Windsor Deserved This Kind Of Chaos

Let us get one thing straight right out of the gate. Windsor, Ontario is a gritty, beautiful wrestling town that has been starved for a proper supercard for way too long. When Scott D'Amore and Tony Khan decided to slam their respective action figures together for ROH x MLP Global Wars Canada in Windsor, we all knew it was going to be a fascinating experiment.

And for the most part, they delivered on the violence. You look at a card featuring Rich Swann going up against Ricochet and your brain instantly prepares for a car crash. We are talking about two guys who treat gravity like it is merely a suggestion.

Let’s circle back to Ricochet and Rich Swann for a second, because I feel like people are taking these guys for granted. We have reached a point where seeing a man do a double-rotation moonsault barely gets a reaction. We are spoiled.

Ricochet has spent the last decade proving he is basically a superhero operating under an assumed name. His body control is completely alien. And Swann? Swann is one of the most resilient performers of his generation. The guy has been counted out a million times and just keeps coming back.

Putting them in the ring together in Windsor was a guarantee that gravity would be entirely disrespected. These two have a history, they know each other’s pacing, and they know exactly how to escalate a match from a sprint to an absolute dead-sprint.

It is the exact flavor of indie wrestling chaos that made Ring of Honor famous in the mid-2000s. It felt nostalgic but dangerous at the same time.

Then you have Gisele Shaw and Deonna Purrazzo beating the hell out of each other. Purrazzo is a machine when it comes to breaking down joints and manipulating limbs. Shaw is pure explosive power. The stylistic clash is fascinating.

And let us give Deonna Purrazzo her flowers while we are at it. The Virtuosa moniker is not just a cheap marketing gimmick. She wrestles like she is solving a math equation where the answer is always a broken arm.

Against Gisele Shaw, who is just a powerhouse of momentum and striking, Purrazzo had to get creative. Shaw does not back down. She hits the ropes hard and throws strikes that sound like a car door slamming shut.

That match is the perfect example of why cross-promotional shows work. You get to see two distinct philosophies of violence crash into each other. It is not overly polished television wrestling. It is gritty.

It is the kind of booking that makes you remember why you watch this ridiculous sport in the first place.

Crowning The Tag Team Kings

The main headline coming out of the building, according to the F4WOnline results, was the crowning of the very first Maple Leaf Pro Tag Team Champions. That is a massive milestone for a promotion that is still trying to establish its modern identity.

Tag team wrestling is an art form that constantly gets disrespected by national television promotions. They throw two singles guys together, give them a mashed-up entrance theme, and call it a division. It is insulting to anyone who grew up watching actual tag teams operate.

Scott D'Amore actually understands tag team wrestling. He knows you need tandem offense, double-team psychology, and a referee who completely loses control of the match by minute twelve. Crowning the inaugural champions in Windsor was the right call in the right building.

The fans in that arena are historically rabid. They want blood, they want sweat, and they want shiny new belts held high at the end of the night. Delivering on that promise instantly gives the MLP tag division a sense of legitimacy.

But while the tag title situation is a massive positive, we desperately need to talk about the absolute clown show happening with the men's singles championship.

The Interim Championship Disease

I am begging wrestling promoters to stop doing this. I am literally on my knees asking for an end to this madness. We are getting an Interim Canadian Men’s Champion crowned at MLP Uprising.

Why? Just why? What is our obsession with interim belts?

If a champion gets hurt, you strip them of the title. That is how combat sports have operated since the dawn of time. You do not hand out a temporary plastic crown and tell the audience to pretend it means something. It devalues the actual championship.

Tony Khan popularized this nonsense in All Elite Wrestling and now the contagion has spread to Maple Leaf Pro. It is infuriating. The fans are not stupid. We know what an interim title means. It means the promoter is too scared to make a hard decision.

We saw this exact same scenario play out with Jon Moxley and CM Punk. It was confusing then, and it is confusing now. You either are the champion, or you are on the injured reserve list. Pick a lane.

But again, all of this goodwill crashes into a brick wall when I read the words "Interim Canadian Men’s Champion." It makes my eye twitch. It makes me want to throw my laptop out the window.

Who is booking this? Why are we doing this? The entire concept of an interim champion in professional wrestling is a fundamental misunderstanding of how the sport works. Wrestling is scripted! You control the universe!

In the UFC, an interim title makes sense because you cannot force two guys to fight if one has a torn ACL. You need a placeholder to sell pay-per-views. In wrestling, you literally write the rules. If the champion cannot defend, you strip the champion. The end. Roll the credits.

When you create an interim title, you are telling the audience that the matches do not actually matter until the real champion comes back. You are creating a waiting room. Nobody buys a ticket to sit in a waiting room.

It is a staggering lack of confidence from the booking committee. Maple Leaf Pro should be better than this.

Now we are heading into MLP Uprising with a gigantic dark cloud hanging over the main event scene. Whoever wins that interim belt is going to feel like a placeholder. They will be carrying a prop instead of a prize.

It is a completely unforced error. D'Amore is usually smarter than this. He knows how to build real prestige around a championship.

The Bigger Picture For Maple Leaf Pro

Despite the interim title nonsense, you have to look at the overall trajectory of MLP right now. They are aggressively pushing themselves into the conversation.

Partnering with Ring of Honor is a massive flex. It gives them access to a roster full of absolute killers. The Global Wars concept was always brilliant when ROH was doing it with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and reviving it for the Canadian market is a stroke of genius.

The wrestling calendar is absurdly crowded right now. We have AEW Dynasty breathing down our necks tomorrow on March 30, and WrestleMania 41 dominating the news cycle for April. Finding oxygen in this environment is nearly impossible.

But MLP is doing it by putting on super-indy cards that appeal directly to the sickos. They know their audience. They are not trying to compete with WWE's stadium shows. They are targeting the fans who want to see Ricochet hit a 630 splash in a bingo hall.

That is how you survive in 2026. You carve out a violently loyal niche and you feed them exactly what they want. You give them Gisele Shaw and Deonna Purrazzo trying to snap each other's arms off. You give them a frantic tag team title tournament.

I just hope they figure out the world title picture before it becomes a complete joke.

What Happens At Uprising?

The pressure on MLP Uprising just increased exponentially. When you advertise crowning a new champion, even a fake interim one, you have to deliver a match of the year contender.

The Canadian fans are going to pack the building, but they are unforgiving. If the match feels like a filler episode of television, they will turn on it immediately. You cannot serve them a lukewarm main event and expect them to cheer.

They need to put two absolute psychopaths in the ring and let them tear the house down. That is the only way you wash the stink off an interim title. Make the violence so compelling that we forget about the bureaucratic nonsense.

Ring of Honor's involvement is the wild card here. How much influence does Tony Khan have over these booking decisions? Is he the one pushing for the interim belt? It certainly smells like his fingerprints are all over it.

If ROH stars are getting heavily featured at Uprising, the promotional crossover could get extremely messy. You run the risk of MLP feeling like a developmental territory for AEW and ROH, rather than a standalone Canadian powerhouse.

Scott D'Amore has to protect his brand. He has to make sure that MLP talent is standing tall at the end of the night. You cannot invite the neighbors over and let them redecorate your living room.

We are going to find out exactly what Maple Leaf Pro is made of over the next month. They survived Global Wars with some fantastic in-ring action. Now they have to survive their own booking decisions.