Pro Wrestling Chronicle

Quite a bit of news has gone down between mid-April and Monday, most of it not yet mentioned on this site. Brian Streleckis takes a page from Lewis Black by scooping up some stories that fell through the cracks.

TNA
A genuine Total Nonstop Action house show went down April 20th in Cornette Country – Louisville, KY. The honorable James E. was in attendance. Highlights included Samoa Joe defeating AJ Styles in another well-received match, Christian Cage defending the (still) NWA World Title against Kurt Angle, and Abyss (who was announced earlier as not being there due to his beat-down on the previous night’s Impact) saving Angle from a post-match beat-down from Cage and Styles. The big news in my book was the long-speculated TNA debut of the Bashams. Long-rumored to be brought in by Christy Hemme as mystery opponents for Voodoo Kin Mafia by many others and myself, Doug Basham and “The Damaja” Danny Basham – both former Louisville regulars – came out to take Abyss’ place in a “Derby City” Street Fight against Rhino. It ended up being Rhino vs. Doug, with Rhino taking the win, but the question remains… did they really have to have one of these guys in a street fight their first time in the promotion? Granted, it’s a house show, but it just seems like more of that classic TNA overcompensation, akin to having a PPV with all cage matches and adding gimmicks to some of those cage matches. I’m hoping to see these guys on Impact soon (hopefully in a better role than Christy Hemme’s mystery team), as these guys could definitely be used to better effect than what they were stuck with in WWE. In the meantime, the Bashams have been wrestling off of TV in…

IWA Mid-South
Lots of news coming out of this small but still thriving indy, aside from the Bashams popping up on some recent shows. A big story (within IWA standards, at least) went down April 14th at a charity show the promotion held at a Shelbyville, IN high school. Well, maybe two big stories, as this show drew an impressive crowd of over 250. The one I had on my mind was Josh Abercrombie losing the IWA-MS Light Heavyweight Title to his rival, “Impact Bully” Brandon Thomaselli, in a TLC match. Abercrombie had held the title for fifteen months during this second reign of his, and even made it into a world title earlier this year. It’s going to be kind of weird with him not holding a title he’s had for so long, but with the possibility of the talented Abercrombie broadening his horizons, it’s for the best to have someone more likely to make more shows. The Abercrombie-Thomaselli feud doesn’t seem over, as on the last IWA-MS show on Saturday the 28th in Midlothian, IL, these two wrestled in a Lumberjack Strap Match (originally just an Indian Strap Match). Abercrombie was victorious, but the match was non-title as, in an odd turn of events, the champion didn’t make weight!

In between the Shelbyville show and the Midlothian show was IWA-MS’ debut show in San Antonio, TX, in conjunction with the local ACW promotion. It reportedly came off very well, with a crowd of 200 and a return date announced for August, but the show suffered from some wrestler no-shows (no Homicide, no Davey Richards, no Abercrombie) that were beyond the wrestlers’ control. Still, Low Ki vs. Hernandez (of LAX fame) went off without a hitch with Low Ki winning, and the big scheduled match between Necro Butcher and Homicide was changed to Necro facing San Antonio native and a former member of ROH’s Carnage Crew, Masada. According to IWA, fans were happy, not just because of the hometown boy, but also because these two have some heat going back to when both toured for Big Japan. The two had a hard-fought match, with Necro coming out on top following a distraction by Hernandez, and even had Masada saving Necro afterwards from a post-match attack by Low Ki and Hernandez (who were weakening Necro for the big June 30th match in Philadelphia pitting Necro & Toby Klein against Low Ki & Homicide).

Looking into May, AJ Styles is set to make his way back into IWA-MS. He hasn’t been in the company since the fall of ’04. May 11th in Plainfield, IN will have Styles take on BLK OUT member Joker, while May 12th in Joliet, IL will pit Styles against NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion, New Japan regular, and a frequent US visitor over the next couple of months, Tiger Mask IV. If these shows draw some good crowds, I’m sure Styles will deliver. The Joliet show also features the return of Tyler Black, a young high flyer with an angry punk motif (he was the intense one to Jimmy Jacobs’ sensitive one in WSX’s DIFH team) who feuded with Abercrombie throughout most of ’05 and ’06. He was forced out of the promotion following a match on the second night of the 2006 TPI against Abercrombie where the loser leaves the promotion for six months, and certain backstage politics (Black is a trainee of Danny Daniels, a guy who has bad blood with IWA-MS and runs rival Chicago-area promotion AAW) have attributed to his absense as well. Anyway, Black is back, and he’ll be wrestling recent WWE exile Joey Mercury (AKA Joey Matthews). Hopefully, Mercury is in better shape than he was a few months ago.

In somewhat-related news, IWA-MS regulars Billy Roc, Ash, and Michael Elgin all got an in-ring look at ROH’s St. Paul, MN show on Friday the 27th. Roc and Ash were part of a pre-show six-man tag with some students. Elgin was on the main show, wrestling student Rhett Titus for less than two minutes before getting into a match with Jimmy Rave, making a surprise return after suffering a broken jaw in the beginning of March. Ash and Elgin are a regular tag team, and in IWA-MS have joined forces with the North Star Express (Darin Corbin and Ryan Cruz) and ring announcer Joey Eastman to form Joey Eastman World Wide, or JEWW.

Since I kind of shifted subjects there, let’s move on to…

ROH
Lots of news coming in now following this past weekend in St. Paul and Chicago Ridge. I’m not predicting doom and gloom, especially when looking ahead to the next few months, but the promotion is in a state of transition now that may or may not live up to last year’s standards. Colt Cabana, Christopher Daniels, Shingo, and even Allison Danger have said, “Goodbye,” or at least, “See ya later.” New names like “M-Dogg” Matt Cross, Erick Stevens, and Mike Quackenbush (yay!) are coming in to say, “Hi there!” or, “Is it okay I crash here?” trying to fill a void. The World Champion is this big Japanese dude plowing through all of our favorites. Now, it appears we’re due for a little bit of stability and some of that 2006 goodness as former ROH World Champion and possibly Wrestling Chronicle poster boy, “American Dragon” Bryan Danielson, is coming back to ROH. Having nursed his injured shoulder since losing the World Title to Homicide on December 23rd, Danielson is slowly making his way back into the ring, working some smaller indies here and there and signed for some high profile matches during PWG’s next shows, which I will cover in due time. Over the past couple of days, it was announced that Danielson will make his ROH return in June, coming to Roxbury Crossing, MA (a new venue in the Boston area) on the 8th, Philadelphia on the 9th, Dayton on the 22nd, and Chicago Ridge on the 23rd. As was already mentioned on this here site, this Chicago Ridge show is especially exciting as they announced during Saturday’s show that it will feature Danielson vs. KENTA in rematch from my favorite ROH match of 2006, held September 16th at “Glory By Honor V: Night 2.” I look forward to what the “Best Wrestler in the World” has in store for us upon his return.

KENTA, along with Naomichi Marufuji and ROH World Champion Takeshi Morishima, are all signed for the June 22nd Dayton show in addition to Chicago Ridge the next night. Before that, all three be on the May 11th show in Hartford, CT and the May 12th show back in the Manhattan Center. KENTA and Marufuji have very intriguing matches on the Hartford show, wrestling Delirious and Matt Sydal respectively, while Morishima teams with Nigel McGuinness to challenge Jay & Mark Briscoe (who seem to be in good shape; haven’t heard any horror stories after this weekend) for the ROH World Tag Team Titles. ROH is claiming that the Manhattan Center show is close to selling out, and they haven’t even announced a match yet.

These three NOAH regulars are naturally set to be a part of ROH’s big weekend in Japan, in conjunction with NOAH and Dragon Gate. In addition to these three, the July 16th Tokyo show (held in Differ Ariake) will also have Go Shiosaki – an impressive young heavyweight who wrestled on the UK shows last Augest – and Ricky Marvin – a Mexican wrestler and NOAH regular making his ROH debut. Marvin, along with Kotaro Suzuki, defeated the Briscoes earlier this year to win the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles.

Getting back to the Briscoes quickly, if Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin’s said-to-be-awesome match with the Briscoes on Saturday is truly their last hurrah for the promotion, then hats off to them. Looking forward to seeing the match myself, as well as more of their PWG stuff and hopefully a more permanent pairing in TNA (which was teased on last week’s Impact in that silly Bob Backlund vignette).

Oh, and how about that No Remorse Corps sign on Raw? In Nashville, no less!

Elswhere in the indies…
Over the weekend in England was the King of Europe Cup, a two-night, sixteen-man tournament with all of the guys representing a different promotion. Nigel McGuinness (representing ROH) won the tournament, defeating Doug Williams (representing Premier Promotions) in the finals. Other participants included Matt Sydal, Davey Richards, Chris Hero, Claudio Castagnoli, El Generico, Pac, and Rhino.

Fledgling promotion Fight Sports Midwest, which held its first show March 17th with matches such as Samoa Joe vs. Eddie Kingston, Austin Aries vs. Josh Abercrombie, and “Sweet & Sour” Larry Sweeney vs. Figure Four Weekly editor Bryan Alvarez, will be running their second show May 11th, once again in Portage, IN. Matches signed include Low Ki vs. Alex Shelley, Tiger Mask IV defending his NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title against Mike Quackenbush, and Josh Abercrombie vs. Human Tornado. You can get more info at the Fight Sports Midwest site, as well as buy the first FSM show at Smart Mark Video.

More ROH info? Go here. More IWA-MS info? Go here. More TNA info? Go here, of course. Want to talk to me? Leave a comment or send an e-mail. As always, cards are subject to change. Coming up soon, we’ve got some tag champs to decide upon in the Midwest and California, and I’ll provide all of the info.