STAMPEDE LIVE

You can contact me by email at jbekolay@home.com or ICQ me, my UIN is 2572608.

In late January, 2000 I attended a Stampede Wrestling show at the Agriplex in Cold Lake, Alberta. This report is almost a year after the fact, so I apologize for any lack of detail and inaccuracies. It is very likely that the match order is messed up. I took some pictures with my digital camera, but the lighting was not good.

As with any indie show, the organization was not perfect. I arrived 15 minutes before the advertised bell time with my friends, but our ringside seats which we paid for in advance were taken. The show started about half an hour late. While waiting, we spotted William Butler Yeats helping with the sound system.

The first match was Satanicous versus Bret Hansen. Satanicous sort of looked like a pumpkin, so called we called him that throughout the match. The ref was some local dude, and he was heckled for counting slow. The crowd was pretty rough on him. There was lots of stalling by Satanicous and the match was slow all the way through. However, it was adequate in getting our voices warmed up.


Satanicous jocking with the crowd.


Satanicous suplexes Hansen.

For the next match, we had a new ref, which was an unmasked Satanicous. The match was William Butler Yeats versus Jake Radcliff. Ruffy Silverstein accompanied Yeats. Me and my friends got behind Yeats. Throughout the match, we encouraged Silverstein to teach Radcliff some respect and interfere. Yeats eventually won the match and a beatdown on Radcliff resulted.


Yeats suplexes Radcliff


Ruffy stomps Radcliff after the match


Yeats celebrates

Tiger Khan came out and worked the crowd pretty well with his usual schtick. There were only two people cheering for him, and one of them was me. Red Thunder came out and we had a match. I forget the result (I believe Khan won), but I do remember that Khan hit his sweet twisting senton in front of me.


Khan suplexes Red Thunder



Tiger Khan hits the TWISTING SENTON~!

Somewhere around these matches (probably after Yeats's match), we had our first intermission. Yeats was working a merchandise table when we asked him for pictures. He asked if we were the guys cheering for him, and then gave us a few pictures. Those pictures will be at the end of the page.

Ruffy Silverstein entered with a mic and Yeats. One of my friends yelled and said he looked like Shane McMahon. Silverstein got hot at him, very funny. Yeats started picking on a fat guy in the front row, which was also hilarious. He also mentioned a relative that lives in Cold Lake. Silverstein had a match with the Cuban Assassin. It was cool to see the Assassin because he is such a legend. Plus, he's funny lookin'. Throughout the match, there were "Shane" chants and other chants relating to Shane McMahon. Don't remember the finish, but Cuban Assassin #2 interfered, I think Thunder and Khan also interfered. This led to a challenge for the main event: Tiger Khan, William Yeats, and Ruffy Silverstein versus Red Thunder and the Cuban Assassins.

Before the main event, there was another intermission. The faces came out for autographs and people were buzzing. The crowd had really heated up by now, it was just really fun.

After the intermission, the last match started. By this time, my friends and I were totally behind the heels to the point where we were exchanging insults with little kids. Great fun, their parents really got a kick out of it. We popped for every move and started chants during every resthold. Tiger Khan hit the twisting senton again. It was hella sweet. Red Thunder had a bit of a confused look on his face because the heels were so over with us. No matter, he started throwing some jibba-jabba at us. Sooner or later, the action spilled to the outside and Yeats and Thunder were brawling right in front of us. We were going nuts. We started giving Yeats our chairs and he hit Thunder again and again. They were cheap plastic chairs and the seat would pop off. When that happened, we'd just give Yeats another. I don't remember the finish, but I'm pretty sure the faces won. Yeats took the mic and said "I hate you (pointing to the faces) and all of you (pointing to the crowd), except for you guys (points to us)." We popped huge again, it was great. That was it for the show.

After the show, we watched the crew deconstruct the ring (Satanicous and Radcliff were part of the ring crew). We hung around for a while and some of the wrestlers soon came out. I shook Red Thunder's hand, he is a giant man. And he was courteous despite the profanities we slung his way during the show. (Well, I was courteous too). Soon, Yeats came out. He spent time signing our stuff, taking pictures, and answering questions. He suggested that they bring TV to Cold Lake next time, but little did he know that the TV would be cancelled before they could return. All in all, Yeats was super cool to us, and we were being super marks and loving it. Ruffy Silverstein also came out and he was great as well.


Me, William Yeats, and a friend. I'm on the left


My group of friends with Yeats and Silverstein.
Silverstein is choking the guy who said he looked like Shane Mcmahon.

All in all, it was the best experience I've had watching wrestling live. The way the guys worked the crowd and the crowd's enthusiasm was just awesome. I lost my voice for the weekend, as had most of my friends. I've also seen 2 WWF house shows (including Chris Benoit vs Chris Jericho in Edmonton) and an IWA Winnipeg show. None of them came close to the amount of fun I had at this show.

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