Fire Pro Wrestling held Fire Pro 134 at Impact Christian Church in Merrillville, IN on Saturday May 20, 2017 at 6:30pm.

We lost this intelligent creature today, but he went peacefully and comfortably in his soft grey doggie bed.  What better way to distract from pet owner sadness than to write about wrestling!  (RIP Happy the Pug, we-have-no-idea-of-birthdate to May 22, 2017.)

This was a brave event to hold on this night, with Wrestling for Warriors to the east in Ft. Wayne, and NXT Takeover: Chicago to the west.  But several of the FPW regulars were there.  The first match was The Gypsy King Ritchie Rothchild vs. Fireball.  Fireball has been showing up a lot in the South Bend / Warsaw circuit, and I think this was his first time at FPW.  Sadly, Ritchie had the home field advantage and won the match with a stunner.  I like the way Ritchie laughs villainously while he toys with his opponent.  Here, he is seen making sure Fireball does not get caught under the bottom rope.  (The Word Press spell checker is telling me that “villainously” is not a word, but fuck Word Press, what do they know?)

The second match was Nicco Antonelli vs. Jonas Keith.  Nicco’s entrace music was almost totally inaudible, and that was a problem for most of the night.  I’m pretty sure that Mr. Keith was last seen by me having his face smushed into the mat courtesy of Mustafa and Drex O’Dell at Fire Pro 132.  I’m glad to see he’s recovered.  Well, that recovery was short lived as Nicco won this match when Jonas went for a splash and missed.

Match 3 was a 3-way between Austin Fury, The Sleepless Gentleman Adam Bueller, and Johnny Motley.  Fury’s Impact Championship was not on the line.  So I’ve been trying to get my kids interested in coming to shows with me, but with no luck so far.  My older daughter, 15, says she’s not interested in sweaty fat guys with tights slamming into each other.  I decided to play the cute guy card, and showed her a picture of Johnny Motley; “Look at this guy, he’s not fat, and he’s a favorite with the ladies in the audience!”  My daughter replied, “Yeah, he’s hot, but he’s not Arrow hot”.  I’m sorry, Johnny, my daughter apparently has high standards and you don’t measure up to Stephen Amell.   If you’re wondering what happened in the match and not my house, the three guys went back and forth in fun fashion for quite a while until eventually Motley pinned Bueller.  After the match, Bueller gave Fury a low blow.

You know your show is going to be short when the intermission comes after just half an hour.

After intermission, The Gentlemen’s Club (CK1 and Dave Allen) took on Stone Hands Slater Wallace and Flash Harris.  Poor Flash got worked over for a loooong time; CK1 and Allen played the sneaky tag team quite well, getting Wallace to try to come in the ring, and then double teaming Harris while the ref was busy shoving Wallace back to his corner.  To the left is Dave Allen gently setting Flash Harris down.  Eventually, Harris tagged in Stone Hands … who proceeded to slam his own partner Harris down to the mat.  The Gentleman’s Club now has a third member!  This turn happened before Tomasso Ciampa’s turn on Johnny Gargano, so for the record, FPW was first!

Because he knew the audience wanted more, Nicco Antonelli came to the ring and complained that his earlier match wasn’t enough competition, and he laid out an open challenge.  Out came … Johnny Motley, for his second round of the night as well.  The two smacked each other around until Motley won.  On his way to the ramp after the match, Motley gave a superkick to Antonelli for his troubles, and then a second one for good measure.

Our next feature was a wrestling match staged against a match between the ring announcer and his note cards.  Drex O’Dell, “from Massachussetts, England” had given his tag team partner Mustafa the night off, and was happy to take care of business on his own.  His opponents were either the Bombito Family or the Bambino Family, depending on whether you believe the ring announcer or their actual ring names.  Fresh off their appearance at the last ACW event, the Bambino Family are trying out more of the NWI scene.  Despite his eagerness to go it alone,  Drex O’Dell got pinned by the Bambinos.  I wonder what Mustafa will say when he hears about this?

Right before each main event, the pastor of Impact Christian Church comes out to invite the crowd to give his church a shot on Sunday mornings.  I think it’s cool that he does this, and really appreciate that he’s not pushy about it, but just like, “hey, you know we’re a church, and you’re welcome to come hang out with us”.  Tonight his invitation made me smile because he talked up the current lesson series on managing anger in the family … which is sort of funny at a wrestling show.

Our main event was Tank vs. Jeremy Hadley for the FPW Championship.  Tank’s another one who is usually seen farther east, and it was good to see him here.  One of the funniest / cutest scenes of the night was Jeremy Hadley’s daughter giving Hadley himself a big boo and thumbs down during his entrance, and chanting “Let’s go Tank!”  To impress the crowd, Tank gave us his rendition of “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof

but then later Jeremy Hadley let Tank know that he sucked by dropping him from the corner with a Frankensteiner.  This was a terrific big guy / little guy match, with Hadley using speed and agility to strike at Tank, and Tank just clobbering the bejeezus out of Hadley.  There were lots of nice near falls to keep us guessing.  Eventually Hadley won with a big frog splash.  After the match, the Gentlemen’s Club came out and attacked Hadley.  I was hoping Tank would let his conscience get the best of him and intervene, but nope.  The Gentlemen’s Club left Hadley laying in the ring, as well as two refs who did try to regain some order.    In the spirit of selling the hell out of a good beating, Hadley and the refs continued to stay down while the crowd started filing out of the church.

Up next: Fire Pro 135 will be held at 6:30pm on Saturday June 17, 2017 at Impact Christian Church.

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If you’re so inclined, check out the Northwest Indiana Wrestling Action Program (NWIWrap) broadcast Sundays at 9:30pm, right after Mostly Metal, which runs Sundays from 8-9:30pm, on WVLP 103.1FM in Valparaiso, IN.  If you’re not in Valpo, catch it streaming on http://www.wvlp.org and the Tune In Radio app.  Rebroadcasts happen Wednesdays 10pm – midnight, and NWIWrap is archived on YouTube, just search for NWIWrap.  You can find @NWIWrap on Twitter.  And you can subscribe to the nwiwrap@gmail.com Google calendar, where I try to keep up to date calendar postings of shows in and around the NWI region.  Because WRESTLING! 

Pro Wrestling King held Sir Lancelot at LaVille Jr-Sr High School in Lakeville, IN on Saturday May 14, 2017 at 7:00pm.  This was a fundraiser for the school’s special needs program.

Note that Sir Lancelot is not a casting call for a remake of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but it is a wrestling show!  The name actually makes sense, because a previous event was “Camelot” (It’s only a model!), and the new name was able to continue that theme and also work in the school’s team name, which is the Lancers!   An upcoming show is titled “Legend of the Sword”.   Someone has been watching too much Merlin.

At the last PWK event at this school, the big bleachers were down, but this time seating was set up in 3 rows of chairs around each side of the ring, and one small section of small bleachers.   I think this helped, because having a relatively small crowd spread over bleachers in a large gym makes things seem more empty.

To start the night, I noted that Ring Announcer Ryan Anderson not only was limping from his bad knee but also sounded like he was dying of pneumonia, so Ryan, I hope you’re feeling better!  He called all the announcements from the music & bell table away from the ring, except for one time when a certain wrestler – see below – pulled the dastardly move of making him walk over to the ring to hand off the mic.

A special pre-show match started things off so that those of us who can tell time and arrive a bit before the start of the show would get a treat.  It was a somewhat trimmed down over the top battle royal, featuring about 8 wrestlers including Irish Whip O’Doul, The Maltese Tiger, Jayden Quick, Jackie Chen, and the Celtic Nightmare (with one or two others I did not know).  Some of these guys would return in other matches later on.  They came out, did their thing for a few minutes, and the Celtic Nightmare ended up the winner.

The opening match on the main card was delayed while we observed the surprise match between Eric King and his laptop as he worked a bit to select the proper entrance music! He was probably nervous with Ryan Anderson looking over his shoulder.  But then we got underway with a six-man scramble, featuring the Maltese Tiger, Irish Whip O’Doul, Jackie Chen, the Celtic Nightmare, JC Bunyan, and Ox Baker Jr.  JC Bunyan was excited to see superfan Colton D. wearing a JC Bunyan shirt.  Also on the apparel side of things,  it turns out that tonight, JC Bunyan’s green plaid shirt almost matched the Celtic Nightmare’s green plaid kilt, and I’m so glad one of them was not wearing both items … although I see a tag team possibility in their future, perhaps the Fashion Nightmares?   After much pounding on each other and people diving onto other people standing outside the ring (“Goddammit!”  — Randy Orton), the Maltese Tiger scored a pinfall while 4 other bodies were still lying on the floor outside the ring.

Next up was tag team action, the Total Radicals Max Beardslee and Zach Mein vs. BD Smooth and Devin Shaw.  Sometimes a match with lots of silly dialog between the folks in the ring can be quite entertaining, and this was such a match.  Shaw in particular also showed off some moves.  Shaw and Smooth got the win.

In the third match, another tag team match, Tony Thunder (with Mr. Tiddlywinks) and Jorge Bravo defeated Cletus Farmer and Big Fish Remboski.  I had not seen Big Fish before and he was pretty smooth for a big man (and big in terms of tall and hefty, not big in terms of overflowing the tights in all the wrong places).  For those of you counting at home, at this point on the card, we’ve had three matches and have seen 14 wrestlers.  (This goes up to 15 or 16 if you count the pre-show match.)

Match 4 was Ames vs. Shady Chris Xion.  This was a lot of fun, although after the first three matches, with this one having only two people in the ring, it seemed like a lot of wasted space.  That’s a lie, these guys used ALL the space, inside, out of, and above the ring. Either one is always crowd pleasing each time I’ve seen them, (although with Shady, you have to take “pleasing” quite loosely, maybe “crowd antagonizing”?) so having them together in a match was a good time.  A minor wardrobe malfunction did not get in Shady Chris Xion’s way, and he got the win with the use of a chain while the ref wasn’t looking.  (His name is Shady, after all…)

During intermission, I had a match of my own, me against one of Hardcore Harry’s world famous meatball subs – their presence at the event was announced in advance on Facebook to great fanfare.  My battle was trying to eat it without making a mess, which was impossible.  But damn, it was a good sandwich.  No pictures, though, I have my dignity.  However, remembering that I could take pictures with my phone, I can now provide visual evidence of the matches in the second half.

We continued with DW Kelley taking on Sadon.  I like Sadon more each time I see him; and, I gather that DW Kelley is relatively new on the scene, but it looked like he held up his end of the bargain quite well.  That’s him in the green tights, by the way.  Sadon got the win.

Now, up until this point in the evening, Ryan Anderson had been able to do all his ring announcing from the comfort of the music / bell table by the curtains.  But the Police Department came out for their match, and Rod Street needed the mic in the ring, and so the meanie made Ryan start walking on his bad knee to the ring, until a sympathetic bystander carried the mic the rest of the way.  And then, after that, Street cut his intro short because when he asked “Do you know who I am??”, several people yelled “YES!” and so he just said, “Well, … OK then.”  Meanwhile, Deputy Dave was the victim of budget cuts as his spool of Caution tape ran out before he was done wrapping the ring.  Oh, by the way, the Police Department (Rod Street, Deputy Dave, and Lt. Eva Lonis) were taking on Team Legend-dairy (Matt O’Hare, Alexander S. Kirk, and Cynnamon) in a 6-person tag match.  Eva Lonis and Cynnamon did some pretty good scrapping, especially outside the ring.  Pictured here is Deputy Dave heroically trying to make a tag to his partner.  The Police Department wins after spraying Kirk with mace.

Steven Drochner, PWK Champion, comes out with his manager Damien Saint, and they complain about the open challenge forced on them by promoter Eric King.  The person accepting the open challenge is … Fireball.  Fireball gave it a good try, but it didn’t take long for Drochner (and Saint and his cane) to overcome him so that Drochner could retain the PWK Title.

And now it was time for the main event, a match that apparently grown men voluntarily participate in, and other grown adults (like me!) enjoy watching – a barefoot Lego death match!  It’s Adam Bueller vs. Jayden Quick.  When he came to the ring, Quick was followed by a tall guy in a purple shirt, and I have no idea who he was.  As the two got closer to the ring, purple shirt guy was attacked by Damien Saint, who must have still had issues to work out after the last match.  From the ring, Quick saw his pal being clobbered by Saint, but was like, “<shrug> You’re on your own, dude.”  The match started with a nice game of “lock up around the outside of the pile of Legos and try to get the other guy into it”. But eventually we got around to them stepping on Legos, falling on Legos, getting slammed on Legos, and throwing Legos at each other. Yes, both of those men in the picture are barefoot.  Yes, those colored specks are Legos.   I’m 50 years old, and I just typed “Lego” multiple times.  I love wrestling in all its craziness.  This match went on for a good while, and Adam Bueller ended up winning.  Afterwards, Jayden Quick vowed to find a way to defeat Bueller eventually.

For the final tally, on the main card we had:  8 matches, 28 wrestlers, 3 managers, one teddy bear, one ring announcer in need of a doctor, one can of mace, one set of ripped pants, one meatball sub, and hundreds of Legos. Not bad for ten bucks.

It looks like the next PWK shows in Northern Indiana are a double-header on June 16 and June 17, 2017, with both shows at Bourbon Park Pavilion in Bourbon, IN.  One June 16, Kongo Kong and Robbie E guest star in “A Sudden Impact on Skull Island”, and on June 17, the usual cast of characters such as in this recap appear in “Legend of the Sword”.  Keep up at http://www.pwk1.com/ 

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If you’re so inclined, check out the Northwest Indiana Wrestling Action Program (NWIWrap) broadcast Sundays at 9:30pm, right after Mostly Metal, which runs Sundays from 8-9:30pm, on WVLP 103.1FM in Valparaiso, IN.  If you’re not in Valpo, catch it streaming on http://www.wvlp.org and the Tune In Radio app.  Rebroadcasts happen Wednesdays 10pm – midnight, and NWIWrap is archived on YouTube, just search for NWIWrap.  You can find @NWIWrap on Twitter.  And you can subscribe to the nwiwrap@gmail.com Google calendar, where I try to keep up to date calendar postings of shows in and around the NWI region.  Because WRESTLING!