Fire Pro Wrestling held FPW 137 at 6:30pm on Saturday, September 16 2017 at Impact Christian Church, Merrillville, IN. I am writing this recap for all you pencil necked geeks out there who didn’t attend!  RIP Brain 😦 Note that there are a couple of names I don’t know I heard correctly, so I’ll gladly accept corrections.

The first match is Johnny Motley vs Ricky Vendel (?).  The crowd takes a while to warm up, but gets going after a bit.  Ricky was good at getting some folks worked up.  One group of fans really want to see Motley’s superkick, and they chanted for it from the opening bell.  Over and over.  And over and over. I thought of making a drinking game out of it, taking a drink every time I heard “Superkick!” but (a) we’re in a church, and (b) I’d need an ambulance before the match is over. Motley shows them up by winning the match without ever doing a kick.  Here we see Motley sending Vendel almost literally ass over elbows.

The second match is Nicco Antonelli vs. Kyle Cross (?).  Nicco must have an enemy upstairs (I mean the sound booth, not WAY upstairs as you might thing in a church), as his entrance music is almost never audible.  I need to hear those violins and mandolin to remind me of my vacations in Venice.  (OK, I’ve never been to Venice.)  Here’s Kyle running into the corner about to clobber Antonelli.  Come on, you have to show more respect to a man whose pants look like the away uniforms from the 1977 Pittsburgh Pirates!  The boots are awesome, though, as is his hat which isn’t seen here.  Nicco gets the win because he’s the better dressed man.

Next we are introduced to a man weighing in at “two hundred fifty five and three quarters pounds”.  That’s pretty damn precise!  It’s Ritchie Rothchild, the Gypsy King.  Ritchie gets on the mic and takes the time to ask the audience some questions, which he has never done in the many years he’s appeared at FPW.  And so The Gypsy Psychologist King tries to convince everyone that they are awful people because we think we are better than him, but none of us will be coming to Impact for church tomorrow, even if it is their 10th anniversary!  After these moments of self reflection, his opponent Austin Fury comes out to get the place rockin.  This was a fun match, with Rothchild playing the steady immovable boulder to Fury’s role of the rubber object bouncing off it.   Fury bounces off the ropes, corners, and so on, and even gets a bloody nose for his trouble, but eventually Rothchild gets the win.

After the first 3 matches, there’s an intermission.  I went to check out the merch table of the Bambino family, but the only shirt sizes there were S and XL.  I need a Pops Bambino-sized shirt!  I’ll keep that money on hand for another time.

The second half started with Roach vs. Adam Bueller for Bueller’s Impact Championship.  (Has there ever been a Rick Raid vs. Roach match?  Just wondering if Raid v. Roach has been a thing.)  Bueller is introduced as “The Violent Gentleman” (which is my favorite of his nicknames) instead of The Antichrist, because when you’re wrestling in a church, it’s best not to take chances on some serious outside interference.  Many of the folks in the crowd are cheering for Adam Bueller.  He tries his hardest to get them off the Bueller train, but no such luck.  Bueller worked Roach’s arm most of the match, and we saw a lot of damaging or submission type holds.   During a bit of stalling, Bueller grabbed a fan … no, like a literal fan, there’s no A/C in this place … and shook it at Roach.  Late in the match, Roach tossed Bueller out of the ring and Bueller laid on the floor making “it’s broken for sure!” noises.  The ref counted to 10, and Roach wins by countout.  Soon, Bueller pops up onto two healthy legs, revealing his deception, as he gets his title back .  This sends a group of fans in front of me (now I mean the people kind, not the spinning kind) into total conniptions!  They’re totally beside themselves that Bueller gets to keep his belt – yelling at Bueller, yelling at the ref, yelling at the dudes at the announcing table.  You’d think someone had just killed their cat!  I don’t think they understood that titles don’t change hands on a countout.  Roach wants another chance, but Bueller says he won’t even be there on October 21, so how bout that!

The next match is a three way tag match for the Impact Tag Team Championship.  We have The Bambino Family, Flash Harris & Mike Strong, and The Cavalier Club (CK1 and Flawless Dave Allen).  The Cavalier Club play it smart and use the rules of “anyone can tag anyone on any team” to arrange to have both of them tagged in at the same time – Allen gives CK1 the Finger Poke of Doom and tries to pin him, but the other 4 realize what’s happening and jump in there really fast!  Later the Club plays it smart by taking a siesta on the outside (see below) while the other four beat each other up.  This was a really fun match; eventually the Bambinos and Flash & Strong wear each other out to the point that the Club is ready to come back, slam Pops Bambino into a ring post, and jump into the ring for one last round of damage and the pin.  The Cavalier Club are your Impact Tag Team Champions!

In the final match, we have Jeremy Hadley defending his FPW Heavyweight Championship from Cavalier Club Member Stone Hands Slater Wallace.  It goes back and forth for a while until the other members of the Cavalier Club, CK1 and Dave Allen, come out from the back and jump Hadley – leading to a DQ.  Here’s a good pic to end on:

The next FPW show will be on Saturday October 14 at Monster Con at the Porter County Expo Center in Valparaiso – bell times at both 11:30 am and 2:00pm!  Then it looks like they’ll be back at their home base of Impact Christian Church in Merrillville on October 21. but Adam Bueller will not be in the building.

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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 8:00-9:30pm CST, 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.wvlp@gmail.com Google calendar, where I try to keep up to date calendar postings of shows in and around the NWI region.  Because WRESTLING!