5 Questions with Rags #89 - Rashad Tyson or "I'm tryin' to be what I'm destined to be"

June 11, 2025 by Blake Morneau in 5 Questions With Rags

When I first started interviewing wrestlers, I had the assumption that you could detect and guess someone's original wrestling inspiration(s) by simply watching them in the ring. Little movements, bits of movesets, etc., I genuinely (and incorrectly) believed this formula meant something. As this hypothesis is being disproven more and more all the time, no one has surprised me with their long-running favourite like Rashad Tyson. “My favourite wrestler I first knew I liked, and specifically thought, 'I'm gonna follow this guy's journey,' was Randy Orton. Specifically bald Legacy Randy Orton.,” Tyson says, shocking me on an idle Friday morning. (If I was drinking coffee I would have spat it out hilariously.) “The whole angle was so entertaining to me growing up. Just his stare alone was the wildest thing. I love a good bad guy. The best bad guys to me are built out of trauma and like, Randy Orton's whole story about his anger issues, 'Don't push me to the edge' and that. I don't wanna resonate with this, but I think it's kinda cool.” Randy Orton. This man, Rashad Tyson – this man I declared my new favourite wrestler on Instagram after seeing him live for literally 3 minutes because of the love I could feel pouring from every corner of the room – came up loving one of the most evil mufuckas to grace a wrestling ring?? How could this be? But if you stop to think even for a moment, it makes perfect sense. Wrestling is about reactions and connections. It's one of the few places where Horseshoe Theory actually applies. Orton connects to the lizard brains of the audience, Rashad connects to their hearts. In the end, it's really the same thing. And there aren't a lot of wrestlers in the Pacific Northwest that are making those connections with the audience like Real Talk Rashad Tyson.

5 Questions with Rags #88 - Casey Ferreira or “I'd call it showboating but this is the Millennium Falcon”

May 22, 2025 by Blake Morneau in 5 Questions With Rags

A few months ago, at the first show from No Fate Pro Wrestling in Vancouver (An incredibly successful and tremendously fun show, by the way) the first wrestler through the curtain was Casey Ferreira. This wasn't a one-off show put on by people who were coming and going. This is a new promotion with a direction and ton of power, run by people who clearly LOVE professional wrestling. Having Ferreira be the first wrestling through the curtain in the history of the new promotion was the choice of people who know what they're doing. You see, each day I wake up as an indie wrestling fan on the west coast and I feel blessed to live in a place so lousy with talent. Walk into any wrestling show in Victoria or Vancouver and you're going to see an endless stream of talent, charisma and passion. With such a high bar being the standard, encountering someone who stands out means something special. You know it as soon as you see them walk to the ring for the first time and engage their opponent for the first time. Casey Ferreira is one of those special people. On that Sunday night in downtown Vancouver, he wrestled other very special wrestler – and past 5 Questions with Rags guest – Eli Surge. It was a bout of hard-hitting strikes and high-flying risks that really encapsulated everything that makes me love professional wrestling. Great crowd connection, chemistry between the wrestlers, technical and devastating moves, and, perhaps most importantly, a story to tie it all together.

“I feel like I'm thinking less and less about moves as I progress. It's really not on mind, not getting me too excited at this point – It's more, at this point, how can I tell a whole match? There are so many fans who realize they love guys because they don't do that many moves. I'll go-go-go, but it's not move-move-move, it's build-build-build-one move. That's what I prefer. The fun part for me is the movement between moves,” Casey reflects, sitting on a bench in the sun in the Victoria neighbourhood of North Park, as preparation for that nights 365 Wrestling show continues a couple of blocks away. His match that night was another thumper, against other fast-rising stud Cole Rivera. It was just the latest entry in a year that is quite apparently ever-more-filled with such occurrences.

5 Questions with Rags #87 - Elliot Tyler or "Beloved in Victoria and reviled in Portland - the anatomy of a rising PNW wrestling star."

December 31, 2024 by Blake Morneau in 5 Questions With Rags

As I sit to put the finishing touches on this piece, we are less than one week away from the first 365 show of 2025 in Victoria and there is ONE MATCH announced for the card. But it doesn't really matter because it's a title match, a dog collar match (A famously violent match type) between the living legend Devon Shooter and the champion, our beloved champion – and funnily enough, the most hated guy in Portland wrestling – Elliot Tyler. And when Elliot Tyler is in the main event, people are going to come out.

But it's not just 365 where he overcame the longtime heel champion, Devon Shooter, where he has become a staple. Tyler has been a force in PNW wrestling scene,. I've talked to multiple people who have been to one wrestling show here on the west coast who said that the wrestler that stood out – sometimes the only one they really remembered – was Elliot Tyler. There are few wrestlers I've encountered that just click with everyone in the audience, no matter who they are – be they younger, older or my mom. It could be the entrance music that makes you want to slide down a rainbow. It could be the barking – who doesn't love barking in a pack? It could be evident hydration on he is always displaying. It could be the opportunity to chant “BEEF!” - who doesn't love a good, strong one-syllable chant? It could be his Big E-like combination of an adorable face and silly-yet-hard-nosed demeanour. (I'm putting the following here because this is still a music blog, for now, and I'm not going to assume you know about non-Stone Cold/Rock-level WWE champions: If you need context for this, please do yourself a favour and do a search for former WWE hampion Big E. He rules so hard.)

Beyond all of that, the thing that stands out when Elliot Tyler gets between the ropes is a legimately radiating love coming from the man himself. He looks like he's having the best time, all the time, and it's a completely infectious energy. The kind of energy that drew all of us to our favourite wrestlers when we first started watching. Thankfully for all us watching independent wrestling on the west coast, in the pacific northwest and beyond, a young man stumbled across something that drew him in more than a decade ago. “Honestly, it was just an accident. I was having a sleepover with a buddy and he fell asleep, and I was flipping through channels and I found a rerun of Friday Night Smackdown! and watched it and I got hooked,” Elliot recalls, telling me about his entry-way into wrestling. “It definitely wasn’t the first match that got me hooked – I think the first match was someone who is cancelled now, and they were notorious for never being that entertaining, from 2010/2011, so I’ll let you pick out from the roster who that could be – the main event had Kane and Edge and Rey Mysterio. I was like 'This is crazy. This is everything I want in life. The absurdity of it all.' A lot of people go 'I saw this match and that’s when I knew.' I never had that. There was never a specific moment where I said, “I have to do this.” It just kind of started as me watching, and it turned into me hitting moves on my pillows, which turned into me hitting moves on my friends in the backyard and then it progressed to me getting into a school. It started with beating up pillows, and it went way too far.”

5 Questions with Rags #86 - Eli Surge

September 24, 2024 by Blake Morneau in 5 Questions With Rags

I take a lot of new people to wrestling – Friends, siblings, parents, acquaintances, work associates, people I yell at on the street. I can say for near-certain that there is no one who connects with the crowd more instantaneously on a consistent basis than Eli Surge. BIRDS AREN'T REAL. The tinfoil hat (always with extras to indoctrinate the crowd). You know what this guy is about and from the moment he steps out from behind the curtain, it's entertaining as fuck. And this is before he gets into the ring with his very excellent wrestling – a hard-hitting and technical style, replete with flourishes like out-of-the-ring moonsaults. (It would be weird if a guy into aliens didn't have a moonsault in his arsenal right? Good call, Eli.)

I've only ever known Eli Surge as the Conspiracy Man – aliens, birds-as-surveillance, Bigfoot and whatnot – but, it wasn't always so, and the story of how it kinda came to be is now one of my favourite stories. “ The conspiracy gimmick started out of frustration, honestly. There was a company that formally ran in Vancouver that had a big show. Three of my friends were in a match with a fly-in talent and I was frustrated as to why I didn’t even get an opportunity on that show,” says Eli, talking to me while taking care of his laundry. “'Fuck you' to gender roles,” he says emphatically. Fuckin' eh, Eli.

RAGSLANDIA - 5 Acts at Rifflandia 2024 that are (probably) going to get me out of the house

September 04, 2024 by Blake Morneau

I can't fucking believe it's September. Wha happen?! But whatever, it's alright because I'm in Victoria and September means Rifflandia 'round these parts. It's tradition. We can have a long talk about the changes it's gone through since it came into our lives 16 years ago, (And please, send me a message or an email if you have thoughts about this. I love to talk about this.) but no matter what, it remains one of the biggest spots on the west coast music calendar. These days I have a hard time dragging myself out of the house most nights – I barely remember what FOMO feels like any more – but Rifflandia has more than a few things to get me out and onto the dance floor this year. There are some notable exceptions from the below list – Oliver Tree, Channel Tres and SkiiTour – who would normally be on this list, but I already wrote about them for the official Rifflandia magazine (It's a good-looking book. Go pick it up around town.), and despite breaking this two-writing rule below. This shit is already getting too long, so without further ado, here is a list of some of the acts that have my tired ass excited to get out into the world for some live fuckin' music.

REZZ
Friday, Main Stage, 10:50pm
This feels like cheating because –1) I wrote about REZZ in the official Rifflandia magazine this year and 2) I try not to touch the first couple of lines of a festival poster because obviously people are gonna go see those acts. They're the headliners. That's why they're there. And maybe I'm writing to this to rouse myself into staying out past 10pm, a thing I rarely do anymore, but if there's something to keep me out of my house and engaged at this time of night at the end of the work week, it's probably REZZ. It's dark, hella groovy and really fucking heavy bass music. Both of my previous encounters from the alien bass-dealer left me with a physical feeling I cannot describe here. Seriously, my body felt different after feeling the effects of her deep-drilling bass. As most DJs play late and rarely make the journey to the Island after their profile reaches a certain size, I've fallen out of experiencing much in terms of big-venue electronic music in the years since the pandemic began. Kudos on Rifflandia for bringing over such a serious DJ and saving me a trip! I'll try my best to still be out and awake!

Crash Test Dummies
Sunday, Main Stage, 6:00pm
I imagine this is a common statement for millenials that were born and raised in Victoria: “My first concert was Crash Test Dummies on the Legislature lawn during the 1994 Commonwealth Games.” It's a core memory for me, even though I don't really remember much about the musical performance itself. I remember my dad really loved “Superman's Song” and I was all about “Afternoons & Coffeespoons,” which to this day remains one of my favourite songs of any genre. It was one of the first songs on my “Liked Songs” when I got a Spotify account. Admittedly I haven't kept up with Crush Test Dummies' output for a long time, but I hung around longer than almost everyone in my life, apart from my buddy Ben. But I can say that I was a 15 year old kid obsessed with their album Give Yourself A Hand when it came out. The title track, the lead single (??) “Keep a Lid on Things” and “I Love Your Goo.” God, I fucking loved that record so much. I think I might actually ascend to a higher plain of existence if I hear them play “I Love Your Goo.” I'm eternally grateful for the music scene in Canada in the 90s that allowed a 10-year old kid to find a band like the Crash Test Dummies on the radio. The idea that they'll be at Rifflandia and maybe another generation of Victoria kids, brought by their parents, could form their own core music memory watching Crash Test Dummies makes me really happy. As I finish this paragraph, “Superman's Song” playing on my headphones, I'm really excited to see the Crash Test Dummies next week.

Dakota Bear
Saturday, Phillips Stage, 5:25pm
Being a fan of hip-hop here on the west coast and not having yet seen Dakota Bear live and in person honestly feels like a personal failing at this point. Dakota Bear popped onto my radar as one of the founders and owners of ultra-dope Decolonial Clothing Co. (You should definitely check it out if you're not already on it.) Then I realized he was behind Land Back Records and THEN I realized he raps – and goodness gracious, he makes bangers. Big, new-school trap beats and relentless low end anchor his old-school approach to lyricism and rapping – clear in delivery and clearer in message in a way that reminds me a lot of the icon Chuck D. Dakota Bear is here to not just about his people, but rap FOR his people. It's not just rap to energize you while you fight the power, but rap to remind you of your own power and how that power magnifies when you're riding with your community. Our island hip-hop legend DJ All Good always says “Hip-hop can save the world.” I might not agree completely with that, but I think we can all agree it absolutely does provide the best fucking soundtrack for the Work that needs to be done. I love rap where you can hear the blood pump if you listen close enough, and that's what Dakota Bear is making. Tap in. Get involved.

De La Soul
Sunday, Main Stage, 7:10pm
(Okay, I need to start by saying that technically I'm not breaking my previously mentioned headliner rule, because De La Soul is actually on the third line of the poster I'm looking at and are not playing a “headline” set time. So, please do not mention this to me.) Do I really need to recommend seeing De La Soul? Inarguably one of the most important and iconic hip-hop groups of all time, De La Soul should not be being missed by anyone at Rifflandia this year. (Alas, they are playing at nearly the same time as Lfucking7, so I guess there is an acceptable to reason to maybe miss them. It is the only excuse I will accept.) The importance of De La Soul in the landscape of hip-hop cannot be overstated – when rap was ablaze with the righteous and unchecked fury of the likes of N.W.A., De La Soul was the counterbalance, the opposite side of the emotions and ideology that was emanating from the west coast. (De La's untouchable debut 3 Feet High and Rising hit the world less than 5 months after Straight Outta Compton.) Thoughtful, playful, absurd and endlessly likeable, De La Soul showed that even while gangsta rap was ripping through the charts, hip-hop was a huge place that had room for everyone. Their fourth album, my favourite De La album, Stakes Is High remains a touchstone for rap fans disillusioned the crass commercialism that has slowly been trying devouring the music we love since it got recognized a serious commodity in the 80s. Not only did De La Soul correctly diagnose the problem on Stakes is High, seeing the crest of the wave in the distance, they offered solutions – musically, lyrically and in their choice of guest spots, ushering in new torch bearers of rap. They called on the likes of Common and Erykah Badu right before they broke out and they introduced most of the world to a young Mos Def. De La Soul weren't just a rap group, they were rap medicine men. It's a place they've continuously held in the culture as they've carried forward. To this day, every time a new De La track or song pops up, it's must-listen because not only are they one of the greatest and most enduring direct conduits to the most important time in rap, they just make really good fucking rap music, no matter the era you're into.

Skratch Bastid
Saturday, Phillips Stage, 8:40pm
The most concise description of me as a music fan these days would probably be, “Old head who still likes to dance.” There aren't many people on a stage specifically made to satisfy this equation like the mighty SKRATCH BASTID. Undisputedly one of Canada's biggest, most respected and frankly, just straight-up dopest DJs in the game today – a position he's carved out and held with nearly a quarter century of crushing dancefloors and pleasing nerds like me, sitting alone with a big set of headphones on. Bastid is one of the most likeable humans to ever step behind the decks, the joy he gets from DJing radiating from the stage as he dazzles with his unmatched ear and more impressively, his unmatched turntable heroics. I became a hip-hop fan in the mid-to-late 90s and by that time changes in hip-hop had allowed the MC to be the star. Sure the DJ was important, but as far as I was concerned, if you weren't holding a mic, I wasn't really paying attention to you. As such, I had never really thought of the DJ as a star performer until I saw Bastid. (Apart from Kid Koala, because I'm a good Canadian kid who grew up on MuchMusic and jumped at my first opportunity to go see Kid Koala after I was legal age. Even though I didn't really understand the greatness I was seeing at the time.) It was 2007, Bastid played before powerful K'naan, here in Victoria, at Sugar Nightclub. I honestly don't remember many specifics of his set except that I was re-experiencing so many songs for what felt like the first time. But one thing I'm SURE I remember – at least 95%, okay 80% sure – that has stuck with me to this day, was a seamless drop between Sabbath's “Iron Man” and dead prez' “Hip Hop” that felt like it lit the fuse of jam-packed room. Everyone lost their fucking minds. Since then, I've always jumped at any chance to see Skratch Bastid. Some of the best sets I've ever seen in Shambhala's legendary Fractal Forest have been courtesy of the man himself. And knowing the quality on that stage every year, that's really saying something. If you're going to Rifflandia, please, just make to sure to see Skratch Bastid. Your ears and hips will thank you.