Camrose, AB

June 22, 2009

I’m not sure how many of you, if any, were able to attend the Rockstar Wrestling Federation Show in Camrose, AB this past weekend, but if you had the chance and didn’t I’m pretty sure you’ll regret it. I plugged the show on the site and as I mentioned, I would be doing a special guest referee spot on the show and a few of my SWA students would be working the show as well. I really had no idea, going in, what to expect from the show. I had never dealt with anyone from RWF before, so to be honest my expectations were low.

The local Indy scene can be very hit and miss, more often miss than hit, which is one of the reasons why I turn down almost every Indy offer I receive. I accepted the RWF offer for two reasons the first being that it was only 45 minutes from my in-laws cabin, which is where I was going to be that weekend, and they agreed to book four of my students in the opening tag team match. I like to help my students get bookings when possible so I figured I’d roll the dice and give RWF a chance.

With the show now behind me I’m happy to report that I had a great time in Camrose, and ended up being a much bigger part of the show than I originally intended. About a week out from the show one of my students pulled out of the tag match, leaving an open spot to fill. After a few unsuccessful attempts to fill the spot I decided to just fill the spot myself and work under a mask as another one of my students. I knew I would have fun working with my guys, and working under the mask instead of as Lance Storm gave me the freedom to just work the opener and have fun. I wasn’t working as Lance Storm so I wasn’t asking for a big pay cheque (I did it for what he was paying the other guys) and since he wasn’t paying for Lance Storm I didn’t feel obligated to put out a Lance Storm caliber Main Event match.

I asked the promoter to keep it quiet and not tell anyone, and to his credit he did just that. I had one of my current students, who came to the show, play decoy for me so there would be an extra body at the show if anyone wanted to know who the masked guy was. When I arrived at the show the only people who knew I’d be working were my students. I don’t think there was a single person in the crowd that had a clue it was me and I know the majority of the boys were very surprised when I quickly slipped off my ref gear and took the mask from my decoy, right before our ring music hit. There were even a few of the boys that missed the ring entrance and didn’t know I worked the show till after the match.

What really made the show for me was the building set up and a really responsive local crowd. The show was held in a hockey arena, which is usually terrible for wrestling. Unless you draw a thousand people or more, you never even fill the seats on the arena floor, so everyone is spread out and a crowd of 500 can look and sound like a crowd of 100. With this show the promoter had tall wooden bleachers set up tight around ring side, which got all the fans in close to the ring. The show drew close to 300 people, (which is real good for an Alberta Indy) and I doubt there was a person more than 30 feet from the ring. The ring was literally surrounded on 3 sides by a wall of fans with a few people sitting on the floor by the entrance way. This set up made the 300 fans look and sound like a crowd of 600, which made for a fun show.

The opening SWA Grad Tag match ended up pitting T-Bone (June 2006) & Chris Knight (Sept. 2007) against Pete Powers (Jan. 2008) & The SWA Kid (Yours Truly). Peter and I were the Baby Face team and in an attempt to conceal my identity I wore the black and red singlet that I only wore once, against Christian on a BSE show in Toronto in 2006, with a red and black Under Armor shirt underneath that, with a black and red Octagon mask; I even tried to work a completely different style, which was a lot of fun. I didn’t do a single move I was known for using during my career and even broke out a couple whacky lucha type rolls to start the match, which got a great reaction, especially from Chris Knight who had never seen me do them before and had no idea what I was doing. The crazy thing is I had no idea I was going to bust them out till about 10 seconds before I did them.

I honestly can’t remember the last time I had so much fun in the ring. There was no pressure to live up to any expectations and even with our attempts to keep our match at a solid opening match effort and just have fun, I think we still managed to have the best match on the card.

The referee gig was a good time as well. I managed to maintain law and order enabling Vance Nevada to successfully defend his Trans Canadian Title. To top the night off I even managed to deliver a Super Kick to the unsuccessful challenger, Michelle Star, who took exception to my refereeing skills.

All in all it was a fun night and I hope everyone who attended the show had a great time. Perhaps they even had a better time now that they realize that in addition to the fun show they also got to see my first wrestling match back in almost 2-years.

Thanks for coming out everyone.
Lance Storm ( A.K.A. The SWA Kid)