The Saturday of the Northern Tour started with myself and fellow Northern Tour ever present Stevie The Wizard maintaining our record of being within the first group people up on the Saturday morning of the Northern Tour. Being somewhat of a night owl, I am not used to early rises but I was up before 6am and we were all on our way to Wick after having breakfast (another thing I am not used to at the moment, with me currently experimenting with intermittent fasting, but that is another story for another day).
The road from Inverness to Wick is an interesting beast, with the hairpin bend at the Berriedale Braes (or as I tend to call it, ‘THAT bend’) making the journey there especially eventful. It consists of lots of hill driving and the realisation that you are actually in the middle of nowhere. I dread to think what this road is like if there was snowfall, but I can imagine there being better preparation up there for events like that, in comparison to the abrupt standstill that seems to take place when the rest of the country is faced with any kind of adverse weather.
Another tradition was reintroduced this year, which was for me going to one of my favourite wrestling tour chomping grounds in Wicker’s World café. The 2013 tour saw me, Stu Pendous and Nathan Black visit this café and it was so good I encouraged Morado, The Bulgarian Baker and W3L Action Academy prospect Derek McGonagle to come to this café in 2014. Time constraints prevented me from going last year, but this year saw me have the breakfast of champions: a slice of cake and a cappuccino.
The show itself emanated from The Wick Youth Club, a change from the Assembly Halls venue that had been ran previously. It is a lot smaller than the Assembly Halls, but it makes for a nice little venue. Once again, I faced off against Nathan Reynolds and despite my best efforts; another visit to ‘Suplex Village’ took place before being finished off with a spear.
Events of interest in regards to this show included a Taylor Bryden losing to Mike Musso via count-out, after Musso had locked Bryden out of the building via the fire exit, a triple threat match between Dickie Divers, Aspen Faith and Johnny Hollywood, where the latter was on the end of some captivatingly crisp Super Kick action before Divers picked up the win. Debbie Sharpe also decided to adopt an alias known as ‘The Tormentor’ for her match against Leah Owens, much to the chagrin of W3L Action Academy prospect Jamie Jones, who is also known as ‘The Tormentor.’ There will be more detailing the Tormentor saga in later parts of this blog.
The main event saw another 6-man tag where The Contingency Plan and I faced Mike Musso, Nathan Reynolds and Aspen Faith. Dickie Divers ended up losing his shoe mid-match, which gave the fan favourites an unfair advantage to start off with, but we were afforded the opportunity to use the shoe to our advantage and as a weapon. The conclusion of the match saw us attempt to lock the fan favourites out of the building via the fire exit, but they got the win despite me realising there was a SECOND fire exit and trying to stop them in their tracks.
The Wick show might have been all said and done after that, but the day was not over as of yet. The Saturday of the Northern Tour sees us do two shows in one day; an afternoon and an evening show. The evening show this year would be taking place in Elgin, a three hour journey from Wick and once the ring and the rest of the equipment had been loaded, it was back on the road and onto the next town, which will be documented in part three. Good day.
– Lucian Maynard-Smith
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