IWA East Coast "Are You Ready" 9/20/11

1. Mickie Knuckles vs. Jay Bly – 2
2. Mad Man Pondo & 2 Tuff Tony vs. Trik Nasty & T.J. Phillips – 0

Apparently Bly is a substitute for whoever was supposed to face Mickie in the first place. He’s got Mario mushrooms on his tights and comes out wearing a Family Guy t-shirt. Guess he couldn’t decide which franchise to rep. Horrible botch on a Irish Whip and the follow up move, whatever it was supposed to be. I’m sort of surprised that Mickie took as much offense from this scrub as she did. Nothing too exciting here. The tag match was thirty seconds of nothing as the only purpose it served was to set up a six-man tag for later.

3. Matt Conrad vs. Bulldozer - 2
When I saw Bulldozer listed on the show, my immediate thought was of Bulldozer Matt Tremont. I couldn’t have been any further off. The Bulldozer here is a huge 300-pounder dressed in a black singlet with a yellow stripes on it and a black and yellow mask. I began wondering if he got his name by bulldozing buffet dinners at Golden Corral. Conrad is probably about a third of the size of his opponent and took a hell of a beating. Highlights here were Conrad getting launched through the railing and then Bulldozer doing a huge running flip just squashing Conrad in the corner.

4. Jason Gory vs. Alex Colon vs. Adam Cole vs. Façade vs. Ophidian - 3
This was one of those scramble matches that most every fed likes to have with the high flyers. This has quite the interesting array of talent involved as there’s guys from ROH, CZW, and CHIKARA. Colon and Gory were pretty much afterthoughts as most of the match was centered around Façade, Cole, and Ophidian. Cole and Ophidian really didn’t seem like they fit in at all in front of the redneck crowd. Façade always seems to be quite content to get by on just his wild offense. Couple decent things here, mostly from Façade, but it broke down too fast in the first act, an area which should have been used to build up to the high flying moves, and quickly went to act three. Sort of like starting with winter and 20 degree weather and one month later jumping right into summer and 80 degree weather.

5. Zac Vincent vs. Viper - 2
Any hope I had for this match immediately diminished when Vincent came out dressed in ultra short black tights and boots with frilly things all over them. Does Viper even care at all? He was completely no selling chops from Vincent and noticeably chewing gum. He exuted as much expression than a couch cushion. Vincent is so frightengly thin that he makes anorexics look fat. Vincent hit a couple nice kicks and did a wacky dance which led the hillbilly announcers proclaim that he was Native American. For the record, one of these announcers sounds almost exactly like the character Dickie Bennett from the TV show Justified. No reason these guys should ever wrestle again … ever.

6. Jason Kincaid vs. Vance Desmond - 3
Two IWA East Coast originals squaring off in this one. Desmond is obviously the heel since he comes out with a rather large dude named Woody Numbers. Kincaid I saw on the last IWA East Coast show I reviewed of theirs against Chris Hero and I wasn’t very impressed with him. Hero was able to guide him through to a passable match but here, he looked sloppy with bad timing on a couple spots. One major negative he has going for him though is his look. While it is recognizable, it just completely screams silly with the dreads, the mountain man beard, the blue singlet with stars, and the fuzzy boots. Desmond seemed content just to get by on being the heel alone. He exerted no extra energy to rile up the crowd and really get them to hate him. The finish here was ripped right off from the Warrior/Rude match at WrestleMania V, but this time with Numbers holding the foot of Kincaid. Not a good match by any means but better than some of the other stuff on this show.

7. Mad Man Pondo, 2 Tuff Tony, & X-Pac vs. Omega Aaron Draven, Trik Nasty, & T.J. Phillips - 4
Pondo, Tony, and X-Pac are about as strange a tandem as you can find. I’ll admit it, I sort of enjoyed this match. Granted, it wasn’t much as the heels were pretty generic but the crowd just loved X-Pac, who didn’t look too bad. Pondo used his usual assortment of chairs and stop signs much to the crowd’s delight and Tony did a couple flips that weren’t too bad. The heel control section on Tony was unbelievably flat and Draven moved around the ring pretty rigid, taking a bump and then going right on to the next thing. The finish was exactly as you though, X-Pac won with the X-Factor. I’m feeling generous with the score on this, so I’ll bump it up an extra point.

8. Sami Callihan vs. Necro Butcher – No DQ, No Count Out Match - 6
A good, all out, tear the building up brawl is exactly what this show needed and that’s exactly what we got. Really though, could anything less be expected from these two? Callihan does some early stalling and running from Necro but after Necro finally catches up with him, the fun begins as they just fight from one end of the building to the other throwing the big brown plastic trash cans at each other, Necro teasing a running powerbomb through the concessions table, a fight out into the hallway. My favorite part was the great exchange consisting of chops and headbutts they had at the top of the bleachers. The way Sami worked over Necro’s rickety old knees by using chairs and wet floor signs was great. The match gets dinged a point for the rather abrupt finish with Necro winning with a small package. I would have liked to have seen Necro get some sort of a comeback. That point aside, this match is worth checking out at least once.