Aerial Assault Match - Winner Gets WIRED Title shot
Pinkie Sanchez vs. Ty Hagen vs. Ryan McBride vs. Derek Frazier vs. Hy-Zaya vs. Latin Dragon vs. Chrisjen Hayme vs. tHURTeen - **1/4
Drew Gulak Invitational
Kit Osbourne vs. Drolix vs. Alexander James - N/A
Winners Get CZW World Tag Team Title Shot
The RunAways vs. The Set vs. Azrieal & Bandito Jr. vs. BLK OUT - **
Greg Excellent vs. The Nigerian Nightmares - DUD
Sami Callihan vs. BJ Whitmer - **3/4
UltraViolent Tables Match
Rory “Little” Mondo vs. Matt Tremont - **
CZW World Heavyweight Title - Lumberjack Strap Match
Devon Moore vs. “BLK Jeez” Sabian - **
Two Ring Psycho Circus Tangled Web Deathmatch
Drake Younger vs. Scotty Vortekz - ***
CZW’s second iPPV of the year was definitely a step or two down from Best Of The Best X. A couple of time-wasting matches that meant nothing, an opener that was revamped at the last-minute, a segment featuring Cole Callaway that may go down as one of CZW’s worst ever, a world title match that showed how bad the champ really is all led to a main event that was fine but far from what they wanted.
ROH - ROH on HDNet Volume 8
American Wolves vs. Dark City Fight Club - **3/4
Roderick Strong vs. Christopher Daniels - ***1/4
Delirious vs. Kenny King - **1/4
Mark Briscoe vs. Claudio Castagnoli - **3/4
Jay Briscoe vs. Chris Hero - ***
Tyler Black vs. Christopher Daniels - ***3/4
Roderick Strong vs. Davey Richards - ***1/2
Kevin Steen vs. Jerry Lynn - **1/4
Kings of Wrestling vs. Colt Cabana & El Generico - **3/4
Tyler Black vs. Steve Corino - **
American Wolves vs. Super Smash Brothers - ***1/2
Steel Cage Match
Austin Aries vs. Delirious - **3/4
Sure it's goofy for the undercard matches but it's fun and they can do serious commentary for the big matches and really get stuff over. The idea of PWG shows are to be fun and easy to watch btw.
Watching Low Ki vs. Claudio and it's just Chuck Taylor and Excalibur having a conversation with each other, sounding like Beavis and Butthead Does Rasslin, while a match is going on, somewhere in the distant background. Occasionally they shout the name of a move, and actually acknowledge that there are viewers there, but at no point do they explain the significance behind the move or what the story, that's developing in the match, actually is.
HAY YOU KNOW DIS IS MY PROMOTION. I BOOK MYSELF TO DO TEH COMMENTARY. I JUST TALK ABOUT PHIL COLLINS'S PUBES AND STUFF LOL!
Basically, two unlikeable nerds attention whoring, while two talented guys have a match, that's beyond anything that Taylor or Excalibur could put on in their wildest dreams.
They also didn't even know whether, best West Coast wrestler of the past decade, Bryan Danielson had ever held their belt. This is during a World Title match, that they expect people to give a shit about.
If it's meant to be easy to watch, then they're failing miserably. The more I hear, the more new audio features I find on my media player. The "it's supposed to be shit, that's PWG's style" thing doesn't make sense to me. I don't get the ironic coolness of liking stuff that's retarded. Maybe you need to be a teenage kid.
Personally I've never been a fan of the PWG commentary. I can see why many love it, but sometimes it's so goofy that I can't actually concentrate on the match properly.
To be fair, I just hate commentary full stop unless it's in Japanese.
Fantastic stuff here. Right Leg and The Prodigy have a really special chemistry, this is what top quality wrestling is all about. Absolutely two of ROH's top prospects at the moment, and I'm totally welcome to the possibility of a lengthy feud between these guys.
2. Kenny King vs Mark Briscoe (**1/2)
A solid if unspectacular encounter here.
3. Rhett Titus vs. Jay Briscoe (**)
More of the same, nothing noteworthy here.
4. The American Wolves vs. Adam Cole & Kyle O'Reilly (***3/4)
This is a great one. In spite of how unpolished Cole and O'Reilly are, this will go down as one of the better matches of this year. A true testament to just how remarkable Edwards and Richards in the ring. Not just anybody could get a match this great out of such an inexperienced pair.
5. Caprice Coleman & Cedric Alexander vs. Michael Elgin and Chase Owens (*1/4)
Highly skippable.
6. Chris Hero vs. Colt Cabana (*3/4)
Yawn. Pretty dull really. Cabana has been stale for God knows how long, and Chris Hero basically needs to be confined to tag action to mask how flawed he is as a performer. Both could officially depart for McMahonland tomorrow and I wouldn't give a flying fuck.
7. Wrestling's Greatest Tag Team vs. The Bravado Brothers (**1/2)
Not a bad match at all. In fact, it's very good. Shelton and Charlie have just been so great thus far in ROH. Every time they're on the card, you know you're gonna get your money's worth. They've turned out to be a wonderful asset to the company, you'd have to be blind or ignorant to think otherwise.
9. Steel Cage Match: El Generico vs Roderick Strong (**1/16)
Good for what it was, I suppose. Rod Strong and Truth Martini are a horrible combination, though. Truth is just too similar to Don Callous, and it wasn't a good gimmick 14 years ago. Roddy as a main event level competitor is somewhat laughable as well.
Fantastic stuff here. Right Leg and The Prodigy have a really special chemistry, this is what top quality wrestling is all about. Absolutely two of ROH's top prospects at the moment, and I'm totally welcome to the possibility of a lengthy feud between these guys.
Hero is a guy I'll always make time to watch on the Indies which is saying a lot considering my distaste for like 90% of what independent wrestling is like these days (strictly ring work here) but I can understand if people found some flaws/areas where he has room to improve.
I like the guy because he can essentially work any style of match, is a good mat worker when he's not just doing it because he can but trying to tie it into the story of the match, is one awesome striker and can play a great face/heel because unlike a lot of independent workers he takes the time to try and wrestle like a cocky heel or a psychotic heel or a heroic babyface. You won't see babyface Hero wrestling like cocky asshole Hero, he'll switch up and try to wrestle a newer style when his character evolves which is something I always appreciate in a worker, sometimes doing the simple things like that is way more impressive than the amount of counters or big impact moves a guy can hit and Hero definitely manages to mix cool looking offence with old school character work and a more intelligent useage of his offence so it comes off much better than the other wrestlers who have nothing besides their chops/kicks.
However..the guy can occasionally throw a lot of his good stuff out of the way and do pointless matwork because he's an exceptional mat wrestler and not tie it into the story, I don't mean to sound like a nerd who'll grab a pen and paper and look for flaws because I don't but I love matwork that can progress a match or a character of one of the workers, when it just gets thrown out for upto 5 minutes at the start before they move away into a strike exchange etc I'm often annoyed because I like each sequence in a match to build off of the last. Doing a lot of cool counters and holds but never taking the time to bring character work into it (i.e Hero as a heel being outwrestled on the mat and getting visibly pissed for the duration of the mat exchanges). Finlay and Regal are masters at being able to mat wrestle/grapple/counter into some fancy hold but make it mean so much more because they work within the holds, such as showing signs of anger/frustration when they're being outwrestled, Hero more often than not is one of the best mat workers on the Indies who strays away from the exhibitonary stuff and keeps it more focused and worthwhile but every now and then he can delve into just doing stuff for the hell of it. I've not seen him do it enough for it to become a major criticism/talking point but I do feel its something you can make an argument/case for if you watched more of his work than I have.
Right now though I'd say his main area where I can lose interest is his striking. He's an awesome striker be it punches/chops/forearms or elbows but he does tend to throw a stupid amount of strikes out there during matches (I think a PWG match vs Danielson springs to mind here) and more often than not when his opponent doesn't sell them and makes them look cheap (something I find happens a stupid amount of times on the indy scene which they try to cover with fighting spirit nonsense) and therefore ineffective and detracting from the quality of the match. There's also the danger that the guy will throw so many awesome strikes that when he hits one strike for the finish it can come off as a weaker finish when it may have been like his 5th best strike of the match. If he reeled it in a bit more or his opponent was more committed to selling the strikes (earth to a certain wild Wolf) then it wouldn't be as big a problem as it can be, but it is definitely something I could see a more old school guy not appreciating about Hero's work which is a shame because he is one of my favourites and definitely someone I'd put in the mold of Danielon/Punk/Nigel in mixing good offence that can entertain a smarkier crowd whilst still sticking to old school rasslin with storytelling, character work, mannerisms and building a match to a fitting conclusion.
Probably wrote a hell of a lot more than I intended to, but yeah Hero despite being awesome the majority of the time is definitely open to occasional flaws. Thankfully he's one of the most consistent workers on the Indy scene so its never more than an occasional fault as opposed to some of the more pimped workers who's flaws I find more apparent in much greater doses.
He's an awesome striker be it punches/chops/forearms or elbows but he does tend to throw a stupid amount of strikes out there during matches (I think a PWG match vs Danielson springs to mind here).
But Danielson sold the elbows like A-Bombs and that match was that awesome to me that I didn't notice Hero threw like fifteen elbows or the match went over fourty minutes. Moreover, that just made sense because Hero was the arrogant champion that came to be a babyface champion because he were so awesome that the crowd started to love him, and then he found Danielson, a man who was more succesful and cheered for, and with every elbow and every kick out, Hero was getting more frustrated and nasty and when Danielson won(And this made sense too, because the absolute king of indies will no longer be in PWG and he has to leave every single tear in that ring), Hero cut a promo at backstage turning heel.
For me, that match was a simple five stars match, just delicious.
I hadn't heard anything of it but if they did, it will probably be released with a Best of his matches in CZW/IWA-MS and various others they have footage to.
Also just finished the YouShoot with Perry Saturn. Its ok but a lot of his answers are Blame it on the drugs basically. He does tell some pretty interesting stories though. Wouldn't rush out to buy it unless you collect shoots or something and it needed more wrestling talk.
That is some amazing stupidity. Couldn't you just split it to orders and pay a total of $28? Something like that should never be the case. Did you contact them about it? You obviously wouldn't want to split the order because you wouldn't qualify for their sale.
And as insane as Steen/Vader sounds I would much rather see Steen and Tozawa team against the Bucks in January. At some point they also need to do a 6-man where Generico and the Bucks are on the same team because heel Bucks with super face Generico sounds like the greatest thing ever.
PWG Eight
Well BOLA is in the mail so I really need to get around to watching this.
Kevin Steen vs. Pac
Steen was not happy at the improved physique of Pac. Lots of nonsense in the opening minutes of the match with the climax of the nonsense being the "Fucking 1982 Test of Strength!" Surprised how long this went as Steen would go on to have a pretty busy night. The match was fun as hell and I have to admit that I love all of Steen's trash talking. ****
Brandon Gatson vs. Brian Cage-Taylor
"Slop Drop Stunner!" was a great call by Hero on one of the moves Cage-Taylor did. I feel like I've seen this match before, as in dozens of times before. Oh that's right it's SoCal Local Match #3. It's not the SUPER SERIOUS style and it's not the OMG SPOTZ!!! type of match. It's the in between match that they do where they don't go crazy with anything and just sort of do a bunch of moves for no reason. After checking my SoCal reference guide I see that the SoCal Local Match #3 is in the *-** range. Hero and Excalibur just told stories so bonus points for that, but the match sucked so I'm deducting 247% the bonus points. Lack of botches adds a 1.05 multiplier to the rating as well. The sarcastic crowd also merits a 7% increase plus 1/16* but the bonus cannot bring the rating over ***. Ok so let's do some quick calculations...
(4!+8)/4 + (2+3*4)^2 - 3^4 + (9+10)(15-21) + 7(17-15)=23
Now lets check the numerical calculations to STARZ chart.... And we get a rating of......... *17/64
Alex Shelley and Roderick Strong vs. El Generico and Ricochet
So I will really try to watch this match and not type up a review where I make a calculation chart for my star ratings. I like how they have Ricochet basically playing a bad influence on Generico. Shelley is still an asshole in the ring and him and Generico really build some heat up with each other. Odd structure of the match though, Richochet was a clear heel yet he played the face in peril while building up the hot tag to Generico, but he bumped like crazy so it didn't bother me that much. The match was really good and a lot of fun but with the guys involved I was expecting a little more. ***1/2
Peter Avalon vs. Ryan Taylor
Oh good another Locals match. This was the FUNNY 2 SERIOUS type. I would explain what that means but I feel that name is fairly self explanatory. Actually it was a fairly entertaining match for the first few minutes so I'm not going into all the calculations. Don't know why it was so long. I feel like this could have been significantly better if it had lasted 5-7 minutes instead however long it did end up lasting, which felt like a long fucking time. *1/2
The RockNES Monsters vs. The Dynasty
The Dynasty starts things off by jumping Yuma and Goodtime. What I really liked about this was that it really pissed of the RockNES Monsters and made this a lot more interesting by creating some intensity in this match. Too bad this wasn't very good at all. I don't think they made any tags and just threw as many moves at each other as they could. I can live with matches like that if you're doing some really cool moves but that wasn't the case here. **1/4
Kevin Steen and CIMA vs. The Young Bucks
The Bucks came out with a clear strategy; Work on Steen's leg because he's already wrestled before and be huge assholes. The match was a little on the short side but I still pretty awesome. Steen wanting to kill the Young Bucks and them just being the biggest jerks in the world towards him make for a great feud. Despite the fact that Steen got the win he didn't get that decisive ass kicking that he's looking for. Good stuff. ***3/4
PWG World Championship Match: Chris Hero vs. Claudio Castagnoli(c)
I love watching these two wrestle. At All Star Weekend they wrestled like they were luchadors to start and in this they did the exact opposite and they wrestled like the heavyweight main eventers they really are. After some great technical exchanges Claudio pops something in Hero's arm (or that's what it was supposed to look like and that's what it did sound like) and Hero just looked up at him with a look that said nothing other than, "Are you serious bro?" Claudio was indeed serious and the match itself got much more serious from that point on. Another thing I loved about it was that they played different roles than their last match. At ASW Hero was the one doing the trash talking and playing the heel. Well in this one we just saw a really really mean streak from Claudio. I wish they had picked up the pace a little more as I would have loced this to be a little faster and 5 minutes shorter. Still a pretty awesome match between them. ***1/2
PWG World Championship Match: Kevin Steen vs. Clausio Castagnoli
Really awesome how this went down with Steen hinting at it on commentary and challenging Claudio right after he wrestled for over a half hour with Hero. The way this started was awesome as well and for the short time it lasted the crowd was at a fever pitch. Awesome way to end the show. NO RATING
Good show but not quite up to the really high standards that PWG had set for itself recently. The ending to the show was worth at least one amazing match though.
Just finished the Smart Mark Shoot with Justice Pain. It was ok nothing ground breaking or go out of your way to get. Seeemed disappointed he wasn't used in the ROH-CZW angle.
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