On April 9th 2017 Smash Wrestling properly laid claim to their claims of being Torontonian by moving out of Etobicoke and running the Phoenix Concert Theatre, just slightly right of downtown Toronto. Now easily accessible by public transit, I gleefully headed down to their show, the aptly-titled New Girl In Town. Their goal was obviously to make this show a landmark event in their history, and they certainly delivered.
He really does look like Uncle Phil…
Smash Wrestling’s new home, the Phoenix Concert Theatre, is a smaller venue as far as concerts are concerned, but has their old home beat by a mile. Gone was the indoor, stuffy, cramped, hot, and far Franklin Horner Community Centre. In its stead, The Phoenix is high ceilinged and open, with a barebones concrete floor and far more space for seats to be packed into, including an overhanging balcony that I can only imagine some brave fool diving off of eventually. Smash used the additional space very well, setting up their entrance on the stage and booking a wild No-DQ match for the finale that would roam the entire venue (except for that oh so dive-able balcony), but I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.
Of particular noteworthiness is how well Smash Wrestling handle their VIP seating. Early access and assigned seating with your name taped to it. Classy and smooth. The Phoenix’s security staff gave me one hell of a pat-down. They must be used to people who are troublemakers. I wonder how they’ll adapt to the Wrestling crowd.
Match 0: Holden Albright and The British Brawler vs. Kevin Blackwood and Mark Wheeler
This was, in essence, a dark match. Albright entered wearing a silver mask, the audience chanting for him to put it back on when he took it off provided for a moment of amusement, but the whole purpose of the mask being taken off seemed vague and unclear. It seemed to add little of value, but maybe he is going for a Tenzan type deal in the long run. The British Brawler had some odd bunching in his tights that made him look like he had a diaper underneath. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. However, true to his namesake, he was in fact good at brawling. These two played the heels in the match, serving as distractions when the other man was legal.
Holden Albright nailed a really great German Suplex on Mark Wheeler, but failed to secure victory for their team. In the end Blackwood hit a nice looking Pumphandle Olympic Slam to secure his team the win. It was a standard tag team affair with a few botched looking spots that the performers just rolled with, not focusing on them and drawing attention to their errors.
Grade: C
Match 1: Greed vs Scotty O’Shea
This is where the show actually kicked off, and they did so in a pretty big way. Greed starts making his way to the ring as his calmly eerie music plays, and is interrupted by a “hacked” video package mocking him. Suddenly, amidst a sea of fans blocking my direct line of sight, O’Shea jumps Greed on the ramp and I think cracked him with a keyboard. They brawled outside for a bit, getting a huge pop from the audience. Before bring the action back into the ring, Greed levels O’Shea with what looked like an F5 onto the ring apron from the floor. Brutal way to kick off the show. Before O’Shea can recover, the portly wildman Greed throws himself off of the apron onto O’Shea.
Once inside the ring things take a more balanced approach to the choreographed violence. O’Shea makes good use of the ring as part of his offensive arsenal, either using it to give him height or sping to his moves, or as a veritable weapon such as when he hit Greed with a Flatliner, dropping him face first onto the taught ring ropes. Greed stayed on the offensive overall longer than O’Shea, leading up to a great moment where he catches The Hacker out of a handspring and tosses him with a Release German Suplex. O’Shea heels it up good during the match, trying to get victory with his feet on the ropes, but can’t secure the three count.
In a match where one of the things I noticed too often was how frequently Greed’s nipple slipped out of his girth-inappropriate black tank top, this great big guy gets the victory over O’Shea when he hits a Shirtless Fat Guy Frog Splash (trademark pending) clean in the ring. Greed is, indeed, good. betetr yet, he keeps getting better each time see him.
Grade: B-
Psycho Mike hanging in there.
Match 2: Super Smash Brothers vs. Well Oiled Machines
At the beginning of the show the sad announcement was made that Eddie Edwards was injured in Japan and will not be competing in what was supposed to be a 3-Way tag match. A video package from TDT (Tabarnak de Team) played beforehand that was obviously quickly edited to remove the American Wolves from the mix, stating that whoever wins the match tonight will have to face them on May 14th. It sucks knowing that the potential had existed for a TDT vs American Wolves match and that an injury prevented this from happening.
The Super Smash Bros, Evil Uno and Stu Grayson, control the match early with quick tags, keeping Psycho Mike of the Well Oiled Machines in the ring. The Well Oiled Machines banter was on fire throughout the match, audible and clear to me in the first row, really helped to flesh out their characters. They gained control of the match but started blind-tagging each other and an undercurrent of them getting agitated with each other was worked into the match. They’re both talented and fit wrestlers, but their character work was really on display in this match. They build up to a confrontation between each other in ring and both wind up eating their share of a Double DDT by Evil Uno.
As the match progresses Stu Grayson proves how insanely agile he can be as he dodges many sinning big boots from Psycho Mike and the Super Smash Bros even get a very close two count when they hit their Piledriver/Running Knee tag finisher followed by Grayson nailing a delicious 450. In the end, however, it was the Well Oiled Machines who claimed the victory after hitting a combo high angle Boston Crab/top rope leg drop to the back of the head. This match was solid fun.
Grade: B+
Match 3: Xandra Bale vs. Allie
Xandra Bale kicks off the match with two tope suicida onto Allie, the second one looked particularly nasty on her knees as she landed hard. There’s some good back and forth between the two leads to a nasty bucklebomb by Allie followed with a good looking sliding elbow. Allie then hits a suplex into the turnbuckles and stacks her up for a pin attempt. Xandra Bale looked great in her mafia-themed pinstripe outfit, but her execution in the middle of the match wasn’t as clean as I had expected. Things just looked a little too obvious that she was in a performance, unlike Allie who is crisp and explosive here. Allie gets the pinfall victory when she catches Bale out of mid-air with a superkick.
Grade: C+
Match 4: Kevin Bennett vs. Andy Williams
This is Smash’s version of Dennis Rodman and Karl Malone in a match with Hogan and DDP. Kevin Bennet is probably the most despised heel in Toronto right now and Andy Williams is the guitarist of Every Time I Die. I went in without any real expectations as to the calibre of Williams’ technique and expected this to be a spectacle more than a match.
Bennett and his cronies get booed and sworn at by the crowd the moment they appear, in the ring he starts to cut a promo but Williams storms the ring and clears out the cronies. He looks great, beefy and crisp in his attacks. What this match does is display how weak his selling is. Early in the match he gets a Guitar Hero guitar controller broken across his knee and the story focuses heavily on his knee being a target. Unfortunately he lacked the little nuances that really make an audience invest in that story… like making me suspend disbelief and think he’s hurt by selling in a somewhat believable way. He goes through the motions, but doesn’t sell it. Williams is, however, willing to take bumps as he gets caught with an Apron Cutter by Bennett in a spot that I genuinely didn’t expect. Williams nails a huge chokeslam on Bennett but can’t get the three count because the ref is distracted by the cronies. When Williams goes to chase them away Bennett trips up the ref who falls in such a fashion that he chop blocks Andy Williams in his wounded knee and Bennett picks up the win. Good heeling.
Grade: C
Match 5: Tony Kozina vs. Davey Richards
Kozina is a great comedy heel here, from beginning to end and really impressed me more and more as this match went on, and I hope that Smash can bring him back in. He started by feigning leaving when he saw how his opponent was, and turned into him finding ways to trip over himself, the ropes, his opponets and build a lot of comedy into the match, much like the Young Bucks have been doing more as their careers develop. Not afraid to make themselves look the fool. During one part of the match Davey wails on him with some move and Kozina goes into a back bump that he rolls out of onto the top of his head, like an upside-down bowling pin, rotates and then collapses. It almost didnt matter what Davey Richards was doing because Kozina would eclipse it. They brawled outside and Richards got some nasty kicks into Kozina, who he had seated on a chair literally one seat over from me. Kozina, the wily heel, escaped the abuse and sent richards into the chair with a Drop Toe Hold. Back in the ring Kozina gets tied up in a cool submission sequence. Kozina goes to the top and crotches himself when he slips, foreshadowing the ending of the match where, after nailing seeming dominant with a springboard face crusher and quick Piledriver, he goes to the top, falls down, trips over Davey Richards and eats a Shining Wizard as he recovers for Richards to get the win.
Grade: B
Setting up for one of the sickest bumps of the night.
Match 6: Sebastian Suave vs. Rosemary
The pre-match segment begin with a great hype video for Rosemary’s farewell match, but Sebastian Suave and his manager Kingdom James come to the ring first. They’re most certainly heels, but Kingdom has such great wit and charisma that you’re dying to see what’ll happen next and he almost gets the both of them some genuine babyface love. They do everything right to stay heels though. Kingdom James gets an “Uncle Phil” chant for his resemblance to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air character. One fan yells something at the robust heel manager who retorts with a brilliant barrage of words, lacing in some great Fresh Prince references, and caps it off with “I have a microphone, I’m going to win every argument!” and suddenly the crowd is on his side.
Rosemary makes her way down to the ring in her carefully selected gear with her carefully selected entrance theme. Her gimmick is so well put together that it sells itself to you without her even having to open her mouth. With both competitors in the ring, the action still can’t kick off yet because the referee keeps finding various bladed items secreted on Rosemary’s body, and just when he thinks he’s found them all she pulls a butcher’s cleaver out of her trunks. The shrill voice and psychoic quips from her during this sequence reinforce her gimmick thoroughly.
The moment the referee finally disarms her, before the bell rings, Suave dashes across the ring and ambushes her. He can’t hold advantage for long, with Rosemary cracking him with a great headbutt and a gorgeous Capture Suplex. She ties him up in a rope trap assisted choke, forcing the ref to count towards five. She’s savage and wild in her attacks against Suave, but also agile and tight in execution. Gimmick and technique coming together in gestalt. My notes literally say at this point that she “suplexes him like a bitch”.
Suddenly a standoff, and Suave tries to low blow Rosemary, an action that must certainly be frowned on by his corporate sponsors, but she just looks at him confused and then makes him eat a head kick and wrecks him with a German Suplex. He rolls outside and she obliterates him with a spear. Momentum shifts when Kingdom James interferes and prevents her from getting the pin. The bumps get crazier as the match goes on, with Rosemary eating a vicious Death Valley driver on the apron, a boat load of body slams, and a top-rope Death Valley Driver into a Ki Krusher. This is followed by a brilliant sequence of near falls. Rosemary comes close to winning but Kingdom James interferes at just the right moment and secures Suave the victory.
Post match sequence has Rosemary’s rival Allie come down to the ring for what we think will be a team up beat down on the defeated woman, but swerves and superkicks the heel and Rosemary hits him with blue mist and the crowd pops one more time for the leaving hero. Standing Ovation. To me, this was the best match of the night.
Grade: A
Match 7: Michael Elgin vs. Jeff Cobb vs. Brent Banks vs. Tarik
Elgin and Banks to start, with Elgin dominating and showing his strength. The back and forth tells a tale of strength versus agility, but Tarik cuts in to break up a Stalling Vertical Suplex, but Big Mike puts on the breaks and turns it into a strongman show, tossing both men in a double suplex. There’s a fracas of action and and people shuffle in and out of the ring in a flurry of well executed, well timed action. Jeff Cobb and Michael Elgin stare each other down and the atmosphere electrifies. They test each other out, exchanging forearms and no selling each other’s huge throws. Then another fracas erupts, punctuated by great dives and hard hits. This match is money. Then its Banks and Elgin again, with a great sequence. Cobb pops up and wrecks Banks, who he takes on a dizzying Tour. It gets frenetic as Tarik and Cobb mix it up and impress the audience. Then its Elgin and Tarik.
Crisp, clean, and gorgeous action so fast that i can’t keep up. I made this note halfway through the match. At this point there had been very few moments where people were down for a meaningful length of time. If I were to level any real complaint at this match is that I could have used to see them slow down and sell just a little more. Give me a chance to be impressed by your choreography just a little more before you show me something new.
Nevertheless, the match roared onwards. Big Mike Germans everyone, multiple times, and even suplexes two people at once. Everyone gets their time in ring and makes it count. How they manage to keep their timing so precise when they ahve such high speed and complicated things to do with their body is beyond me. There is literally no time to breathe as a fan until Elgin hits a deadlift Avalanche Falcon Arrow on Tarik. But the match doesn’t end there, as Banks breaks up the pin and the crowd loves it. Banks kills Elgin and then Cobb is back in the mix, he destroys Banks but the pin is interrupted and Tarik drops Cobb with a Backpack Stunner. The crowd chants “Fight Forever“.
The match ends as Michael Elgin ruins Tarik, first throwing him out of the ring onto Cobb and Banks, nasty fucking bump, and then kills Tarik with a Bucklebomb and Sit-Out Power Bomb. Elgin gets the victory. Standing Ovation Number Two..
Grade: A
Post match they tease Elgin vs. Cobb in singles action, but before they collide with each other they each have to beat their next opponents. For Elgin they announce Zack Saber Jr., crowd goes wild, for Cobb they announce Kyle O’Reilly, crowd doesn’t pop so much. I can’t blame them, I’ve seen O’Reilly before, but never ZSJ. Smash are playing hardball for my money. Keep it up, guys.
This is the best picture I took that night.
Match 8: Smash Wrestling Championship Match – Tyson Dux (c) vs. Jimmy Havoc, No DQ
The match starts with some back and forth action that contrasts Havoc’s savage brawling skills with Dux’s precision and technicality.The action almost immediately spills out of the ring and into the audience, wandering out of view and into pretty much every section of the crowd except for my own. As they wind their way back into the ring Jimmy collects various implements from around the venue, bringing into play cookie sheets, a staple gun, tacks, chairs, some paper and some lemons. In the end most of the staples get put into Havoc himself, with some money tacked onto his face. Crowd seems to dig it, but some of it just seems all too deliberate for me to suspend my disbelief.
The action spills out of the ring, out of site again. Ooohs and Aaaahs from those close enough to see. A table gets brought into play. They get in the ring and there’s more back and forth action, weapons involved, and pinfall attempts exchanged. Havoc staples Dux in the junk at one point, pretty certain that’d have ended it if it were me. They do some good spots with the tacks, including loading up Dux mouth with them and punching him. Dux retains after a sequence of Death Valley Drivers into, respectively, a table, the turnbuckle, and the tacks, but Havoc kicks out and its finally a submission hold when he’s in the tacks that makes him quit.
Grade: A-
Smash Wrestling’s previous event, F8ful Eight, piqued my curiosity. This show made me a fan. This weekend it will be made available to watch online on their website, so go visit Smash Wrestling on Sunday and pay to watch this show.
Do you have any feedback or questions? Please leave a comment here.
Don’t forget to Like my FaceBook page and Follow me on Twitter!