Alright, the blog is back as regularly scheduled. A short break since around mid-February, I took a short hiatus as we were building up the House of Pain championship feud, and I didn’t particularly want to give too much away during that time. I’m a bit daft like that. There was such a short time to build the match up, I felt as though that needed the attention.
Anyway, after writing the huge G6 blog last week, I’ve got the taste for writing the blogs again, so we’re back at it again, a week or 2 earlier than planned.
On the blog returning, I had intended to write a huge catch up since the absence, but in reality, thats not something I particularly want to do now. This would begin to rival the G6 blog in length, and that took me a good 2 days to type out…
Here, I’ll cover last weekend’s House of Pain goings on, and a little bit of background into where I’ve ‘been’ since then. It’ll make sense.
Ok, so last weekend, I was present on the Saturday and Sunday shows, in Beeston and Cotgrave respectively.
First up was the Beeston matinee event, a match against Lucas Archer, originally a non-title bout, then turned into a 5th successful defence. The Beeston afternoon audience was a little more challenging to engage than the evening one, but even so, I feel like they were invested by the end. This was a fun little match between Lucas and I, not perfect, but a lot of fun. It was also our first singles bout in around 4 years, since we had a trio of matches in his rookie year. I’ve said it before, but he has a good mind for the business, and always has a lot of interesting takes, and thoughts into what goes into a match. I took a stupid RKO here, diving off of the buckle into it. First gigantic front landing bump of the weekend….
Onto the evening show, this was the House of Pain vs Lincoln Fight Factory event. I wasn’t booked on this show, which, if I’m completely honest, bothered me. I understood, that it was all of the HOP good guys here, but still… Anyway, a little interference in the main event of G-Wizz vs Bram, and ol’ Wizza lost. As did HOP. Whoops.
A few TKO’s and stunners later, I was the one crawling backstage. Yum.
Sunday, onto Cotgrave for HOP again. Here we were, the House of Pain championship match against Garrett Bond. I wasn’t in a good place on arrival to this show. I was tired, and those cold bumps the previous evening really hurt. Add to that no kneepads. Regardless, I was there to perform no matter. All I wanted to achieve here, was to help push G-Wizz off on the best possible footing as the new champion. I wanted an exciting match, with a few memorable moments, and a ridiculous finish.
I think thats what was achieved here. We went into the match with only a couple of pieces in mind, and the finish. We pretty much ad-libbed the majority of the match. As I’ve mentioned before in previous blogs, I enjoy listening to the audience through the match and changing the flow as they begin to become restless at times. I like being an adaptable performer.
Anyhow, the match finished with a giant second rope TKO, and there we go, new House of Pain champion. A second belt lost in a week. Pretty funny how things work out sometimes. I’m sure Bond will be a fine champion, although I do have my rematch penned in at the end of the month.
So a few things before I close up this weeks blog. This past week has been the closest I’ve come to finishing up wrestling. Outside of wrestling, I started a new job this past Monday. I started that day feeling absolutely horrendous. My hip was extremely sore. My knees were almost unbearable at times, and my back has a recurring pain (usually when I don’t cool down properly, I’m attributing that to Saturday nights cold bumping, and rushing off fairly quickly after). The hip was a new one, but having seen photos back of the weekend,I think this is purely down to how I landed on the RKO and TKO. I can manage the back pain for the most part. I’m overdue my osteopath visit, so hopefully that will help. My knees are something different, and at some point in the near future, I’m going to have to get them looked at properly. My knees have been an issue since before I wrestled. As some of you know through following my social channels, I used to skateboard, and thats certainly not a sport thats easy on them. Additionally, any injury thats stopped me from wrestling in the past, has always been down to my knee, either over-extending or I’m sure theres been ligament damage to some degree. Either way, I don’t think that this is something that I can put off much longer, and I’ll hopefully be able to get some answers. I’ll take it from there before I make any rash decisions about what I do in wrestling. I spoke to a few of my friends in wrestling, and they think maybe a reduced schedule may help – they’re probably right, but my problem is that I’m all in, or I’m all out. Anyway, yeah, I’m still here, and still raring to go.
Also from looking back at photo’s of the past weekend, I was really unhappy with my appearance. A lot of my presentation looks tired. As of last Sunday, the ring jacket has now been ‘retired’. 2 years with it has been a long time. A new one is being prepared, so hopefully it wont be long before something fresh arrives. I feel the same with a lot of my trunks as well. The Godzilla ones are ready for an early bath. I want to use the end of the title runs to usher in something a bit fresher. I allowed myself to get tired, this won’t happen again.
February wasn’t my finest month in the gym, and my legs especially are showing it. They looked absolutely vile over the weekend. For the foreseeable, every gym session involves a round of weighted squats.
I just want to finish on a positive. As most will know, the HOP show in Cotgrave was for the charity ‘Wish Upon A Star’. I wasn’t intending to put myself forward for the show for that reason. This isn’t because I’m a complete and utter arsehole, its because it isn’t a charity I support personally. For the last couple of years I’ve donated a percentage of my wrestling wage to autism charities, which I am again doing this year. I took a wage from this show, and 100% of that has been added to the pot. I will always do this for every and all ‘charity’ shows I do, so if I ask for my wage, this is why.
Anyway, I think we’ve rounded off the blog for this week – quite a bit of negative, but all stuff I’m working on. Cheers for reading. This was longer than expected…
Juken on the Web:
Song of the Week
Of course its here. Anyway – BANGER!
This particular match up was one I’d been after for a while. I’d admired Chris for a bit, after a brief twitter exchange when he was over in Amreica with CZW, at the same time I was in Thailand training. I was pleased when this was booked. There were some good set pieces in this match from what I recall, and a decent first meeting. Unfortunately we’ve never worked since. I can’t recall the finish, although I remember this was a submission finish again. I’ think this was probably when I was trying out the bridging Fujiwara armbar. Fun fact – Chris wore Nixon Newell’s ring gear for this match… 
Onto defence 3, and another man I knew very well in the shape of Zak Northern. Zak is someone I’ve worked against numerous times previous to this match, so I was confident that this would be a good showing. From what I recall this was OK. We’d planned a rope heavy match, so of course by the time we worked the match the ropes had loosened and were like shoelaces. There was an ‘Ultimate X’ match later on so the tension had gone there. This slowed down the action for me, and wasn’t quite up to the standard we’d come to expect of ours
elves, I think. A learning experience for the pair of us to be more versatile Still, we had a fun match. Again, submission finish.
So, here’s where the belt was taking me. Japan. Funny how these things happen, but this was the start of a slew of international defences, and really, the place where I could start to push those numbers up, if successful. PW4U ran quarterly at this stage, and I wanted to bang in the defences.
ramped bus trip really did me in. I was concerned that I’d be too tired to perform.
A week after touching back down in the UK, it was back to business, back to Silverdale for PW4U. A four way match…
On the opposite side of the coin, I was pleased to get the opportunity to do some fun stuff with Robert Sharpe, as Danxig’s replacement. This was something we could have potentially done anyway, without ‘The Sickness’, Rob as the downtrodden understudy, made for a cool sidestory, as when he got some retribution later on in the year, it was set up for some really fun stuff. I’m sad we never got to pay that off fully.
Defence 8, and a revisit to the world of Pyro. I’d just fought him in tag action at the previous PW4U show. This was a fun little match, albeit one to further a feud and to build to something of a series between us. This wasn’t anything spectacular, it never needed to be. A countout finish, which I then challenged him to a no-countout match, as I’d been embarrassed by
If I never had to talk about this match again I wouldn’t. I wrote an
Get yer jeans ahhhht!! Streetfight madness on a Sunday afternoon. This was fun. I never get asked to do gimmick matches for some reason, so I made sure this was fun.
Back to Japan for a third visit and a bunch of potential defences here. Small Ichigaya mat show, and a triple threat. Tough competition, in Emi Sakura and Sawasdee Kamen. Fast paced, cool stuff, pinning Kamen for the retention, which left the path clear to head to Korakuen Hall the following week.
When you look at a picture of Drill, you imagine “Big massive bastard. Probably does a lot of throwing”. Neither were true.
it for me. I probably should have raised my concerns at this time, but instead I just let it go. I think I actually had one eye on losing those tag belts, which by now were starting to weigh heavy. I really wanted to build the G6 back up again. The match itself was OK, I felt, but nothing spectacular. I think it was probably my mindset, and not the opponent that affects my enjoyment of this era of the reign. Submission finish, by the way – bridging Fujiwara armbar…
looking forward to this feud as we’d really enjoyed working together in the tag team storyline, and I think the plan may well have been to have him take the title eventually. I had no issue with this, as to be honest, it was definitely time for someone else to take the reigns.
Oh man look at the hairline on that promo haha!
strange. Noah also wanted to showcase his wrestling ability a little more than normal, considering here at PW4U, he was a more character driven performer. We went into this just thinking about having a good solid match. This match was fine, I think we did ok. Finish was a waistlock takedown into an…. armbar! Submission finish…
Sometimes, you head into a match and just think “fuck it. I’m gonna have a good time with this”. And sometimes, everyone involved thinks the same. We were all on the same page here. We just wanted to have an action packed match, that kept the audience entertained. It was all here, MOVEZ~1! It just felt like the match needed something different than everything else on the card that day. This was to me the best G6 match we’d had in PW4U, at least during my time there. What kind of match would you expect from a match of this ‘weight class(?)’ really? Something like this for me.
Here we are then. The finale. Let’s get the gripes out of the way real quick. The set-up for this match, wasn’t much. I’d have loved to have built a program beforehand to really garner some interest, and help tip Ry over a little more. For me, being a championship holder is all about making the belt mean something, and then when you hand it over, you set that person on their way as best you can. That’s why I feel a program would have benefited here. This could have kicked off 
instead of the Noah match, still included a triple threat etc. I had no doubt that we could deliver in-ring. None whatsoever.
This had to be everything I’ve learned or achieved during this run, and packaged off for Ry to take forward. Mat wrestling with exciting counters, interesting set pieces, a bit of looking the fool, a dirty, DIRTY cutoff. A final stretch that had that disbelief factor. I’m pretty sure again, noone thought I was losing here, which was absolutely fine. We might have the chance to get that reaction I craved.
Juken Pro Wrestler 