Saturday night suplex

by RAF KATIGBAK

How was your weekend? Mine was pretty average: slept in, went for brunch with some friends, thought about going to the gym, then didn’t, bought some groceries, then after dinner, watched a young, bloody Québécois man with a goatee jump from the upper balcony of the Medley onto another man who was held up by several bystanders, while a room of 946 spectators chanted “Ho-ly-shit! Ho-ly-shit!” like it was Mad Max’s Thunderdome. You know, same old same old.

If there’s one thing we Quebecers love—besides Styx—it’s wrestling. In fact, Pierre Falardeau, in his ironic 1971 documentary Continuons le Combat, blamed the popularity of la lutte for the failure of the separatist movement.

MEDLEY MAYHEM: IWS champ Viking

While we can boast a few great homegrown wrestlers graduating to the American big leagues in the past—like the Rougeau Brothers and Mad Dog Vachon—the Internet Wrestling Syndicate (IWS) is Montreal’s own present-day hardcore wrestling federation, and it’s been around for almost a decade now. Oh, and it’s also completely insane. Unlike the WWE and WCW, the IWS likes to take a cue from extreme Japanese wrestling and introduces a number of foreign objects to the mix like light tubes, barbed wire and thumbtacks on the mat. I guess slamming people into the ground wasn’t enough.

These guys are for real. Well, sort of. Like the popular TV wrestling federations, the characters are caricatures with clownish names like Franky the Mobster, Beef Wellington, Kid Kamikaze and the Hardcore Ninjaz. While there is a fair share of choreographed antics and ill-timed leap frogs against the ropes, you can’t help but feel that these guys actually get hurt when they get their heads rammed into the steel fences separating the ring from the crowd.

I had first come to realize the mind-bending insanity of IWS in November 2000, when I was privy to probably the craziest, most out of control live spectacle I have ever witnessed. The event was dubbed Change, after, I’m assuming, the IWS’s then-recent decision to switch their name from the World Wrestling Syndicate after partnering up with Wild Rose Productions (the Internet porn company owned by Carol Cox). I won’t get into the gory details, but let’s just say the half-time show consisted of one of Carol Cox’s “talents” performing an impromptu skin flute solo on an inebriated audience member in the middle of the ring. Utter chaos.

Going to an IWS match is like going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show—participation isn’t mandatory, but it’s encouraged. Try as you might, it’s hard not to get swept up in the moment and join in the chants of “On-s’en-cal-isse!” (when there’s too much stage banter) or “You-fucked-up!” (when a wrestler makes a slip-up) or the popular “You-sick-fuck!” (when the wrestler gets creative with his moves or uses various props to assault his opponent).

Last Saturday was Un F’n Sanctioned 2007, the yearly brawl that goes down at the Medley show bar downtown. I had arrived late and the place was packed. Luckily, I was just in time for their Quebec Rules match, where it was deemed there was to be “no ass punching” and, “in true Quebec fashion,” announced the ringmaster, “if anything illegal happens, they’ll take your ass to court.” It was a classic franco-anglo match-up: Fred la Merveille (dressed as a cop) vs. the redhead Shayne Hawke. While the tension was indeed palpable, it was all in good fun, and French and English alike enjoyed the spectacle—especially when the francophone team cracked open some cans of Pepsi to celebrate their win.

For more info, check out www.syndicatewrestling.com
The next event, Know Your Enemy, is on April 28
at Bogey’s World Bar and Billiard (3250 Cremazie E.)

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca