Andy’s (not so) Angry: The #HossDivision, GFW Tags New Japan, and Stepping Back in the Combat Zone

In 2010, my friend, her brother and I piled into a little car, and made the trek from central Long Island to middle-of-nowhere Delaware.  We crashed in a hotel, grabbed breakfast the next morning at Cracker Barrel, then spent the rest of the day watching guys maim each other at the CZW Tournament of Death IX.

I still have mixed feelings about that day.

I’ll admit it, I had fun.  There’s a sick, perverted enjoyment in watching guys sacrifice themselves for a pop.  I witnessed things that day that I haven’t seen in a wrestling ring since.  The crowd and the atmosphere are both incredibly unique. And, as I’ve confirmed on trips to Cooperstown and the Midwest, a road trip with friends is always fun.

And hey, any show that gets me on Botchamania AND Tosh.0 can’t be all bad, right?

But there are a few things that really upset me looking back on this show.

One guy who worked the show (in three matches, no less) is dead.  Rumor had it that JC Bailey had a serious painkiller problem.

One guy who worked the show was arrested about six months later for robbing a bank.  In a jailhouse interview, Nick F’n Gage admitted he had been addicted to painkillers for at least a decade. He was also homeless at the time of the robbery.  He blew most of his bank robbery proceeds in Atlantic City before he was caught by police.

And in an era where we learned in horror that a man with the brain of an 80-year-old dementia patient had murdered his wife and child before taking his own life, I watched almost everyone on the card take dangerously stiff shots to the head.

All this came to mind as I tried to review CZW’s New York debut show, Cerebral.  It was a solid show.  It was very ECW-esque, in the way that it featured some world class technical wrestling, incredible athleticism, and brutal hardcore wrestling.  The friends who came with me to the show – who are NOT wrestling fans – had a great time, to the point that they’re already asking to tag along when I go to other shows.

But something bothered me at Cerebral.  It wasn’t the blood (which flowed freely in several matches.)  It wasn’t the f-bombs.  It wasn’t the snarky crowd.  It wasn’t the barbed wire, or the suplex in the crowd that left me with a sweet bruise on my arm.

It’s the head shots.

In three separate matches, guys took incredible stiff chair shots to the head.  I cringed, hard.  The crowd dug it and, to a degree, I suppose I did too.  But I worry about these guys.  I worry about them a lot.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I suffer from migraines.  They’re absolutely debilitating, and perhaps the only thing in my life that has ever left me legitimately incapacitated.  They’re the only thing that ever make me almost understand the mindset of an addict, who eats pills or shoots up to feel “normal.”  It’s the only thing that makes me almost understand the idea of doing anything to not hurt.

And, from my seat, it looks like these guys are doing this to themselves on purpose. I suppose every professional wrestler is a bit of a masochist at heart, or else they could never get in the ring in the first place. But there has to be a limit.

Last fall, I wrote about wrestlers (and the wrestling business) doing their part to protect the boys and, in turn, the business as a whole. One year later, Daniel Bryan is on the sidelines, with injuries suffered as a result of his balls-to-the-wall style.  A handful of top guys are out with moderate to major injuries.

The more things change…

I wrote then that I no longer enjoy watching two guys kill themselves for a crowd.  I still don’t,

But then again, I’m going to watch TLC with Nick.  I’m going to buy a ticket if CZW returns to New York…and I may just make another trip to a Tournament of Death.  So like the same crowd that I criticize, for knowing better but continuing to cheer for blood and headshots… I’m a hypocrite, too.

You know what makes even less sense to, though?  Sozio at CZW Champion.  What gives?

@AndyMillerJMS

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