San Diego’s Finest City Wrestling held their first show since June after taking a three month hiatus. The big story the promotion was pushing going in was if Bad Dude Tito Escondido would show up to defend his FCW Heavyweight title. Escondido won the title at last weekend’s Bumps and Brewses show in Los Angeles after he insisted Tyler Bateman put it on the line in their three-way match with Ryan Taylor. In the storyline Escondido hadn’t committed to being at the show.
Despite the hiatus and no big names like Rey Fenix or Jeff Cobb the crowd was a pretty good size with nearly every chair filled and quite a few people standing. The crowd also managed to stay pretty hot, despite the show length.
Jay Baker over Koto Hiro [6’30]
This was a pre-show match. The crowd loved Hiro and hated Baker. This was decent, especially for it being a pre-show match.
Alonzo Alvarez over Guy Cool [12’20]
Both of these wrestlers are fairly new, with Guy Cool being a rookie last year, and Alvarez being a likely rookie of the year candidate this year. Alvarez dominated most of the match, with a lot of it spent working over Guy Cool’s left arm. Cool’s selling was suspect at times, and later in the match wasn’t even bothering to sell the arm. The pacing of the match could have been better as well. They did some crowd brawling in the match. In fact there was crowd brawling in every match. Sometimes multiple times in a match. More on that later. Alvarez hit a really nice belly to belly suplex off the ropes on Cool. Alvarez won with a submission that involved Cool’s left arm, so it was nice to see they went back to that. Both wrestlers show a lot of promise but the pacing just wasn’t very good here.
Rating: * 3/4
FCW promoter Gus Parsons came out to the ring to address the heavyweight title situation. After explaining how the title changed hands at Bumps and Brewses he said if Tito doesn’t show he was going to strip him of the title, and he knows Tito is sitting at home right now.
Dirty Ron McDonald over Human Tornado, Matt Twizted, and Aaron Garvey [12’32]
Tornado and McDonald (as Seabass) had a fun match at the last FCW show, so this time they added Garvey and Twizted to the match. The result was a mess. McDonald came out with his dog, McNugget, who was some type of small dog. He handed it off to someone in the crowd and the match began. There was a pretty cool spot where McDonald goes to do a flip onto the other wrestlers outside the ring, and they group moves and he goes straight to the floor. Both Tornado and McDonald were fine when they were in the ring, but Twizted and Garvey didn’t do much. There should never be periods in a four-way match like this where nothing is happening, but there were. Lots of crowd brawling in this of course as well. There was also a lot of sloppiness. The finish saw McDonald first have his dog dive onto Garvey, then McDonald did an elbow for the pin. This wasn’t good.
Rating: *
Donnie Suarez & Biagio Crescenzo over KC Douglas & Michael Hopkins by submission [11’24]
I was looking forward to seeing KC Douglas and Hopkins against wrestlers outside of people they train with. Crescenzo is usually fairly solid, and Suarez is really under rated. Hopkins and Douglas looked pretty good for the most part, though there were a couple of miscues (including Douglas crotching himself on the ropes when trying to go over). I thought they held their own against guys outside of their wheelhouse. Once again there was some crowd brawling in this. The pacing could have been a little better, but it was a decent match.
Rating: ** 1/4
Eli Everfly over Jake Atlas to retain the FCW Lightweight title [22’13]
This was fun. Eli Everfly is a maniac. He by far attempts some of the riskiest offense in the area, and with the high degree of difficulty, sometimes it isn’t going to work. It looked like he got spiked a couple times trying for a sort of Frankensteiner variation. The first time it looked fairly nasty, but the match went another 12 minutes or so after and he seemed fine. There was lot of high flying offense from both guys. There was crowd brawling of course. Atlas is so good for his experience level. Like quite a few other matches, the pacing seemed a little off, and it could probably have benefited from being a little more compact and shaving maybe five minutes off, but this was good. Eli won with a Canadian Destroyer.
Rating: ***
Jacob Diez over Corey Jackson to retain the FCW XRT title [23’19]
The Vegan Superman gimmick has really worked well for Diez. He gets a ton of heat with it. He came out with his valet and was even wearing a Superman cape. I thought he and Corey Jackson matched up well and had some pretty good sequences but once again this was another match that suffered from pacing problems. First, it should have been cut in half time wise. Going back to the crowd brawling problem on the show, they did it three separate times in the match. Even if they only did it once it would have cut ten minutes off and the match would have been a lot tighter. When you brawl into the crowd there’s always a portion of the audience who can’t see what’s going on and t takes them out of the match. Plus it really loses it’s appeal when it happens three times in a long match and in eight straight matches. There’s a place for crowd brawling, especially on independent wrestling where you are trying to give people something they can’t see on TV, but look at all the good matches on TV and notice how they don’t do it for the most part. It isn’t necessary to have a good match. They also kicked out of everything, including Diez hitting Jackson with the title. Diez eventually won with a schoolboy. This was way too long.
Rating: ** 1/4
Rocketboy D’Marco Wilson over Adam Thornstowe [17’11]
This was good. Rocketboy seemingly gets better every time I see him. He did a great job selling Thornstowe’s offense. Thornstowe is always really good. They of course did some crowd brawling in this, with Rocketboy getting thrown through chairs. I thought the match also suffered by going as long as it did, especially after the length of the two previous matches, but they managed to keep the action going pretty well.
Rating: ***
H.A.T.E (Ray Rosas & Peter Avalon) over True Grit (Jesse James & Hoss Hogg) [13’58]
I didn’t think H.A.T.E got much of a reaction coming out, but then they cut a promo and really turned the crowd against them. Both Peter and Ray are really good at enraging people. True Grit has really been having a great year and probably haven’t peaked yet. This was really good with a lot of back and forth between both teams. Peter managed to hit Hoss with a cow bell, allowing Ray to pin him. This was really good and my match of the night.
Rating: *** 1/2
Bad Dude Tito Escondido over B-Boy and Tyler Bateman to retain the FCW Heavyweight title [15’02]
B-Boy and Bateman both were in the ring, and Gus Parsons came out, said Tito wasn’t there and before he could finish his sentence to say he is stripping Tito of the title, Tito’s music hit. The crowd managed to stay pretty hot for this, despite the long show up to this point. All three guys really worked well together. There’s been a lot of Bateman and Escondido singles matches in the area lately, but not much with B-Boy, so that was an interesting dynamic. There were some sketchy moments however, such as Bateman completely missing Escondido with a clothesline and Escondido selling it like Stan Hansen just hit him. Still, this was good. After Escondido won H.A.T.E came out and celebrated in the ring to end the show.
Rating: *** 1/4
The show seemed to go fairly long, and not to beat a dead horse but the crowd brawling was a problem. There needs to be someone at the promotion making sure that not everyone is doing it. If even five matches would have cut it out, it would have saved 30 minutes off the show that went almost four hours.
That being said, it was still overall a good show, with the second half really saving the first. Despite being done in several promotions, the H.A.T.E stuff has managed to stay fresh and it will be interesting to see where FCW goes with it. Right now B-Boy is the only one that seems to be in position to challenge Tito for the heavyweight title, but that should be a good match as well.
FCW’s next show will be on October 15th, and it is a mystery show with no announced matches or lineup. All three titles are supposed to be on the line, so you can expect at least Escondido, Everfly, and Diez.
