The Wrestling Summit took place in Las Vegas on September 22nd at the Orleans Arena. While the show didn’t take place in SoCal, there were several SoCal stars on the show. The show features a tag team tournament to crown “La Copa De Lucha” champions featuring four teams representing Japan, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. The main event saw Adam Pearce take on Frankie Kazarian, and the undercard saw X-Pac take on Rocky Romero along with several tag matches with wrestlers such as Colt Cabana, Babi Slymm, Durango Kid, and others. -The show opens up with several shots of the Orleans Arena and Casino, and the Las Vegas strip. Dave Marquez introduces the fans to the show and they show a shot of the Orleans Arena before the event took place. After that, Dave begins to talk about La Copa De Lucha and there is a shot of La Copa De Lucha trophy. After that, a music video is played with clips from the Chicago based women’s promotion, SHIMMMER, and a plug for the Big Vision DVD release, and an ad for the Ultimate Insiders DVD series.
La Copa De Lucha Tournament Match: Team Mexico: Los Luchas(Zokre & Phoenix Star) vs. Team Japan: Black Tiger IV & Puma
The show starts off with the first round match for La Copa De Lucha. The match was good. Black Tiger(Rocky Romero) and Puma were the heels in this match, and they played to the crowd pretty well. Basic tag match with some good lucha stuff mixed in. Good opener, with Los Luchas hitting some nice looking double team spots.
-Next is a backstage promo with Joey Ryan and Karl Anderson, Team USA, cutting a promo about the other teams in the tournament. Karl Anderson was pretty entertaining, and Joey Ryan made a hilarious comment about beating the crap out of the Mexicans, and then paying them less than minimum wage to clean it up.
La Copa De Lucha Tournament Match: Team USA: Joey Ryan & Karl Anderson vs. Team Canada: Canadian Spymasters A & B
The Masked Spymasters looked pretty small in the match. This match wasn’t anything special. Team USA dominated the match, but there was some decent stuff in here. Joey and Karl worked really well as a team here, and made for a great heel tag team. The finish was pretty cool aswell. Joey hit one of the Spymasters with a superkick, which setup Karl Anderson hitting a spinebuster on the Spymaster and setup for a Boston Crab, with Joey spearing the other Spymaster and preventing him from making the save and getting the win for Team USA. Decent squash type match, with Joey and Karl working well as a team. After the match, there was a shot of Mr. Vanderpyle at ringside taking notes and possibly scouting talent. There was no explanation as to why he was out there at this point. After the match, Karl and Joey were interviewed in the ring.
Derek Sanders & Durango Kid vs. Paul Tracy & Zarco
I’ve only seen Durango Kid, and I’m usually into his matches. I can’t say the same about this match. There were some pretty sloppy spots in this, and it started to get awkward at times. it didn’t feel like anyone clicked. Paul Tracy looked alright in this, and he seems like he can do much better than this and I’d like to see what he can do in a different setting. During the match, Dave Marquez explains Vanderpyle’s appearence from the last match.
Kafu & Babi Slymm vs. Colt Cabana & The Plague
During each team’s entrance, there were clips being played that featured promos from both teams from earlier in the night. Kafu reminds me of Bruiser Brody, but instead of saying “HUSS”, he says “HURT” and does a hand chop into the air. The match was pretty standard big man stuff. Nothing mindblowing, but it was a decent enough match. Kafu got the pin on Cabana when he hit this Full Nelson release face crusher type move, which was pretty impressive. Vanderpyle came out again, and again he was scouting the talent that was in the ring.
Rocky Romero vs. X-Pac
This is probably the most random match I’ve ever seen in my life. X-Pac got a pretty good reaction from the fans, and Rocky Romero played a good heel in this. This wasn’t your usual Rocky Romero match, as it came off as something really different than what we would see from him. The brawling segment of the match was alright, but nothing really seemed to stand out in this match for me. Decent match that could of been better. The finsih of the match was pretty weak, with both men hitting low blows in front of the referee without getting DQ’d, and X-Pac winning with an X-Factor. I didn’t really like the low blow stuff, and it hurt the match in my mind.
La Copa De Lucha Tournament Finals: Team USA: Joey Ryan & Karl Anderson vs. Team Mexico: Los Luchas(Zokre & Phoenix Star)
Before the match started, Joey came out to the ring with an American flag covering him. When he got into the ring, he pulled out a stack of tortillas and started to throw them at the crowd while Anderson got on the mic and threatend to call the INS on the Hispanic fans in the building. The fans started to throw a trash at Team USA, and several referees had to come out to clean things up. Los Luchas came out and Team USA attacked them and there was a short brawl Lots of great heel work by Team USA here, and the action was pretty fun to watch. Los Luchas hit an awesome spot that saw Zokre hit his tope head fake dive, and when he rolled backwards Phoenix Star did a jumping flip roll over him, got up and hit a springboard tope con hilo onto Team USA. Joey and Karl tried to get the win the same way they put away Team Canada, but the Boston Crab was broken up by a springboard leg drop by Phoenix Star. The finsih saw Zokre and Phoenix Star hit stereo springboard topes onto Joey and Karl and getting the double pin for the win.
-After the match, there’s a promo aired with Adam Pearce backstage where he talks about his match with Frankie Kazarian. During this, they showed Frankie in the hallway getting ready for his match. Pretty cool segment that helped build up the main event match.
Frankie Kazarian vs. Adam Pearce
The match was being built up through out the night, and the announcers kept stressing that the end of the TV time was coming up and that if it didn’t finish they would show what happend next week. Their past was brought up several times during the match, and there was a brief mention of their cage match two years ago in PWG(although they didn’t bring up PWG’s name directly when talking about it). The match was a pretty good old school style match. The brawling part of the match on the outside was pretty cool, aswell as Frankie’s comebacks in the match. Pearce got the win when Frankie accidently hit the referee down low, and when he was selling it Pearce hit Frankie with a low blow of his own and hit a Piledriver for the win.
-For a debut show, this was pretty good. The best match of the show had to be La Copa De Lucha finals. Everyone in that match was really fun to watch through out the show. The setup in the arena was a lot more professional than anything I’ve seen from TNA, and everything came off well on camera. One problem I had with the production though was how the crowd heat didn’t come across well on camera. The announcers could of been turned down a bit so that we could hear the fans chanting, cheering, and booing.
-Aside from the main event and the Copa De Lucha finals, nothing really stood out on the show wrestling wise. I thought the Derek Sanders & Durango Kid vs. Paul Tracy & Zarco match was the worst match on the show, and found X-Pac vs. Romero to be pretty disapointing. Overall the episode was good, but it wasn’t great.
