GCW Joey Janela’s LA Confidential, Los Angeles, CA
For almost 20 years people have been shitting on David Arquette winning the WCW world title so he decided to do a deathmatch with Nick Gage. That’d show ’em. Gage’s GCW title IS on the line. I watched this show live and won’t get out of it on a rewatch what I did then, but I suspect the weirdness will hold up.
Gage takes the mic after Arquette’s introduction to yell fuck and fuck and fuck and Murder Death Kill Gang, etc. Arquette uses his Hollywood acting talents to look apprehensive. Whenever someone who’s not a wrestler tries to act like they think a wrestler acts, it’s always bad, even if — or perhaps especially if — they are trained actors.
Anyway, the bell sounds. They circle around a little. Arquette ducks out in the corner. After that, he ducks out of the ring entirely. But he comes back, then runs away from Gage again. Gage finally just comes over and grabs Arquette by the head and shoves him down. Gage begs Arquette to punch him, then spits at him. Arquette throws a tremendously bad right hand. Gage calls him on. Another one, and then Gage just wrecks Arquette with a right hand.
Gage stomping on Arquette, who tries to turtle up. Gage picks him up and chops him in the corner. Forearm. Chop. Arquette thrown through the ropes to the floor. Gage grabs a chair but Arquette runs into him. That leads to Gage throwing a chair at Arquette.
Gage sets up a bunch of chairs and tosses Arquette onto them. Gage his Arquette with a can of beer or whatever. It was a can. Gage walks Arquette out into the crowd. We can’t see anything happening here.
They walk back toward the ring and Gage tosses Arquette in. Gage tosses a chair into the ring. Gage wedges a chair in the corner, throws Arquette toward it, but Arquette pulls up short. Gage charges, Arquette moves, and Gage hits the chair.
Arquette with a clumsy frankensteiner. Gage to the floor. Arquette goes up, his legs trembling, and loses his balance. But he recovers, goes up again, and dives onto Gage on the floor.
Arquette goes back in and gets that wedged chair, then executes the worst suicide dive in history. He tries it a second time, it goes no better. This time he abandons the chair, takes off, and just sort of clumsily tumbles over the top rope, hanging on to it all the way to a seated position on the apron, accomplishing absolutely nothing. So Gage hits him with a beer bottle to end Arquette’s attempts at lucha diving.
Gage gets a door. He sets it up in the corner. He spears Arquette through it. Gage grabs half the broken door and smashes it over Arquette’s skull. Then he gets it and hits him again, Arquette clearly shying away from the contact this time.
Gage leaves the ring and heads backstage. He comes back with a bunch of light tubes. Arquette’s just sort of waiting for him to return, and he does. Then, Joey Ryan appears in the ring. He’s got his arm in a sling due to a torn pec, which knocked him out of this match as Gage’s original opponent.
Ryan winds up superkicking Gage. Ryan wants Gage to touch his penis. Then from out of nowhere, Messiah appears. Yes, Messiah. He takes Ryan out of the ring, then Arquette hits Gage with a Diamond Cutter.
Gage kicks out at one.
Gage smashes David Arquette over the head with light tubes. Arquette, in true Ian Rotten fashion, then appears to just openly and blatantly scrape at his forehead until there’s a little blood. It’s no Ian blood, but there’s a little blood.
Meanwhile, Gage sets up a couple chairs in a seated position, and balances a bunch of tubes on them. But Gage turns around into bad right hands and some biting. And then Arquette hits another Diamond Cutter, this one through the tubes.
So Arquette has the advantage, and now he’s got a bundle of tubes. He puts them against Gage in the corner, then hits a cannonball. David Arquette is FIRED UP, ladies and gentlemen! There is an “Arquette” chant.
But then Gage comes back and has a pizza cutter, slicing up Arquette’s forehead. “This is the Mass Transit incident times infinity!” What a stupid fucking commentary line, but what else would one expect from KG?
Gage grinds a broken light tube into Arquette’s forehead. Gage smashes Arquette overt the head with a broken tube, then goes to carve him again, but Arquette, who isn’t a wrestler, panics and gets his own neck sliced open pretty badly.
He covers Gage a couple times, then leaves the ring. Arquette checks the blood out a little bit, then decides to go back and finish the match.
Arquette goes down to be pinned, but Gage grabs more tubes and hits him again, to DO something to require a pin. They don’t break, because he’s not swinging too hard, but Arquette comes up, grabs a chair that has broken glass on it, and shoots on Nick Gage, throwing the chair at him and coming at him. Gage takes Arquette over easily, pins him, and that’s the match. Gage cuts a promo after that Arquette kinda interrupts from afar, as the feelings are not great at the moment.
Things would clear up. Arquette blamed himself for his own inexperience messing things up, and if you do watch the match, you see that’s absolutely the case. Gage is a professional at this — he’s done it all hundreds of times.
But still:
Rating: 3/5. Obviously it’s not a Good Wrestling Match or even a Good Deathmatch Wrestling Match, but it’s certainly a memorable event of 2018, something we’ll talk about long after we’re done talking about Pete Dunne vs Kyle O’Reilly or Seth Rollins vs The Miz. Because of that, a big part of me wants to slap a 4.5 on this bad boy and put it on the MOTY list, but it’s not THAT level of legend, more just an intensely weird curiosity, but one worth checking out if you can handle the blood and whatnot.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
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