“I don’t know what the fuck is going on” – PCW referee El Negro, 11/22/03
There have been a lot of good shows in SoCal lately, but you can’t have good shows without having bad shows once in awhile to remind us what a good show is. Luckily there was PCW’s November 22nd show to remind us what a bad show is.Before the show a few people asked that I do the dollar rating to review this show. For those that don’t know the dollar rating is a system devised by Otto “Hack-Man” Heuer of rec.sports.pro-wrestling fame, that gives a monetary value to each match in order to determine how much the show was worth versus how much it cost. Since I hadn’t done it in awhile I said “why not”.
The show started fairly late, probably 30 minutes or so but I wasn’t keeping track. It began with Aaron Proctor coming to the ring to announce his retirement from PCW and that Glenn “Diablo” McNeil would be taking over as commissioner of PCW. No one in the audience seemed to care about this at all, and it came across like Proctor and McNeil were just having a conversation on the side of the ring. Once that was all over Diablo announced Messiah would not be there tonight due to a family emergency. The crowd groaned.
Foob Dogg over Plague by DQ [1’59]
Plague came out to the ring first, then Diablo announced his opponent would be Foob Dogg. When Foob Dogg looked at him puzzled Diablo said “Hey, we’re kind of short tonight”. There wasn’t really a lot to the match. Plague basically squashed Foob Dogg but wouldn’t stop choking him resulting in a DQ. Thankfully it was kept really short, but by this point you could really tell they were losing the crowd and it was going to be hard to get them back.
Rating: $0.00
Bo Cooper over Sexy Chino [7’50]
No one should ever go nearly eight minutes with Sexy Chino. Bo is a lot bigger than Chino, and should not be wrestling guys Chino’s size. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be in the ring with small guys, I’m saying no one takes Chino as anything more than a comedy wrestler and Cooper shouldn’t be selling for him or letting Chino knock him down. At one point Chino blew a springboard in to a shoulder tackle but Cooper still sold it. They couldn’t even do the old “small guy uses speed versus big guy” routine, as Chino is slow and fairly sloppy in the ring. They did try to work some comedy into the match, with Sexy Chino biting Bo Cooper’s arm where he just got a new tattoo, but for the most part the match was serious, and as you can imagine Sexy Chino in an eight minute serious match isn’t good. Bo Cooper looked OK in the match, though it’s hard to do a whole lot against Chino. Sexy Chino did sell his beating in his post match dance, which was kind of funny I guess. Anyway, not a very good match at all.
Rating: $0.10
Chippy Sanchez over Catastrophe [5’30]
I figured since these guys wrestle against each other all the time in WPW the card should pick up some, and while this match was better than the previous two, it still wasn’t very good. Both guys are usually better than this too, but I guess it was an off night.
Rating: $0.20
Johnny Webb & Juantastico over Stepfather & Red Headed Stepchild [16’23]
I would have rated this higher if it was shorter, as Juantastico and Webb both looked pretty good in the match. Actually, Webb looked better in this match than any of his matches in XPW while he was their champ. I thought Stepfather looked pretty decent too, and he does his gimmick well, but he may actually over do it, as it started to get really annoying. The match itself seemed to have no end. Webb put a mask on during the match to honor his lucha libre heritage. Later in the match while Stepfather was blinded Webb put the mask on Red Headed Stepchild and tricked Stepfather into helping to pin his own partner. This would have been a good eight-minute match. Oh yeah, this is the match where the El Negro quote to start off this review took place.
Rating: $0.30
Matrix over Steve Pain [9’27]
One good thing about the show was that the matches were progressively getting better. Matrix came out with his manager Jason Bennett and without his tag-team partner Preston Scott. This match was pretty decent, but nothing special. I think Matrix is pretty underrated around SoCal, though he hasn’t really improved much over the last year it seems. Steve Pain seems to get better every time I see him. The match itself was there. Nothing special, but it wasn’t bad either. Just your average filler match.
Rating: $0.70
Joey Ryan over Infernal to retain the PCW MAXimum title two falls to one [6’05]
This match had potential, but anytime a two out of three falls match goes six minutes there’s trouble. Infernal won the first fall in about two minutes. I think maybe Joey Ryan was still shaken from his match with Super Dragon last week at PWG. During the second fall Infernal took a nasty suplex in the crowd where it looked as if he hit his head pretty hard on the ground. Then Joey Ryan won that fall by count-out at about the four-minute mark. Apparently Joey Ryan is heading in a new direction after his hardcore match with Super Dragon too, as the third fall was won when he set up a table on the outside and pushed Infernal off the top rope through the table, then rolled him into the ring for the win. For what little there was of this match, it was actually pretty good. Somehow a six minute long three falls match seemed to fit on this show.
Rating: $0.90
Scott Lost over Lil’ Cholo [10’23]
Easily the best match of the night up until this point. The crowd was pretty much dead by this point, but both guys seemed to give a pretty good effort. The two of them have had better matches together, most notably their ladder match in APW LA, but still this was a fairly good match.
Rating: $2.25
B-Boy over Super Dragon [21’55]
It was a nice surprise to see B-Boy replace Messiah in this match. I think if they had just booked this a while ago and hyped it up they would have actually drawn better. They could have played up the fact that Dragon and B-Boy haven’t met each other in a singles match in SoCal in over two years, and it being close to the two-year anniversary of their match in MPW that was named 2001’s match of the year. But B-Boy was a last minute replacement and they weren’t really afforded that opportunity. They announced that B-Boy would be defending the PCW title for Messiah. This was a really good match, though I don’t think it was up to par with any of their previous singles matches. The previous ones just seemed fresher, plus they all had more of a build to them where each guy was playing off the history they had with each other. The lack of any crowd heat also hurt the match, but the lack of heat wasn’t Dragon or B-Boy’s fault, but the fault of the bad show everyone sat through before this match. At one point Dragon even yelled out during the match that “this is the worst crowd I’ve ever seen”. Throughout the match Dragon continuously avoided B-Boy’s shinning wizard by blocking it, dodging it, or reversing it into a hold. Super Dragon was able to hit the psycho driver, but he was to exhausted by that point to go for the pin, and B-Boy rolled out of the ring. B-Boy eventually hit a shinning wizard, but one wasn’t enough to get the pin, so he hit a second one on Dragon and got the three. After the match Diablo came out and started to cut a promo on the crowd for some unknown reason, but thankfully Super Dragon took away the mike and the show ended.
Rating: $4.00
Total value: $8.45
Ticket price: $15.00
As you can see I don’t feel that the show was worth the price of the tickets. The main saved the show, but from what I’ve heard it doesn’t come of good on tape because of the crowd, so I don’t know if it’s even worth getting the tape when it comes out, even for that match.
Now, a lot of what happened wasn’t PCW’s fault, and they should actually be commended on some things. Let’s face it, the original card wasn’t all that great to start with, but with all the no-shows they were handed, there wasn’t a whole lot they could do. They made a good effort in working with what they had, and made a good call in getting B-Boy to come in for the main event.
I think PCW’s biggest problem going forward is going to be getting the fans back. Several people at the show told me it’s their last PCW show. Even though some people disliked Aaron Proctor, he brought some fan friendliness to PCW that was severely lacking before his time there. With all the recent matches they’ve announced over the last few shows that never happened, and this terrible last show, it’s going to be very difficult to restore the fan’s faith in the promotion.
In my opinion what PCW should do is start by booking a card with wrestlers they know will be there. Book a main event between two wrestlers who are going to show up, and make it a main event people want to see. Next put matches together that make sense. Why was Joey Ryan and Infernal in a three falls match in their first match against each other? In a non lucha environment a three falls match is a gimmick match, and gimmick matches should be kept special, not used as throw away six minute matches that aren’t even part of a feud. After this past show PCW may need to start over with their angles to actually start building stuff, but the random matches have to end. Most importantly lower the ticket prices. I’m not saying permanently lower them, but for the return show they are going to need to do something to bring the fans back in. Revolution X can charge ten dollars with a better card, then PCW can charge ten dollars. If you lose money on the show charging ten dollars, consider it an investment into the future. It’s better to draw 100 at ten dollars a ticket, than 50 at fifteen a ticket.
Whatever they do, they are going to need to do something.
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A little note on the UPW press release from a couple weeks ago about Sylvester Terkay and Tom Howard fighting on the December 31st K-1 special. According to the Wrestling Observer both are going to be fighting in mixed-martial-arts matches and not kickboxing. It will be interesting to see how this turns out. If both matches are shoots and they lose it might be in hindsight a bad idea for both guys.
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EWF will be running a benefit show for the Old Fire Relief fund on December 14th in San Bernardino featuring Honky Tonk Man and Konnan. For more info on the show check the upcoming events section.
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I’ll have my look at the top tag-teams of 2003 up a little bit later in the week.
-Steve
