Over the years there have been some pretty wild wrestling matches that spilled out of arenas. Generally these involve some kind of battered looking hardcore title, but what it a World title was on the line, featuring one of the future most famous stars in wrestling? In this video we’ll look at one such match that took place in of all places, Tampa Florida in 2004, for the prestigious Full Impact Pro World championship.
FIP, or Full Impact Pro was started in August 2003 and still runs today. It has always been based in Florida, running shows all over the state. It’s owner Sal Hamaoui has ties to former Ring of Honor booker at the time Gabe Sapolsky, and FIP served as a sort of sister promotion to ROH in the early years of both companies. From the start of FIP until around 2009, every FIP World champion was a current ROH roster member, with the title being defended frequently on ROH shows, even changing hands in Ring of Honor twice. FIP’s relationship with ROH fell apart around the time Gabe left the company, and when Gabe began working with Japanese promotion Dragon Gate, even booking their US expansion, one of their wrestlers Masaaki Mochizuki, would become the first non-ROH wrestler to be FIP World champion.
The match we’re talking about today was actually a rematch from a couple of months earlier. At FIP’s Emergence part 2 event on September 25th, Homicide defeated CM Punk in the finals of a tournament to crown the first ever FIP World Champion. By late 2004, CM Punk’s name was already well known in indie wrestling. He’s had a fourteen month run in TNA, most notably teaming with and later turning on and feuding with Raven as a member of the Gathering. He had also been with Ring of Honor since near the beginning, making his debut in November 2002. In 2003 he started wrestling internationally, working in Zero-One in Japan, and in 04 he would begin to work in Europe, for FWA in England and WXW in Germany. He had also already had a couple of WWE tryout matches for WWE, which I talked about in detail in an earlier video on this channel.
Punk’s opponent in the match is known as the “notorious 187”. Homicide is perhaps best known for his time in TNA, as one of the original members of the Latin American Xchange with Hernandez and Konnan. He joined TNA in January 2006, and by the end of that year he would also become the eighth Ring of Honor World Champion, defeating Bryan Danielson for the title at Final Battle 2006. The list of promotions Homicide has worked for over his over thirty year career just reads like a list of all the promotions there is, though never WWE. In a May 2024 interview with Piers Austin, Homicide tells of an opportunity he had in 2005 through Mick Foley, who he met while Mick was appearing for ROH in that year. He said that Mick gave him John Laurinitis’ phone number around the same time that Konnan pitched him the LAX idea, and ultimately he chose to work with Konnan in TNA. He also notes that part of why he never even received a tryout was likely to do with his name, but that he was always open to changing it, much like how in TNA he stopped calling his finisher the ‘cop killa’, renaming it the ‘gringo killer’.
The rematch between CM Punk and Homicide would take place at a venue called the Party Zone, in Tampa Florida, and multiple websites list the attendance for the show at just 20 fans, having drawn 30 the night before at the same venue. When FIP would return to the Party Zone in the following June the attendance would be listed as 100. For what it’s worth I actually tried to count the fans in view and I saw more than twenty for sure, and I actually find the hundred for the later show harder to believe.
On his way to the ring, CM Punk grabs the microphone and promises to take the fight out into the streets of Florida. Homicide comes out and says something something streets as well. The two start going at it with punches right away, and very quickly Azrieal, Punk’s stooge interferes to help him and the match quickly becomes a mugging. A wrestler known as Rainman who had defeated Azrieal in the previous match comes out to save Homicide. Also on this card by the way was a wrestler named Antonio Banks, that’s MVP in a past life. Punk and Homicide battle through the last people still watching NXT Level Up, showing off just how small the room is. They then make their way through a door and into the car park. They fight onto a truck that was backed up to the door which presumably the ring was transported in, and quite hilariously we hear random banging as the camera can’t see what’s going on up there. Once they get off the truck, the two walk and brawl around the side of the gentleman's establishment that this whole video is sort of about, and with a few awkward editing cuts, we then see Punk and Homicide fighting in the strip club.
The fight makes it’s way to the performance area, yeah, let's call it that, and Punk hits a rather impressive kick using the pole to his advantage. The two ladies on stage look none too pleased, and try to continue while Punk gets distracted from his match. He takes a moment to yell something pretty abusive at them, before he and Homicide make their way back out of the building. Homicide then hits Punk with a piledriver on the street, and pins him to win the match and retain his FIP world championship. Instead of caring for him, a few fans lean in to take a picture with Punk’s prone body, and we close with a shot of Homicide back in the strip club enjoying what he sees. The whole thing is unique to say the least, and it’s perhaps the most bizarre World title match I’ve ever seen.
For what it’s worth regarding the comment Punk makes at the performers, in a 2023 interview with Rewind Recap Relive, Homicide notes that they were very upset about this and demanded an apology from Punk. Looks like we can add them to the list of people waiting for that then. He also noted that as of ‘23 he and CM Punk have remained friends, so thats a cool thing to note also.
Following the match, Homicide would defend the title fourteen times throughout 2005, losing it to Bryan Danielson in an ROH ring in January ‘06. Six months after the falls count anywhere match he would again defend the title against CM Punk, this time in an anything goes match at an event called ‘Violence is the Answer’ on April 23rd 2005. The match was hardly the brutal affair you’d expect from a show called that, or a stipulation like anything goes, as there were too many kids in the crowd that night, but Homicide still won again to end their feud.
Let’s get into why this match might have taken the bizarre turn that it did. Before every promotion under the sun relied on a streaming service or their own online presence, and even before the beginnings of internet pay per view events which took a while to catch on, the major indies relied on DVD sales as their main source of income. Ring of Honor in particular stayed afloat through fans waiting a month or so after the events, and buying the DVD’s when they became available. This meant that there was a fair amount of time for word of mouth to build up following the latest shows, especially through discussion of them in places such as the ROH message board, and FIP definitely would have taken advantage of that in the time leading up to the event being available on DVD. This match occurred just a couple of weeks after the CM Punk versus Samoa Joe sixty minute draw for the ROH world championship, the second match in their famous trilogy, and so a lot of people would have been talking about him at this time. It was smart then for FIP to put on a match that CM Punk fans would want to seek out, if only for it’s novelty.
The other, less refined theory, is that Punk and Homicide saw that they were wrestling in front of a tiny crowd and thought fuck it! Let’s take em all to the strip club! Less refined, yet somehow plausible.
Sources:
Match - FIP Fallout Night 2 November 13th 2004: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mlj9vUEZhE
Show: https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=533
Homicide interview (May 2024) https://www.postwrestling.com/2024/05/14/homicide-i-might-have-a-bruise-on-my-brain-that-affects-my-speech/#:~:text=I%20was%20just%20happy%2C%20and,do%20it%20one%20more%20time%E2%80%A6
https://youtu.be/aH3Psq29smA?si=22UnwStpwPuvbqDc
2023 interview about match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAB_xucb2vIReview of third match: https://411mania.com/wrestling/bg-says-fip-violence-is-the-answer/
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