ICW: Show Me Your Lizard! review

Gary Henderson

ICW: Show Me Your Lizard!
27/04/2014 – The Garage, Glasgow

Right, since this is the first review of ICW I’ve done and I’m guessing a lot of you wont be familiar with the talents or the general feel of the show, ill give nice big full descriptions of our combatants and what the fuck all of it means. Basically ICW is a bit like ECW its heyday. An underground promotion that made its name by being hardcore and x-rated, doing stupid shite that included – but wasn’t limited to – a guy stapling a womans vaginal lips, Paul London getting his balls out and hitting someone with a ‘Flying Teabag Senton’ and, well, GRADO.

I don’t like hardcore wrestling that much, so thankfully ICW has evolved a bit now to boast the best of Scottish wrestling inside the ring, while still maintaining a bit of madness outside it. There’s a bit of everything on this show (except GRADO, who was on holiday with his girlfriend), so I’ll dive in;

Opening Segment – Kid Fite calls out Liam Thompson

Kid Fite was the fella who got bollocked by Paul London. But you see, putting testicles in peoples faces is kind of Kid Fites deal. He welcomes us along to the show and reminds us that, indeed, he likes putting his testicles in people’s faces. The crowd like this and cheer wildly for the insinuation that Kid Fite might put his testes in their faces. I am perplexed by this. Surely there’s a #ballstofaces t-shirt to be made out there? Anyway, Thompson is his ex-partner in the hugely successful ‘Fight Club’ tag team, turning on Fite at the company’s last show.

Naturally, Fite wants to ‘kick his fucking cunt in’. This brings out Carmel – Thompsons chick. Long story short, she calls him gay for putting his balls in men’s faces, so Fite threatens to ball-bag her face. She is scared. This brings out Thompson and a scuffle ensues. They get pulled apart by security and all is well with the world once again.

ICW Tag Team Championship
Sumerian Death Squad defeated Kenny Williams & Jeo Hendry by Pinfall to retain the ICW Tag Team Championship.

I will add at this point that I’ve not been to an ICW show in ages, and while I get to a lot of local shows, there are a few guys I’ve not seen in person. Joe Hendry is one of them. Fucking hell this guy is a star. He calls himself the ‘Local Hero’ and has one of the greatest themes I’ve ever heard. I will add a link in here;

The whole crowd sang along to this and swayed their arms. It was fucking beautiful.
Anyway. This guy has star written all over them. He’s tall, built and just dripping with charisma. He also announces his name in song, which causes about 500 other people to repeat it back to him. Great fun. Williams is part of the ‘Kennedy’ group they’re in, and after a pre-match promo, out comes the Sumerian Death Squad.

They are basically a couple of fucking bruisers. Big, gruff, dirty bastards who like to smash the fuck out of people. There’s a bit of L.O.D about them, but if L.O.D were in G.O.T after spending some time in the D.O.A. They’re basically the L.O.D.G.O.T.D.O.A. They can work too. This was probably the match of the night, with the S.D.S throwing about some cracking double team power moves on Williams (who is a little, skinny guy that bumps like a fucking champion and looks like ‘not-very-funny British comedian’ Russell Kane). Hendry looked a wee bit out of his depth in-ring but he’ll get better and become huge one day. Too much star quality there.

SDS took the win after about five moves with no real name in a row which were basically “lets see how high we can throw Kenny”. Great match which garnered a ‘This is Awesome’ chant from the crowd.

A little bit on the crowd as an aside. What a shower of cunts. Just enjoy the show, don’t spend three hours trying to get yourself over with whacky chats and blatantly not listening through any of the promos because you’re so much bigger than the product. Anyway…

20-Minute Time Limit
James Scott vs Joe Coffey ended in a Draw after the 20-Minute time limit expired.

I didn’t really enjoy this too much. They tried to have a technical Japanese strong-style epic, but it was too sloppy and lacked any sort of heat after the great spot-fest it had to follow. There were botched ‘giant swings’ and really weak looking offense on both sides. Anyway, Joe Coffey is part of the Coffey brothers tag team. He’s a big fella who would look like a beast if he dropped a few stone. James Scott has been around forever as Darkside and looks like a slightly chubbier Taz – provoking the chant “Wee Fat Taz” from the crowd.

It went to a 20 minute draw. This was blatantly going to happen as the kept mentioning the time limit. I went for a pee during this match and the Nigerian toilet attendant informed me that “no splash, no gash”, which was the best part of the match.

Coffey gets on the mike and challenges Scott to a 60 minute Iron Man Match, the crowd chant ‘No!’ which was quite funny. Scott says he’s shooting and this is real, his back is fucked and he’s retiring after ten years. The crowd start singing the goodbye song. He then says to the crowd the people chanting that can fuck off but the ones applauding him will be missed and all that soppy shit.

The crowd eventually start a thank you chant, tears and all that lovely stuff. The guy is done apparently.

Four-On-Three
New Age Kliq (Chris Renfrew, BT Gunn & Dickie Divers) defeated Wolfgang, Jimmy Havoc & The Bucky Boys by Pinfall.

The NAK are an NWO type group of anarchists led by Chris Renfew who has a fucking brilliant mind for the business and helps book the promotion. The Bucky Boys are a group of Neds (chavs, whatever you want to call them) who are so much bloody fun. They come out to hard techno music, drink Buckfast (a tonic wine favoured by such) and are just a brilliant pastiche on a very prominent sub-section of Scottish society. Wolfgang is just a bloody big fella with a lovely smile who does a great Senton Bomb – and I’m sure you all know who Jimmy Havoc is.

The highlight of the match was basically the crowd chanting “HAVOCS GONNA TURN GONNA TURN, HAVOCS GONNA TURN” so much that the wrestlers had to start addressing it, leading the face team into a corner conference asking Havoc if he was going to turn while Havoc pleaded and promised them.

Match reminded me of a Shield 6-man. Lots of stuff going on, loads of innovative offence by ‘Stevie Boy’ of the Bucky Boys, everyone getting their shit in and general pendemonium all over the place. The finish came when the lights dropped and the NAK’s music began blaring out. A hooded cunt appeared in the ring and dropped Stevie with the Vertebreaker. After the pin, he revealed himself to be James Scott – the guy who just retired.

He announced he was reverting back to ‘Darkside’, his previous gimmick, rather than his current ‘Wee Fat Taz’ moniker. For the record he still looks both wee, fat and a bit like Taz. Good match and nice swerve this though.

Next up was meant to be a singles match between the incredibly talented Noam Dar and Mark Coffey. Right before it started, the lights dropped and in came Fergal Fucking Devitt dressed as Darth Maul. This was the best thing on the show by a country mile and garnered easily the biggest pop. I was the most hungover guy in the world at this show and even I lost my shit a bit for him. He’s just miles ahead of anyone else in the local scene. He was unannounced for the show, but as he won the Zero-G (secondary) title at ICW’s last show from Coffey, we had a triple threat title match on our hands.

Zero-G Championship – Three-Way
Mark Coffey defeated Prince Devitt & Noam Dar by Pinfall to become the new Zero-G Champion. *NEW CHAMPION*

This was so great. Devitt is just so smooth and crisp in the ring, and totally carried everything about this match. Coffey looked decent and Dar has an amazing future ahead of him with him only being like 21 or something, but Christ Devitt is good. This was your WWE main event style triple threat match where one guy spills and two go at it, until another guy spills and the other two go at it. A few spots here and there with Devitt chopping the shit out of people and a few crowd dives put it over the top.

The only thing that stopped it being the best match on the show was the finish. It was a bit of an anti-climax which saw Coffey getting the clean pin to win the title back. The crowd chanted ‘Bullshit’, but hey, Devitt looks like he’s off to bigger things so it was only ever going to be a short reign. Much like Alan Partridge at an E.L.O concert in 1979, we all chanted ‘please come back’ at Devitt. He might. He’s bloody good.

Jackie Polo defeated Solar by Pinfall.

Solar is basically Rey Mysterio. Jackie Polo is basically Mr. Perfect/Tyler Breeze. Nothing match. Polo has a ‘bad neck’ and wears a brace everywhere. Nuts Asai Moonsault into the crowd by Solar but Polo finished him off in short time with a shoulder-breaker I think. Probably.

Anyway he goes to Styles clash solar because he’s feuding with the guy who broke his neck on one a few months back, but some fat bald guy that I don’t know called Sweenie came out and tried to take a piss on polo, who escaped. This was kind of shit.

Main event time.

ICW Heavyweight Championship
Jack Jester defeated Red Lightning by Pinfall to retain the ICW Heavyweight Championship.

This was so flat. I really like Jack Jester because he works in an S&M dungeon, really dedicating himself to the gimmick of seedy pirate/clown/I’m not really sure. I’ve seen him in action many times over the years and he’s usually very fucking good, but this just fell totally flat. Red Lightning is a Scottish wrestling mainstay who looks to be slightly past his best, but again, every time I’ve seen him, he has been right good to watch. This just wasn’t one of those times.

They did the whole brawling into the crowd and hit each other with chairs and barbed wire baseball bats, but it was all very safe and a bit meh. I don’t want them to go out there and kill each other, but if you bring a barbed wire baseball bat out to the ring, either do something worthwhile with it or don’t introduce it at all. A few half arsed hits off the chair was as much as we got.
Anyway, Jester won with a Tombstone Piledriver.

Out came Jimmy Havoc who challenged Jester to a match in London. They sucked each other off about how hardcore each other was and that ended the show.