Thunderous body slams, bruising pile drivers and acrobatic lunges off the top ropes. These actions will all be front and center stage at the West Ferris Community Centre as the ‘Blood Sweat and Ears’ wrestling card rolls into North Bay Saturday April 14.
“It’s basically a compilation of the elite, independent talent in Ontario, Quebec and Northern United States,” North Bay native and competitive wrestler Brett Farrell said Wednesday afternoon.
Although wrestling enthusiasts won’t see the big name competitors at the event, such as John Cena or Stone Cold Steve Austin, like they see on broadcasts of WWE RAW or other pro wrestling league shows, they will see up and coming wrestlers that are thriving to make it into the big circuit. Farrell says this event is a good way for young talent to showcase their skills.
“We try to put each guy against a guy that will bring out the best in each other, that way your getting quality matches, the guys are getting quality training and experience, which is what will bring them to the big show,” Farrell explained.
Farrell says the event will be jam packed with action from beginning to end, as the show tries to have every match as exciting as possible.
“Guys like Tornado Tyson Dukes, TNT the tag team, other promotions have them as their top tag team and will have a lot of lower card guys underneath, pretty much all of our guys are of that caliber, that’s what we strive for is keeping the entire show from start to finish at a five star level,” Farrell said.
‘Blood, Sweat and Ears’, despite its vulgar title, will play host to people of all ages as it’s designated as a family event.
“It’s going to be hard hitting action, but you’re not going to see guys pull out baseball bats wrapped with barbwire and smacking each other around,” Farrell stated. “It is a physical sport, so you might see more than ballet, but it’s professional wrestling, you’re going to see fighting, but it’s not going to be to the point where you’re going to have to cover your kid’s eyes from watching.”
The 34 year old, 5’10, 250-pound Farrell, who trained under another North Bay native Lance Storm at the Hart Brothers’ Wrestling school in Calgary, has been asked to help out as a special enforcer for the tag-team main event featuring Cobra Ky and James Champagne against the Suicide Kids. Farrell says he will be used to make sure the rules don’t get bent and that everyone has a fair match. Although Farrell hasn’t been in the ring since October, he said he won’t shy away from taking physical action against anyone that tries anything outside of the rules of the ring.
“We’ve all seen a wrestling match where a ref gets knocked out or someone smacks the ref from behind and the ref’s down, so bad guys can do what they want to do. I’m going to be there to prevent that from happening,” Farrell said. “If someone decides to pull brass knuckles out of their boots or use a steel chair...I have been hit before with a chair and I can take it, I can swing it pretty good too,” he added with a smile.
Professional wrestling has had many titles over the years such as fake, staged or even a soap opera for men. Farrell says he has scars on his body to prove that the sport is far from what people generally perceive it to be, and people do actually get hurt during matches, as well as in training.
“Anyone can bring the whole fake card all they want, but I have got a torn bicep, three dislocated shoulders, my knees are bad, two concussions and sometimes I can’t even remember my own name,” Farrell said of the list of injuries he’s endured in his wrestling career.
Farrell, who has had short stints in the WCW and WWE, fighting legends like the Big Boss Man, Jake the Snake Roberts and Marty Jannetty, says that even starting out to learn how to bounce against the ropes in the ring is no easy task and can be very painful.
“People look at it and see it and the flow is bing-bang-boom and everything is done, people don’t even think about it, but running the ropes…it took me at least two weeks just to learn how to run the ropes properly. Most of the ropes are made with steel cables encased in hard plastic. It’s like hitting a wall,” Farrell said firmly. “You have welts on your back for the first few weeks and just that alone is enough to make you think, I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.”
The man known as ‘Big Daddy Hammer’ while on the wrestling mat, has had a passion for the sport dating back to when he was a kid, as he would watch the WWF (now called the WWE) with his father, idolizing Ric Flair. He says times have changed in the wrestling world from when he was starting out. With so many different circuits and training facilities available to an aspiring wrestler, Farrell says the time to get involved and actually have a shot at the big leagues is better now than it ever has been.
“Guys in Toronto now…there’s 15 schools running in Toronto area, if guys want to get better and want to improve their skills they just go to the school, slap down 20$ and roll around for three hours with some of the best competition in Ontario,” Farrell said. “It’s kind of hard not to get good when you’re surrounded by good people, but in North Bay who’s around here? There’s nobody around, it’s a dead area, that’s why I’m thinking if we can bring Blood, Sweat and Ears here, maybe revive it and maybe get a school going up here eventually.”
If everything goes as planned and the event draws a large enough turnout, Farrell says a similar event could possibly take place in August that would include bigger name wrestlers such as Lance Storm as well as others from the TNA.
“If we can pull in 500 to 1,000 people with no big names in the show, then we should get double that(in August),” Farrell said.
The ‘Blood, Sweat and Ears’ event takes place April 14th at the West Ferris Community Centre, with the scheduled start time of 4:30p.m.. Tickets to the show are available at Memorial Gardens, with the bounty being 10$ for general admission and 15$ for VIP. Tickets will also be available online at www.ticketbreak.com.
