BRM Reviews FIP Everything Burns 2017

[Big Red Machine]

FIP Everything Burns 2017 (1/8/2017)- Ybor City, Florida

GET THE CONTRACT FIGHT FOR ALL- no rating, bad segment
The show just opened with a brunette named Nika standing in the right in a slinky dress and saying “come and get the contract, boys” in a seductive manner, then all of a sudden some people are fighting in the crowd or something. Then some dude gets into the ring (I guess that the papers Nika is holding are the contract) but instead of giving it to him she makes an angry face. Instead of trying to get it from her, this dude (who is apparently named Billy Barboza) turns around to celebrate but when he turns around again a woman dressed up wrestling boots, a pink dress, and white facepaint and carrying a kendo stick gets into the ring and spits red mist in his face (apparently this is Su Yung).
We are fifty-seven seconds into this show and I don’t think I have ever been more confused than I am right now. Not during the dirt worst of TNA, not during any Russo-booked WCW crap, not even during my occasional attempts to watch DDT. Now that I think about it, MAYBE I was this confused during the Body Bag match on the second 3PW show, but aside from that I have never been this confused. Would it really have been so hard to take a minute at the beginning of the show to make sure that the audience knows what the f*ck is going on?
So… apparently getting the contract earns you a title shot later tonight. Fine. But why the hell is Su Yung trying to stop people from getting it? And is Mila supposed to be trying to stop people from getting it or is she playing the role of a human pole because Gabe didn’t want a book a pole match because he knows that pole matches automatically inspire ridicule from most fans?
The announcers seem confused as well, and are bringing up some of the things that are running through my head right now as well, so at least that tells me that this confusion is by design, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating.
The guys trying to get the contract are all coming off like idiots because they’re getting in the ring so damn slowly that it makes it seem obvious that they are doing so specifically so that Su can hit them because that’s the spot rather than looking like they’re actually trying to win the match like they should be doing. They all get smart and decide to try to all get in at once so they surround the ring but then some dude named Teddy Stigma shows up with a 2x4 wrapped in barbed wire and they all get down because they’re afraid of him. He and Su exchange some looks, then Su dives onto the dudes on the outside. Mila runs her finger down Teddy’s chest, then just hands him the contract.
I have decided to rate this as a segment rather than as a match (and I was going to go slightly into the negatives) because the announcers made clear that this confusion was what the booker wanted me to feel… but as I said above, that doesn’t stop this from being extremely frustrating to watch.

THE NEXT SEGMENT- what am I getting myself into?
A dude named Timothy Barr comes out with Kaci Lennox, who we just learned was the ring announcer. Barr asks “how about that, ladies and gentlemen? The new FIP!” I didn’t watch the old FIP and have only tuned in to this show due to the booking change (Gabe Sapolsky is now booking it), but if the rest of “the new FIP” is anything like what we just saw, I think I’d rather have the old one back. Kaci says something about Su’s dive being totally crazy. Both of these two come across like vapid, WWE-style hype machines who will tell me that everything I see tonight is the greatest thing ever, no matter how routine it is.
They are soon replaced by Billy Barboza his manager Weevil Whitaker. These guys are walking cartoon characters. Their gimmick is that they have a book full of “the greatest moves of all time.” We’re only six minutes in, but I’m thoroughly convinced that Gabe booked this show while he was high and getting help from an equally high Mike Quackenbush.
They give a long-winded speech about how Barboza won’t be wrestling tonight. It was one of those deliveries that is clearly purposely bad, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s still bad. As they go to leave Barboza is assaulted by Alexander Rudolph, so we get…

ALEX RUDOLPH vs. BILLY BARBOZA (w/Weevil Whitaker)- 0.25/10
Rudolph looks like gigantic version of an LOTR dwarf.
FIP now apparently has no count-outs or DQs. This the same promotion that used to allow their world title to change hands on count-outs. The match was quite unenjoyable, all because of Barboza and Weevil. After seeing these two I will never call anything in WWE “cartoonish” ever again.

TIMOTHY BARR MAKES AN ANNOUNCEMENT- specifically, that “tonight, FIP has taken the rulebook, and thrown it right out the f*cking window.” Well if that’s the case then maybe you should have mentioned that to the live crowd at some point BEFORE doing a match with a blatant low blow it rather than after one.

SAMMY GUEVARA & DEZMOND XAVIER vs. SAMI CALLIHAN & DAVE CRIST- no rating, slightly interesting segment.
Before the match can start Darby Allin shows up and pointedly asks Sammy and Dezmond “do you know Uncle John?” They don’t. He then asks their opponents the same question and Callihan replies “F*CK YEAH!” and he and Crist nail Sammy and Dezmond with running bicycle kicks. They put the boots to Sammy and Dezmond and Sami Callihan says that they all know Uncle John so we should call them “Uncle John’s Friends.” The heels then walk off, so apparently this match isn’t happening. That was kind of weird. Also, apparently this has something to do with some video that was sent to FIP that they posted on YouTube titled “Do You Know Uncle John.” I went and watched it. It was short and weird. The Age of the Fall this is not.

THREE WAY DANCE: Jason Cade vs. Jason Kincaid vs. A.R. Fox- no rating
Uncle John’s friends are back out. Darby Allin asks first Jason Cade and then Jason Kincaid if they know Uncle John but they apparently don’t. Meanwhile, one fan is shouting at them to “just say yes!” Darby then asks if anyone here knows Uncle John and A.R. Fox suddenly attacks Cade while Callihan goes over to Kincaid and slams him down from his perch atop the turnbuckles. They put the boots the Jasons and then Fox told us that he knows Uncle John. At this point announcer Trevin Adams had the same reaction that I did, which was “Two matches in a row!” “Can we watch a G-d damn wrestling match!?”
Uncle John’s friends start throwing things around and Darby says that “you will all know Uncle John.”

ARIA BLAKE vs. PRISCILLA KELLY- 2/10
They did some stuff. Blake won with a roll-up.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- it turns out that Priscilla Kelly knows Uncle John, too. Well… at least we got a match first this time. The rest of Uncle John’s Friends come out which distracts Blake so that Kelly can attack her from behind. They all menace Blake until the guys they had previously attacked all came out to make the save. Jason Cade cuts a promo demanding an eight-man tag team match against them later tonight.

AUSTIN THEORY vs. ANTHONY HENRY (w/Amber Young)- 6/10
Dontay Brown comes out and cuts a promo saying he wants to place a bet on Austin Theory. This doesn’t seem like the sort of thing you’re allowed to do IN THE RING. He asks who wants to take this bet and Amber Young volunteers because she has full faith in her boyfriends’ abilities. So she’s managing him and now taking a bet out on his success? Didn’t Pete Rose get in a lot of trouble for this?
And of course both Brown and Young were allowed to stay at ringside for this match in which they both have a lot of money on the line. Yeah. That sounds like a good idea. The finish was that they were arguing so Henry released a submission that he had on Theory to go yell at Brown but then got rolled up by Theory (who put his feet on the ropes for good measure) for the pinfall.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Brown very reasonably asks Amber Young to pay up but she says she doesn’t have any money on her. Well then why did you take the bet? Brown invites her back to his place to discuss how they will get this debt paid off, so she slaps him. Amber and Henry leave and Dontay Brown vows that this isn’t over because “Dontay Brown always collects.”
This was fine for now, but I’ll really only be able to have a clearer idea if this angle is going to be full of holes or not once the next chapter of it comes along (i.e. shouldn’t Amber just go to the ATM, get the money, and then arrange to pay Dontay? And if so, shouldn’t that settle everything and this would just end? There are other directions they could take it to keep it going, but some of those are fraught with logical issues).

FIP FLORIDA HERITAGE TITLE MATCH: Martin Stone(c) vs. Jon Davis- 4.5/10
First they had a slugfest which Davis started to win so Stone rolled out of the ring and said he wanted a “wrestling match.” Then they did a few wrestling spots with Davis coming out on top so Stone rolled out of the ring again and complained that Davis was “using Judo,” which was “not wrestling,” and he insisted that Davis have a technical wrestling match with him. Then he got back into the ring and they just had a normal match for a while, doing a combination of everything, seemingly forgetting all about the story they had just set up.
They did that for a while, with the announcers often reminding us that there were no count-outs, DQs, or time limits in FIP anymore, so there is no champion’s advantage. Stone then rolled out of the ring, but instead of grabbing a mic he this time grabbed the purse of a woman sitting in the second row, opened it, and started rooting through it. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen, as people seemed to be legitimately wondering what Stone was doing and whether he was going to grabs this poor woman’s wallet and then just run off.
Instead he grabbed a big, honking steel chain that she apparently keeps in her purse and they built up to him finally using it on Davis after Davis thwarted about his first four attempts, first kicking Davis in the nuts and then knocking him out with the chain, and while this would normally be heelish behavior, it’s kind of hard for me to criticize a guy for doing this in a No DQs match.
This whole thing really didn’t work for me. The only part of it that I thought was good was Davis’ reaction when he finally woke up and picked up the chain that Stone had cockily draped over him after defeating him. Davis’ facial reactions and then his softly spoken yet deadly serious vow that “Martin Stone, the next time we are in the ring together I will beat the sh*t out of you” definitely have me interested in seeing their rematch.

FIP WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Hooligans (Devin Cutter & Mason Cutter)(c) (w/Uncle Leo) vs. Drennan & Parrow- 5.75/10
The Hooligans are fat hicks dressed in overalls with stereotypical farm music as their entrance theme. One of them has brown hair, a beard, and a marijuana leaf tattoo on his shoulder, but he is decidedly not the Necro Butcher. They pretended to be afraid of the big, scary, Parrow, but when his back was turned they started the match off by hitting him with a chair.
The match was a big weapons brawl that had me constantly confused about who were the babyfaces and who were the heels. Also, I’m not going to lie to you: the presence of these walking cartoon characters that are The Hooligans made it pretty hard for me to get into this match.

The annoying dorks are back. The dude cemented himself as the more annoying of the two when he said the following about one of the earlier matches: “You know that Omega-Okada sh*t? This blew that match right out of the f*cking water.” The fans booed this statement, and even the female dork made a “what the hell is he talking about?” face when her male compatriot opened his mouth. I can’t possibly imagine that Gabe sent him out there to say this because there is no way that such a statement wouldn’t get heavily booed… which of course means that we now have the seemingly babyface company hype-man putting over one of the company’s matches at this big show… and getting booed for it. He defended it by saying “Hey! I’m entitled to my own f*cking opinion!” which is technically true, but there are times when you shouldn’t broadcast your opinion because it will reflect badly on your employer. The female dork look embarrassed to be seen with this guy at this point.

FIP WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Fred Yehi(c) vs. Teddy Stigma- 7.75/10
They told a very good story with Yehi starting off trying to keep weapons out of the match but embracing their use by the end. Rather than thumbtacks they used bottle caps, and Yehi got powerbombed into them. That must have hurt like a motherf*cker. This was a GREAT match, showing Yehi in all of his Yehi-ish glory.

The dorks are back. The male dork fakes an apology about his earlier statement but now shifts his praise to Yehi and Stigma, giving it ten stars. It’s still nowhere in Okada vs. Omega’s league, but at least this time he put over a match that was actually good.

UNCLE JOHN’S FRIENDS (Darby Allin, Sami Callihan, Dave Crist, & A.R. Fox) (w/Priscilla Kelly) vs. JASON CADE, SAMMY GUEVARA, JASON KINCAID, & DEZMOND XAVIER (w/Aria Blake)- 7.75/10
This was a wild and crazy weapons brawl and the wrestlers did a good job of using their environment to create some unique spots, but as they went on they started to get too cutesy and it started to feel like they were setting up for spots rather than having a wrestling match that progressed from spot to spot. The one spot that the women got was pretty bad. Someone needs to teach Aria Blake how to look angry.
Uncle John’s Friends won the match, then cut a promo reiterating that they all knew Uncle John and were his friends, and insisted that we all knew Uncle John as well, driving home the idea that Uncle John’s identity will be an important mystery, and unlike WWE’s Sister Abigail, I am confident that we’ll get an explanation and a big payoff to this at some point because unlike WWE’s hacks, Gabe actually knows what he is doing.

This show will draw obvious comparisons between it and a show that, in hindsight has turned out to be one of the most important shows that Gabe ever booked: ROH Generation Next. Both shows took place at a time when the promotion needed a reboot and both involved a new heel stable emerging, causing chaos throughout the night by attacking people and cancelling many of the scheduled matches to replace them with a big eight-man tag in the hopes of getting some very talented young wrestlers over. The key difference is that in this case most of the young guys that this angle was trying to get over were actually on the babyface side. Uncle John’s friends are actually pretty well known on the indy scene (Allin is the only one who I would say the majority of indy fans outside of his local region have at most only heard of), and due to the nature of the angle- both the mystery aspect and the fact that a top stable will get more focus than four individual guys- it will be a bit harder to get the young guys on the babyface side over as main eventers. I’m not saying tonight wasn’t a good first step (because it certainly was), but I think more focus on them will be necessary to really get them over the same way that the Generation Next guys were able to get over and become the next group of stars that helped carry ROH forward.
As for the show overall… I’m mixed. It certainly did its job in shaking things up in the promotion and the change to hardcore rules helps to distinguish it from EVOLVE... and perhaps even more importantly, from Style Battle, who they usually share venues with and run on the same weekend as. There were two great matches at the top of the card, but pretty much everything up until then was very confusing and hard to enjoy. I’m sure it was a bit confusing by design, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the show. If you’re looking for a new wrestling product to give a try to I’d definitely recommend that you check the new FIP out, but I, personally, won’t be in any rush to come back unless I hear that the undercards get better.