerry Morton walked out and cut a promo on all 5 legends before getting beaten up by everyone (including his dad, Ricky) and pinned by all 5.
Then it was time for Sabu’s retirement barbed wire match against Joey Janella. This match was weird and it was not the fault of Janella. First it took a good 20 minutes to hook up the barbed wire because it seemed like no one knew how to string it up properly, which got proven when Sabu first went into the barbed wire and it broke, causing him to go head-first into a barbed wire box gimmick they had at ringside and then Sabu was put through a barbed wire board and crashed through, landing head first on the floor.
Now, you can tell by the fact that I mentioned Sabu was wrestling that he showed up and the bell rang. When Sabu came out, he was wearing a suit and during the introductions was making gestures that he was hurt and the match wouldn’t happen and then had a prolonged conversation with the ring announcer before he finally started the match. The first surprise was Bill Alfonso coming to the ring and helping Sabu. Then Atticus Coger (who earlier defeated Fuego del Sol in a Career vs Mask Match) hit the ring with his brother, Otis to attack Sabu, Fonzie and Janella. Suddenly the lights went out, the opening strands of Enter Sandman played and approximately 7 minutes later, The Sandman made it to the ring. The reason why it took him so long is because there was only one way he could go from section 204 where he came in and the ring. Unfortunately for him he went the wrong direction. The good news with that is he walked by me and I got a lot of pictures, but the match literally stopped as this happened. Then, after Sandman ran off the Brothers Coger, Sabu eventually won the match and finally accepted the GCW Independent Hall of Fame plaque he didn’t leave his hotel room to get last year.
So that is the end of my independent wrestling journey for the weekend. I am headed to WWE World and WrestleMania the next two days and hope to have something written about that as well. Until then, thanks for reading!
Mark Hitchcock Memorial Supershow
Arez, Canis Lupis, El Bendito, Latigo & Toxin defeated Aero Panther, El Vengador, Fight Panther, Gravity & Spider Fly in the annual 10-man tag.
Mascara Dorada defeated Ninja Mack
Danhausen defeated 1 Called Manders, Cheeseburger, Mike D Vecchio, Super Crazy, TJP and Vaughn Vertigo
Matt Riddle defeated Matt Makowski
Mickie James defeated Maki Itoh
Butterbean vs Minoru Suzuki ended in a Double Countout
TMDK defeated Flip Gordon, Hechicero & Michael Oku
TNA Unbreakable
Eric Young defeated JDC and Zachary Wentz
Steve Maclin defeated Ace Austin and Eddie Edwards
X-Division Champion Moose defeated Sidney Akeem
Mike Santana & The Hardys defeated Mustafa Ali & The Nemeth’s
Joe Hendry & Masha Slamovich defeated Frankie Kazarian & Tessa Blanchard
Sami Callihan defeated Mance Warner in Barbed Wire Massacre
Steve Maclin defeated Eric Young and AJ Francis to become the first TNA International Champion
PROGRESS Chapter 179
Lykos Gym defeated Boisterous Behaviour
wXw World Champion 1 Called Manders defeated Marcus Mathers and Tate Mayfairs
Mike D Vecchio defeated Kuro
Women’s Champion Nina Samuels defeated Rhio and Vert Vixen
Paul Walter Hauser defeated Proteus Champion Simon Miller, Adami Priest, Charles Crowley and Effy to win the title
Minoru Suzuki defeated Cara Noir
PROGRESS Champion Luke Jacobs defeated Michael Oku
PoderMania~! 7
Leva Von Erich defeated Ricky Tenacious
Nicole Matthews defeated Aleah James
Brittnie Brooks & Kaia McKenna defeated Gin Sevani & Joseline Navarro
EVE Champion Nina Samuels defeated Izzy Moreno
Amira defeated Lil Marz
Carolina Cruz defeated Su Yung
FSW Women’s Champion Gypsy Mac defeated Zamaya
Alex Gracia defeated Alejandra Quintanilla
Shazza McKenzie defeated Nixi XS in a Last Showgirl Standing Match
Jazmine Alure defeated Ashley Vox
Poder Champion Brittany Blake defeated Zoe Lucas
DDT Goes Las Vegas
Starboy Charlie defeated Yuni
Daisuke Sasaki & Ilusion defeated Dan The Dad & Kody Lane and Mizuki Watase & Shota
Santana Jackson defeated Antonio Honda
wXw Champion 1 Called Manders defeated Yukio Naya
Kazuma Sumi, Nick Wayne & Shunma Katsumata defeated Gringo Loco, Marcus Mathers & Tyler Bateman
Shinya Aoki defeated Timothy Thatcher
DDT Champion Minoru Suzuki defeated Yoshihiko
Konosuke Takeshita defeated MAO
Joey Janela’s Spring Break 9
Alec Price & Jordan Oliver defeated GCW Tag Team Champions Violence Is Forever to win the titles
The Wagner Family defeated Los Desperados
Megan Bayne defeated Bozilla
Zack Sabre Jr defeated 1 Called Manders
Atticus Cogar defeated Fuego Del Sol in a Career vs Mask Match
Minoru Suzuki vs Matt Tremont ended in a No Contest
JCW Champion Masha Slamovich defeated Suzu Suzuki
Gabe Kidd defeated Mance Warner
Damian 666, George South, Mike Jackson, Ricky Morton & Robert Gibson defeated Kerry Morton
Sabu defeated Joey Janela in a Barbed Wire match
