I’ve been reminiscing a lot about the pre-AEW days, when independent wrestling was riding a tidal wave of success, culminating in the massively successful All In pay-per-view in 2018. Even casual fans like myself were drawn in to the world of independent wrestling with shows like All In and the American stars being showcased overseas in companies like New Japan.
Over the past year I’ve read a couple fantastic books covering the rise of independent wrestling in the 2000s, most notably Too Sweet: Inside The Indie Wrestling Revolution, chronicling independent promotions around the globe, and Killing The Business, the Young Bucks autobiography. In the wake of the WWE becoming a wrestling monopoly, it took a lot of years of hard work and grassroots level growth to bring independent wrestling to the forefront as a bonafide alternative for wrestling fans. It’s phenomenal to see how the indie boom evolved and eventually became an alternative on traditional cable TV in the form of All Elite Wrestling. I’ve been interested to go back a few years and check out some proto AEW events that featured a lot of the wrestlers that would become stars in the promotion.
Chris Jericho has always been an innovator, and an extremely creative one at that. It was major news when he eventually split from the WWE and showed up in New Japan. Jericho was a household name and brought instant credibility to whatever project he was involved in. Leave it to Jericho to come up with a concept as unique as the Rock N’ Wrestling Rager at Sea. This event was part of a Caribbean cruise organized and hosted by Jericho that featured metal and rock performances, a wrestling fan fest, and the Sea of Honor tournament; a multi-day tournament of matches for Ring of Honor, in addition to a massive six man tag main event.
The ring was truly set up in the middle of the cruise ship, with fans seated at ringside and the decks above. It was an AMAZING setting for pro wrestling, and you could see the ocean waves in the background as the cruise sailed the high seas. This was a Ring of Honor production and looked top notch. AEW would eventually have a live Dynamite broadcast during Jericho’s next cruise at the beginning of 2020.
The matches took place over several days, and the commentators rotated in and out. Primarily it was Colt Cabana and Jay Lethal calling the action, and they were pretty damn great. I was familiar with a lot of the roster, but there were a number of guys that I had never seen work before. Most interesting was seeing a lot of the names that would go on to star in AEW in a year’s time.
The broadcast I have didn’t include the first round of matches for the Sea of Honor tournament, instead just showing highlights, finishes, and the bracketing. Things kicked off with second round action.
1) Ashley Remington (Dalton Castle) defeated Christopher Daniels
It was fun to see Christopher Daniels with the same So Cal Uncensored gimmick and music that he’d bring over to AEW. Things get off to a weird start here, as Daniels is supposed to be facing Dalton Castle. Apparently Castle suffered a “concussion” in the first round and instead comes out as the easy going “Smooth Sailing” Ashley Remington, a former indie gimmick of his. Kind of funny, but having no knowledge of this, it didn’t do anything for me. Almost all of the matches were surprisingly quick, going 10 minutes or less. This was a lot of stalling and gimmickery, but really it didn’t matter because the setting was so cool and it was fun watching all of the nerds in the crowd who were on a wrestling themed cruise! This was the peak of indie wrestling, and the crowd is full of Bullet Club, Omega, and other indie shirts. Funniest of all were seeing the geeks wearing out-of-place WWE shirts. As for the match, Remington surprisingly wins and had won over the mostly confused crowd with this geeky gimmick.
2) Flip Gordon defeated Marty Scurll
I remember Flip was a highly touted prospect, but he’s still in ROH, not jumping to AEW or WWE. ROH is no longer the super indie it was at this time, but they still seem to have a young and hungry roster, though it’s a lot of these same guys. Gordon gets over huge on this card, with his catchy theme music (Flip! Flip! Flip! Flip!) and crazy aerial wrestling. The Villain Marty Scurll was expected to be a major part of AEW, but was instead outed in #metoo fashion as a weird creep who lured underage girls, pretty much tanking his career. At this time in 2018, none of that had yet come to light, and fans were so nuts for his matches. This was a really great battle, probably my favorite of the first round. All of these matches just seemed so much cooler taking place on a ship! The setting just made this card feel like something truly special. In what seemed like a surprise, Flip shocked Marty for the win and advanced in the tournament.
3) Jay Briscoe defeated Cheeseburger
I remember reading so much about Mark and Jay Briscoe. For years it seemed like they were future superstars in the making, having dominated ROH and the indies. Turns out they made a bunch of shitty comments online, failed their WWE tryout and burned their chances at having a shot at the big time. Plus, they’re two ugly ass rednecks, who look like a couple of homeless meth addicts. They hail from rural Maryland and wrestle in shitty, tattered ring gear. I guess that’s their whole gimmick? Something about them feels very ugly and wrong. Cheeseburger is a really skinny wimp who pulled off a fluke victory in the first round. Jay Briscoe beats the shit out of him, but Cheese refuses to give up or stay down. The crowd is all nuts for him as he keeps fighting back and gets a couple near falls, but the Jay Driller finally finishes him off.
4) Mark Briscoe defeated Adam Page
Wow, so cool to see early Adam Page before he became a bonafide superstar in AEW. Page has the same gimmick and music here in ROH and was mainly a mid-carder before breaking out in 2020. The first part of this match is some kind of stupid macho chop and punch contest, where they just kept trading shots back and forth forever with the crowd egging them on and making stupid chants. Eventually it turned into a really hard hitting, solid match. Page delivers a lot of what would become his signature moves, but can’t finish Mark off. The crowd is really into this one, as the fucking ugly Briscoe finally picks up the win.
5) Flip Gordon defeated Dalton Castle
On to the next round, and another day of the cruise, with new commentators. Dalton Castle is back in place of Ashley Remington and hilariously the crowd starts a ‘Smooth Sailing’ chant at him. This match is pretty damn good, and Flip is just massively over. I wonder why he was never picked up for AEW or NXT? Flip emerges victorious and surprisingly moves on to the finals.
6) Jay Briscoe defeated Mark Briscoe
A battle of the two meth head brothers has the crowd super excited. Despite their awful appearance and attire, the Briscoes are solid workers. This match is super hard hitting, with the brothers destroying each other with all kinds of sick moves and super stiff shots. I ended up really enjoying this match because of how intense it was. Jay Driller finishes, which is a pretty insane looking move.
7) Flip Gordon defeated Jay Briscoe
The finals of the Sea of Honor tournament feature a great clash of styles, as the high flying Flip had to battle the brutal intensity of Jay Briscoe. This was a real solid match, but I think Flip was looking a little exposed, as his high flying shit didn’t look as cool against an opponent like Jay. Still, the setting and the fans made this feel really exciting. Flip kept surprising everyone by kicking out of big moves and fighting back, finally pulling off the minor upset victory. The fans were going nuts for Flip who looked like a pretty big star coming out of this match.
8) Bullet Club (Kenny Omega, Cody and Marty Scurll) defeated Alpha Club (Chris Jericho, Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson)
The special six man main event of the cruise featured a battle between two factions split out of the Bullet Club. I don’t know if it all went down in Japan or in Ring of Honor, but the Alpha Club split off from the Bullet Club for this feud. This match was both awesome and absolutely fascinating. Two months after this event, five of these six men would be part of the press conference launch of All Elite Wrestling. Nobody could possibly have predicted what was going on behind the scenes at this point. The Young Bucks detail all this in their book, and how AEW was in the works a long time before being launched. Back to the match at hand. I loved seeing Jericho and the Bucks all in matching attire and Jericho was flying around the ring pretty good still at this point. This was in the midst of the ongoing Omega-Jericho feud, and fans were chomping at the bit to see them go at it, but they never really locked up until late in the match, with Omega doing his best to avoid him. Cody was working to turn the crowd against them, but the fans were just going gaga over everything in this match and eating it all up. This match definitely feels like the culmination of the indie revolution. The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega had become household names for wrestling fans, despite never having worked in the WWE. Jericho and Cody represented the disenfranchised members of the WWE roster, who were creatively frustrated and really benefitted from a change of scenery. The worst thing that happened with the end of WCW and ECW was the stagnating of the WWE. Competition is necessary in wrestling. A change of scenery is necessary in wrestling. A wrestling monopoly is boring and doesn’t work. Okay, back to this match again. It was fantastic, a blueprint of what was to come in AEW. It had a hot finish with the Bullet Club picking up the win to end this super unique event, one of the last super indie shows before the announcement of All Elite Wrestling.
the RepoDan Wrestling Institution 