Friday night Resistance Pro started off the new year with an event titled, Stay Hungry in a new venue (for them), Bourbon Street. They packed the card full of the usual great talent the federation has been known for along with some new faces and a couple of big name established stars. The place was packed full of fans and the crowd was hot nearly all night as they were entertaining by some high quality pro wrestling action.
Two dark matches got the crowd warmed up. The first was John Pittman vs. Trip Cassidy. Pittman made the referee and Cassidy use hand sanitizer before the match because he said it was flu season and wanted to be safe. The two had a short match with some good back and forth action before Cassidy got the win.
Next up was the Two Star Heroes vs. New Millennia. New Millennia got a lot of heckling from the crowd for their weird haircuts and the crowd absolutely loved Two Star Heroes. They popped for all their double team action and even popped when Chris Castro did a “Hadoken” and a “Shoruiken” (moves from the Street Fighter video game). Since no actual fireball emitted from Castro’s hands during the Hadoken he must have been trained by Dan as opposed to Ryu. Lack of projectile aside, it was an amusing spot and their match was a lot of fun. The Two Star heroes got a well-deserved win and with the reaction they received they may soon find themselves graduating to the main card and get in the mix for the tag titles.
The Baron Brothers (owners of Resistance Pro) came to the ring and talked to the crowd for a bit before asking women’s champion, Melanie Cruise, to come to the ring. Melanie announced that she suffered a concussion at the previous Resistance Pro show and she is not medically cleared to wrestle. Knowing that she wouldn’t be recovered in time to defend her title within the 60 day time frame required of a champion, she forfeit her title and said that instead of trying to fight that rule, she respected the belt too much to not defend it honorably. With a heavy heart she handed the belt to the Barons and left the ring. The crowd wished her well and were not happy about her giving up the title.
Mr. 450 took on Steven Walters. 450 came to the ring holding a mask which he put on once the bell rang. This match had a lot of action that happened all over the ring and even outside of it. In one spot 450 nailed Walters with a suicide dive which led to some outside of the ring fighting. Walters got the advantage for a while and stomped and pounded on 450 but he was able to manage a comeback after some flashy reversals. He then nailed Walters with many of his signature spots that set him up for his namesake finisher which got him the win. The crowd loved every minute of the match and Walters did great as a heel and got a lot of heat from the crowd as he demanded that they cheer for him. Both of these wrestlers have future superstar written all over them.
In a tag team match, Lock Up put their titles on the line against Ruff Skies (Ruff Crossing and John Skyler). Lock Up has such a great gimmick that has a great dichotomy between them being babyfaces forced to wrestle for a heel manager. They have a lot of flashy double team moves and the fans love them. Ruff Skies really brought the fight to them and the two teams put on an extremely entertaining match with lots of double team action and a fast pace from start to finish. In the end Lock Up was victorious.
Jay Bradley came to the ring and received a standing ovation from the crowd. Just the night before Jay was given a contract to wrestling for TNA Wrestling (one of the big two promotions, second only to WWE but far more entertaining). Jay gave a very classy speech talking about his history in the business and he thanked the Barons, Billy, all the rest of the RPro family and the fans for helping him get to the big time. Jay is a true talent who should go very far in this business and don’t be surprised to see him quickly become a household name among TNA fans. The celebration was short-lived as Nikki St. John came to the ring which led to the two trading insults and then Jocephus coming to the ring and attacking Jay.
The next match was a four-way elimination match for the now vacant women’s title. Amazing Kong, D’Arcy Dixon, Thunderkitty and Nikki St. John went at it in hopes of winning that title. Kong was easily overpowering all of them individually so they wisely started double and triple teaming her in an effort to try to wear her down. Their alliances were brief however and they couldn’t work together long enough to eliminate Kong. Thunderkitty was the first two go and then Nikki started dominating on offense against the remaining ladies but eventually she was eliminated and that left D’Arcy and Kong. D’Arcy said she wasn’t afraid to Kong this time and did her best to stand up to her and did manage to get Kong off her feet a couple of times but it wasn’t enough to keep the monster down and Kong made a comeback and decimated D’Arcy to become the new champion. Zach Thompson came to the ring to interview the newly crowned champ and Kong said she won’t feel like a champion until she beats a real champion and told Melanie that she will keep the belt warm for when she can return and that when she does she’s really going to have to fight to get it back.
Jesse Corgan (Billy’s brother) came to the ring with Chris Hall and Jesse said that there was no way in hell he was going to wrestle as he is a manager and not a wrestler. He sat down in the middle of the ring and said that he was going to sit there all night if he had to until his brother came to his senses and called off his match. Billy came to the ring with radio personality, Mancow. After a lot of long-winded rambling from Mancow, it was declared that if Jesse didn’t wrestle in his match, he’d be suspended from RPro and Chris Hall would be fired. GQ and Eric St. Vaughn was their opponents. Hall and GQ started the match and the big Hall dominated the match. When GQ tried to tag Vaughn, he refused to take the tag as he wanted nothing to do with the big man. In fact at one point he was so scared of Hall that he screamed like a girl as he hopped off the apron to get away from him. GQ was able to mount a small comeback and then Vaughn decided it was safe to tag himself in. He put Hall in a headlock and Hall easily powered out of it which scared the crap out of Vaughn and he ran right back to his corner and tagged GQ back in. Hall beat on him some more and then T-boned GQ into his corner which allowed GQ to tag Vaughn back in. Vaughn wanted nothing to do with Hall but had no choice. Hall power slammed him in the corner near Jesse. When Hall went up on the ropes to do a Vader bomb, Jesse tagged him so after Hall landed the move, the referee demanded that Hall leave and Jesse come in. Jesse quickly climbed in and covered Vaughn to win the match. Hall was a little surprised and annoyed as Jesse celebrated “his” first win. Since this match put two heel teams against each other, the crowd was left confused as to why and who they should be cheering and as a result they were mostly flat for the duration of the match. The match itself was fine for what it was but it would have made more sense and gone over better if Jesse and Hall were facing a babyface tag-team.
Jay Bradley came back to the ring to fight Jocephus. The two had a great brawl that went all over the venue and saw both big men doing their best to beat the life out of the other. Neither one of them kept the upper hand for very long at all and it was a very evenly matched bout. Evenly matched until Nikki St. John came to the ring and started to interfere. When she came into the ring she got nailed by Jay’s boomstick lariat for her troubles but the distraction was enough to give Jocephus a chance to lay Jay out with his choke slam to get the victory. This was an excellent brawl and the fans popped huge when Jay nailed Nikki with the boomstick.
In the main event, The Ego Robert Anthony defended his belt against former WWE and TNA superstar Matt Hardy. The crowd was pretty evenly split for who they were cheering for. Matt’s female manager did her best to get the crowd to side for her man but many die-hard Ego fans weren’t having it. The match got off to a slow start with both guys trading wrist locks and various holds but it eventually picked up steam and then the two guys started to hit their stride. They took the fighting to the crowd and all around the audience before they came back to the area outside the ring. Ego planted Hardy on a chair and then put another chair in front of him where he told one of the nearby fans to sit. Ego then took a running start and jumped over the fan in the chair to land on Hardy. The crowd exploded for this spot. When they finally got back into the ring they brawled like there was no tomorrow. Each man gave everything he had, including low blows and neither could keep the other one down. Hardy delivered a unprecidented three side effects on Ego but he still managed to kick out. Both men were getting worn out and frustrated as was Hardy’s manager who hopped up on the apron to try to distract Ego. Ego shoved Hardy into her which knocked her off the apron and allowed him to roll up Hardy and get the three count. After the match Ego got on the mic and gave respect to Hardy who responded by slapping him in the penis.
After Hardy left the ring, a man dressed up like Jesus came walking through the crowd and then into the ring. The crowd was confused and Ego looked a little surprised. Ego asked him to bless the belt and as this pseudo Jesus started his blessing, Jocephus came to the ring and choke slammed the fake Jesus. Fake Jesus did not rise from the dead and had to be carried out. The crowd could make little sense of all of this and it left them kind of flat. Despite that, Stay Hungry was a great show with a big, great crowd and was another fun night of wrestling that the promotion has become famous for.
Check out additional photos from this event here!
