#Wrestlemania30

This was the part of the trip I think I’ve been most looking forward to writing about because it details a very personal history of mine.
In 1982 for my 8th bday my dad took me to see my very first wrestling match and needless to say that’s all it took, I was hooked.
We were living in Little Rock, AR & he took me not because he was the fan and I along for the ride – very much the opposite – in fact he took every chance he could to criticize & heckle the television when starting that year my Saturday Mornings full of cartoons culminated with an hour of wrestling (although he would never admit it I know he started to enjoy it & soon look forward to it as well).
Fans from the 1980s will remember that pre-1985 wrestling back then was a territorial business & so you only had access (unless you had cable) to what the local territory was and even if you had cable that program was not going to tour outside its defined territory.
About once every other month at Barton Coliseum in Little Rock, from 1982 – 1986 one of my parents would take me to see our local promotion: Mid-South Wrestling.
It was $5 for adults & $3 for children and I remember my dad always paying with a $10 and the remaining $2 was for me to hit the concession stand with.
I knew the show was good, but it wasn’t until I was an adult & even still now that I’m aware of just how lucky I was to have lived in that territory.
Sure you always go back to your childhood & you never feel the same way about things the way you do about things that happened when your a kid – It’s natural to put that revisionist spin on it because you put that special meaning on it regardless if its deserving or not.
However, historically Mid-South Wrestling is now viewed as the greatest wrestling territory ever and its episodic storylines are now legendary above all others.
All of the wrestlers that started there that went on to bigger things speaks for itself and all of the ones I have personally spoken to marvel at the fact that whenever fans stop them on the street they ask them about Mid-South more than any other time in their careers.
When I ran into Jim Cornette last night and told him I was an old Mid-South guy he asked me if I was coming to the 1st ever Mid-South Fanfest the next day.
I told him I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Day 2 – April 4th

So with that sense of nostalgia we got up early and headed back across Lake Pontchartrain for an unforgettable day & also Jess’s first live wrestling event.

1st Annual Mid-South Wrestling Fan Fest – Sigur Center – Chalmette, LA

There are two ways you can view this event: Both valid and accurate but with completely different experiences. It would be impossible for me not to adopt a little bit of both. One side being the optimist reliving some of his favorite memories as a child – The other, a rational adult who is forced to see the event for what it is.I will explore both viewpoints here – however regardless, nothing changes that we had a great time and am so glad we came.

Each were introduced fighter intro style by Socal Val who would also host the wrestling portion of the event later in the evening.
This was a real treat for me and totally full circle as one of my fave memories as a child almost 30 years prior was being at the live events during the height of the R&R/Midnight Express feud. Seeing them all seated at a table together telling stories and answering questions was worth the price of admission right there & Jim Cornette was as funny & outspoken as his wrestling persona.

Afterwards we checked out the spread of the Fanfest – The merchandise was limited to a few T-shirts, some 8X10s, a few vendor tables with DVDs, books, and action figures, and any items that the stars were selling.  It was a mix of personalities from the territory like Kamala (who sadly had double-leg amputation in 2011 due to diabetes) & Dark Journey along with more modern stars like ECW Originals Tommy Dreamer and Shane Douglas (both who wrestled at the events later)
Mickie James (who appeared but cancelled her match due to now being pregnant) and former WWE Diva Kaitlyn (who now goes by her real name Celeste Bonin….and who should’ve been Mickie’s replacement in the match in my opinion).

SoCal Val

One Man Gang

In 1985, my Dad took me to an outlet mall in Bryant, AR (between Little Rock & Benton) one Saturday afternoon to meet Hacksaw Jim Duggan, my fave at the time & the hero of the territory. I couldn’t see how you could have a Mid-South anything without him being there, so I was glad to see him.
Compared to the other events we attended this week, the interaction with the wrestlers was not crowded or rushed and fun for all.

During the cajun style dinner Jim Cornette returned to conduct a Q&A with Cowboy Bill Watts. Watts is to Mid-South as what Vince McMahon is to the WWE, he was the booker, the promoter and essentially the lifeblood of the organization. When WWE inducted him into their Hall of Fame in 2009 (along with Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Von Erichs) it was one of my main inspirations for attending.
Of course I’m older now and this stuff means more to me than anything that will come later regardless of the quality of what’s current. However I don’t count myself among some of the attendees here, who bemoan the current WWE product and seem blissfully unaware that culturally they have checked out.
To me this was a celebration of something special – a time – a place – for me – that was unlike any other.

(later that evening) Mid-South Battles Lines – Sigur Center – Chalmette, LA

As one might expect from a company steeped in wrestling tradition, the night also featured a complete wrestling show, featuring a mix of some of those stars with other current names, like Elijah Burke, Lance Hoyt, and TNA Knockout Angelina Love.

Arriving at this old building in a small town (just outside New Orleans) for better or worse felt just like the Mid-South events I remember as a kid. Their was a lady behind a folding table with a stack of pre-printed tickets selling them for cash only – Just like the old days. Was this on purpose or they just haven’t updated their resources since the 80s? – I’ll let you decide, but it was perfect. Especially the old school concession stand – the smell of the nachos almost made me cry (with delight).

We get upstairs to our seats and prepare for the show to begin –
To unpack things a bit this was NOT an event put on by the former producers of Mid-South – this was an event put on by independent promotion
Traditional Championship Wrestling who clearly has a Mid-South fan among their ranks of Matt Riviera and given the rich tradition of Mid-South in New Orleans decided to host a Mid-South themed event and this along with the fanfest were the results.

This is important to note because in order to proceed one must ask/answer the following:

Why after 28 years of folding as a promotion would they have a Mid-South event now? – A: Again because of the geographic significance along with the strength of renewed interest from WWE’s recent DVD Legends of Mid-South?

Why wouldn’t they have done one before, why is this the first one? – A: This is the most important question of them all and the answer is because for an extremely prideful territory like this who even in the Information Age still largely sticks to kayfabe, that pulling back the curtain like this is really something that would have taken this long to get to (if ever). Also because most of the wrestlers or those involved back in the day have since died and their are very few left – so do it now before its too late.
Also again this was not put on by Mid-South, this was put on by fans of Mid-South that also might explain the absence of some crucial names that are still alive (and were in town) – Why Jim Ross, Ted Dibiase, Terry Taylor & Michael Hayes were not there is either they couldn’t afford them or those under WWE contract were not allowed to. Regardless they should have been.

….but I wasn’t here to entertain the politics of the business, I was here to relive a time before I knew that their even were politics in the biz.
We headed upstairs to our first balcony seats to get ready for the show to start, that was actually being streamed online via Pay Per View.

With less than 200 in attendance in a place that holds 3,000 and the show being staged Town Hall style it was what it was but it started a great theme of being at an event with no one to the left,right, in front or behind us. I told Jess she was my good-luck charm after the nightmare situation that I experienced at the events in NYC last year.
Here are the highlights:

With all the competition during WrestleMania weekend, TCW knew it needed some name wrestlers to draw a crowd. It was an odd mix of wrestlers from TCW (who I didn’t even know existed before today) along with a hodgepodge of former WWE and TNA wrestlers or any seemingly journeyman with a reputation.

With Socal Val handling the announcing the show began with former WWE star Chris Adonis (who used to go by the Masterpiece) vs. Lance Hoyt.

Tommy Dreamer is apparently just a wrestler for hire these days was involved in a six-man tag vs. The Empire who’s Mid-South contribution was being escorted to the ring by Dark Journey – the former valet of The Missing Link.

Another Mid-South contribution was a match with 70 year old Bill Dundee who appeared on the panel this morning vs. King Shane Williams

The smell of those nachos made it impossible to resist making a trip to an old school concession stand just the like old days. And apparently with 1985 prices too as I couldn’t believe that an order of nachos piled high with everything on them and a beer was $3.50 !!!
I come back with my prize of processed cheese & microwaved chili, reveling in the white trash diet of my youth excited to tell Jess how cheap they were as
Elijah “The Pope” Burke threatened to steal the show in his amazing match with Steve Anthony.

They had Jess so riled up and excited that caused her to knock the entire gelatinous mess ALL OVER ME – She is normally very clumsy anyway but I couldn’t be mad – I was proud of her excitement and even prouder to say that my first event was a Mid-South show and now she could say the same.
I went back to the concession stand and the incredibly cute college girl that sold them to me with the thickest cajun accent I’ve ever heard heard saw I was covered in cheese took pity on me, gave me stuff to clean up with and replaced my order free of charge. No chance of that ever happening in NYC.
They only cost $2 to begin with so I tipped her $5 and thanked her profusely.

Naturally following this match their was an intermission (so if I had just waited, my pants might have been chili-free)
I hadn’t been to a wrestling event that had an intermission since the 80’s – it was perfect –

Their were a few other announcements:

Matt Riviera presented a check for $1000 to Bobby Fulton of The Fantastics to help with medical expenses in a very touching presentation. Fulton has been having some serious health issues lately.
Bobby Eaton, one half of the Midnight Express, has also had his share of health problems, was presented with the Workers Choice Award by the hosts of Sirius FM’s Busted Open –

It was nice and a deserving honor to a true legend and I felt so bad for him that the reality of receiving a lifetime achievement to a place that was officially 93% empty had to be sobering beyond words.

They return to action but Socal Val who was sounding hoarse throughout the evening had lost her voice and an older gentlemen who appeared to be one of the producers took over. I loved her genuine enthusiasm and she looked so lovely.
Though she had been legitimately hoarse throughout the evening, I cynically joked that she had to bail because this was running so late & she was booked for another gig (see the flyer for Kevin Nash’s event below) – but she did stay till the end of the event.

Her replacement seemed exasperated by the even thinner crowd and other complications. What was originally scheduled as TNA Knockout Angelina Love vs. Mickie James was changed again due to James’ now pregnancy and was now billed as her facing Barbie Hayden.
Now at the moment of showtime it appeared Hayden was a no show & the producer kinda threw his hands in the air and asked the audience “So, do you guys want to see a women’s match or not?” – My answer was a resounding yes –
They only person they had to face her was a wrestler on the independent circuit named Miss Diss Lexia, but since she was from Dallas and the underdog we decided to root for her.
Here’s Angelina & her preparing for the match –

And how sad, as much as I was rooting for Miss Dislexia, being green as grass, what does she do? She gives poor Miss Love a freaking concussion.
Can you imagine how mad Angelina must have been? Here she was most likely doing this match as a favor & paid very little or at all with no chance this raises her profile and now she has to wrestle the rest of the weekend with a concussion.

The next one-two punch was the total highlight for me –

The first main event featured perhaps the greatest Mid-South tag team in history, The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express vs. Genetic Perfection

I wasn’t aware that The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express has continued to wrestle regularly all these years. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson could still work. This team was the total summation of my life from 1983 until 1986 – the last time I saw them. Naturally it would have been excellent to have them face the Midnight Express but as I mentioned above, those guys are in no shape to do this anymore sadly.
I was stunned when they hit their patented double dropkick & won the TCW Tag Team Championship.
To see them hit that & win the belts one more time brought tears to my eyes and was arguably my fave moment of the entire extended weekend. I hope those guys know that somehow.

The final match of the evening was the Junkyard Dog Memorial Cup Battle Royal. If that sounds familiar, you should know that Battle Lines was promoting this match long before the WWE was promoting the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal for WrestleMania.
JYD was easily the most popular hero of the territory (especially here in New Orleans where at the height of his popularity would sell out the Superdome).

Elijah Burke came out wearing tights in the exact same style as JYD did in Mid-South. They were white with “Thump” on the back and had stars & he wore a dog collar.

He eliminated Lance Hoyt for the win & the PA system even played JYD’s entrance music Queens’ Another One Bites the Dust as Burke celebrated by doing the Dog’s patented rope dance.I never thought I’d hear that music again at a live wrestling show and to hear it in New Orleans was something special. I can’t thank TCW enough for letting me experience these special specifics from my childhood again.

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As you can see their was alot of competition tonight that and that the others were in NOLA proper could have accounted for such a low turnout, but realistically it may not have had much to do with it. Two of the competing events were at Tulane University where we were now headed for their (& ours) third event of the day that started at Midnight – which just gave a truly odd event the setting that it needed.

Kaiju Big Battel – Mcalister Auditorium at Tulane University – New Orleans

Could this day get any cooler, longer? – It was certainly about to get weirder as we made our way into New Orleans just before midnight and finally located Tulane University and secured parking just outside of it.  I overestimated the event as I was looking for a large venue on the campus and thought I could just follow the herd of people. Here we were, its late at night in creepy NOLA without a soul around. I finally see someone and desperately ask were the Auditorium is and of course the person is a mute and is gesticulating wildly and grunting the hitch-hiker from Creepshow.

We enter the campus grounds and I certainly don’t mean to make light of a very unfunny subject but the only adjective I can use to describe the very long and barren walk we took into the campus is rape-y.

We finally come to a clearing and see some action up ahead deep into the heart of the campus – Now it feels like a block party that’s just about to reach its apex – it had that late-night Rocky Horror vibe to it that people were ready to get weird.

The event was supposed to start at midnight but by 1220am they hadn’t even started seating people yet and the lobby of this university hall was buzzing with anticpation, punctuated by the roar of merchandise sales in abundance.

Full disclosure: We knew nothing about this event – Not the participants, the producers, its origin, what to expect, the storylines etc – NOTHING.
We just saw like a 30 sec video and thought it was gonna be some weird Japanese wrestling thing that started at midnight on a college campus and that was enough for us.
I had heard that they only have a few live events a year and that they sell out almost instantly & we didn’t have tickets so that was a definite concern.
I didn’t even see where they were selling tickets so we started to assume that it was sold out. The crowd was getting antsy so when they opened the doors finally people just started stampeding in and so I grabbed Jess and in we went – no ticket, no nothing.

Wrestling is a varied art form. The word can be used to refer to a number of different things that, once you’re familiar with the basics of the sport, are quite different. It can just as easily be used to refer to WWE’s sports entertainment approach as Japan’s puroresu, the southern-US approach of rasslin’, ROH’s serious athleticism, and TNA’s directionless nonsense.
All can accurately be described as professional wrestling but they all have their different, some more pronounced than others.
Out on the very fringes of the term sits what we were about to witness – the Kaiju Big Battel.
This is where wrestling meets Japanese monster movies, a combination so niche that no mainstream promotion would ever touch it and so specific that smaller companies would avoid it even as a one off. Because how would you even incorporate it as a one off? It’s a pairing that has to be embraced in order to work.

Some aspects of wrestling logic don’t apply to Kaiju Big Battel. The ring is presented as a cityscape which the competing kaiju use as a battleground. Traditional wrestling moves and holds are used sporadically. And, most notably, everyone competes as a kaiju character, most of whom are linked to one loose faction (heroes, rogues, or Dr Cube’s Posse) wearing a specially designed outfit. Suspension of disbelief is more required than usual and the promotion’s own logic has to be fully embraced. But it’s still unmistakably wrestling. There’s a ring and the base logic of a good guy facing a bad guy. It’s just that here the good guy might be a cardboard box robot and the bad guy a walking mushroom.

Our fears of sitting in someone else’s seats quickly subsided as to illustrate how much I had overestimated this event along with tonight’s fierce competition as this venue holds 2k their were less than a hundred people here and the ring was on a stage that looked like it reguarly holds High School talent shows.

It kicks off with this Weird Al look-alike in a white dinner jacket appropriately named Louden Noxious already at ringside high fiving fans and screaming unintelligibly into a microphone. He continued his screeching, which the crowd loved, as he dashed around the arena, clambered over chairs, and ran into the crowd below the stage before ending up in the ring. Once he’d made it there he promised us an evening of danger and mentioned the PPV broadcast. He’s a very good hype man, even if you can’t make out most of what he says.
After nearly six minutes of hype, during which he revealed that lead baddie Dr Cube was the new judge of New Orleans, Noxious introduced The Gambling Bug (it bites people and they become addicted to gambling). It had a bag allegedly containing ¥5,000 with it, to face Paco and Pedro, the Plantains, two guys actually dressed up as Plaintains –

Fighto 1- The Challenge

The Gambling Bug issued a challenge. He stated that no monster could ever lift him, or slam him thru a city high rise for that matter. He made a $33,000 bet to any one living or dead to take up this challenge. Enter Paco & Pedro, the Plantain Twins.

After some tumultuous action in the Big Ring and much urban destruction, both plantains picked up Gambling Bug and slamed him thru an abandoned tenement building full of stray cats. Gambling Bug threw a fit and Paco grabed the money and run. Pedro on the other hand was so excited about winning the money he failed to see his brother take off with the loot. He is so busy thinking of ways to spend their windfall that he fails to see The Gambling Bug pick up a 20 story building to smash onto his head. Gambling Bug then proceeded to tie up the unconscious Pedro and drag him away.

.Next saw the obviously super popular Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle take on Tucor and Sekhmet. Tucor is a slender brown kaiju with a beak and Craw has a giant right hand and a metal jaw. They are two of Dr Cube’s lead henchmen. Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle is, as you can probably guess, a tin of chicken noodles with arms and legs.

Fighto 2- Gumbo Grudge

Kung Fu Chicken Noodle came to warn the Kaiju fans to beware of spicy-hot gumbo-
Then a hungry Monger Kingu and Tucor rushed the ring and tried to open up KFCN’s can to make their own pot of gumbo.

In an impressive display Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle nailed both his opponents with Stunners and performed a moonsault. Unfortunately for him he missed, which allowed Tucor to pull him up and Samoan roll him through stack of buildings, reducing them to rubble. Amazingly Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle was able to stagger back to his feet as his foes posed. Both received splashes before Kung-Fu Chicken Noodle obtained the popular win with a double choke slam to which Louden Noxious exclaimed (and gave us the line of the weekend) “Its a CANNED FOOD DRIVE!”

After the match The Grudyin joined his Posse teammates in the ring. Unimpressed with their loss The Grudyin knocked their heads together. Sun Buster, a green clad hero with a NES controller for a forearm, was introduced as his opponent.

Fighto 3- The Cajun Breakfast 

After the Grudyin came out and chastised his teammates,he grabbed Tucor’s box of looped fruity breakfast cereal and introduced it to Grudyin’s head. However the Ref was knocked out cold, so out came The Awful Waffle who took his place –

At some point during this, they parodied Mick Foley’s thumbtack bit but with gumballs that cause wacky hijinx as LN came out to the seated audience to pass the gumballs on to the fans. It was at this point that I looked over at Jess and said “If you had to describe what your doing & seeing right now to someone on the telephone, do you think you could do it accurately? – Answer: Hell no.

After that Louden Noxious said that there was no number one contender for the Grand championship and issued a challenge to anyone in the audience to participate . By pure coincidence the audience included kaiju hero Dusto Bunny (who has to be seen to be believed).

Fighto 5- Who Will Be Truly Great? (the MAIN EVENT)

Steam Powered Tentacle Boulder, stewart of the vacant championship, had determined that Dusto Bunny was to represent the heroes and representing Dr Cube’s Posse was to be the chaotic #13.

Next The Gambling Bug returned with Paco tied up and held hostage. Pedro was then introduced with the bag of yen he’d won fair and square earlier in the evening. It wasn’t entirely clear but it seemed as though the decision of the earlier match was under investigation. Dr Cube was introduced as a judge alongside his minions and Tucor. Cube ran through the case but the poor microphone made it impossible to hear most of what he said (in fairness the fact that he had a box on his head didn’t help). I did understand him sentencing The Gambling Bug to death though. Which seemed… excessive.

Cube’s Posse beat the monster down and carried it backstage. Tucor and the number one contender then turned Pedro and ejected Remsburg from the ring. The beating finished with Tucor leaping off the top rope to splash the Plantain through a pile of buildings. Seconds afterwards American Beetle rocked up and untied Paco, allowing the yellow ones to take out all members of the Posse, and Dr Cube himself, to send the crowd home happy.

Kaiju Big Battel is not going to be for everyone. I imagine many wrestling fans will find it jarring. I certainly wouldn’t be interested in watching it more than a once a year. But it’s a refreshing break from wrestling’s usual tropes and a chance to watch the sport through a different creative prism. Watched sporadically I think most wrestling fans with a sense of fun can enjoy Kaiju Big Battel’s product. And a large number of non-fans probably can too. Jess absolutely loved it, but agreed that she was happy that we didn’t pay to see it.

– The event was over just after 2am and we didn’t hit the freeway till closer to 3am and still had an hour long drive back to Picayune. A truly weird end to an extrodinary day.
Only to get up a few hours later for more excitement – Stay tuned for Part 3 IIII

Photos – 

Roy Turner
Terry Canova
Shawn Sparks
Linda Newton