Irish Promotions Thread *Please read post 1* (*Mod Warning Post #3947)

To be fair the stuff Moxley and Janela put their bodies thru was arguably worse, it was showcased as the main event also.

Should that stuff be banned for of irresponsible people doing it?

leggo

That's the important distinction: big difference between doing stunts that look mad but can be performed safely (thumbtacks, for example, barely hurt at all when your adrenaline is up mid-match) and doing something we specifically know is dangerous in itself. You could take thumbtack bumps 200 nights a year for a decade and be fine. You could take a bad chairshot to the head once and take 20 years off your life.

The diving headbutt is another example of that distinction. Chris Benoit, Dynamite Kid, Daniel Bryan...it's a move that's left behind a trail of devastation. Just this week I was doing research on Harley Race and was reminded that a diving headbutt gone wrong was the beginning of the end of his in-ring career. With what we know it's important that people within the business understand why it's bad now and get pushback whenever they ignore that knowledge.

rizzla

leggo wrote: »

The problem with the AEW chair shot is that Cody is now in a position of high influence within wrestling and him doing it, gimmicked or not, sends a message that this is cool and doing this stuff is what will get you noticed by the likes of AEW. That position of influence is something he's deliberately sought and makes a big deal of. He releases videos of him hiring new people and making business decisions trying to hype how big of a deal and life-changing AEW is with him at the core of it.

Just about this bit, what if we take WWE and Wrestlemania, something which would have had a lot more eyes.

Shane/Miz match. The suplex from the production area onto the hidden crash mats, gimmicked or not, sends a message that this is cool and doing this stuff is what will get you noticed by the likes of WWE.

Should all spots (involving gimmickry) be cancelled because of a ripple affect which will influence new wrestlers on smaller shows to take risks?

Anyway, OTT tickets went on sale for their Sept 7th show, only one match announced so far, no interest in Paul Robinson. Kicking myself the belfast show was sold out when they announced LJ Cleary v Devlin. I'm gonna hold off on my tickets till more of the card is announced. This time last year I would have bought a damn season pass if they announced one. Can't put my finger on what's different but I just don't mind missing the OTT shows now.

leggo

I know people are doing logical backflips to let AEW off the hook* but no, it's not the same. The spot at WrestleMania wasn't unsafe. It was a bump onto a crash mat. It was as safe as, if not safer, than taking a suplex in the ring. It just looks dangerous. That's what wrestling is supposed to be: something that looks mental and painful but actually doesn't hurt anyone involved.

Chairshots are risky. There's no real way to gimmick them beyond 'not hitting them at all', which invalidates the point of doing it to begin with. As soon as you start the spot it becomes about damage limitation rather than damage prevention. Even if someone takes one and appears fine, we now know that we've zero idea what damage it's actually done to their brain internally. Go back and look at Chris Benoit murdering his family out of the blue if you don't believe me, or how the diving headbutt ****ed so many people up over the years (even if there wasn't one particular diving headbutt that you can point to, the unseen, cumulative damage of doing it night-after-night is the point).

People say "But it was supposed to be gimmicked" like that validates Cody's plan. That actually re-enforces the point about how chairshots are risky! Even when you're gimmicking them for safety, it can still go tits. That's the point! And that's a different ballpark to a spot that looks dangerous but is actually safe, or a spot that goes safely 99 times out of 100 but then a freak accident occurs.

*For the record, I actually think we should let them off the hook fairly soon too. They've taken their licks and will have learned their lesson, I doubt we'll be seeing another chairshot in AEW for the foreseeable. It was an over-zealous mistake rather than malicious. But stuff like this is a direct consequence of that so it needs to be brought up.

rizzla

No still don't really get your point.

So lets say Gimmick chair v1, the backrest seems like the variable they didn't consider and actually caused the damage. Gimmick chair v2 has a gimmicked back rest and they had Mythbusters come in to prove that the chair is now just as safe as a suplex from 20ft up onto some thin plywood and crash mats. Should they still do it?

A smaller promotion won't have gimmick chairs, crash mats or other safety precautions (to the same extent). As a bigger promotion, AEW/WWE, should they look at spots where they use smoke and mirrors to protect their performers and think, we can't do this. If someone in a smaller promotion was to attempt this they could really hurt themselves.

I would say no, a blanket no. AEW/WWE can do what they like and can continue to try to innovate to protect their performers but all the while making it look as real as possible and if other promotions want to attempt the stuff they see, they can.

But you seem to be saying yes, they should be considerate but with a lot of exceptions around gimmick props.

The biggest thing which would turn people off a larger promotion or hit their popularity would be if they hired one of these goons taking unprotected chair shots, solely because they took those hits. I would highly doubt that would happen. Press release, "Their skulls mad hard, we had to hire them, who knows what condition their brain is in but we couldn't say no."

Yeah I'm a bit confused.

You seemed to have said chair shots are bad, understandably, but one of your points was due to fear of people reenacting it.

We point out things in other matches that shouldnt be reenacted but still shouldnt negate someone doing them , you say they are safe stunts. So surely by those standards if the chair shot could be regarded and reworked into a safe spot and you still say no?


Not having a go either, its an interesting debate, im a fan of the hardcore style of wrestling and the violence is something i tend to miss sometimes. I feel like overall wrestling has lost a bit of an edge and grit ,not due to lack of chairshots to head

jface187

Trinity Brawl 2: pop up on my Eventbrite for next Friday. It's free in but no mention on who's on. Does anyone know anything about it? Did anyone go to the first one?

rizzla

jface187 wrote: »

Trinity Brawl 2: pop up on my Eventbrite for next Friday. It's free in but no mention on who's on. Does anyone know anything about it? Did anyone go to the first one?

I was considering this. It's a pay what you like, so can be free if you want. What's it like? Never really heard of it. Is it just a banter show? If so I'm all in.

brianblaze

rizzla wrote: »

I was considering this. It's a pay what you like, so can be free if you want. What's it like? Never really heard of it. Is it just a banter show? If so I'm all in.

The previous one was amazing apparently. I'm working so can't go along but if so could I'd be all over it

leggo

Sirsok wrote: »

Yeah I'm a bit confused.

You seemed to have said chair shots are bad, understandably, but one of your points was due to fear of people reenacting it.

We point out things in other matches that shouldnt be reenacted but still shouldnt negate someone doing them , you say they are safe stunts. So surely by those standards if the chair shot could be regarded and reworked into a safe spot and you still say no?


Not having a go either, its an interesting debate, im a fan of the hardcore style of wrestling and the violence is something i tend to miss sometimes. I feel like overall wrestling has lost a bit of an edge and grit ,not due to lack of chairshots to head

There is no risk-free way to smack someone who isn’t defending themselves in the head and guarantee safety. If you smack someone hard enough with a fluffy toy it can cause damage like! There’s debate in football now about whether headers are even safe or could they lead to concussions and CTE. Your head and brain simply aren’t built to take any kind of unnecessary force and the Chris Benoit story is the worst case scenario of what it can lead to. So let’s not put it to the test at all! Why are chairshots, of all things, the thing that people are like “ah but we can’t lose that now that’s too far, let’s look at this whole thing again”?

And the thing is we’re simply not far along enough medically to get ANY kind of gauge on this. Last I checked (though the great work Chris Nowinski et al are doing may have changed this), they couldn’t even test for CTE on people who were alive. An NFL player, for example, committed suicide due to CTE and left a note to say that he shot himself in the chest so people could do research on his brain to find a cure. So if we’re that early into studying, if we can’t tell if a person even has it while alive, we definitely can’t tell what can and can’t cause it if you put it to the test with certain blows. And ****ing Cody definitely doesn’t have the secret like! :pac:

So to put out the notion that there’s a safe way to ‘gimmick’ a blow to the head like that is absolute bollocks. It starts to introduce the notion that now chairshots are okay. A week later GCW had a sick chairshot on their show, a couple of months later we’re discussing it happening on an Irish indie show. So, even if AEW had the resources to do this ‘safely’ (they don’t), promotions lower down the totem pole don’t have the same standards and resources so their imitations will do damage. If you want to be an industry leader, that comes with a responsibility or you face a backlash. They failed in that responsibility here and we’re literally seeing the consequences here now. So can we accept that instead of making it another boring “But WWE did THIS??” debate? We’re not seeing people risk injury doing suplexes onto crash-mats. It’s not a thing because bumps onto crash-mats aren’t dangerous or cause CTE (unless an absolute freak accident happens), they just look cool if you shoot them from the right angle. And small indie shows generally aren’t big enough to replicate that spot anyway, there’s not many scaffolds hanging around the Ringside Club or Big Sean to suplex people off, it’s a ridiculous argument.

nannerby

brianblaze wrote: »

The previous one was amazing apparently. I'm working so can't go along but if so could I'd be all over it

This one didnt disappoint either great show.

Manning3000

Does anyone know is there a bar at the OTT Cork Neptune Stadium show on Sunday???

nannerby

Also at the Trinity Brawl 2, Jack Gleeson(joffery from Game of Thrones)took part in the show nice guy had no probs mixing with the fans afterwards.

B.A._Baracus

Gas.
What promotion is behind Trinity Brawl 2? (didn't even know about it until now)

nannerby

B.A._Baracus wrote: »

Gas.
What promotion is behind Trinity Brawl 2? (didn't even know about it until now)

Im not sure there was nothing on my email ticket I think maybe Trinity did it themselves.

diusmr8a504cvk

nannerby wrote: »

Im not sure there was nothing on my email ticket I think maybe Trinity did it themselves.

Did they play "The Billy Boys" at any stage?

:pac:

brianblaze

nannerby wrote: »

Im not sure there was nothing on my email ticket I think maybe Trinity did it themselves.

Wasn't it run by J Money?

leggo

https://twitter.com/JMoneyWorldwide/status/1162661544074911745

nannerby

brianblaze wrote: »

Wasn't it run by J Money?[/QUOT


It could have been I just didn't notice who the promoter was but whoever did it they did a great job.

showpony1

Trinity Brawl was excellent, a throwback to enjoyable Tivoli shows.

ThePott

OTT in Cork on Sunday, Card looking great. Lots of promos done for Raven v Valkyrie, could maybe see a hometown title win. Hope it does well in Neptune, be great to have OTT be in Cork every now and then.

Phoenix have put up tickets for an 18+ Gym show too limited to about 50 tickets in September. They've confirmed Justy, B-Cool, Terry Thatcher, Raven Creed, Matt Skyler and Butch Armstrong so far. Could be a good shout if you can get to it.

Cherry_Cola

Anyone head to OTT in Cork tonight? Would love to see the setup if anyone has pics. Unfortunately unable to make it as prepping tonnes for work this week.

bot43

Cherry_Cola wrote: »

Anyone head to OTT in Cork tonight? Would love to see the setup if anyone has pics. Unfortunately unable to make it as prepping tonnes for work this week.

Great show. They curtained off from around the half way line as otherwise the place would have looked empty.

Opened with Devlin v Fleisch. Everything you would expect really.

Comedy match featuring Justy and Martina next. Was fun.

MTH v The Rascalz next. Brilliant 6 man tag. MTH went over.

Scotty Davis v Cara Noir (??) next. Took the crowd a while to get into this but once they did they stayed in. Brilliant match which Scotty won.

After intermission we had Starr v some guy whose name escapes me. Solid if unspectacular outing. Star cut a promo on Devlin after. Some jackass in the bleachers kept interrupting.

Raven v Valkyrie next. Raven went full demon but ultimately lost because foxy didn’t see some blatant cheating.

PAC v Michael Bailey. Brilliant match with the most insane spot I’ve seen in the flesh. That balcony was too damned tempting. PAC won.

https://twitter.com/frankiem1984/status/1165745167640465409?s=21

ThePott

Was there, someone posted this on Twitter if you wanna see the layout https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EC13sI6WkAA1CpD?format=jpg&name=4096x4096
Anyway, I'll give a rundown, I'll try keep who wins to a minimum cause it will be up On-Demand during the week but I'll talk a bit (as I tend to do) and I'll put the details in spoilers just in case anyone is going to check it out and wants it fresh.

Devlin (c) v Fleisch got us started. This was an unreal opener. People were really loud for Jody, he was a fixture in Cork in the days of CCW so maybe that's why. Started very evenly matched with them going for the same moves. Lots of high-flying especially from Jody, who is insanely good still. Flipped off a wall at one point. Was a great bout and the crowd was pumped by the end.

Justy & Sammy v Session Moth & Dan Barry People ate up Dan Barry who was dressed in a matching leopard skin shirt to go with his partner. This was a strange match to get a read on but not for a bad reason. First I thought it was going to be an out and out comedy match which I'm fine with cause it was hilarious but it turned into a more competitive bout eventually. Great spots include Justy accidentally cranking Sammy's arm thinking it was SMM and Moth being unable to chop despite Dan showing her how, leading Justy to force Martina to tag Dan in so he could be properly chopped. Good variety going between this and the opener.

Only Tru Pros (Michael May and Liam Royale) w/J-Money v Strong Hearts (T Hawk and El Lindaman). I've been abroad for a few weeks hadn't kept up with the card for today so this was a total surprise to me. Michael May continues to impress and Liam Royale is a definite one to watch. The Strong Hearts were outstanding and had some great charisma. T Hawk did the loudest chop I've ever heard in person. Good match.

Cara Noir v Scotty Davis. One of the best matches I've seen live. Had a real shoot style to it, some of the suplexes looked like MMA takedowns, rear naked chokes a plenty and even some throwing of kicks and punches had a kickboxing feel to them. Cara Noir is awesome and love his look and entrance. Scotty Davis is one of the best in Ireland without a doubt. Loved this match, maybe match of the night for me. Started a little slow but crowd got so into it.

The Rascalz v MTH. Match was a bit slow initially but really ramped up. Apparently they fought in England on Friday too. Some cool aerial moves, there was a series of suicide dives that was great. The Rascalz have a sort of shoved moonsault that looked unreal. Darren Kearney did one of the most impressive feats of strengths I've ever seen, can't even explain it. Great match.

Calum Black v David Starr. Bit of a strange one back after intermission cause it was quite a slow match with not a lot of big spots so the crowd were unsure of themselves. Was also really stiff, lots of clotheslines, like a LOT! Decent match, crowd was Anti-Starr for a while. He cut a promo blaming Foxy for losing to Walter and taking shots at him for WWE from what I could tell, saying the only guy he wanted to fight isn't here. He says he wants Devlin now because the 'Import Killer' has become the Import. The crowd cheered when he talked about indie wrestling and he chastised them for being fickle

Valkyrie v Raven Creed. The crowd was hot for Raven all show, the Baddest B1tch from Ballincollig as they called her. She came out in crazy clown like face paint and attacked Valkyrie as she walked around the ring during her entrance. Some rough fighting outside the ring. Flexor stopped Valkyrie from using the belt and Foxy escorted him out. Of course while this was happening Raven had Valkyrie pinned which he never saw. Valkyrie pinned Raven with her feet on the ropes. Gutted Raven didn't win it back in Cork but understand it all the same. Was a great match and Raven is clearly a hometown hero. Flexor was entertaining and Valkyrie heeled it up good.

Pac v Speedball Mike Bailey. First time seeing Speedball. Dude is awesome, really entertaining and gifted in the ring. I was worried with All Out that Pac might go easy but that was far from the case. Amazing match, really well matched opponents. There was a particular moment where they got on the balcony and fought, Pac fell to the ground below and Speedball flipped off it onto him, was nuts. Pac hit a second rope tombstone and the Red Arrow is impressive as hell as always.

Hadn't been to an OTT show since Scrappermania 3, was great having it in Cork and hope they return soon. Attendance looked good, they could definitely have filled more if needs be. Can't speak to how the show was promoted in the run up cause I've been out of the city but can definitely see them having another massive show in Neptune.

Edit- bot43 beat me to it haha

Cherry_Cola

Nice one lads. CCW are active again on social media and seem to be teasing something for November 1st. Could it be a new wrestling war in Cork?!

ThePott

Saw this very interesting. Could be for a podcast or an online library or something just as easy. Intrigued to say the least though.
Still says no longer active on Twitter but who knows.

the eternal struggler

Not sure how "great" it is tbh. From everything I've heard and read from podcasts, twitter etc etc, that promotion was a running joke and the promoter is the same amongst all the Irish wrestlers. Even look at the Low Blows tweet today about the press conference thing. Fairly sure this will be the Courage of Cork.

ThePott

No one said Great. Whatever else I enjoyed a lot of CCW shows over the years. If it means another option for indie wrestlers in Ireland great. Maybe it's a farewell show, a relaunch, who knows. Regardless they were around for a lot longer than Courage so not sure it's an apt comparison.
As I said, I'm intrigued, if it means more wrestling in my locality, that's pretty cool. We'll see how it plays out.

bot43

CCWs last show had 30-40 people at it. The promoters name is dirt. Unless it’s an invasion on Phoenix angle it’s going nowhere imo.

B.A._Baracus

bot43 wrote: »

CCWs last show had 30-40 people at it. The promoters name is dirt. Unless it’s an invasion on Phoenix angle it’s going nowhere imo.

How is his name dirt?
I'm not sparking something here I geuinely have no clue whats going on

*edit*
I don't even know who the promoter is. Man I know nothing anymore :pac: