Connor McGrath
Just as it is in the WWE Universe, the title scene in Wrestling On Fire is in complete upheaval. After a controversial finish to a title match between long time champ Brian Fury and El Leon Apolo, Mario Savoldi held up the WOF Championship and declared that any star from WOF or its sister promotion ECPW had a shot at winning the vacant belt. To sell the importance of this announcement, we open the show by seeing it for the third weekend in a row.
Triple Threat Match for the ECPW Light Heavyweight Championship: Dan De Man (c) Vs Danny Dubstep Vs Junior Flow
Dan De Man is both the ECPW Light Heavyweight Champ and the ECPW Proving Ground Champ. Looking at ECPW’s website for the time, they have about ten different titles. And who says titles are meaningless these days. They’re trying to claim that Junior Flow is ECPW Tag Team Champ Frankie Flow’s son, which seems mildly implausible but I guess Frankie must be older than I thought (or Junior is really, really young). Danny Dubstep’s gimmick is that he’s…a raver, I guess? His last name is Dubstep and he wears a bunch of bandanas. It must be what the kids like, I suppose! The youth football team in the front row has an elaborate chant for him that I can’t really decipher. This a pretty rote triple threat with the greenhorns trying to double team the champ but their greed and the champ’s nefarious heel tactics doing them in. De Man wins with a reverse Russian Legsweep. C+
Crazy Ivan and Andrew Anderson (with Doug DeVito) Vs El Leon Apolo and Jumbo Joe Gunns
Crazy Ivan is the ECPW Television Champ, Anderson in the former ECPW Heavyweight Champ and Gunns is the current ECPW Champion. We all know Apolo. DeVito gets off to a good start on the mic by calling himself the “Championship of Managers”. OK, dude. All of the ECPW main eventers either look like wrestlers and/or have gimmicks that are straight from 1986. Which is probably why Wrestling On Fire aligned themselves with them. Actually, this match plays out like an ’80s WWF tag main event. Just a bunch of big dudes lumbering around, heel managers weaseling around the ring. Apolo wins after hitting Ivan with a Rock Bottom. C
After the match, Ken Reedy attempts to interview Andrew Anderson but is gingerly assaulted. Apolo runs in, yelling in Spanish to make the save. Ken Reedy groans about his knee popping as the show comes to a close. WOF seems to fall back on heels attacking announcers/non-wrestlers angles an awful lot. In the past year or so, we’ve seen Brian Fury pummel AJ Savoldi, The Giant Pharaoh attack Bob Conn, and now Ken Reedy . It’s an OK concept for an angle to pull out once every other year, maybe once/twice a year max but it seems like WOF does ’em to death. I think part of the problem is they think their non-wrestling personalities are way more over than they actually are. Yeah, the commentary has improved 1000x times since the day of Tommy Savoldi garbling into the microphone but their announcers seem pretty interchangeable. And c’mon, there’s really more ways to get a heel over than “attacking defenseless announcers”.
Speaking of the Savoldis, I’d like to end this review by mentioning the passing of the patriarch of the family, Angelo Savoldi this weekend at the age of 99. He was one of the great light heavyweights of his era. After his in-ring career was done, he became a minority owner of the WWWF, eventually parlaying that into owning his own promotion, ICW (later IWCCW) with his sons. In recent years, has gained some notoriety as the oldest living professional wrestler. A lot has been debated about the Savoldis but their impact on pro wrestling; especially the independent scene of the past thirty years has been indelible and none of it would have happened without Angelo Salvoldi. So I tip my cap to him as he makes his way to the great wrestling ring in the sky.
On that solemn note, that ends another edition of Connor Watches Wrestling On Fire. Remember to rake your leaves and not feed your dogs chocolate. Happy trails until next week, my amigos!
