CCW "WrestleJam 2"
CAMS/ACES School, Northford, CT
6/11/05

This show was dedicated to the memory of Dan "Spider" Quirk.

At about 7PM they did a pre-show ceremony honoring Spider (Dan Quirk). You may recall that Dan was the young indy wrestler tragically killed in a ring accident recently. He was a CT native and a regular CCW worker who also did a lot of behind the scenes work, including running CCW’s website. The entire CCW roster (including guest Matt Hardy) came out to the ring as the lights were lowered. Several people, including promoter Joe LaChance and Spider’s friend and mentor Bulldog Blanski, praised Spider and told stories about him. Some of the workers who had been Spider’s close friends were visibly breaking down during the ceremony. Blanski ended the speeches on just the right note by telling a VERY funny story about Spider, which actually sparked some laughter and seemed to help everyone remember why they were glad to have known him rather than focusing on the tragedy of his death. After the speeches, they showed an excellent highlight video, assembled by Shane at EIW Tapes, of Spider’s wrestling life and times, set to "Raise Your Hand". After that they put up the lights, thanked everyone for coming, and announced that the show would start in 10 minutes. They also reminded the fans "it’s okay to laugh again, its okay to enjoy yourself again…Dan would have wanted it that way". Based on everything I have heard about him, I would tend to believe that this is actually true. While the tribute unavoidably got the show started on a somber note, it was the right way to handle the situation. This ceremony could have gone wrong, but as it turned out it was very tasteful and well done. One hears about so much petty and small minded behavior in the wrestling business. Despite the horrible circumstance, it was outright inspiring to see a group of wrestling people come together in memory of their friend and do things the right way, with no egos involved. It’s also worth noting that Matt Hardy, who isn’t a CCW regular, probably didn’t know Spider personally, and very possibly never saw the guy in his life, stayed out there for the entire ceremony and was totally respectful the whole time.

Blanski also mentioned that as a result of Spider’s passing, he and Mike E Milano and had reopened communications with Jason Knight. Milano and Blanski were both part of Knight’s ACW (Assault Championship Wrestling) before breaking off to form their own ill-fated DPW (Defiant Pro Wrestling) last year. DPW had 2 excellent shows and apparently disappeared. Meanwhile, ACW has been largely inactive save for one last-minute, nearly unattended show last fall. [On the whole that last ACW show was not too good, apparently serving mainly as a practice session for a blatantly disrespectful Frankie Starz and his UWA crew. However Jason Knight and Ron Zombie still put on a great, punishing all-out brawl of a main event. The late Chris Candido also had a fun match that day.] As a fan, I’m hoping that Blanski, Milano, and Knight get together and start something up here in CT again. While some fans didn’t respect the company, I really enjoyed ACW’s shows and would love to see the company resurrected in some form. If not ACW, then something involving a combination of these three people. Come on guys, CT needs you.

On a personal note, I was offered a chance to write something about Spider for this website after his passing. I turned it around and around in my mind, and no matter how I came at it, I couldn’t help but feel like I would have been exploiting a tragedy. Albeit with the best of intentions. Consequently, I never wrote anything. Since the subject is unavoidable in this context, I guess I’ll say a few words now.

I first saw Spider on a PWA show a couple of years ago. I have to be honest, the first time I saw him I wanted to laugh, he looked so skinny and young. Here’s my impression at the time: "They had one wrestler in there called The Spider (sic) who looked to be all of about 14 years old and 80 lbs soaking wet. The kid was actually pretty good in the ring though, crisp in most of his execution and didn’t try anything he couldn’t pull off. The crowd gradually got behind him to the point where they were upset when he got eliminated." Looking back, I got one thing wrong (aside from age/weight): the crowd didn’t "gradually" get behind him. The crowds were ALWAYS behind Spider. They loved this performer. In fact he was one of the only wrestlers able to create ANY crowd reaction that afternoon. As I went to more CT shows and saw Spider on nearly every one, I quickly got to look forward to his matches. Yup, I liked him too. He was still in that stage where you could see him picking things up as time went on, and adding new stuff like some surprising spots of ground based grappling. He had great energy and great babyface charisma. He knowingly used his underdog look to his advantage, and it worked. It added to his matches, and like all good underdog babyfaces he could sell like crazy. On the personal level, when I was writing for another website, Spider was the first guy I felt comfortable enough to approach for an interview, and he gave me a great one. I do not, and probably never will, consider my self "in the business". I am a fan who happens to lucky enough to have found outlets for his opinions. However by doing me that favor, Dan definitely helped me raise my profile and improve my writing skills. While I didn’t make the effort to maintain a relationship (something I deeply regret now), I will always think fondly of Dan and will miss the human being (who I met but briefly) and the performer (who I enjoyed watching on many occasions). It’s funny, the things you take for granted until one day they are gone. Somehow I just thought I’d always see "Spider" when I went to a local show.

I’ll close the subject with this quote, culled with the site owner’s permission from the aforementioned interview:

Q: Any final words for your fans?

A:"Thanks so much to each and every one of you. You've made it possible for me to live a dream and without you there would be no Spider. Thanks so much."

Well, now that I’ve opened this review on its own somber note, let me get on with the show recap/review:

"The All American" won a 30 man battle royal to open the show. There were several suspect looking masked workers in this match (almost certainly CCW regs in disguise) and then ending of the match featured a funny moment where the announcer proclaimed the wrong masked guy as the winner before correcting himself. Match was mix of trainees and new guys with more experienced indy vets. Not much to say about this one otherwise.

The next match was a tag team scramble for the CCW titles, champions All Money Is Legal vs The Logan Brothers vs Jason Blade/Kid Mikaze vs The Outkast Killaz. I had never seen the Logans before and was impressed; they have good look and seemed pretty sharp in the ring. I guess someone else thought so too, since the Logans won the match and the belts. This is good since it means we will see more of them in CCW, though hopefully not at the expense of AMIL. Good match. I even enjoyed the OCK who normally don’t do much for me but were flawless here.

Next we had women’s tag team action as April Hunter & Ariel defeated Cindy Rogers and Della Morte (w/Lady MacBeth) in an unadvertised match. This was an enjoyable match but could have used a little more April and a little more Cindy. Ariel wore Spider’s logo on her wrestling outfit. She’s going with a look similar to Simply Lucious these days. It doesn’t suit her as well as some of her other gimmicks in my opinion. Not to say she looks bad (she doesn’t) but this look is not as flattering as her others. The clean cut athletic looking Rogers seemed out of place with Goth girls Morte and MacBeth but was great in the ring as always.

American Idol came out to do a Piper’s Pit type interview segment. First he broke character to talk warmly about his friend Spider. Then he got back into character and brought out Mike E Milano and Milano’s new protégé Mindy [something beginning with M]. Milano promptly took over, threw Idol off of his own "show", and brought out Tony DeVito to talk about his scheduled match against Ron Zombie. DeVito heeled all over the CT fans and made some semi-shoot comments about Zombie being a Cactus Jack knockoff. Zombie came out to respond, and it ended with a challenge for a mystery partner tag match instead of the singles bout. I was disappointed in this at first since I was looking forward to seeing these 2 area vets have their first one on one match, but my disappointment quickly faded when the match itself arrived. More on that later.

Next Scotty Charisma (w/ Miss Kara) defeated Rob Eckos (w/Mike Winner) after a hurricarana from Miss Kara. This was a good match but for whatever reason the crowd didn’t get into it. They didn’t seem to care about Eckos and his manager as heels so that made it difficult for Scotty and Kara to build up the audience sympathy that this match needed to get over. Anyway the work was fine and I enjoyed the match. The crowd was pretty quiet all night. Maybe that’s just becoming the standard here in CT as it seems to happen to CCW a lot, yet they draw well so those same quiet fans are presumably coming back for more. You also have to take the occasion into consideration; some people may simply not have felt much like cheering. Together, Charisma and Kara together have a blond star-quarterback-and-head-cheerleader appearance that looks great and could probably be tipped over into a really effective heel gimmick. After all, a lot of people HATED the star quarterback and the head cheerleader in high school! Maybe that would be the way to go in the future? After seeing it on several different shows, I’m also still trying to figure out why having Miss Kara grab you and flip you over is supposed to be an unpleasant thing. But I digress…..

Jay Lethal vs Slyck Wagner Brown went to a time limit draw. Slyck appeared to have Lethal down for a sure 3 count after a slam off the ropes when the bell rang at the 2 ½ count. Great match, arguably the best of the night. The crowd didn’t much like the finish but did like the match. It was quite obvious that the "20 minute time limit" arrived abruptly at about 15 minutes in, but other than that I had no problem with the finish. Anybody who had a problem with the match itself simply didn’t watch it. This was main event worthy stuff.

Matt Hardy came out and did his usual anti Edge, Lita and WWE rants. He gave away a copy of the Hardy Boyz book to the section that started the best chants. He also started a "Spider" chant a couple of times himself, which was cool of him. Hardy looked like he was having fun.

They took an intermission so Hardy could do polaroids and autographs in the ring. He had done them pre show as well.

Luis Ortiz beat Josh Daniels with the Death Valley Driver in a very good technical match. This was pretty even as they traded the advantage throughout until Ortiz hit the DVD almost out of nowhere. Both of these guys looked really sharp in there. Fun visual contrast as well between the bizarre looking Ortiz - the man had red eyes and a green tongue, and it wasn’t Christmas - and the no frills, Benoit-esque Daniels. They are both scientific wrestlers with great skills, but they sure aren’t the same otherwise.

Next it was time for the mystery partner tag match. DeVito came out with his partner - Homicide!!! Big pop and a big surprise as Homicide was not advertised, nor was he present for the pre-show ceremony. Zombie chose as his partner a New England area veteran, the hard-hitting Jose Perez. So it broke down as NY vs New England. This quickly turned into a WILD brawl that went all over the building. Reminiscent of the old ECW tag brawls where there was more going on than you could really watch at one time. Homicide and Perez paired off at one point and laid waste to the entire section of chairs where I was sitting. (I moved.) Woo hoo! Eventually the match somehow got back to the ring and the hometown team of Zombie and Perez appear to have the advantage. Before they could get the 3 count, Monsta Mack and Low Ki ran out and DESTROYED Perez and Zombie. Basically they beat on Perez/Zombie 5 on 2 until they got tired of doing it, taunting the faces and the crowd the whole time. Fans were kind of torn, as they really wanted to pop for the surprise appearances of Mack and Ki - who were beating on their heroes. The Rottweilers (or La Familia or the Strong Style Thugs or The Doghouse or whatever the contingent of Ki/Mack/Homicide plus DeVito are called here) finally left after what seemed like a very long time. The babyfaces were then scraped off the floor and returned to the back. If the goal was to turn DeVito heel, they definitely got it done here. Nice surprise to see Low Ki, even if just for a run in. This was a tremendous brawl and my personal favorite match on the show.

On a related subject, why wasn’t DeVito on either One Night Stand or Hardcore Homecoming? He certainly deserved to be.

Mana retained his CCW world title against Dylan Kage in a match that just never seemed to come together. It ended after about 5 minutes with a ref bump leading to a pin that you could almost have missed seeing. I was told later that Mana was working with a serious injury, which is undoubtedly why this match didn’t click.

CCW added a new main event to close out the show, a ten man tag consisting entirely of Spider’s friends, as a way to pay final tribute to him. The heel team was J-Busta (who worked a series of long term programs against Spider around the area), Iron Eagle, Anthony Michaels (managed by Joe Rules), Tim Kilgore and Dave Cole. To give some background, Spider was Cole’s first professional opponent, and Kilgore rode with him Spider the ambulance the night he died. (Some early reports incorrectly identified Kilgore as Spider’s brother.) The faces were Mark Gore, Ron Zombie, Jose Perez, Nocturne (Spider’s frequent travel buddy and former roommate iirc) and Bulldog Blanski (who helped break Spider into the wrestling business). As you can imagine, emotions ran high in this one, both in the ring and in the audience. Nobody really wanted to boo the ostensible "heels", though J-Busta managed to draw a few jeers anyway. That’s a complement to his skills. Blanski, who has been retired from the ring for a couple of years, got in late in the match and did some fun old Dusty Rhodes type spots where the heels all ran into his offense. Match ended when Nocturne hit Spider’s old finisher to get the win. Afterward everyone in the match drank beers in Spider’s honor. Then they did the real salute - with fish sticks and Kool Aid, said to be Spider’s favorite meal. Nice way to end a slightly strange (due to the circumstances) but very enjoyable evening of wrestling.

Jose Perez worked a three-fer on this show, appearing in the battle royal as well as the NY v NE match and the ten man tag. He didn’t exactly slack off in any of them either. The tag brawl alone would have wiped out most guys.

No return date announced yet. In one of those horrible ironies, CCW hasn’t been able to update their site recently - because Spider was the webmaster. (Note the "Quirk Sites" legend on the front page.) I’d stay tuned to http://www.ctchampionshipwrestling.com/ anyway, as any new announcements will appear on the message board there until they get the situation straightened out.

I can be reached at adolan62@yahoo.com with any comments or feedback.