Guest feature written and contributed by Michael Richard Blais
March 7th, Calgary, it’s the last dream match on my list…
It’s always been weird for me when people have asked about my dream matches because I think I’ve always viewed them differently than other people do. I could talk about a dream match with wrestlers of years past like Eddie Guerrero, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, etc. I could talk about a dream match with current-day wrestlers who are at the highest levels like AJ Styles, Randy Orton, Roman Reigns, etc. My brain was never wired like that though. I’d love to wrestle those guys, I’d love to test myself against them, but my dream was always just to be a wrestler. That was the dream because it meant something to me. Dream matches would need to mean something to me.
So whenever people have asked me my dream match, from the very beginning I always answer TJ Wilson. He’s my trainer, my mentor, someone I have looked up to, and has helped mold the way I am, not just in wrestling, but in life. He was always the answer but I just never dove into the others because there was never time when I was asked to spout off the truth of why I’d say these are dream matches and I’ve already had many of them.
When I first started wrestling as a kid the top wrestlers around here were TJ Wilson, Harry Smith, Apocalypse, Duke Durrango, and Randy Myers. All of them had such an influence on me, just watching them but also being lucky enough to learn from them all. These were THE GUYS if you came around pro-wrestling in the mid-2000s all the way into the early 2010s these were the guys you wanted to be like. They all had their own qualities to them but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that they were the guys leading the rest of us.
Every one of them had a hand in creating “Michael Richard Blais” the pro-wrestler. They were all so gracious with their time and knowledge. None of them had a reason to ever want to help this 13-year-old, unathletic, chubby kid who didn’t look like he had a future but they did. Sometimes they were tough, sometimes they were very critical…but ultimately, always supportive and the reason I ever had the courage to do any of the stuff I have. If it wasn’t for every one of them I wouldn’t have kept doing this for 20 years. I wouldn’t have wrestled guys like Samoa Joe, Cody Rhodes, Christopher Daniels, etc. I wouldn’t have gotten to wrestle on WWE RAW. I wouldn’t have wrestled coast to coast or for major indy companies like GCW. If it wasn’t for them, I would have never been able to do the Infinity Gauntlet raising $10,000+ for the Stollery wrestling for 8 hours. If it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t know I existed. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know where I’d be but I probably wouldn’t have ever moved to Edmonton, I probably wouldn’t have my own family and I wouldn’t have ever been on the ground floor of LPW helping build it to the level it is and will climb to.
They’re the dream matches, because of those things. They’re the dream matches. TJ Wilson, Harry Smith, Apocalypse, Duke Durrango, and Randy Myers. Those were my dream matches because I wanted to show them they didn’t waste their time with me. There is this saying in wrestling that the money and the miles are the only things that are real, but the respect of your peers is real, too. Their respect means a lot to me. I wanted to wrestle them to show them they did good, that I could hang with them…they didn’t waste their time with that chubby kid.
I’ve been lucky. Unfortunately one of those will never happen, I won’t get that dream match with TJ on a show, but I was lucky I got to have it once in practice. I’m lucky that I get to talk to him about wrestling the way I do. I’ve checked off almost everyone else though. I got to wrestle Harry Smith multiple times, and I know I took him to the limit. I got to wrestle Duke Durrango, earn his respect, and ultimately retire him which is an honour I’ll never take lightly. I’ve gotten to wrestle Randy Myers multiple times and share a hug with him that at a time in our lives, felt like we never would. There’s only one left that is possible that I haven’t checked off…
March 7th, Calgary, Alberta, Canada at the Deerfoot Inn & Casino at LPW: Press Start. It’s Michael Richard Blais vs Viktor…Viktor, the former Apocalypse back in the day here. That’s the last one. He was always known for his intensity, unmatched, enough so it would elicit fear in not just fans but a lot of the other wrestlers. I’m not shy on intensity though: maybe that’s one of the things I learned from him without even knowing it at the time.
I need this match to be special, I need this match to be great, I need the best crowd we can get there for it, I need to earn his respect…and I need to win…because to me, this is as real as it gets.
God’s Gift to Wrestling, Michael Richard Blais.
