ESW Human cockfighting

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Added by July 31, 2012

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Part of the charm of the tape-trading scene was the pot luck involved. Sometimes you’d get Tiger Mask I sometimes you’d get Tiger Mask IV. Here’s a tape that listed an AIDS infected syringes match.

I know nothing about Extremely Strange Wrestling, so here’s an article copy-pasted from here.

I’ve been watching wrestling for well over half my life now. Seen the NWA become WCW, and WCW become a gimmick in the WWF which became the WWE. ECW came and went, GLOW went and came back (I’m not kidding, with Jimmy Hart of all people running the show. Feel free to shoot yourselves in hopes you never accidentally see a second of it while channel surfing). Been there as friends grew from their first outlaw show to actually becoming stars, with others who are destined to achieve it. Watched Vic Grimes and New Jack nearly kill themselves, Sabu close a wound mid-match that required close to a hundred stitches, and Mr. Danger get eaten by pirhanas. Six-sided rings, no roped rings, exploding cages of barbed wire… with very few exceptions, I have seen it all.

Now, the opportunity to fill the gap has finally become available again. And although I’ve been become nearly completely desensitized both to the violence and ability levels that even the most wild performers can offer, I absolutely marked out yesterday upon hearing that for the first time in years the one part of the wrestling puzzle I was afraid was gone forever is once again out there (and when I say “out there”, I ain’t just whistling Dixie brother), straight from the man responsible. And that is what today’s post is about.

When you think “extreme”, what comes to mind? ECW, with the Axl/Ian matches banned from TV and names like Sabu, Funk, New Jack, Cactus Jack, and Sandman scarring themselves for life? XPW, the company financed with porn money that has taken many of those names and raises the bar to the next level? CZW, known to use weed whackers and lemon juice with matches so violent they recently had a worker nearly have to get his arm amputated? IWA, Big Japan, or FMW, pure psychotic destruction from the society that consideres tenticle rape cartoons high art?

Yeah, those are fine… but there was one company who made those guys seem like a less graceful performance of fucking “Muppets on Ice”. A group so over-the-top that arrests, riots, and being shut out of their venue were not just possibilities, but actual occurances. Matches where blood was far from the only bodily fluid spilled, and where the antics reached such levels of depravity you’d swear they couldn’t have really taken place… but they did.

Welcome to the world of EXTREMELY STRANGE WRESTLING!

ESW was the brainchild of wrestler/promoter J.R. BENSON, a former (and unbelievably, “current”) member of Roland Alexander’s well-known Cali group APW. After being responsible for bringing the hardcore style to the area (along with Vic Grimes and others), Benson had a falling out with management and left to form his own company where his style would not only be embraced, but the focal point. He first formed “Insanely Strange Wrestling”, but when they decided to try to appeal to a more mainstream (pfffft) audience they violated the principles that Benson had brought them to life for, and he packed up along with a whole chunk of the talent and went “extreme”.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Now a lot of this is being written from memory based on second-hand recountings from about 5 years ago, so some of the names and things associated with “Extreme” may actually be “Insane”… the point of this isn’t to be a scholarly piece, just to open the eyes of those of you who never realized something like this existed, to re-introduce it to those who had all but forgotten, and to once again irreparably scar the minds of those who had spent the time since trying with all their might to forever repress it.

Some of the characters involved should give you an idea of what this group was all about. The two actual wrestlers who stick out in my mind the most were “The Abortionist”, who came to the ring in a bloody doctor’s robe and employed a wire hanger as his weapon of choice (and would try to use it on the valets, not just to hit or choke but in the way it was intended). The other, “The Great NAMBLA”, took over if the Abortionist didn’t do his job properly and the child was actually born… making sure he was shown the love and affection that only the North American Man/Boy Love Association can deliver (along with his “manager” The Friction Kid”). These were supplimented with guys like Natural Born Molester, Rapist, El Hijo de Manny Jesus Juan Julio Ernesto Ramon Chico Verde Chille Con Carne Perez, and JR Benson himself, otherwise referred to as “God”.

The sickness wasn’t limited to the guys. We had the Volumptuous Brenda, who once revived her man JR by relieving herself in his mouth on a CROWDED LOS ANGELES STREET, stopping traffic and narrowly averting a full-scale riot. Also charming the crowds was Mistriss Synn, a dominatrix who had the ability to turn any man into a weak-willed sex slave. But far better is my very favorite creation of the company, the one who convinced me that every single person involved in this should in some way have a major role in running the country: KAREN VON ERICH. Now if you are new to wrestling and not really familiar with the story of the Von Erich family, you may want to stop and read THIS before continuing on. If you do know the morbid tale then you know why her character, the “only daughter” in the klan who was molested and force-fed drugs by her daddy and because of that (and due to her genetic disposition) spends all of her time around the ringside area trying to kill herself is either one of the most tasteless or funniest things you’ve ever heard in all your years of following wrestling (or more likely a combination of the two). In fact… just thinking about it… BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!

And then there was their drunken commissioner, “Paul E.”. If all goes well we’ll have his shoot interview HERE ON LETHAL very shortly so I’ll save the full story about him for that… in the meantime, read what he’s been doing with his time away from the biz HERE. Classic.

But it wasn’t just the combatants that set the unique tone, the matches themselves were… well… “insanely extreme” as well. WWF had coffin matches… ESW had “Box of AIDS-Infected Needle” Matches. And the one that got them the most industry “heat” wasn’t just because of the gore involved, but because this was back in a time before wrestlers gave interviews that let reporters in on the joke. At the notorious “Exposing The Business: Breaking Kayfabe” show they had a “Blade Rope” match, where the wrestlers (both of whom had already been rendered “HIV-Positive” from previous death matches) did their thing in a ring wrapped with razor blades that dangled from the ropes. The object wasn’t to use them to destroy the opponent but to get them and openly gig, or “blade” themselves. This was made all the more entertaining by Miss Von Erich, who kept trying to steal the weapons to cut her own wrists with them (again… BWAHAHAHAHA!)

ESW basically disbanded once Benson and company decided they’d taken things as far as they could without becoming a repetative parody of themselves. But thankfully they are reborn in the form of videotapes once again being sold by Benson himself. I’m yet to see them (that won’t last long, my money order is going in the mail this weekend), but I’ve seen loads of pictures and have had friends who swear the vids are the best money spent this side of a GG Allin DVD or crack. In addition to the matches with the stuff I’ve mentioned plus so much more it would take a whole front page of posts to tell you about you can check out the TAPE SECTION of JR’s website, which not only has the matches from there but also early APW stuff (Spike Dudley’s first match, the “sickest chair shot in history” from Sabu), and tons of extras like the footage of Jim Cornette LOSING IT at a Dairy Queen drive-thru that has to be seen to be believed (at one time they also had the Missy Hyatt lesbian sex scene on there until she sued. Yeah, that’s the sort of thing that could really sully her reputation *rolls eyes*).

And now Benson is back in the last place anyone ever thought they’d see him again, raising Hell in the promotion he was accused of sending on the road to nearly a decade ago. God bless that man. If everyone in the business did things his way I may never have become an op board writer… because I wouldn’t have a goddamned thing to bitch about.

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