BEST ON THE INDIES: RICKEY SHANE PAGE

Rickey comes across in this interview as an all around good-natured guy with a sense of humor. He is very self-deprecating about his backyard wrestling days. Some of the aliases that he recounted people using during that time (including himself, who apparently was known as "Retarded Rickey" back then) sound hilarious. It was interesting to hear the perspective of a guy like Rickey who got about four years of indie wrestling experience before getting formallly trained, then rotated between being a singles and a tag team wrestler, and then became a death match wrestler.

You also get a good idea of the petty feuds between the small Ohio promotions like MCW, CAPW, PWO, and AIW in the early to mid 2000s, as Rickey explains how there was politics when it came to working for more than one promotion at once. Later in the interview, he talks openly about the differences he had with AIW. Part of the reason for his differences with AIW is panic attacks, anxiety, and depression that he had a few years ago, and he talks about those issues in a candid and captivating segment of the interview. He admits that a storyline in Alpha-1 Wrestling, as well as his death match wrestling style, were partly inspired by his real-life personal problems.

Rickey provides some hilarious impressions of New Jack, who he wrestled twice early in his career, that are worth seeing. He also recounted interesting stories about Hernandez, Tommy Rich, Tracy Smothers, Gorgeous George (Randy Savage's ex-girlfriend), and 2 Cold Scorpio. I had no idea that Rickey was close to Pete Dunne and Mark Andrews, as he talked about his friendship with them and how it led him to travel England. Rickey has some shrewd comments about style adaption. He says that he can adjust to most wrestling styles, but that he wants it - when he wrestles, for instance a technical match - to be believable that it's the big, bad Rickey Shane Page wrestling, and not a leaner performer who wrestles a style less marked by outsizing and overpowering his opponent.

The part about Atsushi Onita was especially fascinating for someone like me who is a fan of Onita. The talk about the CZW vs. GCW rivalry was also welcomed, as I didn't expect him to be so candid about it or spend as much time as he did on it. There are also a few miscellaneous cool moments where Rickey shows some of his injuries from throughout his career, and he also explains what it feels like physically in the heat of the moment during death matches, when the blood is literally flowing out of you.

I was actually starting to get concerned during the last third of the interview, as one glaring omission to that point was that Rickey had only talked sparingly about his mindset when going into a death match. Then, luckily, he talked quite a bit about what goes through his head when he does death matches during the last hour of the interview.

My one criticism of this interview is that there are some relative omissions. There was no name (word) association part of this interview, which largely left out rivals like Heidi Lovelace (Ruby Riott) and Sami Callihan. More glaringly, he only talks a little about CZW promoter DJ Hyde. I would have liked to have heard more about DJ, as he is a controversial figure. Also, while he certainly talked about rivals Nick Gage, Matt Tremont, and Danny Havoc, there could have been a little more focus on them, as they are well-known regular opponents of his. It's one thing for an RF Video "Reflections" program to not have a name association section, but I think this one should have had one, given that it is a standard shoot interview and Rickey is a well-traveled indie wrestler who has been in the ring with a variety of talents. These omissions are the reasons that I'm not giving this interview an A-.

GRADE: B+

PURCHASE:

DVD: http://smartmarkvideo.com/best-the-indies-dvd-rickey-shane-page-sad-boy-nice-boy (featuring bonus matches)

DIGITAL: http://smartmarkvideo.com/best-the-indies-rickey-shane-page-sad-boy-mp4, http://smvod.com/products/best-on-the-indies-rickey-shane-page-sad-boy-nice-boy-the-ballad-of-rickey-shane-page

Index of topics discussed:

- his earliest memories of pro wrestling
- his experience as a backyard wrestler
- memories of his earliest matches
- having matches for four years before getting formally trained
- Mega Championship Wrestling (MCW)
- feuds among local Ohio indie promotions back in the day
- J.T. Lightning
- his old alias Christian Faith
- his Faith in Nothing tag team with Vincent Nothing
- wrestling against New Jack
- facing Abyss & Monty Brown in a tag team match
- his thoughts on when he started winning titles in wrestling
- John Thorne
- wrestling at the ECW Arena for Wicked Hanuman
- wrestling against L.A.X. (Homicide & Hernandez)
- wrestling against Tracy Smothers & Chris Hamrick
- returning to AIW in 2008
- moving to New Jersey in the mid to late 2000s
- wrestling for CHIKARA at the Young Lions Cup
- debuting in IWA-MS
- getting away from tag team wrestling and starting to do more singles matches
- debuting in AAW
- wrestling Madman Pondo and Necro Butcher in IWA-EC
- getting more involved with death match wrestling
- Irish Airborne (Jake & Dave Crist)
- his neck injury that kept him out of the ring for a year
- adopting the name Rickey Shane Page
- debuting in CZW
- wrestling in singles tournaments
- the importance of championship belts to him
- doing his first No-Rope Barbed-Wire Death Match
- joining the #NIXON stable in AIW
- working intergender matches
- his friendship with Pete Dunne & Mark Andrews
- Olde Wrestling
- Alpha-1 Wrestling and its promoter, Ethan Page (who makes a brief cameo in this interview)
- the importance of having close friends in wrestling
- adapting to different styles of wrestling
- wrestling 2 Cold Scorpio in AIW
- starting to wrestle regularly in CZW
- Danny Havoc
- moving on from AIW
- personal issues that he has had and how they affected his wrestling career
- wrestling overseas in England, thanks to Pete Dunne
- his Uncle Eggbert alias
- participating in the big CZW annual events like Best of the Best, Tournament of Death, and Cage of Death
- butting heads with DJ Hyde
- why he loses so many matches
- having a successful run at the IWA-MS King of the Death Matches Tournament
- wrestling against Atsushi Onita in CZW
- Matt Tremont
- his Dog Collar match vs. Gregory Iron
- the upcoming stars of Alpha-1 Wrestling
- wrestling Nick Gage in IWA-MS and Beyond Wrestling
- winning the CZW World Heavyweight Championship
- why he has only wrestled for GCW once
- the real-life GCW vs. CZW rivalry
- plans to wrestle for PROGRESS Wrestling
- if he regrets becoming a death match wrestler
- his future
- his message to his fans

RUN TIME: 2 hr. 48 min.

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