GCW Joey Janela’s Spring Break: The Immortal Clusterfuck 2026 (4.18.26) review 

 

April 18, 2026 

 

WRESTLEMANIA WEEK REVIEW #17  

 

You may have noticed I took almost an entire day off between reviews here. This wasn’t for my mental health and wellbeing but rather that I couldn’t get my shift covered and had to go in to work. Anyway, we’re at the Horseshoe for this fucking stupid show. Hosts are Veda Scott and a rotating second person. Veda has been a real trooper this weekend and you can hear her voice is almost on the way out. The weekend finished just in time. Appreciate the work she did in learning back stories and weaving together booking for so many different promotions.  

 

Steel Cage Deathmatch 

GCW Ultraviolent Championship 

Otis Cogar (c) vs. Matt Tremont 

Otis had an ugly match with Toby Klein yesterday and his trios match went south in a hurry when JGeorge got hurt.  

This is really his last shot to make an impact this week. The opening spot is Tremont leapfrogging Otis to send him through a glass pane and, boy, relying on Tremont to leapfrog you is not where I would want to be, brother. It does not come off. In modern ultraviolent matches, it’s no longer enough to just hit each other with stuff, although that’s exactly what they should do here.  

Tremont ends up a bloody mess, and he has to ask Cogar to ease up a bit, which he does with a light tube in his mouth.  

The match gets completely derailed by run ins by VNDL48. Tremont makes his own save and frogsplashes Otis with lighttubes for the win and the belt. What an odd conclusion to this match. There was certainly a lot of effort here, and I appreciate the bloodshed. The actual wrestling wasn’t very good though, which is ultimately what you need. Look at the Death Vegas main event for how you can do both. ** 

 

Now because it takes FOREVER to clear up all this shit, we are now 2h10m into the run time. So, the Clusterfuck match is only…2h30m long. Fuck me.  

 

Immortal Clusterfuck 

I’ll only be running commentary on fun things. So, normal wrestling stuff I’ll just ignore. Most of the guys at the start are spot guys anyway, although this is an ideal place to just do a bunch of spots. Knock yourself out. Shotzi, who’s been great this weekend, is an early stand out before Nate Webb comes out. His entrance is a highlight of the Clusterfuck every year, so naturally they ruin it by having someone interupt it. This leads to a karaoke section of the match. Amazingly GCW’s microphones work for it. Which naturally segues into a dancing section.  

 

The best thing about the Clusterfuck is that it’s essentially a series of short matches. It rarely ever has an overarcing narrative where one guy is key to everything. Like Ric Flair in the 1992 Royal Rumble or Shawn in ‘95/’96. Even if someone goes from the start to the finish. The main issue frequently stems from having talent in the match that no one knows. We then seque into a tag teams bit. They do a tag team bit every year and every year it tanks. Brooke Havok has a decent showing here, as does Matt Mako.  

 

Sean Ross Sapp is in this thing, and he’s got actual gear. What a fucking mark. He has FIGHTFUL written on his ass for fuck’s sake. Why are we encouraging him, as a community? Bryan Alvarez, an actual trained wrestler, then jumps in to teach him the business. There’s then a Power Slap segment. Power Slap is great to watch but if you participate in it, you are a brain dead idiot. Yes, that is a shot at Swagger.  

 

We get a women’s based segment and I’m predicting Charles Mason will ruin it. That’s at 3h8m on the tape. Let’s see if I’m right. That girl with the dumb gamergirl gimmick is in here. I can’t spell her name without looking it up and I’m trying to avoid spoilers so it’s not happening. Killer Kelly goes on a biting butts rampage and the crowd chant “eat that ass” and D’Lo Brown, on comms, is stunned into silence. The women’s segment just ends after six minutes. No Charles Mason. Huh, I guess I lost out on that prediction. I’m going to leave it in though.  

 

Next up is an Invisible Man segment. Big up to Tommy Shire hitting a chop and actually using his thigh slap to make it make noise. Hahaha. Emil Jay is actually laughing when he announces Manders getting thrown out. Invisible Man popped the boys. Terry Yaki doing the round the world pop-up drop-down DDT is amazing. Everyone wants to work the Invisible Man, brother. Ian Maxwell pops me by making it look like Invisible Man has actually lifted him out of the ring.  

I love how Joey Janela does this stalling superplex and we’re just sat watching him do…well…nothing at all for half a minute. Wrestling! “I’M SORRY, I LOVE YOU” superkick is so good. Janela’s best work of the weekend, imo. Having bested the Invisible Man he then has to take on Starman, which is…Joey Janela in a mask. Starman freezing and Joey ducking under a clothesline five times is also good stuff. Janela then unmasks the frozen Starman to reveal it’s Starboy Charlie. “I knew it wasn’t Joey Janela” says Joey Janela. This is a real swerve Russo, you hack.  

D’Lo’s music starts playing. “You know what, Clusterfuck…fuck it”. Shockingly, D’Lo is still a good worker. I don’t think I’ve seen him wrestle in about 13 years. He’s out here popping off powerbombs and shit in jeans and a hoodie. The Sleepy Ed introduction, where everything is whispered leads into some great sleepy stuff.  

Oh no, he’s snuggling her. Will Nixi XS tap out? Don’t show this to WWE, they’ll make Johnny Gargano do it.  

OH NO, T-REXS! RUN AWAY GUYS, RUN AWAY! Blue T-Rex attempts a full nelson on Sleepy Ed but can’t his tiny arms around Ed’s shoulders. Tragically, the dinosaurs have gone extinct and are eliminated. Parrow does another Sleepy Ed segment and gets visibly annoyed with drunks trying to ruin it. Wrestling fans are usually pretty good at pantomime, but sometimes you get one that’s so drunk and stupid that they cannot shut up.  

There are moments during these shows where I wonder if someone has spiked my water with hallucinogens. As Cereal Man battles Parrow the crowd chant “this is real”. Ah, thank you, my brothers and sisters. The biggest issue with the Clusterfuck is not that they do all this daft shit, it’s that there is too much wrestling in between. I guess the urge is to make the show as long as possible to give the crowd their money’s worth, but I just want the stupid shit at this point.  

It gets to the point where Jimmy Lloyd joins the match, and I’m certain he’s already been in. Is that not Jimmy Lloyd?  I love how this is the kind of match where Heath Slater can compete against Mullet Man and Tombstone Jesus. Frank the Clown appears. Why is he still a thing? I mean, he could say the same thing about me to be honest but here we are, 2026, still going. I wrote my first review online in 1998. Fun fact.  

 

Tara Zep’s arrival makes me realise I’ve only seen her on two shows. She really impressed me a few years ago. Great look, solid worker, what happened? Anyway, this is really starting to drag now. You can see the building has emptied out a LOT. The enthusiasm for this gimmick has slipped away. We end this with a busted open SLADE against Shotzi Blackheart, who’s been in here for a couple of hours. Shotzi backdrops SLADE out and Shotzi wins the Clusterfuck.  

It’s nice to see the crowd popping in unison at Shotzi’s win. She’s had a really good weekend and has genuinely impressed me with her desire and effort. Even when the matches she’s been in haven’t worked, she’s still given it her all. The Maple Leaf Pro four-way is one of my favourite individual performances all weekend.  

 

The Clusterfuck this year was middling. It had great moments but they were spread out and there were way too many dead stretches. The worst one coming at the conclusion where Frank the Clown’s arrival caused about a quarter of the crowd to abandon the show and go to sleep. We’ll call it **½, because there was a lot of fun stuff here but not enough to suggest you should do something stupid like watch the entire show.  

 

The 411: 

You know what you’re getting with this and every year I consider skipping it. I only keep hanging on because you do get some fun stuff in the Clusterfuck. I, oddly enough, thought Joey Janela did some of his best work all weekend here. It was way too long though, as always, as Janela can’t help himself and they up booking 80 people for a battle royal.  

 

For my amusement, here is a list of Clusterfuck winners: 

Jimmy Lloyd (Spring Break, 2017) 

The Invisible Man (Spring Break 2, 2018) 

Womens wrestling/No Contest, no winner declared (Greatest Clusterfuck, 2019) 

Nate Webb (“Spring Break 4”) – this was during Covid and didn’t happen until October 2020 

Second Gear Crew (Greatest Clusterfuck, 2022) 

Microman (Clusterfuck Forever, 2024) 

Brodie Lee Jr (Clusterfuck Forever, 2025) 

Shotzi Blackheart (Immortal Clusterfuck, 2026) 

 

I did this to just check Shotzi is the first official women’s wrestler to win the Clusterfuck and she is. Joey did do a big feminism driven angle on Clusterfuck #3 in his defence.  

 

Show Ranking:   

WWE Wrestlemania N2 7.8  

NJPW Death Vegas 7.5  

Wrestlecon Supershow 6.3   

HOG Culture Clash 6.1 

MLP Multiverse 5.9  

Dragon Gate USA: Gate of Sin City 5.8   

Progress 5.6   

Bloodsport 5.5  

Spring Break 5.2  

Clusterfuck 4.6  

Ladies Night Out 16 4.5   

Hybrid x PWU Midnight Xpress 4.1   

MDK Fight Club 4.0   

Wrestlemania N1 3.8  

CCW High Rollers 3.4   

Podermania~! 3.1  

Juggalos 2.2   

  

Best Matches:   

Tremont & Gage vs. Takeda & Yamashita vs. Desperado & Kasai (NJPW Death Vegas) ****¼   

Roman Reigns vs. CM Punk (Wrestlemania N2) ****¼  

Bandido vs. Amazing Red (HOG Culture Clash) **** 

Zack Sabre Jr vs. Fuminori Abe (NJPW Death Vegas) ***¾   

Mark Davis vs. Masato Tanaka (Wrestlecon Supershow) ***¾   

Man Like Dereiss vs. Michael Oku (Progress) ***½   

Tim Thatcher vs. Charlie Dempsey (Bloodsport) ***½  

Gisele Shaw vs. Persephone vs. Killer Kelly vs. Shotzi Blackheart (MLP) ***¼  

Gunther vs. Seth Rollins (Wrestlemania N1) ***¼  

Manders vs. Thomas Shire (Hybrid/PWU) ***¼   

IC ladder match (Wrestlemania N2) ***¼  

Jacob Fatu vs. Drew McIntyre (Wrestlemania N1) *** 

Bandido vs. Galeno del Mal (Wrestlecon Supershow) ***  

Hechicero vs. Jonathan Gresham (MLP) *** 

Perry & Stunt vs. Stackhouse & Orso (Spring Break) *** 

Charles Mason vs. Michael Oku (HOG Culture Clash) *** 

Ben K & Hyo vs. Aero Panther & Fight Panther Jr vs. Jordan Oliver & Alec Price (DGUSA) ***  

Fuminori Abe vs. Erick Stevens (Bloodsport) *** 

 

Sandman vs. Invisible Man (Spring Break) 

  

Matches watched: 133

Number of coffees drunk; 11 

Number of Geoguessr seeds played as a welcoming distraction: 9 

Number of motivational/tactical Irn Bru’s drunk: 5