This past Sunday’s The WRLD on GCW event at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, New York featured surprises appearances by Lio Rush, Sean “X-Pac” Waltman, Brian Meyers, Hornswoggle, Marko Stunt, Virgil, Mark Sterling, Sabu, and Bill Alfonso throughout the show.
As noted before, Chris Dickinson has been out of action since this past November due to a leg injury. During the pre-show of GCW’s The WRLD on GCW event, Dickinson announced that he will be making his in-ring return from injury at GCW’s next Spring Break event this April in Dallas, Texas.
In regards to the lack of deathmatches and blood during the event, Post Wrestling’s John Pollock reported that this was due to the strict rules from the New York State Athletic Commission which forbids the usage of blading for wrestling events held within the state. The specific rules state that “A promoter of professional wrestling shall not permit cutting, blading, or gigging, whereby one or more wrestlers intentionally cut their own skin or the skin of another during the exhibition.”
PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that GCW officials reportedly came up with the idea for Bill Alfonso and Sabu to make a surprise appearance the week prior to the show, according to PWInsider.
PWInsider also reported that there were no major injuries suffered at GCW’s event beyond Matt Cardona potentially breaking his nose during his match against Joey Janela.
PWInsider also reported that GCW officials made several changes to their original plans for this past Sunday’s event due to time constraints. Mike Johnson reported that GCW had a hard cut off time of 11PM to end their event on pay-per-view and as a result several matches had their times cut and several video packages were pulled in order to end the show on time. Johnson reported that despite its short length, the GCW World Tag Team Championship match was never originally planned to go long in length.
During a recent interview with the Busted Open Radio podcast, commentator Lenny Leonard gave more details regarding GCW’s original plans for their event that had to be scrapped due to timing related issues. Leonard stated:
“I think they were probably right about where they were supposed to be. I didn’t have it timed out while I was watching it, but I don’t think they got rushed too much. I think it was the last match more than anything. We even were cutting out…all those video packages they played, they originally had me pitching to all of those packages where I had verge I had written out that I would throw to set the stage. We had to cut that out. There was going to be a minute segment with us talking about the (Indie) Hall of Fame and some video behind it. We had to cut that out. We tried to shave as much as we could where we could when we were on the fly. I think it was the tag match that felt the brunt, unfortunately.”
Transcript h/t: Fightful.com