brendan halpin

Is there a better balm for the soul in troubled times than watching people get suplexed, dropkicked, and clotheslined? I think not!

Back at the Sons of Italy Hall in scenic Watertown MA for another Chaotic Wrestling show, still Boston’s best entertainment value at 20 bucks for second-row seats for three hours of wrestling entertainment.

The show opened with the team of Paris Van Dale and Dante Drago vs. up and comers The Shooter Boys. Paris did fantastic character work when she was a solo act, hamming it up as a diva who loved being champion but didn’t much like actually wrestling to defend the title. It was a great gimmick, and yet I enjoyed her face turn as she warmed up to teaming up with Dante Drago, but she’s now been relegated to standing in the corner of the wring calling for the tag while Dante gets the stuffing beaten out of him. In short, she’s not being given an opportunity to do what she’s best at. So when the Shooter Boys asked her to ditch Dante and become the first Shooter Girl, I hoped we were in for a heel turn, but sadly, she remained loyal to Dante. They won the match, but I hope this is setting her up to betray Dante in epic fashion.

Tag team champs The Monarchy hosted a “beat the clock” challenge. Rules were incomprehensible, but basically the Monarchy (King BMT and Queen Ariel) sat on chairs with cardboard thrones behind them and watched four matches. Blue collar Seabass Finn took on fabulous Armani Kaos and won. Glamour girl Livyah (my daughter: “she must have money. Her hair is expensive.” beat Jose Zamora, who seems to have cribbed Paris’s “influencer” act, Greasy, arrogant DJ Powers took on Tony “The Big Cheese” Navarro, whose entire gimmick is that he’s Italian, which I love. Anyway, that match took too long so they were both disqualified (I told you the rules were incomprehensible). Spike Nishimura beat preening narcissist Kalvin Dumont in 16 seconds, so that meant that Spike and Livyah (I don’t know, something to do with time) won the right to face off against The Monarchy for the championship. (After the 16 second match, King BMT said “in even less time than it took Rich Palladino [the beloved ring announcer] to conceive his last child, Spike wins.”)

A word about Spike: she’s the lone female wrestler in the promotion leaning into “tough” rather than glamorous. I love glamour and glitz but also athleticism, and I like that Spike is bringing the tough kid energy. Her costume looks like she’s on her way to the gym rather than a pageant, and though she’s not physically imposing, she very much looks like she could beat your ass and enjoy doing it.

Great stuff. And then we got 3 members of God’s Greatest Creation facing off against Anthony Greene and crowd favorites Trigga the OG and Mortar. GGC’s gimmick is that they’re kind of a creepy religious cult led by Arcturus in face paint and a pope hat like the Papa Emeritus you ordered on Temu. This was an absolutely kickass match that had the crowd on their feet and screaming. GGC won, which was disappointing (as my friend Greg said, “If I want to watch creepy religious fanatics beat the good guys, I’ll turn on the news!”), but it was an absolutely fantastic match.

Intermission should have come after this tough act to follow, but instead we got JT Dunn vs. Jariel Rivera in an absolute snoozefest of a match. The crowd got so quiet that I could hear the conversation of the frat boy dickheads behind me, so that kind of killed the vibe. Here’s the thing about JT Dunn—he’s probably the best technical wrestler in the entire promotion, and his character seems to be a genuinely nice, hardworking, humble guy. He introduced his infant son from the ring and we all cheered! Definitely the kind of guy you’d like to hang out with. But this persona generates basically zero heat in the ring. So this match featured good wrestling but got almost no reaction from the standing room only crowd.

After the intermission we got the tag team match of The Monarchy vs. Spike and Livyah. The Monarchy do top-notch character work, and so even though they’re the heels, I didn’t mind seeing them win. Side note: every Chaotic show I’ve been to in the last year has had a kid in a banana costume in the crowd. In the past, she’s always had a hand-painted sign that said “DWEEB” that she would hold up at appropriate moments, but this time she had a sign that read, “BMT PEED HIMSELF” which was brilliant. Viva banana kid!

Ricky Smokes beat John Walters to retain his championship belt, then put Waters through a door. Smokes goes from arrogant sneer to terrified disbelief in a heartbeat and is just a great heel. He is a WWE ID prospect, and I suspect folks will soon be paying more than 20 bucks to watch him wrestle.

If you’ve read this far: please support the independent artists of your local wrestling promotion as well as all the other independent artists: musicians, authors, artists, filmmakers, fiber artists, whatever. Go see a show! Buy an album on bandcamp! Keep artsists making great art that makes reality bearable!