Steve’s View #117
Best of the West
Rather than do a complete Best of the West review, due to the amount of matches, I’ll take a page out of Scrub’s book since his computer blew up, and steal his “highs and lows” format.Highs
Scott Lost – By far the star of the show. This is really Scott Lost’s breakout year, with this tournament, his ladder match with Lil’ Cholo in GSCW, and Toryumon next month. Lost’s matches with Hardkore Kidd, Jardi Frantz, and Super Dragon were arguably the top three matches of the show.
Lil’ Cholo winning the tournament – A lot of people saw this coming, so it was no real surprise, but in all honesty no one but Lil’ Cholo should have won. Lil’ Cholo has really progressed as a wrestler over the last year and a half, and really deserves a chance to hang to show what he can do at the top of the lineup. Like with Scott Lost, this tournament should be seen as an extension of the ladder match he and Lost had in GSCW as far as Cholo breaking out goes.
Hardkore Kidd – First he cut a really great promo to put over the Marketplace as an important venue, then he had a very good match with Lost, and even put him over. Hardkore Kidd can hang with anyone in the tournament, but he did the right thing to help put over Lost for the night, as Lost going over anyone else might not have had the same impact as going over Hardkore Kidd, with the exception of Super Dragon or B-Boy, who no one saw losing in the first round either.
Super Dragon – It was another awesome performance for Super Dragon. This may be Super Dragon’s best year ever.
WPW wrestlers – Except for Lil’ Cholo, most of the WPW regulars don’t really get the props they deserve. Both Silver Tyger and Infernal proved they can hang with SoCal’s best in the tournament. Both wrestlers had very good matches with Super Dragon, and Silver Tyger had a good opening round match with Funky Billy Kim.
Trying to make the tournament unique – Tournaments have been done to death in the indys, so I have to give credit to WPW for trying to do something to make the tournament unique with the semi-final draws. Unfortunately I don’t think it worked, but I’ll save that for the lows.
Lows
Semi-final draws – As I said, it was good to try and make the tournament unique, but the draws came off flat. Especially the first one, that no one believed even went to the time limit (which it didn’t), then they spent ten minutes after doing the angle where they’d decide the match with a coin flip after the next match. The Super Dragon and Scott Lost match was in my opinion the best match on the show, but the draw took away from the match also. Lost got the pin on Dragon in the main, but it would have been much more meaningful in the singles match.
Sixteen-man tournament – A fifteen match tournament in one night is just too hard to pull off. There are too many matches to keep the crowd, and the crowd really adds so much to a show. Having an eight-man tournament would have worked just as well, plus with only eight people in the tournament there is a little more prestige with being a part of it. It’s worked for the ECWA Super 8 for years.
Thoughts
Overall I thought it was a very good show. The Toryumon connection really adds something to WPW, and I can see over time these monthly Friday night shows getting bigger and bigger crowds because of it. The tournament was a good start for the Friday night shows, and hopefully they’ll be able to keep the momentum up. I wouldn’t mind that if Best of the West becomes an annual thing, it gets spread out over two nights or like I said, drops down to eight wrestlers.
Another benefit to these Friday shows, is once they really start gaining steam, it should improve attendance at the Sunday shows too. WPW is starting to gain a little steam and it will be fun to see where they go with it.
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Chavo Guerrero Sr., Manny Fernandez, and Jamie from Tough Enough 3 were all in attendance at WPW’s “Best of the West”.
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You can expect to see a more active talent exchange between Toryumon and WPW now. In August WPW will be using Mini CIMA and SUWAcito from Toryumon X, and Scott Lost will be heading over to Toryumon in Japan. Toryumon also wanted to use Chilango, but he is unable to go due to visa problems. WPW told me that we can expect to see a lot more Toryumon wrestlers coming in too.
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Hardkore Kidd will be going to IWA Puerto Rico soon.
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Matrix missed his scheduled bookings this past weekend due to a loss in his family. I’d like to send my best wishes to him in this tough time.
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Since WWE Raw was in Los Angeles this week, I decided to check it out. While I didn’t care for most of the show, the Chris Jericho and Shawn Michaels match was fantastic. It was the best match I’ve seen on Raw in a long time. I’ve heard it even came off better for the live crowd.
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Roddy Piper was at Comic Con International this past week. He was scheduled to be there all four days, but for whatever reason he missed the first day. I was briefly able to speak with him, and the only really newsworthy thing to report is that he says he hasn’t spoken to anyone in the WWE since he was let go.
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Jardi Frantz injured his arm July 20th’s APW show in Hayward and will be out for about a month. There’s been no word on who will be replacing Jardi at July 26th’s PWG show, and there’s a chance he may be able to wrestle at APW LA’s August 16th show, but a replacement is being worked on in case he is unable to work.
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Booker T will be signing autographs from 6:00 to 8:00 PM. at RVD’s 5-Star Comics, at the Lakewood Center Mall in Lakewood today.
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Just a short column for this week. I’ll be back next week with news and notes from Pro-Wrestling Guerrilla’s debut.
-Steve
