PCW Part 1

Arriving in Dallas on Friday afternoon was already a long day for me as I had been up since 5 a.m. that morning. I was gearing myself up for the evening’s matches when I got a call at my hotel room from Rob Moore letting me know that Kody Kox, ring announcer for PCW Uncut, would be picking me up in about 20 minutes or so.

I hurried to get everything together that I would want to take that night and quickly showered to be in the best of shape for the evening. Kody was running a few minutes late, and that was OK by me, anyway, as I had to try and jam as much stuff into my briefcase as I could. I took along pictures and one of my early photo albums to share with anyone I could in the dressing room.

Arriving at the PCW Arena, we went into the gym area, where a huge part of that room was engulfed in exercise equipment and a caged-in area where mixed martial arts are taught. They also had a huge boxing/wrestling ring in the center of the room where future stars are taught the art of catch-as-catch-can wrestling from some of the pros.

I was asked to follow a security member as she took me to the main arena. I passed near the ticket taker’s booth, and there were newspaper clippings on the walls about legends and locals alike. There was also a huge glass-encased area you had to pass by that contains robes, jackets, window cards, pictures and personal items of many of the greats of our business. I hope someday to have my pictures in that room and be a part of that elite group.

I was given a choice of seats to watch the Friday night matches, called "UNCUT." The wrestlers are fairly new to our business and are not usually on the Saturday night cards unless they have an extremely unusual talent about them. They also must be able to withstand some of the punishment that is given out by the huge athletes of "Full Throttle." Some of those guys go 300+ pounds, and some are as tall as 7 feet and more.

From the opening bell that started the card, I witnessed spontaneous crowd reaction that told me that all the fans here knew who they liked and did not like. They even had their own cheering section for their favorites.

One of the young men that really caught my eye was Jiggle-O James Johnson. He is probably the smallest member of his roster, but he competes on both Friday and Saturday night cards and usually in the main event. He fought a young man by the name of Jerry Brown, and they had one of the best knock down drag out battles I have seen in a lot of years.

The announcer, Kody Kox, does an awe-inspiring job of ring announcing. He puts his whole heart into every word that he says and tries to give justice to every athlete that comes into the arena to do battle. Something about him tells me that I should know this talented young man. I am sure that if one of the major companies in the wrestling business see this multi-gifted man, they will try and get him away from Arlington, Texas.

Another of the young aggressive athletes on Friday night’s card was Viktor Tadlock a German-born technician that is slowly gaining the respect of many that he faces each week at the PCW Arena. He faced Franco D'Angelo in the semi-main event that saw Mr. Brown come down to ringside and take out the manager of Tadlock, Attorney-At-Law Paul Lewis, who carries a Halliburton briefcase with him to ringside.

Brown grabbed the briefcase and gave it to D'Angelo to hit Viktor in the head with, but, instead, Franco blasted Brown with the case, knocking him into the solid metal security fence that surrounds the ring. It was nice to see someone with morals that wrestled aggressively as D'Angelo did.

In all, about 300 fans were in attendance on Friday night and left the arena very happy with the end results of the evening. I wish to at this time thank the board of directors of PCW for giving me a warm Texas welcome to the arena.

More from Arlington next week…

Percival A. Friend, Retired
The Epitome of Wrestling Managers

2003 BWC Hall of Fame Inductee
2004 CAC Hall of Fame Inductee
2006 LWA Hall of Fame Inductee
2007 TCCW Hall of Fame Honoree