IWA: Carnage Cup VIII Review!
It’s been a long and unhealthy while since I’ve reviewed a Death Match Wrestling tournament of any sorts. Well, to be honest it was September this year when I unleashed my review for ICW: No Holds Barred 6 (see review here) so I think I’m over exaggerating the time scale. Either way, here comes IWA Deep South.
It was in one of my GCW (Game Changer Wrestling) reviews that I kind of slated IWA, by calling them stale. Well, there’s a few IWA company territories. The most well-known, Mid-South, to me is boring and the same old crap each and every time – clumsy moves, light tubes, bit of barbed wire and blood, not much more. To many folks that’s all the artform of Death Match Wrestling is, but to the core audience who follow, it’s quite gripping and totally jaw-dropping in parts.
IWA Deep South get the big names in this genre but are as low down rough as hell backwoods hillbilly redneck as it gets. Truthfully the crowds (and some of the local grapplers) are looking like overweight mutant inbred folks who would likely eat a tourist, and it’s no overstatement to say, about 98% of those in attendance and the wrestlers are pure white meat. Says it all really.
I’ve been into the bloodier violent side of wrestling since I was a kid seeing Abdullah the Butcher, Bruiser Brody, and The Sheepherders on cable TV destroying opponents weekly. I tended to ignore the big companies like WWF and WCW in favour of looking for smaller places where it just felt more real, y’ know. Also, I love the feel of comradeship which you get in places like CZW, GCW, H2O, etcetera.
IWA Deep South looks as if a couple of people have hired a battered old ring, sat chairs round it wherever they could hire somewhere, invited loads of ‘wrasslers’ to hurt one another, and made a few dollars for everyone involved, hoping for a lot of tape ‘n’ DVD sales afterwards. The fact is this event suffers from bad weather mid-way and the men still fight in the pouring rain says it all. Guts and stupidity — love it!
IWA: Carnage Cup VIII was held in Alabama back in 2012, outdoors hoping for a nice sun shining event late March. Match one, a Spider Net Circus one, pits regular combatants Bryant Woods against Spidar Boodrow. Looks like a car boot sale (aka flea market) as Bryant heads out carrying weights attached to his pierced earlobes big grin on his face. Spidar however looks pissed off, I mean really pissed off, almost like he is annoyed that Bryant would even dare to smile. Well, the smile fades as both grab a lightube and circle one another outside the ring. “Ohhh, glass sprays into the crowd from the get-go!” states the Southern drawling commentator, Smooth, as the battle begins. “Good to join yer, buddy.” says our other commentator, Christian whilst the two blokes hit one another across the heads with all kinds of stuff until blood trickles.
Anyway, you kind of figure that this whole thing is gonna go way beyond the normal when in this opening match, both of them fight over to a truck which so happens to conveniently have stepladders up against it. Yep, you know they made need an ambulance soon. I’ve seen many incredible falls from great heights in these kind of matches, though this one didn’t scale the OMG scale as high as say, Nick Gage Vs Nate Hatred (CZW Aftermatch 2003) or Joey Janela Vs Zandig (GCW Tournament of Survival 1 2016… see review here) the build-up was actually far more convincing since the two of them kind of dared one another onto the truck instead of, well, if you’ve seen the TOS 1 match you’ll understand.
After a lacklustre match between Bill the Butcher and Viking modelled twat, Kody Krueger, up steps the “Angel of Death” John Rare against one of the royal veterans in the game, Mad Man Pondo. I’ve seen John Rare in some diabolical matches (look up the infamous Saw III match) but he’s against Pondo who has taken on the best. He comes out with Crazy Mary Dobson by his side. Now Mary was a risk taker on the indie scene, she’s had epic tag team matches against men and women, been thrown into barbed wire, bled all over the place, and always smiling afterwards. Then she made it into the WWE, became Sarah Logan, was buried, and after being fired I think kind of lost her love for the world of wrestling. Happens to many people who go through the big WWE grinder unfortunately.
This one is a nicely calculated paced-slow burner as they trade a few blows and wrestling moves before Pondo is caught in barbed wire ropes – meanwhile above their heads dark storm clouds approach ominously. They fight onto ladders until there’s a run in by a geeza called Phil Macchio in which he assaults Pondo. After the match, Mad Man Pondo and Mary head over to the rather shabby live band and he gets on the mic to challenge Phil. “…an’ if he ain’t a coward like that Smooth, he’ll git in the ring!”
Hold up, wait a minute. Smooth isn’t liked by Mad Man Pondo, in fact later he devotes a whole song to him live where the lyrics are simply “Fuck Smooth!” over and over! Why? Well, it’s something to do with Pondo’s wife at the time. It’s in his book which I reviewed a while back, Memoirs of a Madman (see review here) Smooth remains quiet throughout both segments funnily enough.
Shane Smalls takes on Jerek Tyler for a traditional mat grappling match with a bit of high flying which the crowd totally loves, then along comes one of the IWA made men, Freakshow. This guy is huge and tends to appear at a multitude of these things. He’s against Travis Locke and they use scissors, thumb tacks, anything which allows the crimson to flow. Speaking of flowing, the rain begins, and everyone ends up soaked but the matches continue regardless.
Josh Crowe vs Damien Payne is my highlight thus so far. These two young lads give it everything. It’s a loose lightubes match, but their chemistry and techniques are far more thrilling than the simple smash of glass. The downpour is relentless as these two wade around the pools. They do some high-risk stuff, and the showstopper for me had me scream out when I first watched it. In fact, I rewound the scene and showed my two sons who were stunned, then days later two of my wrestling buddies when they popped by. There’s a manoeuvre called the Canadian Destroyer. It is seldom used, and when it is used, the appearance is one of sheer brutality. These two perform it on the ground with no protection. That is complete and utter trust for the victim that his cranium is protected by the giver otherwise it is a genuine case of death or at least a coma. Look it up, see the ones in the ring, then imagine it on the soaking wet gravel ground. Oh, my fucking God!!! But then there’s a second one off the top rope. I was gasping, I truly was!
How do you follow that up and better it? Well, you can’t better it but you can send the Bulldozer Matt Tremont out in a barbed wire massacre match against the smaller Sid Fabulous. In this field of wrestling, there are legendary names such as Terry Funk and Mick Foley, then there’s Necrobutcher, Wife Beater, Lobo, Nick Gage and CZW creator, Zandig. Through time as many of the older names retire (it’s like UFC fighters or carpet fitters I suppose, with the exception of Nick Gage and a couple of others, you have a short time scale in Death Match Wrestling before the wounds take longer to heal and you retire or semi retire at least. Matt Tremont came along mid-way and built up an iconic status simply by being a beast (he owns a wrestling collectable shop as well).
The sun comes out again and dries up all the rain as the afternoon continues. Carnage Cup is divided into two days and works like CZW’s Tournament of Death events wherein winners advance to take on other winners in rather nastier matches than the last until two men enter and one-man leaves, or in some cases the finale has four men. Day 2 has John Rare and Spidar totally ripping each other to pieces. Bats, ladders, a BBQ – it all gets used. Then Pondo goes to war against Phil which is a bloody savage brawl and Crazy Mary Dobson gets involved but suffers for her efforts.
Through all the chaos and madness, we finally arrive at the finale where the four survivors face off. The crowd whoop with glee as we see the standard carpet strips, lightubes, but also added joys such as fire and a grab your face moment second fall off a truck. Holy shit!
This is by far the best IWA Deep South Carnage Cup that I’ve watched so far, having viewed about four so far. Others have good spots but are padded by a lot of fillers and very clumsy matches, this one has so many shockers it’s a must for the gore loving rabid fans of the art.
Mind you, as strong as your guts might be, as firm as your nerves, nothing will prepare you for the slightly obese Southern lady dancing to the live band…
Directed by: Smart Mark Video
Editing by: Smart Mark Video
Cast: Mad Man Pondo, Freakshow, Crazy Mary Dobson, John Rare, Matt Tremont, Smooth, Bryant Woods, Josh Crowe, Spidar Boodrow, Damien Payne
Year: 2012
Country: USA
Language: English
Colour: Colour
Runtime: 3h 10min
Studio: IWA Deep South
