LINCOLN PARK, Mich. — Despite taking place in a hockey arena, the air inside was humid and the temperature ran hot at the Lincoln Park Community Center for XICW’s Scar Wars, a hardcore and deathmatch themed event. The evening’s MCs Johnny Delicious and Jeremiah Goldmain promised extreme violence and blood, but the opening match began with a pretty standard bout between two young, up and comers that was disrupted by Caden Monroe, fork in hand, along with his brother MM3 (Malcolm Monroe III) and father DBA (Malcolm Monroe Jr.), otherwise known as the Monroe Dynasty, who quickly beat down and disposed of the two wrestlers in the ring.
The DBA had some unfortunate news to share. Eight wrestlers scheduled to appear that evening didn’t show, including those booked to wrestle MM3 and DBA, so to make it up to the crowd, DBA challenged MM3 to a glass and light tubes match in the main event. MM3 accepted, and the show was on like Donkey Kong.
The first rightfully booked and promoted match was a “Death by Doors” match between Jake Christ and Crazy King. Oftentimes, Christ gets booed by Metro Detroit crowds for being from Ohio, but in this case, the Lincoln Park crowd enthusiastically cheered for Christ. They also cheered for Crazy King, who’s become somewhat of a local regular, despite being from Guadalajara, Mexico. I expected Christ and Crazy King to deliver a solid match, and they didn’t let us down, both being somewhat smaller, energetic high flyers, even if they were wrestling in more of a deathmatch style tonight. In the end, after multiple wooden doors were shattered, and the ring apron was covered in splinters, Christ pinned Crazy King, but they both shook hands and took a bow when the match was over, so no hard feelings.
The next few matches got a little shuffled, due to the rash of card changes, so we got a tag team match between Maxximillian and Adam Wick, with Heather Blue, versus XICW United States Champion Jack Price and Zach Gowen. This match almost immediately spread out into the crowd, with each pair going their own ways and trading blows with each other, and with Heather Blue getting into the mix of it, as well. Possibly the most notable moment of the match is when Jack Price hit Heather Blue with a power bomb onto a folding chair that was suspended across two other folding chairs. It was a hellaciously stiff looking bump that received an equally loud reaction of cheers and knowing groans and winces, and shortly after, Price and Gowen emerged victorious.
After this was the final match of the first half of the show, a Seven Man Extreme Musical Chairs match, which they proudly announced was created by veteran referee A.T. Huck, who was there to help referee the insanity that followed. The combatants in this match were Caden Monroe, RC3, the Soultaker, Dread King Logan, Great Tiger, Solo, and AOD. The basic concept of this match was that once everyone was in the ring, the match would begin, and so would the music, then it’s every man for himself. Like in a typical game of musical chairs, there would be one less chair in the ring then there are participants, and when the music stops, everyone must sit in a chair, and whoever didn’t have a chair would be eliminated. Honestly. It made for a pretty entertaining match, with clearly defined rules, so I’d like to see this tried again sometime. I won’t recap every elimination here, but I was somewhat surprised when the Soultaker was the first elimination of the match. I didn’t think he’d win, but I also didn’t think he’d be the first one out. It ultimately came down to the Dread King Logan and Caden Monroe, and I expected Monroe to win, due to his lineage and his earlier disruption of the first match, but Logan overpowered Monroe in what was an impressive outing from the young talent. It wasn’t his time tonight, but it seems he might be next in line for XICW greatness.
After intermission, the next match was a Pits of Pain tag team match featuring 2 Hookers and an 8-Ball, Randi West and Mickie Knuckles, and the team of Baka Gaijin, Dale Patricks and Mad Man Pondo with “Death Dealer” Tommy Starr. Before the match, the MCs explained what were in each of the four “pits of pain” but it really didn’t matter what was in each because barely a minute went by before the ring was full of debris, each wrestler was covered in blood, and the fight spilled into the crowd, with Pondo and Knuckles battling inches away from me. The evening’s motto was, if they’re coming at you, get the f#ck outta the way, and that’s exactly what I did, not wanting to catch a stray from Pondo or Aunt Mickie. West and Knuckles put up a good fight against Patricks and Pondo, but Patricks and Pondo were just two strong for the two titular “hookers,” and Baka Gaijin scored the big win.
The co-main event of the evening was a Fans Bring the Weapons/Everything but the Kitchen Sink match between Chuck Stein and Jeff King. Once again, the Lincoln Park Community Center crowd enthusiastically cheered both King and Stein, who are longtime local favorites, so everyone was just excited to watch what was sure to be a violent and entertaining match. A few of the more memorable fan supplied weapons that got incorporated into the match were a wooden board covered in mouse traps and balloons filled with salt, a role of light tubes that had lemon slices attached to it, a thumbtack studded wiffle ball bat, another plastic bat covered in firecrackers, and a flat screen TV. Add to that a plethora of light tubes, barbed wire, and folding chairs, and by the end of the match, which saw Stein pin King, both competitors were absolutely soaked in their own and each other’s blood.
And now it was time for our main event of the evening, the DBA Malcolm Monroe Jr. versus his son MM3 in a Pane in the Glass/Typhoon of Tubes match for the XICW Downriver Championship. DBA had come out of his deathmatch retirement to do battle with his advertised opponent, but even though that match wouldn’t happen tonight, he decided to still give the fans what they wanted, and challenged his son, with the title on the line. Being a father myself, and one who never knew his own dad, I get pretty easily sucked in to stories like this, so I’ll admit I felt a little emotional when the match began, and DBA and MM3 began firing off on each other, taking turns busting light tubes over each other’s heads. I don’t know if that’s a sentiment I ever would’ve expected to experience in my lifetime, but old age does funny things to your heart, literally and figuratively speaking. Anyway, while somebody working in concessions was cutting onions, DBA and MM3 were cutting each other in the ring with light tubes and shattered panes of glass. At one point in the match, the father and son duo took the fight into the crowd, where they took turns hitting each other with different children in the bleachers (presumably other family members). MM3 even picked a woman up out of the crowd and used her to kick DBA, but when MM3 put her back down, she gave him the double middle-fingers and kicked him back. It was a big old, blood covered family affair, and I truly expected MM3 to win, not unlike I expected Caden Monroe to win his earlier match, but alas, in the final stanza of the match, MM3 was put through a pane of glass and DBA dropped his world famous flaming elbow onto his son and pinned him in the middle of the ring for the win.
At the end of the night, the bloodied patriarch of the Monroe Dynasty stood tall, Downriver Championship in hand. His plasma soaked sons, Caden and MM3, may have tasted defeat, but the DBA, Malcolm Monroe Jr., remained the face of Xtreme Intense Championship Wrestling.
