A Few Late ‘09/Early ‘10 HWA Matches

Ok, so I’ve been keeping tabs on the HWA the past couple of months and noticed something … they can go from really good to really bad in the span of a few weeks, as evidenced by the 12/19/09 and 1/29/10 shows (both of which were good shows) and this past week’s Wednesday show (2/17/10, which was downright hideous). The Wednesday night shows are held on the fourth floor of an ancient opera house with paint peeling off the ceiling, plastic over the windows, and a eerie staleness in the air. So here are some notes on a few matches that have stuck out in my mind over the past month or so.

Norwood Street Fight: Brian Beech vs. Ron Mathis (World War 3, 12/19/09) - 3
Beech legitimately dislocated his shoulder in the first 90 seconds after throwing a simple punch. Mathis showed some fire but didn’t really impress me all that much. The match featured your standard brawl in the hallway with rubber trash cans and assorted weaponry. There was no apron on the ring and from our vantage point in the second row we could clearly see Beech do a blade job and then throw said blade under the ring. Mathis was playing the heel and really made you hate him. Not so much because of his character, but because of his shoddy ring work. The finish was Mathis executing a giant spot on Beech off a turnbuckle through an ancient looking table. Afterwards, Beech cut a promo about how he was leaving now that he lost. Good riddance.

Aaron Extreme vs. N8 Flames (Sorg Opera House, 1/27/10) - 2
These two are the scrawniest dudes I’ve ever seen wrestle on a live show. Extreme is so tiny that if he went on a diet, he would go from skin and bone to just bone. Flames spelling his name like that is just an insult. I did some research on Aaron and found out that he used to work for that terrible fed that I ripped apart back in the spring of ‘08 (whose name I won’t mention because it would only inflate their egos). They botched a simple slam and damn near killed each other on a few highspots. They did what they could and didn’t impress a soul. This was like what it would be if Stevie Wonder had ever led Ray Charles through an art museum (think about that for a moment).

Four Way TLC Match: Irish Airborne vs. The Hybrids vs. Drake Younger & Scotty Vortekz vs. Aeroform (All or Nothing, 1/29/10) - 6
Wild match here with Drake piledriving one of the Hybrids on top of the bar in the first few minutes of the match. I saw the Hybrids in a four-way elimination bout back in December and they brought nothing to the table. This is the first I’ve seen of Aeroform as a team and they came across as a bit spotty but fun to watch. Drake made this match. Just killing people with chair shots and brawling all over the ring area. The false finish in which they eliminated the two non-HWA teams from the match was stupid. The final act saw a few table spots and the Airborne retain the HWA tag belts, which are actually replica WCW world title belts. If this ever sees the light of day on a DVD release, it’s worth at least one watch, maybe two if you dig Drake Younger like I do.

King Vu vs. “Madness” Chris Hall (Sorg Opera House, 2/17/10) - 1
This started off fine but once the ref got bumped in the first few minutes, things quickly deteriorated faster than New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They brawled on the floor and one of them got shoved into a chair and nearly took out some obsese girl and her infant child. The whole situation pretty much filled the room with a weird vibe and numerous lariat and spinebuster sequences bored the crowd to death. The finish should have come after a giant superplex from the top rope but no, it came on a shitty roll-up from Vu. Another mind-boggling aspect of the match was the fact that the referee laid on the mat for a good ten minutes without any of the other referees coming out to carry him to the back or take control of the match. Seeing a match like this really makes me re-think the posssibility of going to their weekly live shows again.