It won’t be Jackie Moon versus Dewey the Killer Bear, but there will be wrestling at a basketball game in St. John’s tonight.
The game is at Mile One Centre, where the National Basketball League of Canada’s’s Edge take on the Windsor Express in the back end of a two-game visit to St. John’s by the Express.
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However, the grappling we’re talking about won’t between the players on the opposing hoops teams.
The Edge have hooked up with locally-based New Evolution Wrestling (NEW) and will be presenting a couple of matches, a pre-game tag-team bout and a halftime feature with NEW champion and Mount Pearl native “Dynamite” Dylan Davis of Mount Pearl defending his title against “Wild Thing” Tony King.
“It’s just another piece of entertainment we’re just trying to give our fans,” said Trevor Murphy, the Edge’s director of operations and assistant GM.
“We’re looking for things that are family-friendly, fan-friendly, a lot of fun. We have a good vibe going during the games and we want to keep that vibe going throughout even when the game is not being played.”
On Saturday, the Edge had live music — in the form of Kellie Loder and her band — performing at halftime and Murphy says the team’s front office has “other things in the works” for non-basketball entertainment in future games.
But the newest promotion is something that came about in part because couple of people working for the Edge are wrestling fans.
One is Colin Fardy, the team’s game operations manager responsible for in-game entertainment. The other is assistant coach Steve Marcus.
“Steve Marcus is a huge wrestling fan,” said Murphy. “He went to see (a NEW card) one night and brought some other people from the team with him.
“He ended up making some contacts with people in the local wrestling community and between that and Colin being a fan, too, it kind of developed from there.”
The pre-game match has “Bulldog” Brandon Hynes teaming up with Scott “The Redefinition” Humphries to take on Justin “Hellraiser” Lock and “Psycho” Mitch.
As for that Jackie Moon vs Dewey match we mentioned earlier on, it’s from Semi-Pro, the movie that had Will Ferrell starring as the player-owner of the Flint Tropics, a fictional team in the old ABA.
Search online for “Jackie Moon wrestling a bear” if you want to see what it’s all about, but you probably won’t be surprised to find out the bear wins.
