This past weekend Sabotage ran its third show in Southern California, and fourth overall, with a show billed as a war of the genders. Every match on the show was an intergender match, and while intergender wrestling itself isn’t that rare in independent wrestling, this may have been the first all intergender show (it certainly was the first locally). Since there is already Chad’s Chaos Column recap of the show up on the site, I didn’t want to do another review, but did want to offer a few thoughts on the show.
About an hour before the show was scheduled to start, they had a talent show contest featuring some of the wrestlers. This is something that started with their second show, and is definitely something unique and sets Sabotage apart from other shows. The talent contest had 3 judges, Donovan Troi, Joey Rodriguez, and Human Tornado, who would each give a thumbs up or thumbs down.
Thunder Rosa was first, and her talent was singing, to which Troi and Tornado gave her a thumbs down, and Rodriguez gave her a thumbs up. The next three talents were all used as ways of advancing Sabotage’s storylines, with Lucian being forced to wrestle Alexander G. Bernard (he lost in 3 minutes and 50 seconds), Mariachi Loco using his dance moves to try and seduce Holidead only to give her a superkick in the end, and Desi Derata singing about pigs while wearing a pig costume and hogtying Human Tornado. The judges ruled that Mariachi loco was the winner, but then the fans were asked who won by applause and Thunder Rosa was ruled the winner. I’m not sure what the point in the judges were if their votes meant nothing, but Tornado and Troi were both hilarious.
Hopefully Sabotage keeps up the talent shows going forward, as like I mentioned, they are fun extra that is unique to the promotion. I think they really help set the atmosphere of fun that the promotion has.
As for the show itself, I don’t think there was a bad match on the show, though there were a few times things got sloppy in a few matches. That could be attributed to unfamiliarity with the wrestlers not being used to each other. It was also disappointing that Joe Heiken was injured and had to be taken off the show, but it’s rare when an indy wrestling show’s card doesn’t have some changes.
Of all the matches, the tag match between the team of Human Tornado and Rocketboy Wilson against Desi Derata and Mazzerati, had the most build to it. Largely thanks to Human Tornado and Desi Derata building it up by fighting on social media. It showed by the crowd heat for the match versus the matches that came before it. They did a great job building to Desi and Tornado finally being in the ring together, but after that point the structure of the match was a little weird, with Mazzerati trying to steal the pinfall and tagging herself in and what not. This was never explained before (unless it is based off something on a previous show) and it came after Mazzerati took the brunt of the abuse from Tornado and Rocketboy. Still, the match was fun and managed to maintain heat throughout. Desi Derata really came off great. With the entire buildup, the talent show judging, and the match itself Human Tornado has one of his best performances in years.
B-Boy and Hudson Envy put on a pretty good match that featured a lot of hard hitting. Hudson has such a great presence when she comes out to the ring. It’s rare in an intergender match when the female comes across as more intimidating than the male, but Hudson has that aura about her. I thought at times the match slowed down a little too much and had periods with nothing going on, but it was still good.
I had never seen Steven Tresario wrestle before this show, but was really impressed with his performance. He and Shotzi had a really good match that ended up being my 2nd favorite match on the show. While I understand that they have trained together, everything was structured great and allowed both wrestlers to shine. Shotzi has to be one of the best women’s wrestlers on the independent scene today. Everything she does looks so good. Hopefully whatever medical issue got her taken out of Tough Enough doesn’t keep her out of WWE in the future. She could be a star.
I thought both the Holidead versus Mariachi Loco and Thunder Rosa versus Ray Rosas matches were really good as well.
When the main event was starting and when Donovan Troi and his entourage and co-GM Kady Maddox came to the ring I was worried that the match would have a lot of interference or some other shenanigans, but everyone stayed out of the action and didn’t take away from the match. This match was fantastic. I have seen Delilah Doom a few times now and she is really good, but normally has some light hearted moments in her matches like push up contests or aerobics or what have you. In this she was completely serious and treated the match like a battle. Both wrestlers went all out in this and the intensity was great. This was next level Delilah Doom. It’s like when Street Fighter 2 became Turbo Street Fighter 2. I haven’t seen the Sabotage show in Austin, so I can’t comment on that, but people who have seen every show were saying this was easily the best match in the promotion’s history. Hopefully they can get this match out for people to see as quick as possible. I think this was the best intergender match in Southern California since The Young Bucks versus Worlds Cutest Tag Team a few years ago in PWG.
I’m not sure what the future holds for Sabotage. The promoter, Brian Cervantes, and Thunder Rosa are moving to Texas, and at least the next Sabotage show will be taking place in Texas. Hopefully they’ll be back in Southern California at some point, because they definitely fill a unique niche and have built a decent fanbase in the area already.
