On Friday, July 31st I visited the Gladeville Community Center in Gladeville, Tennessee for Pro Wrestling Alliance. For those unfamiliar, Gladeville is in between Lebanon and Mt. Juliet, and about a 40 minute drive from Nashville. The beautiful thing about going to a PWA show is that you truly get a Memphis style show. This show is as much apart of the Gladeville community as friday night lights and the county fair. A crowd of 175+ people came to cheer their heroes, boo their villains and above all else, enjoy some old school rasslin’. 

Our first match was a triple threat, as crowd favorite Nate Starr took on Jay Solis and Mr. Gold. This reporter very much enjoyed the Golden fiend, weighing in at “tons of gold” and hailing from “Goldburg” Kentucky. To the crowd’s delight, Nate Starr won with a sunset flip. Our second match had 1/2 of the Original Sins, “The Problem” Tyler Lydol taking on Dewey Barnes. Some may be more familiar with the latter from his TNA run as White Tiger, but I’m familiar with Dewey as a long time mainstay of Tennessee wrestling. Barnes won this match with his feet on the ropes. 

Honcho Hensley and Austin Cruz easily had two of the most memorable moves of the evening. The first saw Cruz easily be the largest competitor I’ve ever seen successfully hit a Canadian Destroyer. After a run-in distraction by Dewey Barnes, Hensley would hit a vertebreaker on Cruz, to the shock, awe and horror of the crowd. Hensley’s devastating move would earn him the pinfall victory.

Our fourth match was for the PWA tag team titles, held by “The Gargoyle” Kerry Awful and “The Gremlin” Larry Cooter, a group, managed by Lucky, known as “The Present”. Let me tell you, these three are not afraid to piss off a crowd, and as they riled the crowd into a fervor, Big & Rich’s 2004 classic “Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy” echoed throughout the community center, as “The Measuring Stick” Danial Starling and “Mr. Boom Bastic” Azrael Row made their way to the ring as their challengers. Mr. Boom Bastic was something to truly see, and while Kerry and Larry may have underestimated him for his small stature, they quickly found out that this man is full of fight. However, with help from Lucky ringside and a sick double team move, The Present would go on to retain their titles.

The semi-main saw the defense of the U.S. Championship, as the champion Matt Starr would take on “The Jackal of Bluegrass” Jackie Thad. About a minute into the match, Thad would collapse with what appeared to be a knee injury. This however, was a ruse as Thad would take his opening to rake the eyes of Starr. Thad would continue to show that there was no line he was unwilling to cross, as he hit a well disguised low blow while distracting the ref. Thad would take too long relishing in his dirty deeds, leaving a window open for Starr to roll up his opponent and retain his title. 

The PWA Heavyweight title was on the line as their champion, “The Neglected” Landon Bradley defended against “Raddy Daddy” Cole Radrick. Avid wrestling fans know Radrick from his time in GCW, and for always having the coolest throwback Nascar shirts I’ve ever seen. Landon had Jay Solis with him in his corner for the main event, and the room was deafening with boos for the duos. After a thrilling back and forth twenty minute match, Radrick would get the pinfall victory, and just as we thought a new PWA Champion would be crowned, we saw Landon and Jay’s master plan come into play. Prior to hitting his finisher, a metal chain passed from Solis to Bradley was tucked into Cole’s singlet by the champion. They quickly disputed the match’s result with the referee, and with Radrick caught red headed with the unused smoking gun, the decision was reversed. While the crowd absolutely exploded with rage at the result, I thought it was one of the most creative insurance plans I had seen from a conniving champion in a minute.

I really appreciate the hospitality that the Pro Wrestling Alliance staff showed to me during my visit. I think they have something really unique going on, and I highly encourage anyone looking for a fun friday activity to go check them out. You can find PWA on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. I want to thank anyone who took the time to read this, and as always, get out of the damn house and go watch and support your local rasslin show!

Pour up a Small Town Secret and join McCash as he relives this tense David Cronenberg thriller alongside Brandon and Stoney. Today, we’re drinking with…A History of Violence. 

To make the Small Town Secret, you’ll need
• 2 oz rye whiskey
• ½ oz cherry liqueur
• ¼ oz maple syrup
• 2 dashes Angostura bitters
• 1 dash orange bitters
• Orange peel
• cherry

Instructions
1. Fill a mixing glass with ice.
2. Add rye whiskey, cherry liqueur, maple syrup, and both bitters.
3. Stir for about 20 seconds until well chilled.
4. Strain into a large rocks glass with a single cube.
5. Express an orange peel over the drink and drop it in.
6. Garnish with a cherry.

Keep up with all of our work covering the world of movies on Nashville Movie Dispatch. Listen to Drinking With… on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you take in your podcasts! Just search for ‘Drinking With…’ and you’ll find us. Or, just smash the play button on the embed below!

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

For all of the love that Yankee Candle gets for its classics – the Clean Cotton, Midsummers Night, Sparkling Cinnamon heavyweights, for example – the brand does a good job of sprinkling in some out-of-left-field fragrance from time to time. Last year, something inspired them to release the Into the Garden collection, fragrances all inspired by – you guessed it – being in a garden. This collection included Emerald Herbs, Honey Bee Tea, and Garden Rain Shower, all harmless enough. But, that fourth one is the one I’m here to discuss today, because it definitely checks that out-of-left-field fragrance box. It is Sun Gold Tomato. Yes, a tomato candle. Yankee Candle made a candle that smells like tomato vine and tangy lime.

The official description from Yankee Candle’s website: “Your hard work in the garden pays off in abundance: scents of tangy lime, fresh herbs, and ripe golden tomatoes picked straight from the vine.“

My taste always gravitates towards the weird candles. If there’s a weird scent, I’m gonna sniff that joint. When they did a candle that smelled like bacon, I was there on Day 1. So, it should come as no surprise that my eye shifted toward Sun Gold Tomato when I saw the release of that Into the Garden Collection. I kept picking up the jar, sniffing it, and putting it back down for the first year or so it was out. Then, at the latest semi-anny, I noticed it was marked down by like 75%. It was tempting, but ultimately, in my never ending quest to save money wherever I can, I put it back on the shelf.

We got home that evening and I discovered that my mother-in-law had snuck Sun Gold Tomato (as well as Golden Honey) to the register and paid for them while I wasn’t looking. It was a birthday present, and finally, I had a Sun Gold Tomato of my own to hold.

What I like most about this candle is how it takes me back to my youth. I grew up as a kid venturing into my grandparents’s garden. My dad grew tomatoes out of buckets on the back porch some summers. There are few things that really feel like summer the way the smell of vine-ripened tomatoes does. Sun Gold Tomato does have a sweet and citrusy side to it – the lime is a prominent secondary note. But, it’s front-loaded enough with the pure smell of a tomato vine that I can deal with it. It’s a great candle that may not be for everyone, of course. But, for me, that scent of tomato vine hits my nose and it takes me back to the lush greens and sweltering heat of a middle Tennessee summer in the 1990s.

Check out the Yankee Candle archives here on SoBros Network for my extensive backlog of Yankee Candle reviews! Also, be sure to check out my comprehensive list of the top 100 Yankee Candle fragrances of all time. I worked on that thing for forever, so any read is appreciated, thank you. That is all.

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

It’s the biggest party of the summer! Or…in other words, if you’re a wrestling fan like me, you know that tagline means it’s just about time for the WWE’s second biggest show of the year behind only WrestleMania: SummerSlam.

It’s hard to believe that the 39th installment of the show is taking place this weekend from Minneapolis, Minnesota. Where does the time go? This year’s SummerSlam has shaped up to be an interesting show. Running it back with Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins isn’t really my cup of tea, but the other title match should be fun between CM Punk and Cody Rhodes. I’m also stoked to see Oba Femi and Brock Lesnar duke it out inside Hell in a Cell. And, adding Gunther vs. Nick Aldis to the card could be sneaky good. So, I figured there’s no better time to relive some of my favorite matches from the show in years past. My hope is, if you’re nostalgic like me anyway, that you’ll go back and watch some of these this week before firing up whatever pay-per-view gimmick they’re running on Saturday and Sunday nights. Before we get started, let’s get through a few honorable mentions.

Honorable Mentions: I loved the magnitude of the Undertaker-Edge Hell in a Cell match from 2008, and the brute physicality that ensued. Bret Hart’s run with and challenging for the Intercontinental Championship produced some of the best matches of the early 1990s – his showdown with Mr. Perfect in 1991 was no different. Finally, while the invasion angle of 2001 might have fallen a bit flat for most wrestling fans, that year’s SummerSlam had a pair of high quality championship bouts as The Rock battled Booker T for the WCW Championship and Stone Cold Steve Austin took on Kurt Angle for the WWE Championship.

My Top 10 Matches in SummerSlam History

10. John Cena vs. AJ Styles, 2016 – Cena-Styles was a matchup between two icons of my adolescence. That rivalry produced a surreal dream match that I’m not sure any of us could’ve seen coming back in the 2000s. The two had a series of matches together, hallmarked by back-and-forth action, near falls, and hot crowds. This SummerSlam bout was no different.

9. Universal Championship: Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns vs. Samoa Joe vs. Braun Strowman, 2017 – You want to talk about some big meaty men slappin’ meat?!?! This match was chock full of it. To this day, it still comes to mind when I think about the quintessential multi-men demolition derby style prize fights. This one was a ton of fun.

8. Intercontinental Championship Ladder Match: Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon, 1995 – For all of the love their ladder match from WrestleMania X, I always thought the rematch at SummerSlam that year was equally as death-defying.

7. TLC I, 2000 – Speaking of death-defying, the first Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match between The Dudley Boyz, The Hardy Boyz, and Edge & Christian is one of the most iconic matches in wrestling history. There’s an entire generation of fans who were in awe of the bodies thrown through tables, tossed from ladders, and based with chairs.

6. No DQ: CM Punk vs. Brock Lesnar, 2013 – 2013’s iteration of SummerSlam had some big time matches, but I don’t know that any of them felt as raw and intense as this one. I’ve always thought Lesnar does his best work with a smaller guy that he can throw around, have sell his offense, and then spark the crowd when they inevitably make their comeback – Daniel Bryan, AJ Styles, Rey Mysterio…all of these guys come to mind. Punk fit that mold too, and the two of these guys went out and put on a physically exhausting slugfest.

5. Intercontinental Championship Ladder Match: Triple H vs. The Rock, 1998 – What is it with SummerSlam and Intercontinental Championship ladder matches? This one happened during the formative years of my wrestling fandom, and it was one of those matches that just drew me in even further. What’s wild to look back on is where these two icons of the business were at when this match happened…just two hungry young bucks trying to scratch and claw their way to the top of the card. This was one of the defining matches in what would become one of the era’s greatest feuds.

4. WWE Championship: John Cena vs. CM Punk, 2011 – How can any wrestling fan forget the infamous “Pipe Bomb” promo and the subsequent “Summer of Punk” (WWE version)? Though the WWE failed to parlay it into sustained success throughout the fall of 2011, it was white hot for those few months. When you get something that over, and it hits that sweet spot where the in-ring stuff matches up to it, you’ve created something special. Punk’s match with Cena at SummerSlam was the culmination of that summer, and while I think their match from Money In The Bank that year was better, this one still delivered a memorable contest.

3. WWE Championship: Daniel Bryan vs. John Cena, 2013 – Not only was this match exciting in its own right, but you could make a compelling argument that the fabled “YES Movement” that led Bryan to the mountaintop at WrestleMania XXX began this night. It was the classic wrestling tale of an overlooked underdog attempting to prove himself against one of the greatest of all time.

2. Non-sanctioned Street Fight: Shawn Michaels vs. Triple H, 2002 – So many of us thought Shawn Michaels would never wrestle again after his back injury in 1998 sidelined him for four years. It wasn’t just that he came back that made this match so special, it was that he went so hard in this match that we couldn’t believe it. Forget SummerSlam – this is one of my favorite street fights of all time, and it just so happened to have taken place on what I still consider to be the greatest SummerSlam card of all time.

1. Intercontinental Championship: Bret Hart vs British Bulldog, 1992 – If we’re compiling a top 10 list of the matches that damn near perfectly encapsulate the pure sport of professional wrestling, this one would be on it. The headlining bout for nearly 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium in London had it all…championship on the line, a hometown hero in the British Bulldog, an interesting styles clash, drama. It’s one of my favorite matches of all time. It really is one of those matches you can turn on and say “this right here is what pro wrestling is all about.” To this day, I still think that finish is one of the most creative of all time, and it created a moment wrestling fans of a certain era will never forget.

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.

Brandon Vick reviews Minions & Monsters, Evil Dead Burn, Motor City, and The Odyssey on this month’s installment of The Cinema Chronicles!

Minions & Monsters – 6:31
Evil Dead Burn – 11:43
Motor City – 18:03
The Odyssey – 23:25

Keep up with all of our work covering the world of movies on Nashville Movie Dispatch. Listen to the The Cinema Chronicles podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you take in your podcasts! Just search for ‘Nashville Movie Dispatch’ and you’ll find us. Or, just smash the play button on the embed below!

Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.

Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.