Frightmare Wins Back Synergy Championship
Black Friday was a record-setting event.
Perhaps Synergy Pro Wrestling built up a year’s worth of goodwill with the wrestling gods, as Black Friday was a total turnaround from the disastrous Black Saturday in 2018.
At last year’s Thanksgiving weekend spectacle – the New Jersey-based promotion’s most anticipated card at the time – three advertised marquee matches didn’t take place.
Abyss had to back out due to his mother being sent to the emergency room (the classy veteran did send a video apologizing to the crowd). Then, Synergy Champion Matt Tremont had to skip the show due to his wife being hospitalized. Finally, Brandon Kirk was supposed to face Jimmy Lloyd in a chairs match main event. Synergy owner (then-creative director) Colin West revealed that Kirk had called him 20 minutes before match time, claiming to be stuck in traffic from working another show. That resulted in Kirk’s brief firing (he returned in July as part of the inaugural Garden State Invitational).
It was a drastically different scene last Friday at the Polish Falcons Nest in Hillsborough, NJ. An estimated 170 folks – another attendance record – packed the building that was uniquely dark except for lighting over the ring. New Jersey-based Raze Lighting created the environment, fueling a raucous atmosphere of loud cheers from fans of all ages.
This time all the big names showed up: Homicide outlasted X-Division Champion Ace Austin, MLW’s Jordan Oliver, Anthony Gangone, Archadia and Kirk in the Best of the Light Heavyweights – a nod to Synergy’s spiritual ancestor, Jersey All Pro Wrestling. Tremont got his revenge on Mike Del for costing him the Synergy Championship in January, choking out the cocky assailant in a brutal chain match. The only advertised match that didn’t happen was LSG vs. Eric Corvis – Gary Jay subbed for LSG and picked up the victory.
With so much action, the show understandably ran late. The title vs. mask main event didn’t start until after 11 p.m. That was a bit late for many of the kids in the crowd, whose parents took them home before they could witness Frightmare win back the title he never lost, dethroning Matt Macintosh to become the first two-time Synergy Champion.
It was surprising that parents didn’t flee a couple hours earlier, when Jimmy Lloyd stormed the ring and cut a profanity-laced tirade on the promotion. Apparently, the psychotic “Different Boy” had a year’s worth of frustration pent up and chose Black Friday to air his f-bomb-filled grievances. Certainly a shocking and effective debut, it cemented the gradual shift in Synergy’s tone over the past few months.
In the fall of 2017, Dan and Heather Funkenstein, owners of Funkenstein Wrestling Superstore, founded Synergy with the goal of providing a family-friendly wrestling promotion to the Manville area. Characters like “Retrosexual” Anthony Greene, “2 Hot” Steve Scott and Jeff Cannonball blended comedy and athleticism into the perfect milkshake. Although there was the occasional hardcore brawl, like Frightmare and Drake Chambers’ gruesome dog collar match or the barefoot LEGOs triple threat between Cannonball, Logan Black and Louie Ramos, the entertainment was kept pretty PG.
Parents could bring their children to the shows without fear of the content; but not many did. On more than one occasion, you could walk into the Manville-Hillsborough Elks Lodge and count 50 heads at most. While that’s understandable for a startup, momentum is everything in pro wrestling. If you don’t have a buzz around your product, you’ll be struggling in the digital age, especially in the Philadelphia/New Jersey/Delaware market.
When ECWA went on hiatus in June, matchmaker Joe Zanolle suggested that a traditional style simply isn’t popular in the former ECW territory.Since Paul Heyman’s hardcore promotion shuttered its doors nearly 20 years ago, several companies have emerged to quench the region’s bloodthirsty fans, such as CZW, Game Changer Wrestling and H20 Wrestling. “That’s not a style we are interested in promoting,” Zanolle said. “We’re family friendly with no cursing, blood or weapons. But the Philly area is very different.”
When Colin West took over the promotion in May, the attitude changed. He began building that much-needed momentum.
“I now had to look at what was going to garner the most interest and start moving in that direction,” West says. “A hard PG limit was not doing it.”
Over the past few months, Synergy has gone more hardcore. Fans were encouraged to bring the weapons to Tremont’s battle with Del in May. Aaron Bradley and TJ Crawford unleashed hell on each other in an unsanctioned fight in September, in which f-bombs and middle fingers were traded back and forth. Their feud culminated in a Last Man Standing match at Black Friday, which included more profanity, lewd gestures, an unprotected chairshot to the head and Crawford hitting Bradley with a rolling Death Valley Driver off a ladder onto a row of chairs.
“The results justify the means,” West says. “Our crowd is talking to us. They want edgy and realistic, but not full-on profane. We won’t be going full out crazy. Other people already do that and do that well. I like our balance right now.”
Since the tonal shift, attendance has increased and social media has been buzzing. Of course, Synergy’s rising profile can also be attributed to West bringing in more recognizable names like Jazz, Rhino and Homicide. In September, the company inked a deal with FITE TV, allowing fans from around the world to watch Synergy events live. In order to attract those international eyeballs, West acknowledges that the product has to appeal to different appetites.
“Being on FITE plays a factor to a degree, sure,” he says. “We have a larger audience to answer to now. But I still have to be good to Somerset County (Synergy’s home base). It’s a fine line.”
West will be tiptoeing that line into 2020 and beyond. Synergy has five events already booked for next year, and at least four of those will be streamed live on FITE TV. Synergy’s next event takes place on Dec. 28: Warhorse’s Big Bad Bitchin’ Christmas Party. As you can tell, it’s not exactly P.G., but it’s a one-time special occasion.
“I still consider us a family-friendly promotion, with some room for language,” West says. “I look at real life. If I get hit really hard, I’m not going to say ‘oh poopy fudge.’ But in reality, people also don’t say ‘fuck’ 35 times in five minutes.
Jimmy (Lloyd) was an outlier.”
Full results
Frightmare def. Matt Macintosh to win the Synergy Championship
Homicide def. Brandon Kirk, Jordan Oliver, Ace Austin, Archadia & Anthony Gangone to win the 2019 Best of the Light Heavyweights
TJ Crawford def. Aaron Bradley in a Last Man Standing match
Matt Tremont def. Mike Del in a chain match
Gary Jay def. Eric Corvis
Leyla Hirsch def. DL Hurst
MV Young def. Logan Black & Joe Gacy
Chris Benne def. Jason Sinclair
Crash Jaxon & Lord Crewe ended in a no contest after Tremont interrupted
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