So my wife and I attended this event. Why wait until the video was posted on MCW’s Rage TV streaming service to review the show? Well, there’s a very simple explanation. I paid good money for those tickets and wasn’t going to spend my time writing notes. I was going to have a good time. Besides, and this is definitely secondary, by waiting for the video to be released, I could see the backstage segments and the commentary. A classy way to do things, I know. With that in mind, here’s what you can dig on if you check out this episode of Rage TV:
Backstage Segment: Rayo and Bruiser
Bruiser is the franchise of MCW, having held their main title six times. I suppose he isn’t in any major storylines right now, so they’re sticking him with Rayo, who is a skinny Peruvian lad with a soccer player gimmick. I’ve certainly seen weirder gimmicks than a soccer player turned wrestler, but that didn’t make it any easier to wrap my head around. Rayo’s thing right now is that he’s a young upstart being paired with a veteran, someone he doesn’t want to disappoint.
When we see Rayo backstage, he’s going over a bunch of potential team names. They’re all very silly, of course. This team is playing on a rather hilarious juxtaposition of the big surly brawler and the young, much smaller, upstart.
Such is the nature of indie wrestling, I suppose, but for me the funniest part of the backstage segment was when special guest Tommy Dreamer walked backstage to check his cellphone, saw that a segment was being shot, and instead of walking back out, turned his back to the camera and finished whatever he had to do on his phone.
Guns for Hire (Bill Collier and Paul Jordane) with Kevin Eck vs The Hell Cats (Sexy Steve and Jimmy Starz)
The Hell Cats are a fun group. But they’re average sized dudes and look tiny next to Collier and Jordane, who have apparently been built entirely from brick and concrete and are about seven hundred feet tall. Basically, the gimmick for Guns for Hire is that they’re supposed to beat the shit out of MCW’s tag teams, to take them out before they have a chance to challenge the MCW tag team champions the Ectourage, who are, as you might expect, also managed by Kevin Eck. The Hell Cats have a basic good timin’ stoner kind of gimmick. Yeah, I can be pretty dense sometimes. I didn’t realize the whole stoner connection until the crowd started chanting, “THC! THC!” and I was wondering why even little kids were chanting about getting high. But my wife pointed out that those were the Hell Cats’ initials and I just sort of mumbled, “Ha, yeah, duh. I get it now.” I am not a bright man sometimes.
This was a classic high-flyers, speedballs vs brute force brawlers kind of deal. It was a nice juxtaposition. There was a hilarious part early in the match where Collier challenged Sexy Steve to a test of strength and held his arm out, but Steve was too short to reach his hand and had to try to jump to get to it.
Kevin Eck reminds me a bit of Bobby Heenan. He wears a WWE jacket to the ring. His character is an arrogant know it all who’s billed from Stamford Connecticut, which, of course, is where the WWE headquarters is located. Eck legitimately used to work for them, having been part of their creative team at one time. He is, of course, responsible for plenty of interference and dirty tricks that are sometimes successful in getting his team over. In this case it worked and Guns for Hire left with the victory.
Nice match. Good opening. It was fun watching Collier and Jordane manhandle the Hell Cats while they responded with speed and ingenuity.
Jeremiah vs Phoenix Fury
Phoenix Fury is a masked luchador, and I feel like it’s a good thing for any promotion to have at least one luchador on their roster. Fury is definitely a fan favorite, especially with the kids. Which makes sense, considering that luchadors are basically superheroes and villains come to life. Fury has long curly hair coming out from the back of his mask, which makes me wonder if the guy has a mullet, which would be freakin’ awesome.
Jeremiah has a holier-than-thou preacher thing going on. He’s great at talking the crowd into a frenzy. These guys are both very talented. They’re both graduates of the MCW training center which, if for no other reason, deserves a lot of props for graduating Lio Rush, the current Ring of Honor Top Prospect Tournament winner and, at only twenty-one, one of the best wrestlers in the world.
Very nice back and forth momentum with these two. Fury executed plenty of dives, and hit a flawless tornado DDT while Jeremiah tried to wear Fury down with a series of submission holds. It was a quick match, with Fury finally going over. Definitely no complaints here. I dig the occasional luchador match.
It didn’t last very long, but it did what it needed to do.
Appalachian Outlaws (Hoss and Bo Nekoda) vs Bruiser and Rayo
The crowd went crazy for Bruiser and Rayo. Bruiser’s a big guy, as you might expect, and Rayo is a smaller guy whose cardio is dialed up to eleven. They work great together, but you can tell this is all a temporary thing, maybe to get Bruiser out of the main event scene for a little while while Black Wall Street member Drolix chases the title. I still think the soccer player gimmick is a little weird. Reminds me of the New Generation era in the WWF, where everyone was both a wrestler and had an outside occupation. But then again, I wasn’t exactly the target audience for Rayo. One of the commentators described Rayo as Bruisers “little buddy,” which sounded rather condescending.
The Appalachian Outlaws are pretty convincing, as far as redneck gimmicks go. They look like they haven’t bathed in weeks. Maybe they haven’t. They’re managed by Colonel Callahan who came to the ring with a plastic soda bottle into which he spit gimmicked tobacco. At least I hope the tobacco was gimmicked. Because later in the match, it got used. Yuck.
It was nice to see how well Bruiser and Rayo work together. They’re definitely having fun with this this pairing. Rayo has great conditioning. He started the match out with a nice fast pace. The Outlaws did a lot of double teaming on Bruiser, because it’s his immense power they have to worry about.
Yikes. So apparently Bo Nekoda has a move called the “Snot Elbow.” Gross.
The match ended when Callahan handed Hoss his tobacco spit bottle. Hoss spit it into Rayo’s eyes, which allowed Bo Nekoda to roll him up for the win. Well, if you want to make heels really hated, this gross-out stuff really works. Also, kids, never put another man’s tobacco spit in your mouth. It’s definitely not sanitary and your lips will probably rot away. Seriously, that was some sick shit.
As they walked back to the dressing room, Bruiser argued with Rayo, teasing a tag split. This pairing definitely isn’t going to last forever, but it’s certainly fun to watch.
Jason Kincaid vs Brandon Scott
Jason Kincaid is probably best known for his work in NWA Smoky Mountain. Very good wrestler. He actually lost to Lio Rush in the first round of the ROH Top Prospect Tournament. I haven’t seen it, but I’m sure it was great. Maybe I should make a note of that. Anyway, this was Kincaid’s MCW debut. I hope he comes back soon. Though I live in Frederick and MCW mostly holds cards in the Baltimore area, which is about 45 minutes away, I still consider MCW my local promotion.
Brandon Scott, a former MCW Rage TV champion, was the perfect partner for Kincaid. Both were wonderful technical wrestlers. They really knew how to build a match. They started off slow, with some nice mat wrestling and built to a real breakneck speed. I was a bit annoyed at the audience when they started chanting, “This is boring” at the start of the match, but by the end they were chanting, “This is awesome.” And it was. This was the best match of the night. I guess you could call it the show stealer. Yeah, I think it was the show stealer.
Both Scott and Kincaid were about evenly matched in terms of technical ability, which is why it made sense to put them together. Kincaid went over, to a massive explosion of cheers. The two performers, both baby faces shook hands in the middle of the ring. It was a real treat to witness this match in person.
Backstage Interview With Ken Dixon
Dixon is a former Rage TV champion, the secondary MCW title. Later in the evening, he’s going to have a match with Billy Gunn, of Attitude Era fame, who currently holds the belt, capturing it off Dixon a few months ago. Although Gunn is a pretty frequent MCW special attraction, he’s not on the roster, so you definitely got the feeling going into this card that Dixon was going to regain his title, but it was still pretty cool to see these two guys go at it.
Dixon was interviewed by Tara, a beautiful redhead who also occasionally also does ring announcing. Dixon displayed some pretty typical tough heel bravado, bragging that he’s going to win the title back. My favorite line from his promo: “I hold a flashlight and you’re out of batteries.” Haha...what?
Ecktourage (Eric Chapel and Dirty Money) w/ Kevin Eck vs Punk Rock All Stars (Shaun Cannon and Drake Carter)
The Punk Rock All Stars have long, spiked hair. They definitely need a lot of hair product for that look. I wondered how long it would take for sweat to make the product useless, causing the hair to go limp. As it turns out, the answer is, well, about until the end of the match. The Ecktourage are great wimpy heels. At one point, one of the Punk Rock All Stars delivered a chop to Eric Chapel and he shouted, “He hurt my booby!” The match ended as Kevin Eck distracted the referee as Chapel threw one of the tag belts into the arms of Shaun Cannon. Chapel tossed himself to the mat just as the referee is done with Kevin Eck. Seeing Cannon with the belt and Chapel lying on the mat, he assumed the worst and disqualified the Punk Rock All Stars. Injustice!
Well, the ref might not have seen what happened, but general manager Phil Stamper saw the whole thing. He comes out from backstage and tells Kevin Eck he’s suspended for thirty days. Normally this wouldn’t really matter, since MCW puts on one, maybe two shows a month, but they were in the middle of the Spring Fever Tour and had several other stops that month, so effectively Eck was banned for the remainder of the tour. While Stamper was admonishing Eck, Chapel had some great lines. He shouted things like, “We don’t cheat, we improvise,” and, “Calm down, Jesus loves you.”
This match was fun. The Punk Rock All Stars are about as high energy as you would expect from a tag team with that name.
The Ecktourage added some nice comedy. All was right with the world.
Billy Gunn vs Ken Dixon
Ken Dixon and Billy Gunn are two very big dudes, plus Gunn is in his 50’s so, as you might expect, this was a brawler match. It was slower paced, more old school. There were a lot of hip tosses, bodyslams and a good portion of the match took place outside the ring.
Ken Dixon was accompanied to the ring by the Dixon Line, his security team, who, as you might expect, double teamed Gunn a few times. One of the Dixon Line guys tried to interfere in the match but Gunn punched him out and the crowd popped huge. But the interference distracted Gunn enough that Dixon was able to give him a low blow and take the victory.
Like I said before, I expected this to happen. It’s one of those things with special attractions. If they win a title, they’ll lose it pretty soon thereafter because maybe they only have one or two more nights booked. Some promotions even find a way for the special attraction guy to win and lose the title in the same night. Still, it’s almost definite that Billy Gunn will return to MCW at some point. He seems to have a great relationship with the promotors and has appeared on their cards several times over the past few years.
Backstage Segment: Bruiser and Rayo
Rayo felt terrible about losing the match (though, to be fair, I’m not sure what he could have done after being blinded by gross tobacco spit). He figured the tag team needed to dissolve. He decided that he needs to burn all their clothes to, I guess symbolically destroy their relationship. Bruiser came out of the showers wearing nothing but a towel, and saw that Rayo was about to burn Bruiser’s boxer shorts. He stopped him and asked Rayo what the hell he was doing. Rayo explained his guilt and Bruiser basically said, “You win some, you lose some.” Rayo was so happy that they’re still going to be a tag team that he jumps into Bruiser’s arms and gives him a big hug. This prompted the alpha man Bruiser to yell, “Get off me!”
Despite the slight whiff of homophobia in that segment, it was funny enough. Is Rayo some sort of mad stalker? Will this turn out to be a Fatal Attraction scenario? Maybe Rayo will snap and go full Backlund. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with this angle.
Six Man Extreme Rules Match: King Ryan McBride and the Dixon Line (Rob Locke and Joe Keys) vs Black Wall$treet (Chuck Lennox and Drolix) and Tommy Dreamer
Extreme rules! Nice! Well, lots of kids in the audience, so I assumed it was going to be a PG type affair, obviously no blood.
I’m fine with that. It really just means a lot of brawling and very little wrestling. But it turned out we got both brawling and wrestling when King McBride got on the mic and told the crowd to “take a knee.” I’ve got to admit, I don’t like “king” gimmicks.
They’re all the same. But whatever, it was pretty funny when McBride said that the match was no longer going to be extreme rules. Instead, it was going to be “King’s rules, which means all rules apply.” Well, yes, a bit weird that wrestlers get to change match stipulations, but we’re gonna roll with it.
So with extreme rules out the door, we got a good five or ten minutes or so of wrestling. The dramatic force behind this match was that Drolix, a former MCW champion, was chasing McBride, the current champion, for an eventual payoff match. So here we were furthering the feud without having them go one on one quite yet. Plus we get Tommy Dreamer, too.
Speaking of Dreamer, at about the midpoint in the match he grabbed the microphone and shouted, “Screw this! Extreme rules!”
Okay, so wrestlers definitely get to change match stipulations. At least in this match.
So a brawl broke out. Very PG. Stop signs, garbage cans, etc. A cluster of bodies. Hard to follow at points. Tommy Dreamer let fans chop Joe Keys, pulling him around the guardrail outside the ring. A young fella of about five straight up punched keys in the chest, which made everyone crack up. The commentators laughed, talked about the devastating heart punch the kid delivered.
Eventually, Drolix suplexed McBride onto a stop sign, getting Black Wallstreet the win and giving the crowd the payoff they expected.
Good match. Everything you might expect from a PG extreme rules match.
The card was a nice mix of styles. High flyers, technical wrestling, a nice dash of comedy. That Jason Kincaid and Brandon Scott match, though. Wonderful stuff. That was enough reason in itself to check out this card.
MCW Spring Fever Tour, Frederick, 3/19/16 is available for rent or download at
https://www.mcwragetv.com/
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