Category: World Wide Wrestling RPG: Discussion

Man, Sami’s Creative really hit him with a hard move when he botched that Work The Audience roll!

http://uproxx.com/prowrestling/2015/05/sami-zayn-may-have-injured-his-rotator-cuff-during-his-raw-ring-entrance/

Originally shared by Nathan Paoletta

AAW Take No Prisoners

A wrestling show review, part 2 of 2

The real good stuff.

Tag Match (not sure if it was a championship match) – OI4K (c) vs. Zero Gravity

Zero Gravity are two tiny guys who wrestle all over the place up here. They are a great technical/flippy/high flying team, but I think I’ve seen them wrestle 4 times now and they’re just…kind of boring to me? They do great stuff but I still have no sense of character other than “the flippy guys”.

OI4K (stands for Ohio Is 4 Killers) are the AAW tag champs, and I think they used to compete as Irish AirBorn. Anyway. They’re bigger bruiser types, (I typecast them as “Illuminati Vikings” based on their gear and hair) and I didn’t really have expectations set for them.

This match was great! OI4K have an explosive quality to them that I find really compelling, where bigger guys can just snap out big power moves from nowhere, like some great suplex’s and powerslams. Great base for Zero Gravity to fly from, through and around. The spot of the match was when one of the OI4K guys jumped down from the top turnbuckle to springboard off the second rope into a catch-him-in-midair Diamond Cutter, sending the Zero G guy pogoing OUT OF THE RING. That was the peak of the middle third of the match, and then it crescendo’d with this crazy tandem corkscrew splash bomb…thing from the top turnbuckle that sent all four guys flying. Amazing work.

I really appreciated how both teams had tandem offense that made sense – like, Zero Gravity has a move where they tag, the illegal man then snap suplexes the opponent and the legal man grabs his head into the sitout part of a sitout powerbomb, putting him in the pinning position right there. Smart stuff.

Anyway, OI4K won with their tandem tombstone piledriver (one guy holds the opponent, the other doublestomps on his back on the way down). Great tag match.

Backstage video where the manager of another tag team, the Hooligans, challenges OI4K for their titles. Now THAT is gonna be a bruiser of a match.

Tommaso Ciampa vs. Davey Richards

I was looking forward to match perhaps the most, and wow. It did not disappoint. 

I saw Ciampa at the last indy show I went to and he was great, but clearly working down to the level of the (young) local guy he was working with. He had a match at the last AAW show with Tommy End that everyone was gushing about. I was super pumped.

Davey Richards I don’t know much about, except that he’s half of the TNA tag team American Wolves. Turns out he is really fucking great.

There’s a lot to say about this match so I’ll try to stick to the highlights. 

First off, let’s talk about tone and contrast. This match started with some genuinely funny comedic stuff that I’m pretty sure was vamping on the crowd response. Ciampa’s “standard chant” is Ciam-pas Gon-na Kill-You, which we were doing, and then he spread his arms and the crowd switched to Ciam-pas Gon-na Hug-You and it turned into an extended thing where he kept offering hugs to everyone (fans ringside, the ref, etc) and Richards kept shaking his head no. So basic, so effective. Richards (OBVIOUSLY) finally went in for a hug and turned it into an armbar submission, and we were off to part 2 – the matwork. 

These guys can fucking wrestle. There was probably 5-6 minutes (!) of really stiff amateur-style submissions and submission counters, interspersed with another humorous Ciampa spot where he grabs the rope and yells ROPE BREAK, then yells when his opponent grabs the rope – I dunno, you probably need context, but just great stuff. There were some moments where my buddy and I were pretty sure they were shoot wrestling because it got really sloppy but in a very natural manner, if that makes sense?

These two styles were obviously appealing to different parts of the audience. They segued back to the hugging bit to reset, and went from there into more expected pro wrestling moves and interactions, but kept doing little callbacks to earlier moments and fan interactions (Richards kept going to the top turnbuckle and flipping off one particular guy, stuff like that).

It was really, really compelling. The tone started with this comedic thing and naturally morphed through the technical prowess to turning into a serious, these-guys-are-going-to-kill-each-other intensity. Ciampa comes big with knee strikes and Richards just has great submissions and power moves, and their chemistry was fantastic.

They did a little bit of finisher-trading and then Ciampa countered Richards into a small package for the win. 

This wasn’t a match that the crowd was automatically into. There wasn’t a title or anything at stake. But these two guys had the charisma and the structure to their match to bring it from zero to everyone on their feet across 16 minutes, and it was really, really fun to watch. My clear favorite for match of the night. 

Ryan Boz vs. Justice Jones

When these guys came out I joked “follow that, boys” to my friend, and then ran to the bathroom. When I came back, they were almost done. Two big hoss’s that I don’t know, and I am kinda sad that I missed it, because the last minute was pretty fun, including a corner cannonball into a waiting steel chair! But yeah, obviously a cool down match. Ryan Boz won.

Johnny Gargano vs. Chris Sabin

I’m a Gargano mark. “Johnny Wrestling” as he’s known, works all over the indie scene. He’s just reliably entertaining, seems like he can work with everyone and I always enjoy his matches. I’ve heard of Sabin but never seen him and didn’t know what to expect.

This was a good match! They’re both smaller guys (aka “normal human who’s in good shape” size), and they were working what I would call “the indie style,” lots of strikes and slaps, dives to the outside, interspersed with matwork. Lot’s of false finishes.

It was funny, I started out clearly cheering Gargano (who was the babyface for the match), but Sabin does this “Hail Sabin!” thing that popped me, since I apparently mark for Satan. So I ended up in the “I like both these guys” camp.  

This match might have had more sustained audience engagement across it’s entirety than the Ciampa/Richards match, but it didn’t hit the same emotional height, for me. I did really like it and it introduced me to a new cool wrestler that I’d like to see more of (Chris Sabin). Solid match, glad it was on the card, but probably not going to remember it very well as time passes.

Main Event – Samoa Joe vs. Josh Alexander vs. Eddie Kingston (c)

For those who don’t know, Samoa Joe is essentially an indie wrestling fan legend. He was in in TNA for a long time and the line on him there was that he seemed to coast through a lot of his matches, but before that he was in the Daniel Bryan/CM Punk league of indie talent. Since leaving TNA he’s doing a victory lap (essentially) of the indies before a (rumored) move to NXT in some capacity. I wasn’t watching wrestling when he was first around, so one of my big motivations for going to this show was to see him in a big spotlight match.

Eddie Kingston has quietly become one of my favorite wrestlers. He’s a big jock from Yonkers with a gut and an attitude. He anchored Chikara for YEARS as their Grand Champion, in stark contrast to all the high-concept lucha-style comic characters. He has a great promo and a room-filling presence.

“Walking Weapon” Josh Alexander is the more serious, technical half of Monster Mafia and is on a hot streak across the board right now. I saw him down at Dreamwave in their title match and liked him there, but don’t have much other context for him.

So, high expectations for this match. And it delivered! It was an elimination match, which I prefer to the Triple Threat, and was very high-impact from the get-go. Kingston instigated things with some eye rakes and then powdered to let the other guys go at each other, and from there there was good flow of guys coming in and out from the floor. All three guys are just crazy strong and I was legit afraid the ring might collapse in some moments.

But! I don’t know if something happened or there was some venue-relating time issue, but the match was really short! Samoa Joe put out Kingston with his signature Muscle-Buster about 6 minutes into the match, and it felt abrupt (and felt like a swerve – I think we all expected Alexander to get eliminated first). Joe and Alexander just beat the hell out of each other for another 5 or 6 minutes, Joe hit Alexander with the Muscle Buster but Alexander kicked out and I think hit Joe with a piledriver for the win? I expected a false finish so was already mentally moving on when the ref counted 3, so I don’t remember exactly. The whole match was only 12 minutes or so.

That sad, it was an intense 12 minutes and those guys sure went all-out. After the match Kingston came back, shook Joe’s hand and snapped the belt onto Alexander! Classy move and the crowd was into it.

Your NEW AAW Champion is “Walking Weapon” Josh Alexander!

Samoa Joe has amazing ring presence. He’s just so intense and captivating. If you have a chance to see him, do it.

The last bit was Alexander’s tag partner Page coming out to congratulate him, and he kept grabbing the belt and holding it up like it was his, taking selfies, etc, and it was great little tease to DISSENTION AMONG THE TEAM as Alexander wouldn’t actually let go of the belt and just kept giving Page this severe side-eye. Again, not a big thing, but enough to tease how their relationship is going to change. Good stuff.

And then we left to beat traffic!

Even with a few misses (for me) early on the card, it was a really fun show and I got what I wanted out of it. I’m glad I went, will definitely be going to more in the future.

Good job AAW!

Originally shared by Nathan Paoletta

AAW Take No Prisoners

A wrestling show review, part 1 of 2

I don’t know if this will be interesting to anyone else but I feel like talking about this show I went too, so here goes! It was a big card so I’m breaking it into two posts.

Some context: AAW is a Chicago-area promotion that seems to be in the conversation of “top tier indies” based on the talent pool they share with other promotions like IAW, PWG, Ring of Honor, and so on. This could be local bias on my part! I’ve been to one of their live shows before, about a year ago, and since then the production quality and overall talent level has gone way up. 

But it is a local thing and there’s local wrestlers who I imagine are never going to travel and end up in “the circuit,” but who I’ve seen a good amount at various Chicago promotions.

So I actually had context for the majority of the personalities in these matches. I also went with a friend, so the combo definitely elevated my overall “fun” level.

The Show

There was a “dark match” that was going on while we were getting in our seats (a match that goes on before the main show to warm up the crowd), and wrapped up right when we sat down, so we pretty much missed it.

Opening Match – 6-Way, Winner Gets A Match stipulation (Davey Vega vs. Tony Kozina vs. Matt Cage vs. Candice LaRae vs. Louis Lyndon vs. Gregory Iron)

I’ve seen Candice LaRae a lot recently (she’s part of intergender World’s Cutest Tag Team with Joey Ryan), and Cage and Lyndon are both established local guys. Gregory Iron is a wrestler with a withered arm from cerebral palsy who I’ve seen work once or twice, he’s a midwest institution. I didn’t know the other guys, but Tony Kozina looks scarily like the illustration of the Jobber from WWWRPG and was doing full comedy shtick, so I was an immediate fan.

This was a fun, high energy match that handled the mix of talent really smartly. LaRae, Lyndon and Iron were fan favorites, Cage was the main heel and the other two guys supported the action and set up some cool spots. LaRae got her signature ‘rana and ballplex spots in. Louis Lyndon ended up with the victory after beating out Cage, I think, which felt pretty satisfying. 

After the match he cut an in-ring promo saying he’s coming for the Heritage title, which is the mid-level title in AAW.

Allysin Kay vs. Heidi Lovelace – This was prefaced with a promo from Kay, who I don’t know, that seems to following a storyline from  SHIMMER, which AAW does split show shows a couple times a year. I had high expectations, I really like Heidi Lovelace and the promo was pretty vicious!

Unfortunately this match felt flat to me. A lot of the action was on the outside (where we couldn’t really see). I’ve seen Lovelace (who’s tiny) do more technical matches, and this was more of a brawl, and when you get right down to it’s hard for me to suspend my disbelief when there’s not a lot of weight behind the punching and stomping, you know? I LOVE women’s wrestling, but I just didn’t think Kay was that great, and this style of match didn’t do Lovelace any favors.

That said, (a) there were some serious Kay fans in the crowd so it’s not like they lost us entirely and (b) the match ended with a VICIOUS discus lariat from Kay that looked like it MURDERED Lovelace. Huge pop for that finish. I wish the rest of the match had had that level of impact.

AAW Heritage Championship Match – Christian Faith (c) vs. Marcus Crane

These are two of those “local guys” that I mentioned above. I never know what to expect from Crane because he plays different “crazy” characters in different promotions, and I haven’t seen Faith before (he’s a big monster in a mask, so I guess maybe I have, but not as this character at least).

Crane is super hateable – he’s scrawny, terrible tattoos, has shaved his belly hair into an upside-down cross – but he was the babyface in the match. Faith is the definition of an e-fed/backyard “cool idea” in full Hot Topic Pants glory. I expected it to be total garbage, to be honest

And you know what? These guys went high impact and it got me into it! Crane got thrown into a wooden post (the venue has big wooden support beams), tossed around in the audience, powerbombed into the turnbuckles, but he kept getting back up and scrapping and fighting and by the end I was all in. I don’t remember many individual spots but there was a lot of “ooh shit that must have hurt” moments.

Christian Faith retained in a match that exceeded my expectations.

CJP vs. Ethan Page

Ethan Page is half of Monster Mafia (a hot indie circuit tag team with Josh Alexander, who was in the championship match later). CJP is CJ Parker, formerly of NXT and back on the indies (by his choice, apparently). 

I. Love. CJ Parker. I think that character (asshole environmentalist jerk) is great and the guy was in a spot in NXT where he was being used really well (a heel to get new guys over), but was almost too good at it, which meant he was never going to get a push on his own terms, you know? Other NXT claim to fame: he broke Kevin Owens nose.

Anyway, I was super excited to see CJP compete.

They both cut promos before the match – “All Ego” Ethan Page basically running down the crowd, CJP coming out to a hometown welcome (he’s from Illinois originally) and calling out Page. His ease on the mic is really remarkable, and he has that room-filling presence you would expect from someone who’s done what he’s done.

And the match was fine! Classic in structure, with Page getting the early advantage and getting his heat on CJP, lots of crowd jeering and mocking spots, a nice comeback from CJP. But honestly I don’t remember much of the match. I think I expected some kind of blowout, and it was “merely” good. I don’t know how much was their chemistry, or if one of them wasn’t on the others level or what. I enjoyed watching the match but have retained none of the details.

I will shout out here, though, to the 12-year-old kid in front of me who was cheering for the most improbable mix of wrestlers, but LOVED CJP and was giving him the peace sign the whole match. He got a peace back when CJP went up to the top turnbuckle near the end of the match and it BLEW HIS YOUNG MIND.

Ethan Page won, and I don’t even remember with what.

Shane Hollister vs. Silas Young

A year ago Shane Hollister was the AAW champion. I think he’s been out with an injury for awhile, and this was his big return match. I’ve seen Silas Young “The Last Real Man” in AAW before, and I think he’s done some ROH stuff as well. 

Good thing first: Young is an AMAZING heel. He’s like a sleazy uncle in terrific shape and just has natural “you should hate me” heat. He comes out Journey and as soon as everyone puts their goddam cell phones down they boo him. It’s great.

Hollister was…not as great. I did like how he was working a little slower style and really taking time to look out and connect with the audience (again, he’s a known quantity and people wanted to cheer for him), but he also might have been a little rusty and went to the “lift my hands to get the people cheering” well a little too often for my taste.

This might have been the longest match on the card, I think it went almost 20 minutes, and felt self-indulgent to me. I understand wanting to have a big return match, but it was in the middle of the card and didn’t really build in tempo, so it became a slog to me, as someone not invested in either guy in particular.

Hollister won with some kind of package driver, and then there was actually some pretty nice post-match stuff:

– His old manager, Scarlett, comes out to mock him, and brings…

– … Matt Cage (who was in the first match) to beat on him and work his injured leg, which brings out…

– … Louis Lyndon, who beat Cage in the first match, to save Hollister, which brings out…

– … Christian Faith, who Lyndon called out with his match opportunity!

Lyndon gets the Dragon Sleeper on Faith and the heels retreat, good guys stand tall.

It was a nice piece of following through on what was established earlier in the show, not too much to lose the crowd, but enough to get some heat going forward for all those guys. It was well-executed basic show-level storytelling, and I liked it a lot. I’ve had this experience at indie shows where all of a sudden a bunch of wrestlers show up and they’re following through on storylines but I have no idea what they are, so I appreciate taking the effort to connect the dots inside the single show.

If there has been an intermission, it should have gone here, but there wasn’t! But this was the switch to the real good stuff, in my eyes.

Part 2 coming soon!

A fascinating story that I had literally never heard of. Worth taking the time to read!

http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2015/04/27/muhammad-ali-ric-flair-oral-history-pro-wrestling-north-korea?page=6&devicetype=default

I don’t know where this is going but I am ON BOARD

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWckIwVz_yI