Layton's Betrayed Remarks

May 20, 2006

MEWL’s April 29th show, Betrayed, left me feeling, well, betrayed.

It was an odd evening right from the start, when MEWL officials told me Lones Oaks, who was scheduled to be a part of a six-man tag team main event, would, due to injury, not be wrestling. Instead, they arranged for him to spend the evening at ringside helping run the sound system and manage the show. It was nice to have the extra help, and it also afforded me an interesting perspective on the show, one that I don’t usually get: a wrestler’s point of view.

While watching the “old” Team X of Kano Karter and Tyrone Evans take on the “new” Team X of Mike Mirra and Patrick McGrath, I knew I was seeing a really brutal match with a couple of hot newcomers making a good show for themselves. But Oaks offered insights, a wrestler’s perspective, that I never would have picked up on otherwise.

After one particularly vicious suplex left Mirra on his head, Oaks turned to me and said “He’s going to have to cover that one for sure!”

“Cover?” I asked, not sure what he meant.

“Yep. Watch Mirra. He landed behind Evans, so Evans had no idea just how hard, or where, Mirra landed. Could be his head, his neck, his back. And he might have been able to roll with it and not take a direct hit. Now you and I and the audience now that kid just got planted on his skull and is in a world of hurt. But he can’t let that show, or Evans will zero right in on whatever is hurting him. He’s going to try to throw him off, so he’s going to have to cover just how badly he’s hurt, and do his best to look like his head is in the match instead of scrambled.”

Turning back to the match, I noticed sure enough that Mirra was holding his upper arm, as though he had landed on his shoulder. Evans took the bait, and for the next several minutes worked over the arm when an assault on Mirra’s oxygen supply, through headlocks and sleepers, probably would have been a more effective approach as Mirra was no doubt already woozy from his cranium’s collision with the mat.

It was a really cool moment for me; I might be involved in this thing professionally now, but I’m still a fan at heart, and for a pro to offer me that kind of analysis of a match was truly exciting. Plus I felt like, after almost two years, I was finally bonding with one of the superstars in MEWL. These guys tend to be a pretty guarded bunch and get suspicious of any outsiders, but now it seemed I was actually connecting with a wrestler.

And then I mentioned that I thought Evans had the best gore in MEWL. Oaks jacked me up against the wall and told me to take it back or he’d use his Oak-splitter gore on me.

For the record, I wholeheartedly believe Lones Oaks has the best gore in MEWL… no, make that in all of wrestling.

But after that I thought it was all downhill. Oh, sure, there was some great wrestling. Sharkboy winning the Cruiserweight Title in an awesome threeway match with Virus and Unknown was a real highlight, and seeing Brandon X give the former Team X a little payback was fun, but for me the whole damn night was ruined by the main event.

Yes, somehow, once again, “The Pure One” Justin Diaz, now aligned with “The Natural” Christian Vaughn as well as his old crony “The Reject” Richard Friar in the Apostles of Light, managed to eke out a win. Perhaps Vaughn; maybe Diaz is unbeatable, and the only hope anyone has is joining with him. Or maybe Diaz really does have some sort of connection with the “Higher Light,” and that’s how he keeps defying the odds and beating much better wrestlers.

Or perhaps what goes around comes around, and payback is a bitch. Perhaps “Big Guns” Jeff Cannon will get Diaz in that dog collar match during MEWL’s June stop in Alliance. And maybe somewhere down the line Jazin Blaze will finally get his hands on Vaughn and give his former best friend a little payback.

And even if I was a little let down by the end of this last show, I don’t want to miss it if that day should come. So I’ll be back in June, hoping and praying that Diaz and Vaughn finally get what is coming to them. I hope to see you there.