by No-Holds Bard
Though a great review for the last BiG Pro show has already been delivered to the boards, I’d like to give everyone my own review. After all, having more than one source is always better than one (or none), and not only that, but the more discussion there is on this brand, the bigger the push they will get, and I believe that they deserve it. So on to the matter at hand:
In my review of the last show I admit that I kind of dogged the audience a bit for being drunken buffoons. I realize that the Newhall crowd is not your average “in” wrestling audience, and these are people from my own hometown, so I shouldn’t expect anything less. So it’s my town and I can lampoon them if I want to. 😉 Like the Thin Lizzy song goes, “The drink will flow and blood will spill/And if the boys want to fight, you better let ‘em.” Basically this summed up the evening. The drink surely did flow, and though no blood was shed this night, there was one hell of a fight that took place between the Battle Ground Pro Heavyweight Champion, “Brawlin’” Bo Cooper and “The Rock Superstar” Kaos, with Jezebel. With the use of a table and help from The Messiah and his crutch, Cooper was allowed to take the victory, sustaining himself as the top dog with the Battle Ground gold, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change any time soon, despite the unsuccessful efforts from a desperate Commissioner Jason Bennett.
The evening began with ring announcer Benjamin Tomas getting interrupted by the greatest dancer in professional wrestling (sorry, Alex Wright), Disco Machine. Disco stated that his challenge was still open that if he lost he’d never wrestle for BiG Pro again, but this time that if he won he’d get a lifetime contract to wrestle for BiG Pro, much to the chagrin of the audience. At the last show “The New York Knockout” Nikki answered Disco’s challenge, and Disco lost by disqualification, which was not one of his stipulations, which a loss only counted as being pinned or submitting, and neither happened. This time “Marvelous” Markus Riot answered his challenge. This was already looking to be a great match. It began with showoff poses, as Riot would mount a turnbuckle and pose for the fans, then Disco would mount the opposite turnbuckle and do the same, receiving cheers and boos, respectively. Disco is known for his comedy-style matches, but he’s a solid wrestler and he matched well with high-flyer Riot. The wrestling was nothing unexpected, which is good in this case; however there was one unexpected variable, and that was referee Preston Scott. At the beginning of the match, Riot got on the mic to let Preston Scott know that he was upset about the ruling of his match at the previous show, where he and Junior lost to Silver Tyger and R2K. Scott told him all would be fine and asked for forgiveness, which Riot gave him. However, during the match it was obvious that Scott could care less what Riot thought as he gave fast counts to Disco and ridiculously slow counts to Riot during pinfall attempts. At one point when Riot had the match won, Scott put Disco’s leg on the rope to break the count. But the match ended when Disco blocked Riot’s Swanton and gave Riot a nasty backbreaker. Disco went for a pinfall, Riot put his leg on the rope, and Scott, knowing the leg was on the rope, still counted to three. Riot was pissed and Scott once again apologized before giving him a killer clothesline. He put Riot in what seemed to be a modified Texas Clover-Leaf, or the old-school Liontamer (not the McVersion of it), tore his ref shirt off and told Riot that he was not a referee but a wrestler, and that when Markus was sucking milk from his mother’s nipples, he was winning titles up and down Southern California. The referee for the rest of the matches was Rick Knox (at least I think his name is Rick, because it sounded like Tomas kept introducing him as Greg).
The next bout was Devilishly Sexy (“Sexy” Sonny Samson and Diablo) versus The Stepfather and Robbie Phoenix. This had hilarity written all over it. First you’ve got a Koko B. Ware wannabe (without the parrot) with a water bottle down his shorts and a longhaired guy that looks like he listens to heavy metal wearing black and red in a Kane-like design doing a Jungle Fever gimmick. Everyone was laughing their asses off. And while I’m on the subject of the audience, forget the drunk crowd I mentioned at the last show, and forget the drunk blonde girls at the show before that, because I’ve got one better: a drunk, young Hispanic guy who hardly spoke English that I saw wandering around outside the venue before the show, carrying a BiG Pro flyer. He was already drunk then, and he drank a lot more during the show. Now I don’t know this guy from Adam, but to me he seemed to be a bit on the homosexual side. He was all over “Sexy” Sonny Samson. I can’t remember if it was during this match or another match that he took his shirt off and was touching himself and flexing the muscles he didn’t have. Anyway, with that aside, The Stepfather and Robbie Phoenix did their usual redneck trailer trash cowbell gimmick, and it got an unusually intense pop from the crowd. I don’t recall them ever getting that big of a pop at the last two shows, but hey, that’s great for them! There’s something about The Stepfather that is highly entertaining, and it isn’t necessarily the gimmick. But in the end the match just served to deliver gay humor between Samson and Diablo, which gave everyone a thousand chuckles. At one point Samson was on all fours in the middle of the ring and Diablo fell into the doggy-style mount position behind him. The Stepfather would kick Diablo in the rear-end and Diablo would “hump” Samson. Stepfather did it a few times, then when he stopped doing it Diablo would still be humping him. Incredbile. Devilishly Sexy came away with the win, but I was so busy laughing I can’t remember how.
At this point Commissioner Bennett was introduced by ring announcer Ben Tomas, to which Bennett came out and taunted the audience about them being on drugs and alcohol (and if you are familiar with Newhall at all, he’s not too far off), and guffawed that “Tonight is a special night; it’s the end of Bo Cooper.” Bennett then introduced The Messiah, the hired mercenary come to take out the Battle Ground champ. Messiah told Bennett that he didn’t know what he was talking about; that he didn’t come to destroy anybody; that he came to wrestle Bo Cooper and put on a great match because the last one they had really sucked. Bennett was pissed that Messiah wasn’t going to do what he wanted him to do, so from the main entrance in ran none other than “The Rock Superstar” Kaos, with Jezebel, and attacked Messiah with clubbing chair shots to the head. Kaos put Messiah’s ankle in the chair and stepped on it, causing great pain and discomfort to Messiah. Bennett badmouthed Messiah and told him he was smart enough to have a backup plan in case Messiah would puss out. So Bennett set the main event, originally supposed to be “Brawlin’” Bo Cooper vs. former XPW and CZW Champion The Messiah, to Cooper vs. Kaos.
After the mayhem receded, Ben Tomas got in the ring and told everyone that the B-Boy/Scorpio Sky match was canceled (to little crowd reaction—besides me), but that they had two guys from Australia that wanted to come out here and make their SoCal debut for BiG Pro. Nobody ever heard of these guys, especially the Newhall crowd. The match was Bobby Joe Marshall vs. Mikey Nichols. Two thin white bald dudes came out, Nichols wearing tight shorts and Marshall wearing long black shorts with suspender straps hanging down (and coming out to Rammstein no less). There was little reaction from the crowd, which was expected, but in no time these guys were just wailing on each other with chops left and right. Marshall broke some blood vessels in his chest. They were also chasing each other around the ring a few times. There were a few comedy spots, like when Marshall chased Nichols around the ring, Nichols got in, and when Marshall got in after him, Nichols would fly into him with a shoulder block, and then when it was reversed and after Nichols chased Marshall around and Marshall went for the flying shoulder block, Nichols stepped out of the way and Marshall landed flat on his face. Marshall got frustrated quite a bit, and I don’t blame him after those devastating chops by Mikey Nichols. But these guys were tough. At one point Marshall had Nichols flat on his stomach in the middle of the ring and Marshall delivered clubbing blows to the back of Mikey’s neck. The match began getting hot more towards the end when Mikey Nichols superplexed Marshall from the top rope, got a 2-count pin attempt, then the chopfest started, and Nichols finally pulled away the victory with a modified piledriver. Great match. Could have been better had we all known who they were, but most of us were sincerely impressed.
The next part of the show was supposed to be the debut of a segment called “Dancin’ With Sexy Chino.” Chino came out to NO crowd reaction. Chino was dancing (if you can call it that) around the ring, stopping in front of girls, trying to get them to get up and dance with him, is what I’m assuming his intentions were. When nobody would get up to dance with him he’d just wave them off and go on to the next one. He got in the ring finally and Commissioner Bennett came out with The Awesome Plague to interrupt. Bennett told Chino that he was a joke and only brought him in to be destroyed by Plague. While in the ring, Bennett noticed that Foob Dogg was sitting out in the audience, front row. He taunted Foob and asked him how he got in there as Foob pointed to his bracelet, saying that he paid for a ticket. That didn’t faze Bennett, however, who instantly made the match right in the ring that Plague would take on Sexy Chino. Of course, everyone was wondering how in the hell Chino would fare to Plague. Well, for the most part, he didn’t. Plague had Chino above his headed, pressing him over and over. Now, if you are unfamiliar with either guy, Plague is a monster, with the old-school ‘50s or ‘60s wrestler type of build, and Chino is this toothpick. Plague was body-pressing him above his head, walking around the ring asking which side should he throw Chino over to. There was no way Chino could mount an offense, no matter how hard he tried. Foob Dogg got up and started taunting Plague, so Plague got out and the two of them brawled outside the ring. This caused referee Rick Knox to count Plague out, giving the win to Sexy Chino. Unbelievable. The two kept going at it as Chino danced in the ring. Guys were coming out to break up Plague and Foob Dogg. The drunk Hispanic guy was all over Chino, even raising his hand up! It was very interesting. Plague wound up killing Foob Dogg as they began to brawl in the ring. Bennett announced, as Foob Dogg lay battered in the ring, that at the next show Foob Dogg would be taking on The Awesome Plague.
The next match was the double strap match between Midnight Dynamite (Johnny Paradise and Charles Mercury) and The Young Bucks (Slick Nick and Mr. Instant Replay). These guys have had a program going in BiG Pro for these last three shows now, and when this match was announced at the last show it seemed as if this would be the big and final battle between them. Of course, with the Bucks coming out to Hanson’s “MmmBop” (most likely for the ladies in the audience), the build-up for the match seemed to lose that raw hostility they had for each other during their last few bouts. For the record I believe it was Slick Nick who was strapped to Charles Mercury and Mr. Instant Replay strapped to Johnny Paradise. Anyway, the match began with the Bucks on top of things, doing moves in tandem, and simultaneously, pulling off incredible combinations involving the straps—very clever and well choreographed. I believe the combo went something like: clothesline, crawl under the legs, flip over using the strap, whipping, to the outside, banging heads on the mat, then throwing them into the corner posts. Dynamite began mounting an offense and the Bucks tried to come back but failed. The Bucks, however, did use the straps to their advantage quite a bit, as I previously stated. The finish was interesting. Charles Mercury and Slick Nick were outside the ring as Paradise and MIR battled it out in the ring. Paradise took a chair shot to the head; Replay went up on the corner turnbuckle and hit a cross-body. He went for a roll-up but Paradise reversed it and scooped up Replay into the Tombstone piledriver and brought him down onto the chair. However, Paradise fell to the mat, Nick and Mercury were outside the ring, and referee Rick Knox wound up counting to ten as Mr. Instant Replay and Johnny Paradise failed to rise and meet the count. So the match ended in a no contest double disqualification. The incensed crowd kept chanting, “Five more minutes!” The match was already highly enjoyable (probably the best out of their three so far), but five more minutes would have been great, so long as we got to finally see a true winner. Part of me wishes they will let one of the teams win already, but the other part of me wants to see more of these specialty matches in an attempt to not only rile up the audience but allow one of these teams to score a true victory.
Finally they gave us intermission. During the break I went up to get a beer at the bar window, which is right next to the curtain. As I was standing in line this young couple in front of me stopped Commissioner Bennett who was walking by and the woman asked him if she could get a picture with Plague. Bennett went to the back, then came back out and said, “I got him.” So Plague came out and this woman got up next to him, had her hand rubbing his chest and he had his arm around her as some other girl took a picture of them. Right after the girl gave her thanks to Plague out comes Foob Dogg from behind the curtain and attacks Plague. I almost got my ass knocked over and backed up the entire length of the ring just because the two of them were literally on my toes pushing me back. It was quite fun and interesting, but I just wanted my beer. They finally split the two of them up and Bennett (once again) kicked Foob Dogg out of the building. As the line reformed ring announcer Ben Tomas got in the ring and said there were two minutes left of intermission. The guy at the fucking bar took forever just to bring the people in front of me their drinks. I was still standing behind these people when the next match started.
The second-to-last match was the triple threat I had been looking forward to all night: “The Russian Hooligan” Alex Koslov vs. Joey Harder vs. Hook Bomberry. When it got time for me to order my damn beer someone’s music was playing so loud (because the speaker was right next to the bar window) and the guy didn’t understand me. Then Ben Tomas came up to the window and asked for a Red Bull. He was getting pissed off as well because it was taking forever, and I couldn’t focus on the match I was looking forward to so much. I got my beer finally and got back to my seat and tried to annotate as much as I could that I missed. Basically in the beginning of the match Koslov went outside of the ring and told the other two guys he wanted to see them do what they do best, so the match began with Harder and Bomberry, as Koslov roamed around outside the ring for the first few minutes. Harder was beating up Bomberry pretty good, went to the outside and then Koslov finally got in and he was wailing on Bomberry as well. Then the two of them double-teamed Bomberry quite a bit. He made a bit of an offense, later botched a pinfall attempt by not raising his arm after a two-count, but didn’t wind up doing much. Koslov had him in his patented submission as Harder knocked him off. Koslov rolled out of the ring and Harder got Bomberry in a Liontamer, causing Bomberry to submit. The other reviewer of this show gave the match to Koslov, but the winner was Joey Harder. Koslov was outside the ring right in front of me when the match ended. And Harder’s been on a winning streak as of late in BiG Pro, and I believe he is undefeated there as of yet. Koslov got back in the ring, a bit upset, and tried to extend his hand to Harder, who accepted it, and then met a side Russian leg sweep from Koslov. Bomberry got up and Koslov tried to extend his hand to him as well, and Hook was asking the audience if he should do it or not. Everyone said no, but he did it anyway, and I was surprised that Koslov didn’t knock him down, too. They shook and Koslov left the ring. I found this very odd. Maybe he’s trying to turn face in BiG Pro? That would be odd since he’s one of the biggest heels around. He’s so over and he gets shit all the time from the Newhall fans.
Anyway, the next and final match saw the Battle Ground Pro Wrestling Heavyweight Champion, “Brawlin’” Bo Cooper defend his title against “The Rock Superstar” Kaos, with Jezebel. Now, I don’t think I need to explain this in too much detail, but Cooper got an INSANE pop from the audience. They were so loud I started chuckling in sheer amazement. The match began with the two men giving a stare-down. Cooper put Kaos in a couple of arm drags then knocked him over the top rope to the outside. Jezebel got up in Bo’s face as Kaos mounted the top turnbuckle behind Bo. Kaos leapt off, Bo caught him and gave him a Samoan drop. Kaos rolled out of the ring and was tended to by Jezebel as Bo started a chant, “You’re a pussy!” Then everyone was saying it. Kaos got back in the ring and began to mount an offense on Bo with help from Jezebel. He put a sleeper hold on Bo, which got the crowd clapping and cheering for Bo to get out of it as he tried to hulk up to no avail. The couple of drunk girls in the corner could be heard chanting, “Bo! Bo! Bo!” Bo got out of the hold and knocked Kaos into the corner as Bo delivered a running butt-splash into Kaos’ face. Then Bo delivered a Bronco Buster, but wasn’t really able to jump up and down on him, so he just jumped on him once and rolled out of the way. Bo went for the pin but Kaos had his leg on the rope. Kaos turned around and gave Bo an ace crusher, went up for a frogsplash, but missed. Bo inadvertently knocked out referee Rick Knox as Kaos delivered a side Russian leg sweep on Bo. At this time Bo recovered and delivered a Spicoli Driver to Kaos, went for the pin, but Knox was out and could not count. So as Bo tended to Knox, Jezebel tosses a chair into the ring that Kaos picks up and whacks Bo over the head with. Kaos came outside and got a table from underneath the ring. He set the table up in the ring and kind of laid Bo out half-assed on the table, with his legs hanging off the side, as he mounted the top turnbuckle. In comes Messiah with a crutch under one arm from when Kaos attacked his ankle earlier in the show and knocks Kaos with it. Bo recovers and picks up a flailing Kaos from the top turnbuckle over his shoulders and delivers a Spicoli Driver through the table. He went for the pin, and this time Knox was well enough to count to three for the pin by the winner, and still Battle Ground Pro Heavyweight Champion, “Brawlin’” Bo Cooper.
Commissioner Bennett came out with a disappointed look of disapproval on his face and yelled at the champ, “It’s no over, Bo!” Bo received another crazy pop as he mounted every corner turnbuckle to take it all in. Some fan handed him a beer, but he only took a sip and handed it off to some other fan. The next show was announced to be on July 29 th , which I will not be able to attend to due to family matters, and Ben Tomas said they’d try to get the Scorpio Sky/B-Boy match that did not take place today. Also, the advertised match of Li’l Cholo and Junior vs. Silver Tyger and Infernal did not take place, but they said Cholo would be defending his Battle Ground Pro Lucha Libre Title against Infernal in a mask vs. title match. Also announced for the next show was The Awesome Plague vs. Foob Dogg, an appearance by The Ballard Brothers, and most likely appearances from Disco Machine, another Dynamite/Bucks match, and of course, “Brawlin’” Bo Cooper.
Overall this was a packed card, even without the two canceled matches, and as the last reviewer said, an amazing effort put forth by everybody. This was, by far, the best BiG Pro show I’ve seen thus far. As long as the crowd stays drunk and entertained, the atmosphere will always be exciting, and the wrestlers will always have an easy job, whether they are heel or face. I was looking forward mostly to that triple threat match, but my experience was marred by the fact that I had to wait in line forever for my goddamn beer, so I wasn’t able to focus on the first half of the match. Other than that, the Marshall/Nichols match was probably the match of the night, as far as the wrestling goes. But there is no doubting that Bo Cooper is the biggest draw in Battle Ground, and I find that pretty refreshing. I’m sorry I won’t be able to make the next show, but you can bet I’ll be at every other one that I can make it to.
The No-Holds Bard
