No Limit wrestling
We got tickets to see No Limit Wrestling for Diarmuid this Christmas. Over the past year or so, we've been sending him random clips of some of the ridiculous shenanigans from WWE and he had started to watch the shows week to week. Sarah and I have always particularly loved Stone Cold hitting Vince McMahon with the bed pan and Ric Flairs WOOOOOO.
I think both myself and Diarmuid have fallen off WWE a little bit this year. The return of Brock Lesnar wasn't a great look for the company and I think I've been avoiding accepting the ties to Saudi Arabia for the last few years. This year, with the Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia, it was much more difficult to ignore and I just don't like the way the women's division is treated there. On top of that, I don't think the booking has been spectacular since Cody finished his story.
All that is to say, while I still love the art of wrestling - particularly the athletics of it - I did not travel to Naas with huge excitement. I was just hoping for a bit of laugh.
We grabbed some food in 33 Main Street before the show. This is a nice little gastro pub with good food and a nice atmosphere. It was busy but it was mostly just families enjoying a bit of food and football on a Sunday afternoon. I had a pizza which I really enjoyed. We'll definitely visit again next time we are in Naas.
Just a short walk from the pub, The Moat Theatre is a small venue that is hidden away from the main thoroughfare of the town. It has a lovely little café when you first enter with lots of nice art on the walls. It is a little bit cramped for how many seats there are in the theatre itself but we arrived only two or three minutes before they opened the doors so it wasn't too bad. My Dad had also bought tickets for himself and my younger cousins, it seems they've become fans of this small federation.
Now, to say that this shows attendance is mainly children is probably an understatement. There were probably 180 kids and 20 adults at the show and those kids were losing their minds. Normally, this isn't my thing, but I honestly quite enjoyed the energy of it all. It was really cool to see that these local wrestlers can garner this level of attention and fanfare plus, at the end of the day, the excitement that these kids feel is the same excitement I had as a kid. A big part of my love for wrestling is nostalgia and 20 years ago at WWE Live in the RDS, I was just as awestruck and excited - maybe a bit less screamy though.
No Limits Wrestling has been around in Ireland since 2006 and it shows. They ran a really tight show and it had great forward momentum. The show opened with a video package that recapped the events of the last show, they had an announcer set up the plan for the night and off we go with some wrestling.
The opening match was pitched as an elimination fatal four-way but Justy was removed pretty much immediately for a bit of comedic effect. Sarah seemed to like Justy so I'm not sure this was the best first move to win her over. I think, barring one character in particular, these three guys were the most over wrestlers of the evening. The ring seemed a little small for more than a singles match so it was rare all three were working at the same time but they put on a good show, got the crowd going and impressed with some top rope work. I remember thinking - "actually, this is probably going to be a good show".
Now from here there was an attempted briefcase cash-in. Fan favourite referee Jacob refused and ended up agreeing to wrestle Sammy D himself. It seems like there is considerable backstory to Jacob - failed wrestler with injuries turned referee. The crowd adored him and I was very impressed that this underdog story was built up throughout the night with the initial encounter, backstage clips and then the main event of Sammy and Jacob battling it out. It was, genuinely, a wonderful piece of storytelling and I wish that I could feel that same satisfaction from an episode of raw. It would be nice to not feel like you have to go and watch 10 more shows leading up to Wrestlemania just to get any payoff.
The middle of the show included a quick tag-team match, a slightly too long Last Man Standing match, a wonderfully acrobatic cruiserweight title match and a Women's title match. These were all good fun - I would have liked the tag match to not be a squash and I wish that the women were given more opportunity to shine. I don't think one women's match is enough in modern wrestling and, even worse, it ended with male intervention so it wasn't even a full match for the women of Irish wrestling to show off. Session Moth is a dumb name and we loved her with all of her cool S's though.
The main event was really good. Jacob and Sammy took their time building up the David and Goliath story and it was a fantastic moment seeing Jacob get the pin. There was a kid behind us that ABSOLUTELY lost his mind at this. Jacob was even swarmed in the lobby afterwards for pictures and autographs.
I've never been to one of these local wrestling shows before. It was a really fantastic experience to see the fandom, the local heroes and the breath of options that wrestling fans have these days. Obviously this is not the spectacle of WWE or the technical wrestling of AEW but I was still very impressed by how well organised the show was, how talented many of the wrestlers were and how connected so many of them were with their fans. It's great laugh and I would highly recommend it if you want to do something a bit different.
No Limit Wrestling regularly perform at the Moat Theatre. Keep an eye out!