Last Friday night was the debut show for Sabotage, and while I’m not going to write a full review, I did want to give some thoughts on the show. I really thought this was an amazing show overall. Not amazing in that it had the greatest matches of the year so far (though it did have some really good matches), but amazing in how fun the entire atmosphere was.
Originally Stardom was planning on doing another U.S. show, and when they changed their mind Brian Cervantes stepped in and decided to promote a show, and for a first effort he probably couldn’t have asked for more. I’m sure they would have liked to have drawn a few more fans, but for a promotion that people were unsure about, I thought the draw was good. It’s a different time and a different era, but they drew about what PWG did at their first show. To top it off the timing wasn’t great as there were two other all women’s shows in the last couple weeks prior, when there was one in the whole year before that. The crowd that was there was very vocal and really into the show, but not in a way where they tried to make themselves a part of the show, which made for a fun atmosphere.
When they started announcing talent for the show, I admittedly hadn’t seen any of the wrestlers from Texas prior, such as Safari Reign, Christi Jaynes, and Delilah Doom and was unsure what we’d get out of them. After seeing them wrestle, they were great choices for the show. Both Christi Jaynes and Safari Reign were in the opener against Raze and Shotzi Blackheart and had really fun, good match to start the show. Hopefully we’ll see more of both of them on future Sabotage shows.
It was too bad Nicole Savoy got hurt and we weren’t able to see her versus Sage Sin, as Nicole has become one of the best women’s wrestlers on the indys, and really should be in NXT, and Sage Sin has been fantastic this year (when not facing Lady Lee) and this would have been a really good match. Putting Sage in the three way with Ray Lyn and Keneisha Moon worked out well however and they had a pretty good match.
The angle to setup the tag-match was very well done. Donovan Troi did a good job generating heat and was very good on the mic unlike most indy managers. I thought the match itself with Twisted Sisters against Lil’ Cholo and Mariachi Loco was OK, but there were parts that really didn’t seem to work as well as they probably would have liked. The heat for it was incredible though.
I really liked the tag-match between Kairi Hojo and Yoko Bito versus Kaitlin Diemond and Kat Von Heez too. Hojo and Bito were awesome, but I thought Diemond and Von Heez were equally as great in the match. I actually decided to check some of their other matches in Stardom after seeing them here.
Taya is a fantastic heel. Right now I think the two best heels in women’s wrestling are Taya and Alexa Bliss. She cuts such a good promo without resorting to screeching and she comes across as such a bully in her in-ring work too. When she issued an open challenge and Thunder Rosa accepted it I expected we’d get a really good match and they didn’t disappoint. I thought the main was the best match on the show. Like I said, Taya is great. Thunder Rosa is a lot like Jeff Cobb in that he wrestles as this character on Lucha Underground but when he is outside that environment he is so much better. I think it is even more so for Thunder Rosa who is almost a completely different wrestler as Thunder Rosa. She works a hybrid strong style and lucha and has been so good.
The pacing of the show was great. None of the matches went longer than they should have, and they didn’t try and jam too much on the card. They started pretty close to one time which was a plus.
Overall a great debut show for Sabotage. If you missed it I’d recommend the DVD when it comes out, especially if you are a fan of women’s wrestling as I think this show, along with the AWS Ladies Night show a few weeks ago compare favorably with well known U.S. women’s promotions like Shimmer and Shine.
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Shelly Martinez has joined WOW and will be debuting this Friday at their free Long Beach show. I think this is a really good pickup for WOW as she adds some name value to their roster as still a lot of people remember her as Ariel in WWE/ECW. They haven’t announced her opponent yet, but did announce Stephy Slays will be taking on Loca.
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There’s a new promotion debuting in December calling themselves Movie City Wrestling. The promotion is run by Brian Farmer and DC Hannon, two wrestlers who came out of the Boston area. Farmer actually lives in SoCal now and has been training with Santino Bros., while Hannon lives in Florida.
The first thing they should probably do is change the name of their promotion, as no one calls Hollywood or Los Angeles, or anywhere else, Movie City. It sounds like something people from outside SoCal would say, like “Cali.” Other than that their first couple of talent announcements are a good start with Hudson Envy and Paul London being announced.
They have their debut show set for December 10th at the UEW Arena (though UEW currently has their deathmatch tournament on their calendar for that same date, but they do change their dates around a lot).
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Check out Chris Duncan’s YouTube channel for a ton of great videos relating to SoCal wrestling, including his look at the recent Sabotage show.
