Connecticut Championship Wrestling Since Sean is probably already writing a detailed review of the
show, I'll talk more about how I (and the other fans) liked the matches and
the show rather than recap things in detail. Here goes: Out of 3 shows I've seen in this building so far, CCW had the
largest and hottest crowd by far. 100-150 or so people may not sound like
much, but it's about all the room can hold as every seat was filled by the
second match and they actually had to bring in a few extra chairs. The
crowd seemed to know most of the wrestlers and for the most part seemed to
be very into the product. There were even a bunch of "CCW"
chants. The negative was that about 60% of the crowd left at intermission
and never came back, which hurt the rest of the show. I don't know if
people didn't like what they saw - though it sounded like they did - or if
it was because so many attendees were families with kids in tow. I'm
guessing the latter but who knows. Show overall was your typical Connecticut indy show and I found it
enjoyable for what it was. I think CCW is making the smart play by keeping
the budget reasonable and pushing names that the limited local audience is
familiar with rather than making the mistake of PWA or Xboku and bringing
in high profile, high cost names that, in this area at least, won't
necessarily draw a lot more people. [Wow, that was almost a Meltzer-esque
run-on sentence.] For whatever reason, wrestling in ANY form just doesn't
draw well here outside of a small base of hardcore supporters and families
with small children looking for something to do together. Even the WWE and
ROH don't do that well here in the southwest corner of the state. The guys
CCW did bring in from out of state were well chosen in that they were
somewhat lesser known talent who are very good at both the in-ring
wrestling and working a crowd, such as NY Striker, Crazy Ivan, and The
Solution. Some of the out of state guys got over and some didn't. but all
performed solidly and the stuff that didn't work for the most part could be
fixed easily enough by tweaking the booking here and there. The show was scheduled for a 2PM start and got going somewhere
between 2:15 and 2:30. I didn't think to check the time when it was over
but at ten matches it felt just a little long. I think that may have been
part of the reason for the mass exodus at intermission; after roughly two
and a half hours maybe some fans just felt like they'd had their fill for
the day. La Familia members Dylan Kage, Avil Graves and Mercedes Martinez
w/Mike E Milano beat Scotty Matthews, Scotty Charisma, and Scotty, er, Vic
Gun'R when Martinez pinned Charisma. I suppose this is as good of a time to
say to any disgruntled JAPW fans reading this that Milano's La Familia has
been using this gimmick name for well over a year so they preceded JAPW's
totally unrelated La Familia. Match was okay but went about 5 minutes too
long . Martinez plays the Chyna role where she's not afraid to go in there and
mix it up with the boys, except that when one of the faces goes to hit her
she begs off and switches to scared-little-girl mode to throw them off
until her team can get the advantage again. Good heel tactic that worked in
this match. Kage was hitting pretty crisp superkicks on everything that
moved for a while. Matthews did a lot of goofy comedy, such as starting a
"this is boring" chant at himself (!), that didn't seem entirely
in place for this context since the two teams were supposed to be deadly
enemies.
"Fired Up" 1/25/04
Knights Of Columbus Hall, Fairfield, CT
Excerpt
from Adam
Dolan's CCW 1/25 Show Review
http://www.declarationofindependents.net 