With the long standing Raincity Coalition and Fur & Loathing feud over a set of lewd tag titles that were immediately discarded over and out of the way, it was time to cover some new ground within the confines of the Battle Palace. A month has past and we've all moved onto new things: Drew is nursing his aforementioned injury, Kaden is noticeably absent from this show and Scott is wrestling an old backyard friend of ours in James Diesel, whom I'll be discussing further in a few weeks time. As far as what I had in store for me on this particular evening, in my first match that I had up until this point in a 3-2-1 ring against someone who wasn't from my group of friends that I trained and/or backyarded with, I went one on one with "Romantic" Romeo Ramirez.
As I mentioned previously, while we did have some hesitation with fully integrating ourselves into the 3-2-1 fray and working with some of the roster members who were particularly green, after pretty much exclusively wrestling one another for 6 straight months, it became clear that we would have no choice. Not only would help to freshen up the cards but it's the manner in which green talent gets better; by working with people more seasoned and experienced who can help them grow. The joke was on me because little did I know truly how much learning and growing I still had to do over the next decade of becoming the world travelled indie wrestler that I was, but there's still quite a while until we cover those bases.
"Romantic" Romeo Ramirez is someone who was relatively new at this point and while he may have lacked some finer technical polish, he had an undeniable natural charisma and a great gimmick to boot; one that was incredibly over with the every growing 3-2-1 fanbase, who naturally wanted to cheer for him and would eventually turn him babyface despite the best efforts of the powers that be. While he was soft spoken with his words, through his perfectly coifed hairdo and mannerisms, he expertly portrayed an over the top, fiery Don Juan esque lothario complete with a White Puffy shirt made famous from a particular episode of Seinfeld.
He also found himself accompanied by a masked Butler, always wielding a mirror and a dozen roses; a gimmick that was eventually dropped with my best guess being that the cost benefit analysis of spending more on his monthly flower fix than his nightly payoff came to be a factor. And of course, he entered to a myriad of songs by Seattle's own Kenny G, eventually settling on a cover of Celine Dione's "My Heart Will Go On" although at this point he's using the curly haired hornsman's rendition of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful"; which is the reason why my YouTube upload of this match cannot be monetized or even viewed in a handful of countries.
Generally speaking, this match is fairly basic but it builds logically with clearly defined face & heel roles and a couple of cute spots, mostly based around Romeo's Flowers. After some early chain wrestling that Romeo wants nothing to do with, I take over with some hard forearms and European uppercuts before he can bail to the floor as I attempt my big corner charging dropkick. This all leads to yet another early tease of the big apron diving dropkick in one of these matches, however this time it's merely that; just a tease as his butler, sporting a Mil Mascaras match on this particular occasion handed off the bouquet to Romeo who in turn attempted to thwart me with it. In something resembling an attempt at a lighthearted moment, I instead call a mid-dropkick audible accepting the bouquet, punctuated with a very dismissive slap to the face as the fans eager for the now patented torching of my hip in order to smash an opponent sitting amongst them with my feet were let down as we merely made our way back inside the squared circle.
The ensuing shine of mine consists of a variety of pretty basic and fool proof submissions and stretches disguised as something more advanced and complex like pabulum for novice fans of the technical wrestling I longed to produce. This included a chinlock with an additional hammerlocked arm utilizing one of my legs, a forced split stretch involving a handstand (both of which may have been lifted from Doug Williams many years prior) and one of my own invention - a cross legged stretch with my knee on the opponent's stomach with added pressure applied forcing them into an abdominal crunch where they were met by an incoming strike of my choosing. It's at this point that I noticed that the referee for this match is Jimmy Jameson, sporting a fresh haircut that you can set your watch to. This would be the first of many times that he would be the man with the unenviable job of checking if someone's shoulders were down for 3 or whether or not someone could continue while finding themselves in the midst of a seemingly inescapable scenario in a match of mine; his resume in the future would include some pretty monumental encounters in my 3-2-1 tenure.
Romeo is table to take control here with a couple of his adorable prancing lariats with me eventually avoiding one by rolling out of the way only for the Butler to do it with the Roses in the Battle Palace. Clue jokes aside, it was in fact our friend Mil who once again handed the bouquet to Ramirez behind my back and as I found myself flying back into frame with an attempted drop kick, being met with the exploding bushel of blossoms upside my head. One thing that may not be immediately obvious to people rewatching on tape however was my hair brained attempt to take a classic inside out bump on the flowers; like one would on a big lariat (from a Big Cat) not turning out as smoothly as I had hoped. The one thing that I failed to account for was all of the added force that is generated by being hit with someone's arm on a lariat, which is what enables you to get spun all the way over in to a safe landing on your stomach or hip with that bump. Instead I found myself on the receiving end of a hard landing on my neck and shoulders surrounded by the discarded white rose pedals that now adorned the canvas. On the plus side, there wasn't any additional projectiles strewn about in the form of colourful plastic balls any longer.
The ensuing heat from this point on is decent albeit somewhat basic with competent selling on my behalf. One thing that I definitely needed to improve on at this point and thankfully would over the years was my feeding and selling into place during the body of a match; more specifically when working as an underdog. This segment does end up coming off a tad one note-y and repetitive as we truly could not top Romeo's incredibly memorable cut off on me with the flowers from earlier in the match, another good lesson I would learn over the years as well. There are also numerous points within the match where I can see myself obviously covering my face in an unnatural manner in order to call spots to my opponent, while sitting in rest holds, although maybe I shouldn't be bringing attention to that sort of thing; Oh well.
Something that I was toying with at the time that I utilized for years to come is the notion of teasing a big move, often some form of a suplex, multiple times throughout the second act of a match as a hope spot with little additional frills or components to the moments themselves; just the struggle over the move itself acting to build drama and an inert desire within the fans to see the underdog make a come back with the payoff being the move finally being hit as a big climactic moment. In this instance it's a German Suplex which I do eventually hit a huge bridging version of, complete with dead lifting Romeo off of his feet much to his (and my own) surprise for what amounted to my one big false finish in this match, with a massive pop from the fans to go along with it.
The other thing that I love about this particular moment in this match is that you can hear off camera from Scott (who was filming the match) with him sending me essentially a voice memo that I would eventually hear when I watched the match back at a later time; letting me know that he too had bit on the move as the potential finish for the match. This is something we used to do all the time when filming one another's matches and being particularly impressed by something the other person had done in the moment. At the time it just felt like a fun thing we used to do to entertain ourselves; leaving little easter eggs for one another to discover but with hindsight, it's become its own added form of substance to these matches and my life in general.
When it comes to the spot itself though - years later I would use a similarly conceived series of moments in my match with Fred Yehi, one of the strongest and toughest wrestlers I was lucky enough to ever share a ring with. On that particular night at "The Mecca" in Ridgefield Park, NJ - I instructed him that I was going to attempt to hit a Butterfly Suplex and no matter how hard I try, not to let me lock my grip and accomplish the task at hand until a point much later on in the match. Not only was it successful in building up the lactic acid and burning out my forearms in the process on that particular evening, but it got the desired reaction from the crowd when it was finally executed successfully.
The finish to this one comes in pretty quick succession as I followed up on the huge German Suplex by attempting the more effective arm trap variation of it on the romantic one - only for his man servant to get up on the apron in an attempted distraction. In classic babyface fashion, I run the two into one another although favouring a school boy in place of the traditional O'Connor roll typically used in this scenario, utilizing a cool transition from the kickout at 2 to setup my now patented "Jim Breaks Armbar" (Sorry Zack) for a tap out victory. It's literally as I'm writing this with nearly 10 years of hindsight that I find myself realizing that at this point I was undefeated in singles competition in a 3-2-1 Battle ring. Not only that but I had managed to have a fun, competent match with a completely cold opponent and hopefully gain some confidence in the mean time. While the fans were happy enough to cheer me throughout the bulk of the match, it's in an unexpected twist that after my victory I found myself on the receiving end of some boos and loud "USA" chants but that just goes to show you how much that fanbase wanted to cheer for Romeo who inadvertently was starting to get over as a babyface.
My next visit to Seattle would see me taking my place at the helm of the #1 contendership for the 3-2-1 Battle! Solid Steel championship, a belt that I would come to know very very well eventually down the line. But not only would there be a bit of a delay before I would get my hands on that particular title, there would also be an unexpected delay in the mean time for me even receiving my initial opportunity to fight for it in the first place.
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