Connor McGrath
Hello everybody! Hope you had a great Royal Rumble/Grammys weekend and welcome to pro wrestling’s seventh greatest Monday tradition…Culture Crossfire’s recap of Wrestling On Fire’s half hour syndicated show! Let’s get right to the action!
Since we haven’t had an 100%, all new episode since before the holidays, we get a refresher of what the hell was going on when we left off a month ago. We get a “Previously Seen On” segment to hype the Crazy Ivan/Kai Katana Vs Matt McIntosh/Ricky Reyes match we’re going to see tonight. Both teams cut promos to hype the match.
Our credits are slightly tweaked again and we’re back to the show being called ECPW on Fire. Eminem’s “Beserk” is theme music and as much as I hate copyright infringement, I hated that awful Rob Zombie wannabe theme “Feed The Beast” even more.
Junior Flow Vs FX
When we last saw Junior Flow, he had turned on his father Frankie. The audience and FX, the jabroni he’s facing chant “You Sold Out” at him. I mean, sure Junior turned heel and betrayed his dad but I don’t think he sold out. FX seems like the name of a wrestler that would have a gimmick but he’s just a fiery babyface undercard dude. The audience is kind of clever when they chant “YES!” after Junior yells “You think you’re better than me?” at his opponent. Frankie Flow comes out to chide his son for a minute then wanders off. Flow goes over in an extended squash with a rollup. Just sort of a nothing match just meant to push the fact that Junior Flow is a dick now. D
During the commercial break, we get an ad for a Best of ICW DVD on sale for $10 on WrestlingOnFire.com! Ah, the stars of yesteryear! Sgt. Slaughter! Kevin Sullivan! The Missing Link! Exotic Adrian Street! Those classic battles of the ’80s and the—-wait, a second, this isn’t an Andrew Lutzke column. Let’s move on.
Crazy Ivan and Kai Katana (with Doug DeVito) Vs Ricky Reyes and Matt McIntosh
Whatever Ivan and Katana’s theme is is blatantly dubbed over with weird dubstep (possibly stock music?) . Which seems weird since they used an Eminem song they clearly didn’t have the rights to as the theme this week. Or maybe Em is a big fan of minor, East Coast indy wrestling action like I am. Reyes and McIntosh’s theme is obviously also weirdly dubbed over. This match, actually, should be pretty decent since all four guys are solid workers and/or entertaining. We start with a wild brawl outside of the ring. Maybe I’m just easily entertained since I just got done watching the 2014 Royal Rumble but this match is a fairly entertaining slobberknocker. McIntosh does a dive to the floor onto the other three guys that seems completely unreasonable considering there are 40 people in the crowd. McIntosh is a spot monkey but he definitely brings an energy to the show that it’s usually missing. The match ends with the heels going over after McIntosh accidentally superkicks Reyes. After the match, Reyes and McIntosh get into a shoving match and Reyes teases a heel turn. Reyes turns about as much as Lex Luger did in the mid ’90s, I swear. Despite a slightly lame ending, that was one of the more fun matches I’ve seen lately on this show. B+ Even though I hate that Ricky Reyes’ character changes week to week, a match between him and McIntosh would probably be a lot of fun.
Despite the mediocre start, this week’s show wrapped up pretty nicely with a main event that got over all four participants. I could even argue that this might have been the most fun pro wrestling show I watched all weekend. Thanks everybody for taking time out of your day to read this column every week. I’m going to chug some NyQuil and head off to Hoogie Boogie Land! Stay warm, everybody and remember to never feed your dogs chocolate.
