Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
Welcome back to the Fun House Mirror, the column that looks at an MMA show that has the feel of an old school territory professional wrestling show and a United States company that wants to put out a Lucha Libre influenced product.
This week team Koscheck explodes with a wild card match between Aaron "England" Wilkenson versus Marc "Mini-Josh" Stevens. And, as teased in the preview, Josh tries to pick a fist fight with the 270+ pound medic.
Will Nam come to the rescue again and tackle Josh before he gets his candy ass reduced to a grease stain on the floor?
VTR come on!
We first get a montage of team GSP training, along with member of team GSP, including Dane, expressing disappointment that Stevens was chosen over Dane.
Dana does sound bite saying that he felt that Stevens was the obvious pick. You know, instead of having signs up backstage saying "never leave your fate in the hands of the judges" I think they should have signs saying "never leave your fate in the hands of Dana White".
We then get some background on GSP assistant coach Cleopas Ncube who coaches wrestling. We find out that he has become close with Johnathon Brookins and Michael Johnson. Cleopas goes so far as to say that he owns Michael's ass.
We also find out that Alex has been having back problems. Michael bashes Alex saying that Alex was using this as an excuse to not train as hard as the rest of the team.
Team Koscheck then comes in to train to see that someone had put an ugly ass blond wig on a training dummy, apparently to mock Koscheck's hair do.
Team Koscheck members Jeffery Lentz and Andy Main also do not agree with Stevens being picked for wild card.
To build up to a compelling grudge match between the two we then get some more interaction between the paramedic and Josh.
We also get some more friction between Johnson and Caceres with Alex making fun of Johnson in the house for Cleopas' comment.
Aaron gives his thoughts on the upcoming fight, complete with subtitles even though his speech is way more understandable than some of the American fighters than the UFC has had on.
On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any heat at all between Marc and Aaron.
We go to the weigh in and on the way in Koscheck pulls the pants down of Brad Tate (the Medic).
They then go to trash talking on the bleachers which leads to a physical confrontation. This leads to a pull apart where Dane has Josh putting his hands on him.
Josh then has the Josh-ness to say that he doesn't associate with guys like Brad Tate, conveniently forgetting that he was the one who initiated 99% of the associating with Brad.
I wonder if Josh was born stupid or has had too many concussions?
Things calm down but Dane walks out of the room in anger. Josh follows him (followed by GSP) to apologize.
Josh then blames GSP for the whole thing.
GSP for his part says that he was upset with Tate and he didn't want people from his team to trash talk.
GSP then has a team meeting, trying to head off problems in the round of eight where there were going to be five GSP fighters and three Josh fighters so two GSP fighters would have to fight each other.
GSP is conveniently forgetting that DW could be a dick and have two of the Josh fighters fight each other and four of the GSP fighters fight each other.
But, putting that aside, GSP comes up with a pretty good system. He has people put their name on a piece of paper and the name of someone they wouldn't have a issue with fighting. If they get two papers with the same names then GSP will make the fight.
Since the four GSP members who are not Alex Caceres are all going to write Bruce LeRoy, I guess it will come down to who Alex wants to fight.
Aaron then gets a call from home saying his Grandmother had died. He is very shaken by this but promises his mother to stay the course and not go home.
It's fight time and we find out that Josh will not corner either man but sit in the stands. It looks like Nam will corner Aaron and Sako will corner Marc.
The tale of the tape shows that Aaron is two years younger and has a three inch height and reach advantage.
In the first round Marc comes out like a house on fire and gets a take down on Aaron and then moves to side control and then to full mount and then to back control. However, Aaron is not going down easily, and with actually useful coaching by Nam, he weathers the storm and finally gets a reversal. However, even after the reversal Marc is still trying hard for the triangle. It takes until the end of the round before Aaron can improve his position through the triangle enough to rain down some punches.
Tough round to call.
Aaron has a cut under his right eye on his cheek.
The second round starts with Aaron pushing the stand up game. Then Aaron goes for a knee and Marc goes for a take down. However, this time Aaron is ready for him and slaps on the guillotine choke. And, before you can say deja vu, MARC TAPS OUT.
Marc could not have been happy losing the fight that way.
Dana White takes a shot at Nam Phan say that he was the worst corner man ever for saying to Aaron that he was winning the whole round, conveniently forgetting that Nam talked Aaron through getting out of a mount and then out of a triangle. And, conveniently forgetting that Nam's fighter won.
Too bad for Marc that no one was talking him through getting out of the guillotine.
Dana is again a fountain of misinformation saying that Marc tapped out to the exact same move twice conveniently forgetting that Cody's guillotine is a unique variation that is a combination sleeper hold and neck crank.
Both Jeff and Andy chime in saying that they would have had a better showing than Marc put on.
It's time for the round of eight match making. It seems a lock that one fight will be Alex versus Michael from team GSP.
The other three fights, if I could chose, would be:
The battle of the soft spoken: Nam Phan versus Johnathon Brookins
The battle of the guillotine chokes: Cody McKinie versus Aaron Wilkenson
The psycho against the grizzled veteran: Sako Chivitchian versus Kyle Watson
Dana, GSP and Josh then have the fighters come in one by one to say who they match up the best with. Nearly everyone picks Alex.
Josh is surprised that GSP is saying a lot of "candid" scouting tips in the session conveniently forgetting that GSP has played head games successfully with him before and could be feeding Josh a bunch of baloney.
Unfortunately, it's Dana who is going to have the final say, so we might be getting some crack pairings.
Time for the announcement!
The Dana picks are:
Johnathon Brookins versus "Psycho" Sako Chivitchian
Cody McKinie versus Nam Phan
Kyle Watson versus Aaron Wilkenson
Michael Johnson versus Alex "Bruce LeRoy" Caceres
Next week: two fights!
This week the Pod-Cast-A-Go-Go counters with action from We Must Eat Michigan's Brain that is Dragon-tastic.
The first match is Bryan Danielson versus Eddie Kingston in Bryan's first match after being fired from the WWE for choking out a ring attendant with his own necktie. This is only the first couple of minutes so they don't really get it out of first gear.
The second match is the closing minutes of the BDK's Tim Dunst, the then reigning Young Lions' Cup holder, defending against Frightmare (who later in the year won the annual Young Lions' Cup Tournament). Tim has apparently worked over Frightmare's leg earlier in the match so in an act of despicable heal-ocity Tim carries Frightmare out into the audience and leaves him there to try to make it back to the ring on his bad leg. However, the Chikara fans are not going to let Frightmare go out like that so three fans wind up assisting Frightmare back into the ring. But, Tim has an evil twisted plan in place. While Frightmare is outside of the ring he moves the turn buckle out of position. He then tries to ram Frightmare's head into the exposed steel but Frightmare blocks this. Then, the final part of Tim's diabolical plan kicks in. While the referee goes to readjust the turn buckle Tim pokes Frightmare in the eyes and pulls out a necktie from his tights. Tim then starts choking Frightmare with the tie and hides this fact from the referee by applying a rear chin lock with a body scissors. Frightmare is choked out by this morally bankrupt maneuver and Tim sends a message to his opponent for the next night Bryan Danielson.
Not a bad week of action at all. I could have done without the antics of Josh and Brad Tate, but it was sweet to see Mini-Josh get tapped out again.
