B.A.W. Oregon Trip (Will be long.)
on Friday I worked a wrestling show as a Referee for the promotion of BAW in the motherfucking cold state of Oregon, and here, yes here on Scroby's blog, are the details of my journey from California to Oregon to work the BAW show.
My adventure began on Friday morning, at 4 in the motherfucking morning, as myself (Referee Toby), and indy wrestlers, Alexis Smirnoff Jr, Jason Vega, The Big Ugly JD Bishop, and Kassy Summers, all packed ourselves in a new Dodge Charger and left Sacramento CA and started making our way towards Oregon. It was a LONG freaking trip. The trip from Sacramento CA to McMinnville OR, took us about 12 hours, making very little stops...and myself getting very little sleep.
Nothing special really happened on the way up there, I heard a few stories from the wrestlers, we talked about other local promotions, and gimmicks and stuff like that as we made our way up there. Due to us getting lost a few times because Smirnoff can't apprently read his own writing, myself, Jason Vega, and Alexis Smirnoff got to the venue that was hosting the show in McMinnville OR around 4 o'clock. We had dropped off Kassy and The Big Ugly with two other wrestlers that had met up with us after we got into Oregon. The two of them would be at the venue later on.
It was very cold in Oregon, but I tired to not let it bother me much as I was excited to work this show. New Jack, Brother Runt (Spike Dudley), Mike Modest, and Molly Holly were also booked on this show as well and I was excited to meet them, plus all the other wrestlers on the show that I had never met before. Even though myself, Vega, and Smirnoff had gotten there around 4 in the afternoon and had been put in the wrong direction a few times, we were really the first workers there. The BAW Promoter, along with the head trainer Terry Bull, and some of the trainees and ring crew were there but we were the first people outside of the promotion to show up.
I don't know much about the BAW promoter or Terry Bull but both were very nice to me throughout the night, which I'm grateful for because it was a long ass drive there and I only had about 5 hours of sleep from the night before with maybe an hour of sleep on the car ride up there, and I really wasn't wishing for anyone to be a dick. When I had got there 3 of the trainees were working out a dark match that they were going to do before the actual show had started. After introducing myself to the people who were there and feeling out the ring a little bit, I pretty much sat back and relaxed and hung out.
After a little while, the owner of Devil Mountain Wrestling (my home indy promotion) Helfyre showed up as he was also booked on the card. Helfyre's gimmick...well is basically himself, Helfyre. I guess I would describe him as a Death Metal wrestler gimmick, but...not so much. Its sorta hard to describe what Helfyre's gimmick actually is, but if you want you can look him up on myspace under "Helfyre". After a little while longer more and more workers started showing up.
The Devil Mountain Trainees, Josh, Anton, and Neil showed up. Anton and Josh were both having their first matches on this show, while Neil made the trip to support the both of them. Neil and Josh are both close friends who both went into wrestling training together. Josh was going to have a match with Helfyre whose his trainer at Devil Mountain and Anton was going to have a match with Jason Vega.
As the night went on, more and more people showed up. I introduced myself to all the new wrestlers who I hadn't met before and also put my Ref gear on as the time got closer to show time. It was near 6:30 when Spike, New Jack, and Modest had showed up. I introduced myself to Spike and Modest and shook both their hands, with New Jack it was a little bit hard to introduce myself because he was pretty much getting settled in and figuring things out, so I just let him be as I finished getting myself ready for the dark match at 6:30.
Even though the show started at 7, the promoter and the booker wanted to have the dark match at 6:30 to try and get the crowd hyped up a bit before the show. It was the 3 wrestling trainees who were The Incredible Ty, Sir Latte (yes its a Starbucks coffee gimmick), and someone else whose name escapes me at the moment (like I said it was a long night). I got to Ref this match and it was a pretty quick match and the 3 BAW trainees did some pretty good spots as well with the match ending with Sir Latte stealing a pin on Ty after the 3rd trainee hit a swinging neck breaker on Ty. After the match was over, I went back to the locker room so I could get the run down of the card and the matches I was giong to Ref.
After waiting around a bit because I wasn't sure if the card was fully finished or not, this woman came up to me and I introduced myself to her and lord and behold it was Molly Holly! I didn't reconize her as she has (from what I can tell) slimmed down from the last time I saw her on tv and looks great. Not saying she didn't look great before hand because she did, but she looks even greater now. After I talked with her a bit and letting her know when what she was doing was up and when a match was, I had to talk with Terry to figure out what matches I was going to be doing for the night. I had the first, second, and sixth match of the night.
The first match was Micheal Blade facing someone whose name again escapes me at the moment and his name isn't on the BAW site yet, so I can't look it up there. The second match was going to be Jason Vega vs Anton, whose under a mask for this show, and the sixth match was going to be Mike Modest vs Wage. Yes folks I had Mike Modest's match! I felt like a lucky boy that night.
I'm not going to go into detail about how the matches went because I felt they all went fine and all 6 men that I worked with really liked the job I did as a Referee. Modest was very impressed with me and told me what he had liked about the job I had did. Modest had went out there with a ring on his finger and as I was "checking" him, I had noticed ( really didn't notice the ring) the ring. Before I rang the bell, Modest jumped out of the ring and grabbed a mic and told me to come here. So I very confusingly walked over to him and asked him whats going on.....he then explained to me how he had the ring on his finger when I checked him and didn't say anything and told me that he could have used that as a weapon. I hung my head down as he was telling me this in front of a live crowd on the mic. After the match was over, Modest had won with a small package, Wage who was still in the wrestling ring, was telling me that I made a fast count and started asking me if I was in Modest's pocket, then to make things worse the freaking BAW Commish comes over and says "Wage has a points, it looked like a fast count." At that point I just got down off the ring and went back to the locker room.
Afterwards, I went up to Modest to shake his hand, and return his ring (he had handed it to me after the promo) and he told me how he liked how I didn't do a Ref over reaction when he was cutting the promo on me and how he liked how I did just stand next to him and listened to what he had to say, like I knew I fucked up and I was going to listen to what he had to say....in reality I thought I had really fucked up, I honest to God did not see the ring he was wearing and he was cutting a shoot on me. Luckily it wasn't and Modest was really cool and I'm really glad I got to work with him and Wage, both really stand up guys.
As the night went on, I enjoyed myself. Everyone was just fun to be around and was just so freaking nice to me and all had positive things to say about my Refereeing, espically how I had the crowd hating me, even though I was just being a Ref. We actually had a 2nd Ref there and when he came out for the 3rd match of the night, the fans cheered for him and I also heard some fan yell out "Finally a good Referee."...God I love heel heat. For some reason on the 3 shows that I have Ref'ed for, I have been boo'ed or have gotten some kind of heat, its freaking great, it really is. After the show was over, myself, Jason Vega, and Smirnoff all headed back for California around midnight of Friday night, and I got back home in California after 10 in the morning, and even though I'm still tired, I wanted to post this as hopefully some of you would like to read it.
Now if guys don't mind, I'm going to leave you a little describtion of my experiance with the some people I worked with last night.
New Jack: Just fun to be around and a very cool guy. He was having a good time last night in the locker room and it was just fun to be around him.
Spike Dudley: Nice guy, I don't know what to make of the guy other than that. He was just a very nice kinda quiet guy.
Molly Holly: Ok first, she's hot! Chris Water's if your reading this, I'm sorry but......I MET MOLLY HOLLY, I MET MOLLY HOLLY!, ok I'm sorry. Molly is such a nice and sweet person. She's very cool to talk to and I'm glad I got to meet her last night.
Mike Modest: Like I said, very stand up guy, and I'm so happy that he was really impressed with my work in the ring with him. It also seems he lost a lot of weight as he's not as, and I'm not knocking him at all so no one take it like that, muscle massive as he used to be. He's still in GREAT shape but he's just slimmed down a bit.
Everyone else was just a pleasure to work with and hang out with in the back. Everyone was so nice to me and actually the wrestler Lonestar, who has his own promotion in..I think Kentucky gave me a invite to go Ref a show for his promotion out there. I really made a good impression and I can't wait to return on the 26th of Jan.
Well there you guys go, thats pretty much my trip to Oregon in a nutshell. I did leave some detail out because I felt this blog might get to long and I didn't want to do that. And I also know I said my next post was going to be about my time with the WCWA but I'll do that post later, I promise. I hope you guys enjoyed this post and all comments are welcomed.
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