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Ten Years Later: Mitch Pukes, Power Elbows, and Stolen Stereos

Posted: Apr 12th 2012 By: mikeiles

As the end of 2003 came, the Tulsa wrestling scene was starting to get busier. SRPW (TPW?s rival fed) had an awesome weekly venue at Mickey?s Bowling Alley in East Tulsa. They also ran alternating weeks at different Salvation Army Boys and Girls Clubs. Unfortunately, TPW (the company for which I worked) had just lost ?The Deep End?, a venue we had been wrestling at weekly most of that fall. To complicate matters, the TPW ring was locked up inside ?The Deep End? bar after we ran the last show. The bar owner and his landlord had a dispute and he padlocked the doors. We were not allowed access to get our ring out. Sonny C (the TPW owner) and Rocco Valentino (the booker) were looking for a venue where we could run and not having much success. I know Rocco was getting pretty tired of wrestling by this point. He was ready to move on with this life.

Without a regular venue, Rocco had gone against his standard policy and started allowing TPW guys to work for SRPW if they wanted. He told them that if they did, they would not get pushed in TPW. One of the guys working both companies was Kenny ?Outcast? Campbell, my former tag partner. Kenny and I started together in the business back in 2001. Our careers had taken very different paths. Currently he was the TPW champion (second highest belt in the company behind the Oklahoma champion) and I was sidelined from wrestling indefinitely with a head injury. Rocco had made an exception for Kenny. If he was willing to always wear a mask in SRPW, he could keep his push in TPW. It made some of us a little tense. The TPW title was going to be in the SRPW locker room where someone might steal or vandalize it.

In January I went to my final appointment with a neurologist and he declared me fit to wrestle again if I wanted to return. My multiple knock outs and concussions to this point were a concern for him. He said I needed to be extra cautious to avoid head injuries. This was incredible news for me. The only problem was now finding a place for TPW run events and a wrestling ring we could use at those events. Sonny C. found a solution to the first problem. He located a community center in Downtown Tulsa called Owen Park. The building was actually used once before for a wrestling event by SRPW. A referee we called ?Keebler? worked for a local school. He had set up a fundraiser for OCW there. Unfortunately, OCW went out of business the week before. Luckily he was able to get SRPW to take over the event so the fundraiser could still happen. We called the place and they said they would love to have us. This was not the safest area in Tulsa, but the guy was letting us run shows for very cheap. As far as a ring problem goes, that was easy for me to fix. I had bought the old OPW ring from Rocco a year or so earlier when he retrieved it from the bowling alley. I volunteered its services. After being out of the ring for so long, I was incredibly excited to get back.

That first Owen Park show also saw the debut of one of my long time friends and former backyard wrestler, Mitch Carter. The first time I saw Mitch he had to show me his license to convince me he was 16. He had such a baby face that I thought he was 11 or 12. He wanted to wrestle in my backyard badly and be part of ICF. He called himself ?Raging Madness?. I didn?t think he would last very long and since I was kind of douche back then, I booked his backyard debut against my hardcore champion Cold Blooded Chris in a hardcore match. I basically watched CBC pick Mitch up and slam him on the ground or on top of various weapons for five minutes straight. The climax saw Raging Madness puke his guts out in the backyard. Never thought I would see Mitch again after that. To his credit, he showed up to just about every backyard wrestling show after that, and usually puked his guts out in every match. When he was old enough he joined the TPW School and finally got that puking during matches thing under control. He is certainly one of the best to have started in my backyard.

The night I made my return, I was also the main event. It was Justin Lee vs Sonny C vs Romero. I got a very warm ovation from the crowd and a ?welcome back? chant. I had all brand new ring gear made featuring the ?Broken Arrow? logo on it. I had now stopped referring to myself as ?The Future? and started calling myself ?The Broken Arrow Bad Boy?. At the time Romero (Russ) was doing a power elbow as his finisher. He did not pull that sucker either. Head injury or not, he threw that thing at my head like I owed him money. Luckily I had ?scouted? my opponent and gotten my hands up just enough to cushion the blow. The match itself was fun and I believe it ended with New Canada jumping all three of us in the ring. The crowd was probably about 100 people. At that time it was nice just to have a venue. We could work on building up the crowds again. We had a strong group of about 20 or so very loyal fans who we know would be there every time the doors opened.

The Owen Park people were nice enough to let us store the ring on site, so there was no more having to load and unload the ring after every show. Of course, this was a very ghetto area of town and our first night at the venue, Sonny C?s car was broken into and his stereo taken. That was not a good omen of things to come. As happy as we were to be there at Owen Park, we were already looking for some place a little safer. Unfortunately for us, Kenny was also a ?no-show? for that first event. We were left wondering whether or not the TPW champion was even still part of TPW.