Wrestlers Sharp at Nanaimo Show
Thanks to the Nanaimo News Bulletin!
Nobody had an easy match Saturday night in Nanaimo.
The Extreme Canadian Championship Wrestling event at Beban Park’s Centennial Building featured a series of highly competitive fights as all the wrestlers looked sharp.
Nanaimo’s Ice and his Pop Culture tag-team partner Bishop won an action-packed main event, defeating Kyle O’Reilly and El Phantasmo two falls to one in a best-two-out-of-three-falls match.
The two other Nanaimo grapplers were also winners, as Scott Steel was the last man standing after the battle royal finale and B.J. Laredo picked up a win over a masked opponent.
The local wrestlers appreciated the support from their hometown fans.
“It felt great,” Laredo said. “The crowd was great; we had a really, really good turnout.”
In the semi-main event, ECCW champ Sid Sylum defended his belt, pinning Artemis Spencer in a fast-paced affair. All other champions defended their titles, too, as Azeem the Dream beat Steel for the National Wrestling Alliance Canadian junior title; Tenille Tayla survived a triple-threat match against Nicole Matthews and K.C. Spinelli; and the Cremator handled Lumberjack Bubba to retain the Vancouver Island championship.
In the Canadian junior heavyweight title match, Steel was cheated out of a fair fight. First Azeem framed Laredo to get the “Hardcore Cowboy” barred from ringside, then Azeem’s manager the Natural shoved Steel off the top rope so the Dream could steal the win.
“They ejected my partner and cheated for the win,” Steel said. “You can’t do much about that, the ref can’t see everything all the time.”
In the Vancouver Island championship match, Bubba used low blows and eye gouges to stay in it, but was eventually out-matched by the Cremator. The 6-foot-10 monster used a chokeslam to score the pin.
Laredo’s match was a back-and-forth affair, but Cowboy hit his jackhammer finisher to defeat his pink-clad mystery opponent.
“It was tough to come up with a game plan, but I was fairly well prepared; I trained hard,” Laredo said.
Next up was Sylum versus Spencer and the challenger got the crowd behind him in no time with a high-flying moveset. The wily champ slowed down Spencer, however, and used his Tombstone piledriver finishing manoeuvre to secure the win.
The ECCW Supergirls champion Tayla had a tough time in her bout as Matthews and Spinelli teamed up for the early part of the match. Tayla ended up isolating Spinelli, then kicked and pinned the rookie.
The main event started with a bang as Ice and Bishop were on fire from the opening bell and squashed their opponents to score the first fall after just a few minutes. O’Reilly and Phantasmo cheated their way back into the match, though, and scored what should have been an illegal pin by locking arms for leverage. In the decisive third fall, Bishop obliterated El Phantasmo with a clothesline, then kicked O’Reilly out of the ring so Ice could lock in a Sharpshooter submission and force Phantasmo to tap out.
“We felt it,” Ice said. “Pop Culture was on, Nanaimo was on.”
He said he and Bishop went into the match expecting dirty tactics from the opposition.
“They tried to kill our momentum and kill our spirit,” Ice said. “But Nanaimo knows better than to let that spirit be killed.”
Moments after the main event, all the other wrestlers ran out and started beating each other up in the battle royal. The final three ended up being Steel, Sylum and Azeem and the two bad guys wasted no time teaming up on Steel. Sylum accidentally eliminated his friend, however, then rushed at Steel in frustration. Steel simply ducked and pulled down the top rope to send the champ spilling over onto the floor.
Ending the night victorious, Steel said, will give him momentum.
“Knowing that I eliminated the top dog in ECCW, I’m going to push that much harder,” he said.
He credited the crowd support for helping him outlast the other wrestlers in the battle royal.
“The fans gave me the energy to do it,” he said.
sports@nanaimobulletin.com
