This past weekend Pro Wrestling Guerrilla ran their two night tournament to determine their first ever champion. Rather than do a full review of the show, because of the amount of matches, I was planning on doing a good, the bad, and the ugly type column. There really wasn’t enough that could be considered bad, so it’s back to a full review.08/29/03
As I drove up to the venue for night one, I noticed a ton of people, and was thinking “wow, PWG really is drawing big.” Then I realized there was some sort of fair going on. I should have known PWG didn’t book a donkey.
The show itself had about 120 people there, give or take 10. I don’t think too many more could have even fit in the venue, even though before the show they were saying the venue would seat about 200. Friday nights always seem to be a tough draw, mainly because of how spread out everything in SoCal is, and the traffic. That’s really no excuse as UPW draws huge on weeknights, and they deal with the same traffic problems. Lack of promotion probably has more to do with the turnout than anything. It being Labor Day weekend didn’t help things though.
The show, which began a little late, started with Paul T. and Excalibur coming out to the ring and reading off the first round matches. Then Excalibur announced Super Dragon and here we go with the first round of the sixteen-man tournament.
Super Dragon over Hook Bomberry [19’32]
This was a fantastic match. At the start of the match there was a fan the kept chanting for Super Dragon. In fact he never stopped chanting even with Super Dragon telling him to shut up. Eventually Dragon went into the audience and got in this guy’s face and finally he shut up. Classic stuff. Anyway, like in most recent Dragon matches, the match consisted of Dragon just destroying Hook pretty much the entire, but Hook being the fighter he is just wouldn’t give up. Occasionally Hook would try to make a comeback, but it never lasted long before Dragon would just destroy him. Eventually Dragon’s punishment was just too much for Hook and Dragon got the win.
Colt Cabana over M Dogg 20 [11’37]
As most people who read this column on a regular basis undoubtedly know, I have never thought too highly of M Dogg’s wrestling. However this was the best I have ever seen him look. Everything looked crisp and fluid, and didn’t have any of that unnecessary flipping for the sake of flipping stuff he tends to do a lot. I hope Colt Cabana becomes a PWG and SoCal regular. I think he’s now had five matches in SoCal, and I don’t think any of them have been below excellent.
Joey Ryan over Scorpio Sky [14’04]
I honestly don’t remember a whole lot about this match, except that at the time I remember thinking it was pretty good. On a night with so many good matches, it really didn’t do anything to stand out I guess. That’s one of the hazards of writing a review four days later. There was one point where Scorpio went up to the top rope, and ended up hitting the air conditioning. Joey Ryan got the win and moved on.
Adam Pearce over Disco Machine [8’07]
This match began with a dance contest between Pearce’s manager, Mr. Vanderpyle and Disco Machine. After Disco’s dancing Pearce attacked him from behind. Pearce is a master at getting the crowd involved in the match, and throughout the whole match Pearce and Vanderpyle interacted with the crowd in a way to really generate heat on them. Pearce and Hardkore Kidd are easily the top two heels in SoCal with no one in their league. This was a pretty good match overall, with Pearce winning with the piledriver.
Frankie Kazarian over Scott Lost [11’05]
This was a really solid face versus face match. I think the fact that the crowd really couldn’t decide who to get behind, hurt the match in the heat department a little, but as far as the actual in ring work goes it was solid. Frankie won with the Wave of the Future.
B-Boy over Tony Kozina [16’52]
This was another good match, which was the trend of the night. The problem I had with this match, as well as quite a few recent B-Boy matches is that a lot of the sequences in the match seem to be lifted straight from other matches on the east coast. In a recent three way in UPW there were some three-way spots taken from ROH, and in this match there were sequences taken straight off of ROH tapes. I obviously wasn’t there when any of these matches were planned, so I’m not saying it’s B-Boy’s doing, but it’s prevalent enough in his matches where it stands out. Enough fans in the audience watch ROH tapes to know where the sequences came from, and it hurts the match. Since both wrestlers were familiar with each other from their match in EPIC, both tried to adapt their styles to better combat the other, with B-Boy going for a more ground based style, and Kozina trying a more striking based attack. Still, B-Boy did the better job of adapting as he won the match with his new finisher.
NOSAWA over TARO [8’53]
I thought this was the worst match of the two days. TARO is insanely over, which really saved this match. I’m sure on the video this match will come out better, as most of NOSAWA’s kicks and punches had a ton of air in them which can be covered in editing. Other than that NOSAWA looked pretty good. Honestly, I have never seen a good TARO match that didn’t feature Super Dragon aside from a single Rising Son match in 2000 or 2001, but his charisma really makes up for that. I don’t know what it is, his matches just don’t seem to click. For those unfamiliar with TARO, he has a blue dot on his tights that he calls the “button”. And in every match he “pushes the button.” In this match he went for the button, but Paul T. was able to run in and stop him from pushing it, giving NOSAWA the win.
Chris Daniels over Hardkore Kidd [12’10]
Hardkore Kidd came out with a ton of fire in this match and was just going all out from the opening bell. Daniels looked good as always. He probably hasn’t looked bad in a match in several years. This was probably my third favorite match of the entire tournament, as it was so well done, and was just so intense from start to finish. Daniels won with the Angel’s Wings. A great finish to a great night.
Without putting too much thought into it, this was probably the best show I’ve been to this year in SoCal. From top to bottom an awesome card, with only one below average match, and several great ones. Talking to a couple people after the show they even told me they weren’t planning on going to the second day, but based on the strength of day one they’ve decided to go.
8/30/03
For some reason lately the traffic going up to Frank and Sons on the 5 has been out of control, on Saturday though I didn’t hit any traffic so I made it up there nearly an hour before the show started. Walking around the show I noticed there’s a second wrestling booth now besides the Alternative Wrestling Shop and a booth specializing in mixed-martial-arts stuff.
Frank and Sons is an oven during the summer, and Saturday was no different. I think the heat might actually be keeping people away from the shows, but once again the attendance for the show could probably be linked to lack of promotion and the Labor Day weekend. The more I think about it the more I think Labor Day had to do with the turnout. As Frank and Sons was emptier than normal, and parking wasn’t all that hard to find. Anyway, on to the second round of the tournament.
Frankie Kazarian over Lil’ Cholo (subbing for B-Boy) [5’39]
There’s no question this would have been better with B-Boy in there, as B-Boy and Kazarian have worked together so much, but Lil’ Cholo was probably the best short notice substitute they could find. Anyway, Frankie won with the Tazmission.
Chris Daniels over NOSAWA [6’54]
This was one of the matches I was most looking forward to when NOSAWA was announced as being in the tournament (I never thought TARO would win). NOSAWA looked a lot better in this match than he did the night before. Daniels once again looked good in everything they did. There wasn’t a whole lot to the match itself, it was solid, but really had no depth. Daniels advances.
Joey Ryan over Adam Pearce [12’31]
Like I said earlier Adam Pearce is a heat machine. Joey did a good job at playing the underdog in the match, and I thought this was all together a fun match. There was a ton of interference and a ref bump, but it didn’t take anything away from the match, and helped keep up the “cheat to win” psychology behind Pearce’s matches. For the most part it was a really fun old school styled match.
Super Dragon over Colt Cabana [13’14]
This was a really good match, but not as good as either’s first round match. As with most matches where Dragon faces more established non-SoCal guys, this one wasn’t nearly as stiff as his other matches in the tournament. Both guys were solid in the match, and the match was pretty good, it’s just another of those matches that when compared with the rest of the show it wont stand out that much.
Next PWG went to an intermission, then onto the semi-finals.
Frankie Kazarian over Chris Daniels [13’49]
I thought this was the fourth best match of the tournament. The ending sequence was fantastic. They went a million miles per hour, just going toe to toe trying to out do each other. The only negative with the finish is that a lot of times sequences like this lose a little something on video, and in the end this match wont get the pimping it deserves.
Joey Ryan over Super Dragon [22’08]
This was the easy match of the tournament. I’ll go on record right now and say the Joey Ryan and Super Dragon feud has the chance to top the feuds Dragon has had with Rising Son and B-Boy, just based off their few meetings. I thought the Dragon and Excalibur versus Joey and Scott Lost match at APW LA earlier this month was better up until the end, but this match was better overall. This is probably a semi serious match of the year candidate. The story of the match itself was Dragon destroying Joey Ryan, but Ryan continuing to fight back. Joey Ryan eventually managed to hit the Duff Drop on Dragon to the outside, then roll him into the ring for the win. Terrific match. After the match both Joey Ryan and Dragon needed help getting to the back, which setup a beat up Joey Ryan versus a relatively unscathed Frankie Kazarian in the finals.
Next there were a couple of non-tournament matches to give the wrestlers a little time to rest between matches.
Hardkore Kidd & Al Katrazz over Hook Bomberry & Apolo Kahn [11’49]
Hardkore Kidd came out and said he wanted a heavyweight, not a midget, which lead to Hook coming out. Then Al Katrazz ran out, then Apolo. Paul T. made the match official and here we go. The match started out OK, but then something happened in the audience with a fan getting tossed out for stealing tapes and everyone quit watching the match and went into “what the hell is going on” mode. Plus they followed the excellent Super Dragon and Joey Ryan match. The match was never able to regain the crowd. Hardkore Inc. won when Adam Pearce did a run in and gave Apolo the piledriver.
Scott Lost, Tony Kozina, & TARO over M Dogg 20, Scorpio Sky, & Disco Machine [16’14]
This was a pretty fun match that started with Scorpio reading a page from the wrestling rule book that said buttons were illegal. Then TARO found a page that said buttons were legal. Funny stuff. Everyone looked pretty good in this, including M Dogg again, but really no one had enough time to really stand out in the match. Just a fun match that did what it was supposed to, kill time.
Now it was time for the tournament finals.
Frankie Kazarian over Joey Ryan [11’38]
There was really two ways they could go with this match. They could go for realism where Frankie would have a fairly easy victory due to Joey being beat up as he was, or they could go for the Joey Ryan miracle upset victory. They picked option one. Joey pretty much sold his injured ribs the entire match, and Frankie being the cunning warrior he is, constantly worked over Joey’s ribs. Eventually Frankie won with the Flux Capacitor. Frankie Kazarian becomes the first PWG champion.
Overall two really good shows, with night one being the better of the two in my opinion. Both shows were better than PWG’s debut show, and if they continue the trend it wont be long before they are making waves in indy wrestling. The main thing they need to fix is their tape situation, as that is one of the things they promised when they first announced they’d be running, that they’d have tapes out quickly, and tapes have yet to come out.
Their next show on October 4th has a card that is even more stacked than this tournament was, with AJ Styles, Chris Daniels, the Briscoes, the return of Bobby Quance, plus all the other PWG regulars.
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I had a chance to watch the XPW pay-per-view the other day, and I think if XPW is banking on pay-per-view success as the future of their promotion, we won’t be seeing XPW running live shows again.
The music video promoting the show that was online, as well as the commercials that were airing promoting the show, were very impressive, and I imagine this first pay-per-view possibly did decent based on the strength of those ads. However the show itself had nothing to offer that would keep people coming back for more.
The entire show was short clips from matches, and clips of a few of the XPW females, with the occasional shot of Supreme walking around punching people. And while the deathmatch clips might appeal to the crash TV audience, I guarantee by the end of the show even they had seen enough of guys getting hit with light tubes and falling into thumbtacks.
As far as an intro to XPW goes, I don’t think the PPV did a very good job at that either, as most of the clips had no real setup to them to really explain what was going on. The old XPW home video, “The Revolution Will be Televised” actually does a much better job of introducing people to XPW, though they did have two hours and XPW had been around a shorter amount of time at that point.
With XPW having not been on TV in awhile, I had forgotten how annoying Kriss Kloss can get at times. This pay-per-view was a quick reminder.
For the next XPW pay-per-view I hope they decide to go with some full matches, and use the Kriss Kloss intros to give more of the back story to the matches or feuds, than just throw up random clips. I just don’t think most wrestling fans want to just see clips, and I don’t think the show offered enough of the kind of action the people who are fans of the backyard wrestling videos want to see. I actually watched this with someone who had never gone to an XPW show, and when they watched an FMW video in the past they liked it. During the XPW pay-per-view they asked that I “just turn it off.” I definitely wouldn’t expect many people who weren’t fans of XPW going in, to bother buying the next pay-per-view.
Really, the main goal of the pay-per-view should have been to capture new fans, new fans who would by the videos and merchandise, and in that I think the promotion failed. XPW’s website should have been pushed on the pay-per-view also, to help create those new sales. I’m sure most people can search for XPW with a search engine and find the site, but advertising a Supreme shirt for instance, may have brought a few more people to the site to buy that shirt.
Since XPW is using it’s catalog of footage for these pay-per-views, which is money that’s already spent for the most part, and has XEG backing them, then they really had nothing to lose with the pay-per-views, and a lot to gain if the took off. Obviously the PPV companies aren’t going to keep airing them if they tank, so they need to quickly fix what’s not working with the shows and see if they can attract an audience that will buy pay-per-view after pay-per-view. My solution to make the most out of the situation they are in would be to show a couple full matches, music videos, the XPW girls, and to push the website and merchandise.
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WPW’s show was canceled again this past Sunday, and they won’t be running again for the next few weeks due to insurance problems with the Anaheim Marketplace.
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Next week I’ll have my Revolution J 3 preview.
-Steve
