On September 20th Revolution Pro ran it’s third annual Revolution J tournament. This year’s tournament was booked with the idea of getting over Rising Son as a major heel in the promotion, in what looks to be a second attempt to make Rising Son the focal point of the fed.
In 2002 after Revolution Pro returned from a somewhat long hiatus, Rising Son was pushed as the top star of Revolution Pro as a face, in sort of a defender of Revolution Pro. The idea largely failed as most people were used to Revolution Pro having fantastic main events, and for whatever reason Rising Son’s match quality had deteriorated greatly from the year before. And with Super Dragon having matches on the undercard, it only made Son’s matches seem all that much worse. Eventually the idea was dropped and Super Dragon was once again pushed as the top guy in Rev Pro, beginning a feud with Mr. Excitement.The Mr. Excitement and Super Dragon feud then lead into the second Revolution J, where with Mr. Excitement winning the tournament, he was seemingly being groomed for a top spot in the promotion also, but his win was never followed up on with any sort of real push immediately after.
This year’s Revolution J saw the outlaw Rising Son, who has been banned from Revolution Pro, being brought in by Super Boy to screw over the “establishment”. It’s clear with the time and effort spent building the Rising Son as an outlaw heel versus Revolution Pro angle, that unlike last year’s tournament there will be some follow up to it, but it’s anyone’s guess how well it will go over. If it’s anything like the last Rising Son as the top guy in Rev Pro angle (though obviously this time in reverse), it may be a long fall in Rev Pro. Likewise if the 2001 Rising Son shows up, I’d expect it to workout fine.
More on Rising Son and the angle in a minute.
Rather than do a complete review of the Revolution J, I decided to steal Scrub’s highs and lows format and give my thoughts on the show that way.
Highs
Quicksilver versus Phoenix Star – Aside from Super Dragon defeating Excalibur at last year’s Revolution J, this may have been the best first round match in Revolution J history. I don’t really see any way at this point that Quicksilver doesn’t win rookie of the year for 2003. He has just been fantastic all year. I was actually in a discussion before the tournament that I hadn’t seen Phoenix Star or Zokre have any really good matches wrestling anyone other than each other, then this match opens the tournament.
Super Dragon – Once again the MVP of the Revolution J. He actually worked six matches in less than 24 hours, working twice the night before at MLW and then four matches at the Revolution J. All four of his Revolution J matches were good this year, including a really good rematch of last year’s finals against Mr. Excitement.
The Thomasellis – It’s always good to see fresh faces in SoCal. It’s even better to see fresh faces who can have good matches. No one really knew what to expect with either guy, but after a good first round match, people were pretty much sold on them. Not to mention a pretty good match Vito had with Shane Ballard in round two, and a good, but short match between Vito and Super Dragon in the third round. Hopefully we’ll see more of both guys in Rev Pro.
Revolution X – At the show Veronica Caine came out and tried to sign Konnan and Kaos to “something new” she is doing, and after both rejected her, and cut promos on her, she announced to the crowd, and had people pass out flyers, for Revolution X. The angle kind of fell flat on the audience, but I think the idea of having two different Revolution Pros with two different directions is a good idea. It’s kind of like Toryumon in Japan with several promotions. Also it opens up lots of possibilities for later on, with promotion versus promotion feuds and the like (hopefully they’d watch Toryumon versus T2P to getting booking ideas, rather than WWE versus WCW). Also keeping the hardcore stuff to one promotion doesn’t offend the fans who doesn’t want to see it, and vice versa. It will be interesting to see how they pull it off.
Lows
Lack of importance – Like Scrub touched upon on post on the SCU message board, Revolution Pro really did nothing to make the tournament seem special. The Revolution J should be the biggest show of the year for Rev Pro, but if you don’t treat it as a special show no one will see it as one. No pre-show ceremony, no video clips (I don’t even know if the television there works still for that), nothing aside from the streamers. I’ve been to both APW’s King of the Indies and CZW’s Best of the Best and both promotions made you know that you were at a special show. I think Rising Son’s victory would have seemed like even more of a blow to Rev Pro, if the Revolution J was made to seem like a bigger deal at the show.
Rising Son – I thought the angle at the show didn’t go off as well as it could have. First it’s hard to get someone over as a super heel when his entire family is sitting in the audience cheering him on. Rising Son’s match with Chilango in the first round may have been the worst tournament match in Revolution J history, so at this point Son was met with mostly silence from a good portion of the crowd, except for his cheering section.
Then there was the disappointment in not seeing Super Boy. Super Boy got a welcome back chant, and he was the focus of a lot of the show’s hype. Then he was replaced by Rising Son, who got a decent reaction, but not the type of reaction a wrestler who was as big a part of Rev Pro returning should have gotten. The reason for that was because people wanted to see Super Boy, so the crowd was disappointed, and then the surprise to make up for that disappointment didn’t do the job with everyone there.
Next, Rising Son’s matches. I really wont go into the first match, as it was just plain awful. Son’s match with Joey Ryan was decent, and his Super Dragon match was good, but he was doing face mannerisms in both matches, despite the fact that he was clearly trying to be heel.
And lastly the finals. This part isn’t 100% on Rising Son. The finish of the finals saw Super Dragon give Son the psycho driver, then pull him up on two, then he went right into the supernatural driver (psycho driver 2001) and pulled him up on two, then Dragon put Son in the corner and gave him the violent party, then held him up by the hair and gave him a lariat. Super Dragon used two of his finishers, and two of his moves that are in the upper echelon of his arsenal. So what comes next? Rising Son kicks out on two. Might as well bring kryptonite to a match with Rising Son. I guess they can say in storyline that Rising Son had been training for all of Dragon’s offense on some desert island by having coconuts dropped on his head. Then Son reverses a second rope psycho driver into a DDT and gets the pin on Super Dragon. Son then precedes to completely no sell the previous match, despite being given two finishers and two high impact moves just a minute before.
Show length – This is always an issue with one night sixteen-man tournaments. The trouble is this show didn’t even have an intermission. I understand that they needed to be done with the venue by a certain point, but cutting time out of some of the matches and giving the fans a break, without forcing people to miss some of the action would have been nice.
The tag match – Here’s a perfect example of how to save time. Don’t run this match. There was nothing wrong with the match itself, but it’s pretty much a waste to spend the money to book Konnan in a five-minute match, especially on a show that already had 14 other matches.
No lucha matches – Neither of the two first round lucha matches happened. There should have been some switch with possibly putting Zokre in with Principe Unlimited, who probably would have been better at working Principe Unlimited’s style than Joey Ryan. Or Chilango and Principe Unlimited would have been fine too.
Unlike the last two year’s Revolution J’s there was no real match of the year canidate, nor even a match of the month candidate on this year’s show, but the show overall may have been better than the previous two years, with only two matches really being below average (Principe Unlimited vs. Joey Ryan & Rising Son vs. Chilango), and the rest being good to pretty good. Match of the night was Super Dragon over Mr. Excitement.
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I had a chance to read SCRAP magazine #4 the other day, and like all previous issues this one is a must read. It has an excellent interview with Adam Pearce in it, that starts off in kayfabe, but quickly turns into a shoot. For those who don’t know SCRAP is a magazine devoted to the SoCal indy scene that is put out by Rick Knox. For more info on it e-mail Rick Knox at whoknox@pacbell.net.
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I’d like to send my congratulations to (former?) WCWA champion and San Diego Horseman Jason Allgood who got married in Las Vegas last week.
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UPW’s The Miz is on this season’s “Real World vs. Road Rules Challenge” on MTV. The Miz used to be on “The Real World” before getting into pro-wrestling at UPW.
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Just a short column this week as I’m getting ready to head out to the UFC event in Las Vegas. Speaking of mixed-martial-arts, there’s been some talk about adding mma coverage to SCU when there are events being run in SoCal, most likely starting with November 2nd’s King of the Cage show at Pala Casino outside San Diego. If you have an opinion on this, either positive or negative head over to the SCU message board and speak out.
-Steve
