Warrior Wrestling 7: Live Impressions and Photo Gallery

Warrior Wrestling 7 featured some major talent on the card with an incredible main event match.

Date: Friday, Dec. 13, 2019

Place: Marian Catholic High School (700 Ashland Avenue; Chicago Heights, Illinois 60411)

Ticket price: $60 (Third row), $5 Parking

The show is available to watch on FITE for $14.99 and on High Spots for $9.99/14.99.

Impressions/Observations:

Warrior Wrestling 7 was a great show all around. There weren’t any bad matches. It’s definitely worth checking on for $15, especially the last four matches. The main event itself is amazing and must-watch.
Warrior Wrestling 7 had some major talent for the show, most noticeably Minoru Suzuki, Will Ospreay and an appearance by Kurt Angle.
There was a great crowd for the show. It was pretty packed in the building. I thought for a Friday night with no other major wrestling shows running in the area at the same time (like WWE or AEW) that the crowd wouldn’t be that big. The location is really far away if you’re coming from Chicago or the surrounding suburbs since it’s closer to Indiana. It takes forever to get to the building. There was definitely a bigger crowd for this show than for Warrior Wrestling 6 over this past Labor Day weekend, which surprised me.
I didn’t get into the building until right after the National Anthem was sung and Ethan Page was coming out for a promo, so I missed the pre-show match with Danhausen.
This was a heavy New Japan Pro Wrestling show. Guys like Lance Archer and Will Ospreay both had their NJPW championship belts with them as well. Maybe NJPW is starting a partnership with Warrior Wrestling for its American expansion plans (I’m joking). The New Japan talent is probably a reason for the bigger crowd.
I’m not sure when an American fan would have a chance to see Minoru Suzuki live in person. This made it feel like a special moment.
I have no idea how Warrior Wrestling keeps getting all these big names for their shows or how they can even afford them. Supposedly a lot of the money generated from the shows goes towards funding the school and its programs. I guess the school owns the promotion and the principal puts the shows together.
General admission tickets for the bleacher seats were $35 with a $2.75 fee. Ringside first row seats were $100 plus a $6 fee. The other ringside seats were $60 each with a $4 fee. That’s a bit more expensive than other independent shows. The doors were advertised to open at 6 with the show starting at 7.
The VIP fan fest before the show was a separate $100 ticket, which was advertised to run between 5-6:30. You could supposedly meet, get a picture and an autograph with every wrestler there. They sent out different emails stating that to get this for all 29 wrestlers, the total would cost at least $750 and then changed it later to at least $800. The thing with the VIP fest is that the lines get long so you’re probably not going to meet every wrestler. When I did it for one of the first Warrior shows (the ticket price was a lot different then), some wrestlers had their own prices and requirements for getting autographs/pictures, so just because you had the VIP pass didn’t mean you would get a picture with everyone. They might have changed that since then though.
The Warrior Wrestling shows are more self-contained, so if you watch them later down the road you don’t miss out on major storylines. They do book stuff for the next shows but they only run every couple of months.
Holidead has a lot of potential. This was my first time even hearing about her. I think she came out to Type O Negative’s “Black No. 1” for her theme song. She’s got a cool look and is pretty good in the ring.
Before his match Ace Austin cut a promo about him not bringing his X-Division title with him because he doesn’t trust any of the fans or anyone in the promotion to not steal his belt because a champion in another promotion got his title stolen in this city (Walter getting his NXT UK title stolen from his car before the Evolve 142 show at the Logan Square Auditorium in Chicago earlier in December). Austin has noticeably improved from a character and in-ring standpoint over the past year.
Carlos Romo looked pretty good. I had never heard of him before.
Frank the Clown sucks. The fans hated him. The building was booing him so loud you couldn’t even hear his promo. He’s not particularly good at what he does and is obviously playing a part so it comes across as extremely fake.
Sam Adonis was getting ripped hard by the fans over Corey Graves, who is his brother in real life and had a recent issue with going after Mauro Ranallo on Twitter over Survivor Series weekend. This caused Ranallo, who has mental health issues, to temporarily leave Twitter and miss calling some matches for the WWE Survivor Series show. You could tell Adonis obviously heard the chants but he didn’t react to them that much. The fans were chanting you suck like your brother, your brother sucks, and some more vile taunts too.
I don’t think Adonis is particularly that great but he and Elgin had a really good match that went to a 20 minute draw. It was in that vein of an Elgin match with a lot of power moves and heavy strikes. Unfortunately the match just abruptly ended. They didn’t do it Japan style where the ring announcer is telling the audience that there are 5 minutes left in the match, a minute left, etc. After it was over Elgin wanted the match to continue for five more minutes. Adonis cut a promo saying he doesn’t get paid to wrestle extra so they set up the rematch for Warrior Wrestling 8.
After the Adonis/Elgin match, Adonis went after some small boy in the crowd who was calling him out but ended up backing off, which was awesome. Elgin invited the kid into the ring afterwards, who pinned the ref in a comedy spot. It was apparently Elgin’s birthday that night too.
The Lucha scramble match was fantastic. The match was about what you would imagine it being. Drago’s outfit looks so cool live. I don’t know when I would get to see Aerostar live so it was great to see him too. Aerostar didn’t do anything crazy though, like jump into the ring from the room’s basketball hoop near the ceiling.
Kurt Angle made a brief appearance during the show, which apparently was only for the live audience and not on the broadcast. He really didn’t do or say much. He talked about how Chicago was special to him because he had Cena’s first match here and also was part of WrestleMania 22 at Allstate Arena in 2006 (where he faced Rey Mysterio and Randy Orton in a triple threat match for the World Heavyweight title). He thanked the fans and then quickly hyped up the second part of the show and that was about it. He had his own table in the fan area during intermission where he had a pretty long line. He does look noticeably older up close in person.
They took about a 25 minute intermission after the Angle appearance where the fans could meet the wrestlers in a separate gym area of the school.
Lance Archer had the same style match on the show, where he mostly destroys a smaller opponent, they get some offense in and look like they will possibly win but he cuts them off and gets the pin. He is incredibly stiff with his moves. I like Archer a lot.
When Suzuki made his entrance with the “Kaze ni Nare” theme song the room all clapped and sang together. It was a cool moment to be there live.
Suzuki and Lawlor is in that dream match category. They were great. It was my second favorite match of the night behind the main event.
As Suzuki was going up the entrance ramp he grabbed the same kid that was part of the Elgin match earlier in the night and teased doing a crazy Suzuki thing, which was hilarious.
El Phantasmo reminds me of CM Punk in a way, from his style and look to his general attitude. This was my first time really seeing a match of his. I thought he was great.
ELP cut a funny promo before the match where he said he had waited a long time to say this, and then said CM Punk sucks. He went on to say that Colt Cabana sucks too, the Chicago Cubs suck, the Blackhawks suck and our pizza sucks.
Brian Cage is seriously impressive. He’s fantastic. Seeing a guy his size and with his physique move around so smoothly is incredible. I would say he’s one of the more underrated guys in wrestling right now. He should be in a bigger promotion like WWE, AEW or New Japan at this point.
The main event between CHAOS and The Rascalz was absolutely incredible. It was one of the best matches I’ve ever seen, live or otherwise. All the guys did everything imaginable. It was like that crazy PWG/indy style match where all the guys are just going wild. Amazing Red hit his Code Red from the top turnbuckle to the guys outside the ring, which was insane. The fans were going nuts too. It was just a fantastic match with a great crowd and atmosphere.
Will Ospreay is easily in the top contention for best wrestler right now. Seeing him in action in that smaller, more intimate setting was pretty special.
The Rascalz are also seriously great in the ring. There were some women in the bleachers who were going nuts for them.
Afterwards all the guys embraced for a cool moment. Trey Miguel was visibly emotional and choked up after the match.
Ospreay cut a promo after the match. He started singing “Sweet Home Chicago” but said he only knew the chorus. He joked that they would probably have fun with the Rascalz back at the hotel room. He also joked about how the fans were doing “holy shit” chants inside a Catholic church. The fans were chanting “please come back,” and he said that New Japan is coming back to the States. He said they all knew what the best pro wrestling on the planet is, and that’s New Japan. He said he was afraid of heights and traveling by plane. He said he doesn’t do that many indy shows but would love to come back to Warrior Wrestling.