by Al Basler
Failed Prophecy
It’s been a while, but I felt that it was high time to bring Basler’s Blog back from hiatus. First of all, I want to address a couple of things that happened on last week’s edition of New England Championship Wrestling on WMFP TV.
September was a great month for me personally, and as was noted last week, I had a good reason for my absence from NECW TV recently. Much to apparent chagrin of “Mr. Fabulous” Tony Ulysses, I did indeed get married to my wonderful wife Jamie. I would like to take the time to thank all of the NECW family for their congratulations and well wishes.
The other time my name was dropped last week was by none other than the NECW Television Champion Johnny Thunder. Now, I know I have a little bit of history with Johnny from the old NECW Sonic Boom days, but I thought we had put that behind us. Johnny, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a model by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems like we might have a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black here my friend.
On to more important things. This week’s episode of NECW featured the main event from last month’s Bash 13 event. The NECW Heavyweight Championship was on the line in an usual manner. The champion, Antonio “The Promise” Thomas, teamed with Slyck Wagner Brown to take on Sean Burke and Jeremy Prophet. If Thomas was pinned or made to submit, whoever scored the fall over him would become the new NECW Heavyweight Champion.
Burke and Prophet came into this match with a goal. That goal was for one of them to leave as NECW Heavyweight Champion. We’ve seen this scenario play out many times before in wrestling history, but primarily in 3-way matches. You have two wrestlers who enter the match agreeing to work together, but in the end, the desire to be the champion divides and conquers. In this case, however, while both Burke and Prophet want to be the NECW Heavyweight Champion, they both felt it was more important to just make sure that at the end of the night Antonio Thomas was not the champion. And they had a plan of attack to make it happen.
The mission was simple. Wear down Thomas, keep Brown out of the match, score the victory over Thomas. For much of the match, they were successful. They isolated Thomas and worked over his leg repeatedly. However, Thomas was able to make a tag to Brown and the plan broke down. Thomas and Brown had Burke and Prophet on the ropes. And then, something happened that shocked everyone. Prophet made a blind tag, ran in behind Brown, rolled him up, and (with the aid of a handful of trunks) scored a pin.
So, Sean Burke and Jeremy Prophet get the victory over Antonio Thomas and Wagner Brown, but Thomas remains NECW Heavyweight Champion. Yes, you read that right. Burke and Prophet lost an opportunity to become the NECW Heavyweight Champion because Prophet pinned the wrong guy. Prophet tried to explain himself to Burke after the match saying that Burke was in trouble and he felt it was better for them to win the match and not the title than to lose. In you believe that, you are as naive as, well, Sean Burke.
Make no mistake about it, Prophet let his hatred of Wagner Brown get the better of him. That’s the only explanation I can think of. Let’s look at the situation again. Prophet makes a blind tag and proceeds to blindside Brown into Thomas before rolling him up. Logic dictates that in that scenario, Prophet could have just as easily railroaded Brown and not pinned him. The match would have continued, with Prophet and Burke on the advantage. They could have systematically tried to take Brown out of the match. Knowing Antonio Thomas like I do, he would not have just sat in the corner and allowed Brown to get beat in order to preserve his title. Once they did enough damage to Brown, they could have allowed Thomas to tag back in and then you ostensibly have a 2-on-1 against Thomas. Seems pretty simple to me.
Instead, Prophet pinned Brown. If he didn’t get caught up in the heat of the moment, he’s a fool. I’ll let you decide which of those is more likely to be the case. Opportunities to become the NECW Heavyweight Champion do not grow on trees. This one was squandered by Jeremy Prophet.
Maybe Burke bought Prophet’s explanation because he knew he had another shot at Thomas already in his back pocket. After the match, Burke challenged Thomas to a best 2 out of 3 falls championship match, which the champion readily accepted. That match will take place tonight at the Cove Community Center in Beverly, Massachusetts at FRIDAY FIGHT NIGHT. Despite Jeremy Prophet, Sean Burke will have another opportunity. For Prophet, however, a golden one just slipped through his grasp. And there’s no one to blame for that, but Jeremy Prophet.