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There’s a new fever in pro wrestling, and it’s tearing up the independent scene with its eyes on tag team gold in June.
Danny Orion and Josh Shimbashi, known simply as Shimbashi, wowed fans with their quick moves and incredible teamwork during WrestleMania Week in Las Vegas, and their rising popularity helped them earn their latest shot at a tag team championship.
New Fever will take on Midnight Heat for the Pandemonium Tag Team Championship at Pandemonium: Pro Wrestling’s Dismantling Summer event in Portland, Oregon on June 6. Both Orion and Shimbashi expressed confidence going into the match.
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Shimbashi and Danny Orion are a tag team group called New Fever (Provided to Pakinomist Digital)
“Expectations, absolutely, we’re just going to beat the hell out of them,” Orion told Pakinomist Digital in a recent interview. “That’s No. 1. I bet they’re excited to be in the ring with New Fever after what we did during ‘Mania week and what we’ve been doing.”
Shimbashi said he brings an extra briefcase for his half of the belt.
“I expect the bag will be about 20 pounds heavier. I’ll bring a separate carry-on bag so I can put the new belt in,” he said. “And I think Pandemonium will have the unique opportunity to be the first tag team championship that New Fever will hold — the first of many, by the way.
“I expect, and you can quote me on this, I expect three tag titles before the end of the year… I already believe New Fever is easily something special. I think we’re already doing what a lot of tag teams don’t, which is wrestling all over the country, which already puts us in a unique class, and we haven’t tagged in a whole year. me, the sky’s the limit from here.”
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Orion, who is already the New Texas Pro World Heavyweight Champion, and Shimbashi have come a long way in their own pro wrestling journeys to reach this point.
Shimbashi explained that he had to pay his own way to get into a professional wrestling school and saved up nearly $2,100 to start training. He met Orion at his first booking. As for Orion, he explained that he broke his leg playing flag football and started watching wrestling videos on his social media. From there he started researching schools and started training from there.
The two said they were not in a tag team from the top. The two started in two separate groups. Orion tried to convince his group to allow Shimbashi to join them, but kept running around.
Shimbashi and Danny Orion, known as New Fever, compete in the ring. (Provided to Pakinomist Digital)
“I’m still not over the fact that your two friends didn’t let me into the group because I thought it was crazy,” Shimbashi told Pakinomist Digital. “We were in two different teams at the time. And Danny and I were both like, let’s merge the teams and become one big team. And everyone, except us, was like, ‘Bad idea, not good, I don’t want to do that.'” He left his team and I left mine.
“We were doing singles stuff for a long time, and I think we both happened to be noticed by the same people and they said, ‘Oh, they’re both from Texas. Let’s get them to show up at these shows.’ And then it got a bit runny for a while. Wherever I was at a show, Danny was there too and vice versa. And I think they were like, ‘Well, get on guys, right?’ And we were like, ‘Absolutely, we tag a lot.’ And since then we can actually say that we have tagged.”
It took the duo a hot minute to come up with the New Fever tag team name.
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“I discovered a band on TikTok called South Arcade,” Orion told Pakinomist Digital. “Someone captioned (a video) and said, “Oh, I love when White boys sing. Let’s make the White boys sing like that again.” And it was actually good, so I delved into them. They had such a retro vibe in the early 2000s, and I’m just starting to vibe with their music.
“I posted one of their song names, as a caption, ‘Danny Orion is the new fever of wrestling fever’ or something. And some people said, ‘Yo, that’s a good moniker.’ I kept that for a bit. Him and I came up with tag team names, all of which were bad by the way. … Blender Bros was the one.”
Shimbashi said the original plan was to be called Blender Bros.
“This was our brilliant idea as a team. We loved saying we put people in the blender, let’s be Blender Bros. And then we were like, ‘Oh my god, I get it’. We bring a blender to shows and we make smoothies for people and it becomes our thing,” he said. “We both went, we’re going to sit on this, don’t tell anybody this idea because they’re going to steal it. So we had the Blender Bros. I think we had the Rail Boys and stuff. And we ended up just being like, OK, he was in a group called Culture Shock and I was in a group called Pretty Boy Rock, and our brilliant idea was, and we were like, that one time, and we kind of swapped it.
“Then Danny thought, what about New Fever? And I thought, well, that’s better than anything else we came up with.”
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New Fever picked up a victory over Jordan Saint and Robert Martyr at Pandemonium Pro’s Whatever Forever in Las Vegas. The team has since appeared for ACTION Wrestling, PrideStyle Pro, Absolute Intense Wrestling and Pro Wrestling Junkie as they prepare for Dismantling Summer.
