Saturday Seven – CZW Dojo Wars Superstars Who Made It To The Show, Volume 2

Welcome to the Saturday Six Seven, where each week I let you get to know me a bit better with the help of a list. Any idiot can do a Top 5 list, which is why I kicked it up a notch to a Top 6 7. This week’s topic: CZW Dojo Wars Superstars who made it to the show, Volume 2.

It’s only taken two and a half years between volumes, but in this edition, in honor of the most Stupendous WrestleMania happening this weekend, I’m going to go over a list of people who have graduated from putting on $5 shows for me and 12 other people to showing off their skills by making it up to THE major league wrestling promotion, WWE. Even so, only two are currently active in the WWE, most have moved on to other pastures, either AEW or Impact. But you can’t take away from them the time they spent at the top of the mountain. No wait, that was a weird TNA reverse battle royale. You know what I mean.

1. Drew Gulak – Head Trainer & 9, 20, 26-29, 42, 44-45, 49, 60, 62-63, Mega Event 2 – 8x 24/7 Champion, 1x WWE Cruiserweight Champion
    
   

   Drew is just all around a good dude. When Dojo Wars started, he was CZW World champion, doing his ‘Drew For a Better Combat Zone’ shtick, which he pretty much copied exactly in his early appearances with the ‘No Fly Zone’. But then he added the PowerPoints and took it to a whole new level. Sure, once 205 Live went away he’s kinda just been floundering in the 24/7 hunt, but he’s still always been a good hand and very entertaining. While at Dojo Wars, he wasn’t always wrestling, but he was pretty much always there running the show until he left for the E. He did pull me aside by name once, and thanked me for all those early event write ups, so I got that going for me. I saw him many years later at a memorial show for Dojo Wars’ photographer, and I don’t think he remembered me, but he was still super nice. He went all the way from a dingy warehouse to getting flown to Saudi Arabia to be in the Greatest Royal Rumble, which is about as high as one can rise.

2. Lennon Duffy to Lio Rush – 17,18,20,26,35,40,48 – 1x NXT Cruiserweight Champion
    
   

   Back when I met him, it was before he was going by Lio Rush, he was going by the name “Lennon Duffy”, which yeah, that was definitely an upgrade. I remember back at the time being like “This guy has moves” and he was doing flippy shit well above what alot of the other students were doing. His path has been, let’s call it complicated. He got a lot of visibility as Bobby Lashley’s mouthpiece, but wasn’t wrestling alot. He eventually went back to NXT and took the Cruiserweight Championship off of Drew Gulak and had a short run, before being laid off amid the various waves of COVID cost cutting measures. But he came back to AEW, at least for a while. He seems to be a free agent now, so there’s no telling what he’ll do next.

3. Slugger Clark to Velveteen Dream – 17,18, 20 – 1x NXT North American Champion
    
   

   He only appeared at a few holiday shows wrestling with his tag team partner, Lio Rush, right before he went off to be on the revamped Tough Enough. But even those few times I saw him was enough to skew my viewing experience of that season. It was clear he was the only one with any passion or experience. It’s a shame he didn’t win, but he’s the only male from that season with any kind of wrestling success, so in that sense, he’s the true winner. His transition to Velveteen Dream was, well, strange, but he did some amazing work with it. His whole program with Aleister Black was amazing. Unfortunately, some unfounded personal rumors persist about him, and we’ll probabaly never see him again, which is a shame. Maybe EC3 and Braun Strowman will bring him into CYN.

4. Shane “Swerve” Strickland to Isaiah “Swerve” Scott – 4-7 – 1x NXT North American Champion
    
   

   In the Dojo, Swerve had a series of contests over the CZW Wired Title, trading it back and forth with Joe Gacy. I’ll be the first to admit, I was not the target audience for Hit Row, and I hated pretty much everything about them. But one thing you couldn’t deny, was that Swerve could wrestle. It’s a real shame WWE dropped the ball on him so hard. After winning the NXT North American Title, he got called up to Smackdown along with Hit Row. He then had to drop the belt to Carmelo Hayes, B-Fab was released, and then all of Hit Row was released all in the span of two months. He bounced back quickly though and landed at AEW.

5. Joe Gacy – Pretty much all the damn time, but explicitly 1-16, 18-25, 30-32, 34, 35, 40-42, 45, 49, 60, 62, 63, 65-67, 72, 74, 75-77, 82,83, 85, 87, 88,89, 94, 99, 100, 102, 104, 113, 126, 147, 150, 152, 164, 169, 172
    
   

   I do not understand this weird new age woke influencer character that Gacy has been slotted with. In the many many times I saw Gacy, he was an unstoppable monster, just beating the holy hell out of other dudes, to the chants of “Gacy’s gonna kill you”. I mean, it’s good he’s at the table, but it seems to be a complete 180 from everything I’ve ever seen from him. It looks like maybe little bits are breaking through, so hopefully eventually he gets like a full stable and just runs around wrecking up the joint.

6. Anthony Bennett – almost weekly between 115 and 182 – NXT Cruiserweight Classic Participant
    
   

   Bennett actually showed up in the Dojo after his time in the Cruiserweight Classic, which is something we didn’t let him forget. People (ok, I) would frequently mock him that he got beat by Tony Neese of all people (who didn’t even make it to the quarterfinals) and that he lost pretty quickly in the first round. Also that his hair and sunglasses were ridiculous. But he still kept coming back week after week working on his craft, so you have to respect that.

7. Kimber Lee to Abbey Laith – 2-4 – Mae Young Classic 2017 Participant
    
   

   Her time in both the Dojo specifically and WWE were pretty short, but Kimber has a pretty long list of accomplishments. Before the Mae Young, she was the Chikara Grand Champion, the first female to hold the main title of a major promotion. It’s a pretty big deal even if we’re not supposed to talk about Chikara anymore due to all the stuff owner Mike Quackenbush did. She was released mostly because she didn’t have the right WWE “look”, supposedly because of her weight. Which is horseshit. She’s no Alexa Bliss or Liv Morgan, but she’s no Tamina or Kharma. Since her departure, she was great in the very convoluted Impact storyline of Su Yung/Susie/Susan and Deonna Purrazzo. It’s hard to explain. Wrestling is weird sometimes.

Biff Busick would get a slot for his run as Oney Lorcan, where he was a 1x NXT Tag team champion, but while he appeared with his training Dojo at Dojo Wars 15, he himself did not actually wrestle.

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook