Into the Indies 10.03.11: What We Did on Our Summer Vacation (Part 2)
Posted by Ryan Byers on 10.04.2011
I2I once again profiles a group of wrestlers from North America who spent their summers overseas gaining some great experience. Don't know who Hailey Hatred is? You will soon . . .
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Into the Indies, the column known for its sporadic hiatuses.
Last we were here, we took a special look at North American wrestlers who spent the summer wrestling in Japanese independent promotions. From Jennie Rose to Mentallo, they may have achieved varying degrees of kayfabe success, but they all added impressive entries to their resumes and hopefully got a step closer towards breaking out of indy obscurity and into the mainstream. The column was well received and there are actually many more folks from the Western Hemisphere who spent time across the international dateline this past summer, so I thought that this week would be a perfect opportunity to finish chronicling the story of how these wrestlers spent their summer vacations.
Masada
Masada is a guy who has some real world class professional wrestling credentials, though you don't hear a heck of a lot about him. He received training at the Texas Wrestling Academy, which was formerly owned by Shawn Michaels and, even in its post-HBK days, produced some great talent like Paul London. He was part of the early days of Ring of Honor, fighting alongside the likes of "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes. He's received WWE and TNA tryouts, he's been big on Texas indies, and, yet, it seems like he can't get any kudos in the United States as of late. However, if there's one place where they've embraced Masada, it's been Japan, particularly in the deathmatch subculture. The big man from Waco has, over the past several years, become a favorite opponent of Big Japan/FREEDOMS wrestler Jun Kasai, with the Crazy Monkey in the past having booked Masada to be a major player in deathmatch tournaments that he has promoted. This past summer, Masada was back in the Land of the Rising Sun for some hardcore competition on an August 25 show produced by Kasai and appropriately named PAIN LIMIT. This year, the show saw Masada once again entering himself into a single elimination tournament full of deathmatches, and, once again, he made it all the way to the finals. This resulted in Masada fighting in two huge matches in the same night on 8/25, kicking it off against heavyweight Mammoth Sasaki in a barbed wire board match and wrapping the evening up against another vet, the Winger, in a match involving boards of CRUSHED GLASS. Even if he's not turning into the next breakout star in America anytime soon, Masada is going to keep trying to be noticed by any means necessary.
Masda mixes it up in the United States
Gaylon Summers
Gaylon Summers is a bit of an obscure name, but he has a hell of an interesting backstory. In addition to being a trained professional wrestler, Summers is also part of the United States Marine Corps. Approximately four years ago, Summers found himself stationed in North Carolina and ran across Allison Danger and her husband, Swiss wrestler Ares, who helped train him after he had already gained some experience on the local independent scene. Eventually Summers received orders that sent him to Japan, where he made contacts in the professional wrestling industry and started competing for Union Pro, a sub-brand of the more popular DDT group. Summers, who dwarfs the majority of the wrestlers in the Japanese indies and has a hell of a physique, is probably the most likely person profiled in this series of articles to eventually break through to either WWE or TNA. He's got the look, he's got the backstory, and he's got the talent. The other thing he recently got was the highest profile match of his career, when he was given the opportunity to wrestle Danshoku Dino on a DDT show as part of an angle in which Bob Sapp was sending American "assassins" after Dino to derail him before he locked up with Sapp at the company's biggest show of the year. Summers more than held his own in that match, and we'll probably see him more in DDT in the future, even if he did tap out to Danshoku's "Gaydo Clutch" in the end.
Summers in UNION
Mercedes Martinez
This past weekend, Mercedes was tearing it up in SHIMMER, the promotion she is perhaps most closely associated with, starting of a new rivalry with up-and-comer Athena and apparently turning heel. However, this past summer, Mercedes was embroiled in a bitter feud with a veteran of the ring as opposed to locking it up with a relative newcomer. In what was a rare international tour for her career, Martinez was brought into joshi promotion Stardom in July for a match against Nanae Takahashi. Takahashi, who is the focal point of the Stardom group, was set to celebrate her fifteenth anniversary in professional wrestling and got a hell of an opponent for her celebratory match in the form of Martinez. There was a pre-match attack on Takahashi in which she was dominated by the Latina star, but, days later, the two locked it up in the ring to a different result. In a twelve minute long match held on July 28, Nanae was able to pin Martinez clean in the middle. In addition to being one of Takahashi's anniversary matches, the bout also served as the semi-finals in a tournament to crown Stardom's first singles champion, so the victory brought Takahashi closer to some cherished gold. Mercedes might have missed out on her opportunity to claim the belt, but I wouldn't be surprised to see her back in the mix in Stardom before the end of the year.
Old school Mercedes against former TNA star Trinity
SeXXXy Eddy
SeXXXY Eddy is a guy who has had to sit back and watch a lot of his friends have a great deal of success while he's not been quite as fortunate. He came out of the same Montreal independent scene that produced Kevin Steen and El Generico, both of whom are currently top acts in Ring of Honor, as well as LuFisto, who is commonly considered one of the top female grapplers in North America. Eddy, meanwhile, has gotten a run here or there in a group like CZW but hasn't been able to break on through to larger promotions. Well, at least you could say that about him until this past summer, when Eddy went on a tour de force in DDT, an even bigger company than the ROH that several of his Quebecois brethren come home. As was the case with Gaylon Summers who we discussed earlier, Eddy was originally brought in as a Bob Sapp "assassin" to go after Danshoku Dino. However, unlike the other assassins, he stuck around for a little while longer after losing to Dino on June 19. In fact, Eddy was back later on the very same show, where he became one of the few people who we are profiling in this column to win a title during his time in Japan. He snuck into the ring and took advantage of the 24/7-esque rules of the DDT Iron Man Heavy Metal Title, pinning champion Masa Takahashi after a sneak attack before losing the belt later in the same show to Keisuke Ishii. Eddy locked up with Ishii again when he returned to DDT in August, facing Keisuke in a mixed tag match. This time, Eddy got his win back by pinning Takahashi. The sexxxy one's over the top gimmick was a perfect fit for DDT, and he came across as naturally there as Kenny Omega did when he debuted a couple of years back. Let's see now if Eddy can have the same level of success as Omega.
Eddy fights a woman. In a light tube match. Yeah.
Hailey Hatred
A little over a year ago, I was reviewing matches of Hailey's from the tiny, Ohio-based independent group Beyond Wrestling. Who would have known that, just twelve months later, Ms. Hatred would make herself into one of the most dominant acts in all of joshi puroresu? Hatred started the summer holding a couple of different women's independent championships, and she brought those with her to JWP, one of the last remaining promotions from joshi's glory days, though currently it operates mostly at the level of an independent. Instead of using Hatred and her independent championships from other companies in order to put their home grown talent over, JWP decided that they were going to adopt Hailey as one of their own, making her into a dominant main event star. To that end, Hatred got some major victories. One of her biggest victories was on June 26, when she defeated masked JWP star Leon. The win was huge for several reasons, first of all because it saw Hailey retain her TWL and IMW Hybrid Fighting Women's Titles. Additionally, the match was the finals of a major tournament being produced by JWP. Finally, Leon went into the battle as the JWP Openweight Champion, the top title in the company. Hatred managed to pull out the victory, officially making her the top act in the promotion. Hailey has continued to roll through the competition, including a major successful title defense against Kaori Yoneyama on August 8. Recently, Hailey returned to her home country and competed in SHIMMER for the first time, hopefully starting off a run that will see her become as popular at home as she is abroad.
Hatred vs. joshi flavor of the month Kana
And with that, we're done with our look at wrestlers' summer vacations! Join us next week for another edition of I2I where we will cover a topic that . . . well . . . I don't know what the topic will be yet. We'll figure it out.
Looking forward to the next installment of Into the Indies? Keep an eye on 411's Twitter accounts, and you just might see it pop up!
