FIST Combat held their second Southern California show on April 7, 2017 in San Diego, and it ended up being a pretty entertaining event. I used the term event, rather than wrestling show because FIST really isn’t a traditional wrestling show. As I mentioned in my review of their last show, the venue they run in has way to low of a ceiling that really limits most modern style wrestling matches. However with a pretty crazy atmosphere and wrestlers working around the limitations, the show is a good time.
The crowd seemed a little bigger than the last show, but I’m not certain on that. The Padres home opener was earlier in the day and a few people actually came to the show straight from there. Like AWS a few weeks ago, I went to the show with someone who never had been to an indy wrestling show before and was not familiar with any of the wrestlers, though he has seen Nacho Libre starring El Snowflake (and Jack Black).
Hobo was added to the announce team for this show, and he was very un-Hobo like wearing a three piece suit. The crowd was pretty hot to start, and some parts of the audience were pretty intoxicated already.
Eli Everfly over Azrael, Donnie Suarez, Alonzo Alvarez, Biagio Crescenzo, and Dave Wasted [9’36]
Hobo announced this as a tag-team match. Dave Wasted came out already drunk and challenged everyone to a drinking contest. Biagio accepted and while Dave was drinking beers, Biagio would take a mouthful, then sneakily spit out the beer to the outside of the ring. Eventually they started fighting and everyone was going at it. I thought everyone did a good job of adapting their styles to the environment for the match, especially Eli and Biagio who both worked more strong style and less flying than normal. Donnie Suarez was delivering some pretty hard sounding chops to Dave Wasted early on too. They managed to keep the match really fast paced and it was a lot of fun. Eli Everfly won with a Canadian Destroyer. After the match Hobo announced that it wasn’t actually a tag-team match.
Pinky Santino over Kaka Meng [8’11]
Both guys got a pretty nice reaction to start the match. It was downhill from there. There was a lot of stalling and offense that looked slow and weak from both guys. There were even “boring” chants from the intoxicated crowd. Pinky won with a knee to the face. This wasn’t good.
Tilikum (Terex) over El Snowflake (Human Tornado) [5’24]
Sharkey was announced as being in the match, but when his music came on, he never came out to the ring. The ref went to the back and when he returned it was announced that Sharkey had been caught and is now in captivity. Luckily they had another opponent for Tilikum, El Snowflake. Snowflake got on the mike and cut a promo announcing that he actually killed Sharkey and that he was not only going to kill Tilikum, but he was going to chop him up and feed him to the children in the audience (it was a 21 and up show, though there were a couple kids). He then declared that Tilikum is not big enough, so he was going to take care of that and left the venue. A couple minutes later he shows back up with nachos from next door. Tilikum took the nachos and threw them at JR Richardson, who was sitting in the front row, getting nacho cheese all over him. I guess Hobo was hungry, as he came into the audience and ate nachos off JR’s crotch…
The match was short but fun for what it was. Tilikum won with a standing moonsault. On Tilikum’s way to the back, there was some altercation with a fan, which caused the fan to start going crazy, which lead to the ref getting involved. Ring crew/security tried to make it over to that area, and in the chaos someone tripped over one of the lights and the FIST Combat sign on the wall came down. We were descending into total chaos.
True Grit (Jesse James & Hoss Hogg) over Pinoy Pride (Eki Sol & Johnny Dynamo) [7’43]
I thought this match was pretty solid. Jesse James was taking some pretty hard chops and he had a hand print on his chest and back for pretty much the entire match. This was my first time seeing Pinoy Pride and I thought they did well. There was a lot of brawling and lots of power offense from True Grit. James hit a lariat followed by both he and Hogg hitting a drop kick to get the win.
B-Boy over Ryan Kidd to become the FIST Heavyweight champion [11’17]
This was really good. Ryan Kidd worked a pretty different style than he normally does as he and B-Boy built more towards their striking based offense rather than aerial moves. Kidd did a good job working a heel style and was really able to get the crowd to turn on him (he had Jacob Diez as his second as well, which also helped). This was billed as being the finals of a tournament, but I think it was a two person tournament as it was never mentioned in any advertising leading up to the show. B-Boy got the win with the Driller, which is a chicken wing piledriver. This was really good.
Dirty Ron McDonald over The Christian Crusader to retain the Get FISTed title [7’17]
This match was after a short intermission. Before the match Dirty Ronald McDonald came out carrying a Happy Meal cut a hilarious promo covering such things as having to get a dental work in Mexico because he’s poor and smashing someone’s girl up against a wall like Dale Earnhardt. The people who brought their kids to the show probably had some explaining to do when they got home. The match itself went about the right amount of time it should have and Dirty Ron controlled most of it. After getting the pin Dirty Ron managed to fit most of The Christian Crusader’s head into the Happy Meal bag. This was fun.
Rocketboy Wilson over Jacob Diez [15’41]
Jacob Diez, who is billed as the Vegan Superman was really hated by the FIST crowd. Far more than anyone else. He even got a “Trader Joes” chant. This match was pretty crazy. They brawled into the crowd and up onto the stage. It looked like Rocketboy was going to suplex Diez off the stage, but Diez reversed it and managed to suplex Rocketboy. Later Rocketboy did a crazy flip off the stage and hit Diez in the crowd and a bunch of chairs in the process. Diez took a pretty crazy bump into the chairs as well. After they got back in the ring Rocketboy hit a double stomp while using his skateboard to get the pin.
Overall I thought this was a fun show. The atmosphere in the venue is good and the wrestlers did a good job of adapting their matches to the limitations of the venue. More so than the first show, the show being 21 and up was better taken advantage of too. The person who I brought who had never been to an indy wrestling show before loved it and had a great time. Having only watched WWE seeing things like Canadian Destroyers and dives into the crowd were totally new to him, and he was blown away. If you are only interested in seeing great wrestling, FIST might not be for you. If you are looking for a wild show that happens to be built around some wrestling matches, FIST might be worth checking out.
Their next show in San Diego is on May 12th and they have announced Willie Mack will be taking on B-Boy for the FIST title.
