The debut show for Southern States follows their open combine show in May in where wrestlers from around the Southeast had impromptu matches in front of judges and invitations were made for tonight’s show. Promotion and match rules were posted on their page.
First time being at El Galaxy. It was portioned off from an old K-Mart where the garden/auto section was at. Very large and roomy. They do serve food and, of course, adult beverages. This is not the first time they have held wrestling shows here; PNLL runs here every couple of months.
Stan Robinson, Butterbean, and Darryl Hall are your referees. Liam Patrick is your ring announcer: I’ve seen him at other promotions in other capacities before. He did a decent job; a couple of miscues but I’ve seen seasoned announcers do worse.
3MP and Chip Day come out to the ring to start the show. 3MP insults the ring announcer and Duncan Mitchell’s mother. This brings out Mitchell and he confronts 3MP. He’s tired on 3MP’s insults and says that he had pinned Day at the tryout show. One of Mitchell’s better promos that I’ve witnessed. Mitchell wants to hear from Day if Day wants to face the Big Duncan Energy or not. Day says Mitchell needs to call his parents because Mitchell’s gonna have a concussion at the end of the night and Day will put Mitchell’s mother’s name in his mouth anyway.
1st match: NWA Superstar Sal Rinauro vs. Larry Lazard
Happy Sal is here tonight. I’ve seen Lazard at a couple of WGW shows, very energetic. Sal wants to have fun; Lazard wants to wrestle. Sal bends Lazard’s arm in a way it wasn’t suppose to go. Lazard wants to go up tempo and frustrates Sal, who isn’t so happy anymore. He stretches Lazard’s midsection. Lazard’s selling is much improved since I last saw him. Amazing comeback from Lazard with a spectacular kip up. Lazard stretches Sal, Sal works up, Lazard hits the lariat, very near fall. Sal rebounds and tries to cross face but Lazard reverses and Sal is close to tapping. Sal fights out, Lazard hits the back of the head for a near fall. Lazard crashes and burns again; Sal sets up and hits the kneeling DDT for the win at 13:57. Sal pulls Lazard to his feet, gives some words to him, shakes Lazard’s hand and leaves.
2nd match: “The Pure Ashhole” Ash Bennett vs. Aaron Dallas
Ring announcer had the wrong cue for the match, got it corrected. First time seeing Bennett in action. Dallas would be in consideration for rookie of the year, he’s still in his first year. Heel chicanery from Bennett, Dallas gets tired of it and tees off on Bennett. Leg sweep, roll through into a cross face for Dallas. Bennett has to rake the eyes to get out. Bennett drapes the throat of Dallas over the top rope. Crowd rallies to Dallas, he fires up. Bennett tries another submission, Dallas powers him over to get out. Dallas pins Bennett via a DVD at 9:21.
3rd match: “The Ripper” Tre Shaw and Eric “The World” Walker vs. The All-Star Special (William Huckaby and Hold My Beer Hanson)
A.S.S. comes out to the Cupid Shuffle with the crowd dancing along with it, Hanson has two left feet. Walker in full asshole mode for the match; racking my memory for the last time I’ve seen Walker in action. Walker fights through several A.S.S. double teams and makes the tag to Shaw and they isolate Hanson. Spicoli driver from Shaw for a near fall, nicely done. Rock Bottom from Hanson creates the separation for the hot tag to Huck who unloads on Shaw. Walker sneaks in and superkicks Huck. Shaw wants to do a move on Huck; Walker blind tags, Shaw wasn’t’ happy. Walker turns around and into an attack from Hanson and Huck cleans up the rest for the win at 8:10.
4th match: Proc “the Croc” Johnston vs. Lamar Diggs
Heavyweight battle for this match: “Where the big boys play!”. Proc being the heel for this. Diggs busts out a drop kick, damn! An illegal throat thrust puts the heat on Diggs. A spine buster from Proc got major air, but only a two count. Proc rushes, Diggs dodges. Corner splash, then a Samoan drop, and then a leg drop for a two count for Diggs. Diggs sets up, Proc dodges and lays Diggs out with a lariat from hell for the win at 5:56. Big boy hits in this match.
5th match: Duncan Mitchell vs. “All Business” Chip Day with 3MP
A new nickname for Day, he was due for a new one. A lot of social media interaction happened during the tryout show and this show. They run at each other, Day kicks Duncan down. Day goes for a vertical, Duncan squirms out and almost school boys’ day. Duncan sets up; Day sees this and rolls out of the ring. Duncan follows, MP runs interference, allowing Day to attack. All Day, all the time now. Duncan’s punch drunk but fighting back; he lands a sling blade for the comeback. Day tries for a flip, Duncan flips all the way over and onto his feet. MP grabs the leg for the distraction, allowing Day to finish off Duncan at 7:54.
Special announcement: SS will be at Southern Fried Gaming Expo and will be back at El Galaxy July 24th.
6th match: Tever Aeon and The Creeps (Irving West and Andey Ripley) vs. Zamir Zuriel and The Nawfside Heroes (Shooter Gabe and Jose Manuel)
The lights literally went out for this match, they will wrestle in the near dark, which is pretty perfect for Aeon. Lights are back on at about the 2:30 mark. Gabe takes the early heat. Gabe wants the smoke from Ripley, who obliges. Gabe reverses a single leg crab from West and locks in an ankle lock, west makes the ropes. Gabe can’t capitalize and the heat’s back on him. Ripley ducks the head and Gabe makes the tag to Jose. Tever spooks him and Jose tags out to Zamir. Aeon directing traffic on Zamir. Things break down and Aeon gets a one on one with Jose and disposes of him in short order at the time of 10:44. The ending seemed a bit rushed.
Diggs comes out and wants another piece of Proc and calls him out. Proc comes out; he’s in street clothes. Diggs runs out and they are fighting out in the floor. Referees and talent spill out from the back to try and break it up. They fight to the back and back into the building from the side door. A.S.S. gets Diggs to the back. Proc says that he’s now 2-0 on Diggs and will see Diggs at the Gaming Expo in July.
7th match: AWOL with Taliaferro vs. Keelin Cole
Keelan’s very green, AWOL’s been making waves. He’s wrestling barefoot and being arrogant, playing with his food type of arrogant. Very quick match with AWOL winning at? Whoops, I forgot to start my clock, it was only a couple of minutes. Geter walks in the front door, AWOL goes to attack, Geter shrugs him off and throws him into the ring. Geter knocks AWOL out and almost nonchalantly, walks out of the ring (See the combine report for the backstory on this). Taliaferro’s in the ring with the drinking horn. He pours some liquid into the mouth of AWOL and AWOL does a PCO and resurrects. AWOL giggles and they leave the ring.
8th match: Sir Knight, Merrik Donovan vs. DMC
I’m familiar with Donovan, DMC not so much. They have a stare off. DMC wants to know who’s collecting his robe, last time Goodman got it. He was encouraged to get it again; DMC says not you again. He finally gives the robe to a little kid in the crowd with the admonishment to keep it safe. Fantastic stuff. Some good shit to open the match: Donovan’s being very physical on DMC, nice looking front clip. Beautiful drop kick from DMC, leads to snake eyes into a belly to back for a near fall. Great looking power slam from Donovan. Very even match, but Donovan’s getting testy at DMC. DMC feeds him a high knee. DMC in firm control, hitting high impact moves. Donovan catches a flying DMC and plants him for a near fall. DMC with a couple of kicks to the face of Donovan for a near fall. DMC slaps the face of Donovan; Donovan slaps the spit out of DMC. Donovan’s gone into berserker mode on DMC, gets a near fall. DMC’s quickness pays off. Draping DDT from DMC gets him the win at 10:44. After the match, DMC tells Donovan to tell Joe he says hey, gives Donovan a couple of slaps to the face, and leaves.
3MP’s in the ring with the mic, and says that DMC needs to run over to 3MP. And mic drop.
Main event: The Exotic Youth (Zach Mosley and Bryce Cannon) vs. Terry Yaki and Jay Lucas
EY has some words for Goodman on their way to the ring. Yaki and Lucas get the hero’s welcome from the crowd. Mosley and Lucas start off, good sequence where Mosely tries to get out of the headlock, Lucas grabs the ear to re-apply it. Mosley’s upset and tags in Cannon, Lucas tags in Yaki. Yaki wants the polo off of Cannon. Cannon gets pissed and makes the mistake of rushing in and pays for that. Innovative double team on Cannon. Mosley gets in on it and he gets rocked. Opposite side topes then backsplashes onto EY. Then dueling missile dropkicks in the ring. Mosley in the Tree of Woe, Yaki goes for a drop kick, Mosley shows off his ab strength and Yaki misses underneath. Cannon grabs the legs and make a wish on the ring post. Cannon uses one of his polos to choke Yaki. He hands the second polo to Mosley to continue the choking. Hope spot for Yaki, Mosley sneaks to the other side to pull Lucas off the apron to prevent the tag. Yaki creates another hope spot and he gets the hot tag to Lucas who body blocks both EY. Corner to corner sets up the EY doing harm to each other, Lucas gets a near fall. Mosley fights out of a double team and kicks Lucas out of the ring, EY double team Yaki and wow! Yaki kicked out. Thought that was the end. EY mistake leads to a face double team, Cannon just breaks it up. Mosely gets pinned at 14:08 when Yaki gets him with a hurricanrana.
EY offer their hands and they shake and hug for mutual respect. EY raise their hands and then deliver stereo nut shots to Yaki and Lucas. Larry Lazard runs out with a chair to chase of EY before they can do more damage.
Goodman and Jabari said their match at the combine was better than this and I wonder how; this match was fantastic.
Overall, a damn good debut show for SSP. First match could have shaved a minute or two off, but I know nothing. IMO, you want things to happen in a show to make you want to come back to the next show to see if wrongs were righted or to see how something plays out. I believe that they hit all the points on this, and I want to come back to see what happens next.
Good contrast in styles not only between matches, but in the matches themselves. Cannon and Mosley are basically having must see matches right now.
Yes, after the show, I got two black guys mixed up. There’s a couple of excuses I could use, but I won’t. I embarrassed myself, which is par for the course.
Again, IMO, content has almost caught up to personalities aspect of, at least on the local level, what drives the shows. Content was created to match what the personalities were doing.
Over the last several years, the local scene has gone from basically every promoter wanting to do away with whatever perceived competition there was, to a level of basic cooperation where I wouldn’t have been surprised to have seen Brandon Whatley come out during the main event to attack Jay Lucas at some point.
