This past Saturday night, I had the opportunity to attend All-American Pro Wrestling’s biggest show ever. Entitled “Main Event,” it featured four major stars making their debut. Matt Cross, Colt Cabana, El Generico, and PAC drove down from Chicago to Marion, Illinois. To give you some perspective, Marion is 5 ½ hours away from the city and is closer to places like St. Louis, Nashville, and Memphis. A number of firsts took place this weekend. First time on Amtrak. First time in truly southern Illinois. First time seeing a wrestling show in a motorcycle warehouse. First time a wrestling show literally ran out of chairs. However, in a weekend of firsts, a very familiar story seemed to be repeated all over again.
To walk into the on the day of the show at 8:00a.m. and see it completely empty was quite the sight. No hint of what was to come could be seen except for various parts of the ring stacked in one corner of the warehouse. A whopping six people, including promoter, marketing director, and technical people, put this all together. In many ways, putting a ring is like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. Watching the boards and posts and taped rope become the ring really lends a lot of perspective about paying dues and how wrestlers pay them by putting rings together. What came across in this time was a passion for what they were doing. A lot of positive and negative things can be said about the show itself. I’ll save that for the DVD review to come in a few weeks. If nothing else, their wanting the show to succeed and come across professionally led a positive vibe which could be felt by wrestlers and fans alike.
What separates AAPW from a number of organizations is television. “Collision” airs every other Saturday on a local ABC affiliate (reviews of which can be found covered by Ron Freeman on this site, click here to find them all), and they have been centering the broadcasts around this major show. It was refreshing to see how all the storylines came together and got blown off. There was a lot of buzz about how well the show would do considering the largest attendance wasn’t ever more than 150 people.
Considering some fans were already arriving before noon (show started seven hours later), we all should have known what was to come. It was a pretty incredible sight as around 400 people overcrowded the warehouse to witness this show. How did they fit into 236 chairs? Well, they didn’t. There were literally people hanging from the rafters (or motorcycle shelves depending on your point of view) and standing all about. Note to AAPW: Get more chairs! But the crowd seemed pretty behaved for the most part. Everyone, staff and fans included, seemed to be surprised at the incredible turn-out. Clearly the marketing and bringing in of guest stars worked.
The actual show produced a number of matches of varying quality. Matt Cross was a surprise opponent for a wrestler named Pokerface in the second match. In this atmosphere, Cross came off like a star and did a great job making Pokerface looking like a bigger star. I loved the booking here and thought Cross was used to great effect. The two matches that came previous to PAC and Generico were not exactly matches to go out of your way to see. The five way featured some rather husky wrestlers and a cruiserweight named Jay Spade. Not that the match was terrible, but it was definitely on the sloppy side. My gut feeling was the match could have been the worst on the card, so when it wasn’t, I probably ended up enjoying it significantly more. Then a tag match featuring the Mississippi Madman took place. Oh boy. This match had a lot to be desired. Understandably, AAPW had to juggle the tag division on this night because their champions could not be at the show. Unfortunately, the match we got was easily the worst match of the night. On the plus side, the bar was set extremely low for PAC and Generico.
If you close your eyes and picture a PAC and Generico, you’d probably get something similar to what they did at “Main Event.” They’re clearly two of the best at what they do in the ring. To have it happen in a small Illinois town in front of 400 people was something special. Just the night before, they got stuck in a cockamamie four way in front of 200 people. 24 hours later, they had an amazing contest which could have easily been rated ****-****1/4. For a virgin crowd that didn’t seem used to this kind of action, they were totally into things and gave both men a standing ovation immediately following. It was an amazing way to go into intermission as there was no way to top what these two did.
On a side note, I wanted to mention how much I respect PAC as an individual and performer. Not getting him for an interview was personally my biggest disappointment of the weekend, but he could not have been a nicer, more humble individual to the wrestlers, fans, staff and me. Someday, I hope I can get PAC for an interview, but just know that he will be making an appearance on another podcast which let’s face it, is probably better 99% of the other wrestling podcasts out there.
Post-intermission I didn’t really get a chance to see as much of the card as I wanted to for various reasons. Because of how large the crowd was, it was hard to find a good space to watch the show, and the long of day of being at the building started catching up with me. From what I saw, Eric Wayne and Colt Cabana had a solid/basic wrestling match. Cabana used a lot of his familiar tricks, and he crowd ate it up. Wayne is actually a third generation star. AAPW seems pretty high on him moving forward, and I’ll be interested to see how he develops in the coming months. I also witnessed most of the spectacle that was the Kevin Hunsperger versus Mike Masters contest.
For those who don’t know, Hunsperger is a local journalist/celebrity who’s done a lot for the community. He also happens to be a play-by-play man for AAPW. Unlike a lot of people in his position. Hunsperger clearly takes what he does for AAPW seriously. Everything he did before and long after the show would lead you to believe that what I said in the previous statement is true. From being there early to set-up to calling the first half of the show to then wrestling? Lots of respect should be given to him for his hard work. While the match may not have been a five star classic, it was certainly better executed than a lot of other matches featuring announcers or celebrities.
The last thing I needed in my life was another independent company to follow. However, AAPW earned my interest as a viewer and wrestling blogger. Before leaving Marion, I informed AAPW officials of my intention to come back later this year whenever they have another big show. AAPW is far from a perfect wrestling company, but based on the Saturday show and the hard work put in by their staff, they are definitely a company worth watching out for in 2012. If this company can bring in over 400 people on a freezing Saturday night with football going on, then they have the potential to be a solid independent wrestling company. And considering the landscape of the business, we could certainly use more of those.
I was strongly considering finding a way to get myself to see the last show at the old ECW arena. After what I’ve seen live from AAPW and on iPPV from Evolve, I have no regrets about my decision. I had the chance to see some of my favorite performers in front of a great group of fans who cared about what was going on and showed this fact by making noises with their mouths. Once I get the DVD and the entire run of the first season, I’ll be able to speak more on some of the matches featuring the local talent, including the main event championship match. In summation, I congratulate AAPW for putting on a great show…
Now what’s next?
For more information on AAPW, including pre-orders for “Main Event” and upcoming shows, check out their website. Just like everyone else in the world, they have a Facebook and Twitter. Also, you can check out this promotion for free by watching their television show on Vimeo.