CageMatch 7/7/08

Another quick entry here, about last Saturday's CageMatch. There's a bunch of videos involved here, so watch them when prompted and we'll discuss each one.

First, early in the week we had a statement from CageMatch President Jack Tunney. View it here. Basically, this was a promo for the show, and a vain attempt to get people wondering about what was going on with CageMatch. (That's "vain" in every sense of the word.) It was also a setup for what would happen with the opening of the actual show on Saturday--I planned WAY ahead for this one. This was another one of those fabulous pretapes with Bill Henderson. The phraseology at the end of Tunney's speech was meant to echo an exchange between Tunney and Biff Hobgood in Biff's last appearance. It's what we dramatic experts call "foreshadowing". And I wrote and recorded a rap about Troy Sterling. Yep. Go watch the video again. (Only Kit caught it the first time.)

So on to the show proper. This week's episode started with this video. Go watch it. I used a banana tree pic I had made for the BB boys a few weeks ago and never got to use, and then used stock photos of pretty boys to make up the members of Formula X. (As you will soon see, Formula X didn't actually exist, and to my knowledge, there isn't really a "By Golly Improv Theater" in Minneapolis.) By the way, the Formula X guys are all named after wrestlers from the glory days of All Japan Wrestling.

Okay, so then yours truly as Scott Sullivan comes out to introduce the show. I mention that Jack Tunney had released a statement, and show them the above-described video. Then after reiterating that Jack Tunney said if Troy didn't show up this week, that he'd "take care of him", I tell the crowd that I had not seen Sterling around the dressing rooms, but that he did release a statement of his own. It is here. Seen it? Good. So now you see the reveal--we basically did a callback to the way Biff was killed off way back when. And then we gave it a little twist to make it dramatic and hilarious. I loved the way it turned out, and when the crowd saw the opening with Troy in front of the massage parlour, they freaked. They knew what I was trying to do, so that was a good feeling. One funny thing: University Massage took their sign off the front door, so I had to replace it in post. Remi did a great job delivering the threat at the end, and then having the strains of "Money Money Money" come in just before the bill slid across the screen came off perfectly.

So now Troy Sterling has made his entrance, and he goes into a rage, proclaiming that CageMatch has gotten too expensive, and so he's firing Scott Sullivan, he's firing tech Tommy Dynamite, and he's even firing the challengers, Formula X. He's decided to replace us all with inexpensive Mexican labourers. So Joe Stanton makes his entrance as Don Sullivan, which is hilarious. And then Troy orders that the show be restarted, and we get this video. Enjoyed that? So yes, Senor Bueno is the real challenger this week. The footage was from "Los Campeones Justicieros" and "Vuelven Los Campeones Justicieros", and I was terribly amused to actually find a shot with Blue Demon in a suit at a desk, as Business Bueno. I had a blast making the identity screen for Senior Bueno, with the parody of "Meet The Beatles". I also loved making the "Perro Lucha" logo, playing on the "Los Perros del Mal" group.

The great thing about this show? I was under one of the masks. So I performed as two characters on the same show. Great fun. Tommy ended up hitting me with a chair, and I got him in the sleeper. There was some improv in there somewhere, and apparently I delivered a half-decent contribution to the group, according to commenters after the show. Banana Breakup premiered their shirts that I helped design. We all had a blast.

Stills aplenty from the videos are in the usual place, here.

Addendum: Forgot to mention, I also recorded a special version of the Hall of Champions for this show, where I did the whole "Since the dawn of humanity..." speech in Spanish, and all the champion identity screens were wearing bandito mustaches. It got a good series of laughs. I'm not uploading that video though. You really need to attend the show more often.

Also: I calculated that there was almost TEN MINUTES of video in this show. YOW!