The Reconstructed

What better way can you think of to cleanse the pallet from the reminder of seemingly perpetual singleness than by going to a post Valentine’s Day Death Match Wrestling event? I can think of probably a thousand in retrospect, but that is what I chose. Impulsiveness and indiscretion can rue the day in seasons of incessant uncertainty. So rather than making an excuse, I am choosing to write about the redemption of death match wrestling.

On Saturday, February 15^th at 8 PM Game Changer Wrestling hosted an event called Run Rickey Run, in which the main event saw Rickey Shane Page (who I was excited to see but would learn the crowd was not) faced a man who is affectionately known as Nick F’n Gage. I give you that context to say I was eager to see Rickey Shane Page (RSP) for two reasons.

Reason 1: I have previously written about a promotion called Olde Wrestling that puts on a doozy of a show in Ohio each year that is 1920’s themed. It is truly a spectacle. At this show RSP wrestles as one Judge Hugo who has a limp. I have seen him wrestle with both a cane and in a wheelchair in a pro wrestling ring and it is innovative and artistic and truly had me fascinated.

Reason 2: RSP wrestled my buddy Matt aka Inky Scoops in Matt’s final pro wrestling match.

I felt that was enough to want to see RSP doing his death match style thing which he is primarily known for.

But there were a few additional reasons I went. I accidentally walked into the Showboat a few weeks ago and saw a sign inside, advertising the show. A few years ago, I thought my last wrestling match was going to be at the Showboat at a show that was cancelled. And finally, a wrestler named the Bad Boy Joey Janela was performing, a New Jersey native, recently signed to a major wrestling company, who I happened to see when he was a young baby face back in 2011 at an indy wrestling show in a ladder match that turned into a tables match when the belt that was dangling from the ceiling accidentally fell. (if you are asking “what the heck is a ladder match?” I’m glad you asked, a belt hangs above the ring, if you grab it you become the champion, if the belt accidentally falls to the mat because it wasn’t attached properly, apparently you change the concept of the match without question, while the audience laughs and plays along).

Inconspicuous by their absence there were no ladders at this event. Why is that a surprise? Because there was no shortage of light bulb tubes, doors, barbed wire, sheets of glass, barbeque skewers, a fork (table and meat variety) and chairs. Everything you need for a picnic, although they did run out of freaking pizza, giving out the last slice right as I got to the front of the concessions line, but let’s not make this post about me.

Usually every new place or experience I involve myself with, I get a souvenir because I am a child and I like to remind myself of all the places I go alone, after always making sure to feed my cat and give her a hug goodbye since she cannot handle being out of her element. However, I could not bring myself to buy something because I was unsure what or if I wanted to remember. Instead of souvenir, I digress from this long intro and present you the body of this entry:

7:55pm- I walk around aimlessly looking for my seat and pass by the various merchandise tables. I don’t like shirts or autographed photos, but I do keep my eyes peeled for pins (it’s been a thing). It was cute. My seat in the 4^th row had my name on it with a post-it note. I thought that it was an interesting touch. The seat next to mine also marked with a post-it note name, the last one in the row, no one ever claimed.

8:00ish pm- They do a countdown, lots of f-words to really hype it up. I am fascinated by the beautiful colors of the ceiling, reminds me of a circus tent, reminds me of the one time I went to Vegas and walked into Circus Circus and was almost enraged by how much the casino was not like a circus at all, literally ruining any good impression I had of Vegas other than the Alien museum that was on the outskirts of Vegas. This room looked like a good circus room. And it was close to being one.

8:00-9:00 pm- Now by no means do I want to do disrespect to the performers at the beginning of this card. One was fun a 6-man Scramble match that was entertaining and a singles match that I will not say much about. The third match was good, kind of long, also featured a PA wrestler Tony Deppen who has been doing great on the indies the past few years.

9pm- The Bad Boy Joey Janela comes out with the second or third loudest reaction of the night. He looked less indy than the past two times I saw him. His match with the extremely unlikable Jordan Oliver was good enough, but what caught me was his promo post-match. It was enjoyable because it blurred the lines of what was believable, what was in character. This is typically when wrestling is at its best. He talks about his back injury and talks about potentially having peaked with his new contract, both of which are questions I’m sure people are asking and on social media are saying. The back-injury bit had me empathizing when he talked about his depression. I too have a back-injury, mine is metaphysical, being “back” in Jersey, in an industry that has treated me well financially, that has me displaced in my mind mentally, isolated me spiritually which has affected me physically. We do this to ourselves. I’ve exercised like 7 times in the last 4 months.  I can’t find the right things to pray. I wanted to pray for Joey, though he’s brash, kind of full of himself, calls himself the hardest worker in the business, has done some pretty insane things, so a back injury should surprise no one who follows his work. But I wanted to pray with him for healing, instead I pray away from him for it because I don’t think he has peaked but do think he has to muddle his way through a new system in order to break through the muck.

Joey beat Jordan Oliver and gets beat up afterward by Oliver’s posse and a match is set up when his friends Marko Stunt and Jungle Boy save the day for his Spring Break event in Florida, which have been some of the most talked about Indy shows in the last few years.

9:30pm – Cue the death match portion of the show. A guy I’m supposed to know from Japan wrestles a guy from the 609 my area code. He may have gone to high school with my friend Gabe but looks 8 years too old but who knows? They beat each other up with light bulb tubes. A piece of tube glass hits me and falls to the ground. Yay! We go to intermission.

9:50 PM- I get concessions (pizza incident from above happens so I get a coke and pretzel) and officially decide not to get a souvenir, though Joey Janela’s table is right behind me. I notice he is on his phone a lot, sells his merch and then when people try to make conversation with him, he points to the ring as a way to try and avoid small talk in an effort to appear like he is paying attention to the other matches. I don’t talk to him but did watch him creepily as he interacted with others. Empaths do this. We watch and really have to be convinced that our interactions won’t inconvenience others.

10-11PM- This portion of the show is where things really picked up and I began to feel like I was entering the first level of hell. Portions of the first half of the show felt like waiting in line to get there, but every match after 10 pm had blood weapons and plenty of vulgarity. Matt Tremont the Bulldozer faces some guy I’ve never heard of, named Matt Justice who has a typical big guy pro wrestler look. He was great honestly, but the match featured a lot of jamming a meat fork and then an actual fork into Matt Tremont’s head and body.  The table fork was sticking out of his head at one point. Abdullah the Butcher would be pleased. It may have been a throwback, Matt Justice kind of looked like Bruiser Brody a little bit. Anyway, I almost threw up (this isn’t about me). Thankfully I had just eaten that pretzel and soda to settle me a bit.

The third match after break featured Allie Kat (it was her birthday) wrestling Mance Warner (playing the misogynist southerner). I get the point and the story they were telling, but will leave out the gruesome details. I almost left. Allie Kat won, on a fluke. She had to win, if she didn’t win it would have just been an awful display of humanity, which one could argue, in a much longer post, had no redemptive merit whatsoever. Happy Birthday!

11PM- I am tired, I am over the blood and the less compelling story telling of the previous matches. I’m hoping my car isn’t towed since I parked in some condo parking lot in a dark alley next to the showboat. I hopped a fence to get to it when I left the venue.

The next match was another bloody mess with two guys I’ve never heard of, some really muscular dude who beat a death match icon that got a pretty loud reaction There was a suplex through a makeshift glass table, the match wasn’t anything to write home about.

11:15PM- the main event, Nick F’n Gage comes out with his crazed looking manager wearing a Mountain Dew blazer. The crowd is wild. I get Nick’s story wrong confused him with a wrestler named New Jack and assume Nick Gage who represents Murder Death Kill (MDK) actually committed homicide, but later found out he just served out his prison time for second degree bank robbery, which I suppose is much better than the myth I believed and was propagated. Sorry Nick F’n Gage for misunderstanding you, more on that in a second. RSP came out with some friends and the reaction was visceral and angry, which surprised me. Granted I had no context, but I was bright-eyed and just excited to see Judge Hugo who wrestled my friend Matt and was nice to me in Ohio. The Atlantic City crowd did not like that he was from Ohio. Most people outside of Ohio don’t care for people from Ohio, at least that is the impression I also got in South Carolina. Sorry Ohio. Sorry Rickey Shane Page that the crowd was raucously against you. I wanted to cheer for you but…

The bonus of this match was Nick threw Rickey through two rows of chairs and crashed into the elderly lady in front of me. She no sold even though she was hit in the legs by the second row of chairs pretty hard. She did not realize or perhaps could not move out of the way which is  the custom in these situations. I got up and moved and I was directly behind her. Nick the F’n guy did not see her and proceeded to hit RSP over the head with can of Lincoln Logs which also hit that same old lady on the head when he let got of the can. She no sold that as well but Nick the apologetic said sorry to the old woman and asked if she was okay (she was) before proceeding to grabbing RSP, walking right past me and ramming his head into a merchandise table. Oh, what a wonderful world. At that point, I still thought he literally committed a murder, so my heart went out to him when he apologized to an old lady that refused to move out of the way of at least one very bloody man. Courtesy is a hallmark of humanity and most people don’t want to hurt total strangers.  I don’t know if that is entirely true, but I think it tells a story.

Even Death Match wrestlers are capable of compassion, and if I had to guess, they also need it.

***Post-Script- Nick Gage lost, thank goodness, the crowd literally threw water and beer cans into the ring and cursed RSP and crew out of the building, it was beautiful. I lingered for a moment looked around, saw the Bad Boy Joey Janela again and was happy to be going home. I slept fine and made it on time to church the next morning.