Devil Budakahn Memorial Show Review

From www.Sirpsychosexy.net

Saturday night, the Sorg clan ventured into the wintery weather to attend the Devil Budakahn Memorial Show. A show involving stars and efforts from members of every professional wrestling company in the Pittsburgh area.

In full disclosure, I have never actually seen Budakahn in a match, live or on tape. I still consider my self relatively new to the open door of the the independent scene, and only know of him through stories and the exposure of his own memorial show. I do know that he died last year, around the time of the Benoit deaths mid last year. But either way, this lineup was not to be missed. It was a rogues gallery of the best in town that were all there on a voluntary basis to help the family left behind by his death.

Wrestling unfortunately has gone through many changes over the decades in demographic switching from 20-30’s age group to now 40’s-50’s as the viewership ages so does the performances to appeal to an older audience. Things never thought acceptable in the 70’s were now commonplace in the memorial show. The show was covered in other companies billboards and posters, an obvious shift towards the insights in articles like this https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2019/03/insights-frontlines-b2b-marketing.html that are pushing entire paradigm shifts in how the show is being marketed.

The night started off with a surprise reunion of all former Sexual Harrassment members (Xtasy, Idol, Lords, and Rogers) against members of the Devil’s Advocates (the faction he led, I understand) plus Jason Gory. Great 8 man tag with all the comedy you’d expect from any match involving the “Bi-sexual Bulldozer” Eric Xtasy, including a lap around the balcony.

We had a lumberjack match with Powerhouse Hughes and the Beast for the CWF belt. I got to finally talk to Hughes, who I had been corresponding with for interviews and to help promote via my podcast. He was really cool, and followed up with an email back yesterday. I can’t wait to sit down and talk about the business with him in the near future.

We also were treated to a 3 way dance for NWA East/PWX‘s 3 Rivers Championship, held by Chris Lerusso, who is probably a bigger fan of our show than we are of his (at least until I caught this match). Also in there were Scottie Gash (who the Weekly Features are huge fanboys of), and Bobby Shields. Great 3 way, and a great introduction for me to the PWX talent.

After the intermission, we had Shiima Xion wrestle the most hilarious gimmick I’ve ever seen, the Sharecropper. This guy had a corn on the cob themed mask and a carrot on his pants (on the pantleg, ya perverts). Great fast paced match.

Then SJK took on Mr. Wrestling 3, who happens to be Steve Corino, surprisingly, for the Zero-One United States Championship. Now, since I’ve last seen SJK in IWC back in August, this guy has picked up something like 6 belts. (which is probably wrong. He might have won a belt sunday on his drive home, at his rate.) Steve had a long winded, but pretty good, heel promo that fired the crowd up more than they had been all night. And, amazingly, SJK actually won. This was a big deal since this a Japanese fed’s title that changed hands in Pittsburgh, PA at a memorial show. That kind of stuff usually doesn’t happen. Talked to Sterling briefly after the show to let me know he didn’t forget about the interview we’ve been working on lining up. but considering he has belts on three separate continents, I compeletely understand.

Dennis Gregory has a match with Crusher Hansen. First, Crusher’s manager, Max Steel, was hilarious. Second, Crusher was a lot better than I expected for a guy his size. And third, announcer Chuck Roberts tried to take a pot shot at Gregory (he was responsible for “putting Chuck out” for a month in IWC in the past. The tension between them has been great). And of course, we probably got the loudest chants of the night for that “bum” Dennis Gregory.

Finally, we had a tag match with Shirley Doe and Mantis (not CJ Sensation) vs Hentai and Dirk Ciglar. Great match. Each had valets on the outside, who I had never seen before, and both got involved in the action. The match ended, and the Gambinos came out to attack Doe and Hentai, which erupted in a locker room emptying brawl that was amazing to watch first hand, and ended up spilling into my section as Hentai suplexed Demarco off the top rope into ALL of the guys in fromt of us (sadly, crushing someone’s action figure they won in the night’s raffles.)

Great night, a lot of heartfelt words for everyone’s former friend. We will talk more about it tomorrow on the show, I’m sure!