Professional Wrestling Rocked RI

story & photo
by Christopher Annino

Eastern Professional Wrestling is a fun, family-friendly company that helps with charities and fundraisers. Each event a percentage of money is donated back to a charity of their choice. Wrestler Brutal Bob Evans, owner, teaches for Eastern Professional Wrestling and Slam Tech Wrestling School. This year wrestlers from TNA and WWE guest appeared in several matches. Such legendary wrestlers were Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Jerry “The King” Lawler, and Ron Simmons.

A few weeks ago they had a match at the Westerly Armory, the proceeds went to the up keep of the historical building. Over 10 matches occurred that night, including a tag-team title match between the Winter Hill Gang and Steve “The Turtle” Weiner and The Giant Rob Araujo, which both “The Turtle” and The Giant destroyed the Winter Hill Gang. And the main event was a six-man cage match that consisted of the red team, with Brutal Bob Evans, Owen Graichen, Dan Freitas, and Amber-Rae, manager, going against the blue team, which consisted of Congo, Revolution Chris Venom, Rocket Fred Curry and Golden Greek Alex Arion, manager. The Blue team lost the cage match making the Red team the victors.

Prior to the event, radio host Jim Da Gorilla from the Renegade Express WBLQ and myself had a rather hostile interview with one of the well known villains Slash Sullivan. Slash won that night against the break-dancing, mat warrior J-Byrd. When I asked which match he won was his favorite, he replied, “I can’t believe you call your self a journalist, what type of question is that? Every match that I win is my favorite match. I bet that you wouldn’t last ten seconds in the ring with me. Come January is the next time you best be ready  ‘cause the next time you’ll see me it will be inside the ring,” said Slash.

I had the pleasure to interview football legend and the first African American to win a heavyweight wrestling title, Ron Simmons. I asked him what his feelings in regards to our country having its first African American president.

A teary-eyed Ron said, “Well, I don’t think the value of my title compares to the President’s, but I feel that our situation is the same. I feel that it is a tremendous accomplishment. I never thought this was something that I would see in my lifetime. America is a wonderful place and I feel that we have proven ourselves to be the land of opportunity especially during these past several decades. When I won the WCW belt I feel that in a way it broke down a barrier for other ethnicities to become successful in my business.”

For more information on Eastern Professional Wrestling visit www.epw.com.

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