By Pete Hitchcock
I would first like to thank Jordan Devlin and WALTER for being excellent professional wrestlers. I would now like to condemn them for the permanent damage they have done to my wallet.
One horrifying thought that had set in while starting my second year of law school was that my LPC exams would fall all over Carat weekend, which I had really wanted to go to following the huge news and reactions coming from the last two years worth.
WXW was one of the two promotions I had most badly wanted to see live in Europe…along with OTT in Dublin- both of them for much the same reasons. So when Scrappermania was announced for Paddy’s Day weekend in Dublin, promising either an apparent rematch between WALTER and Jordan Devlin and potential redemption for the Irish Ace, or David Starr getting his latest shot at a first win over his biggest enemy, it was a no-brainer, especially as my exams finished two days before!
I realised that I would end up broke shortly afterwards.
I got flights and tickets about as early as possible, but it took about a month to book somewhere to stay that didn’t cost 8 billion Euros a night. Don’t advertise property that’s not available, Airbnb owners! However in February I nabbed something and we were off to the races…or graps in this case. A few pesky litigation, business and real estate exams later I was flying off to Dublin at a pretty early hour of Saturday morning.
PRE SHOW
Dublin has haywire weather like London so it didn’t feel a huge amount like properly going abroad. It would rain, get sunny and get windy for the entire day, sometimes all at once. I got off the bus on O’Connell Street and immediately walked down past a series of cool statues of Joyce and some other Irish names and headed for Trinity College, Dublin.
As a grad of another Trinity College, it was cool to see this place and although the giant queue and hefty prices prevented me from seeing the Book of Kells, I had a good little time walking the grounds. Following a coffee at Keoghs around the corner and checking out St Stephen’s Green, I headed back up over the Ha’penny Bridge to meet the other member of Wrestling Should be Fun, the Arn Anderson of Wrestling Blogging, your favourite wrestler’s favourite beer buyer, the SHOTBOI in your coffee, Dom van Dam.
I’ve known Dom since mid-2016 through my brother and another wrestling group (@2xFootstomp) and he was actually the one who introduced me to the fine folks of WSBF. Combined with the fact that he had been to Dublin a whole bunch before, as opposed to my total of zero trips, and it was hard to ask for a better travelling partner. Plus, Dom’s a big guy and he can hold his drink, I thought. If I get completely wankered, he can look after me!
First thing Dom does is take me to Irish culinary institution Supermacs. Or as I heard it initially, Supermax. I thought we were at least 12 hours too early to end up behind bars! Supermacs is expensive as hell for fast food but it does taste good and they give you a lot. I filled up pretty quickly and didn’t end up needing real dinner later so I guess it worked out. I think next time I’m trying a burger rather than fried chicken there though.
Following this we legged it over to a pub by Temple Bar to watch the climactic Wales vs Ireland rugby game. I kept my rugby affiliations very quiet during this game as we ended up nabbing a pretty good table and getting a few Guinnesses down, in addition to picking up our Airbnb keys and meeting up with Dom’s friend from back in Australia, Kristy. By the way, Guinness really does taste better in Dublin.
At least, better than York Hall, which isn’t hard. Sadly, Wales did not get a shutout but I was pretty happy ahead of the show with a grand slam already in the bag.
We eventually left and moved down to a pub, which I remember being called the Headline Bar, but don’t quote me on that, that was pretty near the venue and where a bunch of wrestling fans were gathering. It resembled the set up to a joke as I, an ostensible Welshman, had a beer with an Englishman, a Scotsman and a drunk Irishman and talked about Progress’ booking and Carat and probably some other stuff…?
They are hazy memories, guys. Eventually we decided to move on into the venue and arrived pretty close to showtime.
Although Dom and I both had seats, we ended up standing together at the back for the entire show as we had a pretty good view there. I first got us some beers and on the way back from the bar bumped into Irish wunderkind Scotty Davis, who is eight years younger than me but has the facial hair of someone ten years older. Quite impressive, really.
In addition also heading back to the dressing rooms, which were RIGHT NEXT TO THE BAR, was the man every person in the room had come to see, Jordan Devlin himself. I wished them luck and got back in time for the start of the show.
This place was packed. Perhaps not a complete sell-out, but it certainly didn’t feel like there were any empty seats at all, and the crowd was hot as hell. This was probably the hottest crowd for an overall show I had been in since NXT Takeover London, and there were at most 20% of the people there were for that show so it was a hell of an achievement.
For comparison to indy crowds in the UK, the RevPro show I remember having this heat was Angle vs Sabre for Ospreay’s return and the main event match, but these guys were hotter throughout the entire show. It was really fun to be a part of it.
MATCH ONE
The first match was a fatal four way between the best tag team of last year and new FRIENDS OF THE GROUP, Aussie Open, the Besties in the World, Team Lucha Underground of Angelico and Rey Horus and Club Tropicana, who I didn’t know.
Aussie Open were fantastic as these absolute dick heels, bringing a bit of their Fight Club Pro aesthetic here, but I was most excited to see Rey Horus, AKA Dragon Azteca Jr, who in addition to being the heir of an ancient lucha libre legacy has also been ripping it up for years for PWG. I had never seen him live before.
Exact details of the match do escape me somewhat except for this amazing spot where a lot of people were stacked up in a corner and Mark Davis took a luchador to the balls, which can’t have been fun. Those damned Aussies went over in the end but it was definitely a fun opener.
MATCH TWO
This was followed by another fun tag, this time a six-man, pitting the Rapture (Sha Samuels, Charlie Sterling and LIVERPOOL’S NUMBER ONE, SOOOOOOON TO BE RECOGNISED AS THE WOOOORRRRRRLD’S NUMBER ONE ZACK GIBSON) vs the young Irish trio of More than Hype. I have never seen More than Hype before, but I have heard the…hype on a bunch of podcasts and the like so it was cool to see them in person. MTH acquitted themselves very well but the Rapture were absolutely hilarious, including Gibson cutting a promo on one member of the opposition while his teammate had him in a headlock. The heat this man gets is absolutely incredible.
It was also pretty cool to see Charlie Sterling for the first time in two years since his run as Charlie Garrett as RevPro tag champ. Plus he and his teammate here, Sha, had one of my favourite random matches at the Cockpit ever complete with the most ridiculous finishing sequence ever (Superkick, RKO, Spiral Tap!?).
He’s changed his look a ton and I’m surprised he doesn’t get booked more as he’s a great worker, and his slimy heel character here has legs to it, I think. MTH go over, ending their losing streak that I didn’t see. The rumours about the current crop of younger Irish talent being really good are very much true, so let’s see if we can get some of these guys down south, eh?
MATCH THREE
The next match is quite hard to describe so I’m not going to that much. But everyone should watch the fucking crazy pre-match hype video, which was a cross between Pulp Fiction and a Peter Jackson film from the 80s with some ridiculous unnecessary head-explodey gore. Very surreal. I know nothing about every single person in this match except for the Angel Cruzer’s teammate (I’m not sure if this was a surprise or not)…STAND BACK! THERE’S A HURRICANE COMING THROUGH! THIS MAN PINNED THE FUCKING ROCK.
This leads to a wild comedy match, with one of the heels getting run over and eaten up by a FUCKING LAWNMOWER. Crazy shit. I recommend watching this if you check out the show just for the weirdness value. Hurricane looked great. WRESTLING, SHAAANE!
MATCH FOUR
This was followed by Dan Barry of Team Tremendous, whom I have seen once before in Progress if I’m remembering correctly vs absolute mega heel David Starr. I think David Starr is the character Ciampa wishes he was in terms of knowing how to push every button for massive heat regarding his presentation. He enters to Foggy Dew, of all things, and this crowd HATE HIM.
Barry is normally a complete comedy character but he puts in a very serious shift here and Starr has to really work for his win. A very solid and well worked professional wrestling match that there’s not too much to say about but that I suggest you watch. I think this is the point that Dom’s friend Kristy arrives. Again, hazy memories.
MATCH FIVE
This is followed by a pretty similar match in terms of story- Ireland’s second most well known female wrestler, the Session Moth Martina, taking on probably the best women’s wrestler in the world, Meiko Satomura (yeah I said it, Io/Asuka/Kairi/Momo fans).
Meiko has had the best women’s match I’ve ever seen in person last year at Wrestle Queendom in London against Kay Lee Ray, for Pro Wrestling EVE. I’ve seen Martina probably a half dozen times but this is the first time I’ve seen her ‘get serious’, per se, which is the story of the match. She does well!
There’s good selling, grappling and striking and you believe she’s a big threat to Meiko. She even kicks out of the Scorpio Rising! Meiko’s protection over her character in Japan means that she’s hugely credible in the West even if she loses a little more over here.
Meiko is able to pick up the win with a DVD but post match Martina and Meiko rave in the ring and on the stage!? Well, Martina got serious for the match… Best Martina match I’ve seen.
MATCH SIX
The final match of the first half- the sixth match!- was a six man tag which was both loser leaves town AND ALSO…for the OTT Tag Team Championships!? Was that advertised? I didn’t see. This had the full on versions of British Strong Style and the Kings of the North going at it. BSS are so fucking over, and coming out to Love is Blindness again was awesome.
Thanks, Progress music guys, for getting rid of that…All signs pointed to BSS losing this match as part of their farewell tour of the indies, including one KOTN kicking out of a whole bunch of finishers in a row, including Pete’s which is quite protected.
Then he ate a Burning Hammer Knee Drop combo courtesy of Pete and Trent- and there’s no way he’s kicking out of that right? But the KOTN are obviously going ov-OH SHIT! WE HAVE NEW CHAMPS! AND THE KOTN ARE GONE!?
The reaction and shock to the finish- and a good kind of shock- was ridiculous and a hell of a talking point for intermission. This match was absolutely crazy in terms of action, BSS had their working boots strapped tightly on for this one.
MATCH SEVEN
Following the intermission, there were only three matches. This card was definitely structured a little weirdly in terms of being very top heavy but it was quite clear they wanted Devlin v WALTER to get the main event treatment. The first match afterwards was for the OTT Women’s Championship with champion Raven Creed taking on challenger Debbie Keitel.
I have heard good things about these two from the same avenues that hyped up MTH and Scotty Davis. Perhaps the crowd was drained from the first half and it being on right after intermission didn’t help but there wasn’t much to this, I thought. Perhaps this was the wrong environment to see these two for the first time.
MATCH EIGHT
The penultimate match was Scotty Davis vs a BONAFIDE FUCKING WRESTLING LEGEND in Jushin Thunder Liger. I have quite enjoyed what I have seen of Ospreay’s ‘New Japan Rep’ character in his angle with WALTER and now giving Davis the Liger match and I think people were hyped about it beforehand, but now Liger has announced his upcoming retirement matches like this mean even more.
They had a solid match and it’s still crazy to me how good Liger is at his age and given how long he’s been wrestling. My one complaint would be Scotty’s Roll of the Dice esque finisher looks a bit weak especially given his impressive array of suplexes otherwise. Scotty went over, clean as a whistle, and you could tell this meant the absolute world to him. Definitely one to watch if he’s in your area.
This is maybe the sixth time I’ve seen Liger live, but if it’s the last, then WHAT A GUY. Main-evented the first show I was ever at live, against AJ Styles, so he’s got that credit too. Legend.
THE MAIN EVENT
IT’S TIME! This main event, or even the chance at this main event, got me to fly to Dublin in the first place. DEVLIN VS WALTER. This feud and OTT in general have become known for their absolutely perfect hype packages courtesy of the Crooked Gentlemen/Shaun Ryan and this is no exception.
WALTER is presented as the namesake of his submission, Gojira/Godzilla rising from the sea, but taking him on is a reborn Devlin, who’s beaten David Starr, he’s trained harder, he’s ready. The presentation of this match, even before the bell is perfect.
Devlin’s entrance theme is hypnotic, it’s a remix of the Inception theme by Zimmer collaborator Junkie XL, and coupled with the music even standing at the back you can feel how pumped Devlin is. WALTER is…fuck me the crowd hate this guy. What a prick.
The match is predictably fucking excellent and it was a privilege to be part of the crowd for it. The first match is probably better bell to bell but this atmosphere is something different. If Devlin loses, he is done.
And he has WALTER’s number throughout as well. It’s a change of pace and although WALTER comes close, including hitting that terrifying Fire Thunder Driver that changed wrestling in this country and many others throughout 2018, Devlin survives!
WALTER’s on the run! I’ve never seen him this scared, it’s crazy. One thing I could have done without is the ‘heel deliberately tries to get themselves DQed and the ref says no’ spot as everyone is doing that these days and it’s a bit against the sports build that the match otherwise has, but I understand it builds off the PAC match from last month. (This is a common thing with PAC, huh?)
The wall of noise as the ref’s hand hits for 3 after the second Package Piledriver is nuclear. It’s this moment that reaffirms I made the right choice to come. Congrats to Jordan!
POST SHOW
After the show, we mosey on over to the Bernard Shaw, which is like the Tardis- bigger on the inside- for a few more drinks before eventually calling it a night at around 1:30. A little early, but it’s impossible to get in anywhere else. It’s at this point that my memory gets conveniently hazy, but to cut things short, we had a sweet breakfast the next day and I ended up being cozy back home in London by 5pm or so.
I would highly recommend wrestling fans of all shapes and sizes making the trip over for Wrestlerama later this year, because Dublin is a cool city with some sick fucking graps.
Wrestling Should be Fun and this certainly was.
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