WrestleCon brought the Mark Hitchcock Memorial SuperShow to Horseshoe Las Vegas today and delivered the kind of card this event usually promises: nostalgia, chaos, hard-hitting wrestling, lucha, and a little bit of everything else. But by the end of the afternoon, the wrestling was only half the story. The bigger cloud over the show was the fallout from Leon Slater being pulled from the originally advertised Ricochet match, the reporting around TNA’s decision, and the crowd making its feelings clear with loud “Fuck TNA” chants before the main event. What should have been remembered first as a strong WrestleMania week supershow instead became a card where the in-ring action had to share space with backstage tension, replacement plans, and fan backlash that only got louder as the show moved toward its finish.
Here are the full results
- Headbanger Thrasher & Swoggle def. Rhino & Heath
- Love and Peace def. CPF, Mala Fama, and Star Men
- Mark Davis def. Masato Tanaka
- The Swirl def. Subculture
- Beast Mortos, Derek Dillinger, Jimmy Townsend, Danny Jones, and Lacey Lane def. Steph De Lander, Mance Warner, Gravity, L.J. Cleary, and Vaughn Vertigo
- Bandido def. Galeno Del Mal
- Man Like DeReiss (c) def. Ethan Allen (PROGRESS Men’s World Championship)
- The Demand def. Speedball Mike Bailey, Michael Oku, and Kevin Knight
Breakdowns & Reactions
The show opened the right way. WrestleCon started by honoring Mark Hitchcock, then leaned right into the familiar convention-week feel that has always made this event stand out from a standard indie card. That tone carried straight into the opener, where Mosh announced he was out with a torn bicep and Swoggle stepped in alongside Thrasher against Heath and Rhino. It turned into exactly the kind of match it needed to be: light, goofy, nostalgic, and easy for the crowd to get behind. Thrasher stealing the win with a roll-up on Rhino was less about the result and more about getting the room moving early.
The international elimination match kept that energy up without letting the card sit in one style for too long. Love and Peace, CPF, Mala Fama, and Star Men gave the afternoon its first true burst of Mania-week chaos. It was fast, busy, and built more around pace than deep story, which was fine for where it landed on the card. Star Men went out first, Mala Fama followed, and Ben-K pinning Joe Lando gave Love and Peace the win in the final stretch. It did exactly what it needed to do and kept the show from dragging in the early going.
From there, the event started tightening up. Mark Davis beating Masato Tanaka with a piledriver felt like the first real pivot into the more serious section of the card. That mattered because shows like this can get too novelty-heavy if they stay in nostalgia mode too long. Davis and Tanaka gave the event some weight. Tanaka still means something to this crowd, and Davis beating him clean gave the card one of its more meaningful wins. It helped the show settle into a stronger in-ring groove before the final stretch.
The Swirl beating Subculture was another smart change of pace. After Davis and Tanaka brought the heavier tone, this gave the crowd a cleaner, faster modern tag match. That is one thing this show did well all afternoon: it spaced out its styles so nothing stayed in one lane too long. The Swirl getting the win kept the pace up and made the card feel like it was still building instead of coasting.
The ten-person tag was the show going full supershow again. Beast Mortos, Derek Dillinger, Jimmy Townsend, Danny Jones, and Lacey Lane beating Steph De Lander, Mance Warner, Gravity, L.J. Cleary, and Vaughn Vertigo was pure overload by design. There were a lot of bodies, a lot of personalities, and a lot happening at once, but Mortos getting the decisive fall gave it enough structure to work. On another card, this probably feels thrown together. Here, it fit the tone of the event.
Bandido vs. Galeno Del Mal was one of the clearest wrestling-first highlights on the entire show. Bandido winning with the 21Gunplex gave the card one of its strongest straight-up match results, and it felt important because he came into the event as one of the surest stars on the lineup. On a day where so much of the conversation drifted toward backstage controversy, this was one of the matches that pulled the focus back where it belonged.
The bonus PROGRESS Men’s World Championship match also added to the feeling that this show was a true WrestleMania week crossroads event. Man Like DeReiss retaining against Ethan Allen was a nice extra title hook and another reminder of how many different promotions were bleeding into the same Las Vegas scene this week. It could have felt random, but instead it just added to the variety that held the whole card together.
Still, the real story of the day sat over the entire back half of the show. Ricochet vs. Leon Slater was supposed to be one of the signature attractions of the event before Slater was pulled. The reporting around the situation made it clear this was not just a routine card change. The match had been positioned as a major opportunity for Slater, and the belief coming out of the fallout was that this was supposed to be a spotlight moment, not a throwaway booking. Once that changed, the entire tone of the main event shifted with it.
That is why the crowd reaction mattered so much. The “Fuck TNA” chants were not just random noise. They were the audience turning a backstage issue into part of the live show. Fans in the building made it very clear who they blamed for taking away one of the matches they most wanted to see. Once that happened, the replacement main event was never going to be judged like a normal substitute match. It had to work against the disappointment of the match fans felt they lost.
To the replacement match’s credit, The Demand vs. Speedball Mike Bailey, Michael Oku, and Kevin Knight still gave the card a strong closing stretch. Ricochet and Oku opening the match was smart, Knight and Bailey brought the speed and burst the bout needed, and Oku spending much of the match fighting from underneath gave the babyface side a clear anchor. The finish was the right kind of controversial too. Oku appeared to have Ricochet caught and in trouble, Ricochet looked like he tapped, but the referee was distracted. That opened the door for The Demand to take over, triple-team Oku, and finish him with a Doomsday Device. It was the right finish for this situation because it protected the babyface side, leaned into heel tactics, and fit the mood of a match already surrounded by outside controversy.
The bigger takeaway is that this show succeeded in-ring but got overshadowed by everything around it. The card was paced well, there was enough variety to keep it moving, Davis and Bandido stood out in important spots, and the main event replacement did about as much as it could under the circumstances. But this event is going to be remembered first for the Leon Slater fallout, the backlash tied to TNA’s decision-making, and the fans in the building openly revolting against that situation before the bell even rang.
Final Thoughts
This was a good show that never had a real chance to just be a good show. WrestleCon still delivered a card with range, structure, and enough strong wrestling to make it worthwhile, but the Slater situation hung over everything once the match changed. By the end, The Demand escaped with the main event win, Bandido gave the card one of its best pure matches, and Mark Davis scored one of the stronger victories on the lineup. Even so, the loudest thing coming out of this show was not a finish or a surprise. It was the reaction to a match fans never got to see.
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