SCRAPYARD - a uk-based indie wrestling thing

Here's the first guy who answered the challenge:



Kamara Moore! Kamara's a cool character within AES canon, since he was kind of the very first "indy wrestling guy trying to make it in the big leagues" type dude on the site, years and years ago. In the time since he debuted he's won several championships and headlined numerous shows; so interestingly, when he debuted in ScrapYard he was, for the first time in his existence as a character on AES, playing the role of the tenured veteran with years of mainstream experience under his belt, rather than the up-and-coming underdog he usually found himself positioned as.

And here's participant #2 in this match:



Joseph James is one of the most important and beloved characters in AES history. He's been around since just about the site's very beginning, undergoing countless changes as a character in that time, and in recent years finding himself positioned as kind of a Mike Quackenbush-esque mentor figure to the newer wrestlers in the industry, putting a big focus on nurturing the future of wrestling. Here's the thing, though: in all his years as a competitor in AES, throughout all the ups and downs of his career, Joseph James has never won a world title. So while this win would be a nice feather in Kamara's cap, for Joseph James, this match is crucial - an opportunity he might not get many more of, in the winding-down period of his career.



So they wrestle for a couple of minutes, and then this girl comes out.



May Russell's situation is the exact opposite of Joseph James' - a 19-year-old, having never wrestled outside of the US or her native Australia, with everything on the line here. While Joseph needs to validate his long, storied career with that one crowning achievement that has always eluded him, May needs desperately to prove that she belongs on the same platform as competitors like him and Kamara.

And so May Russell does this:



May and Joseph spend the remainder of the match outside the ring, too preoccupied with one another to win the title - essentially, May removes Joseph from title contention, short-sightedly focusing on beating up this one guy and forgetting about the actual objective of the match at hand. (As you might expect, Joseph isn't too happy about this.)

So after May commits Neck Murder on poor old JJ, the match basically comes down to Kamara and participant #4.



Sanako Asano is an elite-level wrestler, a product of the Japanese dojo system who's held smaller titles in every company she's wrestled in, but has never managed to ascend to the next level. Sanako has a lot of momentum carrying her into this match, and a world of potential to live up to - this match will serve as a litmus test as to whether she's truly the talent she's been touted as since her overseas debut, or if "TV Title-level talent" is her ceiling as a performer.



Anyway, Sanako and Kamara lock up for the first time, and then this happens.





In the one year since his AES debut, Roze O. Flavio has more-or-less managed to establish himself as the primary antagonist of AES. In the small handful of matches he's had in that year, he's proven himself to be nigh-undefeatable - though he's never been involved in a match as high-profile as this one, and one of the few matches he has lost was his first, and only, title match at this point in time: a match against Kamara Moore, for the latter's New Origin Wrestling Prosperity Championship.

Basically, Kamara's fucked.

Both wrestlers in the ring already are tired - Sanako actually wrestled Joseph and May a bit before May disposed of Joseph, I just cleverly changed the order of events here in this recap slightly for thematic purposes because I'm a storytelling master - and Roze O. Flavio is a) menacing and b) pissed. The result of this match seems like a foregone conclusion.

And yet.



Sanako manages to neutralize Roze, kicking the fuck of him and taking him out of the match just long enough for either her or Kamara to score a decisive blow on the other, and provide this match, and this title, with a fair, earned winner.

And then.



Sanako hits the Downpour - a reverse frankensteiner, and her brand new finishing maneuver - and pins Kamara Moore to become ScrapYard's very first Cast Iron Champion.



So yeah, that's the first match! I think it was pretty cool, a match with an indeterminate amount of participants was kind of interesting to edit and I'm pretty proud of how it was paced and how the various tapings flowed into one another. I think watching this one provides a definite taste of what ScrapYard's like, so if you're on the fence that's probably a decent one to have a go at sitting through to see if you like it.

I was actually hoping to do the whole first show in this post, but writing this one match up took me a really long time actually! So I'm gonna take a little break for now, and hopefully have another update done before the end of the day. None of the other matches on the first show are as plot-heavy as this one, so follow-up posts should hopefully be a bit less dense.