Saturday, April 6, the East Coast Wrestling Association held its 16th annual Super 8 Tournament. The tourney, the notable participants including Gregory Iron and Tony Nese, has been a launching pad of sorts for independent wrestling talent in America. Previous participants have included Billy Kidman, Austin Aries, Christopher Daniels and Bryan “Daniel Bryan” Danielson. While the tournament itself produced some memorable moments and excellent wrestling matches, it wasn’t the only thing that took place in Newark, DE that night.

The last match before intermission was a three-way match for the ECWA Unified Tag Team Championships. The champions, the Midnight Sensations, were a team that was billed from a future where humans have colonized one of the moons of Saturn. One team of challengers were a standard, indie-style tag team called Fusion DS. Then, there were the Flatliners.

How does one relay the teaming of Matt Burns and Asylum? They’ve been described as “Canadian as s**t” by one person in the business, which may or may not be a compliment. I’d pretty much call them hosses, because they’re both objectively big guys. Sure, some people are “indie” big, but both these guys looked like they had bodies fit for a higher level than the ECWA. If their frames were more WWE than bingo hall though, their ring attire was more 1995 WWF than anything else. Sporting half-pink, half-green singlets with a stylized close-up drawing of a gorilla on the front, the Flatliners looked like they’d have been more at home across the ring from High Energy on Superstars in the early-to-mid ’90s than anything else.

One cannot totally judge a book by its cover, obviously, but if the exposure had stopped there, I still would’ve been impressed with these guys. When they started wrestling though? Yeah, I was smitten. They were everything that was good about classic tag team wrestling with a lot of what is fun about the independent scene today thrown in. Asylum at one point had one of his opponents in a stalling suplex, while Burns was on the apron counting the seconds which his partner had the victim upside down. Mid-countdown, Burns tagged in and assumed the suplex hold, and thus the roles had become reversed when Asylum started his own count.

Later on in the match, all four of the other people in the match were perched on the top rope, trying to coax Burns off his seat on the top turnbuckle with a superplex. Asylum turned to the crowd for approval before adding the extra muscle to bring the four men - and his partner - crashing to the mat in a hextuple superplex that almost shook the entire building. Then, if that wasn’t enough, the two played Rock-Paper-Scissors to see who’d complete the dive out of the ring on the other four guys. Basically, the Flatliners were two big galoots having as much fun as anyone could have in a wrestling ring for the amusement of me and everyone else in that building.

The best part about the whole thing was that I was discovering a new favorite wrestling act completely by my own surprise. No one told me before the event to look out for these guys. They’re not overexposed in all the high-level indies along the East Coast. They were a true unknown to me, and there is a certain satisfaction one gets from being the guy who “discovers” something awesome before most of his friends. Sure, there’s a level of hipster attitude mixed in with that feeling, but then again, who doesn’t like being the first to hop onto a new thing? Who doesn’t want to be the one who shares something awesome with their friends rather than being the who’s always partaking in what others are sharing?

I had an epiphany during this match, and it was one of the best wrestling-related feelings I’ve had in my life. I hope everyone is able to have one of their own as well.

TH writes The Wrestling Blog and broadcasts The Wrestling Podcast. You can find him on Twitter, or at various other spots around the Internet. He also loves Chikara, and quite frankly, thinks you should too.

Edited by Jason Mann.

Ian Riccaboni of Phillies Nation is the guest this week, and surprise surprise, it’s more talk about WrestleMania. It’s not all current though, as we dig into some classic WrestleMania matches and moments, including the legendary blindfold match between Jake Roberts and Rick Martel at WMVII. We also talk about Iron Sheik’s inappropriate boners, Hulk Hogan, the greatness of Cody Rhodes, our excitement levels for WrestleMania this year, the rise of one CM Punk and we even provide five times the daily recommended amount of Brutus Beefcake references. We end talking about what to expect from the Phillies offense this season, and it’s surprisingly optimistic.

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After 42 episodes, Eric Gargiulo of the Camel Clutch Blog is back on the podcast! We kick it off by breaking down WrestleMania. First up is the controversial Chris Jericho promo on CM Punk, going into why we’re not looking forward to the Triple H/Undertaker match (even with an aside on how they’re going to do Hell in a Cell outdoors). We talk about how far The Miz has fallen and how good a guy Daniel Bryan is. There’s reflection on ROH’s 10 years, kind words for Steve Corino and discussion on why CZW seems to get the hot up-and-comers in indie wrestling before ROH does. We put over Adam Cole and talk about the proposed WWE Network Cruiserweight show before finishing on the idea of karma not existing in wrestling.

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With the first set of SHIMMER tapings happening in and around the time of posting (we edit at our own pace here at Fair to Flair), our thoughts turn to the exposition of the best that women’s wrestling has to offer us. During the live events that will produce four DVDs jam-packed with fine wrestling, Cheerleader Melissa will defend her World Championship. We’ll see Kana make her grand return to America. Hailey Hatred will stop by for the entire weekend to show why she is America’s greatest export to Japanese pro wrestling. Assuming that a giant miracle doesn’t happen, conspicuous by her absence will be the woman who held the Championship, the one Melissa beat at the last set of tapings, Madison Eagles.

This time last year, Eagles was still basking in the glow of having dethroned MsChif for the title after the Scream Queen held it for god knows how long. It was a year prior when that landmark victory happened, but the thing about SHIMMER is that it runs so few shows that a year in its parlance would probably equate to two months in WWE’s or four in Ring of Honor. Her legend was growing by the day. In addition to being Queen Sh*t of SHIM Mountain, she was starting to take more dates for Chikara and take excursions into Japan, which is arguably the pinnacle of women’s wrestling in the entire world right now (no offense to the indie scene here in America, but I’m sure they’d agree with me).

Then came a slew of injuries that kept derailing her and taking her out of appearances. The way she was seemingly battered, I’m surprised she even made it to the second set of 2011 tapings in one piece, because she did a good job covering up the string and duct tape holding her together. Her injuries have gotten so bad that doctors have told her she may never wrestle again.

A wrestler’s health is the most important thing, obviously. If the Aussie sparkplug has to retire, then she has to retire, but I’m not ready to give up on her just yet. While circumstances like these are unavoidable, I’m not entirely sure that capitulation to venomously apparent fate is the right attitude. Eagles took the richest prize in American women’s wrestling, but can anyone seriously say that that was the last thing she could have done in her career? Can anyone look to her match at Chikara King of Trios against Manami Toyota and say with any finality that they’ve seen her wrestle against everyone she needed to wrestle? Does anyone have the temerity to claim that with Sara del Rey blazing trails in Chikara (or even Rachel Summerlyn and Portia Perez in Anarchy Championship Wrestling) that she was not meant to join the Chikara roster and shatter the gender barrier alongside her most recent ally in SHIMMER?

I have not seen nearly enough of Eagles to sate my thirst for her ability and dazzling talents. She is just too good to sit on the sidelines and let a bum knee hold her idle while her contemporaries make beautiful wrestling music without her. Is it selfish? Maybe, but at the same time, while I don’t know her and can’t speak for her, I can only assume that she feels the same way.

That’s why I’m rooting for Madison Eagles. I don’t want to see greatness end early. I don’t want to see a promising career cut short because of a few bad breaks here and there. I want to see her regain her health and go out there to keep blazing her path to the top of the mountain.

SHIMMER weekends like the one happening around this time are just too empty without her.

TH writes The Wrestling Blog and broadcasts The Wrestling Podcast. You can find him on Twitter, or at various other spots around the Internet. He also loves Chikara, and quite frankly, thinks you should too.

Edited by K Sawyer Paul

At the end of episode 41 of The Wrestling Podcast, Joe Drilling proclaimed that all wrestlers should have to take some kind of acting class, a course in improv, if you will. It felt like a throwaway comment, but I was nodding my head in agreement from my end of the recording line. This was something that should’ve gotten its own treatment, not just a mention at the end of a podcast while I was admittedly trying to wrap it up rather than let another 1 hour and 40 minute marathon podcast commence. Hey, those sessions are special and should only happen once every 50 shows. But I digress.

Now, I know what some might say. Why should a pro wrestler take an acting class? Shouldn’t knowing how to wrestle be enough to compensate for a lack of charisma? Well, if we want to strive for adequate, then yeah, maybe that would be fine. However, shouldn’t we want wrestling to be adequate? Shouldn’t we want our performers to blaze trails out of the ring as well as inside of it?

Yeah, we have Daniel Bryan lighting the world on fire, but for every one of him, there’s a Randy Orton, who’s pulling his weight in the ring but is just so wooden out of it. For every Wade Barrett and Sheamus, there’s a Michael McGillicutty and a Drew McIntyre. For all the Kevin Steens and James Stormses, there are 10 Roderick Strongs and Matt Morgans. The lack of character building is just galling here. We’re so quick to complain about guys who can’t wrestle and call for them to get more training to get better, but what about the ones who can’t act?

We here at Fair to Flair have a scant few things that we beat our readers’ heads in with, but the idea that pro wrestling is as much performance art as, if not more so than, a sport is one that all of us have supported with unequivocal fervor. The acting side is just as important as the wrestling side, or at the very least the gap between the two is pretty minuscule. So, if we demand training for one important part of it, why not for the other?

Everyone starts off in wrestling school with the aim to make it to the main event of WrestleMania. Well, that’s a gross generalization. Some people do it so they can main event Korauken Hall in Japan, but making the assumption that most Americans are weaned on the American paradigm, that’s a fair assessment. How rare is it that someone who ONLY wrestles makes it to that level? The guy who came closest ended up murdering his family, and yet he even had some kind of charisma about him. There’s a reason why Bryan Danielson got the chance to become Daniel Bryan while Roderick Strong didn’t get to be Strongman Rodney. So, if someone wasn’t as supremely gifted as Danielson at portraying a character, why wouldn’t they work at it? Just like people seek out teachers to train them on how to wrestle a match, why wouldn’t they want people to teach them how to act?

Seeking out a trainer is one thing. Trust me, it’s important, but if someone was serious, really serious, about being a professional wrestler, and they didn’t have insane natural amounts of charisma or didn’t know timing, it’d be pretty advantageous for them to join an improv troupe. Or they could do a theater group. Or get an acting coach. Take classes. Do something to cultivate how to be an actor. That’s what wrestlers are at heart; they’re actors who do their own stunts.

Again, wrestling is nothing without the matches, but without character development, it’s just spinning wheels. Everyone should listen to Joe Drilling. Learn to act at the same time as you learn to wrestle. Even if it just improves the quality the local indie promotion, it’ll improve the entire fabric of the wrestling community.

TH writes The Wrestling Blog and broadcasts The Wrestling Podcast. You can find him on Twitter, or at various other spots around the Internet. He also loves Chikara, and quite frankly, thinks you should too.

Edited by Jason Mann.