Skip to content

All-Star Wrestling’s 10th-anniversary show prompts move to 1,000-seat Agriplex for one night in July

Event could draw ‘biggest wrestling crowd in Surrey in years’
web1_KyleOReilly
photo: submitted Former ROH (Ring of Honor) champ Kyle O’Reilly (right) will get his kicks in an All-Star Wrestling event on Friday, June 9 at Cloverdale Fairgrounds’ Alice MacKay building.

For one night only, Surrey-based All-Star Wrestling will move into a much bigger venue.

The occasion is a special one, as ASW will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a big event on Friday, July 7 at the Agriplex arena at Cloverdale Fairgrounds.

The wrestling action that night will feature Tommy Dreamer, Gangrel, Short Sleeve Sampson, UFC fighter “Filthy” Tom Lawlor and others.

Mark Vellios, a chief organizer of the event, is excited to stage it.

“For our 10th anniversary, we’re pretty sure we’d sell out the small building, and we’re shooting for a thousand people in the Agriplex, which will be the biggest wrestling crowd in Surrey in years,” he told the Now-Leader. “We’ve sold all of our VIPs and front-rows (seats) already, and now we’re starting to sell the floor,” he added. “We’ve stacked up all of our top guys, guys who are popular, for this show.”

By “small building,” Vellios refers to the Alice MacKay building, also located at the fairgrounds, on the edge of 176th Street. The venue is put into service for ASW shows every second Friday night.

A wrestling event there this Friday night (June 9) is also a special one for Vellios, as it will feature former ROH (Ring of Honor Wrestling) world champ Kyle O’Reilly against Kenny Lush (aka “Loose Cannon”) in an event dubbed Wrestling with Honor.

“It looks like he (O’Reilly) will be going to the WWE soon, although that hasn’t been announced yet – kinda hush-hush,” Vellios said.

“I originally trained him to be a wrestler when he broke in, about 10 years ago now, more than that. He’s a big wrestling star in Japan, and he was raised in North Delta.… This will be his first time with us at All-Star, and he was with ECCW back in the day.”

Back in his day, Vellios was known as Gorgeous Michelle Starr in the wrestling ring, before he retired his colourful boas and makeup in 2015 to concentrate on his dock job and to also run All-Star Wrestling’s regional circuit of events.

As Starr, Vellios made his Canadian debut at a previous version of All-Star Wrestling in 1988, and wrestled for the promotion until it closed down in 1989. Originally from California, Vellios’ first foray into professional wrestling was as a member of the WWF’s ring crew for the west coast. He decided to try his hand at performing within the squared circle on local independent shows. The rest is history.

Vellios launched West Coast Championship Wrestling in 1991 and held matches at Bridgeview Hall before moving on to Cloverdale’s Alice MacKay building. By 2006, he decided to sell his share in another promotion, ECCW, and walk away from the business altogether, but found himself drawn back to it soon enough.

“I took a year off and then opened up (the current iteration of) All-Star Wrestling,” recalled Vellios in a 2014 interview with the Now.

Using a name familiar to many, Vellios said he initially revived ASW with the intent to do one-off shows and fundraising events. However, just like his walking away from the business, that idea was also short-lived.

“Then it got more serious, more competitive, and eventually we got back into Cloverdale and been going strong ever since,” he told the Now’s Christopher Poon in 2014.

At the Alice MacKay building, Vellios said the switch to biweekly events is still “hit and miss” in terms of tickets sold. The company had to think about “whether it’s good to do it twice a month in there and whether it’s hurting us or not,” he said, “but we’re getting crowds in there now, for sure.”

ASW’s 10th-anniversary show at the Agriplex is “definitely a special, big-budget show for us,” Vellios explained, “and probably the most expensive one we’ve done. We have people flying in for it, plus our local crew, so we have plane tickets to deal with and hotels, that kind of stuff, and we’re paying some of the people in U.S. dollars, so it’s quite a big venture for us. It’s exciting doing something like this (on a larger scale), but it’s more of a risk, too.”

General-admission seats for the July 7 event are $15 via allstarwrestling.ca, or call 604-710-0872.

Tickets are similarly priced for this Friday’s event at Alice MacKay building, where the O’Reilly-Lush battle is the main draw. Other matches will feature Moondog Manson facing Azeem the Dream, Air Adonis against Adam Ryder, “Ravenous” Randy Myers teaming with Sgt. Mike Everest to take on The Tokyo Raiders, Kellen Raeth vs. Matt Xstatic and Dave “The Black Sheep” Turner in his ASW debut against Salty Seaman. Bell time is 7:30 p.m., with a post-show “meet the wrestlers” event at The Attic pool hall and bar, 9461 120th St., North Delta.

Another new development in the ASW world is the construction of a new wrestling ring.

“We have a new ring that we built, and we used it for just one show so far, and we haven’t used it in Clovedale yet,” Vellios explained. “We still have the other one, and the newer one was needed because we had two shows on the same day – one downtown at Robson Square in the ice arena area there on May 5 and 6 as part of a Mexican (festival), and a private birthday party event in Burnaby on the same day, the Saturday, so we got that second ring ready to go.

“It’s a bigger ring and it’s higher off the ground, so the visibility is better than with the smaller one. We’re hoping to use the new one for the 10th-anniversary event.”

tom.zillich@ surreynowleader.com



Tom Zillich

About the Author: Tom Zillich

I cover entertainment, sports and news stories for the Surrey Now-Leader, where I've worked for more than half of my 30-plus years in the newspaper business.
Read more