9/29/07 Full Impact Pro "Cage of Pain II - Wargames" Results

FIP drew quite a large crowd for the hyped up CAGE OF PAIN II show as part of the third anniversary weekend, a show with one of the most chilling endings that I've ever seen live in an Indy show. This was at the National Guard Armory in Crystal River, the site of the first Cage of Pain in December of 06.

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We started with Johnathan Gold, the ring announcer, on major hype duty for the show. I liked this because it made the show feel big, and it really was. FIP brought top stars from Shimmer, Dragon Gate, Chikara, and ROH (as usual).

Rather than start with a YRR promo, which has been the norm at FIP for months, we get right into the opening contest.

Match #1: "Kool" Seth Delay defeated Scott Commodity and Jake Crist from Irish Airborne (w/ Dave Crist) in a 3-Way Dance. Great opener to get the crowd riled up. A nice mix of high flying and stiff shots. Seth Delay won (which doesn't happen often) with what I describe as a "Moonsault Senton" on Commodity. We would later find out Dave couldn't work because he hurt his knee the previous night.

FIP WORLD Heavyweight Champion Roderick Strong came out and cut a promo on "Sweet n Sour" Larry Sweeney, essentially accepting the challenge Sweeney laid out last night. Roderick says Sweeney figurtavely signed his name on the dotted line when he attacked him. DP Assosiates President and Vice President Dave Prazak and Mr. Milo Beasley (respectively) came out to represent Sweeney and warned Roderick that Sweeney was taking the gold tonight. Roderick attacked Mr. Milo Beasley and nailed him with a sick-looking Urinage on the wheelchair. This was nasty. Sweeney came from behind and clocked Roderick and proclaimed that later tonight, he would leave with two belts.

The Minnesota Home Wrecking Crew came out, followed by Daizee Haze and Sara Del Ray. After some mic work, the babyfaces ran in to start the match.

Match #2: Shimmer Champion Sara Del Ray and Daizee Haze defeated The Minnesota Home Wrecking Crew of Lacey and Rain when Daizee hit Rain with a Hart Punch cleanly. Got the heat on Daizee for a bit, hot tag to Sara, who cleaned house old-school style. A few sloppy spots here and there, but nothing too nasty, except for some stiff forearms here and there. Daizee bled a little bit from her hand, not sure what happened there.

Match #3: FIP Tag Team Champion Jay Briscoe defeated Gran Akuma with the Jay Driller (double underhook piledriver) in a really good scientific match. Double chants for Jay and Akuma, even though Briscoe's were louder. The Briscoes, rocking the confederate flags, are almost like folk heroes in Crystal River. After the match, we had a handshake and show of respect.

FIP Florida Heritage Champion Erick Stevens came out. He says after last night, he has no opponents left to beat. Prazak and Milo came back out and gloated that he had an opponent for Erick: THE NECRO BUTCHER~! and that this match was FALLS COUNT ANYWHERE~! Uh oh. So now we've got...

Match #4: FIP Florida Heritage Champion Erick Stevens defeated Necro Butcher (w/ Dave Prazak and Mr. Milo Beasley) to retain the title. This was the best match of the night up until this point. As typical with Necro matches, chairs were involved, and they went into the crowd, which happens at seemingly every FIP show in 2007. The entire folding chair arrangement was in array as they fought all around the building. At one point, Necro smashed Erick's head onto the unconstructed pieces of the Cage of Pain. They teased a spot through the merchandise table (which would've been great) and did tons of nasty falls and bumps. Necro bled (big shocker there) from his hand. This match had a lot of heat because a good portion of the crowd was behind Necro, and there were five to six big false-finishes before the end of the match, and at many points, actually thought Necro would win the title. Once they got back to the ring, they used folding chairs every way possible until Prazak got up on the apron with a chair. Necro irish whipped Erick who reversed it but Necro blocked. Erick nails Necro from behind, causing Prazak to fall off the apron, and rolls Necro up for the 3 count. 1980s WWE finish, but it worked.

Match #5: BxB Hulk, Yamato, and Jack Evans defeated Delirious, Hallowicked, and Jigsaw in a special six-man DRAGON GATE RULES~! match, which we all called Chikara vs. Dragon Gate. Once again, Dragon Gate rules are basically lucha rules. No tags needed, double and triple team moves are allowed, which means absolutely madness. Streamer shower for both teams. Crowd cheered pretty much everybody, except for the few uneducated people who thought the Japanese wrestlers were "foreign heels", which they really weren't. THIS... THIS... in my view, was the best match of the night and kicked many, many asses. These six men went on all cylinders, and yeah, it turned into a spotfest, but when you have a spotfest highlighted by DRAGON GATE~!, it's alright. There were double and triple team moves all around, including some spots that Jack and Roderick did when they were teaming up. Jack Evans has a death wish. At one point in the match, five of these men each had a head-scissors on each other, making a big long line of head-scissors. Delirious comes into the ring looking confused, and instead of adding to the line, he grabbed Yamato's legs, at the front of the line, and turned it into a boston crab, so all five men had to turn over at the same time. LUCHA LEVEL WACKYNESS~! This was the greatest thing I had ever seen live. The finish came when BxB Hulk had Hallowicked in a backbreaker position while Jack came off the top with what I call a moonsault knee to the face for the pin. This was unreal.

After the match, crowd chanted "FIP" and "DRAGON GATE" and the six competitors shook hands. How the fuck can they top this?

Match #6: FIP World Heavyweight Champion Roderick Strong defeated "Sweet n Sour" Larry Sweeney (w/ Dave Prazak and Mr. Milo Beasley) to retain the FIP World Title. Sweeney's Tex-Arcana belt was not on the line. This was a nice old-school title match, complete with Sweeney playing the cowardly heel, picking his spots until he saw an opening, accusing the babyface of pulling the hair, etc. At one point, Roderick took Sweeney's glasses, his feathers, and the Tex-Arcana title and mocked him. THIS MUST'VE SUCKED to have to go out after that last match. Crowd was drained, but still into it. Finish came when Roderick hit Larry with the Gibson Driver, then turned it right into the Strong Hold for the tap-out.

After the match, crowd chanted "you tapped out" at Sweeney while Prazak flipped out at another loss and says when they return in November, he's got a surprise for Roderick. He says the FIP title is coming back to DP.

--Intermission--

They set up the Cage of Pain, which took some time. They had barbed wire wrapped around and over the cage, a table, trash can, flourescent light tubes, and what appeared to be TORCHES~!, but were just fancy bamboo sticks, and eerie premonition of what was to come. They also had two tables on the outside of the cage and one inside with LIGHT TUBES TAPED ON IT~! Cudos to the ring crew for setting this up so quickly.

Ring announcer Johnathan Gold told us that the match was under WAR GAMES style rules. Two men start, every 3 minutes (I believe it was 3) a new man comes into the cage for his team until all eight men are in the ring. You can win via pinfall or submission only. The YRR won the coin toss (apparently), so they were going in first.

Before the match started, Sal Rinauro came out and cut one of the best promos he'd ever cut in his career. He says when he was a kid, July 4th, 1987, he saw a wrestling show at the Omni in Atlanta, Georgia that changed his life. He remembered WAR GAMES~! He vowed as a child that he would never compete in something so brutal and grotesk. He says that now, because of the Black Market and HBX, he HAD to break his promise to himself. He blamed them for taking his innocence (perhaps a bad choice of words) and says that all that they wanted all along was to be like the YRR, but they couldn't be, and now, the YRR, just for tonight, had to be like them (or something like that).

Match #7: The Black Market and the Heartbreak Express defeated The YRR of Kenny King, Chasyn "Not Cocky" Rance, Sal Rinauro, and Jason Blade.

As stated before, Rinauro started out for the YRR and Joey Machete from Black Market came down. As expected, the match opened slowly with not many weapons used. Joey threw Rinauro into the cage and hit him with some of the bamboo torches. Participant #2 for the YRR was Kenny King. Here they started to use some of the tubes. These things popped and exploded hard, and some glass shards went into the floor, but none hit the audience from my view. Nastyness. Kenny and Sal double teamed Joey until Participant #2 for the babyfaces came out, which was Superstar Sean Davis from Heartbreak Express. He began to use the trash can to help. Out came participant #3: Jason Blade, from the YRR. He came in hot and beat down Sean and Joey until Phil Davis from HBX came down with a FIRE EXTINGUISHER and used it to blind the YRR. They had to open the back door of the Armory to let the smoke out. The last man from the YRR came out, Chasyn Rance, and instead of his usual cocky strut, he ran in there with a purpose but was soon taken out. They did some particularly nasty, concussion-giving chairshots. Some guys took it right to the face, while others like Kenny King, smartly protected themselves. The last man to enter was Shawn Murphy of Black Market, and CAGE OF PAIN II was on.

After Murphy cleaned house, the four members of the YRR jumped him. At this point the match went back and forth. YRR actually used the strategy of isolating one man and beating him down one-by-one, but this was quickly averted. The babyfaces started to use the light tubes in one nasty spot after another. There was tons and tons of debree in the ring, including glass shards and pieces of wood, so I can imagine it was hard to land even in the ring. Jason Blade tries to escape the Cage of Pain, but gets flung from the top of it through a table on the outside. Christ Almighty he's dead. That looked nasty. Pretty much everybody was bleeding. The finish came when Chasyn was hip-tossed from the middle rope through the Light Tube Table. Legalized Carnage. Crowd popped huge for the finish. Blood everywhere.

THEN CAME THE AFTERMATH~!

So the YRR, now a bloody heap, clear the ring and Black Market and Heartbreak Express celebrate in the ring. The babyfaces stand in the ring in victory. Suddenly the lights go out. I immediately thought they were debuting somebody or something or... yup... fireball spot. Problem is, they FUCKED UP~!, excuse my language. You can clearly see the two teams in the middle of the ring looking at each other. You can see them lighting the flash paper and like, Phil immediately hit Joey Machete with the fireball, but a FULL MINUTE passed with Shawn Murphy just staring at Sean Davis as he's scrambling to light it and not lighting it properly. A FULL MINUTE. This looked very fake, but I'm sure it'll be edited for DVD release. Finally, they lit the flash paper and Shawn went down screaming. The lights came back up and the heels were standing over the babyfaces. The HBX cut a promo on the "redneck fans of Crystal River".

The crowd went absolutely apeshit. THIS was WHITE HEAT and the atmosphere was chilling. The fans started to throw trash, water bottles, soda cans, and even a couple of chairs, into the ring. There was lots of cursing, despite the kids being there. This was NWO 1996 heat~!. This was kayfabe era heat~!. This was like the Von Erich door-smash. Words cannot describe the amount of heat this got from the audience. The other babyfaces (Jigsaw, Commodity etc) came out help the Black Market to the back as HBX stood in the ring, now probably the biggest heels in FIP history.

Thoughts:

I can honestly say I have never been to a show LIVE and seen an angle that garnered as much heat as that, indy or not. The fans bought into the angle so much and I'm sure it looked great on DVD. After the show I spoke to some people and heard heresay that some fans got hit in the face with debree, others got hit with glass shards, and supposedly one kid got punched in the stomach by a staffer. Now this is all heresay, but the first two are definitely not FIP's fault. If you advertise a match like this with tubes, you know theres a chance they may fly, which is why if you are a fan, you either stand back or cover your face. If you have children, MOVE THEM TO THE BACK. I can honestly say I've seen some pretty crappy parenting at some of these indy shows. FIP actually moved the seating back about 3 feet. Sometimes fans stay back to greet the wrestlers, but this time, the FIP staffers wanted everybody out of the building ASAP.

The one thing I was thinking is, "where do we go from here?" Black Market and HBX feuded all of last year, culminating in the first Cage of Pain, which has become FIP's big signature match. How can they possibly top that? Besides that, I was NOT bored whatsoever ONCE during this show. All of the matches were good, but the 6-Man Dragon Gate/Chikara match blew everybody away, as well as the main event (came in 2nd for MOTN). FIP offered up everything, from scientific wrestling (Akuma vs. Briscoe), to garbage wrestling (the main and the Stevens/Necro match), to old-school style (Strong/Sweeney), to high flying (the six man), and even a three way and women's match. Top-to-bottom, you got a little of EVERYTHING out of this card and it was easily the best FIP show since International Impact Phase 2. The crowd was absolutely bonkers for everything, hotter than I've ever heard at an FIP show, and was at first completely silent during the closing angle, but then got rowdy at the end. A must-have for DVD. THUMBS UP~!

Full Impact Pro Wrestling will return on Friday, November 9th in Crystal River, FL and Saturday, November 10th in Arcadia, FL. {plug}