House of pain - lethal lottery St Anns church Nottingham January 28th 2017
The venue here is a church hall - nice retro feel for myself in attending event at a venue like this, not since the old IWF shows in Gateshead have I been to one. It's looking like a decent crowd, a fair amount of youngsters - that's always a good thing when it's advertisement said it was 100% family friendly.
Now, I know this blog is called pints, piledrivers and bus replacement services, there's no alcohol at the venue - again, with it being a family friendly show, this could be a good thing - especially as a lot of folk have driven here. So, for the purposes of this event, I'm rebranding it coffee, codebreakerers and completely misunderstanding Google maps (walking around trying to find the place initially - hey, it's my first time in Nottingham, gimme a break) there's plenty of time for the pint/pub portion afterwards
The venue is about 3/4 the size of the innesfree back in Newcastle - I'll be honest that's about the best frame of reference I can come up with, my estimates of potential house sizes aren't the best (my career as an estate agent beckons), and it is pretty much full - save a few seats that were reserved and not used. Lighting wise 6 full yet filtered square ceiling lights. not filtered as in coloured, but softened to a nice mellow yet functional level. It works here because it suits the venue, it's pretty much full, and the ring is fairly large - there's not much chance of focus being lost.
The ring is a good 2ft extra along each side than the one the I'm used to seeing at home promotions. The ring posts appear to have a little bit of an inward lean on them, I'm not sure if that's intentional or not. Real ropes as opposed to cables, good to see that's a tradition being kept, even if they do tend to loosen over time.
The ring announcer and ref are out with the extremely popular Joey Cement (I might be wrong, but it seems like he's one of the young trainees who's on ring crew - one thing is for certain, he's well over) to give us an introduction to what is happening tonight, they know nothing. Anyone can be involved and anything can happen. The bell rings, and Joey Cement rolls up the announcer for the quick win!
Steven Harris comes out with Harley. They are not well liked here, and it looks like the feeling is mutual.
Sensational Saj Malik is his opponent for this singles match.
Steven is trying to use his technical skills and power against the sensational one, and keep the pace slow. That's not happening straight away, lots of head scissors and fast paced defence / reversals to start from Saj. Harley's keeping her presence felt on the outside with some well placed interference and vocal interaction with the audience.
Steven would eventually get the better of Saj, in a contest that made great use of all of the space in and around the ring. Great (formal) opener.
Six man tag action up next with Sam Spencer, a guy In a tux who's name sounded like Theodore DiamondAnd Harley (with Steven Harris) vs Danny Thomas, Karl Brown and one half of the House of Pain tag champs, BFD.
Harris is ejected at the start of this one. Harley and Harris aren't happy about this in the slightest.
Lots of good interaction with the crowd from the heels
Harley giving a great showing, the fact that she's the only woman in the match isn't phasing her at all
Eyerake on the rope by Diamond and a side suplex right out of Dino bravo 1989 playbook. Nice to see these still being executed so well.
Spencer is an absolute beast, I wouldn't be surprised to see him on more cards soon. So is BFD - who finished it for his team with a black hole slam
Next up: Princess Charlie Logan vs Vegan powered Nick Hendricks
The Vegan as a heel is a bit of an odd one that I've never quite got. The condescending preachy aspect isn't something I've ever encountered in real life situations I've not been able to just walk away from. That being said, this guy wears it well. The obnoxious smirk and dismissal of his opponent today is enough to reinforce his place in this match.
Fantastic big guy vs small woman match, story told really well. With Charlie going over with a roll up
Danny Chase and Sam Spencer are out for the next randomly drawn match - Disco Dan is the opponent
Disco is trying to get chase to dance, and it looks like it might happen
The heels bail and disco brings in Princess Logan and half the audience in to cha cha slide.
Then I don't know exactly what happened, but I might have slipped into an alternative universe where Chase and Spencer did the "time of my life" routine from Dirty Dancing. Full routine including the lift!
Danny Chase gets the win after retaliating to a sneak behind trip and roll up attempt from Disco Dan. Apparently "nobody puts Danny in the corner". The beating he gave the Disco Cat showed us why.
I really hope someone was taping that cause that was so god damned funny it was unreal
Interval - some nice merchandise here - no xls though, so I'm gonna have to go online..
Concrete, the announcer and referee come back to the ring for the second half.
Our second half opener is a tag team match set for one fall.
Syntax is out first - the masked man is massively popular here.
James Stewart is his partner, and does not garner the same reaction. It looks like we have a heel and face team brought together by the draw here
Opposition provided by the other half of the House of Pain tag champs Joseph Starr and Tommy Taylor
Great fundamentals from all 4. Both teams are not getting along.
Starr and Taylor the first to crack with Starr forarming Taylor in the face. Taylor would get revenge when Stewart tagged in, throw syntax out and Taylor took the opportunity to level Starr and dragged Stewart on top of him for the pin costing himself and star the match. Excellent reinforcement of Taylor's recent heel turn.
Nathan Nyx with the Supermodel Visage - or should I say against...
The banter between these two is awesome as they please not to have to fight each other. A double lay down/pin was their first attempt at getting out of it.
Multiple refusals to fight insue until the threat of a double head shave from Stixx' was put on the table.
A reluctant square up with a pinky promise of no face shots starts a pretty good match between these two. The promise held up until visage had his Japanese style paper fan broken amongst the antics.
Visage ends it with a sneaky kick after coming out of a make up hug. Visage is highly entertaining, and Nyx definitely held his own.
Our main event of the night is a 6 man scramble match for the House of Pain Title
The world warrior Juken
Ruthless Bjorn Jones,
House of Pain champion Kyle Kingsley
Timberwolf
The Righteous Joseph Conners
G-wiz Garrett Bond
Highlights - dives, great chain work, towers of doom, Conners going ape on timberwolf leaving him a back redder than the ring skirts after a chopping match with Ric Flair
Plenty more too - all of these guys have great futures ahead of them.
Jukin over with an insane looking cross calf hold German suplex.
All in all this was a great show - lots of very promising young talent here. Stixx and Juken are doing a fantastic job giving these guys the building blocks for great careers.
Back to the town centre
The post show pint at the lord Roberts. Kopek stout - dark and smoky enough to satisfy.
It was like nectar. The pub isn't badly priced, but artisan facial hair virus is rampant here and the bouncer looks like a cross between porkpie from Desmond's (fuck me I'm dating myself with that reference) and an American 1950s portrayal of a gangster
I like it here - but I'm not shaving while I can remember what the locals look like.
Supplemental- robbing bastards award goes to the Six Barrels, where a pint of snecklifter cost £4.10. I don't know when snecklifter became a craft brew!
Quick tip for anyone going from Nottingham to Lincoln - in the winter, the first train is mid afternoon. The line is closed half of the day for some reason.
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