IWTV Family Reunion 2021 Part 1
Date: April 8, 2021
Location: 81Bay Brewing, Tampa, Florida
Commentators: Various

We’ll start the marathon wrestling weekend with this, part of the Showcase of the Independents. I watched the Family Reunion show two years ago and had a good enough time with it to try another version. IWTV is a wrestling streaming service with all kinds of indy promotions available and this is kind of a sampler of some of their bigger names and promotions. Let’s get to it.

I do not follow any of these promotions so I am coming into this completely blind on all angles and stories.

As you might have expected, the show doesn’t start on time, kicking off about ten minutes late.

The show is dedicated to Shannon Place, a member of the TV crew, who passed away yesterday.

A Very Good Professional Wrestling Team vs. Boomer Hatfield/Boar/Erica Leigh

This is from Camp Leapfrog (which is apparently some offshoot of Chikara) under lucha rules and the trio is Matt Makowski/Travis Huckabee/A Very Good Professional Wrestler. In a clever/annoying idea, the former team comes out to Foo Fighter’s Best Of You but it stays on THE BEST, which repeats on a loop. Hatfield and Very Good start things off and apparently are father and son, meaning Very Good would seem to be the unmasked Dasher Hatfield of Chikara fame.

Feeling out process to start with the expected technical exchange. Hatfield gets in an armdrag into an armbar, which doesn’t sit well with Very Good. The brawling begins so it’s off to Erica vs. Huckabee with Erica booting him out to the floor. Makowski and the rather large Boar come in with Makowski reversing a fireman’s carry into a cross armbreaker. Erica comes back in and gets knocked away from trying to whip Makowski in, allowing Huckabee to come back in and work on the arm.

A not great looking running knee in the corner hits Erica’s arm again and Makowski adds a slam for two. Makowski’s butterfly suplex can’t set up an armbar so Boomer goes up top, gets the tag from there, and comes in with a high crossbody. House is cleaned until Very Good is left to German suplex Hatfield. Another running knee in the corner gets two but Hatfield grabs a rather spinning armdrag to put Very Good down. Hatfield has to get out of a reverse chinlock and hits some running elbows in the corner.

Very Good catches one such charge and Gory Bombs him into the buckle for two. They both flip to their feet and Hatfield hits a Saito suplex, allowing the hot tag off to Boar. Everything breaks down and Boar tosses Huckabee onto the other two. Boar hits a rather impressive no hands dive over the top, leaving Erica to roll Very Good up for two.

Hatfield is back in with a tornado DDT on Very Good but Huckabee plants Hatfield with a swinging cutter. Total Elimination drops Boar for two but Hatfield is back in with a top rope Meteora on Huckabee. Very Good plants Hatfield but Boar tosses a few people at them for the save. Boar hits something like a Bitter End to finish Huckabee at 17:12.

Rating: C. This went a bit longer than it should have but what we got was good enough, with everyone flying around and doing their thing as well as they could have. The idea here is a Showcase and that is exactly what we got, with six people who have done this for a bit getting to do their thing. Of course it was a bit messy, but what else are you expecting from a Boar fighting in a brewery?

Daniel Makabe vs. Jaden Newman

From Scenic City Invitational and Makabe won their most recent big tournament. They go technical to start (makes sense for Makabe, who is billed as the Wrestling Genius) with Newman grabbing a cravate to little effect. A sunset flip doesn’t work for Newman as he has to bail to the ropes to escape an STF. Makabe can’t get Cattle Mutilation so he settles for two off a German suplex instead.

Newman is right back with a powerslam into a chinlock, followed by a heck of a left hand to the ear. A northern lights suplex gives Newman two as Makabe is bleeding from the….somewhere. Newman hits a cravate driver for two and the cravate goes on again. Makabe is back up to lay him over the middle rope for some choking. That earns him a ram into the buckle though and Newman cravates him over the rope for a change.

That’s broken up and Makabe hits a running kick to the face, setting up a superplex for the double knockdown. It’s Makabe up first with a tiger driver for two but Newman pulls him into a hangman’s clutch (STF with a cravate) but Makabe slips out. Instead Newman elbows him in the head, only to get pulled into a rear naked choke. That’s broken up as well so Makabe snaps off a dragon screw legwhip. The Fujiwara armbar makes Newman tap at 9:53.

Rating: C+. This was a little bit more my speed as Makabe picked him apart with Newman focusing on the cravate a bit too much. Sometimes you need a good technical exchange and that’s what you got here. Both guys looked fairly good here and I could go for more of both of them, so well done throughout.

Will Wrestle vs. Judge Hugo Lexington Black

From Olde Wrestling, which is designed to be out of the 1800s or whatever other era you picture as being rather old. I’ve heard about this promotion before and it did sound a bit fun. Before the match, (Rickey Shane Page as a corrupt judge) says he doesn’t want to wrestle and hates all of the fans. He would rather sit on the beach and drink some sweet tea because….well that’s what a southern man does. Will is a panhandler who would do a headlock for a handout.

We get started with Will, who only has one shoe, being rather pleased with being given a dollar. Then Black takes it away so Will wrestles him around and gets it again. The bill is tucked away so Black grabs a spinning release slam to take over. A stomp to the socked foot has Will in trouble but he manages to get his dollar back.

Black suplexes him down and stomps on the foot again, which certainly does make sense. After a bite of the foot, we hit the spinning toehold but Will steals Page’s shoe to put it on the other foot. Will pops up with a tornado DDT and goes up but Black throws more money for a distraction. A sunset flip doesn’t work for Will, but he reaches into Black’s pocket to pull out a five dollar bill. The shock is enough to pin Black at 6:21.

Rating: C. I thought it was fun and I’ve been wanting to see a full show from this promotion for awhile now. That’s the point of a show like this so I’ll check one of their full things out later. Good little match here with a funny story throughout. They didn’t overstay their welcome and were entertaining as well, which is as good as you can get.

Wheeler Yuta vs. Adam Priest

The winner gets an Independent Wrestling TV Title shot. Yuta bails to the floor to start but comes back in to take Priest down with a waistlock. Priest slips out but Yuta gets two off a sunset flip. A right hand rocks Priest but seems to wake him up, meaning it’s a gutwrench suplex for two. They trade some loud chops with Priest getting the better of it and tying the leg up into the strange cousin of a Tequila Sunrise.

Priest can’t switch it into a Sharpshooter as Yuta grabs the ear for a break. A trip sends Yuta outside for a loud chop off until Yuta sends his shoulder into the post. Back in and Yuta hits a slam into a top rope splash for two, with Priest going into the corner to favor his shoulder. Yuta is smart enough to go after the arm, including the rather nasty stomp. The armbar goes on (makes sense) for a bit, followed by a German suplex for two on Priest.

Another German suplex gets two on Yuta and another German suplex gets another two on Yuta. Priest grabs a brainbuster for two more but he still can’t get a Sharpshooter. Yuta is back up with a backfist into a nasty looking middle rope DDT to the arm. The Fujiwara armbar has Priest in trouble but Yuta lets go and kicks the arm. Zack Sabre Jr.’s European Clutch pins Priest at 10:04.

Rating: C+. Another nice match with Yuta being the more polished of the two. Working on the arm is something that is always going to work and it went fine here. Priest looked like someone who could go somewhere in the future with some more seasoning and having matches with slightly bigger stars like Yuta is a good idea. Good stuff here and Yuta continues to grow.

Robert Martyr vs. Dominic Garrini

From Paradigm Pro Wrestling and under UWFI rules, with Garrini being billed as the UWFIcon. This match has a points system with both wrestlers starting with fifteen points. If you run out of points, it’s an automatic loss, though you can also lose by submission or knockout. Garrini goes for the arm to start and Martyr goes to the rope to lose a point. The attempted triangle choke sends him to the ropes again so it’s already 15-13 (assuming commentary knows what they’re talking about, as we aren’t getting any announcements). Garrini snaps off a German suplex, which seems to be another point off for Martyr.

Garrini’s Kimura attempt is blocked and Martyr fires off elbows to the head. Martyr has to slip out of a guillotine choke so Garrini grabs a cross armbreaker, meaning it’s another Martyr rope break. Back up and Garrini blasts him in the head but Martyr is back up with a crossface chickenwing, sending Garrini to the ropes for a change. A slap off goes to Garrini but Martyr suplexes him down, which apparently is points off too (we need a scoreboard or something). Garrini pulls him into a Crossface for the tap at 4:44.

Rating: C-. This is just not my style and the points system was more confusing than anything else. Garrini is someone I’ve seen a few times in MLW and he is fine enough for what he does, but I don’t usually care for this kind of stuff. Martyr was decent in a short match here, but this was all about Garrini and it showed.

Funny Bone/Nurse Ratchet/Super Beast vs. D-Rogue/James C/Willow Nightingale

This is from Hoodslam, meaning the wrestlers are going to be about as gimmicky as you can get. Beast brings Ratchet to the ring in a body bag for some extra flavor. Nightingale seems rather happy to be here, which seems to be the case with a lot of wrestlers these days. Beast offers Nightingale a spot in said body bag but she’ll pass for now. Ratchet, who staggers around like a zombie, starts with Nightingale, who is a bit terrified.

A test of strength is teased but Ratchet grabs her by the throat. Nightingale headbutts her way out but seems scared to follow up. There’s a slam to put Ratchet down but she does an Undertaker sit up. Another slam lets her do the Bray Wyatt spider walk, meaning it’s off to the much bigger C. Eat Defeat knocks Ratchet….almost off her feet but not quite. Ratchet goes up for Old School and walks around the corner before coming down on the arm.

Bone (in a skull mask) comes in to work on the arm, setting up an exchange of middle fingers. A cross between a neckbreaker/Backstabber puts Bone down and it’s off to Rogue. Bone blasts him with some jumping knees and Rogue goes into a rather slow motion fall. The rather muscular Beast comes in to send Rogue flying, setting up some running strikes in the corner.

Rogue manages to send him outside so Ratchet comes back in with a high crossbody. That’s pulled out of the air and countered into a slam, allowing Rogue to dive onto Beast and Bone. Back in and Nightingale Rock Bottoms Ratchet but misses a moonsault. James slips in with a pumphandle piledriver on Ratchet but Beast plants him with a powerslam. Bone adds a top rope elbow for the pin at 8:08.

Rating: C. Oh yeah this was heavy on the gimmicks, which worked out well enough. Hoodslam is not exactly my taste (though I do want to see Drugs Bunny) but you could get the idea of the weird trio here. They didn’t hide who was going to win here and that is ok for something like this. Again, it’s meant to be a showcase and I got a bit of an idea of what I would get out of these people, which is how it is supposed to go.

IWA-Mid South Title: Jake Crist vs. John Wayne Murdoch

Crist is defending and there are no rules (you knew they would get something like this in). The bell rings and Crist throws a door at Murdoch’s face. A high crossbody connects and Crist fires off the kicks to the head for two. They head outside with Crist being sent face first into the bar to put him in some trouble. It’s time to sit in some chairs and hit each other in the face, which is always a bit of an odd visual.

Back in and Murdoch chairs him between the shoulders, setting up a neckbreaker for two. We hit the chinlock early on but Crist is back up, only to get kneed in the ribs. Crist is back up with some chops into a Death Valley Driver for two of his own. A powerslam into a chair in the corner gets two on Murdoch so Crist bridges a door between two chairs.

They go up top and Crist hits a super cutter through the door, setting up a backslide for two. Murdoch is back with a Canadian Destroyer but Crist backslides him again for two more. A brainbuster gives Murdoch his own two and it’s time to bridge another door over the chairs. Murdoch hits a super Canadian Destroyer through the door for the pin and the title at 7:35.

Rating: D+. They flew through this and it felt like it was clipped a bit on time. Much like the UWFI stuff, this is totally not my style but at least they didn’t go into the full hardcore nonsense. I mean, yeah they were breaking doors and such but there is a big difference between that and the blood and such, which is just annoying instead of something with some value.

Independent Wrestling TV Title: Edith Surreal vs. Lee Moriarty

Moriarty is defending and Surreal is better known as Still Life With Apricots And Pears, meaning we have a bunch of paintings set up around the ring (if you’re not familiar, don’t bother trying to figure it out because this is one of the weirdest gimmicks you’ll see). They go technical to start with Moriarty working on the arm. A quick trip to the mat doesn’t go anywhere so it’s time for another exchange of arm control. Surreal switches over to the leg but Moriarty slips out in a hurry.

Back up and Surreal cranks on the arm, setting up a crucifix for two, with Moriarty bouncing out, which seems to hurt Surreal’s ribs. They run the ropes until Surreal snaps off a hurricanrana into an elbow to the face for two more. Moriarty gets in a shot to the ribs and puts on a bodyscissors, complete with an arm crank for a bonus. That’s broken up so Moriarty shouts at her a lot as frustration is setting in.

Some shoulders to the ribs in the corner and an arm snap have Surreal in more trouble, followed by an abdominal stretch. That’s broken up and Surreal ties up the limbs into a rollup for two. They trade some rollups for two each until Surreal knocks him down again. A guillotine legdrop gets two on Moriarty and it’s time to go back to the rollups, with Moriarty trapping the legs and kicking the ribs to retain at 10:37.

Rating: C+. This was another rather entertaining, back and forth exchange with both of them getting to shine. Surreal is someone who is about as unique as you can get today and that is always worth a look. Then you have Moriarty, who is a lot more traditional of a star but is rather good at the technical stuff. You can never see enough of that and Moriarty got to stand out rather well here.

Post match they shake hands but a masked man comes in to chair them both down. It’s Wheeler Yuta of course and we’re off the air in a hurry.

Overall Rating: C+. You have to consider what they were going for here and that was a nice success. This was about looking at a little bit of all kinds of wrestling from different places while also setting up something for tomorrow. It was a completely watchable show and ran about two hours flat, which is hardly wasting time. If you haven’t seen that much indy stuff, you might want to check this out and see what they have to pick from, because there were a lot of choices here.

 

 

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Those of you that have read my stuff for years now (thanks for that) know that I like to talk about WCW. The company officially closed over ten years ago and yet there are still people that talk about how great it was. Now yes, WCW had some absolutely dreadful stuff over the years, most of which I’ve at least touched on. However, what people forget is that WCW had some flat out AWESOME stuff that today’s WWE wishes they could do. WCW had WWF beaten and then screwed up, and today Vince McMahon and WWE rule the wrestling world totally and completely.

Now, there have been books written about how WCW died and went out of business and all that. However, there are a few things we’re not quite clear on and to be fair, I don’t think there’s a clear answer out there. As you’ve probably guessed from the title, the purpose of this piece is to try to figure out who killed WCW, when it happened, what caused it. This is very important to start things off with: I don’t have a specific answer to those questions as I write this. I’ve tried to figure these answers out for years and I thought maybe by writing it out I could come to some sort of conclusion. When I started reviewing the late WCW shows I thought about doing this and was going to call it “Jumping the Shark Backwards”, but I never got around to it. Here it is now though, so let’s see if we can figure it out.

One major note: about 99% of this isn’t researched and most of it is coming off the top of my head, so if I mess up a few dates or names, don’t be surprised.

Another warning: this is LONG. It’s easily the longest piece I’ve ever written on wrestling so don’t expect it to be quick like a lot of other things I write. There are stats, history lessons, my thoughts on things, and a lot of other stuff. It reads almost like a college paper so this is going to take awhile to get through.

To begin with, I’ll give you a brief(ish) history of WCW. For the sake of clarity, we’re going to say that WCW officially started when Ted Turner took over the company, which took place on November 21, 1988. Now before I explain how we got there, I’ll go a bit further back into history. Not that it’s important to this, but I like talking about the history of the sport I love. If you’re already familiar with the way the territory system and Jim Crockett Promotions worked, skip ahead a little. The first paragraph after the history lesson begins with “Now that we know how it started, how did it die?”

See, today wrestling is way different than it originally had started as. WAY back in the day (as in like before the 1950s) you would have local territories and local promoters would run their individual areas. To cross over into another promoter’s territory was almost an act of war, which would somewhat be the case into the mid 80s. In 1948, a group of promoters combined to form the organization known as the NWA. The basic idea was they would all still run their territories, but there would be one name over all of them and one champion to rule them all. Local champions would exist, but the NWA World Champion would travel around.

For a non-wrestling analogy, think of the NCAA. You have your Big East, your ACC, your SEC and so on, but they’re all members of the NCAA and while you’ll have conference champions, there’s one NCAA Champion. Then imagine that champion traveled to individual conferences, wore trunks and tried to pin the other players down.

Anyway, this was the dominant situation for about 12 years, until two guys named Toots Mondt and Vince McMahon Senior thought that the NWA Champion, Lou Thesz, wasn’t a good enough draw in the northeast where they ran a territory. They withdrew from the NWA and changed their name to the World Wide Wrestling Federation (that’s about as abridged and simplified as saying a babies come from a mother’s stomach but you get the idea).

More companies eventually did this and the NWA started to realize they were in trouble. At the same time, a man named Jim Crockett promoted in the Carolinas area. His son took over the company and became president of the NWA. At the same time, Vince McMahon Jr. (the Vince that most of you are familiar with, had a radical idea: what if wrestling was a national product? I want this to be clear: this was INSANE at the time. Nothing had ever been attempted like this and most people laughed at him.

Then Vince got evil on them. He started going around and taking up all of the talent around the country from various promotions. Now his dad had this wrestler that was a heel, but was offered a part in a big Hollywood movie. Vince Sr. said you’re a wrestler, not an actor (there’s a joke in there somewhere) so if you take the movie, you’re gone. The wrestler took the movie, became a sensation, then went to the AWA, wore red and yellow, and Hulkamania was born. Vince Jr. bought his father out, brought back Hogan, and the rest is history.

Now around this time, Jim Crockett Jr. (both big time players in the 80s were juniors. Kind of interesting) had taken over and came up with an idea of his own: why can’t I own more than one territory? So basically, Crockett did the same thing Vince did: he went around and bought up every major name in a bunch of territories or flat out bought the territory itself. He had his own empire going in the southeast and for all intents and purposes, he owned the NWA (note that officially he didn’t but he owned about 90% of the talent anyone would want to see).

Crockett did really well for awhile, namely on the strength of the Flair vs. Dusty feud and the Four Horsemen. He had a national TV show on Ted Turner’s TBS station and life was good. The problem was he had a booker named Dusty Rhodes, and Rhodes was a little crazy. He would create what is known as the Dusty Finish, which would involve a fall going down and then something happening to cancel it, he created the Bunkhouse Stampede, which was a cage match battle royal where the idea was to throw people out of the cage (think about that for a minute and guess who won) and then came up with the idea of putting the world title on Rick Steiner, who was more or less the Eric Young of his day.

Combine this with Crockett overspending on things like jets and buying all these promotions and Ronnie Garvin as world champion and Vince messing with his PPV debut and Hulkamania and it’s no wonder why he was broke relatively soon. Enter Ted Turner, who bought the promotion flat out and took over on November 21, 1988, which is where we’ll say WCW began.

Now that we know how it started, how did it die? You’ll hear a lot of different theories about this, but for this case, I think we should use the process of elimination. Now for an opening suspect, the most common answer is the day that Jamie Kellner, one of the new bosses at AOL-Time Warner, canceled WCW programming on TBS and TNT. I’ve heard the argument and statements that it was that move that killed WCW and it’s still as stupid today as it was then.

Just think about this for a few seconds. Kellner had built up a lot of what was the FOX Network dominance. The guy knew what he was doing. Do you really think he would have killed off WCW programming if it still had value? By 2001 when the switch was pulled, WCW had been driven so far into the ground that there was absolutely no way that it was going to come back. Scratch that. It could have, but it was going to take YEARS to do.

Why in the world would they want to keep the company on the air when it was so damaged and bleeding money like it was already doing? This idea that Kellner and his cutting off the programming was what killed WCW is just wrong on all levels. He didn’t kill WCW. He simply put it out of its misery.

We’ll move back in time for the rest of this and go to Bash at the Beach 2000. This is a far less likely candidate because it’s really not that remembered. The idea here is that there was some kind of worked shoot which we’re still not sure how much was a work and how much was a shoot. It was Hogan vs. Jarrett for the title, Jarrett laid down, Hogan got the title and was never seen again. Russo came out later and buried him and made Booker vs. Jarrett the main event where Booker got the world title.

What did this wind up meaning? Nothing. The ratings didn’t go up, no one ever mentioned Hogan again, and Booker was moved up to the main event out of nowhere. A telling sign about WCW and the state of their world title at the time though: Booker is famous for being a five time world champion in WCW right? He won all of those in a span of about 9 months, including a span where he was injured for awhile. The title at this point was completely worthless because no one could keep it more than 5 minutes. We’ll get back to that very soon. This isn’t the right answer either so let’s keep going.

The next suspect is one David Arquette. I’m sure you’re all familiar with this story. For some reason WCW thought it would be a good idea to have a movie featuring the company. In short, it BOMBED, but that’s not the point here. In an effort to market the film, WCW took one of its actors and made him HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE WORLD. Yes, an actor was world champion at the same time that HHH was WWF Champion.

So to the shock of no one, the angle bombed and they didn’t take the title off him immediately. Instead, they let David Arquette keep the title until Slamboree 2000 where they had a triple cage match with him vs. Jarrett vs. DDP. Jarrett won the title after Arquette was standing on top of the cage by himself for a few minutes and could have grabbed the title. While it’s a stretch, it could be argued that this was more of making the title look worthless. You know, beyond the fact that the real life husband of Monica from Friends was WCW World Champion.

Let’s compare this to WWF and Drew Carey who was in the 2001 Royal Rumble. In 2001 he was promoting a comedy PPV and Vince put him in the Rumble. He took the spot that was going to either Chaz (Mosh from the Headbangers) or D’Lo Brown. Both Carey and David are about the same level of celebrity status and they’re here to promote something that not a lot of people are going to watch anyway. What does the WWF do?

They replace a jobber in a match where he absolutely won’t be missed. Think about it: what would Brown or Mosh do in the match? Hang around for about seven minutes and be destroyed by either Taker or Kane or someone like that. Would anyone really miss either of them being in there? Not in the slightest. Instead, you get a celebrity in the match where he might bring in a few fans to the show. See, that’s how you use celebrities.

You put them in a place where they don’t make a big difference at all, but they seem like they do. That’s smart business. You give up a little something and while you likely won’t get a big payoff, you might get a decent one. If not, you lost Mosh or D’Lo for one night. That’s something you can live with and if nothing else, Drew gets publicity and you look like nice guys. Now on the other hand you have WCW, where a celebrity of about equal status was there trying to promote something.

What does WCW do? THEY MAKE HIM WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION, thereby making the wrestlers look pathetic, the title look like a joke, their PPV look like a bigger freak show than a pro wrestling show normally is, an more or less drive yet another spike into their own coffin.

Instead of having him do something stupid with Disco Inferno or something for like 5 minutes on Nitro, they said that this actor is on equal footing with the champions of the other major company at the time, which at that time would have been HHH. See why they went out of business so fast?

To top it off, at the end of the show, Kanyon came out to help save DDP from a beatdown. Mike Awesome then threw Kanyon off the triple cage and through the ramp as the announcers said that this was the worse On top of that, Arquette came back at another PPV later on. Again, no one cared. The movie bombed, the title looked completely worthless, and WCW slipped one step further to worthlessness. We’ll call this the first of the potential suspects.

In reverse chronological order:
1. David Arquette Wins World Title – May 7, 2000