Raise Up: Preview of Ultralight Beam 6-person Tag
6-Person tag Match: Highflying Star Machines vs Tankman / Kemp / Holliday
Stare down from NAP Blackout. VOD available on IWTV
On April 30th, 2022, in the main event of the 2nd half of our debut doubleheader Blackout, Calvin Tankman faced off against Myron Reed, where the two long-time rivals and friends pushed it to the limit. After the match, while sharing a moment with two of the other NAP co-founders Chase Holliday and Shawn Kemp, Tankman declared himself the top dog in Indianapolis and put out a challenge to anyone person who thinks they can knock off his crown.
The challenge was immediately answered by not just one person, but a team of them, a team who had won their 3-on-3 tag match on the first half of the doubleheader. Three men synonymous with wrestling in the mid-Atlantic region but more specifically the Deadlock Pro Wrestling promotion in Diego Hill, BK Westbrook, and DPW World Champion Bojack all made their way to the ring and a stare down commenced.
In the spring of 1981 North Carolina and Indiana met on the biggest stage of them all in that year’s NCAA Basketball National championship game. A clash between two basketball staples led by two surefire NBA stars in UNC’s James Worthy & IU’s Isiah Thomas surrounded by a team of future NBA journeymen. Between the 2 teams, there were a combined 8 future first or second-round NBA draft picks, 5 future NBA championships, and 2 Hall-Of-Famers. This was the game that took these two schools that were already known far and wide for their excellence in the sport and took them into being standard bearers.
40+ years later these two regions have an opportunity to take their reputations, one as a cauldron of iconic moments and legendary wrestlers on the upswing again, and the other a hot bed for the fastest rising independent stars on the scene today. At stake, not a National Championship, but the chance to plant a flag at the summit of an unclaimed wrestling territory.
The NAP trio of Tankman, Kemp, and Holliday have known each other for years and have tagged with each other before but never as a trio. Some would say that shouldn’t be an issue as they have years of trust and knowledge built up between them but experience as a team like the Highflying Star Machines have can’t be replicated. In addition to that, all three of these men have wrestled each other in extremely heated bouts over the past few months and while everything seems okay on the surface there’s no accounting for feelings in the midst of battle and that could very well be their downfall.
It’s also worth noting that while never during wrestling competition these men have met many a time before, as the NAP trio are also DPW roster members with Kemp & Holliday competing as a tag team and Tankman as a singles competitor and a successful one at that. Tankman currently holds the DPW National Championship and has been called by management and fans alike as the “gatekeeper” of Deadlock Pro Wrestling a title that as DPW’s first and only ever holder of its top championship should go to Bojack.
Diego falls in support of his best friend Bojack as he looks to stamp the flag of the Star Machines at the very top of the NAP Mountain which leaves the last member BK Westbrook. BK while being a man who usually marches to the beat of his own drum has been uncharacteristically standoffish with his HFSM brothers, most notably competing in a heated tag team match in North Carolina against Bojack. And while his social media speaks in support of them being a cohesive unit, his actions say otherwise. Will the cohesive unit truly be on the same page by September 11th?
The last portion of this entire matchup that may impact the outcome of this matchup is the ruleset. Naptown All Pro officials have not revealed the nature of this match, whether it is a traditional one-fall match or a Lucha style 2 out of 3 falls contest. Both have been hinted at, but nothing has been confirmed nor do we know when it will be revealed. There’s a strong chance that the match stipulation won’t be revealed until the match comes through the curtain that night meaning both teams have to prepare accordingly. A standard match is a business as usual but with 2 out of 3 falls there’s far more strategy involved, a strategy that is more than familiar to Calvin Tankman and Shawn Kemp who have been in quite a few 2 out of 3 falls matches.
Is a home game advantage for Tankman, Kemp, & Holliday enough to tackle arguably the most well-oiled trios machine in all of independent wrestling? Eyes all across the country are on this 6-person tag team match and with layers this deep who knows what may happen!