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Dylan Waco

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Vintage Wrestling Summerbash 2013

 

Team Lucha v. The Exerguys

 

This wasn't any good but I enjoyed watching because the concept of The Exerguys is pretty great. Two dudes in pink spandex coming out to the blaring tune of "I Want To Get Physical!! Physical!" while tugging at various low intensity exercise equipment is the sort of gimmick that really works in a setting like this. I especially enjoyed the fact that one of the guys is pretty chunky and grizzly in look, completely un-Bodydonnaesque in every way. I do think the act would be slightly enhanced if they came out to the Hot Sundae classic "Go For It," but what they have is fine. They were also the vastly better team in this. Team Lucha look and wrestle like what old school wrestling guys in shoot tapes always accuse all indie wrestlers of being. One of them looks almost Tanahashiesque with his hair cut and the other just looks boring. The boring guy ends up playing the FIP in this and his selling is just astoundingly bad, filled with stupid "yuk, yuk" moments and ending in one of the lamest and most choreographed looking falling hot tags I've ever seen. The Exerguys actually had a good command of tag psychology, a couple of nice double teams and some decent individual offense, but they couldn't overcome that scrub. The Tanahashi guy was slightly less offensive and had a couple of spots that looked pretty decent, but the way Team Lucha tried to run through all of their offense in sequences really exposed how shitty most of it was. It was almost like they watched some Guerreros tags without understanding that a key part of the Guerreros act was that they were actually flashy for their time and more importantly had good timing. Anyway, The Exerguys piqued my interest enough where this wasn't a total disaster and I will say that Team Lucha was over, but I never want to see another match of theirs again. The Southern tag format and setting (pretty hot crowd and a ring that looked like it was covered with two or three layers of staph) made this more watchable than it normally would have been.

 

Sam Shaw v. QT Marshall

 

I've said this before and he's since been released, but I still cannot believe TNA signed Sam Shaw of all people. If you wanted to pick a random Florida/South Georgia indie guy there are easily 20-30 guys better and of those only a handful might have wanted any real money to sign. Here Shaw comes to the ring and immediately dresses the ref in his hat and shirt. I have no clue what the significance of that was, but this would be a theme with Shaw putting on Marshall's robe in order to spark outrage from him a little later. In general Marshall is one of those ROH guys who I sort of thing would be really good most places other than ROH (he's decent there) and this match kind of validates my thoughts in that respect. I really enjoyed his interaction with the crowd during the stalling bit, especially his Yes/No battle with the little kid in the front row. He had some fun spots on offense and took a couple of really nice bumps too. Shaw is as bland and do nothing as it gets and sure enough this ended as indiesh as I had feared but this match sort of succeeded at making want Marshall to get signed by the WWE, where I could see him having good matches in NXT.

 

Sobeq Ra v. ?

 

This was just a two move squash. The Ra character is completely bizarre. He is billed from Egypt and I think he's supposed to be inspired by the Mummy movies in appearance, but he has greenish hair and a real white trash looking valet. On top of it he doesn't have the mystical quality you would expect a guy like this to be trying to project. When he tossed his vest on the floor instead of into the waiting arms of his valet it did make me want to punch him in the face though so he has that going for him I guess.

 

Opportunity Knocks Battle Royal

 

The winner of this gets a title shot or something. Normally I would have skipped over this but I'm committed to this whole show thing. I wish I had skipped over this. This included a big guy working a Norman The Lunatic/Eugene hybrid gimmick, a football player, Deathrow Jethro - who was eliminated first despite having an insanely elaborate entrance and being hands down the best guy in the match - a guy who looked like he was doing a Heath Slater rip off act (no I'm not kidding) and a couple of other scrubs. This is as bad as you would expect, with lots of bad comedy and awkward looking exchanges.

 

Milo Beasley v. Eric Cooper - Street Fight

 

I was kind of hoping for something out of this because I have seen shows where two random guys had a street fight and it ended up stealing the show. Well that didn't happen here. This may have suffered some from the fact that I watched Luke Gallows v. Jake Davis the other day and that is just a vastly, vastly better match worked in an at least theoretically similar fashion. I should have know this would be bad when Milo came to the ring to "Bro Hymn" with a shopping cart full of weapons, an entrance that is possibly the most CZWish thing I've ever seen, but even if I had projected that it would stink at that point I wouldn't have guessed it would be this soulless and boring. I did appreciate them building to the big table spot, Cooper took one huge bump and the finish did look sick, but the bulk of this was just really tedious with nothing interesting at all happening. I actually got pumped for the run in of Cooper's Eric Bischoff lookalike manager, but that didn't last and didn't mean anything either. This just wasn't good.

 

Mike Cruz v. Gus Money

 

This was a pretty good sprint. Nothing outstanding, but on a weak show, the effort of Cruz stands out. I'm still not sold that he can carry a weaker opponent, or lead a long match, but they got about seven minutes here which was the right length for what he can do. Some really stiff shots in this, decent structure for such a weak match and Cruz took two really nice bumps. I wish they had shaved about ten minutes off of the last piece of shit and tacked some of that on here, because I think they might have been able to do something really good with a bit more time. Even still this was a solid enough match.

 

Beast Mode v. Circle of Disrespect

 

This was actually structured well enough where it kind of made up for the match that no one in the match was any good. I am not a guy who thinks match lay out is everything, but there are times where layout can really disguise flaws and while their were plenty of flaws on display here, chunks of this were fine because they kept the formula fairly simple. I mean Beast Mode are just too pasty, long haired, big guys who can barely execute basic stuff, Simon Sez is pretty terrible though extremely charismatic and Francisco Ciasco (sp?) is serviceable but nothing more and still this was not terrible. It wasn't good, but it wasn't terrible. Next.

 

Maxwell Chicago v. Bruce Santee

 

Everyone should see Chicago at least once. I'm not even touting him as a worker per se, but the guy wrestlers in various tuxedo get ups and just looks completely absurd even on a card with a ton of absurd shit. He's working the up coming EVOLVE tourney and I have no fucking clue how that is going to come off. I'm pretty sure Santee is the guy who had a roid rage attack on Kahagas on an indie show some time back so I expect him to work stiff and Maxwell to bump around like a goof for him and that is exactly what I got. I have to admit Chicago was incredibly entertaining crawling around in his red tux get up, throwing half hearted shots trying to defend himself, desperately clinging to the ref in an attempt to escape. This ended up being worked sort of like a sniveling manager v. strong man babyface hero, albeit with Chicago being more athletic then most manager types. He took over with nut shots, did a couple of semi-impressive spots, then got cut down to size, had his nuts squeezed and was powered down. Fun match actually, made me want to see Chicago work as a manager/wrestler type in a bigger promotion.

 

Kory Chavis v. Jon Davis

 

Ugh what a way to end the show. This started hot with some decent brawling, built to a reasonably solid heat segment from Chavis and then on the back end it was a pretty indierific affair though at least stuff looked good. Then we got a stupid ref bump and a Dusty finish. Pretty fitting ending to this show.

 

Overall Thoughts

 

Poor show. On paper this looked interesting to me because there were several solid enough guys on the card and they were fairly well spread out. Instead the whole show was really flat, with nothing worth going out of your way to see.

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Wrestle 1 Debut Show (9/8)

 

Daiki Inaba & Hiroshi Yamato vs. Tokyo Gurentai (MAZADA & NOSAWA Rongai)

 

This was a completely inoffensive opening tag. I didn't get the sense that the crowd gave a fuck about any of these guys which is probably not the best way to kick off a new promotion, but aside from that, this sort of felt like a modernized version of early 90's WCW opening tag matches I saw live, with your really over the top heel team and your really vanilla babyface team. I'm not sure there is a single thing in this match that stood out other than a really nice looking missle dropkick, but it wasn't sleep inducing either.

 

Kohei Sato & Ryouji Sai vs. Ryota Hama & Yasufumi Nakanoue

 

Man I love Hama. I'm sure to many people he qualifies as a "guilty pleasure," but I feel absolutely no guilt about it, and I'm not sure there are ten guys in Japan I'd rather watch more than him. Here he is debuting his Rikishi get up and is just about the most slovenly looking fat guy ever in wrestling which makes it even more awesome when he crushes someone with a crossbody or takes a double suplex on his head. I'm sure the guy has to be falling apart doing that sort of stuff and they are wise to hide him in short matches and tags but he really is outstanding at the tasks they assign him. As a whole this is a pretty decent match, in large part because they use Hama's freakshow stuff to keep the match from falling off a cliff into hyperactive spot trading. The end result is that Nakanoue actually looked better than he probably is (he does have a pretty boss elbow drop though) and the Sato/Sai team came across like ass kickers.

 

Mayu Iwatani vs. Yoshiko

 

This was better than I expected it to be. I mean way better. Perhaps that's because every time I try and watch Joshi these days my eyes glaze over and I almost immediately lapse into full blown "fuck this to hell" mode which really dampened my expectations for this, but in any case I actually enjoyed this a good bit. I think it helps that this felt special on the show and was a real change of pace from the matches that proceeded it. It also helped that this was kept very short and Iwatani was working as a sort of "going for broke" underdog babyface against an absolute savage asskicker in Yoshiko. There were definitely some less than clean moments in this, but I dug the opening rope running bit and I loved the drop down rana into a half crab bit from Yoshiko which looked fucking killer. Iwanti is better as a ragdoll than an offensive worker, but when she did get the rana in later I actually bit on a false finish which is rare. I also liked the finish with Iwanti kicking out of a couple of credible potentially finishes and then getting wrecked by a second rope senton after having survived a standing senton from earlier in the match. This wasn't great or anything, but it managed to be a quick match that still had a real sense of escalation to it which is not something that is easy to do.

 

Fujita Hayato & Masaaki Mochizuki vs. Junior Stars (Koji Kanemoto & Minoru Tanaka)

 

I actually like everyone in this to one degree or another, but this was not my kind of match. These sort of back and fourth matches can work at times, but I prefer tag matches to have at least the pretense of one team having real momentum for some meaningful period of time. Unsurprisingly I thought the highlights of this were the exchanges between Kanemoto and Hayato, which came across as both more intense and sharper than anything else in the match. I wouldn't say this was bad, but I wouldn't watch this twice.

 

Kaz Hayashi & Shuji Kondo vs. Strong BJ (Daisuke Sekimoto & Yuji Okabayashi)

 

This was okay. On the one hand I liked that this was set up with the muscle heads as dominant and the match built around them in control and Hayashi/Kondo making comebacks. On the other hand the muscle head offense was really lacking at times and really stupid at other times. I'm not sure there is a spot in wrestling I hate more than that double German spot they do and the sequence where they were running through body slam variations forever got tired fast. Watching this actually kind of depressed me because I remember when I thought Hayashi was pretty great and while he has a moment or two in this, I actually thought a lot of his comeback spots looked really silly. I think the best moments in the previous tag were better than the best moments in this, but this was better put together. Neither match worked for me as a whole, but I imagine big fans of modern Japanese wrestling would really like both.

 

Laughter7 (Katsuyori Shibata & Kazushi Sakuraba) vs. Stack Of Arms (Masakatsu Funaki & Masayuki Kono)

 

This could have, and maybe should have, been better than it was but I still enjoyed it. I know some people thought Kono was terrible in this, I thought he was okay, but he did stick out like a sore thumb and it hurt the match. Still, Laughter7 is one of my favorite things in modern Japanese wrestling. I'm not even that big a fan of Shibata, but there is something interesting about the dynamic they have and every time they work even simple double team spots I mark out for them. Funaki is still a really good worker in the right setting and he had some flashes in this, but I thought the best guy by far was Sakuraba. I liked some of Shibata's offense, but in general I thought Sak's grappling, subs and strikes all looked better and I also think the way he reacts to stuff is more interesting. It's hard to articulate why I enjoy him, and I'm not even positive he's all that great a worker, but there is something novel about him popping up these days and I want to watch every match he's in. As a whole this was pretty good, if not particularly exciting.

 

KAI vs. Seiya Sanada

 

I actually liked Sanada as Rene Dupree's traveling opponent in this years Maritimes tour and I liked KAI a lot v. Akiyama in the Carnival, so this is a rare case of two young Japanese guys with ridiculous haircuts opposing each other in a match I was sort of interested to see. There was some Tanahashish execution that I found annoying, but in general I liked this a good bit up until Sanada's comeback. Dude took a fucking brainbuster on the floor, a brainbuster in the ring, gets choked out and then after laying on his face for a few minutes pops up and the typical bullshit "stretch run!" that never ends stuff that I absolutely loathe kicks in. This pissed me off far more than it should have because there really was no reason to believe this match would go any other way, but the fact that the first half was pretty sensible, made the second half all the more intolerable to me. Yuck.

 

Bob Sapp & Keiji Muto vs. Rene Dupree & Zodiac

 

I thought Dupree was absolutely awesome in this. Actually I have to give the heel team credit as a whole because this really should have been a complete trainwreck and I was really pissed off coming off that last match and this match was actually respectable despite the fact that the babyface team is just about the least appealing "veteran" duo I can imagine. Zodiac isn't going to light anyone's world on fire, but he looks like the sort of guy who'd sell Dupree party drugs out of the back of a van in North Sydney and that's really all I need out of him. Both the heels did a great job making the faces offense look good, especially Dupree. He was taking these big impact bumps and delivering with these really strong facial expressions after everything. I also liked this offense which was not fancy, but well executed and direct. This was well structured and they even managed to do some pretty fun stuff with Sapp on the defensive which is a minor miracle. By no means was this a great match. It wasn't even all that good really, but it made up for the last match.

 

Overall Thoughts

 

I actually thought for a debut show this was pretty decent. There was nothing out of this world, but there was a lot of variety on the show and it felt distinct from a lot of the stuff I've seen out of Japan this year. No match was a home run or even close to it. In fact I don't know that there is a single thing on the show worth going out of your way to see. But it was a very digestable show, with nothing overwhelming, no matches that dragged or went on too long, and nothing that was fatally offensive to my tastes.

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Pro Wrestling Rossville 10/12/13

 

Mega-Rumble

 

A pseudo-suburb of Chattanooga, Rossville, Ga is the birthplace of Terry Gordy, and in some respects the epicenter of the North Georgia/East TN wrestling universe. There are a bunch of guys who live there and train there. Several promotions have run out of Rossville over the years, including the currently active Empire, which I think is one of the better indies in the States. Rossville is also an amazingly epic, seemingly endless, skid row. The main drag Rossville Boulevard is jammed back with a combination of decrepit buildings, seedy businesses, and sprawling empty concrete lots littered with crack pipes and hypodermic needles. One of those empty lots is directly across the street from a massive pornography store. In this lot an old man (think Randy Savage in his last years in terms of look) sets up shop every day with two massive canopies where he sells tons and tons of his own porn on both VHS and DVD, as well as a wildly diverse collection of shoes. Just a bit further up the road is a Mexican restaurant/night club called the "Turd On," which is a well known meth front. Even further down is a cluster of deeply disturbing "thrift" stores, one of which has a box filled with body parts from action figures that are for sale for a penny a piece and another which regularly stocks adult diapers and bullets. Almost every corner has a liquor store, pawn shop, payday loan joint or some business built around the promise of seeing nude women (pornography store, strip club, nude car wash, et). Years ago my wife, my father and I were driving down the road at about noon and in the middle of the street there was a single prosthetic (hopefully) leg, inside of a full pant leg, as if an amputee had been running across the road and half of his pants had just fallen off in tact at the seam. None of thought it odd or even said anything at the time. Later upon reflection "it was Rossville" seemed to be the conclusion we reached when trying to figure out how such a thing was possible.

 

Of course this preface wasn't really necessary, but I thought it was worth including because it gives you a little local flavor if you decide to follow along with me and watch all or some of this show. More to the point it also helps explain the outright absurdity of this match. The Mega-Rumble is basically a twelve man royal rumble, except here guys come to the ring in one minute increments and when it gets down to the last two they have a match that most end in pinfall (the announcers stipulated that it couldn't even end in submission, which has to be the strangest qualifier I've ever heard for a match). I had originally thought this show was going to be held in the Empire Arena (i.e. a warehouse, which is actually in one of the nicer areas of town), but instead it is what I assume is a high school gym. When I saw the show was less than an hour and a half long, I figured this battle royal would be used as a filler to get a few extra guys on the show and it would go about twelve minutes. Instead they went about twenty and it was a who's who of mediocre North GA/East TN indie guys and then Drew Game.

 

Drew Game is kind of a sad case. At one point he was one of the better and most unique in ring guys in the area. At his peak he was part of a really great local tag team with Drew Delight. I saw the two have a couple of really good matches for the old UEW promotion (based out of East Ridge, the birthplace of Dylan Waco, and an area that rivals Rossville in its trashiness) and my brothers, uncle and cousin went regularly and were huge marks for the guy. Delight is probably the best in ring guy to ever come out that indie scene and he is now semi-retired, working a handful of times a year at most and running the aforementioned Empire fed. Game never gets booked in Empire which makes me think there was a falling out, and he tends to turn up more often in the secondary indies that run the area, where he desperately tries to get good matches out of half trained twenty year olds.

 

Yeah I know, you don't give a fuck about any of that and probably don't give a fuck about the match, but watching this match it felt like an inside joke on Game. He was the first guy in and worked the whole match. Hell the match didn't have an elimination until about thirteen minutes in. He was the only guy who seemed to want to do anything interesting, aside from Bane Lynch who did some dangerous as shit looking leaping knee to Game and then took a pretty cool fall away slam over the top when he was eventually eliminated. At times Game was standing around waiting for shit to happen and he just looked like a defeated man. There was one point where CJ Therell came out and I gasped. Therell is the only guy I've ever seen have a bad match with Drew Delight and even calling him "half trained" feels like a statement that gives him the benefit of way too many doubts. Sure enough about a minute or so in he botched up an exchange that involved a clothesline off the ropes, something I've only seen Bo Dallas do before him. When Therell came out I thought to myself "christ, who's next, Logan Alvey?" And then Logan Alvey came out. I don't even know if I can describe why that is so hilariously awful, but it was. Needless to say the match didn't get better.

 

In the end it came down to Game and Jason Hampton, another indie guy who has been around forever. Hampton is interesting in his own right because he's one of the only local guys who seemingly never gets pushed into main events, no matter what random as fuck, third rate indie he is working. To be fair to Hampton he does work the better promotions in the region to (namely Empire and DSCW), but he basically will work anywhere. The last time I saw him he was passing out flyers/trying to scalp tickets outside of a WWE show almost literally in my brothers backyard. He didn't look good then, and he looked even worse now. He took a couple of spots from Drew Game, rolled back in the ring, hit a ball shot off camera and then a double underhook DDT and pinned him. Drew Game is my friend on facebook, and I expect some sort of death threat after writing this, but the conclusion I reached here is that he needs to get out of wrestling. The guy has talent, but ten-plus years in if you are working opening match battle royals for Rossville indies, where you are expected to hold together a match where the majority of guys involved struggle running the ropes, and the end result is you take a fall from a guy I've never seen win a match who looks to be in the worst shape of his life....I mean I know wrestling is a work but my god.

 

Mikey Watkins v. Ryan Vega

 

Vega is a rookie coming out of Empire. Watkins is somewhat I am not all that familiar with, but he came out of TWA which just closed up after a 20-plus year run. This was put out there as a sort of "Young Lions" type of match and to that end this was not bad. I can't say it was a good match, because there were a lot of senseless moments and you can tell Vega is green as grass. On the other hand Watkins is an impressive flyer. His spots were dynamic and I got the feeling against the right guy he could almost be Amazing Red-ish in terms of putting a match together in a smart way, while still getting his shit in. To his credit Vega took a version of the Dustin crossbody bump and Watkins took his finish like a champ. This was kept short and as a result was pretty watchable. Vega might actually end up pretty good himself, but he's got a ways to go.

 

Matt Fortune v. Joey Lynch

 

Matt Fortune is probably a top twenty-five guy from the area, maybe even top twenty. That sounds more insulting than I mean it though, because there are a lot of guys from that area that I think are good. Lynch I have seen twice on an EWA show and wasn't overly impressed. One of the things that really holds Fortune back to me is that he is a good heel, good at building matches, has some fun spots, entertaining on the mat, but he goes full blown Kurt Angle all to often on the stretch run. Well on the front end of this match we got him as a solid heel, we got some fun mat spots, hell we even got some really clever cut off spots. Lynch was over as a face and things were looking pretty good. I even liked the comeback of Lynch with his shooting star press near fall, which felt huge in this setting. And then Fortune ran up and hit a German off the top rope. Yeah it was a reset spot and yeah it wasn't even the worst spot in the match because Lynch won with a stupid as fuck Canadian Destroyer thing. But man did it feel like I dagger straight into the heart of a match that had been pretty good before it. In the end this was more annoying than anything, because the last bit felt like a "fuck you" to the first three quarters of the match.

 

Lamar Phillips/T-Bone v. Wyld Stallions v. Keith Hamil/Leroy Lewis v. The Movement

 

This is elimination rules. My first inclination was to bitch that KT Hamil wasn't in this match teaming with his brother as he is one of the better guys in the area and they are a good team, but in turns out he is in a singles match next so I can't bitch. My second thought is that this match will probably mark the fourth or fifth different way I have spelled the Hamil Brothers last name in a review and I'm still not sure what the correct form is.

 

Anyway, I have enjoyed The Movement this year, though they are not even close to the best indie team around. Going in I kind of figured they would go over and the match would be built around them working with the other teams, two of which I think are makeshift and the third of which (Wyld Stallions) are a decent fourth or fifth generation replica of the RnR Express with more neon (it would probably be more apt to compare them to the RPMs, but you get the point). Instead this match ended up being built up as the Stallions return after a one year absence.

 

Amazingly, I was most impressed with T-Bone who I have largely avoided on the SCW shows I've watched. Now I kind of want to go back and give the guy a chance. He's basically a poor man's Jerry Blackwell, a big rotund guy who will crush you with offense or take absolutely crazy bumps for a guy his size. At one point Leroy Lewis fucking murders whim with a Minchinoku Driver and then a Death Valley Driver on subsequent exchanges and I thought they might end up breaking the ring. Lamar Phillips was pretty fun as the standard douchebag heel too and I thought the match lost a little when they got eliminated. Parts of the segment with the Stallions and The Movement were pretty decent, but I've seen much better out of The Movement this year, and Cory Cox of the Stallions constantly getting down from the apron and then struggling to get back up was distracting and strange. As a whole the match was pretty disjointed at times, and down right messy during the first exchange with The Movement and Stallions after it got down to those two teams, but it was still a fun match.

 

KT Hamil v. Adam Jacobs

 

Jacobs is a carriable guy, who can't lead a match himself and is better off against big dudes. Hamil isn't a big dude, but he is one of the best guys in the area - in some ways the best - so I was excited for this. It ended up being a pretty decent match, but it suffered badly from being face v. face and not having a ton of time to develop. Hamil is best off working as an underdog babyface or a chickenshit, lunatic bumping heel and this didn't play to either strength. Instead they worked a traditional match, starting with some pretty sharp mat work, building to some slightly bigger spots, a few momentum swings tied in and then a finish. There was one spot that was a bit too cute and didn't come off, but over all I really liked several of the individual sequences, my favorite probably being Hamil's running lariat or the superplex to the floor tease. On the other hand a few things were just a bit telegraphed (probably hurt some by the camera angle) and the finish felt out of the blue. This wasn't bad by any means, probably about as good as it could have been all things considered, but it is still probably the worst Hamil match I've seen this year.

 

Cyrus The Destroyer v. Tank - No DQ

 

Now this is an interesting match. My brother (Exposer) saw this exact match at a Pro Wrestling Chattanooga show earlier this year and said it stole the show. At the time both guys were working Empire as a part of separate stables and for most of the Summer the promotion built to a match between the two for the company title. They had this really heavily hyped exchange in a six-man tag match at the companies flag ship show during Mania weekend and their singles match was promoted more than anything else in the companies history - and then Cyrus no showed. I won't go into the details but Tank ended up with the title, Cyrus ended up feuding with Torque in DSCW (a couple of really good matches between these two are on youtube as well) and they just completed a tournament to see who gets the first title shot at Tank which was won by Shaun Tempers. Right before this match starts they announce this is for the Empire belt which I think is kind of funny because I can't imagine the Empire promoter is happy about that, but what the hell do I know.

 

As a match these are two big guys, who are really athletic and can cut a pace. I really think this was hurt by going on last because the crowd seemed sort of tired by the time this went on and when these guys didn't really cut a pace and instead worked a straight brawl it didn't get over as well as I would have thought. On the other hand, aside from one chair spot were Tank seemed to senseless wait for Cyrus to charge and hit him, I really did like this. Most of this was just big dudes clubbing each other, but I really liked the toe-for-toe punch exchanges and I enjoyed all the big spots. Tank got color, Cyrus hit his really great looking Vader Bomb splash, Tank hit his really great looking corner rolling senton which literally shook the ring and the finish was pretty satisfying. Ultimately I still think a match like this is going to come across far better live then it does on a long shot stationary camera, but I did like it.

 

Overall Thoughts:

 

This wasn't all that good a show, but I enjoyed watching it because I enjoy watching wrestling in this setting. This show also had a real variety to it which helped as none of the matches had similar themes and after the opening battle royal, every match had at least aspects to it that were very enjoyable. I wouldn't advocate anyone go out of there way to see it, and the good workers on the show have all had much better matches this year, but as a whole it was better than the sum of its parts.

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Great Review Dylan.

 

A few history notes for anyone else who cares:

 

I've been going to East TN/North GA Indy shows for over twelve years so I know a good deal about the back history on some of these guys.

 

So, for interesting randomness I used to see Leroy Lewis all the time at the Dollar Store where he worked on North Market here in Chatt. He had a tag partner, Jay Farley, (who coincidentally was the first UEW champion in 2000), who also worked there. Both are swell guys and whenever I went in there with my Uncle he'd chat them up while they were doing inventory and they'd give us scoops on the latest cards and shows in the area. My fondest memory of their work as a tag team was one night at UEW they were in the main event battle royal. UEW was like any indy fed in the area and some Saturday's guys wouldn't show up or the card was particularly light, etc. So, oftentimes a main event battle royal with all the workers that showed up would take place at the end of the night. On this night, Jay Farley was sick was some type of stomach bug or whatever. So, in awesome southern indy fashion he's coming down to the ring chugging pepto bismol while preparing for a ten to fifteen man battle royal. It was grand. Currently, Jay apparently still works at the North Market Dollar Store but Leroy was relocated to the even more downtrodden Dollar Store on South Market a few blocks away from the hit liquor store in town.

 

Corey Cox was once a sixteen year old referee/ring boy at UEW back in the early 2000s. He was a skinny little punk kid who smoked cigarettes like a chimney and chatted with the fans while we all waited in line for the show. After a while, he started ripping teams off and shit or something as the ref and eventually do a full heel turn and became the roadie for Andrew Alexander's (Now a member of Devil's Rejects and a fab indy worker) tag team that was an early 2000s rip-off of Spinal Tap. I have no clue when Cox got fully trained or when he began working on a regular schedule because once UEW went out of business in 2004 we were jumping from indy show to indy show for years. Anyways, he's turned in some solid performances from what I've caught from him although I've never thought he was too special of a worker. I enjoyed him more as Andy Alexander's roadie.

 

Also, I will tell a great story about friends of mine from high school hopping onto the highway off of Rossville Boulevard. There's this underpass right at the intersection of Rossville Boulevard and I think Central Avenue where drunken bums sleep. Next to the underpass on both sides is a motel that is a soliciting hot spot and across the street from that is a porn store. Behind the porn store is a small strip joint called "B.J.s Puss N Boots." Anyways, my friends were taking the ramp onto the freeway by the overpass there and a hooker was getting chased by her pimp midday as they avoided semis careening down the Ridge Cut which is a massive ridge (Missionary Ridge of Civil War fame) that the freeway goes over to connect the Chattanooga City Limits and East Ridge. The hooker ran in front of my friends car (thankfully they were at a near stop) and they hit her. Of course, the cops showed up and evidently the pimp was giving this hooker a telling in front of the cops and my friends (who are from a small town in North GA) were mortified.

 

Man, no one will care about this but I love these stories. Thanks for the great write-up again Dylan and that was easily the best description of Rossville I've ever heard.

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  • 4 weeks later...

NJPW Power Struggle 2013

 

Manabu Nakanishi, Captain New Japan, KUSHIDA & BUSHI vs. Yujiro Takahashi, YOSHI-HASHI, Rocky Romero & Alex Koslov

 

I tend to like these mindless opener type of matches more than most because they don't pretend to be something they aren't. That is to say this is just a way for guys to get a paycheck, get their shit in and get the crowd amped. To that end these matches are almost always inoffensive at worst, and often times some of my favorite stuff on shows, where they are largely afterthoughts. This didn't have anything as fun as Akebono tends to be when he gets thrown into something like this, but I actually did enjoy this a good deal. You had some showcase rope running spots, for your fans of that, some strong man Nakanishi spots for your fans of that, your Santinoesque Hooligan spot, your quasi-lucha exchange, et. Fuck, even Captain New Japan being the FIP for a couple of minutes was fun and really a good use for a guy in a costume that looks like something a three year old would wear on a chilly Halloween night. Solid little sprint, that got just enough time to serve it's purpose, without going over the edge into too much.

 

"Suzuki-gun" TAKA Michinoku & Taichi vs. "The Young Bucks" Matt & Nick Jackson

 

I generally enjoy the Young Bucks as heels, so on paper this had me optimistic coming in. I thought the first few minutes of this were okay, but not terribly engaging, and the Bucks weren't heeling it up enough for my liking. Having said that, everything from the big baseball slide forward was really fun highspot wrestling, with some decent teases mixed in and that really hooked me. The big dives both looked nuts (Taka's almost looked like a combo dropkick/splash because of the angle) and they did a good job with the false finishes. Like the last match this also benefited a great deal from being long enough to establish some drama, but not long enough to get into the sort of nearfalls for the sake of nearfalls overkill that makes so many of these matches tedious affairs to me. A real pleasant surprise over all.

 

Tomoaki Honma vs. Katsuyori Shibata

 

This was actually really good considering who was involved. I think Shibata has been wildly overrated during his NJPW, though he's had his moments. Honma is a guy who is not ever going to jump off the page as someone you want to watch, though I generally have no problem with him. Anyway this was worked the way an ass beater v. underdog with stupid bleached hair should be worked. By that I mean to say that Shibata beat the fuck out of Honma, who was given just enough hope to look like he belonged in the same ring as him, but not enough hope to turn the thing into a farce. I absolutely loved the way he crumpled after one particular attempt to take control earned him a shot to the face, and they did a great job making him look like he had more heart than brains. Really the build to him getting a real combo in was excellent stuff, made even better when he airballed on his timber headbutt off the top, leading to a string of exceedingly vicious looking spots, before he was finally put away. Honestly after the corner dropkick could be argued as gratuitous, considering how nasty that looked, but Honma's selling was outstanding, even as he was just doing enough not to die. Also the post-match with Shibata walking off immediately as if he was sickened by the whole affair was great. I loved this to the point where it's probably one of my ten favorite NJPW matches all year.

 

Yuji Nagata & Kazushi Sakuraba vs. Toru Yano & Takashi Iizuka

 

One day I want an explanation as to why Iizuka sexually assaults the announcer before every match as it makes me almost as uncomfortable as post-match of the Chiggy v. Dump hair match that is disturbingly snuffish. This time the guy gets painted up like a blue cat for some reason, which actually evolves into Sakuraba getting jumped in the aisle on the way to the ring and four way brawl with all the matches participants. I actually was sort of mystified by this as the whole purpose of the Nagata/Sak team is to work the Gracies at the Dome show, and yet a ton of this is them getting beaten up by a pair of middling comedic guys. Sak in particular was made to look really weak on the front end and Nagata's comeback was not terribly impressive. I did like Sak's corner flurry, but watching him bust out the mist of all things to set up the double armbar finish was just...I don't even know. Imagine if they had set up CM Punk v. Brock Lesnar with Punk working a warm up ppv match against Tommy Dreamer, that won after desperately spitting soda in his eyes to set up his submission, then try and picture how much outrage that would have garnered. I really didn't dislike this match, I just didn't understand it. At all.

 

Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima vs. Lance Archer & Davey Boy Smith Jr. vs. Rob Conway & Jax Dane

 

I like some of these guys a good bit, but this is as uninteresting a match on paper as I can think of. Honestly I couldn't follow this at all. I get that they were breaking up the tag title issues or something, but I didn't realize what the fuck was going on with the multiple falls and I thought this match was filled with bad transitions and awkward moments. The best part of this was Bruce Tharpe getting up on the apron and fucking with Kojima, that guy really should be a full time heel manager. Other than that, this was nothing worth watching.

 

Togi Makabe & Kota Ibushi vs. Prince Devitt & Bad Luck Fale

 

This really exceeded my expectations, mainly because this was very well put together. Coming into this my favorite guy of the bunch was probably Makabe, and I'm hardly a big fan of his, so I had just figured this was going to fall into the "not my cup of tea" category. But at the end of the day, this is why I watch the matches, as this was a match with a real story. More than that this was a match that was the exact opposite of the Sak/Nak match in that it set up for a Dome match in the most effective way possible. As a whole I do not understand the hype behind Devitt's gimmick and still don't, but he was very effective as the chicken shit turd, hiding behind Fale, and trying to pick the bones that presented themselves with cheap shots and quick strikes. Fale for his part his limited, but fits fine in his role. I know Gallows is coming over, but in a way it' s a shame he's not in that role, because he'd be ten thousand times better. Still there is probably something to Fale being the guy as he looks like a monster, but does nothing to overshadow his stablemates. Anyway, he was what he needed to be here and the faces were way better than I would have expected. Both guys sold well in this and there were some transitions and moments where I was certain that would go out the window and it never did. The whole match seemed to be building to one of two conclusions, Devitt stealing the fall or Ibushi finally shutting him up. I'm no Ibushi fan, but his spots were well timed in this, his selling good, his fire strong. And when he did get the fall in this - especially coming off some of the teases prior to it - it was a very effective moment, that even made me mildly interested in a Dome match between the two, even if I cannot imagine it being as smartly worked as this match was. This isn't anything special really, but it was a good, effective match and they deserve credit for it.

 

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tomohiro Ishii

 

Tanahashi v. Suazuki was the better match, but this is probably the best Tanahashi performance I can recall seeing. I often hear Tanahashi fans rave about his pacing, even while acknowledging some of the things I see as his flaws, but I have never seen that as being a real strength of his. Well in this match it was a real and clear strength to the point where I can't imagine anyone denying it. The pacing and timing in general on the spots was really excellent, and not particularly easy because Ishii (as much as I like him) is nowhere near the star of Tanahashi so there is a bit of nuance in how you have to put a match like this together to make it work. I especially liked stuff like the back of the head lariat early in the match from Ishii, or the cut off spot on the skin the cat, both of which were done in a way to maximize their effect. This also was a really tremendous performance from Ishii. Not only did his offense look extra sharp, but I thought he was marvelous at selling Tanahashi's stuff. As most people know I generally hate Tanahashi's offense, but here it actually ranged from okay to pretty good and a lot of that was because of the way Ishii was grimacing and/or gripping his wounds. Even the way he took stuff like the body press off the top where he sold the back of head like he was hit by a canon really added to the match a ton. I could have lived without some of Tanahashi's strikes (though they weren't anywhere near as bad here as they were in the G1 match these two had) and I didn't care for the pop up suplex routine, but at least both guys sold on the back end, it was worked as a reset spot and built to the big superplex near fall (which was excellent). I also have to say that I hope Tanahashi starts working the cloverleaf as a staple spot, as I felt it added to the drama of the match and was a credible way to take Ishii down a peg, even if he didn't sell the leg after the fact. This is another match that also had a very good finish, as you need your co-ace to look strong and decisive in putting the guy a few pegs below him down, while also showing that the tough underneath guy can fight. This match succeeded in that regard. Not a MOTYC, but one of the better matches in Japan this year.

 

Tetsuya Naito vs. Masato Tanaka

 

It's not uncommon for me to watch NJPW shows with no volume, but given the hype surrounding the Osaka crowd shitting on Naito, I figured I would put the earpiece in for at least part of this. Honestly I think the harping on the crowd reaction was kind of overblown, though I do see the point that Naito isn't as over as he should be given the degree of his push. On the other hand this is the best Naito match I've seen. Ever. That's not to say this was a great match, or even really worth going out of your way to see, unless you are a big fan of Tanaka. But man if you like Tanaka this was fun. I don't know if the intent of this was really "Tanaka's last stand," but this had the feel of a match where a guy knows his time is up and he's just fighting to stay relevant with all of his might. I thought his offense was really solid and on point (if somewhat predictable as it has been for years) and I was amazed at how well he was able to reign in the excess of Naito. Naito is a guy who has not shown me multiple speeds ever. He's either laid out on his ass or running through spots. Well here he was selling a good bit, and while I still think some of his flurries were a bit too peppy, it was a good effort by him for the most part. The transitions in this weren't all that great, but it was a match with a real heat section - even if the crowd reacted "wrong" to it - and at the big moments really felt like big moments.

 

Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Minoru Suzuki

 

I have taken to comparing Nakamura to a .235 hitter, who strikes out a ton, but several times a year will hit walk off home runs to win games. Well if Sakaruba and Ibushi matches were grandslams, this was striking out on three pitches. On paper there is absolutely no reason for this to be less than very good, and yet this was anything but, entirely because of Nakamura's terrible selling and "I've gotta get my shit in!" approach to the match. It would be lie to say I totally hated this, because I enjoy watching Suzuki work from the top too much to hate any match where he is in control for a big portion of it. Still, when you miss wild running knees into the post and then into the turnbuckle, the spots should have some meaning. Here they came across as just a way to kill time. This was probably the single most disappointing match of the year.

 

Kazuchika Okada vs. "The Machine Gun" Karl Anderson

 

This was hurt some in my eyes by the fact that I find Karl Anderson to me among the least interesting acts in pro wrestling today. There is just something about the guy that immediately makes me not care about everything he is involved in. He's not even that bad, it's just that I don't think he is engaging on any level. As a result of this I never really got into this match, though I never really checked out either. As a match they tried to segment this into distinct sections, but there were still a ton of moments where I thought there were reversals just for reversals sake, and I hated a lot of the offense from both guys. The sequence that set up the first rainmaker was one of the best examples I can think of when I think of what I hate about modern "tit for tat" wrestling, though as a whole this match was not dominated by that sort of thing. I guess this was an okay match, but when the highlight for me is the Bullet Club and Gedo running around that's not exactly a good thing, and it felt like a really flat way to end the show.

 

Overall Thoughts:

 

Kind of hard to bitch a ton about a show where a lot of the matches were better than I expected, there was nothing that I outright loathed and six of the ten bouts were matches I thought were pretty good or better. To me the worst thing about this was the match placement as the show sort of petered out with the hugely underwhelming semi-main, and a main featuring a guy that puts me to sleep against a guy I am not terribly high on. On the other hand those matches absolutely should have been in the spots they were in from a booking perspective. This show didn't feel as big as Day Four of the G1, but I could see a case for this being the better show from top to bottom, though the best two matches here don't really rate with the best two matches of that show. Still, this was probably my second favorite NJPW show of the year at worst, and a show I liked a lot better than some of the previous efforts that were more highly touted.

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Did you watch the post match stuff with Okada & Naito facing off? That's where the crowd really takes a giant shit on Naito, aside from his match basically killing the crowd until Okada got them back two matches later. Nak & Sak sort of got screwed, because they did not have the right kind of match in terms of winning a crowd back over after it completely died for Naito's.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Dylan, my local indy HWA just announced for their Jan. 17th show Ricky Morton vs. Tarek the Great and The Soul Shooters vs. "Hardcore Icons" 2 Tuff Tony and Necro Butcher. Looks like they're partnering w/ SmartMark now so it'll be available shortly after. Sounds like something interesting enough to be worthy of a show review down the road.

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  • 1 month later...

So I have decided to review the 12/23 NJPW show as a New Years Day project while I watch bowl games.

 

Sho Tanaka vs Yohei Komatsu

 

I saw this get praise elsewhere so I was sort of psyched to see it. Generally I am a fan of your stripped down, young lions matches, as the guys always work hard, but don't try and go beyond their capabilities, so if anything I was coming in with a bias towards this style of match. Well, this had the look of Kimura v. Fujinami, with your black trunks v. black trunks, grappling sequence early, but I actually thought this was a pretty flat match. I appreciate the idea behind some of this, but I thought this was one of the worst examples I've seen from 2013 of guys not knowing how to change speeds at all. When it was time to go on offense there was absolutely no delay, no struggle, no emotion, no build, it was just someone else's turn to start doing stuff and by god they were going to do it. Very Naito-esque, though unlike Naito these guys would actually grip their backs some at least. I did dig the importance of the Boston Crab, and I kind of like the finish, but I can't get excited about a match where the big runs of offense feel meaningless.

 

TAKA Michinoku & Taichi vs KUSHIDA & BUSHI vs Jado & Gedo

 

I like Gedo as a rule, and Taka looked really good against Tajiri (who doesn't?) but man this had a lot of dead weight in it. Taichi is just embarrassingly awful. Everything he did in this was either off time, looked terrible, or both. I get that he's not really a "serious" player, but he's not funny either and not entertaining at all. Also Jado is shit. I hate his comedy stuff more than I hate anything else in New Japan. KUSHIDA and BUSHI are both limited, but I give it to them - they always work hard, to the point where I wish NJPW would find something of more note to do with them. This match didn't have the flow, pace or big spots you want out of a balls out, workrate, sprint, and it didn't have anything else going for it either. Boring.

 

Toru Yano & Takashi Iizuka vs Jushin Liger & Tiger Mask

 

This match would have benefited a ton from having a heel team with decent offense. It is rare for me to criticize a match on the grounds that the offense was weak, but I don't think Iizuka did anything other than lame looking chokes on Liger, and Liger is a guy who can eat offense and make even piddling shit look good if you just give me a real chance too. This was put together well, and I kind of liked Tiger Mask as your tenth generation copy of Rey Mysterio. I also thought the finishing run was solid, as it was the first time Liger had the chance to do anything of note at all in the match. Still this wasn't much.

 

Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima & Captain New Japan vs Yuji Nagata, Manabu Nakanishi & Tomoaki Honma

 

I actually thought this was quite good. I think the WWE in 2013 has shown that trios matches are a good idea across the board, as they are matches that can draw out the best in guys, while hiding their weaknesses. On top of that there is a ton of stuff you can do with the structure that keeps the match logical, without making it uninteresting. You look at this lineup on paper and thing, "ah hell, this is not gonna be much," but really I thought everyone looked good. With guys like Kojima and Tenzan, there biggest aspects are there charisma and identifiable spots, and both guys made good use of them here. Honma's best asset is being the underdog that everyone sort of loves, and he got to be that here in a different setting. Nakanishi is someone you just want to see lariat guys and he did that. Captain New Japan is someone I like way more than most, as he always seems to do enough to look good, without going outside the lines of his gimmick and in this match he sold well, and hit his one big spot right on cue. Nagata I pretty much loathe at this point, but this was probably the best I've seen him look all year, precisely because so little was expected of him. Nothing outstanding here, but there were heat sections, the match had a sound progression to it, and everyone contributed. Hard to complain about that.

 

Togi Makabe & Kota Ibushi vs Tomohiro Ishii & Yujiro Takahashi

 

Basically an all action tag match here. That is not my favorite style of tag, and even within that style of match, I didn't think this was all that good. As a vehicle to get over a potential feud with Ishii and Ibushi it worked, but I have no confidence that NJPW is going that route, considering the fact that Ishii isn't even on the Dome show. There were some fun spots in this, and better selling than normal for matches of this type, though I wanted more to the Ishii and Ibushi segments than we got. I did appreciate the finality and "case closed" nature of the finish, which was refreshing given the staples of this style.

 

Minoru Suzuki vs YOSHI-HASHI

 

There was probably too much bullshit in this, but it as largely forgivable because Suzuki is so completely believable as a sadistic mauler of easy victims, that the outside interference and weapons shots feels more like an animal toying with his prey, than a desperate man cheating to win. As a whole this was pretty much how you should work a match between a semi-main event level, vet and an up and comer undercard guy. The vet was the clear star, the clear asskicker. The young guy, was clearly working from underneath and trying to make the most out of his chances. YOSHI-HASHI doesn't have the best offense in the world, but it largely worked here, and they mixed in some cool spots, namely the Suzuki dropkick cutoff and some of the stuff out of the sleeper. Pretty good, albeit modest, match.

 

Kazuchika Okada & Shinsuke Nakamura vs Hiroshi Tanahashi & Tetsuya Naito

 

Meltzer almost went the full five stars on this, so I came in with extremely low expectations. I realize that reads trollish or mean spirited, but it's more of a general comment on how far off I am from him and a lot of other hardcore NJPW fans when it comes to their main event scene. Having said that, I thought this was actually a very good match all things considered. In some ways it was sort of the opposite of most NJPW main events I see in that that there were lots of moments and individual spots I disliked, but as a big picture match I thought it worked very well and achieved it's goal which to my eyes was getting over Naito as a believable contender and opponent for the IWGP at the Dome show. I could see an argument that they sort of telegraphed they were going long (which was obvious anyhow) with the opening stuff, but I actually liked some of the opening work more than usual for a match with these guys involved, and it was used primarily to set up the early Naito in peril stuff which to me was the most compelling part of the match. Nakamura is a guy who will lay down a stiff ass beating and that is exactly what he did. In some ways Nakamura - who I thought was clearly the best guy in the match - was too good here, as it sort of lessened the impact of the Okada/Naito exchanges that were really what this match was theoretically about, but I can't really call that a negative. Tanahashi was sort of used as a decoy here, switching things up for a bit, and teasing big moments, that would then be paid off in the person of Naito. I actually thought that was a good role for him, and I have to admit I have enjoyed him more in the last three months of 2013 than at any point in his career. I still hate the Rainmaker as a finish (really I hate it period), but I have to say the big dropkick save to block it was a pretty great spot, and the fact that it ended up leading to more of Naito trying to prove himself was even better. I could have dealt without some of the details/spots they worked, but the selling this was actually pretty good as a whole, and there were probably fewer spots that made me shake my head than any Naito match ever. Also Nakamura's running knee right before the finish was great, even if I thought the last second rainmaker was kind of silly. This isn't a MOTY, let alone a five star match, but I got more out of than I could have ever imagined looking at the names on paper and knowing the length of the match.

 

Overall Thoughts:

 

A rare NJPW show where I thought the main event was easily the best match on the show, and in many ways it was a show saving match. I wouldn't say the show was terrible up until that point, but it certainly wasn't good. As a go home show for the Dome, I thought it was sort of a mixed bag. If you are a big NJPW fan coming in you probably would love the main event enough to get you super psyched for Jan. 4. As a match I liked the main event, but I still don't have a ton of faith in either of the big matches at the Dome. If anything it made me want to see Nakamura v. Okada and Nakamura v. Naito. Also the fact that Ishii, Honma and Suzuki are either not on the Dome show, or in uninteresting matches, irritates me even more after seeing this show.

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