LadySports ::: CHICKFIGHT!

ALL-FEMALE PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING TOURNAMENT OCTOBER 29 & 30

FRIDAY RESULTS

Friday 10/29/04 -- Day One of APW Halloween Hell featuring Chick Fight Tournament 2004 was held in Hayward, CA

Text and Photos courtesy Dr Mike Lano

APW and the Pro Girls Wrestling Association joined forces for the first time for APW's 8th annual Halloween Hell weekend. This is the first time APW has had a two day tournament for their annual spectacular (always 5 stars, one of APW's WMania type events) resembling their historic KOI tournament in 2001 that first paired the world's greatest talent like Chris Danials, Low Ki, eventual winner American Dragon, Super Dragon, Doug Williams, Samoa Joe, Frankie Kazarian, Mike Modest, Donovan Morgan, Bison Smith, Spanky, Scoot Andrews and more; serving as the inspiration for Ring of Honor and great promotions utilizing the top indie talent on the planet, to follow. I hope one day to see pure wrestling matches in the awesome ROH with women of this calibre and know the great fans of the Northeast would dig these matches no-end.

Randy Powell runs PGWA and promotes credible, ROH-type all-girl wrestling shows across the U.S. as well as the LadySports.com website. He is still championing non t & a women's wrestling, bringing in former greats like Penny Banner (the first AWA women's champ in the 60's), Sue Green, Luna Vachon, Sheri Martel and more to his shows.

The venue: sold-out APW dojo in Hayward, CA Friday, Oct 29th

The girls worked out earlier in the day and Princess Sugey from the Monterrey, Mexico all women's promotion (Sara Del Ray from Iron and others have competed there) impressed everyone by being a real shooter and wanting no light. She is very tough and could easily keep up with any ROH-type athlete, as could Melissa Anderson, 2nd generation wrestler. Melissa's dad Doug used to team with Bill Anderson (moving to Phoenix and reportedly completing his autobiography with WWE's Keith Greenberg!) and the late/great pal Louie Spicolli.

When the show started, all APW staff was dressed to the nines, and all the entrants in the tournament came to the ring with a Chick Fight 2004 shirt on after a cool video history of women's wrestling was shown. This was exactly the classy way KOI was done in 2001 that impressed Dave Meltzer, Bryan Alvarez (who also wrestled!), historian J Michael Kenyon and so many wrestling reporters who flew in for that event. Each one did a short, shoot promo about themselves.

1: Princess Sugey beat the fill-in for ailing Vancouver star Miss Chevious (Candice LeRae who competes as a Canadian and is currently training/working for Jesse Hernandez EWF in San Berdo, CA). Candice didn't get in much offense, and the masked Sugey was out of this world stretching her, chopping the hell out of her (we'd see that in nearly every match with these female Flairs) and using a lot of innovative holds and submissions in the Sayama Japanolucha style. Sugey also can work the crowd great, pretending not to know English (she is fluent in Spanish primarily) and saying "por que?" each time one of APW's two female refs would disipline her (Christina McGraw, Dina Massaro). It's pretty cool that APW has been so progressive the past 3 years with talented female refs and a female ring announcer ("Betty Beefcake"). Sugey advances.

2: CAC's 2004 future legend (holder of the same title belt in APW currently) Melissa Anderson, no longer just a cheerleader at all-had a 4+ star holds/maneuvers match with Nene Kimura who is training for the next few months at APW before returning to JD star promotion in Japan. They continued the feud they had from the last big Gym Wars 3 weeks ago when they tore the house down for that main event. This was an even better match if that's possible which had all the psychology, rationale, moves and escapes so many cry for at WWE and elsewhere---and this was a women's match. Could've easily been part of a Wrestlemarinpiad (sp) joint show in Japan--it was that good and Nene can work the crowd too. Melissa has already put in her 4 months+ in Japan (she'd like to go back one more time besides more trips to Mexico and Germany) and Les Thatcher and so many at WWE are already impressed with her after seeing her work at OVW). Both do the AJW screeching bigtime and were really intense for this, Nene doing the Japan hairtossing of Melissa all over the ring. Melissa got a surprise submission out of nowhere with a move I've never seen before and win, but I'm sure they'll be feuding and giving more state of the art female matches at APW before Nene sadly has to return back to Japan. Perhaps the best technical match on the show, and that's saying something. I can't say enough great things about this ROH/KOI type match but what else would one expect from these two pros?

3: Nikki Roxx-trained by Walter Kowalski and who's worked extensively for Sheldon Goldberg's NECW promotion and so many others in the NE as well as Japan! (she can speak it pretty well and was keeping up with me) beat giant monster Hailey Hatred who was doing some awesome power moves ala Pink Cadillac from Florida days who had a nice Japan run herself. The crowd kept chanting "barbi doll"--hey, we're all admittedly sexist at heel Hatred and although she was a bit nervous, she really went into 5th gear as did Nikki. The sexist animal I am, I have to admit besides being a totally credible athlete, Nikki has perhaps the best body on a female wrestler I've ever seen which good or bad is so important in N.A. wrestling. Just a beautiful girl, but once they started with the moves and counters; you mentally put that aside and focus on the ability portion. Nikki is another who should be looked at by WWE bigtime after Melissa and Nene. And she really knows how to work the crowd, and showed a lot of great reason for doing things, psychology--totally refreshing. I should mention all the APW guys in the back, BTW, were watching/studying all the matches bigtime and applauding big moves, flying, etc beginning with one of the top trainer/wrestlers ever in Robert Thompson. That was cool to see, as well as the boys wincing when the girls did legit painful stuff to one another. Nikki got a surprise roll-up and win on her larger opponent who went ballistic. Good stuff

4: Christie Ricci (swears she didn't take the name from the actress) also got a surprise pin/win over APW's own rookie star Tiffany (the Mafia Princess). This was Tiffany's best match I believe I've ever seen, and that's saying something since she's worked on APW supercards with her trainer Melissa and Nene. Lots of new moves and psychology from Tiffany which was cool to see since she's a real sponge for knowledge during training. Sexist pitch (that's going to happen when the lady wrestlers are all so cool looking): Ricci is one of the tallest, well conditioned (not quite like Nikki) blonde athletes I've ever seen--looking to be over 6' tall. Gorgeous babyface who the crowd was in love with, with many chanting her name in a good way.Tiffany did all her heel stuff and they worked well together. Even match up but Ricci advances. She's from Hendersonville, TN and a big fan natch of the one and only Eddie Gilbert who we all love and miss.

*So impressed that all the male APW wrestlers plus Asian Cougar and another great star flown over from the same Japanese promotion; weren't booked to take any spotlight away from the purpose of the evening--all the 4 and 5 star ladies matches which were the main deal. That was classy and the boys graciously acknowledged the women were the stars of the night. They had a big battle royal to determine the challenger for the next evenings huge APW Universal title held by JJ Perez who watched the match ringside with his belt over his shoulder. All the APW males were in it plus the two Japan stars and one big tall Hispanic guy who looked like Big Joe from Oregon/Washington. The two japanese greats were left in the ring with the heel vampire Billy Blade and finally the amazing Asian Cougar tossed out Billy. There was also cool spot harking back to the Lebell/Shire 70's battle royal days with a multi-man, football type pileup and pin. Great battle royal and now a dream match tonight/Saturday with JJ defending against Asian Cougar!

* In the first of two semi-finals in the tourny: Princess Sugey had a drag-out,kickass match with Nikki Roxx before winning with her unusual leg and arm submission that looks like a chiropractors nightmare. After Nikki was forced to tap out (selling the pain well-that's something else all the women did was show great selling when necessary), Sugey kept reapplying the hold and pointing to herself, demanding all of us photographers to keep taking pics of her. It was something else and again Nikki Roxx is a class athlete, as were all the girls or they wouldn't have been flown in.

* Melissa beat Chrity Ricci in a deservedly lengthy, 22+ classic that began like the previous semifinal. Both semis were off the hool for the reasons stated above: good displays of mat and chain, great pyschology and selling, good give and take, innovation and creativity. The lack of pushed t and a is refreshing and all I can say is this Japanolucha style was well done by all the int'l athletes APW has and also brought in with Randy Powell's help for DVD and tapes which is the current way to market matches one could watch over and over. These two top-name wrestlers hadn't met before and began with great mat and chain wrestling and counters to see how far they could push the other. Both had shaken hands before the bell but the local California fans know you never count Melissa out to be as aggressive as possible w/o going full-fledged heel. The crowd was evenly divided with cheers for both, and by this point they were hoarse because all the wrestlers had really stepped it up a notch beyond the typical N.A. "girls match" to closely resemble a King of Indies, Ring Of Honor pure wrestling match of skill.

Should mention also, most of these matches, obviously the last two semis had the fans giving standing ovations. After the show was over, all the women entered the ring and had Olympic style rings on banners put over their shoulders-totally class Japan-style that had occured at the 2001 KOI. This two day series will be as important and influential, and it's the direction the biz should be going in since the catfight, b.s. WWE style is getting more boring than usual with the valet types they force to "wrestle" there. These lady wrestlers can hold their own with anyone. Hats off to APW for creating memorable history once again.

So tonight, right back tonight for historic Halloween Hell at 6 pm at APW dojo/Arena, Robert Thompson takes on his arch rival Orlando Mathias in the big cage (that's how Robert was the first eliminated from the battle royal--when Killah J Mathias began taunting him and Robert jumped out of the ring thereby eliminating himself to go after him and add more intrigue, APW highflying champ JJ Perez (fresh from his latest Japan tour with Jardi Franz) defends vs Asian Cougar, a ton of outstanding APW matches and the main event tourny final--Melissa Anderson wrestles Princess Sugey in what should be 5 star++++. Thank you APW!

I forgot to mention in APW training pre-tourny show last night, Melissa Anderson and Princess Sugey (pronounced Sue-hee) who does the hilarious and dead serious promos in Spanish really impressed one another, having never met. When they locked up, they began pounding each other in the chest to test each other; then doing a mat/chain clinic while everyone watched. Sugey thought the girls would be all powder puffs who hadn't competed in the full ladies group in Monterrey, Mexico that occasionally contracts out to Paco Alonso, but she was impressed with Melissa. I belive Nikki, Christie Ricci and Hailey Hatred have all competed for LLF group there.

Some of the girls might not have competed in anything on this level or anything so serious as a King of Indies type of tournament done ala the Olympics; but all stepped up their game and were probably driven to the best matches of their careers; I'm just guessing. Most all were black and blue and bruised at the post-show, just as Danials, Low Ki, Amer Dragon, Samoa Joe were way back at KOI in 2001. Everyone was proud to have been part of such an important to the industry event and although these wrestlers names may not be familiar yet the way a Samoa Joe or Frankie Kazarian may not've been in '01; I think after tonight everyone will know who these girls are. I'm hoping this is the next phase for indie wrsestling: better integration of hybrid-talented girls and minorities.