Nice idea about the Hardcore JusticeTNA/ex ECW PPV...
http://www.prowrestling.net/artman/publish/powellsblog/article10013268.shtml

Definitely something to brag about!

That's awesome, even though quite a few of those dudes haven't been around in a while.  Would love to see Eddie Edwards and Ricky Reyes back.

[37.]

C*4 continues to bring some of the best wrestlers in the world to entertain our fans!

Although I'm not much of a follower/believer of the rankings - here is how talents who have/do appear in C*4 fared in the annual ranking system.

37. Eddie Edwards
54. Kevin Steen
80. Claudio Castagnoli
118. El Generico
131. Tyson Dux
150. Jimmy Jacobs
178. Sonjay Dutt
184. Kiyoshi
186. Petey Williams
220. Icarus
226. Gran Akuma
235. Brodie Lee
259. Jigsaw
262. Johnny Devine
271. Michael Elgin
272. Sebastian Suave
276. Hallowicked
278. Mike Rollins
301. Xtremo
339. Phil Atlas
356. Frankie the Mobster
362. Don Paysan
370. Josh Alexander
376. Matt Burns
381. Asylum
391. Ricky Reyes
449. Colin Delaney
481. Rip Impact

Totally read this. Congrats to Rotchy, Beef and all the gang at ISW.

[Slamtasia 3 Inter Species Wrestling www.interspecieswrestling.com www.smartmarkvideo.com $20.00 Reviewed by Joe Babinsack]

Slamtasia 3
Inter Species Wrestling
www.interspecieswrestling.com
www.smartmarkvideo.com
$20.00
Reviewed by Joe Babinsack
 
 
ISW. It’s not Incredibly Strange Wrestling, but it sure does have that sort of feel. The promotion from Quebec, Canada has been around five long years and counting, and Slamtasia has etched its mark for the third time upon an unsuspecting professional wrestling industry.

The ISW website calls the style a combination of “pro wrestling, lucha libre, crude humour [sic], dance and sometimes musical.”
(I just couldn’t resist the [sic] designation to point out the horrific use of un-American spelling.)

Tit-for-tat, as well, since the opening and theme song for Slamtasia is a profanity-laced parody, with a certain four letter word beginning with an ‘F’  (but at least it’s not spelled F-A-K-E!) and a horrifically anti-American tenor.

Well, I’m more tone-deaf than anything despite my American Idol viewing [or insert your own joke here] but I’m not talking the musical range but the satirical implications. Yeah, Canadians taking pot-shots at America is a long tradition in the business, from Bret Hart’s regrettable slam on Pittsburgh (c’mon, did you think you were in Cleveland?) and before that the legions of “evil Canadians” under the employ of Vincent Kennedy McMahon. I could take it to a more personal level, but why give publicity to hypocritical and bitter reviewers from another Canadian Province?

Regardless, the sarcasm is witty and does what it should do – stokes the emotions and makes you wonder just what Inter Species Wrestling is trying to do.

Well, one thing they’re doing is creating their own niche.

It’s been a long time since XPW unloaded it’s product on the late night airwaves, and longer still since Incredibly Strange Wrestling and other variations of a more perverted twist on traditional professional wrestling exposed their stuff on an unsuspecting demographic.

When the ring announcer proclaims that ISW is not your father’s professional wrestling, he’s more than just a little accurate there. This isn’t anything like the Monday Night Wars he references, and barely has a passing resemblance to the original ECW, and it really doesn’t have a lot to do with the other vulgarity laced promotions I’ve referenced.

Over the years, Inter Species Wrestling has evolved from that a of badly worked, crudely booked and straight-for-the –jugular audacity that was equally cringe-worthy and while quite often so-bad-it-was-entertaining, it seemed so incredibly strange that Kevin “Mr Wrestling” Steen and El Generico could have ever originated from this crowd.
 
In some ways, the promotion has continued to push the envelope. I knew I was in trouble when I got an email asking if I wanted to review the latest ISW DVD, and I responded with a hope that it did not contain any oily men wrestling, which was in turn responded with a smirky sense that that would be the least of my concerns.

Well, that quickly wasn’t my worst nightmarish image, as the opening montage of Slamtasia 3 contains various indignant visuals of auto-erotica and hints of the typical homo-erotica and a series of teases that merely made me wonder what could possibly be worse than the last glimpse that past my eyes.

Yet at the same time, there was that sense that, by using CHIKARA pros, there was a foundation of excellence in the workrate, and there’s always the awesomely talented Steen and El Generico and peers who can work their boots off.

And like CHIKARA, ISW is taking up that sense of character driven wresting, and even though ISW makes CHIKARA’s intricate storylines seemingly rated “G” in comparison, there is a sense that the in-ring efforts (for the most part!) are passionately on display, even despite the over-the-top indignities of visual representations and sexually charged grotesqueries. Yeah, you Canadian reviewers and critics better get out your thesauri.
 
I’ll tempt further insensitivities by straight-out saying that I’m avoiding a ‘blow-by-blow’ of this event. This is one of those DVDs that if you want to explore it in all its niceties and not-so-niceties, then buy it. Nothing is so unbecoming a reviewer than to just spoil the show.
As if spoiling something like ISW is possible.

If you love man on man, man on animal, animal on animal, undead on faux Egyptian, various interspecies conflicts, and to be honest, the ring announcer does provide the litany of abnormalcy one can expect at the shows, then this is the product to warm your heart.
ISW does have one intriguing aspect, which is an audience response reminiscent of the glory days of Heyman’s ECW. So it appears that alchohol-laden live viewers completely eat up what’s delivered to them.

However Mike Rotch (the promoter of Inter Species Wrestling) managed to make the promotion work, he has made it work, despite the mockery, crudity and cutting edge aspects of entertainment and profanity-laced announcing.

Again, I cringe at various avenues of the vulgarity, but within me, I’m thinking more of the twenty-something fans, bored with the current scene, willing to give something satirical, sarcastic and purely entertaining in a perverse way. As opposed to that certain promotion that isn’t entertaining at all, unless you look at professional wrestling as a perversity.

Splitting hairs, indeed, but matches in ISW show that the wrestling talent, the bookers and the production people are all making it happen. It’s hard to fault passion, even if I consider some of it misguided, because professional wrestling at its core is all about stoking emotions.
 
Something tells me that watching ISQ at the Foufounes Electriques nightclub in Montreal may very well be equivalent to watching ECW at the Bingo Hall, and the DVD (and my viewing of more than a few of them) definitely suggest that the essence is captured.
So let’s look at a few glimpses of what ISW has to offer.
 
The opening match is what ISW is all about to me: A combination of excellent workers, character driven entertainment and in-ring action, plus more than a few things meant to gross out the traditional wrestling fan.
 
The Osirian Portal is one of CHIKARA’s most endearing Tag Teams, laced with talent, verve and more than a bit o’nerve. Their opponent’s are Zombified and Izzie Deadyet, although Izzie doesn’t show up here, which is more likely storyline, but hell, I’m not about to dissect the intricacies of worked vs. shoot on this psychological playing field, for fear of losing my mind.
 
Ophidian and Amasis have a lot of fun working with Zombiefied, and the announcing team is overwhelmingly profanity-laced, intermixed with insight and witty comments. With a sycophantic devotion to Eddie Kingston, which I cannot fault, there are way too many references to making the hardcore figure laugh.

I can’t help but laugh at the “stereotypical deadman double choke-slam” comment.
What really impresses me is that Zombiefied and the rest of the home grown ISW talent, have risen to a level where wrestling matches with definitively talented guys like the Osirian Portal produces matches that, with a veneer of vulgarities galore, can be impressive to a jaded observer like myself.

Guys and Gals in the business today don’t often “work” all that much. And what I mean is, in terms of selling, in terms of getting into the character, and in terms of working for and with an audience, there’s a devastatingly problematic development in the industry today. Writers can script promos, and agents can lay out matches, but its damnable that the numbers of wrestlers who can think on their feet and dance the dance in the squared circle are diminishing rapidly.
 
Which to me, means that promotions like ISW and CHIKARA, as well as ROH, Dragon Gate and EVOLVE, among others, are the future of the business, no matter what good ole J.R. has to say on the matter.

Is it easy to play a zombie, no-sell (yeah, that contradicts what I may have said to some degree, but does it?) and play out a well constructed match without looking minor-league, in the presence of tag team specialists like Ophidian/Amasis?
Despite the cringes at the make-up and the commentary and the sight gags, the wrestling aspect is well done.

And then ISW does something creative with a match, or more accurately, nearly half a score of matches, between a male who used to be a cow, and a female who seems to be showing huge potential.

Here we have Beef Wellington (a name that hearkens to a departed wrestler from Calgary, and also to anyone who enjoys the stoked up emotions of Hell’s Kitchen and Gordon Ramsey.)
What’s fascinating about this match, even though I typically abhor man/women matches, is the background and the quasi-shoot aspects of Beef owing the promotion a match because he took the money but refused the match at an earlier show. Now that may not seem like much, but the sense of historical events in professional wrestling 2010 seems like fantasy. Beat-down last week? So what! Two guys with a long term feud for 11 years? So what, just reconcile by declaration and presto, done.

So Beef’s beef with ISW, plus the storyline of him needing to work for the promotion to make money, means that he has to wrestle. Of course he’d want to wrestle a girl with two matches, even though she’s 2-0.

What ensues is a very clever approach to sports entertainment. It made me cringe to see a nigh-mockery of professional wrestling, but in an age where three-minute matches between high caliber names doesn’t send shivers down anyone’s spine, what’s to complain about with eight or nine consecutive matches, all taking a bout a half-minute to finish, between different genders.

And with the fairer sex winning something like eight in a row?
What’s clever, if I can spell this out, is how it all is a nifty plan by Beef to get ISW to pay him for each match. That’s what I call expanding the envelope of entertainment. Maybe I’ll be regaled by a tale that it was a Hollywood writer wannabe who came up with the concept, but I tend to doubt that.

And there it is, as I’m going precariously close to 2000 words, and I know everyone hates it when I do that. Inter Species Wrestling is definitely not for everyone, and distinctly pushes the vulgarity limits of this reviewer, but in the whole, it does provide an interesting and compelling product that has risen from the ashes of pure mockery to a product that can readily present the best talent along with the worst of intentions. And yet, those intentions are intentional, and within the realm of professional wrestling’s mainstream a lot more than what you watch on TV.
Joe Babinsack can be reached at chaosonejoe@yahoo.com

Awwww crap! 

http://www.pwinsider.com/article/49551/bobby-heenan-breaks-hip-and-shoulder-fractures-pelvis.html?p=1

C4 must bring back Page and CTRL-ALT-DELETE!!!

hmmmmm..

SWEET! C4 must bring back Page and CTRL-ALT-DELETE!!! Also, C4's rep willl hopefully spread in this promotion.

[Several weeks ago, "Player Dos" Stupefied defended his newly crowned C*4 Championship, in Montreal, QC, during a showcase match at ISW @ Warped 2010. In a tough defense, Stupefied narrowly overcame Jae Rukin.This afternoon, C*4 officials negotiated with Southern Ontario's Alpha-1 promotion - and have come to an agreement to see our champion defend his title once again! Can Stupefied retain? Or will he be upset by one of his non-C*4 regular opponents?]

Several weeks ago, "Player Dos" Stupefied defended his newly crowned C*4 Championship, in Montreal, QC, during a showcase match at ISW @ Warped 2010.  In a tough defense, Stupefied narrowly overcame Jae Rukin.

This afternoon, C*4 officials negotiated with Southern Ontario's Alpha-1 promotion - and have come to an agreement to see our champion defend his title once again!   Can Stupefied retain?  Or will he be upset by one of his non-C*4 regular opponents?

For the complete card - please check out: http://onindywrestling.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=16904

3 Way Dance - Aug 15th Hype