Late response from me, but I believe this was the show where I called in and brought up the Inter Species Wrestling event I was attending on the 23rd. So allow me to share some thoughts/news from this.
I thought it was a fun show overall, with my biggest negative being the pacing. They had a big Food Fight match that required laying a tarp over the ring mat, then rolling up the tarp and cleaning up around ringside. Then the main event One Million Blocks Death Match (which was likely one million LEGOs or more given how small they were) required a lot of setup before hand. So it was basically two intermissions. When I got home at about 1 AM, I still wanted to see Dynamite from that night (the episode that opens with Bryan Danielson vs. Dustin Rhodes I think), and that remains such a well-paced show.
The main event with all of the LEGOs, a six-way elimination match, was won by Bastion Snow, an ISW character dressed like a snow crab. He lost his mask by the end of it and revealed himself as Canadian indie vet Cecil Nyx. He and the five other wrestlers (Jeff Cannonball, Addy Starr, Lucky Thurteen, Oren Veidt, and Kennedi Copeland) all put each other over and thanked the crowd afterward. It was a wild, dumb, funny, entertaining match to me.
Another standout match for me and the section of fans I found myself sitting with (all of us past Chikara fans) was a 4-way with four Chikara alums: Hallowicked, Boomer Hatfield, Green Ant, and Razerwyng. Great lucha action that got over well with this crowd. Frightmare and Jigsaw were also on this show in separate matches.
Unfortunately, it was revealed several days later that Hallowicked tested positive for COVID-19. Breakthrough case from the sounds of it as he said he’s vaccinated and wears a mask outside the ring (in addition to inside). First things first, I took a COVID swab test this weekend and it came back negative. I was put at ease before this after seeing several other wrestlers tweet that they’ve tested negative as well (including a couple of the wrestlers in his match). Nearly every fan in this small building (the H20 Wrestling Center in Williamstown, NJ) wore a mask as well. I had heard from ISW directly that Hallowicked may have contracted it a few days before the show and kept his distance from most of the wrestlers, and unlike other wrestlers he was not out amongst the crowd during one of the intermissions. So I say precautions still pay off and the science still works.
Best thing about this night to me was running into one of my longtime friends, Barbed Wire City co-director John Philapavage. He produces IWTV’s The Life Of series, and he’s been running production on a lot of IWTV streams recently, including this one and the shows H20 ran this past weekend (including last night’s Destiny card). Great catching up with him. He said things for this ISW show kind of came together late, including not getting lower thirds from the promoter.
