ARWPRO held Nightmare on Grand Ave at Morton High School in Hammond, IN on Saturday Oct 14, 2017 at 7:30pm CST.  This was a fundraiser for high school band uniforms.  This is appropriate since most wrestlers are frustrated band nerds who found it was easier to beat each other over the head with chairs than master the clarinet.  I kid, I kid!  Don’t hurt me.

There are pictures in this recap that aren’t great.  My pics are usually not great anyway, but this time, while the ring was at Morton High School in Hammond, the bleachers where I sat were apparently in Crown Point.  So there was quite a distance.

Props to the ARW ring announcer (you think I’d know his name by now, I only know that Charlie Jr calls him Ginger) for giving a recap of the big events at previous shows that led to the main event matches we’d see on this card.   That was a nice touch.

The first match was Dakota Prodigy (accompanied by Moxie Mollie) defending his Indiana State Championship from Christopher St. Michael.  Once I woke up from St. Michael’s entrance music (*), I neglected to get a picture from this match.  It ended rather abruptly after Prodigy ducked out of the corner when St. Michael was going into it, so that St. Michael went between the turnbuckles and struck the corner post like Braun Strowman always does now; Prodigy rolled him up for the pin.   (*) This sounds like me just being a jerk, but the music fits the lackadaisical “I just don’t care” slow stroll and methodical ring action that St. Michael pulls off.  So it’s good for what he’s doing, it’s just … dull.  OK, maybe I am being a jerk.

The second match was The Mexecutioners (Santana Starks and The Machine) against Nick Calucci and Fitzsimmons.  (Thanks to the ARWPRO Live Facebook page for the proper spelling of those names.)  The Mexecutioners got the win.

 

 
Up next was Moxie Mollie (accompanied by Dakota Prodigy) against Renee Van Peebles (with her agent Chazz Moretti).  Moxie Mollie busted out a cannonball on Van Peebles, but it did not help in the long run.  At one point, Chazz Moretti shoved Dakota Prodigy on the outside of the ring; the distraction allowed him to slip Van Peebles a foreign object (taped brass knuckles?) that she used to conk Moxie Mollie and get the pin. Mollie has already declared via Facebook that she will be taking video evidence to the powers at ARWPRO and asking for a rematch.  You know, I said this on the air this past Sunday and it bears repeating.  Chazz Moretti and Dakota Prodigy have both been guests on the Northwest Indiana Wrestling Action Program (cheap plug!) and I do not approve of guest-on-guest violence.  It could really spoil the WVLP picnic.

In match 4, The Picture Show joined up with (Horn)Swoggle to take on The Family: OSM (Old School Manson), Ivan Manson, and Rancid Joey Rak, all accompanied, of course, by Charlie Junior.  Charlie made sure to tell Rak that he needs to step up his game.  To start the match, Swoggle decided to size up the competition and check the stomach of OSM (below, right).  I’m not sure why!  But after many tag team shenanigans, Swoggle managed to pin Joey Rak.  Of course OSM and Charlie Junior were not happy about this, and Rak got a few whacks on the way to the back.

 

Nick Cutler took on Theo Storm after intermission.  You can’t really tell, but above left shows Cutler putting a hurtin’ on Storm.  Cutler was the victor.

Finally, we had a two semi main events.  The first was a no DQ match between Jon Hudson and Joey Boom Boom – Hudson venting all his recent frustrations with employment in ARWPRO and Joey standing up for the promotion and the boys in the back.  Boom Boom is the one who wanted the match to be no DQ.  This went on for a long time, with lots and lots of near falls.  But eventually Joey Boom Boom came out on top, and Hudson recognized who was the better man on this night, and there were hugs and bro moments all around.  This seems to be Joey Boom Boom’s management style, which also paid off with Ivan Manson earlier in the year:  get someone pissed off enough they challenge him to a match, then gain their respect by really bringing it in the match.  I don’t know, it seems like maybe just offering a couple of extra vacation days would be less painful.

Our second main event featured Aggravated Assault (Punisher 747 and BOW, tag team champs -accompanied by Chazz Moretti) versus Ruff Crossing (ARW World Champ) and Max Holiday – accompanied by Ratt J Flywheel.  Chazz Moretti is so confident that his team will win that he’s brought a briefcase with $25,000 inside to award the winning team (he must not have noticed that the tag team titles are not on the line, because that tends to tip things in favor of the challengers).  This is an interesting set up, because Ruff Crossing just recently defeated Holiday for the ARW World Championship, but then saved Holiday from a beating at the hands of Aggravated Assault afterwards.  Ruff does not like Max, but they’re in the “an enemy of my enemy” situation.  They do have complementary styles and looks, though, and so make a really good tag team together.

 

When Crossing and Holiday win the match (see?), Ruff Crossing quickly grabs the briefcase and starts to celebrate.  But Ratt takes it in hand and says he has a better idea; he trades it in to Moretti in exchange for an actual title shot for his new tag team, freshly dubbed “Ruff Holiday”.  Ruff and Max see the wisdom in this set up.

You can see the follow up to these events at the next ARWPRO show at Gavit Middle / High School in Hammond, IN on Saturday, November 4th at 7:30pm, and then at ARWPRO Black & Blue Wednesday, Wednesday Nov 22 at 7:30pm at the ARWPRO Arena, i.e. American Legion 100 in Lake Station, IN.

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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!