Championship Wrestling From Hollywood Episode 249 Review

:::Editor’s Note:::
These reviews although entertaining for some, are not what I was hoping for when Andrew volunteered to review CWFH Television. The personal attacks are what take away from the true critique that I was initially hoping for. In retrospect, these articles should have never been published. However in the spirit of being Uncensored, they will remain on the site.

:::Author’s Note:::
While Jay Cal might claim that what I say in my reviews are “personal attacks” and such, they simply are not. Anyone who feels that way is reading into things too deeply. While he may be the E.I.C. here on SCU and can dictate what does and doesn’t belong on the site, he shouldn’t be incorrectly telling you, the reader, what the intent of my comments and reviews were. It should also be noted that Jay Cal is friends with people inside Championship Wrestling From Hollywood and some of the workers on these shows. In the spirit of being Uncensored, you, the reader, deserve to know the truth instead of having someone slandering my writings to influence your opinions by twisting other people’s words.. – Andrew

This week, a bunch of the same usual useless bullshit from Championship Wrestling From Hollywood that they produce every week, with some extra racism and ignorance in this episode to go along with the usual uninspired wrestling that’s terribly booked that goes on. Plus the return of Wally George clips! Watch as he has cuts better promos and thrills an audience better than anyone in wrestling today. Everyone take notes and learn some shit.

Show opens with Toasterdork Grant mentioning that there are two matches on the show. Todd Chandler challenging James Morgan for the United TV Championship, and Peter Avalon against the guy he’s interviewing, the fake Russian Brandon aka Sasha Darveko. Brandon does his awful fake accent as usual. He’s informed that his match against Avalon isn’t for Avalon’s title. The reason given was that Dave Marquez’s fake-son said (off camera I guess, since the fake-Marquez brothers are never on TV) “this is American, and you have to earn your title shot.” Tyler Bateman earned his by losing to a comedy character named The Hobo. This show is already a joke, but at least they’re trying. Not hard enough, but they’re trying. Wally George wouldn’t find any of this bullshit to be American though.

The Walking Fetus Stu Stone comes out with James Morgan. He cuts an awful promo and says they hate guys named Todd. He lists off guys named Todd. This show is off to a really terrible start.

United Television Championship Match: James Morgan (w/ Stillbirth Stone) (c) vs. Todd Chandler

This starts with James Morgan beating up Todd Chandler around the ring and into the crowd, hitting him with drinks, a microphone, and held him so that Stillbirth (who is now at ringside doing commentary) could hit him. They go inside the ring to start the match, and Chandler is in control by doing a bunch of basic shit like punches, stomps, knees, and other basic shit. His offense is reminiscent of the movesets wrestlers in videos games had in the 80’s. Actually, this shit is exactly like a 80’s video game wrestling, except less fun. They had a commercial break during this, which featured a commercial with Evander Holyfield eating Carl’s Jr. food being played twice. Anyways, Chandler controls the match some more with boring, basic offense and Stillbirth continues to be an abortion on commentary. The kids in the front row horse playing over a water bottle are more entertaining than this match. There’s a ref bump, Chandler pushed the fetus, grabbed the title and tried to piledrive him on the belt. James Morgan ended up reversing and won after hitting a version of Chris Hero’s “Hero’s Welcome”/Christopher Daniels’ “Last Rites” and getting the win. This match had a good amount of time, which wasn’t a bad thing, but the match was still boring and lame.

Backstage with Toasterdork Grant as he’s interviewing Eli Drake. Eli Drake cuts a stupid promo and says a few words about Big Duke, who he beat cleanly last week. This promo implies that they’re having a match on this show. What the fuck?

After commercial we comeback to Toasterdork Grant talking to Ty Matthews and Eric Watts. He cuts a stupid promo and there’s an implication that they’re going to kidnap and rape Toasterdork or something. They talk about being taken seriously, and I’m sitting here not taking either or them seriously because I’m wondering why there’s no follow up to the Rocky Romero angle? You know, the one where they beat down the guy who won the PP3 Cup tournament that this company spent a lot of TV time building up? See, this is why this show FUCKING SUCKS! They don’t even follow up on their storylines. Fuck this is awful.

JR Kratos vs. Manny Castillo

This match has Tito Escondido on commentary. Tito killed Manny Castillo a few weeks before, so it would only make sense if JR Kratos killed this dork. In fact, it should be pretty obvious that the dork is going to get killed by Kratos. Tito is the best commentator this show has had since Excalibur had short stint on this shitty series. Kratos kills Castillo, who had some hope spots. Honestly, this shouldn’t been a pure squash with Kratos doing all the offense and giving Castillo nothing. Stillbirth asks about Mr. Bookerman Andrew Yuma, and Tito shuts him down. But yeah, as I said, Kratos killed the dork. Kratos’ jumping knee is pretty cool.

Post match shenanigans: Tito attacked Kratos from behind. When Kratos was about to make a comeback, Tito took off. This was a decently booked segment.

Now we go backstage with Toasterdork Grant for the worst segment of this show. He interviews the Classic Connection, who are wearing Zubaz pants. These guys are trying way too hard and coming up way too short. Levi Shapiro cuts a bigoted, ignorant promo, and drops a racist line on Los Primos Rivera as he refers to them as “Chihuahuas.” His partner Buddy Royal calls them J-Lo backup dancers. Fuck this awful promo. Shapiro’s lucky he didn’t say that shit around people who don’t play games like that as they would’ve had some words with him. He only got away with what he said because he said that shit around guys who aren’t about that life.

What bothered me about the “Chihuahuas” line is not only is it an unfunny line, but it is legitimately fucking racist and insulting to both Puerto Ricans and Mexican as we’re two different ethnic groups. The only breed of dog native to Puerto Rico is the Gran Mastín de Borinquen, and Chihuahuas are native to Mexico. What’s worse is that if someone (even if it were someone like me writing on this website) made a comment about Shapiro’s nose, the star of David on his towel, or made any type of comment that could be considered Anti-Semitic, it wouldn’t even fly. Fuck this bullshit, fuck Championship Wrestling From Hollywood for being okay with that shit, and fuck KDOC as well as anyone else who airs this shit. This shit here isn’t “heel heat” that I’m giving Shapiro or this show, this is “you are legitimately fucking terrible at what you do and this awful fucking show deserves to be cancelled” heat. It bothers me that for years that Dave Marquez has always had uncreative race baiting bullshit on his shows to try and draw heat. This isn’t a question of whether or not to use race in things, but rather about not relying on lazy bigotry to get heat. Wrestling promo or not, it was pathetic and not funny. It was unintelligent and uncreative. The Classic Connection fucking suck. I’ll get into the racism shit more later in the review.

Los Primos Rivera (Danny Limelight & Gino Rivera) vs. The Classic Connection (Levi Shapiro & Buddy Royal)

The uneducated fans of Championship Wrestling From Hollywood chanted “USA” during Los Primos Rivera’s entrance. They’re obviously unaware that Puerto Rico is a United States territory and that people from Puerto Rico are disenfranchised citizens of the United States. Stillbirth Stone repeats the same lame/racist Chihuahuas line the Classic Connection used earlier. Fuck everything about the show. I’m not even going to comment on how Gino Ricky Seville The Thrill Alvarez Whatever is awful and looks like a bird because of how shitty everything else has been. Danny Limelight did a cool tope in this match. The crowd was dead for this because BOTH TEAMS ARE FUCKING HEELS! There’s nobody to care about here. Do I care about the annoying guys who walked out on their last two matches, or the unfunny dorks? But yeah, this had a stupid finish. Fuck that “old school” gimmick shit too. Los Primos won and nobody cares. At least the racists on Wally George were able to draw heat and knew how to make entertaining TV.

Backstage with Toasterdork Grant, Peter Avalon talks about fake-Russian Brandon and being disrespected. Generic babyface stuff as we go to commercial. Hey, what happened to Eli Drake and Big Duke? Fuck it, nobody cares anyways.

Peter Avalon vs. Sasha Darevko

Fake-Russian Brandon “Sasha Darevko” Rickert is wearing a black tracksuit under his red one. He must’ve heard the phrase ‘black is a slimming color. You know what else is slimming and doesn’t require much effort? 20 minutes of cardio a day. Get on it, Brandon. This match started out with Peter Avalon having a good showcase on offense, while the former Mike Vega looked like a balding middle aged guy in his grandpa’s tracksuit trying to keep up on his first day of wrestling training. One of the dorks on commentary that isn’t Stillbirth Stone had a funny line about Sasha being “entitled.” Sounded like a shoot to me, be it intentional or not. Fake-Russian Sasha Rickert slows things down when he takes over on offense. Brandon does SPINNING SHIT and looks awful doing so. He resembles a fatter, unfunny version of Charlie Kelly from It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia more than he does a fake-Russian. Charlie Kelly had better workrate than Sasha Brandon does.

After the TV viewer is treated to a wonderful El Pollo Loco commercial, we see more basic shit from Brandon Darevko. He works like a middle aged guy doing play wrestling with his niece while on offense, but with way less cardio. Sasha does a shitty looking LEG SLAP while doing an awkward looking running knee on Avalon in the corner. It looked worse than anything I had seen on both PWG’s All Star Weekend 11 Night 1 and Night 2 combined. combined. Still no sign of Eli Drake and Big Duke. Peter has a comeback until Brandon Darveko fakes a knee injury. His acting skills are just as bad as his wrestling skills. The ref does the fake “X” hand sign and other referees hit the ring. The match should be over now, but this show is booked by idiots and it continued after Sasha Rickert fooled nobody the show by attacking Peter with a cheap shot to get the win. Now he has a title shot. Peter Avalon was the only redeeming quality of this match, but the combination of bad booking and Brandon Vega Darveko being awful dragged this down. Peter deserves better than this shit.

So, what happened with Eli Drake and Big Duke containing their already dead feud? Oh well. Fuck it, Wally George clip.

Final Thoughts

I’m gonna be honest, the pacing the show was somewhat better. Instead of six stupid and pointless matches, we got four. The opener and main event got good time, and one segment used the concept of a squash match correctly while advancing a feud. They also didn’t give out another meaningless shot at one of their championships.

Everything else about this show sucked.

The opener with James Morgan and Todd Chandler was boring, the Classic Connection vs. Los Primos Rivera made no sense and also sucked, there was a pointless Eli Drake promo that literally wasted TV time, and the main event’s only saving grace was Peter Avalon’s performance. The commentary continues to be terrible and unfunny. I don’t give a shit about Ty Matthews and Watts’ schtick.

Now, on to the racist shit from the Classic Connection. These guys are lame. They obviously need to do something to get people into their gimmick and schtick, and they’re the type of team that has to resort to cheap heat by using race to insult their opponents since they suck and can’t generate any real heat. Honestly, commenting and making jokes about race doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is the fact that ignorance is glamorized on this show, and that Latinos continue to be viewed as 2nd class citizens in the eyes of Dave Marquez and his team for nearly a decade now by acting like the current struggles of Latinos in this country are meant to be used to exploit the feelings of people they’re trying to make money off.

10 years ago, Joey Ryan and Karl Anderson were throwing tortillas at large crowds of mostly Mexican fans (they’re not racists, they were just whores who put money before dignity & integrity) on shows promoted by Dave Marquez in a pathetic effort to get them heel heat. It was cheap and insulting to the fans who paid their money to see the show, and ultimately didn’t really lead to anything of substance for anyone involved outside a few sold shows in some arenas that would’ve bombed if they didn’t have El Hijo De Santo headlining them. While I look back and think “fuck those retards for booking that shit” because it was lazy, not because it insulted Mexicans. As someone who is Mexican, I really don’t give a shit about jokes or insults based on race because I usually take it with a grain of salt. The ignorance of it and the way race is still used to get heat in wrestling is what annoys me, but what bothers me is how ridiculous it is that Latinos continue to be a target for abuse on Dave’s shows.

As I said earlier, Levi Shapiro called Los Primos Rivera “chihuahuas.” Los Primos Rivera are Puerto Ricans, not Mexicans. What Shaprio said was ignorant on so many levels, and legitimately fucking racist. I’m not saying he’s racist himself, but what he said was. It was a legitimate insult to both Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. His partner Buddy Royal calling Los Primos Rivera “J-Lo Backup Dancers” would probably be seen as “racist” in some people’s eyes, but it wasn’t offensive. Using something that’s related to Mexican culture and trying to use it to insult Puerto Ricans in a wrestling promo on the other hand is fucked up and ignorant bullshit. Mexicans and Puerto Ricans are two completely different types of people, two different cultures. If Shapiro said that line towards a Mexican team, it wouldn’t have been insulting. Just stupid. It could also be interrupted as “racist” in some people’s eyes, but at least the dickhead would’ve been on point. If he said that they were going to euthanize the “Satos” (which is a Puerto Rican slang for mixed breed street dogs) towards Los Primos Rivera, it would’ve been on point. Instead, he said something stupid and insulting. Again, I’m not saying Shapiro is a racist or that I’m offended by the fact that he’s using race to get cheap heat. All I’m trying to get across is that what he did was lazy and that he’s an uncreative hack, and if there’s anything about his promo that should be considered offensive, it’s the fact that he’s a lazy, uneducated performer making terribly unfunny jokes and that society has some ridiculous double standards when it comes to who you can and can’t make fun of on TV.

That walking abortion Stu Stone also repeated the same stupid fucking line, so he deserves to get blasted too. It’s bad enough you have this fucking no-name loser who never made it in the entertainment industry ruining the quality of the show, but you also have him stealing the same ignorant and racist line that Shapiro had already used. It’s bad enough that the guy who is consistently the worst part of the show every week is featured all throughout the show making bad jokes on commentary instead of trying to get people over, but it’s even worse when you have him spewing the same bigoted garbage that we already heard.

Now just so we’re clear, my reaction isn’t based on the fact these are “heels” who have me “worked” up. If anything, what Shapiro and Stillbirth Stone said was counter-productive for what they’re trying to accomplish. Nobody is getting “heel heat” from this, so before anyone tries to make it seem like that, save it, because real “heel heat” would involve me being emotionally invested enough in seeing something happen to the characters of Stu Stone and Levi Shapiro. Instead, it just makes these shows suck even more and has me hoping that this bullshit show gets cancelled.

This is going back to what I said before; if this were a promo directed towards anyone that wan’t Latino, heads would’ve been rolling and that segment wouldn’t have been aired. Nobody else’s race gets fucked with on this show or any other show Dave Marquez produces. Just Latinos. We’re the only ones that seem to allowed to be shit on. If Dave Marquez exploited Black, Muslim, Asian, or Jewish crowds the way he has exploited Latino fans, he’d be working as a janitor as Disneyland right now. The fact that he gets away with it still is really pathetic. Gary Yap was shit on for lynching Willie Mack during a “Black History Month Challenge” match in Newhall, CA in 2008, and rightfully so, but Dave has NEVER faced ANY scrutiny for what he does with Latinos. No, instead he’s fucking praised for that bullshit. As I mentioned earlier, had I made any comments in this article about Shapiro being Jewish, I’d catch more heat than he’ll probably ever get for that garbage. This is bullshit and completely fucked up.

Lastly, this isn’t about “political correctness.” This is about treating everyone fairly and equally while wanting to watch a wrestling show that isn’t stupid or insulting to anyone’s intelligence. It’s also about being tired of seeing Latinos being the only targets of insults and jokes on shows produced by Dave Marquez whereas other races and cultures aren’t even touched. There’s a good fucking reason why these tapings are only drawing a few dozen fans instead of hundreds or thousands. They wouldn’t have the fucking balls to do something that tried to get heat from Blacks or Jews that involved bigoted comments or actions. Fuck this shit. This show is a fucking joke.

Again, this show sucks. A bunch of poorly booked bullshit that just ends up being another waste of an hour. While there were some things that were a little better on this episode, it still SUCKED.

Note: The opinions and views expressed in this review are Andrew’s and Andrew’s only. The views and representations in this article do not reflect the rest of the opinions of SoCalUncensored.com’s staff and contributors.