I’ve had a busy few days. On Friday afternoon I went to see Spider-Man with Dave and Groves. I think I’ll have to see it again. Groves wasn’t exactly in the most sociable mood (in hindsight I can hardly blame him, what with the travelling and the reverse culture shock and all), the screen at the UGC was full of talkers and rustlers and cellphones ringing, and it was a shitty day weather-wise anyway. It was good - parts of it were excellent - but I didn’t really enjoy it as much as I could have, so it would be unfair of me to give it any kind of review.

Yesterday, I made my way out to Tallaght for the Irish Whip Wrestling matinee show. It was bound to happen; I got hopelessly lost in a maze of roundabouts and motorways, alighted from the bus at the wrong stop and had to hike along the hard shoulder of the Tallaght by-pass to a petrol station to ask for directions. Lucky for me the people there were nice and ten minutes later, after negotiating a series of pathways and tunnels, I was at the National Basketball Arena, with (unbeknownst to me at the time) 20 minutes to spare until the opening bell.

While waiting, I was struck by both a) the lack of people in attendence (I had virtually the whole bleacher section beside the entrance area to myself) and b) the disproportionate number of children in attendance. And I don’t mean teenagers: there were at least thirty kids there less than five years old, running amok in groups, without a parent in sight. Boy, would they be in for a surprise later on…

Without going into too much boring detail, and too much criticism (since it was a wonder they were able to plan a show like this in the first place, let alone run it), it was okay. A bit too much old-school stuff, pandering to the (miniscule) crowd, a lot of mismatching (for instance, Mike Modest - a great wrestler but a small guy - against the barely-recognisable PN News, a huge man about four times his size) which didn’t really bring out the best in anybody, and some blatant money-grabbing (€10 for a polaroid with and autograph from Tatanka, a man with a gut to make a pot-bellied pig envious? No thanks).

But the main event - Zandig challenging Justice Pain for the CZW Championship - was good. I’m sure there was only a small number of us in the crowd who really knew what to expect (presumably myself, and the people who started the ECW-style ‘holy shit!’ chant). I mean, when something is advertised as a barbed wire match, one shouldn’t presume that they’re not going to use real barbed wire. We’re talking about guys from Combat Zone Wrestling here. Of course they’re gonna use the real stuff. And use it they did: Zandig in particular juiced considerably from his forehead after a couple of rakings with the barbed-wire-covered hurley, and it stuck to Pain’s t-shirt when Zandig struck his back with it.

And then it got better. Zandig swung the hurley with such force that half the barbed wire coils flew off out of the ring and almost hit the first row. Then there was the whip into the security barrier that nearly knocked over a kid who shouldn’t have been standing there anyway. After the barbed-wire table spot, I think they decided it was time to wind things up - most of the crowd was more stunned and confused than entertained (for the record, Zandig won the title, which I would assume is probably the first time the title has changed hands outside of the United States - nice one).

Lessons to be learned? I’m guessing that they just wanted paying customers there, that it didn’t matter what age they were, but a hardcore wrestling show is no place for anyone under the age of 12. As a result, the show ended up being a bit of a mess with no real direction.But on the other hand, it was only the first of two shows. Maybe the evening one more than make up for it. But I wasn’t there, so I don’t know. At least they tried.

Whatever the case, I have to laugh at their own assessment of the day, and their highly inflated opinion of themselves.

After the show, I got myself all lost again. Buses were zooming by, but there was no bus stop on the north side of the Tallaght by-pass (which is extremely annoying - it’s barely 30 years old, but Tallaght is undoubtedly the worst planned area in the whole city), so I had to walk back past Arena to the traffic entrance through Tymon Park to catch a different bus. I eventually made it back into town and then home in one piece, just in time for dinner.

And that was me done for the wekeend. I watched Ghosts Of Mars on DVD last night (with the John Carpenter/Natasha Henstridge commentary on, making the film that bit more entertaining), overslept this morning, and I’ve done feck all today. I feel good.

Sun 16 Jun 2002 at 18:28   ·