BRM Reviews FIP Attack of the Masked Fippers

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews FIP Attack of the Masked Fippers

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 10th, '18, 15:25

FIP Attack of the Masked Fippers (12/10/2005)- Brooksville, FL


OPENING SEGMENT- necessary set-up for the rest of the not, though the segment itself was mostly boring and I found both the babyfaces and the heels almost unbearably obnoxious.
The Heartbreak Express (w/SoCal Val & Kory Chavis) come out and announce that they are only obligate dot defend their FIP Tag Team Titles once a month, and they defended the belts at last night’s show so they’re not going to defend them here tonight. They do say that they want a workout, so they bring out Masked Fipper #7 & Masked Fipper #8 to have a match with them.
Before the match can start, Colt Cabana & Sal Rinauro come out and say that the wonderful fans here in Brooksville paid their hard-earned money and they deserve to see a competitive match and a title match, not a non-title “workout.” Sal reminds everyone that “last month, right here in the Hernando Country Fairgrounds, I defeated Phil Brooks… I mean DAVIS” (that had me rolling), and so he and Cabana should get a title shot (they also defeated the Heartbreak Express by DQ in a title match two months ago, which really should have been brought up because it is a much better justification for deserving a title shot than just pinning one of the tag champs in a singles match, but no one ever mentioned it).
SoCal Val proposes the following: Colt and Sal will wrestle singles matches on the first half of the show against wrestlers of her choosing, and if they win, they can have a title shot in the main event. But, Val warns them, their opponents will be extra-motivated tonight because not only has she put a $1,000 bounty on their heads, but she has also offered a date anyone who defeats them. Cabana accepts the challenge, but tells Val that they don’t want a date with her “because we don’t want herpes.” Val, being a fantastic heel, responds to this not by denying that she has herpes, but by shouting “WHERE DID YOU HEAR THAT?!” Because FIP is Gabe Sapolsky booking Memphis, and in a southern territory, part of being a heel (and especially a heel manager) is understanding how to be the butt of the jokes.
I bring this up because specifically avoiding denying allegations that you have an STD is a very counter-intuitive thing for someone to do, so Val is showing a fantastic amount of poise and quick-thinking by being able to do so. Also, remember that at this point, Val is still several months away from her twentieth birthday… and she is probably one of the three best managers in wrestling right now, down to only James Mitchell and maybe Larry Sweeney (I haven’t seen any of Sweeney as a manager from this far back). She really is a completely forgotten story of squandered potential in the wrestling business.

BRYAN DANIELSON PROMO- he claims that Roderick Strong got lucky last month, so he’s calling Roddy out for a match right now. Roddy does indeed come out, so we get…

RODERICK STRONG vs. BRYAN DANIELSON (w/Dave Prazak)- 7/10
Disappointing for twenty-two minutes of Dragon vs. Roddy, but still great. Dragon worked over Roddy’s neck and relied on various nefarious heel tactics, getting the win with a great heel combination on the finish. Roddy was setting up for the Sick Kick but Prazak grabbed his foot, and when Roddy turned around to deal with Prazak, Dragon nailed him with the Rolling Elbow, then hit him with a sick-looking German Suplex and got the pin. I know that sounds mundane, but their execution was absolutely perfect, without even the hint of the usual over-exaggerated “PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING” mannerisms. This is exactly what this would have looked like if this were real.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine
Roddy goes after Dragon after the match to get some revenge but his DP Associates compatriots Jimmy Rave and Adam Pearce came out and beat Roddy down. Frequent DP Associates antagonists Sean Waltman and Azrieal then came out to help Roddy, but the heels got the advantage back when Prazak threw powder into Waltman’s eyes and Rave and Pearce hit Azrieal with a Spike Piledriver.

FIVE-WAY FRENZY: Benny Blanco vs. Chasyn Rance vs. Jaison Moore vs. Seth Delay vs. Kahagas- 3.75/10
According to Dave Prazak, a three-way elimination match is a “dance,” four is a “fray” and five becomes a “frenzy.” Good to know.
This match was undercard jamokes doing undercard jamoke stuff. We got a teeny bit of story in Rance and Delay realizing that they had to work together to eliminate Kahagas, and successfully doing so. This left them as the last two in, and Delay eventually got the pin on Rance, avenging his singles lost to Rance last night. Mutual respect was shown after the match, and they told each other that they’re tied at one now, so I assume a rubber match is coming sometime soon.

COLT CABANA vs. MILANO COLLECTION AT (w/SoCal Val & Kory Chavis)- 6/10
Milano Collection AT is apparently doing a mime gimmick, completely with invisible dog. Both Val and Kory Chavis bent down to pet the dog. I was not expecting that (especially from Chavis).
Milano beat Cabana’s partner Sal Rinauro last night with AT Lock, which targets the arm, so he went for that same strategy here against Cabana. Cabana made a comeback and got a visual pinfall off of a DDT but the ref was down. You’d think this would result in the heel winning so that Colt got screwed (especially once Milano started choking Colt with the leash for his invisible dog) but Colt just won cleanly a few minutes later.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- The Heartbreak Express ran in and attacked Cabana. Sal Rinauro came out to make the save but got attacked from behind by Kory Chavis, leading to…

SAL RINAURO (w/Colt Cabana) vs. KORY CHAVIS (w/SoCal Val & the Heartbreak Express)- 4.75/10
Chavis used his size to dominate, and almost never left his feet unless it was under his own power. He did leave his feet under his own power very often, though, because he did a lot of sit-out moves, which I only bring up to mentioned Dave Prazak’s strange obsession with them on commentary. Shenanigans happened, allowing Chavis to get the win by hitting Sal with Val’s big handbag, which is apparently loaded (I had assumed that it had the promised $1,000 in it. Maybe it was loaded with $1,000 in change?). The fat member of the Heartbreak Express cut a promo in his unbearable, nails-on-a-chalkboard voice, rubbing in the fact that Sal & Cabana would not be getting a title shot tonight, and that instead the main event would be the Heartbreak Express vs. “the worst team on the roster: Masked Fippers 7 & 8.”

ANYTHING GOES MATCH: Fast & Furious (Jerrelle Clark & Jay Fury) vs. Miracle Violence Connection 2005 (Erick Stevens & Steve Madison)- 6.75/10
This started out with Madison cutting a promo calling out Fast & Furious for their match, only for Fast & Furious to be out about two seconds later, during which time it never occurred to the heels to turn and face the entrance-way where their opponents would be coming from, so they got glommed from behind. These two teams proceeded to have a pretty darn good and chaotic weapons brawl. The babyfaces won after Stevens accidentally hit Madison with a clothesline meant for one of the babyfaces.

AZRIEAL & SEAN WALTMAN vs. DP ASSOCIATES (Adam Pearce & Jimmy Rave) (w/Dave Prazak)- 2.5/10
Before the match, Prazak cut a promo vowing that tonight, Peace & Rave would teach Waltman & Azrieal that “nothing hurts more than DP.” Speaking of “hurt,” the match started off with a few minutes of “comedy” that hurt my pure-wrestling sensibilities. Then FIP Heavyweight Champion Homicide- who can’t wrestle because his shoulder is hurt- came out to ringside to be in the babyfaces’ corner. He would later thwart DP Associates’ attempt to once again use the powder in the eyes trick to get an unfair advantage on the babyfaces. The match was pretty boring and mostly not good. It wasn’t any one person’s fault. Stuff just didn’t look so good, didn’t click, and the pace felt painfully slow. DP Associates kept the clown-show up on the outside after the match.

MASKED FIPPER #7 & MASKED FIPPER #8 vs. THE HEARTBREAK EXPRESS (w/SoCal Val & Kory Chavis)- no rating, fine segment
These Masked Fippers are different from the two we saw earlier. These two are pretty obviously Sal Rinauro and Colt Cabnana. The heels saw though this and tried to walk out but Colt & Sal chased them down and dragged them back. On commentary, babyface announcer Jared David played dumb, while Dave Prazak was yelling about how unfair this was. Jared David was quite entertaining here, claiming “I can’t quite read those tights,” prompting Prazak to start screaming “THEY SAY ‘SAVED BY THE SAL!’ IT SAYS SAL!” To which David responded by informing us fans that “it seems Masked Fipper #8 has borrowed the wrestling gear of Sal Rinauro.” I was rolling with laughter.
They brawled for a bit, then got into the ring where we had a brief tag team match. Rinaur- I mean Masked Fipper #8- was the babyface in peril for a minute or two before making the hot tag, and the babyfaces soon got the win via running the Heartbreak Express into each other and pinning them with simultaneous schoolboys. The heels complained but rubbed in the fact that they were still the champions, the babyfaces revealed themselves, and said they deserve a title shot. I don’t normally like turning a main event into a segment, and I don’t really even like this kind of comedy too much, and I cannot stand the Heartbreak Express and want them to go away and never return to any promotion I watch, but in this setting, with these characters, and with the set-up earlier in the night, this all worked for me. I didn’t think it was great or anything, but it was passable.


This was a meh show from FIP. It had a lot of disappointing elements, but when you look at the whole package together it manages to add up to more than the sum of its parts. Throw in the short (less than two hours) run-time, and you have yourself a watchable little show that moved storylines along and gave us a great match between Roddy and Dragon, so I think it has at least earned the right to not be called outright "bad."
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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