This past weekend on Saturday night, February 24 in Leppävirta, Finland, a huge rock & wrestling event called Rock Fight took place. This concept goes back a decade to 2008, when the first Rock Fight took place at the Nosturi club in Helsinki with United Underworld and Stoner Kings, whereas the second Rock Fight took place the following year in 2009, also held at Nosturi, with Silver Moth and Sparzanza offering up the metallic musical fare.
Alas, come 2018, it was time to bring back Rock Fight, this time in a new venue and in a new town. Legendary Finnish punk rockers Klamydia and controversial rap artist Petri Nygård were the artists this time around. In addition, we had six international-quality matches on the show, featuring FCF Wrestling talent in addition to European wrestling stars, as promoted by Nordic Wrestling Events in co-operation with Vesileppis Areena in Leppävirta.
In the main event of this huge Rock Fight event, I put up my esteemed Valhalla Nordic Wrestling Championship title against the gigantic 191cm/190kg Demolition Davies of Germany, with 7-time Finnish heavyweight bodybuilding champion Boogie Mustonen as special guest referee. This is notable for the fact that in Boogie’s last pro wrestling match ever back in July 1997 in Joensuu, Finland, I was the referee for his match against the late Tony “Ludvig Borga” Halme (as seen in the video below).
Demolition Davies was a huge threat and an enormous hurdle for me. Although I trained hell-a-hard for this main event, pushing some damn heavy weights to prepare in the gym, it was very challenging to try to move Davies around. With that amount of girth and pure mass, I had to find a different approach.
Davies managed to bloody me mid-match after he ran my head into the steel ringpost and then proceeded to headbutt me over and over again with his haggard mask, splitting my epidermis wide open. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that thankfully guest referee Boogie Mustonen was a bit slow getting into position and also in making his counts, because it managed to buy me some time and make my kickouts.
Davies’ corner avalanche absolutely crushed me and his big splash knocked the wind out of my sails. Running into the man felt like hitting a tree. Davies put up one hell of an intimidating fight, but finally, in the end, I got a second wind and was able to make a sustained rally before Davies cut me off at the pass with a huge Black Hole Slam, followed by a devastating cannonball in the ring corner.
The one big mistake that Davies did, however, was jawing and bitching at referee Mustonen for his slow counts, which obviously threw my challenger off kilter. Once Davies started shoving Boogie, it was only a matter of time that the 7-time bodybuilding champ would explode. And explode he did with a huge forearm smash that knocked Davies over my fallen torso, enabling me to make a leverage pin on the German giant as Boogie made the count. Three seconds later, I was still the Valhalla Nordic Wrestling Champion.
Rock Fight was a hell of a great time, as in excess of 400 fans came out to see the event. Thanks to everyone that bought a ticket to see the event! Here’s to hoping we’ll see Rock Fight for the fourth time in the future!
ALL PHOTOS BY MARKO SIMONEN (www.markosimonen.com)
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