April 27: Kayfabe Cinema — A movie with a pro wrestler in it.

This hits a bit close to home, as I did indies for more than twenty years, so when I saw Matt Cross, formely M-Dogg, “Super Cop” Dick Justice and “The Handicap Hero” Gregory Iron show up in the first few minutes of a movie, it kind of felt like how I spent most of my weekends over the last few decades: sitting in a high school locker room, waiting for my match. 

Matt’s wife Amy (Roni Jonah) used to wrestle, but left once she got pregnant with their son Cash (Cash K. Allen), who is being babysat by her ex-tag partner Kelsi (Britt Baker, whose boyfriend at the time, Adam Cole, shows up for a few seconds), who lost the ability to wrestle after an accident. A lot of this movie is about the pain of not being in the ring anymore and wishing you had it back, which I connected with very strongly. It doesn’t explore it anywhere near where it should, and really, things just happen in this, rather than feeling like we have any stirrings toward a point of view or a plot.

Paul (Wes Allen), a superfan or smart mark, kidnaps Matt and chains him up in his basement, explaining that he wants to give him his killer instinct back. Powerbomb never gets around to explaining that, instead focusing on Paul taking care of his sick mother or beating up a puppet. It wants to be the indy wrestling version of Misery, yet never quite gets there. 

B.J. Colangelo and R. Zachary Shildwachter have something here, even if they never find it. Instead of going all in on its premise, we have promoter Solomon (Aaron Sechrist) getting beaten up by Adam Cole’s thugs, trying to get Amy to wrestle again, while Paul tases Matt Cross and makes him eat pizza. Then we get a monologue where Kelsi cuts a promo in a mirror, then realizes the extent of her knee pain, turning to the bottle. We never see her again.

If you like indy wrestling, you at least get to see Derek Dillinger and Rickey Shane Page show up. Otherwise, this feels like they had a bunch of footage and no idea how to edit it into a collective whole. An IMDbs trivia says, “Film was funded by wrestling fans and made by wrestling fans (Hence its lack of creativity or professionalism), has several real wrestlers in it.” Man, people will say anything online.

I really wanted to like this movie, but it never gets to where it needs to go, as if it stayed in chain wrestling when it was time for the double down.

Ignore the poster, as that never happens. If this movie were a match on a show, it would really have them going, as Lord Zoltan once said. Going to the bathroom, the concession stand, to their cars to leave…

You can watch this on Tubi.