In September of 2009, High Impact Wrestling Canada (HIW) changed venues in Regina, Saskatchewan. They went from the German Club to the Victoria Club and were doing a double-shot (two shows in a row) there the last Friday and Saturday of every month. The Victoria Club is a private club with a bar/rec room on the main floor and a rentable hall upstairs. They have a lot of members who regularly go to the bar and back in September, they were all curious about this wrestling that was upstairs.
In May 2009, Bucky McGraw and I won a tournament for the HIW Tag Team Championship. During that tournament, we beat Damage Inc. (Crash Crimson and Dice Steel) in the semi-finals when they were disqualified. We started feuding with Damage Inc. the next month. In that match in June, Damage Inc. lost their tempers when we kept getting on top of them and attacked us with chains wrapped around their fists. We were left laying bloody and beaten and had to be helped back to the dressing room.
Fast-forward three months. We’ve had the summer off and are rested and ready to go. On that first Friday in the Victoria Club, Damage Inc. couldn’t make the Friday show so Bucky and I defended our tag team championship successfully against Wavell Starr and Headmaster Joseph. It was announced that Damage Inc. was going to be at the Saturday show but that our win had just qualified Bucky and I for entry into a tournament in Singapore and that we’d be absent from the Saturday show as we had to catch our flight to Singapore.
What Bucky and I didn’t tell anyone is that we were actually able to arrange a later flight. We were going to pay back Damage Inc. for the June assault. We arrived at the Victoria Club extra-early — before anyone was there and stayed out of sight until the crowd had filed upstairs and gotten seated. We knew from talking to the promoter that Damage Inc.’s match would be just after intermission. So, we still had another couple hours to go. We texted a trusted ally in the dressing room and asked him to let us know when Damage Inc. was heading to the ring. Figuring we might as well be comfortable while we waited, we snuck in the back door of the bar downstairs.
Once we’d pulled up a seat and got a couple cokes, it didn’t take long for the club members in the bar to start approaching us and asking questions. They were all curious about the show upstairs, what we were doing downstairs and everything else. So, for a couple hours, Bucky and I talked with all of them, including the bartender. Answered all their questions, including the whole story about us and Damage Inc. and why we were sitting in the bar and how we were going to get some payback.
Then the text came.
Bucky and I dashed out the back door of the bar, up the stairs at the back of the building and into the kitchen that’s just off the hall upstairs. We stood behind the kitchen door listening to Crash yammer on and on — calling us every name in the book. Finally, when he said, “If those guys were here tonight, we’d kick their asses again,” Bucky and I couldn’t stand it anymore and stepped out of the kitchen. Crash and Dice were facing away from us and didn’t see us, but the fans sure did and the excitement level in the room jumped way up.
Bucky and I took our time, walked to the ring and climbed in. I stood right behind Crash and Bucky was right behind Dice. I tapped Crash on the shoulder and when he turned around — WHAM! — I dropped him with fist. And the brawl was on. In the ring, out of the ring, back in the ring. All over the place. At one point, I smashed Crash’s head into the ring announcers table and opened up a small cut on his forehead. I threw him back in the ring and pounded on that cut, opening it up. Not only did Crash have blood running down his face but my fist was covered in it, as well. A minute or so later, Crash and I were back outside the ring and I hit him with the hardest clothesline I could throw. Blood splattered my face, my tank top and my arm when I connected and he went down.
When the officials finally separated us, they shoved both bloody members of Damage Inc. towards the dressing room. Then the promoter turned to us and said, “If you two don’t get your asses outta here, I’m gonna fine and suspend you both,” and they shoved us out the door of the hall, splattered in Damage Inc.’s blood. Bucky and I stood there and blinked at each other for a minute. Couldn’t go back into the hall and watch the rest of the show. Couldn’t go hang out in the dressing room — that was in the hall, too. So, we did the only thing we could think of:
We went back downstairs to the bar.
We walked in, took one, maybe two steps inside and the entire place went silent. “What the hell happened?” the bartender asked.
“Payback’s a bitch,” I said and grinned at him. Then this cheer went through the bar and all the club members we’d been talking to started clapping us on the back and buying us drinks — starting with the bartender. Remind me to walk into more bars covered in blood.
I also noticed that at the October show, a lot of those club members were there in the audience.