Connor McGrath
It’s been a long crazy weekend and I hope everybody had a great Easter/4/20/Patriot’s Day/Earth Day. And I hope everybody’s ready to read their favorite Monday tradition on a Wednesday! This was a big weekend for East Coast Professional Wrestlin On Fire with two big grudge matches (or hate matches as we’ll learn later!) so let’s get started with the recappin’!
The show starts at the announce booth with our announcers, Joey G and Ken Reedy. They put the hype machine into overdrive for today’s show as we’ve got two big rematches…in our main event, Bandido Jr Vs Junior Flow in a No Disqualification Match and we also have “The Punisher” Martinez Vs Luka The Sideshow Freak.
We get a video package highlighting Vincent Valentine and his Dark Carnival. I’m all for over-dramatizing things in wrestling but the announcers talking about how Vincent Valentine literally wants to burn ECPW to the ground seems a bit much. But then again, maybe Valentine just wants to make the On Fire part of ECPW On Fire become a reality!
Luka The Sideshow Freak (with Vincent Valentine) Vs The Punisher Martinez (with The Creeper)
Vincent Valentine cuts a long in-ring promo trying to lure The Punisher Martinez into the Dark Carnival—or he’ll let Luka beat him like a sack of puppies (What?). I don’t see why they insist on doing in-ring promos on this show because 90% of the time, they’re almost completely inaudible. They should just let the managers make their point backstage (where the interviews are only inaudible half of the time). Anyway, Punisher contemplates Valentine’s proposal for a second before decking him. Like the last Luka-Punisher match, this isn’t much of an actual match or at least, not in the version we see. Punisher gets the DQ win when Big Bad John runs in 2 or 3 minutes into the match and attacks him. After the match, The Dark Carnival does a long beatdown on Punisher while The Creeper and the referee just stand there awkwardly. Ken Reedy sells this beatdown almost a little too hard, to the point where I wondered if he was being sarcastic. He yelled out “HE’S GOING TO CAVE HIS HEAD IN!” when Luka has Punisher in the head vice. INC for the match as for the angle, it’s means to an end to further drive the story towards whatever gimmick match they’re going to blow off this Dark Carnival/Punisher feud with. I hate beatdown angles where no one even attempts to run in for the save for a supposedly major babyface. Obviously, The Creeper’s not going to run in but the ref could have taken a half assed bump.
Ken Reedy and Joey G wonder if anybody will be able to stop Vincent Valentine and His Dark Carnival and if Valentine will set ECPW On Fire ON FIRE then go to a long recap of the feud between Junior Flow, Bandido Jr, and Frankie Flow.
Joey G interviews Frankie Flow on “Inside ECPW”, the segment formerly known as “Tommy’s Corner” (and briefly Apter’s Alley!) Frankie Flow seems a bit stilted in his speech but overall, does a pretty good job of selling the gravitas of this angle with his son and his tag team partner fighting each other in a brutal type of match.
Then we get the footage from a few weeks back of Junior Flow roughing some jabroni up at the ECPW Training School while Joey G looks on in disgust.
A video package of the Junior Flow/Bandido Jr/Frankie Flow angle reminds me that this angle started out with two masked men attacking Frankie and Bandido, one of whom was revealed to be Junior…and I don’t think we ever found out who the other was. I’d be surprised if we ever did!
No DQ Match: Junior Flow Vs Bandido Jr
Match starts with Bandido Jr sneaking in from the crowd to attack Junior Flow. The two guys brawl in the crowd which reveals how many empty seats there are! Dopey fans chant “You Sold Out” at Junior Flow, which is dumb because just because a guy turns heel doesn’t mean he sold out. Junior Flow’s heel turn was based on him (falsely) feeling betrayed over his dad picking another tag team partner! His character’s a brat, not a sell out! Pay attention, people! The announcers sell a guard rail getting knocked over like Mick Foley getting thrown off Hell in a Cell. Joey G also yells out “This isn’t a grudge match! This is a HATE match!” a bunch of times during this match. WTH? Grudge Match and Hate Match are the same thing using different words! Anyway, this match is whatever. Both guys bust ass but it’s mostly the same match we saw last week except with chair shots and crowd brawling. However, the finish is tremendous. Frankie Flow comes out to wrestle a chair out of his son’s arms. Father Flow tries to reason with his boy and his tag team partner and try and talk some sense into everybody but Junior Flow trolls him and spits in his dad’s face. Frankie Flow snaps and goes to whack his son in the dome with the chair but Junior ducks and Bandido gets hit with the chair instead. Junior gets the win. Frankie Flow stands around in disbelief at what he just did and while he’s distracted, Junior Flow low blows him and Frankie falls to the ground. Tremendous. C+ match but an A finish. Junior Flow looked like a first rate weaselly heel here. I went from wondering why he’s been eating up so much airtime the past month or two to wanting to see him get pummeled (in the way that ECPW On Fire wants me to see him get pummeled) over the course of the last few minutes of that match.
The first twenty five minutes of the show were fairly blah but the last five minutes sure packed a wallop. I’ll take five good minutes over none.
Hope everybody has a wonderful week. Remember, April Showers may bring May Flowers but nothing good comes from feeding your dogs chocolate! Conn Man Out!
