Ordeal by Fire

BG East released Catalog 104.1 last Thursday (no, I don't get the decimal point either), and it's brimming with promising treats, half of which I have not yet seen. But I did see Demolition 17, a four-match masterpiece that's a worthy successor to the series' previous numbers. In my opinion, it's the best one yet and one of the company's best videos ever, possibly even THE best.

I reviewed the main event in these pages a couple of weeks ago. Guido versus Jake is every bit the stunner that you would expect it to be. Right next to it is another fine match: Jonny Firestorm's tactical demolition of rookie Nicholas Rush. I wrote the catalog copy for this match. Typically, a few minor things get changed between the copy I send and the copy I see online. Frankly, once it's out of my hands, I no longer consider a catalog description mine. What gets cut out or inserted is none of my business. But, boys, easy on the greengrocer's apostrophes, okay? (I mean, "LOT'S"?)

Away from the blog, sometimes I write as an advertiser, to sell the goods to others who might like them, whether I like them or not, but what I wrote about Demolition 17 is pretty much what I would have written for this blog, that is, my heart's truth on the matter, minus a few whimsical details like what I think my balls would think of Jonny's thick hairy forearms. For those few of you who might be interested, though, here's what I wrote about Jonny versus Nicholas in the original draft--or you can read the slightly bowdlerized version here:

In his first singles match, Nicholas Rush faces Jonny Firestorm. Fight Jonny Firestorm and, win or lose, you are officially a BG East wrestler. A match with Jonny at BGE is what pledgeship is in a fraternity. Even if you haven’t got the muscle and guile to beat the guy, and very few do, you have to have the balls to face him in the ring before anybody in the company troubles himself even to learn your name. Nicholas has the balls. At any rate, he had the balls until Jonny impetuously blindsided him and racked his nut-sack against the middle rope. That Jonny! What a guy! Jonny skips the formalities of initiation and rushes headlong into the hazing. He clubs Nicholas’s back with both fists, flattening him face first to the mat. Then he pulls the fledgling wrestler up by the scruff and chops the back of the kid’s head with his triceps. Nick careens into the ropes, where Jonny, a technician of traumatic injury, uses them to further torment the hapless newcomer. Not even a minute into Round 1, and it’s already a bad, bad day for young Nicholas Rush. 

Jonny looks almost bored as he pulps the rookie’s head in a scissors hold. Nicholas moans and feebly thrashes about as Jonny flexes his biceps for the camera and for the fans watching at home. His perfidy knowing no limits, Jonny grabs a top rope for elevation to ratchet up the pressure on Nicholas’s skull. Senseless cruelty excites some people, and silky white trunks do nothing to disguise how much Jonny relishes pulverizing poor Nicholas. “How does that mat taste? How does it taste!” Jonny barks out the question, while grinding the kid’s face to the mat. Cruelty like Jonny’s is both a talent and a hard-won achievement. His finesse and ingenuity in the art of pain never fail to impress. For some reason, Nicholas’s face becomes the main target of Jonny’s wrath, most obviously when Firestorm’s fingers snag the kid’s nostrils, eye sockets, and lips, as if Jonny intends to rip it off like a lucha mask. In this, Jonny pushes too far perhaps, because in a moment of extreme agony and desperation, Nicholas reaches up and rakes his fingernails across Jonny’s eyes, thus turning the tide of the match ... could it be? 

Nicholas Rush’s audacity in fighting back against Jonny Firestorm is swiftly chastised. Jonny slams the rookie’s forehead to the turnbuckle and then mounts the ropes to strangle him. Have no fear: the BGE cameraman pulls in tight on this, so we get the full impact of Jonny’s crotch to Nicholas’s face, while his fingers clutch the victim’s adam’s apple. There should be awards for shots like this one. The corner punishment continues as Jonny imprints Nicholas’s stomach with the sole of his boot. Then Jonny pulls Nick away from the corner by the hair and smashes the kid’s stomach to his knee. It’s probably best that Nicholas skipped breakfast and lunch on the day of the shoot because right away Jonny proceeds to clamp his legs on the kid’s midsection for a hellish bodyscissors. Twist and push as he may, Nicholas can do nothing to free himself. But the one thing he refuses to do is submit! 

Cute rookies should be warned in the future not to sign up for a match in the Demolition series without first noting the name of the series. Firestorm demolishes Rush with no more conscience than a Waffle House fry cook cracks eggs. Nicholas endures unbelievable pain and humiliation, while disregarding repeated opportunities to simply give up. The rookie’s resilience inspires even Jonny’s grudging respect, which does not, however, stop Jonny from continuing to rip the kid apart.  An iron claw to the abs finally convinces Nicholas to submit. But by now Jonny is too worked up to stop. Having ravaged the rookie’s face and stomach, next he targets his spinal column and legs in a wild, even exhilarating exercise of controlled fury, climaxing at the vertex of pro wrestling: a sleeper-choke finish, the two sweaty bodies, near exhaustion, locked together at the extreme of pro-wrestling vanquishment!