Wrestling
The Top 10 Bumps of 2003
By The Paradise City Ninjas
Jan 11, 2004, 03:08

Jake: We here at the PCN Headquarters (dumpster outside of Wal*Mart) are fully committed to bringing you, the non-paying reader, the best opinions on independent wrestling this side of the Equator. Unless, of course, we don�t feel like it, at which point we simply don�t do shit or half-ass it at best. Such as this article.
We�ve resorted to top ten lists, also known in the journalistic world as a �cop-out.� We�ve decided to look for the top ten bumps of 2003, which we then manage to completely ignore by including multiple bumps into a single entry on the list, hence taking it from a top ten into a top fifty-seven or something like that. But it�s our work, and we can break the rules we�ve established if we feel like it, and so we have.
The only we rule we (slightly) followed was that one of us ninjas had to have seen the bump in some way or form, whether it�d be in person, video tape, clip from the internet, or re-enacting the bump with G.I. Joes. This means no Weeeeeeeee (like they had anything this year. Oohhhhh, sunset flip off a ladder, hot shit there), or backwater/backyard indys where Extreme McHardcore dove off a shed onto a gas grill filled with rabid hyenas or something. We also didn�t included botched bumps for the most part, i.e. La Res attempt at channeling the spirit of Mike Awesome and failing miserably, since there�s a difference between hurting yourself or someone by accident and hurting someone or yourself out of pure stupidity or drug influence.

Jay: For the last time, I was NOT on crack when I fell out of that 2nd story window!

Jake: Shut up. So anyway, here�s what we pulled together during yet another of our insomniac idea sessions.

#10: Mitsuharu Misawa gives Kenta Kobashi a Tiger Suplex off the entrance ramp to the floor: NOAH 13-3-03

Jake: I�ve seen clips of this bump, and its pretty knuckin� futz. You gotta realize that at a certain point in time, these two were considered two of the best wrestlers in the earth, nay, universe, and for them to go and pull a bump like this is crazy. Sure, they�ve gone from working mat classics to dropping each other on their heads within minutes of the opening bell, but there�s a big difference between a wrestling mat, a nice level surface, and a three-foot drop in elevation. Kobashi took the bump just about perfectly, on his shoulders instead of his head, and the slightest slip could have easily resulted in the man paralyzing himself. We�ve seen people thrown off ramps and ring aprons all the time, but usually there�s some kind of table there, or the victim has some control over their bump. Kobashi has his damn arms hooked when he�s going backwards off the ramp. Motherfucker�s gotta have elephant balls made out of steel and then bronzed to have done that.


#9: J.C. Bailey superplexes Necro Butcher off the top rope to the outside onto concrete: CZW Respect

Jake: I�ve made no secret my heterosexual love for the Necro Butcher. The man takes punishment like no one else I�ve ever seen, and gleefully comes back for more. In addition, the man has his own goddamn pain spots that I rarely see anyone else take. Tubes and shit to the back? Necro takes them to the chest. Getting your tongue stapled? Necro started that, and then topped himself and everyone else by getting his tongue stapled to the top turnbuckle at Tournament of Death 2. Here, he�s again doing something no one else has done: a superplex to the outside onto nothing but concrete. No people to catch him, no tables or steel coffin to break his fall, and as anyone can tell you, concrete doesn�t give worth shit.
Give credit to the other person in the bump, 20 year-old J.C. Bailey. Known for taking some of the sickest punishment ever (some of which appears later in the list), he wasn�t standing on the top rope with Necro, but on the apron, from which he then fell backwards onto the concrete with nothing to beak his fall as well. His own Nestea Plunge.
But, back to Necro. This bump would have been higher on the list had Necro, in his infinite wisdom, done the bump again against Corporal Robinson and Mad Man Pondo in a recent IWA Mid-South show. Damn Necro, just because your shirt says CHOOSE DEATH doesn�t mean you have to actively search for it.

Jay: If I can distract the reader from your sexual fantasies about a flabby, balding punch-drunk hick for just one second- Mick Foley, in his first book , �Have a Nice Day,� expounded on one of the most basic truths of pro wrestling: the key to making a bump memorable is the impact. No fancy flipping or furniture, just the landing is what counts. This was one hell of a sick landing- I�ve been put through tables and glass, but I�ve also landed flat on my back on concrete, and I�ll tell you the bare ground hurts WAY more. I don�t know what happened in JC Bailey�s childhood that makes him do insane shit like this constantly, but his pure craziness will take him far on the indy scene, if he doesn�t kill himself first. Hopefully he�ll realize when to scale back on bumps like this and extends his career, because for his age his wrestling skill is amazingly advanced and in the time I�ve been scoping the indy scene, I�ve never seen someone improve as rapidly as Bailey has.

#8: Joker gives Chri$ Ca$h a Joker Driver off a 12 foot ladder through a table:
CZW Cage of Death 5

Jay: The Joker Driver, for those of you who aren�t obsessive geeks like us, is an even nastier modification of arguably the deadliest move in indy wrestling- the Storm Cradle Driver. The victim is sitting on the other guy�s shoulders, their neck is hooked, and they�re driven down headfirst into the mat. It�s a move with a very small margin for error- one minor slipup and you�re dead. Now, picture this move, being delivered from 12 feet in the air through a hard piece of wood. While no one will ever call Chris Cash the smartest guy in the indy wrestling business, he�s definitely someone who will never sleepwalk through any match and will always try to put on something memorable. He gets my respect for that, and he definitely succeeded here. This is the bump, and the match, that just may propel Cash and Joker into the upper echelon of CZW and get them talked about on the national scene.

#7: Hotstuff Hernandez powerbombs Jason Cross neck-first into a steel cage:
NWA Wildside�s Freedom Fight 2003

Jay: This is where we bend the rules of this list just a bit. Hotstuff Hernandez, while an amazing athlete with loads of potential, is sloppier than a drooling infant in the wrestling ring. This powerbomb on Jason Cross, which paralleled Sid Vicious� powerbombs on Brian Pillman in a WarGames over a decade ago, was sadly reminiscent in another manner- it resulted in severe injury to its recipient. Cross suffered a severe concussion as a result of this bump, which shifted control of his thoughts to the little head, and as a result he was out of wrestling yet again until just recently.

#6: The Arsenal DVD�s El Generico off a 20-foot balcony through 5 tables:
IWS UnF�nSanctioned 2003

Jake: Up in good ol� Canada, The Arsenal just became world heavyweight champion after defeating Dru Onyx. For his first title defense, he choose Mexico�s greatest export, the jobber who (used to) never job, Jay�s bestest fwiend in the whole wide world, El Generico. Everything was going par for the course, meaning crazy moves, weapon usage, egregious property damage, the works, when Arsenal and Generico begin working their way towards the back of Bar Le Medley in luscious downtown Montreal. As they disappear, five tables are quickly set-up below a part of the balcony. Arsenal and Generico appear on top of the balcony, continue to slug it out, set over the safety rail, where Arsenal lifts Generico on top of his shoulders and delivers a picture-perfect DVD off the balcony through the tables.
I mean picture-perfect. Not like Lobo�s DVD�s where it�s more of a flip off a high object. This DVD could have easily been done the same way in a ring. Instead, it�s off a high balcony through multiple tables. Unlike the majority of the other bumps on this list, no one was expecting these two to bust out an insane bump at all. Even with the annual Fans Bring The Weapons match right after this, these two stole the show with their bump.

Jay: While Arsenal is not exactly a huge fan of my work (I believe one of his recent messageboard posts was �LOL FUCK SHOOTERJAY�) I�m a big fan of his. To paraphrase something Llakor mentioned on the Info Lutte, �when the Arsenal is smiling that usually means something bad is about to happen,� and I love heels like that. So many heels secretly want to be cheered or be thought of as cool- Arsenal is just plain evil and vicious as shit in the ring, which I love. This bump was the epitome of what the Arsenal is about, pure violence, and while I won�t ever live down the disses I laid on Generico, anyone who wants to kill himself so willingly for his craft gets respect from me.

#5: XES69 is thrown off a 15-foot balcony by Kid Kamikaze and powerbombed through a pane of glass by Hi-5:
IWS Hardcore Heat 2003

Jay: I�ve covered these bumps a bit already in my review of this show (somewhere on the site, I�m too lazy to link to it) but this was one of the most disturbing sequences I�ve ever witnessed. XES69, arguably the best all-around athlete in Quebec indy wrestling, wanted to prove he was just as much of a hardcore soldier as the rest of the IWS roster. Boy, did he ever. The balcony drop was completely unprotected, no tables or anything to break his fall, just like the JC Bailey/Necro Butcher bump. The reason this bump is higher on the list? Well, not only was it much higher, XES69 fell right on his HEAD, gruesomely splitting it open to the point that I was gagging the first time I saw his bloodied scalp. But that wasn�t enough, oh no, IWS� baby-oiled hero then immediately gets drilled through a PANE OF GLASS by Hi-5, lacerating it Wifebeater-style. While it�s an amazing visual, part of me condemns it. XES 69 is one of the few Quebec wrestlers with the chance of making an impact on the national American scene if he chooses (along with guys like Kevin Steen, Arsenal, Xtreme Revolution and Hi-5) and really having a memorable career, and taking bumps like this will only inhibit his potential.
Edit: Beef Wellington reminded me of the following on the IWS board: "I'm also surprised you left out The Phantasm on Kid Kamikaze through the glass and me during the Hardcore Heat stupidity sequence. He did have a gunshot hole in his back from which doctors pulled out 6 large shards of glass and it required 10 external stitches and 6 internal stitches to close up a muscle in his back."


#4: The entire Cage of Death 5 Main Event:
CZW Cage of Death 5

Jay: Going into this match, no one knew what the hell this new acid-trip induced cage structure looked like, or what the hell the rules of the match were. Now that it�s come and gone�well, I still don�t think anybody understood it, but it doesn�t matter, because the bumps and overall drama of this match may have single-handedly saved CZW from the abyss. At first, this match was dying a slow death, as Zandig was getting slowly and methodically beaten down by Messiah�s Hi-V stable, but then �Natural Born Killers� blasted over the PA, and everyone�s favorite justifiable homicider, New Jack hit the stage to a gi-normous pop! From there, it was what Eric Gargiulo would call a cacophony of violence. The sickness came fast and furious-before you could process one visually crazy fall, another one hit. B-Boy�s fall into a million thumbtacks, Ian Knoxx�s swinging elbow drop into the same pile, Lobo�s double-DVD off the cage through a stack of tables�that�s just a small sample. Every fan of hardcore wrestling should take a look at this match, because it set a new standard for ultraviolent excitement.

#3: The entire King of the Deathmatch weekend:
IWA Mid-South King of the Deathmatches

Jake: Yeah, it�s another cop-out, but I don�t care. Why is this, two nights worth of bumps, ranked this high? Because we simply can�t figure out which bump from the whole weekend was the sickest, and if you add the whole event together, we believe it can easily make the claim as the most violent and brutal pro wrestling event ever.
Lemme give you just a short list of the bump taken, and remember, this is overlooking a majority of the lighttube smashing and thumbtack bumps:
- Mickie, in her first professional wrestling match, taking one of the most brutal forearm shots I�ve ever seen from Hailey, knocking Mickie legit out.
-Hailey then messing up a powerbomb through two chairs, dropping Mickie on her neck onto the back of a chair.
-�Spyder� Nate Webb doing not one, but two balcony dives onto Mad Man Pondo.
-Rollin� Hard lighting his hand on fire to karate chop �Mean� Mitch Page.
-2 Tuff Tony giving J.C. Bailey a reverse no-look Tombstone, the 2 Tuff Driver, off the ring apron through a barbed wire table.
-Nick Gage giving Dysfunction two of the most disturbing bootscrapes I�ve ever seen.
-�Mr. Insanity� Toby Klein, inside of the ring, throws a VCR at the head of Necro Butcher, kneeling on the outside of the ring. The corner of the VCR hits Necro in the temple.
-Homicide knocks Chris Hero out legit with a Cop Killer (Vertabreaker).
-Balls Mahoney slamming a lighttube bazooka over the head of Ian Rotten, not knowing the weapon he had were lighttubes. Balls looked scared shitless afterwards.
-Ian Rotten powerbombs J.C. Bailey ass-first onto a bed of plastic forks, then dumps salt down the back of Bailey�s pants.
-Nick Gage superplexes Mad Man Pondo off of the �Spyder�s Nest� through three tables and lighttubes, with Pondo missing the majority of the tables.
-Last but definitely not least, Mad Man Pondo and J.C. Bailey using a weedwhacker in their finals matchup.

I can easily say, as an unashamed bloodmark, that KODM 2003 was the best thirty bucks I�ve ever spent. However, I also pimp this tape out to non-deathmatch fans as well. Chris Hero/Homicide, a crazy three-way tag match with nutso dives galore off the �__________ Nest,� Homicide/BJ Whitmer, Hero/Danny Daniels, and more make this tape worthy of anyone�s pickup. If you like professional wrestling, you�ll like this tape set. Again, we can�t figure out which bump of the weekend was the sickest, so we just rounded them all together and gave them #3 on our list.

#2: Mad Man Pondo superplexes J.C. Bailey off an 18-foot scaffold into a barbed wire net:
IWA Mid-South Ultra Styles Clash Weekend, Night 2

Tom: The rules are simple: there's a 20 foot scaffold, with 3 different levels to it, beside the ring. Covering the ring is a circus acrobat's net of barbed wire. The only way to win, however, is by pinfall. Pre-match, Pondo dedicates the match to the Japanese originator of the match, Matsunaga. They actually started the match with a collar-and-elbow tie-up, as the locker rooms empty to watch the match. First big bump is Pondo being tossed off the first level by Bailey, then Bailey doing a swanton onto Pondo and the barbed wire! The ring fills with multiple people to pull and cut the guys out of the barbed wire. They then go back up, and Pondo gives Bailey a Russian Leg Sweep off of the second level! Holy crap! Jim Fannin tries to order for the match to be stopped, but Pondo and Bailey go back up, this time 20 feet up, where Pondo gives Bailey the mother of ALL superplexes, off the scaffold and onto the barbed wire!!!! Holy SHIT! Sorry to go Justin Baisden on you people, but that was a scary-f'n bump. Fannin then orders the match to be stopped, which was a good move. Ian thanks them for doing the match, Pondo thanks Ian for letting him do the match, and JC for being the only guy in America to have the guts to do the match; and Bailey's too hurt to say anything. This wasn't a match; this was a spectacle. This was a VERY violent spectacle, at that. There's a reason why this match is banned in Japan. Must-see, just for the level of violence.

Jake: Thanks for showing up late, bud.

Tom: Piss off.

Jake: Fine. But in all seriousness, I�ve seen a clip of the bump, and its sheer insanity. It�s a legit 20-foot fall as well, as they get a good second and a half of hangtime before hitting the barbed wire net. Remember, as much as the net would give (or did give, since the net was pretty much broken by the time they went for the superplex), it�s counteracted by the idea that it�s barbed wire catching your fall. There is no good way to land, especially since the idea of landing feet-first to negate the fall means you get a crotch-full of barbed wire, and landing head-first is never a good idea anytime. The important thing that a bump needed to have to land high on our list is that it needed to be something you don�t see everyday, and this is certainly one of those bumps that should never be done on a regular basis, if at all.

#1: John Zandig and Nick Mondo go off a 25-foot roof through a lighttube log cabin and six tables:
CZW Tournament of Death 2

Jake: The bump that ended Nick Mondo�s career: plain and simple. Mondo admits that he and Zandig could have easily died from this bump. Instead, both men actually got up and finished the match.
Setting the scene, it�s the semi-finals of the Tournament of Death. Mondo and Zandig are competing in a 2 out of 3 Lighttube Log Cabins match, where the first person to put their opponent through two log cabins is the victor. There was also a No Shirts stipulation attached to it, but since neither Mondo nor Zandig wear shirts when they wrestle, it was meaningless.
Zandig is up 1-0 after putting Mondo through a cabin with a front suplex. After taking a lighttube bazooka to the back, Nick Mondo leaves the ringside area and starts walking towards Racks� Bar, where the event is being held in the parking lot. Zandig follows Mondo towards the building as both disappear. Keep in mind, in last years� tournament, Nick Mondo and Homeless Jimmy went off the top of a Ryder Truck through four tables and a lighttube log cabin.
Zandig and Mondo reappear, this time on top of Racks� itself. The roof is about two stories, so they�re a legit 20-25 feet off the ground. Below them, and way too close to the building, are six tables in a pyramid form, with a lighttube log cabin on the top table. Zandig and Mondo trade lighttube shots, before Zandig presses Mondo up over his head, so Mondo�s some 30 feet off the ground. Zandig walks towards the edge of the roof, has his life flash before his eyes, and goes off the roof with Mondo, as both crash through the glass and wood.
While the bump was bad enough for Zandig, who went feet first through the set-up below, it was even worse for Mondo. He went from over Zandig�s head to along side of Zandig, so that Mondo would go back-first through the structure. Except that Zandig hit the glass and tables first, breaking them and limiting what was available to break Mondo�s fall. In addition, they hit only about four of the six tables, meaning even less of their fall was broken as planned.
From his website, Mondo described how his whole skeleton was in pain after the bump. Amazingly enough, neither Zandig nor Mondo suffered any broken bones, though Mondo had a puncture wound in his back that was described as being �similar to a gunshot wound,� and were able to GET UP from the bump and finish the match, which Mondo won.
Nick Mondo won the Tournament of Death, but lost at the same time. Going into the tournament with three broken bones in his right wrist, Mondo took time off after the event to get surgery and heal from his bumps. Vacating the CZW Iron Man Championship soon thereafter, speculation ran amok about when Mondo would return to CZW. Sadly enough, the answer was never. On November 10th, Nick Mondo announced his retirement from the world of processional wrestling. On behalf of myself, the Paradise City Ninjas, and other wrestling fan around the world, Matt Burns, a.k.a. �Sick� Nick Mondo, thank you for everything you have done in the name of entertainment, in the name of hardcore, and in the name of professional wrestling.

Jay: Our feelings about Nick/Matt, his contributions to the genre of hardcore wrestling, plus a review of Volume 1 of his �Favorite Matches� DVD series, will be covered in the next PCN excursion. Keep checking the site, it�ll show up uh�sometime before we�re dead.

Jake: As with most lists, we�ve probably missed something or made some kind of egregious error which has manage to offend just about everyone, so we�re actually going to provide ways for you to contact us and bitch about our lack of knowledge about everything.

Jake, who�s lame-brain idea this was.

Jay, who helped out with this list and Jake�s inability to use proper grammar.

Tom, who said this was a bad idea and initially refused to participate.

Chris, who�s taking credit for stuff he didn�t do.

Pat, who had no clue we were doing this.

We�ll have our very own website up soon and running, as soon as Jake can get around to doing it. Of course, that means anywhere from next Thursday to 2006, but it�ll be worth the wait! Or so we hope.

Huss off.
For IWA-MS and CZW tapes, go to Smart Mark Video, for NWA Wildside go to Melanie's site as well as Wildside's official site and for IWS check out their official dealer (don�t worry about the X-rated adult stuff. Seriously) and eMax tapes


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