Dylan Reviews Full Shows In This Thread

[goodhelmet]

Also, Dylan, the Starman gimmick is a nod to the old Nintendo Wrestling game.

[Dylan Waco]

Also, Dylan, the Starman gimmick is a nod to the old Nintendo Wrestling game.

How the fuck do I not remember this?

[Chess Knight]

I got excited and thought someone was wrestling with an EarthBound gimmick.

[Badlittlekitten]

Cheeky question, does anyone have a link to a Wrestle Kingdom 7 torrent? Can't find it anywhere and it's becoming an increasing pain to avoid spoilers.

[MJH]

Whole show as one file, plus individual matches, are all on YouTube...

[Badlittlekitten]

Sweet, finally found it on there

[tomk]

. For some reason, PWS brings in George South, I assume pays the man trans from North Carolina or wherever the fuck he lives now, doesn't advertise him (not that George South would have sold even a single ticket, but still, if you're going to pay a man trans to work your show, you might as well let people know he's going to be on the card) and then does like 2 minutes of mic work,

 

George South has a ring that he rents (nice ring although ropes sometimes squeek). Normally when you see South in the NorthEast it's because the fed rented his ring.

[Dylan Waco]

National Pro Wrestling Day Afternoon Card

 

Steve Corino/Jimmy Jacobs v. The Briscoes

 

I pretty much hate modern ROH, but these are four of the guys on the roster who I regularly enjoy. More to the point these are four guys who have been pretty good in your workrate/sprint tag matches over the last several months. You don't really think of 40-something Corino as a guy who would work well in that setting or add a lot to it, but in some respects it's a really good use of him. Probably not as good a use of him as PWX having him work a random series of legends/semi-retired guys, but pretty close. Here he gets to strut, surprise people with his athleticism, grind his forearms into peoples faces and serve as a sort of "standard" that makes everyone else's spots look more spectacular than they might otherwise look. I know this if Phil's line, but Mark Briscoe really is your modern day Roughhouse Fargo at this point and it really is a good fit for him. I also get the distinct vibe that his gimmick is a not so subtle shot at Low Ki, which is funny since you could easily argue Briscoe is more convincing than Low Ki at this point. This had some nice punches, a good babyface shine, a short but solid heat section, cleanly executed big spots, and a finish that was really well set up, when it could have easily come across as horribly contrived. They did all of this in about seven minutes and the match was better for it.

 

Saturyne v. Juan Francisco de Coronado

 

Coronado appears to be working a modified version of the Alberto Del Rio gimmick, including a "manservant" named Herbert. Herbert dresses like Kerwin White, while Coronado wrestles in a bow tie and comes to the ring in a cape. Subtext seems to be some sort of mildly less offensive than normal "OMG GAYZ!" gimmick. On the other hand Coronado is awful twink like in appearance and it's a possible this is actually an inverted gimmick where Coronado is quasi-rent boy of wealthy, golf obsessed, closet case Herbert. Herbert tells his wife and kids he is going off on the weekends to the country club, when in fact he gets his boy all oiled up and has him roll around with similarly clad men for his enjoyment. Or I could be reading too much into this.

 

In any case last time I saw Saturyne the announcers were explaining to me that Ophidian was slapping her in the tits because she asked for it. Then she got choked out. In between this she executed some offense really poorly. It was not the best moment for the champions of barrier breaking, intergender wrestling. So all things considered I was pleasantly surprised by this match.

 

Saturyne looked much better than she did at KoT, which is not really saying much. But the real star here was Coronado as he based really well for Saturyne's hyperactive offense, a lot of which really did not look all that sharp. Coronado had no problem spiking himself on a bulldog and working himself into position for spots that easily could have been a disaster. Saturyne's unprovoked dive on Herbert (hate crime?) looked pretty poor, but aside from that her offense came across pretty as sloppy, but impactful, largely due to Coronado. The guy can eat and a kick and threw some pretty good kicks too. I would have liked to see a more fierce heel control segment and it seemed to me that they were going out of their way to make Saturyne look vastly more skilled than Coronado. But the match we got was better than I would have guessed.

 

Tommy Dreamer/Hale Collins v. Vik Dalisush/Ben Ortiz

 

Dreamer brought in a lot of randoms on his first House of Hardcore show, so I got myself really excited by the idea of Ricky Ortiz/Tommy Dreamer matches built around the rally towel. I was seriously disappointed when I saw that I had read in "Ricky" instead of "Ben." A dream for another day perhaps. Apparently this is Ben's first match and Dreamer felt the need to put him over as a judo guy pre-match...okay. He ended up being a big hoss that almost killed Dreamer with a delayed brainbuster and a hit a decent suplex on Collins later. This match was over with the live crowd and alternated between bowling shoe ugly and perfectly fine. I liked Vic's big bump that set up the finish. Short enough to be inoffensive, but definitely something you would skip if you were cherry picking.

 

Ethan Page v. Josh Alexander

 

Alexander is a Toronto guy that my comrade Dave Musgrave is high on and I've enjoyed what I've been able to find on youtube. This was really a showcase match for him as an offensive dynamo and to that end it was basically a success. I'm not sure it was a very good match and I thought Page looked really lost at times. But Alexander's big forearms looked great, his dive onto the back was an example of an innovative move that actually looked neat and his big power offense spots were all impressive. Kind of odd that the people criticizing the Resistance Pro match from the night show, had nothing to say about the man on woman violence in the finish here, but more on that later.

 

Arik Royal/Chiva Kid v. Ric Converse/Trevor Lee

 

This is the match that was getting all of the hype so I was interested to see it. I have thought about taking the trip up to see CWF Mid-Atlantic live before so this was sort of a test to see if it is worth my time. Watching this the impression I got is that one of their shows would be a ton of fun live, but it didn't make me want to go out and watch a ton of stuff from the promotion on youtube, other than Chiva Kid.

 

Really this match was all about Chiva Kid. I thought Converse was solid as the old vet and Lee took a really great face plant bump and hit a couple of cool cutoff spots. Royal comes across as a poor man's Willie Mack, but I didn't think he looked bad. Still the match was pimped as a star making performance from Kid and that's basically what it was.

 

The funny thing is Kid really didn't get that much in, but what he did was so dynamic that it was bound to steal the show. Really sharp at getting over for these snap rana variations, explosive dives and of course the big double rotation moonsault finish. I think Lee deserves a lot of credit for the way he based for some of this, but Kid does have charisma and it comes through in the ring. Not sure that look is conducive to being a huge player, but this was the first time since Amazing Red popped on the scene where the hype of a flyer came close to matching the reality.

 

Having said that as a match I didn't think it was particularly great, there was one extremely cooperative, "let's take turns" sequence and it needed more time to really develop. So yeah Chiva Kid should get more bookings, but I'm not buying this as a great match or even close to it.

 

The Latino Dragon v. Rory Mondo v. Matt Tremont

 

I like Tremont a lot as a death match guy. He just looks the part, sort of inheriting the mantle from Nick Gage, of scummy, dollar store employee, who enjoys stabbing people to take out his frustrations on the world. Don't know a ton about the other two, but for a three way spotfest of it's kind I thought this mostly delivered. There was some sloppiness, but it was the sort of sloppiness that seemed to fit a CZW match, with personalities this different. Tremont's run of face washes, the dives from the other two and Tremont's huge bump off the apron on the suplex all looked really good. I also thought the finish, with Tremont hitting the big frog splash on both guys before the spinning powerbomb was totally believable. I wouldn't go out of my way to watch this or anything, but I have a more positive view of Tremont after it than I did going in.

 

Colt Cabana v. Mike Quackenbush

 

When this match was about working counters it was pretty decent. The problem is that this is stuff being sold as novel which we have all seen before many times. You can get around that if it is bridged with interesting transitions to different things, but this match was basically schtick/comedy and played out novelty. I didn't think it was bad and I actually liked the finish, which was something that was shit on by a lot of people. But both of these guys could do better than this even with the time restraints.

 

Sugar Dunkerton/Aaron Epic v. Eric Corvis/Chris Dickinson

 

I don't really give a shit about any of these guys and Beyond is usually a promotion with your nutty spotfest that deliver for what they are. So I was pretty surprised to see this as a fairly well structured tag match, that incorporated the big spots in an extremely logical fashion....or at least the first part of this was like that. Epic allows himself to get rag dolled and fucked up by a variety of strikes and power spots from the heels. Dunkerton gets fucking crushed by a suplex on the floor that sees his leg smash the guardrail and they play Epic in isolation for a while. Epic gets the tag and I figured they were going to go to a second FIP like this was an 85 AWA tag match. But instead they go into a strike exchange that Dunkerton wins. And then this sort of devolves into your "all four guys in the ring doing big offensive spots" garbage and then it just sort of ends in a way that was out of the blue. Well, I tried to like this.

 

Oliver Grimsly v. Jojo Bravo v. Shane Hollister v. Too Cold Scorpio

 

As a match this was an odd combination of stuff. I get that the goal was to showcase a lot of different guys, but not sure titty twisters and random valet interference were needed to achieve that goal. I was mainly interested in this to see Scorp and I think he was clearly the best guy in the match. Unfortunately the worst guy in the match was probably Grimsly and he's the one that made it to the end against Scorp. Scorp sold well for most of this and all of his offense continues to look really sharp for a guy any age, let alone his age (and size). Hollister was working a superkick gimmick and Bravo seemed to be a guy that could be really fun in a more athletic Colin Delaney way. This was okay, but I'm not a huge fan of "throw shit at the wall" style matches and this definitely qualifies.

 

Dr. Cube/Sekmet v. American Beetle/Neo Teppen

 

I can't even explain this. This was like GWAR v. teenage Chuck E. Cheese employees in their costumes, with all parties on mescaline and Mr. Bungle playing in the background. For some reason a cinderblock was involved and Gavin Loudspeaker was commenting on things over the PA system. I don't even know that you could call this comedy wrestling. It's something entirely different.

 

Drew Gulak v. Francis O'Rourke

 

There were things about this I did not like, namely some stuff toward the middle of the match that felt really "your turn, my turn"ish. And Gulak surviving that top rope suplex is fucking ridiculous. But I did think they worked some fun call back spots, I liked the opening mat stuff more than most of the opening work in any of the other matches and I thought they at least included elements of struggle even on the spots that were obviously less than organic. I wasn't in love with this match, and I'm not sure it was in the right slot on the card (really what could follow Kaiju?), but for matches of this style it was watchable.

 

Surfer Mitch v. ACH v. Lukas Sharp v. Bolt Brady

 

Sharp was there and Bolt Brady looked fucking terrible in this. For a guy with knee based offense it helps if it looks like it connects. Surfer Mitch was more hit or miss. Some of his stuff looked really impressive, some not so much. The star was ACH. Not only is the guy incredible charismatic, but he really is a guy that knows how to integrate his big spots into a match in a meaningful way. He started off the crazy dive sequence early and his selling of Mitch's offense before the big finish, really put over his flash comeback as something extremely significant. The match itself had more internal logic than the other four-way, but it also had sloppier work.

 

Overall the show was okay but even watching it now while doing other things it felt really long. The original plan was to watch both shows back to back but there is no way in hell I'm doing that even though I want to see ACH v. Scorp. There were several individuals that looked good on the show, but I'm not sure there were even four matches on the show I would call good, and I'm a guy who often gets accused of using that term liberally.

[shoe]

ACH, Bolt Brady, and JoJo Bravo work a lot here in Austin for the ACW promotion. ACH is the cream of the crop of the 3. He's treated like he is Rey Misterio here in Austin. How well did he connect to the crowd? In ACW he has the crowd eating out of his hand.

 

Bolt Brady is a guy who has some fun spots. I have yet to see him put it together and have a good match. Though he had a solid 3 way comedy match with Cabana and ACH.

 

Bravo is someone who I have seen a couple of times and thinks he has potential . He has really good facials in the ring. Though he tends to play stuff up for comedy instead of intensity. Still from what I have seen shows me he has potential if given proper guidance.

[Dylan Waco]

Anarchy gets pretty big play with some people I'm friends with, but I'm pretty skeptical about it. ACH always seems to get over huge though and he was really over there. I am really eager to see the match with Scorp, but not looking forward to sitting through such a long show to get there.

[shoe]

I've been to about 10 ACW shows and they usually have 2 to 3 good matches. Then they have some violent matches with workers who are perfect examples of guys who can't work. They have problems with using way too much chairs especially in the undercard. Though they do have some good workers like ACH, Matthew Palmer, Masada, Robert Evans, JT Lamotta, and Gary Jay. Plus some of the women are pretty hard hitting . They also bring in some national Indy stars from time to time like El Generico, Hero, Lynn, Tozawa, and Cabana.Their live shows go for about 5 hrs. They would benefit from cutting the fat and doing shows in the 3 1/2 hr range.

[goodhelmet]

Whenever I have been to ACW shows, the best matches were with national guys being brought in. The rest was garbage. I have been to every show Hero was on since 2007. His matches were always the best on the show. ACH and Arik Cannon had a match that gets props because they wrestled on a wet mat and didn't botch one move. Mike Dell and Rory Fox had a great team and then a great bloody match that I can't find anywhere. Everything else has been garbage... some good, some bad but garbage. Still, if a card has a national guy on it, I would go.

[Dylan Waco]

some good, some bad but garbage?

[goodhelmet]

Yeah.... even if a match is garbage it can be entertaining where you were happy you watched it. Other garbage is so bad, you are embarrassed to be a wrestling fan.

[shoe]

Usually the first few matches are pretty bad. Like Will said it usually takes a national guy to get me to go to the show. Sometimes they have some cool booking moments, I have also seen them book an angle that was so not the time for it. The crowd was really pissed off. You would have to be blind not to see how pissed the crowd was. Speaking of the crowd. I really don't like them. Their is a pocket of heel fans , then their is a few who are just cracking jokes trying to get themselves over. Again the last show I went to I liked except for the big angle at the end that really hurt a nice moment on the show, and for all the fat on the undercard.

[shoe]

According to ACH Hero was the guy that convinced him to move to St.Louis so he could get more high profile bookings. It seems to be working.

[Dylan Waco]

What was the bad angle?

[shoe]

It was Jerry Lynn's last match in Austin and they were pushing it hard. He worked his ass of in the main event and the match got over big. The people wanted the speech at the end. Instead the heel group came out and laid out Lynn, his opponent, people from the back, the champ is a girl and they threatened to kill Lynn she didn't give him a title match. They kicked the crap out of her and then pinned her for the belt. So the crowd is pissed. Then we get the Jerry Lynn speech. A lot of the crowd is booing. Scott Summer's Lynn's opponent starts yelling at the crowd for being disrespectful. While the crowd is booing at the bush league angle.

[goodhelmet]

The problem is that Scott Summers is pretty bush league. Hero ripped into him after a match they had in 2008. Hero was telling him after the match to stop talking to the fucking fans, start taking wrestling seriously and he might become more than a weekend warrior someday. After the show, my wife and I talked to him about his singlet/onesie... deep shit.

[shoe]

Plus the crowd was there for Lynn. Usually they draw between 100-250. I bet they had 500 packed into that place. So they wanted to see Lynn give a good bye speech, not as a prop in an angle.

[shoe]

The problem is that Scott Summers is pretty bush league. Hero ripped into him after a match they had in 2008. Hero was telling him after the match to stop talking to the fucking fans, start taking wrestling seriously and he might become more than a weekend warrior someday. After the show, my wife and I talked to him about his singlet/onesie... deep shit.

 

Summers is a piece of work. He cuts promos how they work hard . He'll name drop ACH, Masada etc. That is fine. All of the 3 are baby faces . Then he'll name drop Jaykus Plisken. The crowd goes silent. You want to yell Summers you dumb ass Plisken is a heel. We are not supposed to admire his hard work.

[Dylan Waco]

National Pro Wrestling Day Evening Show

 

Reed Bentley/Tripp Cassidy v. Devin Bliss/Heidi Lovelace

 

I alluded to this earlier, but there was a fair amount of controversy in some quarters over the Resistance Pro mixed tag match which is still to come on the show and the way it portrayed women. I am a guy who generally opposes intergender matches because I think it's virtually impossible to do it right and the end result is almost always something that makes someone look bad or is extremely uncomfortable. Having said that if you are going to run these matches, a match like this makes the most sense from a raw logic perspective. Heels ambush babyfaces, girl gets isolated, girl gets pummeled, rookie guy gets hot tag, makes mistake, girl gets finished off with one big shot. This is a logical way to book a match like this and as such it is a reasonably decent match despite some pretty poor exchanges early on. But I have no clue how someone could watch this and come away thinking that this portrayed Lovelace as an equal to her opponents (something that was said by many comparing the RPro match to this one) or how you could watch this and not think there was an element of male on woman violence that was pretty uncomfortable at times. Bentley kept crushing Lovelace with forearms and she took some really impressive - but frightening - bumps. She got forearms rubbed against her face and was trapped underneath two different guys mounting her. I'm not saying the intention was to present her as a victim, nor am I saying that such a presentation would even be bad in the context of pro wrestling. But even if the RPro match turns out to be worse, I'm not sure how this could be pointed to as an example of sexual egalitarianism in a wrestling ring.

 

The SAT v. Angel Ortiz/Mike Draztik

 

Damn another guy named Ortiz who's not Ricky? These people are killing me. The SAT look like two pudgier versions of Michael Elgin at this point and in my head I was kind of hoping this would be a match built around them doing strong man spots. Not so. Really this wasn't built around anything and was a total mess of a match. It's really hard to fuck up a basic tag match that is given a lot of time, but they absolutely butchered this. I can live with a certain amount of poorly timed stuff or guys not knowing what is going on or shit ring positioning. But if you are given fifteen minutes to work a tag match, you ought to at least figure out who is working face and who is working heel. I swear to god they switched that up two or three times here and it just serves to enhance the other weaknesses. I did like Ortiz dive and the double Spanish Fly looks cool, but this match was shit.

 

Christina Von Eerie v. Ezavel Suena

 

God do I hate Dasher Hatfield on commentary. Just awful. This match was pretty short and fairly inoffensive, but aside from maybe one sick kick from Suena and a pretty well executed finish there was really nothing of note. Von Eerie has some hype surrounding her, but I thought Suena was clearly the better worker in this match. I spent most of this wishing someone would punch Dasher in the throat.

 

Robert Anthony/ThunderKitty v. Jay Bradley/D'Arcy Dixon

 

So this match has been shit on in a variety of places. Just the other day I saw Flik talk it up as something of a clusterfuck on DVDVR and while I often disagree with Flik he's a guy who's opinion I generally respect. My good, close, personal, long time friend Thomas Holzerman was there for both shows live and took a massive shit all over this, to the point of getting into something of a twitter war with some of the participants after a blog posting where he argued that the match was the absolute worst example of intergender wrestling as a showcase for misogynistic fantasies. So I was expecting this to be a pretty bad match and possibly a very offensive match. To be fair I rarely get offended by wrestling, but I am predisposed to see intergender matches as slippery slopes, and the comments of Tom and other led me to believe this might be bad enough where even I would cringe.

 

So I watched the match and it turns out I don't think it represented women nearly as bad as the opening match on the evening show with Lovelace. In fact of the intergender matches so far on both shows I thought the women were presented the best in the ring here, as it didn't have the over the top bumping that the Cornado match on the afternoon show had (I gave the guy credit, but he was basically working comedy schtick) and neither was presented as particularly weak. In fact if anything Dixon was presented TOO strongly. I admit that I thought the death valley driver she hit on Anthony was really impressive, but to me that's a perfectly example of "just because you can do it, doesn't mean you should do it." In any even Dixon actually dominated Anthony when she was paired up against him. Yes he slammed her and screamed domestic violence, but it was off an exchange where she out wrestled him. Yes the Philly crowd was chanting "domestic violence," possibly for the wrong reasons, but this is a risk you take when you run these sort of matches and it was clear that Anthony was heel even if the typical pro-heel Philly crowd was cheering for him. Yes she took a nasty kick from him, but it was done off of a misdirection spot. In fact she NEVER got manhandled or taken out by him in an even exchange. The presentation was "she is small, but technically talented to the point of being equal or better than the Resistance Pro Champion." I honestly have no clue how anyone watching the match could come to any other conclusion.

 

Thunderkitty was not presented as strongly, but that's not surprising - she was the female heel. Still she wasn't presented poorly, as she did more opposite Dixon than Anthony did, hit some nice offense, got in a nutshot that disabled Bradley and when she ate her own kick from Bradley it didn't completely eliminate her from the match even though it was a huge shot.

 

I thought there were two clear problems with the match. The first is that Bradley was working as a cocky, douche heel too. This in and of itself is not a massive negative, but he was paired with a babyfaces, babyface in Dixon and while I got the feeling they were sort of teasing a slow heel turn for him over the course of the match, he just oozes dick and that's effectively how he looked all match long. Still when he dropped the fall and attacked Dixon post match in no way did it make Dixon look weak as critics claimed. In fact it made her look strong - she bet the champs ass, and the giant dude got out wrestled by him. I can see how it came across differently live since the Philly fans loathe women, but that's not the fault of the wrestlers. That's the fault of the fans and more importantly the fault of wrestling promotions that see no danger in promoting intergender matches in front of audiences like this.

 

The second problem with the match was the commentary, which was really bad (as noted by Flik on the DVDVR) and which I thought reflected incredibly poorly on Chikara. Chikara is a company that goes out of it's way to promote intergender wrestling, to treat women as equals to men in matches and to get away from the notion that women's wrestling is an irrelevancy. And yet here you have their ring announcer Gavin Loudspeaker and even worse their top official Bryce Remsburg cracking jokes about Thunderkitty for most of the match, with almost all of their jokes being mocking shots at women's wrestlers of years past and how much of a joke they were. I'm hardly a "wrestling history is serious business!" guy, but that was easily the most offensive part about the match to me, particularly because Chikara sells itself as being the vanguard of gender equality in wrestling. Remsburg is a semi-regular guest on Holzerman's podcast (as am I) and I'd be interested to hear Bryce's defense of his commentary, which was distracting, seemed to be deliberately designed to undermine the match and was at direct odds with the PC/ultra inclusive way his home promotion markets themselves.

 

I could see not loving the match, because it wasn't close to great. Hating it? Hell at this point it was the best match on this show by a safe margin and I would argue it was actually pretty good for what it was but my expectations coming in were about as low as they could possibly be. Hating it because it was a woman hating, offensive, piece of trash? I don't see it at all and I'm puzzled as to how anyone could.

 

The Colony/3.0 v. Los Ice Creams/Team FIST

 

The first half of this was everything I hate bout Chikara as it was in full blown "did you know wrestling was fake? Let us show you!" mode. I understand there are people who like that stuff and yes you can point to plenty of other business exposing shit in all sorts of promotions, but I don't think anything is as ridiculous as Chikara, where they literally undermine heat sections for the sole purpose of getting laughs. Not even the Kaiju match I watched on the afternoon show was guilty of that. Anyhow, the second half of this was more tolerable, as they integrated the comedy into the match in a way that led to some interesting spots and counters. I really liked Matthews triple stomp into Fire Ant's big splash and the dive train was pretty good including the spot that Green Ant fucked up. Half of this was terrible, the other half was reasonably entertaining. Pretty much the story of Chikara.

 

Apollyon/Tony Nese v. Alex Reynolds/John Silver

 

This was a really enjoyable spotfest, that even mixed in some sound wrestling structure to give it a little extra something beyond just crazy moves. Nese is a guy that has impressed me before, but has also disappointed me. Still this is a match with two guys who are regular dance partners of his and he gets in all of his signature spots. The escape sequences he does are really sharp and don't look super choreographed even if though they are something he works into a lot of matches. I like his big rotating dive a lot too and his Backlund power lift and face wash knee are great impactful spots. Silver looks sort of silly, but he throws bombs and can take punishment. Reynolds looks pretty douchey and while the spot with him tying Nese up in the ropes looked pretty goofy, I enjoyed it as an attempt to do something interesting while staying within formula. Apollyon got the most hype out of this and I see whyas big dudes who do dives, splashes, bump big, et will always stand out. I'm not sure he really lived up to the chatter I heard about him in this match, but the finish he hit was sick and I did leave this wanting to see more of him. Balls to the wall match that made good use of it's time.

 

AR Fox v. Shane Strickland

 

Fox is one of my favorite of the current indy spot monkeys as he generally doesn't try and work absurdly long near fall fests and instead focuses on getting his impressive stuff in and then going home. This match got just about the perfect amount of time for an AR Fox match and aside from Strickland's silly spinning Canadian Destroyer thing I liked it. I even thought they did a pretty good job of segmenting the match as much as you possibly can in a match that is essentially a "top this" highspot contest. Still I really like Fox's corner combo, his triple dives, the sick double knees that folded up Strickland like an accordion, et. Strickland for his part hit a really nasty looking double stomp and a really nice high kick cut off of a Fox dive. Having said that, my favorite part of the match might have actually been Fox mocking Strickland's dancing. As a whole this was sprinty and fun, though it may have suffered a little following a match with Nese working his Amazing Red/Low Ki tribute spots and a fat guy doing dives.

 

The Devastation Corporation v. The Estonian ThunderFrog/The Latvian Proud Oak

 

The pre-match bit with the Tony Clifton lookalike playing delusional manager who claims territorial era guys are still alive and involved with his promotion was done fifty thousand times better by "Big Don" era Tommy Rich in ECW. Not sure why the Baltic States wildlife would be teaming up here, as my understanding is that these areas see themselves as culturally distinct. Anyhow this was presented by a fed called Wrestling Is Awesome, which is basically just a bobo version of Chikara. I honestly can't think of anything in wrestling I'd rather see less than a bobo version of Chikara so I didn't like this. I especially didn't like this because the Devastation Corporation could be really fun in the right setting, but this ain't it.

 

John McChesney v. Logan Shulo

 

This seemed like it would have been really good if they had more time to space out the spots, but following a couple of big time spotfests earlier in the night hurt this. McCheseney really impressed me as the guy smacked the fuck out of the post on his missed chop, took an insane full length of the ring bump on a suplerplex and almost died on his wild ass tope. Shulo looked fine, but really generic, and having the stupid "Jesus" gimmick meant me were subjected to more awful Bryce/Gavin commentary. I did think the finish with the foreign object being stopped, only to lead to the belt shot would have worked great to end a twenty minute match, with well paced spots. But this match was half that length and while a lot of the spots were impressive they weren't well paced.

 

Matty de Nero/The Hurricane v. Kobald/Ophidian

 

This was way better than I expected, which is to say it was pretty good. This had some of the Chikara-y stuff, but it was well integrated into the confines of a traditional tag match. For example the face shine included a dance off and some schtick from Helms, but it was sold well by the heels and came across as heels trying to upstage a babyface and getting shown up, rather than guys in masks doing a Who's Line Is It Anyway? bit. Think Rougeas v. Rockers almost. This led to a nice couple of dives from the babyfaces before the heels took over. Heels offense was a reasonable combination of indyish offense that at least looked like it hurt and traditional stomps/heel stuff. de Nero wears power glove to the ring and his gimmick is that he powers up rather than hulks up, but to his credit it is way less cartoonish than it sounds and actually worked pretty well. I could have done without the bit with Ophidian hypnotizing Helms, but it was a minimal part of the match and it didn't go too far into the realm of absurdity. Double chokeslam finish was fun. Helms still looks really good and this was a pleasant surprise.

 

ACH v. Too Cold Scorpio

 

I expected this to be the best match of the day and it was. In some respects it was a bit disappointing as I thought working in the comedy spot on the floor didn't really fit the "respect" theme of the match, even if it made sense given the setting. I also thought ACH probably should have gotten to kick out of one big spot before being put away. But otherwise I liked this a lot. The early exchanges, were really good "flashy" spots of the "feeling each other" out mold and there was some cool nuance to them. I liked ACH slipping out from the back elbow to show his speed and using the foot stomp to counter the overhead wristlock a lot. Scorp going nasty with that first big kick was really awesome and even though the follow up stuff on the floor lost me for a second it sort of made sense in the grand scheme of things.

 

ACH's first big run of spots looked good, but I thought this really heated up when Scorp started fire off with the kicks. At that point this turned into something more serious and it escalated with both guys going for the big KO as time went on. Scorp ate some really big shots and I really liked his selling as he kept teasing that he was going to blow shit off, only to get hit by one more big shot from ACH. It's strange but that was a really effective way of making ACH's offense look big time.

 

Finishing run was solid with ACH getting some good near falls and Scorp counting with the big koppokick and then Dropping the Bomb for the win. I get the feeling that they might have done a bit more if the crowd wasn't obviously gassed from the ridiculously long day. I like ACH, but I came away from this match thinking it would have been a better match if he had worked more from underneath, though I'm not positive his selling is sharp enough to have made it work. In any event this was a really good match and a good way to end the show, even if I had built it up to be a slightly better match on paper.

 

Overall I thought the evening show smoked the afternoon show. There were things on the show I didn't like, but the stuff I expected to dislike was better than I thought it would be and the stuff I expected to like I liked. Not a great show, but a good one.

[rovert]

Whenever I have been to ACW shows, the best matches were with national guys being brought in. The rest was garbage. I have been to every show Hero was on since 2007. His matches were always the best on the show. ACH and Arik Cannon had a match that gets props because they wrestled on a wet mat and didn't botch one move. Mike Dell and Rory Fox had a great team and then a great bloody match that I can't find anywhere. Everything else has been garbage... some good, some bad but garbage. Still, if a card has a national guy on it, I would go.

Robert Evans or Portia Perez haven't made much of an impression then? Even character work wise?

[Cox]

As a man of Lithuanian descent, I am praying that Chikara doesn't introduce some bullshit Lithuanian gimmick to form a trios team with the Latvian and the Estonian.

[shoe]

Whenever I have been to ACW shows, the best matches were with national guys being brought in. The rest was garbage. I have been to every show Hero was on since 2007. His matches were always the best on the show. ACH and Arik Cannon had a match that gets props because they wrestled on a wet mat and didn't botch one move. Mike Dell and Rory Fox had a great team and then a great bloody match that I can't find anywhere. Everything else has been garbage... some good, some bad but garbage. Still, if a card has a national guy on it, I would go.

Robert Evans or Portia Perez haven't made much of an impression then? Even character work wise?

 

 

I've liked Evans. He had a really great match against El Generico. He also made a great return to the company and did an homage to Duggan in the Gorilla suit. ACW was doing a show in October and encouraged people to dress in Halloween costumes. Well Evans dressed as Worshack . He sat in the crowd and no one knew it was a returning Evans until he interfered in Portia's match. It was a cool moment.

 

Now Portia has done nothing for me.