H.O.W. Interview on Trash Talking Radio

I saw some photographs  a few weeks ago on Wayne McCarty’s site from the recent Heavy On Wrestling (HOW) card in Superior, WI. In the past few months, in addition to local independent wrestling stars, they have brought in Christy Hemme (TNA, WWE), The Honky Tonk Man (WWF), Terry Funk (NWA, WCW, ECW, WWE,…), The Highlanders (WWE), “Spirit Squad” Mikey (WWE), Cherry (WWE), Eugene (WWE), and Mick Foley (WCW, ECW, WWE,…).

Usually, when a small promoter brings in a big name from out of town, they tend to lose their shirt. The draw never covers expenses. When they keep doing it, they’re usually doing it to “buy” some friends (a “money mark”). That works until their savings run out, and then they end up stiffing the workers and skipping town.

Trash Talking Radio has an interview with HOW promoter “Heavy D” (RealPlayer required- I hate RealPlayer). Listening to the interview, it’s pretty clear that this promoter is not one of those people. As he states, “there’s a difference between putting a show together and being a promoter.” Getting sponsors (Miller Lite, Domino’s), getting radio time on morning shows, selling advertising, getting newspaper coverage, getting venues, and making sure that the product looks and sounds good.

Even though he has only been promoting for a couple of years, they are already drawing 800 to 1000 people per show. I’ve always had mixed feelings about bringing in big names rather than making names out of local talent. Several wrestlers from the Minneapolis area have been involved with the promotion, and it would be good to see those guys get more name recognition up north. Get them to the point where people will want to go to the show just to see them, and not because someone “famous” is on the card. That’s what it sounds like the promoter wants to do, although it’s not clear at this point if he would phase out some of the outside talent or not.

It will be interesting to hear how this progresses.

Bashir Loses Belt- Again

I feel like I’m just recycling the same story. At the TNA Pay-Per-View last Sunday (didn’t see it), Sheik Abdul Bashir lost the X-Division championship belt after some interference by referee Shane Sewell. After all the chaos, TNA declared the title vacant and started a tournament for the X-Division title on this week’s TNA Impact TV show. They also saw fit to eliminate Bashir in the first round of the tournament to ensure that he won’t get it back.

I’m not sure what’s going on here. Apparently they only wanted him champion for a short time, but why didn’t they just put the belt up for grabs after the last time this happened? Why have him win it, then lose-win-lose in the span of a few weeks? Are they planning on doing something with Sewell that they needed him to be bludgeoned by Bashir?

The Other Dark Knight

Tuesday December 9th is the much-anticipated DVD release of the second installment of the revitalized Batman movie series. While millions are getting ready to watch The Dark Night, I thought It would be a good time to remind people that Christian Bale wasn’t the first one to battle the Joker. No, I’m not talking about Michael Keaton or Adam West either. I’m talking about Minnesota’s own Hellraiser Gutz, who is known in the WWE as Bam Neely.

Back around the spring of 1998 (I think), Gutz fought Marty “The Joker” Hamilton at Club Cancun in St. Paul, MN. After working the Joker gimmick for awhile, Marty ended up changing it to “The Jokester“, and then to “The Practical Joker“. I had heard the reason was pressure from DC Comics, that owns the trademark to the name, but I have a hard time believing Marty had enough fame to call the attention of their team of lawyers. Then again you never know.

It’s not the best of Gutz’s matches, but I thought the timing was appropriate. You also get to hear a little bit of his tag partner, Hellraiser Blood, complain about a lack of competition. Sounded like it was originally going to be a tag match, but whoever Marty’s partner was didn’t show up. The Penguin must have been knocking off a bank or something.

Part of why I like watching it is that having wrestled Marty myself, I know how hard it is to “sell” the silly string during a match. Couldn’t have done it better.

This video originally aired on WTW’s wrestling show. Commentary by John Lloyd and “Slick” Mick Karsh. The referee is Eddie Sharkey

Josie Signs with TNA

Saw this on WrestleZone and on Wayne McCarty’s blog (you can also find a picture there).

TNA Wrestling has signed Josie, a trainee of Eddie Sharkey and Terry Fox (this was A.D- After Darin) to a contract. The ring name she is using is Sojourner Bolt.

I mentioned back in September that she had some TV appearances on TNA. Now it looks like she has officially signed.

Congratulations to Josie.

Links for November

I don’t know if this will be a regular monthly “feature”, but below are links to some wrestling-related blog entries & articles that I found interesting during the month of November. Note that I didn’t include the links that were already in a posting on TNA wrestling.

• Wayne McCarty has 8 Stupid Questions for Playboy Pete HUGE
• Raidersaint has some suggestions for promoters in a short series on How to Get Wrestling Fans. The posts on this topic aren’t linked together very well as far as navigation, so you might have to do a search like this.
• Al Creed at has some interesting comments about whether John Cena’s beatdown of Chris Jericho went too far on a recent WWE Raw.
• ksuna24 thinks we may be witnessing a return to the “kid-friendly” WWE product. [I touched on this a little bit in a previous post on WWE's push into Japan]

As I run across things, I’m also going to be adding them to my Delicious bookmarks page (http://delicious.com/drdarindavis). You can also find the last 10 of them on the right side of the page towards the bottom.