Live report from the Bronx, NY

– Just Wrestling has become known for hosting events in sweaty gyms and venues without shower facilities – not entirely deservedly, for the most part. But tonight was certainly a harking back to those heady early days of temporary seating and inadequate ventilation as we descended into the underbelly of the Bronx – the underground, to be more accurate. TC’s Pub is owned by  Eli Flair and Poison Ivy – yes, that Eli Flair; yes, that Poison Ivy. It’s  Impulse ’s spiritual home and before the show he drank upstairs with the people who had come to see him – signing programmes, permitting photographs, repeatedly having to turn down beers. Rumours had swirled that Impulse, real name Randall Knox, will have to withdraw from the remainder of the tour citing a back injury and to a crestfallen audience he announced that this was in fact the truth – but he would honour tonight’s booking, taking on Mike Rossi in the basement. A roar of support told us that if Impulse had ever questioned the adulation of his New York fans, it was entirely without basis.

We descended to the basement to find rows of fold-out chairs packed together around a ramshackle ring. There was barely room to breathe; stretching one’s legs was certainly out of the equation.  Odetta and Anathkash Dakari picked their way through the audience beneath a surprisingly good sound system to begin our night, and gave an intense exposition of the different striking arts permitted in the wrestling ring, Odetta’s precise right hands picking their way past Dakari’s defences but offering no answer when martial-arts skills began to pose ever more complex questions. Odetta landed a heavy reverse DDT that almost had the fall, and the fans were so into it that their yelling of numbers reverberated around the basement causing no end of aural confusion. In the end Dakari’s Metamorphosis did for Odetta, and it being his third consecutive singles win the 175-pounder is now in line for a title shot.

The next match would pit a 265-pound  Orca against the consistently elusive  Skylar Montgomery .

New York state bar journal

My Years in the Womb

Runner's world

American medical directory

New York Magazine