[2001-02-24-XPW-My Bloody Valentine] Vic Grimes vs Supreme (No Rope Barbed Wire, Broken Glass, Light Tubes and Thumbtacks) / The Messiah vs Vic Grimes

[GSR]

The final match in the XPW 2001 King of the Death match tournament.  With barbed wire on two sides of the ring and no ropes on the other, both tease taking a spill to the outside before a Supreme hip toss sends Grimes out and into a bed of light tubes.  Running lariat to the floor by Supreme.  Grimes blocks the attempted suplex and counters with a suplex of his own, dumping Supreme on the bed of, now, broken light tubes instead.  He picks up one of those tubes and grinds it into Supreme’s forehead, re-opening some of those cuts he’d sustained earlier in the night.  Supreme no sells a frying pan shot to the head and repeatedly clobbers Grimes with an array of weapons he gets handed from the ringside fans.  Both men get back in the ring, although not for long as Grimes slams Supreme from the ring back to the outside onto a barbed wire covered ladder that had been placed over the bed of broken light tubes.  That was a painful looking bump.  Rolling senton to the floor by Grimes, but Supreme moves out the way and he lands on that ladder.  Grimes is hobbling about so every chance he legit hurt himself there.  Crappy looking DDT onto the bed of glass followed by an only slightly better looking belly to belly suplex.  As there are no turnbuckles, Supreme decides to use that barbed wire ladder, setting it up on the arena floor and then climbing to the very top of it.  Even though he’s got the referee holding it, the ladder slips and Supreme comes up short on the dive, face planting into the apron and looking like he may well have KO’d himself.  He hasn’t, but Grimes is clearly buying him a bit of time to recover.  Supreme getting back to his feet after that awful botch and bump receives the loudest response of anything in the match so far.  A pair of chair shots to the head of Grimes and still intent on using a ladder, Supreme grabs an even taller one, one that looks every bit of fifteen feet high.  Not planning on making the same mistake as last time he positions this one in the ring.  Three rungs from the top, owner Rob Black suddenly appears and pushes the ladder over sending Supreme crashing through a couple of barbed wire, light tube covered tables that had conveniently placed at ringside.  Another hellacious bump by Supreme there as Kriss Kloss urges for “somebody (to) call 911, this is attempted murder damn it!”  Grimes covers Supreme on the concrete and is the 2001 XPW King of the Death Match tournament winner.  Black hands Grimes a trophy, which is a whopper, dwarfing him, as the commentators sell this tournament as being on a par with the ones from Japan that Mick Foley, Terry Funk and Abdullah the Butcher took part in (although I’m not too sure about that).  Supreme, with a little help, eventually gets back up and the fans chant his name as he’s helped out of there and to the awaiting paramedics.

This segues into a match for the King of the Death match championship against current title holder, The Messiah, where they do the finger poke finish with Grimes just lying down for him after initially hinting that he might not ‘play ball’ and go against what Black had planned.  Fuck that shit!  Balls to the rest of this but Supreme returned, is jumped by the entire ‘Black Army’ (including John Kronus, Kraq and Steve Rizzono) and New Jack makes the save leading to him challenging them to a tag match down the road.

A fairly lousy death match highlighted by two crazy bumps, one planned, one not so.  Rob Black clearly fancies himself as some Vince McMahon come Vince Russo hybrid but comes across as a low rent version of both.  While I imagine if I was to watch the TV shows he’d be all over them, in multiple segments and interfering in matches just like he did here.  No more XPW death matches for me, I’ll be sticking to the matches featuring their workers and lighter wrestlers from now, and where this is no chance of seeing Rob Black show his mug.