My alarm sounded at 9 a.m. on Thursday morning, and the bloody events that went down the night before seemed like a distant memory amid the busy list of events on my schedule for that day. First, we would have a lunch appearance at one of the company’s sponsors, Boston Pizza, before doing a promotional appearance and radio spot with two more sponsors. Finally, we would be heading to the Halifax Forum for the show later that evening.
After learning their lesson from the previous day’s meal, Boston Pizza decided to put us on a budget for the remainder of our appearances, so we all enjoyed a meal of pizza and water before heading over to Popeye’s supplements store for our appearance and radio spot. After the radio spot took a couple hours longer than expected, we went straight over to the Halifax Forum for that night’s show. We were very surprised to find that we weren’t the only ones running late, as the ring, chairs, and rest of the set up were all in the very early stages of being done, and moving along slowly.
We all split up in to different areas of the set up, and may have set a new record for how quickly a ring, a locker room, and eight hundred chairs can be set up. An arena worker was nice enough to find separate locker rooms for myself and 21st Century Fox, which were located close by but in a separate section of the building. I got dressed and, as we were third match, began to head over to the main locker room as the first match was going out.
I got to the doors dividing the two sections of the building to find 21st Century Fox, and to learn that the doors leading to the side of the building that housed the show had locked behind us. My initial thought was that someone was playing a joke on us, but I decided that, joke or not, it was a little late to worry about looking like idiots. I whipped out my cell phone for what I thought would be an easy call to ask the promoter to come open the doors, only to find that I had no reception. I eventually found a door to the outside where I might have been able to get reception, and ended up seeing an arena worker outside in the distance. I flagged the guy down and explained the situation to him, and he opened the doors in time for us to be on deck during the second match.
My match against 21st Century Fox that night was one of my favourite matches of the tour, which was made better by a very interactive crowd. Merchandise was selling slowly, as it was mostly an adult crowd, but all in all the show seemed to be going well. Unfortunately, as with the show in Barrington Passage the night before, ths show wouldn’t end without incident, as “Lumber” Jack Johnson became our first — of what turned out to be several — wrestlers forced to leave the tour due to injury.
I opted to forgo the after-party at Boston Pizza, deciding instead to go find some food and call it a night. After the hectic and problematic first two days of the tour, I needed to rest, if only for a few hours, before getting up early the next morning to head to our first of two shows in Prince Edward Island. The shows on the Island were expected to be the best of the tour, but as we began our drive it quickly became apparent that, not only were the tour’s problems far from over, they had only just gotten started.
Part three of the tour is coming soon, with the shows from Summerside and Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, as well as the final show of the tour in Berwick, Nova Scotia.