I was recently at my first ever live wrestling event in Denmark. International Showdown rocked Langå, a small town about 15 kms from where I grew up, but a 4 hour trainride from where I live now. The afternoon show was dubbed ‘international’ due to appearence of a German tag-team and the American wrestler Cannonball Grizzly, who used to wrestle under the rapper-gimmick PN News in the 90’s (probably a play on equally overweight Prince Be of PM Dawn). 

The trainride was fun enough, I tagged along with fellow wrestling fanatics Metatron (also known to avid hiphopsimpsonsandwrestling.com readers as Orama) and Dennis Flux. We read japanese wrestling mags (I just looked at the pictures) and ate cheese burgers that tasted suspiciously fishy (literally).

Well arrived at the venue, which packed like a hundred spectators we were treated to a thorough 2½ hour card, which included the following I’ll run down without getting too technical:

The Pope Vs. Lightning Kid: The Pope from the bad guy crew (or heel stable) Damage Inc. came out and basically squashed Lightning Kid with lightning speed. It was pretty fast, and not too entertaining which led me to fear I had set my hopes too high.

Raptor Vs Mad Man McKinzy: Mad Man McKinzy came out with the gimmick of MuscleMan a slightly overweight wrestler who claimed he had trained in Argentina and had trimmed down to 3% body fat…He took off the MuscleMan attire as soon as he stepped in the ring, became Mad Man McKinzy and proceeded to pound on high-flyer Raptor. It was thoroughly entertaining, with Mad Man doing solid believable moves that looked and sounded as if  they hurt like hell and Raptor summersaulting backwards off the top rope and other acrobatic craziness. Very impressive!      

Toby Nathland & Flash Christian Vs. Cool Kristian “Krede” & Pablito: Pablito and Krede (who’s actually commented on this site) did some great tagteam work, with Krede bodyslamming left and right, but the Germans definately stole the show with hilarious bad guy personas. The highlight was surely the interaction between Toby and the ref, which went something like this:

Ref: “Toby you can’t use the chair!”

Toby (in English with extreme german accent): “Ach, but why I can’t use chair?”

Final Count & Jackson Vs. Thorn & Lars “The Shooter” Schjøtler: A bit more messy than the previous tag-match and much harder to follow. Still very enjoyable, especially “The Shooter” emulating Bret Hitman Hart, one of my personal favorites, doing the russian legsweep, elbow off the 2. turnbuckle and of course the sharpshooter.

Cannonball Grizzly Vs. Kimball: Awsome match. Grizzly is like 400 lbs but moved quick for his size and Kimball stood the distance. When Grizzly flew from the ring to the arena floor I was honestly a bit scared for the safety of both wrestlers and audience. Kimball was also the first wrestler to portray a good guy or baby face well, and when it came to the action it could just as well have been an american match in my opinion.

Chaos Vs. Tank in a tlc match – No TLC isn’t tender loving care or T-Bozz, Left Eye and Chilli. It’s Tables ladders and chairs and Chaoas and Tank threw all they had at eachother, but they also started out doing some solid mat-wrestling so it wasn’t all just about who got thrown thru what. At the end Chaos won, but was still pushed off a ladder and out of the ring where he crashed thru a table. Very cool! I mean, how do you learn to fall off a 20 foot ladder???

Overall I would say the level of entertainment in the matches was surprisingly high. These guys really knew what they were doing and there weren’t many dull moments. The audience was also into the matches and I heard some funny chants from the backrows. At first it was a little awkward to hear the mix of Danish and English chants but after a few minutes we were chanting “holy shit” and “bollesuppe” in happy unison. The only things that could be improved were the comments between matches and maybe some better musical selections to make it seem more pro. I was also surprised that only the bad guys got time on the microphone, which they did really well (especially Mr. PPV of Damage Inc was hilarious), but it’s hard to dislike them when they’re so funny and not really challenged by the good guys.

In any case I’m a huge fan of all the wrestlers and can’t wait for the next card. There’s a small show in December and then another big show like this one in February where Grizzly will return and challenge Chaos for the title I’m cleverly pointing at above. (follow the development on prowrestling.dk)

I’ll give the show two foamfingers up. Initially I thought it had room for improvement but at the end I was so surprised by the skill-level that I really can’t put a (foam)finger on anything. 

You can check a Youtube.com promo of the show here.