When I went to the Grand Olympic my expectations for XPW on this night were not very high. The last show had been good enough to get XPW ranked number one for the month of March, yet still my expectations were not up there. Why? I realized that XPW’s plans had to be changed in about a week’s time. They had plans on using Shane Douglas, Konnan, and who knows who else. Those plans had to be scrapped because of WCW. Knowing this, I figured the show wouldn’t be on par with last month’s show. The show might not be the best SoCal show of the month again. Unfortunately it was worse than that.
The show started out with Rising Son taking on Super Dragon. These are two of the best workers in SoCal, and they showed why. They put on one hell of a match, and one of the loudest pops of the night was when Super Dragon hit the Psycho Driver. After this match I was starting to think I was wrong about the show. Then out came the Black Army.
I have nothing against their promo or the run in by Mexico’s Most Wanted. Hell, I like it when I see Mexico’s Most Wanted because then I get to see Lady Victoria. What I did have a problem with was the long break after the promo. Yeah Leroy is cool, but he swept the ring four times. Mother Teresea could have ate off that ring and he was still sweeping it. I learned later that the sound equipment went down and that was the cause for that delay. That is no fault of anyone at XPW. But all the matches that came next was.
Nosawa comes out and wants a wrestling match. Dynamite D as the Model comes out and gives him one. Dynamite D is hillarious. The Model was good, not as good as Brother Love at the last show, but still funny as hell. Nosawa and Dynamite D are starting to put on a very good match. Once again hopes are going up for the show. Then Homeless Jimmy’s music hits. There goes that match. Why did Nosawa blade when he did? I don’t even remember him getting hit before he bladed. Jimmy won to get his second win in XPW, but more importantly he turned a good match bad.
Next up was Kid Kaos versus Steve Rizzano. Now I believe these two can put on one hell of a match. On paper if you take out Jimmy you could have had three good, exciting, opening matches. Once again not XPW’s fault Rizzano gets a concussion. I won’t really bad mouth this match, a guy had a concussion. I give them props for trying to finish the match as planned. It just wasn’t fun to watch.
Rob Black comes out again and challenges Sabu to a cage match versus the Messiah tonight. Sabu accepts on the condition that if Messiah losses he can never get another title shot again. Cage match, Messiah challenging Sabu, should be a good match.
Next White Trash comes out and says how he is a midcarder for life because of little green men and George Bush. Yeah, Ok. Pogo then comes out to fight Webb. I forgot about Pogo when I talked about The Night XPW Stood Still. What kind of low class gimmick is this? This is based on a child murderer. That’s not cool. I’m sure the families of the murdered if they knew about this wouldn’t feel to great about it. Put yourself in their shoes. What’s next for XPW? How about a kid who is a wrestler and in every promo he talks about how he will shoot up his school. Or how a Timothy McVeigh type guy, and he can threaten to blow up the Grand Olympic. Or they can use guys that look like skinheads. Wait. Here come the skinheads now to kidnap Webb’s valet Jessica. XPW always one step ahead.
Damien 666, Halloween, and Lady Victoria hit the ring. They call out Rob Black but only Kraq, Angel, and Kronus come out. A pretty decent match takes place. This was the best match since Super Dragon over Rising Son. Victoria and Angel mixed it up pretty good. Mexico’s Most Wanted did what they could against Kraq and Kronus, and overall the match turned out pretty good. Lady Victoria was the highlight of the match as far as I’m concerned. She did a pretty nice powerbomb on Angel and took Kronus’s 450.
Lizzy comes out and talks about how she has been pretty quiet recently. Then she calls out Major Gunns. I wonder if what they said was scripted or ad libbed? First Major Gunns calls Lizzy a cow. Then Lizzy replies “that you could milk a cow with those” referring to Major Gunns breasts. Neither of those insults made much sense. Lizzy a cow? What is going on here. If Lizzy is a cow to Major Gunns I guess the only girls Gunns finds skinny is Olive Oil and the chick from Aly McBeal. And milking a cow with Gunns’ tits? Call me sick but I would actually like to see that.
Vic Grimes versus Supreme. Its cool they put a match on during intermission. Wait. This wasn’t intermission? Damn. I figured it was just by the amount of people getting up and using the restroom and concession stand during this match. Shortly after I had gotten back New Jack came out. New Jack did a pretty cool spot where he dived off a twenty foot ladder. Before the show when I was looking around one of the thoughts in my mind was “New Jack will find away to get killed in here”. Its only a matter of time till he jumps off the upper level. I don’t know what it is about New Jack, maybe his mannerisms, but he has an art to hitting people with things. He is the best pick up by XPW since Chris Candido.
Now the real intermission. Goes on way too long. The crowd was pretty dead already and this killed the rest of it. I figure about 200 people had left the show by this point. Maybe 850-1,000 to start with.
I was looking forward to the main event. Sabu versus Messiah should be a good match. And it was. Messiah and Sabu were both on. Lots of good spots by both guys. Messiah hit the Godsmack on Sabu then tried to climb over the cage, but the new mystery man came out and helped push him back in. Sabu hit the Arabian Face Buster from the top of the cage for the win. The match was good, but the crowd was dead. Nobody cared about the match. I guess that’s what happens when the main event comes after 3 plus hours of a disappointing show.
After the show ended it became apparent Sabu was hurt as he was helped out. Also a security guard was hurt and was attended to by medics then carried out. The loudest chant of the night was the “refund” chant after the show also. Part of the problem with the show may have been the hype, but I had low expectations and was still disappointed. The injuries played apart, and so did bad booking. So many things combined to make this horrible show. XPW needs to step it up next show to regain some of the fans they lost from this one. Every promotion has a bad show or two. It surprises me they could go from where they were at last month to this horrible show so fast. Maybe its a curse from ECW. As bad as this one was, XPW has the capacity to put on a great show. Remember that before you give up on them.
