Vin Gerard
| Vin Gerard | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Birth name | Vince Gerard Durling |
| Born |
February 4, 1986 Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Professional wrestling career | |
| Ring name(s) | Equinox Vin Badd Vin Gerard |
| Billed height | 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) |
| Billed weight | 164 lb (74 kg) |
| Billed from | Coal City, Pennsylvania |
| Trained by |
Mike Quackenbush Chris Hero Claudio Castagnoli |
| Debut | May 20, 2005 |
| Retired | February 26, 2012 |
Vince "Vin" Gerard Durling (born February 4, 1986) is an American former professional wrestler. He is best known for his tenure in Chikara, where he was a one time Young Lions Cup Champion.
After training in Chikara's Wrestle Factory school, Durling made his debut on May 20, 2005, as the fan favorite masked wrestler Equinox, a student of Mexican masked wrestler and Chikara alumnus Skayde. Equinox soon began to show an impressive run early on and even made it past experienced Chikara wrestlers in an unsuccessful attempt to win the Young Lions Cup. However, he suffered a concussion at the Negative Balance event at the hands of Team F.I.S.T. (Gran Akuma and Icarus), which put him on the injured list for a while. Upon his return, Equinox began to occasionally team with fellow masked wrestler Angel de Fuego and they became known as Pareja Solar ("Solar Partners" in Spanish).
At the 2005 Tag World Grand Prix, Angel no-showed the event, an occurrence that would later become a running joke, leaving Equinox alone for the tournament. To compensate for his partner's absence, Hydra was named as a replacement partner for Equinox, though they lost in the first round to the Grand Prix's eventual winners Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli. After the Grand Prix, Pareja Solar split and Equinox returned to singles competition, including an unsuccessful attempt at winning the Young Lions Cup from then champion Arik Cannon, during which he suffered a second concussion near the end 2006.
The first half of 2007 was fairly uneventful for Equinox until he scored an upset over the much larger Brodie Lee in Lee's Chikara debut, although Lee returned a couple of months later and easily defeated Equinox in a rematch. Equinox rebounded and scored another major upset, this time by pinning Chris Hero in a tag team match during Invaders weekend. Hero then began feuding with Equinox, which culminated in a hair vs. mask match that Hero won. After the match, Hero exposed Equinox as a Wrestle Factory drop-out who donned a mask and conned Skayde to get ahead in the wrestling business. After his unmasking, Equinox began using his real name (Vin Gerard) and became a villain while also adopting both a new wrestling style and an entirely new attire consisting of black tights with slight variations of the fire and ice symbols from his Equinox attire and a bandanna. Gerard later elaborated on his situation with Skayde, noting that he had threatened to report Skayde to the border patrol if he did not pretend Gerard was his student. Soon after his unmasking, Gerard was banished from the locker room, robbing him of any entrance music and forcing him to enter the arena though the back door of every venue Chikara ran in.
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