Great Acuma vs. C.I.A. Power League Wrestling ( PLW) 02-09-1997
In what has to come as a shock to virtually nobody, I'm a cable access kid. I was an intern my senior year of high school, I hosted the high school monthly morning show and before you even ask I can assure you those tapes are going to stay in my closet forever. I adore it, I really do. I've spent hours searching YouTube to try and find weird clips and shows from all across the country I didn't know existed. Each area has their own local legends that everyone in the town knows about. My girlfriend is from Rhode Island and they had the Kiss Talk Show, which was dudes in kiss makeup just sorta talking about Kiss. That's the whole show. If that sounds familar it's because Family Guy took that and put it on an episode.. That's such a specific reference that only people from Rhode Island would understand and Seth McFarlane put it on television.
Where I'm from we have a share of local legends. There was Mark Lord who would film long rambling stream of consciousness monologues about things like "putting it all on the world ballot". There was the video sports page , a high school sports recap with a borderline professional who someone got legitimate media credentials and interviews with the likes of Spike Lee and Roger Clemens. And then there was Talking Wrestling
Talking Wrestling was. MY. JAM
I have to sort of piece together this part because I was young and it's not like anybody has done an oral history of it. Man how do we not giggle whenever anyone says Oral History. So, Talking Wrestling was hosted by a guy named Cody Boyns who I believe had a hotline in the 90s. The premise was simple, Cody would come on and well...talk wrestling. Revolutionary. This blew my mind as a kid, because other than my friends...I never heard adults talk about wrestling before. There would be a rotating crew of guests on the show, but eventually some of those guests developed into characters with gimmicls.. My personal favorite was The Master, a scrawny white guy with a sort of Mark Gullen collector of oddities gimmick. Nobody is ever going to believe me when I say this, but I've found a clips of him and ....... he kind of reminds me Ultramantis Black
Of Course, the apex of Talking Wrestling is when Cody Boyns made his one and only wrestling appearance in a match with "Brutal" Bob Evans. That's right, the one and same Brutal Bob from ROH. I saw the tape years ago and all I remember is Cody wins with a DDT onto a skateboard ( somehow that was part of the feud?) and the crowd goes wild. I can't seem to find the match anywhere, but I did figure out it was a company called PLW so I've scoured their youtube looking for any footage to try and relive my memories, but I couldn't found it.
But I found Great Acuma vs C.I.A
Ok, this is baaaaareellly a squash, BUT to quote Millenial Leslie Gore " It's my blog and I'll review this if I want to". This needs to be seen to be believed and even then I lack confidence in what my eyes told me. At the risk of offending PLW alumni, I think they were all relatively untrained when they started, but I'm not fully sure. My theory does hold a bit of watch when you watch this match though, as holy crap.
In one corner, is Great Acuma who is in fact not Gran Akuma. I know it isn't Gran Akuma, because I've tweeted this to him before asking if he knows about this. I am now developing a theory that The Master became Ultramantis Black and with him came the idea for the name Gran Akuma. This is not true, but it's a good conspiracy theory because it doesn't end in anti-semitism. Great Acuma is a ninja in a mask, and a hoodie. Classic Ninja Attire
HIs opponent is Charles I Anderson, aka C.I.A. I do not know why they didn't bother giving him a middle name, nor why he wore a shirt that says Swing but who friggin' cares. His manager is Johnny Velour , which ok I do really like that name. C.I.A isn't a large gentlemen, but it looks like he might have muscles if you take off the black shirt and black pants and black site interrogations that our government still conducts. Sorry, distracted.
The match starts and CIA runs in for the worst tackle I have ever seen in my life. Think about the ground that covers. Then followed by the worst knees and the worst strikes I've ever seen in my life. Think about the ground that covers. Those things combine to make this the best match I've ever seen in my life. After some, let's call it mat wrestling, Acuma is able to gain the advantage and climbs the top...I mean second rope. C.I.A is in trouble as Acuma drops an elbow to the back of his head.....wait I wrote that wrong.. Akuma drops an elbow to mat about 2 feet away from C.I.A who does my favorite botchamania thing, just sorta flail your arms when someone misses and hope they don't notice. CIA is able to recover and hit a.... a Double Arm DDT/Pedigree thing sort of? It looks awful, but I did think that there probably is a way to steal that move and make it look good.
Now the piece de resistance, Johnny Velour hands a foreign object to CIA IN VIEW OF THE REF. CIA hits Acuma, and THEN VELOUR tries to distract the referee after the fact. CIA pins Acuma and gets the win
This whole match is less than 2 minutes and it's mandatory viewing. This is incredible and has 75 reviews on YouTube, which I think I'm at least 20 of them. This doesn't make my squash match hall of fame , but this makes my bad wrestling hall of fame. I adore this match, and I hope we one day get Acuma vs Akuma
TLDR REVIEW
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
If you're interested in more condensed version of my thoughts, You can check out my Twitter where I talk about wrestling or stress out during Boston Celtics games. Hell, I'll even take suggestions for matches you want to see reviewed. You can also check out my Youtube where I make weird videos where I put on wigs in front of a camera to mask my true identity.