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By: Mike Johnson
8/31/2003 7:27:50 PM

USA Pro Wrestling returned to the Elks Lodge in Queens, New York on Friday 8/29, drawing in the 700 range, which on Labor Day weekend in a stifling hot, smelly, dilapidated building, is a hell of an accomplishment. Full results saw:

*The Dirty Rotten Scoundrelz defeated Dan Barry and Johnny Ova with a double Dirty Rotten Driver (double ace crusher by EC Negro while both are on the shoulders of Negro and partner KC Blade). Solid opener. Negro and Blade's facial expressions are better than anyone else on the indy scene right now. Ova and Barry really worked hard here. Crowd was bigtime into DRS as a lot of those who trained at the Doghouse wrestling school and their friends come to see their buddies wrestle, which makes for a ton of heat.

*In a Four Corner, six man tag team match (meaning 12 guys in the bout), Low Rider & Eddie Guapo & Boogalou defeated the teams of The Elm Street Kids, Smoked Out & Jimmy Hustler & unknown rookie, and the team of Danny DeManto & Kevin Matthews & Jay Kronik. When I saw this, all I could think of was some of the 40 minute car wrecks the promotion has put on before, but this wasn't too much or too long, which was a pattern for most of the night. It ended up with Team Boogalou vs. Team DeManto. Boogalou destroyed DeManto with a chair and he was "unable to continue" so Team Boogalou won. The chair shots were brutal and the crowd loved that.

*Johnny TNT and Chris Calibre defeated Jav and James Blood. Short match. Nothing stands out as I write about it two days later.

*The next segment was "Knightlife Auditions." On the promotion's website, they had announced that a member of the heel faction (Boogie Knights & Stryker & Billy Reil & Becky Bayless & Tony Low) were going to leave the company and they were holding open replacements for a new member. This was obviously inspired by American Idol and the whole segment was one of the funniest things I've seen on the indies all year (second only to the Bayless-Mike Kruel wedding a few months back, also from USA Pro). First person was Josh Deely, a local undercard green performer who usually takes his lumps. They made his try to dance, sing, and do imitations before destroying him. Next out was Miss Michelle (one of the women sitting with Billy Kidman at Smackdown from Madison Square Garden a few months back), who likewise gets insulted. The song, "What is Love?" plays and out comes Mikey Whipwreck and Wayne the Convenience Store Guy dressed like SNL skit characters The Butabi Brothers ("Night at the Roxbury") with the bad suits, bopping their heads. They get in the ring and do the bit where they try to dance with the girl in between them and end up using her like a pinball to both Michelle and Bayless. It ends up with Whipwreck and Wayne stealing the Tag Team belts from the Boogie Knights after laying everyone out with Whippersnappers. They tease the segment is over, but no, it continues as The Christopher Street Connection come out to audition. Stryker gets off a line that they are "Equal Opportunity Employers" which I laughed at. Skinhead Ivan, who does the Nazi gimmick, comes out with Zeno who looked like Archie from Archie Comics. It ended up with another brawl, leading to.....

*Christopher Street Connection defeated Skinhead Ivan and Zeno with the Gaybash. Usual good comedy from CSC.

*Next up was a live "Maniac Minute" with several of the USA Pro undercard types like Josh Deely and valet Miss Sinful. Crowd is all over Maniac (promoter Frank Goodman) who was having fun just ripping on things he usually complains about on his local hotline like bus trips and drunken fans. Hey, at least my bus trips always end up happening when I advertise them! Crowd got lost the second he stopped insulting the "guests" and they had a quickie match where he pinned one of the guys, then pulled down the pants of Randy, the USA Pro worker who always, without fail, gets abused to the point I get a little worried about the symbolism involved.

*Homicide pinned Deranged. This was easily the best in-ring match of the night. Deranged has really broken out in the last few months, and with the person he was most compared to (Amazing Red) out for a few with his ACL recovery, Deranged is in a position to burst out in a big way with his work not just here, but CZW, ROH, and JAPW. Homicide continues his streak of having the best match on most of the recent live shows I've seen as well. Homicide nearly killed Deranged with a pair of Copkillas, the second of which scared the living hell out of me. Homicide put over Deranged on the mic, then challenged Tim Arson (doing commentary) to a match on 9/26, with the storyline (although some have said it wasn't a storyline, but if they are doing an angle, it is now) that Arson disrespected Homicide's Doghouse students on a local hotline.

*Balls Mahoney defeated Lowlife Louie Ramos in a Hardcore Match. It's amazing how much they got away with here as they used a barbed wire bat, tables, and all the other weapons of mass destruction. Ramos tried to powerbomb Balls fiancé Lauren through a table but the table decided it didn't want to cooperate. That hurt. Balls got the pin here. After the match, he blew fire at Ramos and then, I kid you not, tried to nail his hand to a makeshift cross. That was without a doubt one of the sickest things I've ever seen. I hated the angle although unlike ECW in 1996, this crowd had no problem with it, so what do I know apparently? The entire locker room ran off Balls while Ramos was helped to the back.

*The Solution defeated Nuke and Vinnie Styles. It seemed like just a match to give the Solution a win to build them in the promotion's Tag scene. The Solution have really improved their game this summer and I suspect we'll be seeing the name breaking out more in other companies.

*Josh Deely (Did we really need to see him in three segments?) won a Battle Royal featuring a number of undercard workers/Ticket sellers, etc. Ring Announcer Stephen DeAngelis kept commenting on the mic that they only had 10 minutes and if they weren't done, he was going to ring the bell no matter what. Actually DeAngelis seemed really frustrated all night giving cues to end matches, only to be ignored. This was exactly what you would think going in.

*Mikey Whipwreck and Wayne (who should just adopt the Whipwreck last name as his style and look is similar to Mikey's) defeated The Boogie Knights to win the promotion's Tag Team championship. Entertaining. After the match, the locker room emptied to pay respect to the Knight's Danny Drake, who announced he was retiring due to continued pain from a neck injury suffered working JAPW last year. The fact Drake even got back in the ring makes him an all-time MVP for the New York Indy scene in my book. The crowd gave Drake a nice sendoff, and it was especially emotional for his legitimate best friend and partner Mike Tobin. I've really enjoyed the Knights improvement and work over the last few years and they really bloomed with a great few matches with the Solution and SATs of late. I loved their "Karate Kid" Cobra-Kai gimmick they used when they worked as faces as well. If he's in constant pain though, Drake made the right call and I wish everyone in wrestling would do the same instead of pushing the pain away while waiting for the magic carrot/big money contract to come their way.

*Slyk Wagner Brown defeated Mike Kruel to win the USA Pro U.S. championship after Billy Reil interfered. OK, but nothing noteworthy. At this point in the show, I know I was feeling pretty drained.

*Billy Reil defeated Simply Luscious and April Hunter in a Three-Way Dance when he pinned Hunter. Reil challenged both to an impromptu match. Stryker was at ringside here and his reactions to everything was top notch. In fact, out of everyone on the roster and even without working, Stryker came off as one of the "true" stars in terms of aura on the show, second behind only Raven in my opinion. Reil was working hard here.

*Xavier pinned The Grimm Reefer to win the USA Pro Xtreme championship. Decent. Crowd was into Reefer.

*Al Snow pinned Sandman. This was Snow's first appearance in the old ECW Madhouse of Extreme since 1998. He got a huge ovation coming out, before giving a speech reminding everyone ECW was dead and he had an important job with WWE. Instant heat. Snow gave the Snowplow to referee Sean Hansen after the match three times, which was weird because he still had another match to ref. Match was what you would expect.

*USA Pro champion Raven pinned D-Lo Brown. Raven was accompanied by Mikey Whipwreck, Wayne, and Tara Charisma. They did a lot of false finishes and interferences. This was real entertaining but by the time it went on, the crowd was so burnt out and tired. Mikey and Wayne came into the balcony in a silly bit where they tried to quell fans from chanting things at Raven, but ended up joining in. Raven really, really worked hard here to interact with the fans. He's still the man when it comes to laying out matches. Had this gone on two hours earlier, a lot of people would have been raving about it after the show.

Notes: WWE's Jonathan Coachman and John "Big" Gaburick (Tough Enough) came to the show with Al Snow and watched most of the event. Coachman really seemed to enjoy the Homicide-Deranged bout. Both were accesible and friendly to the fans who noticed them and Snow put them over on the mic, leading to a "We want Coach" chant...Crowd was in the 700 range, which given the heat is really good....Justin Credible missed a scheduled appearance for the promotion the day before the event according to promoter Frank Goodman, and was removed from working the show....The promotion, in an attempt to keep the locker room in order and to instill some respect for the show, pulled Chris Devine and Damian Dragon, both scheduled to return to the promotion, off the show for arriving late. USA Pro also banned workers from coming out of the locker room during the show and for the most part was successful....The promotion was trying to keep the time of the show to as much of a minimum as possible because of the heat and also because recent shows have topped the six hour mark. This one ended up at about 4 1/2 hours....It was way too hot to sit in that building...The promotion has added Mike Zevon, who heads the Declaration of Independents website, to their writing team....There was a camera crew filming footage backstage and before the show for a company that is purchasing footage to air on PPV in Canada....Commentary for the promotion's videotape of the event was done by worker Tim Arson (still nursing an injured neck from a bout) and former ring announcer Dexter Weiner. The promotion approached me about joining their commentary team regularly (I did 2 or 3 shots last year), but I decided that it wouldn't be the best decision for all involved and wish them the best of luck. I'm interested in hearing how the commentary came out as the promotion had a 2 man team as opposed to the three or more team commentary of the past....The promotion returns 9/26 to the Elks Lodge with Al Snow vs. D-Lo Brown (Winner hosts Sunday Night Heat?) And Raven vs. Sandman vs. Sabu on top.

MKJ's Thoughts: Overall, my opinion on the show was that the promotion had, for the first time in my opinion, really tried to put it's best foot forward when in the past, it seemed like the booking was haphazard and the organization was a joke. They improved greatly in both of those aspects, but have their work cut out for them. The good news is that they realize it, which is the next big step they needed to make. It was typical USA Pro - there was one excellent standout match (Homicide vs. Deranged), some decent wrestling (Raven vs. Brown), some funny bits (the audition), some entertaining stuff, and some bad stuff. In hindsight, a lot of the show would probably be more enjoyable on tape, as you can watch it without sitting in the heat for so long. RF Video taped the show for those interested....I can be reached at AgentCLPT@aol.com.

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