After weeks of waiting, Major League Wrestling finally gets together the number one ranked Davey Richards in a match for the MLW Heavyweight Championship, held by Hammerstone.  It’s a tough decision on who will come out on top:  The American Wolf, or the Master of Muscle Mountain?

We’ll find out more as the night wears on at the Grady Cole Center in Charlotte, NC.  Your commentators Rich Bocchini and Joe Dombrowski have the call.

We get Emilio Sparks (the man that adds the “dirt” in “Dirtsheet writer”), and he goes to Richard Holliday, who’s in an all-white suit, and Alicia Atout about the match. Sparks asks if he will interfere in the match, but Atout says she’ll asks the hard hitting questions. She asks the same question, and Holliday says, “Good question.  Guess we’ll wait and see.”

Those tough “gotcha” questions are the reason I get into this sort of journalism.

But let’s go to ringside, where it’s time for the First Match of the night, and it’s a Three-way title fight for the…

MLW Openweight Championship: Alex Kane (c) (with Mr. Thomas) ACH vs. Calvin Tankman

As the bell rings, Kane and Tankman renew their rivalry, as they slug away at each other.  ACH tries to get in on the fun, but Tankman obliges and hits The Pounce on both men.  Kane goes out of the ring, and Tankman prepares to launch himself and ACH stops him with a standing dropkick.  ACH goes for a tope suicida, but Mr. Thomas trips him up on the other side of the ring, and as ACH turns his attention to the Bomaye Fight Club lackey, Kane gets back in and nails a spear.

The action goes outside the ring as Tankman grabs Kane and chops away, with fans helping prop up Kane.  Kane tries to suplex Tankman on the concrete, but the Heavyweight Hustle throws him off.  Kane comes back to ram his head viciously to the ring post multiple times.  Back in the ring Kane faces ACH, and gets his first overhead belly to belly suplex on the Texas native. The champ picks apart ACH, but he comes back with an impressive deadlift suplex on Kane to cover for a two count.  ACH then focuses on Tankman, who’s back in the ring, and Heavyweight Hustle knocks him off the ring. Now back to Kane, Tankman gets his signature spinning back fist, followed by a corner splash. With Kane sitting on the mat in a daze, Tankman goes for another back fist to the head that misses, but Kane manages to get a Saito suplex to give him some distance, but can’t cover the big man right away, as both men get to their feet, ACH is back in the match and goes up top to Tankman with a crossbody.  However, Tankman catches him, and uses his feet to slam them in Kane’s face in the corner, Send ACH to said corner with a buckle bomb to Kane and a backbreaker, clothesline combo to Kane.  Kane rolls out of the ring again to get separation, but now ACH finally hits the suicide dive to Kane.  He goes up top, but Tankman stops him and attempts a superplex, but ACH escapes and tries a sunset flip.  When that doesn’t work, he switches gear and knocks Tankman’s feet off the middle ropes.  ACH goes for a grapevine submission, but Kane nails ACH with a superkick, then gets a leg trap suplex to a pin.

Your Winner via Pinfall:  Alex Kane

Once again, Tankman is robbed of an opportunity to pin Kane, as the leader of the Bomaye Fight Club walks away with the Openweight title.

Backstage, Emilio Sparks is with EJ Nduka and he’s here to watch the title match for the MLW Heavyweight belt.  Sparks asks who Nduka favors, and he’s coy with his responses as he heads out to greet some fans.

Backstage, we see the Von Erichs coming down the stair to get ready for their upcoming tag team match, and they get ambushed by 5150, as Slice Boogie and Rivera take out the brothers with steel chairs. Boogie and Rivera wrap a chair on Marshall’s leg and give it a one man Con-Chair-to, thus Pillmanizing the younger Von Erich’s ankle.

Gangrel is coming. So…yeah, that’s a thing.

Sparks is backstage with 5150 asking to explain their actions.  Simply put, they ain’t done wrecking tag teams.  What happened to the Von Erichs is a taste of whoever steps up, and they got no time soft teams.  Boogie and Rivera want some hard hitters.

Now to TJP, and give a promo putting himself over and his championship highlights.  He then talks about MLW middleweight division, and calls out Myron Reed.  He’s happy to face him down the road, but will take any middleweight that wants to face the best in the world.

Now we go to the barnburner of a match, and that is the…

Grudge Match: nZo vs. KC Navarro

As Navarro is introduced, nZo comes out right after and starts stomping away, and gets Navarro crouched on the steel guardrails.  Once again, nZo props Navarro in the Razor’s Edge and, like before, slams his back and neck to the ring post.  He sends Navarro back in the ring and then…

Ads (I swear before Crom Almighty:  If this turns out to be a disguised squash match, I will slam my laptop with a sock full of quarters!)

We return back to the ring, and nZo has a mic (natch!), as Navarro struggles to get up. The Realest One gives the mic to the ref to ask Navarro if he still wants the match.  As the ref asks the question, Navarro responds, “How you doin’, b****?” 

Damn, that was gutsy. Stupid, but gutsy, as nZo picks apart Navarro by catapulting his neck to the bottom rope, then uses the top ropes for a lungblower to cover for a two count.  Outside the ring, nZo chops his chest and delivers an inverted DDT to the concrete floor.

In the ring, nZo covers, but Navarro gets his hand on rope.  He finally ends things with the “Done-Zo” (inverted stomp facebreaker), and mercifully ends the match.

Your Winner via Pinfall:  nZo

Before I get ready to break my laptop, nZo gets back on the mic and addresses young Navarro.  I shouldn’t, but…I’m gonna let nZo do what he does best.

“The other day I saw a meme, and it wasn’t the type of meme that makes you laugh. It was a meme with a child with a facial deformity and the meme had in quotations, begging the question from the son to his father, ‘Am I Ugly?’ To which the father said back to the son, ‘No, son.  The world is ugly.’

This world is ugly, KC and everyone who fights ain’t your enemy, and everybody who helps you ain’t your friends.  Wrestling 101, Kid! DTA: don’t trust anybody.  Life Lesson 101. It’s a cold world. You got the word ‘blessed’ tattooed on your arm. The word ‘blessed’…and you know what, kid?  You woke up today. Congratulations.

You’re right. You’re blessed. As a matter of fact, everybody who walked up today who’s in this building is blessed, and the truth of the matter is, everybody in this ring has a gift. Okay? It is in your lifetime you are lucky enough to recognize what that gift is, that that makes you special God’s given the years that you can use it. You get to show it to the world, and quite frankly, I got to get my legs work. My arms work; I can hear; I can see, just like you. I don’t have a deformity, or a disability, and I can speak. And that’s my gift.  I got the gift of gab and the gift of jab.

You know what?  It’s crazy to me that some of my best friends in life…you know what their biggest fear was growing up? You know their biggest fear still is?  Public speaking. Maybe they’re afraid of what people might say about them. There’s more people on the internet than there are people in this world. But maybe…maybe they were just afraid to fail. But you know what? You can’t have success without failure. And if you want success in this business…if you want success in this business, people need to feel you.  And they won’t feel you until they see you get you’re a** kicked!   You think when you came to my boxing gym, that I was gonna give you a fair chance?  That I was gonna show you wrestling moves, KC?  No.  No, it was [not] about how hard you can get hit; it’s about how you respond.

You got heart. You got heart, and you can’t teach that!”

Well, that made up for it.  As nZo is done giving his life lesson, he picks up Navarro, followed by another Done-Zo.  Bada boom, realest talk in the room, How you doin’?

We now get word that the Tag team match between 5150 and The Von Erichs is postponed indefinitely.  We’ll get medical reports later on.

We also get word that 5150 jumped EJ Nduka during a meet and greet with fans and tagged his back. This will not sit well with The Judge.

But, now is the time for the Main Event, and this is for the…

MLW Heavyweight Championship: Hammerstone (c) vs. Davey Richards

Holliday and Atout come out (big surprise), and he gives a big wad of money to a fan at ringside to take the front row seats.  Hey, money talks, especially in this foul year of inflation!

As challenger and champ head to the ring, we get boxing style intros by announcer Tim Barr, and Your Boy Hammer gets streamers.  Very ROH.  Also interesting is the fans at ringside in Charlotte are chanting heavily for Davey.  Curious how this will go.

The bell rings and both men go to their respective finishers early, but each man scouts it right away and back off for a sec.  After a reset, they lockup and it’s a classic power (Hammerstone) vs. technique (Richards), as Hammerstone gets Richards in the corner with shoulder tackles.  He follows with an overhead belly to belly release suplex to Richards, and The American Wolf goes out to get a breather and rethink his strategy.  Your Boy Hammer follows close behind and slingshots Richards right into the guardrails.  Now, Hammerstone locks eyes with Holliday in the front row, and then he goes to deliver a knee lift, but a Richards ducks away and Hammer gets the knee hard in the steel guardrail.  Richards smells blood and ruthlessly rams his leg to the guardrails.  Back in the ring, Richards drapes the bad leg on the second rope and stomps on it.  Richards goes for a grapevine and with surgical precision gets a twist bring the full force of his weight to Hammerstone’s bad leg.  Richards picks the ankle and gets the Figure Four in Charlotte, NC (Woo!), but Hammerstone fights though and Richards resets with a trailer hitch submission.  It looks bad for the champ, but Hammerstone reaches the ropes, and then it leads to…

Ads (one of these days, I will brain someone in production with a spoon not to do ads in the middle of a match!)

We come back, and Richards keeps up attack on Hammerstone’s bad leg, picking his spots to knock champ down.  He tries for a suplex, but Hammerstone lowers himself to the matt, thus making him heavier.  Richards adjusts with Kawada-style kicks to head. He runs the ropes, and form is good, and punts for the extra goal, but the champ hulks up…err, Hammers up.  Now we get forearms between the Alpha wolf and the Alpha male.  Richards goes for a crossbody, but Hammerstone catches him and gets a swinging uranage.  He gets Richards in the corner with a clothesline, and follows with clubbing blows.  Hammerstone rushes at Richards in the corner, but he ducks away and get his bad leg between the ropes for a dragon screw leg whip. Richards goes up top for the double stomp, but he misses and Your Boy Hammer gets an exploder suplex to the corner turnbuckles to cover for a two count.  Richards eyes are Krispy Kremed (read: glazed), and Hammerstone gets him on the apron edge and tries a suplex, but once again Richards finds a way out, and gets another dragon screw to injure his bad leg further.  Richards goes up top again, and hits a double stomp to his leg, and another double stomp to his sternum for one, two…Hammerstone kicks out, but The American Wolf hangs on for the ankle lock. 

Hammerstone pushes off again, and Richards punts.  Hammerstone gets up and nails with the Nightmare Pendulum but cannot cover, and Richards rolls away to safety.  Both men are in pain but still fight on, as Your Boy Hammer goes outside and rolls him back in.  Hammerstone tries for another Nightmare Pendulum, but Richards rolls him up for a two count. 

Hammerstone gets Richards in the Stonebreaker, and then delivers the Nightmare Pendulum to cover for the one, two, and three!

Your Winner via Pinfall:  Hammerstone

Holliday golf claps for the champ, and Hammerstone now goes to his former Dynasty brother. Holliday jaw jacks at Hammerstone, and then all of a sudden Atout gets out the mace and sprays it in Hammerstone eyes.  Holliday leaves the front row and goes to town beating down the champ. He keeps beating him down until the forehead of the champ is busted open, and blood is smeared on the white suit of Holliday, as staff and security try to break up the melee.  The final image has Hammerstone battered and bloodied, while Holliday has a crazed look in his eyes, and his white suit looking like a Jackson Pollack painting, as the show fades to black.

 

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Final Thoughts:

The title match between Richards and Hammerstone is a prime example of why wrestling for the richest prize in the promotion, when done right, puts MLW head and shoulders above the competition.  This is something fans an new viewers should watch to see what wrestling is all about.

The other reason I gave this a high mark is the promo nZo cut on KC Navarro after the match.  That’s probably the realest he’s been in…well, ever.  He truly does have the gift of gab.

There’s more of the MLW SuperFight to show in the weeks ahead, so enjoy and see you in seven!