18th Annual Rumble, CWF Mid-Atlantic Wrestling (6 October 2018)
The house heats up when "TKO" Ted Ireland, Jr., enters the ring. From that entrance on, the 30-man rumble is atomic. Until this past weekend, I hated rumbles. A big part of that is the last rumbles I watched (or tried to watch) were in the 1970s. Back then TV cameramen shot the whole thing from a distance, so that we could see the whole ring and all the action - though in miniature (I had a 7- or 8-inch TV in my bedroom back then) - or else they jump-cut to the hot spots all around the ring, losing all sense of spatial and dramatic continuity.
On Saturday, I discovered the only way to watch a rumble is live and in person on the front row. You're too close to see everything, so you watch the action closest to you, essentially watching a different event from anybody else in the room. It's like going to a 3-ring circus - you watch the acts closer to you but have a general sense of what's happening further away. But there's a kind of continuity, too, because you're filtering everything through your own vantage point.
Despite reservations about rumbles, I went to this show because the buzz was that the annual rumble is the high point of the year - and because this is CWF Mid-Atlantic Wrestling (I'm a huge fan). I went alone, having exhausted the good will of friends willing to tag along just for the pleasure of my company and the chance to ask me (again), "You really like this?"
Like is too small a word. I love the way Southern rasslers fight - brutal, grunting, sweating. Most of these guys are from the area - central North Carolina - and have worked together previously.
The show saw the homecoming of TV wrestlers I hadn't seen for 11 or more years.
Lee Valiant (Handome Jimmy's son) and
Joey Silvia were on local TV wrestling well before I started this blog. Both can bleed on cue the way some actors are said to be able to shed tears. They look different now, a little balder, a little gaunter, but they still steam up my glasses. The show also brought
Nick Richards back to the ring after months out because Ethan Alexander Sharpe broke his fingers. You can bet Nick was quick to get his hands on Ethan - but so were a lot of people: Ethan may be the most reviled man at CWF Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. Even his tag team partner can barely contain his contempt for the weasel.
I shot almost continuously through this event but few images made the trip from my iPhone to my laptop for reasons unknown to me. I lost some good stuff, but I'll spare you the ones-that-got-away stories. The survivors I'm most happy about are the shots of TKO's machine-gun punches, Steve Greene's majestic belly, Ethan Alexander Sharpe's comeuppance at Nick Richards' hands, and Joey Silvia's over-the-top anguish.
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here.
Thanks. Mathieu Beaury now has a Carolina challenger.
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