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Igoe Undead: Robert Discusses His Recent Trip to See the CWF
By Robert Igoe
Nov 28, 2005 - 12:04 PM

Last month, my fiancé, Nancy, and I decided we needed a weekend out of town. Work, among other things, was getting on both of our nerves. Plus, we hadn’t seen my parents or the rest of my family since August. So we went back to the Mon Valley, the part of southwest Pennsylvania where I was born and raised, and spent a few nights with my loved ones.

I also noticed that Championship Wrestling Federation would be holding as show Saturday night in my hometown of Monessen. And since my parents had plans that night, we decided to take in dinner and a wrestling show.

It was one of our better decisions.

It had been five years since I last saw the CWF, or any indy show. I knew that I’d get to see Powerhouse Hughes, a terrific wrestler who earlier in his career patterned a portion of his style from The Undertaker. And since me and Nancy both like ‘Taker, I knew she’d like watching him.

What concerned me was that I was worried that I wouldn’t know anyone else on the card. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. Also on the card were four Pittsburgh mainstays: Blade, an energetic and  pretty nifty cruiserweight who fought to a good double count out with a larger, but very talented, “Sycho” Sean Dahmer, Scotty Venom, the Keystone State Champion who was now calling himself Darth Venom as part of a “Star Wars” inspired cabal called the “Evil Empire”, Eric Lancy who when i last saw him was Eric "the Electric" Love and Devil Bhudakahn, another one of those great cruiserweights that seem to dominate the indy scene. Ironically, last time I saw CWF, Bhudakahn was the heel and Venom was the face. Now the roles were reversed.

Here’s another reason that indy shows will never die: if you like good tag team action, this is about it. Whereas WWE treats tag team wrestling like my German Shepherd treats fire hydrants, here on the indy circuit, you can see some good tag teams, not just a couple guys thrown together to fill a slot.

CWF features two terrific teams. The first one is “Real $mooth,” a tandem of $mooth-X and “Unreal” Aaron Gibbs. This time, they were in separate matches, including a bout to determine top contender for the CWF title. Though both men won, I’m going to hope they don’t come up successful in singles title matches. From what I have been told, they are a great team to watch in a genre where such teams are in the minority.

The first of their bouts was the title contender’s match, a three way bout between Gibbs, Jason Gory and Chaotic Chris LeRusso. $mooth-X was out there for his partner, but soon got tossed back to the locker room for interfering in the match. And in a display of protest not seen this side of Robert Blake, $mooth-X complained that he was being sent off for something he didn’t do.

He was. He didn’t wait until the ref’s back was turned.

As usually happens, the two heels, Gibbs and Gory, focused on eliminating LeRusso as quick as they could. And as usual, the heels both seemed to forget that they other one was going to make sure he didn’t win the match. LeRusso got his shots in, but the match ended when a masked man ran in and attacked Russo and Gory to allow Gibbs to win.

Hmmmm…wonder who the masked guy was? You don’t suppose…?!!?

$mooth X came out later in the show to fight Bret Paradise with Gibbs at ringside. X started the proceedings by taking a child’s book, rubbing it on his backside and tossing it into the crowd. Hey, I’m sick of Harry Potter as anybody, but that’s a bit extreme. Still, I have to admit that any effort an athlete takes to get fans involved in reading is welcome.

While $mooth was finishing off Paradise with a move called “X Marks The Spot,” (a torture rack into a DDT that has to be seen to be believed) Gibbs lurked at ringside, where he would get his shots in, using a chain and a plastic bag to choke out Paradise, then whip him with a towel.

A towel?!!? Hey, why should I stifle a man’s creativity?

And I admit I couldn’t resist having a little fun with him. At one point, he counted along with the referee when $mooth had Paradise down. Gibbs kept going to three. The ref stopped at two.

“Well, you are technically correct,” I told him. “Three does come after two.”

Some people just take a compliment, though. Gibbs started me down and challenged me to step into the ring with him. Well, I won’t cross that railing, Mr. Gibbs, but any time you feel like explaining to me why heels only use a weapon one time then throw it away, I’ll be happy to save you the seat next to me.

But if you think that guy was hard to deal with, that was nothing. The other tag team on the show were the Gambino Brothers, Mickey and Marshall.

“Mickey” and “Marshall” Gambino?

Name aside, these guys were, in all honesty, the best tag team I’d seen since Joey Matthews and Christian York. Great teamwork, outstanding storytelling, unbelievable at getting heat from the fans.

They usually work shows with their sister, Victoria. Now there is a true diva for you. Beautiful, yes. But what makes her so great is that she really does her job like she has a purpose for being there. Sad to say, WWE divas, outside of Trish, seem to have nothing to distinguish themselves from the rest. Take Melina way from MNM and replace her with anyone or anything, it wouldn’t make a difference. You wouldn’t care. But when Victoria isn’t there, you notice she’s gone. Something is missing.

Like Real $mooth, I saw these guys twice. The first time was when they backed up their buddy “Delicious” Jimmy DeMarco.

“Jimmy DeMarco.” Now there’s a name you can hang your hat on! But I digress.

DeMarco was fighting in a singles match against Eric Lancy, one half of the tag team champions with Powerhouse Hughes. The two were scheduled to defend their title, but Hughes suffered an injured ankle and was unable to compete. So he stood ringside to watch his partner’s back.

Hughes did a better job of watching the match than the referee, who never seems to learn that while you’re telling the one guy to get off the ring apron, the other guy is getting cheap shots in at the opponent. The Gambinos got away with it three times before Hughes got frustrated and tripped DeMarco once.

Now he should have known better than that. Sure enough, the referee catches him and sends him to the back, leaving Lancy helpless against what is now a four on one attack. Just when things look darkest, out come Jason Cage and Bobby Shields to run the Gambinos and Victoria off, leaving a confused DeMarco the victim of a small package pinfall.

Oh, one other thing about the Gambinos and DeMarco: they are damn good at giving it right back to you if you boo them. In spades. And as if trying to stay insult for insult with one of them wasn’t bad enough, you often run the risk of getting all four of them in your face.

Now, if this were real life, I’d just sit down and mind my own business, but I had a rotten week and I was in no mood to choke back any more rage, particularly at a bunch of cheaters. Nancy, being that this was her first show, didn’t understand all of this and thought we were heading for jail time.

No, honey, you don’t understand how it works. You have a bad week at work or go through other frustrations where you know it’s wiser to keep your tongue. So you have this pent up rage and anger. You go to the local wrestling show, pay your $8, sit at ringside and wait for the heels to come out. They do something heelish, you yell at them. If you’re lucky as I was, they yell back at you. You get angrier and eventually everyone in your section is screaming for their blood. They know they’re getting a reaction, so they keep being bad and everyone gets angrier. Sometimes the face wins and you and the fans mock the hells, or they win and you release your anger to them all at once. Suddenly, you’re not stressed out, the heel wrestlers know they did a good job. You go home and relax until Monday morning, the heels get paid and the whole thing starts again next time.

DeMarco and the Gambinos (these guys need a team name like Team Canada or The Four Horsemen) would come out again, this time for the Gambinos’ match against Cage and Shields. I was still on their back, telling the Gambinos that “the ring is that way, guys” when they bailed out.

Of course, the Gambinos got a little revenge on me when one of the faces dove from the ring to the floor andon top of Marshall. The two hit the railing with so much impact that it flew right into me, catching me on the shoulder. Fortunately, Nancy didn’t get hit, which is all I cared about.

But it wasn’t only the tag teams that were exciting. This was my first look at Daron Smythe. Folks, like a lot of the smaller TNA talent, this kid could be a big part of the X-Division in TNA within a few years. He delivered some awesome moves in his match against Deven Michael, including a Yakuza kick to get the pin and become the number one contender for the CWF title.

This didn’t sit well with Zubov, the CWF Champion, who at the start of the told Commissioner Bert LeGrande that he was only going to defend the title when he felt like it. Zubov came out and attacked Smythe, beating him to a  pulp and then announcing that if Smythe wanted his title shot, it would have to be that night. So Smythe wrestled twice and again put out a terrific performance, but came up just short of taking the title. Next month though, Zubov will have to give a rematch to the former champion, Dr. Feelgood.

Michael, by the way, wears trunks with snakes on them, has a mustache like Jake Roberts and carries a bag containing…oh, come on, let’s not see the same hands for every question. The bag provided a few funny moments before hand. Seems that the snake wasn’t moving much, leading fans to taunt Michael that it was dead.

Then it moved. Then it sounded like everyone’s car alarm went off simultaneously.

Before the match even started, LeGrande came out to confront Michael and warn him not to take the snake out of the bag out of interest in fan safety. Yeah. Like that was going to happen.

Michael, meanwhile, didn’t take the loss very well. He knocked out Commissioner LeGrande and poured the snake on top of him. Hey, Jake doesn’t own a copyright on that, does he? Besides, wasn’t the Sheik terrorizing people with snakes even before Jake was?

Michael did try to scare me with the snake, but I don’t mind reptiles at all. Most of them aren’t aggressive at all and basically lie there with an expression on their faces saying “shut up and give me a hamster, will ya?” I told him on the way back to the locker room that if he tries that again, I’d have a few new pairs of boots. I was bluffing, of course, I ‘d have no where to wear them.

In the main event, Venom and Bhudakahn put on a terrific show.
Venom, who definitely got his hands on some good photos when he was making his Anakin Skywalker costume, was booed and got his share of catcalls, but rather than confront the fans, he chose to ignore them. This only made the fans even angrier and more happy when Venom lost the title when the interference of Special-Sith backfired and Bhudakahn got the pin. Or did he? Due to a referee "being knocked out", he did not see exactly what happened. Guess we will have to wait until the next show, Holiday Wishes, on Saturday, Dec. 3 in Monessen.

I could go into how much frustration I have in my life, but that’s not something to share at this time. Suffice to say that I will be making a lot more trips to see the Championship Wrestling Federation and other local independent promotions. They are still an economical way to have fun, relax, relieve your stress and, if you’re not careful, see the next Batista or Kurt Angle.

And if the Gambinos are on the card, I’ll have to bring the “A” material. And some cough drops.


Check me out online at: http://www.geocities.com/bobbyknightmare/megaweaponsgarage.html, featuring a tribute to Beverly Garland, the first lady of MST3K, and for those who love The Simpsons but hate Lisa and Flanders, don’t miss this week’s feature on http://www.geocities.com/bobbyknightmare/ulcbedford.html.