Jeff Cannonball vs Tony Deppen
Cannonball is a big fat bald guy who looks a lot like King
Kong Bundy. Deppen is considerably smaller, so uses his speed advantage to
control at first, including a nice suicide dive and a nifty senton from the
apron. Cannonball, for his part, had really fun fat guy offence, like a great
diving legdrop with Deppen in the ropes. He also sold appropriately, brickwall
no-selling an attempted crossbody and doing great wobble-legged selling to
tease going over for Deppen’s strikes. The end sees a ref bump and Cannonball
nailing Deppen with a roll of coins to win. Fun opener.
Jigsaw vs Sonny Kiss vs Archadia vs Blackwater
Four way bout, with Jigsaw defending his HOPE King of Flight
title. Kinda awesome to see a belt from my local promotion on a random US indy.
Kiss has an exotico gimmick, and is really good in the role. His mannerisms are
spot on and his offense plays into the character. He seems incredibly flexible,
as proven by Jigsaw stretching him with a standing submission. Archadia is also
pretty good, nothing spectacular, but nicely solid. Really liked his succession
of legdrops from a sat down position. The weak link does appear to be
Blackwater, who has a hokey “deranged oddball” gimmick and does nothing of any
note in the bout. Jigsaw plays the role of defending champ well, going for
quick roll ups and pins in the knowledge that his champions advantage goes out
of the window in a four way, and he hits a great flip dive. After it breaks
down to all four guys in the ring, Jigsaw pins Blackwater in a top rope stomp.
Amber O’Neal Gallows vs Penelope Ford
Lots of shenanigans within this one. Amy Lee is the guest
referee and Ford is accompanied by Sozio (the former Niles Young), who insults
Lee before the bout, which seems kind of dumb. Ford is pretty cocky to begin
with, making it fun to see the more experienced Gallows ground her and work her
over on the mat. Sozio cheats from the outside, and I dug how much Gallows sold
being choked in the corner – really put over the disadvantage she was now in.
Ford’s offence was pretty weak in comparison, so you can’t really begrudge
Gallows no selling a chop to hit one of her own that is far more effective. The
end was quite nifty, as Sozio passed Ford some tape to choke Gallows with,
which she concealed in a sleeper hold. Lee counted Gallows’ arm down twice,
before realising the tape was there, forcing Ford to break the hold. The
resulting argument let Gallows recover and nails a facebuster to win. Nice
little twist on the usual bit of cheating, but the parts of the match with Ford
in charge were average.
Matt Tremont vs Kevin Sullivan
Really great performance by Tremont here. Sullivan is 66yrs
old and not as mobile as he used to be – at one point nearly tripping up. What
Tremont does here is keep things simple, selling for Sullivan’s punches,
including falling for the old master’s cheapshots and doesn’t try and make
Sullivan fit into a match type that he’s not going to be able to keep up with.
They do a bit of walking brawling, including trips into the kitchen and the
toilets, and they manage to build a fun match based around mainly punching.
They both pull out their respective weapons – fork vs spike – before Jeff
Cannonball comes out to draw the DQ win for Tremont. Stockade makes the save to
build up a tag bout for the next show. This kinda made me curious about a
Tremont/Jerry Lawler match now.
Jimmy Lloyd & Yuta vs Frankie Pickard & Curt
Robinson vs Sozio & Preacher vs Storm of Entrails
Just soak in that team name for a second – Storm of
Entrails. How glorious is that? Anyway, this is a 4 team four way, featuring 7
guys I’ve never seen before and one (Sozio) I’ve not seen in over 10 years, so
this was really a case of having to pick out bits that I enjoyed from various
guys. On that score, I really dug Robinson working basic WoS spots early on,
and Pickard impressed as, despite being a short stocky guy, he nicely landed on
his feet on a back body drop and let rip with a stiff elbow to the face. All
these guys seem to work well together, but the elephant in the room is Storm of
Entrails, two muscly, unhinged looking dudes. They’re kept out of the ring
until the end, and when they come in, they’re immediately gamechangers. Yuta
and Lloyd get taken out with powerbombs, as do Pickard and Robinson. An Alabama
Slam and a top rope elbow gets the win for the Entrails.
Shane Douglas vs Eddie Kingston
This is another case of a younger guy trying to make a
semi-retired veteran look good. In this case, Kingston fares less well than
Tremont, and I think it’s because Douglas is more able and mobile than Sullivan
– it means they try more stuff which doesn’t always come off. There are good
moments here, Kingston stooges around nicely and buys Douglas time to catch
breath on occasion, by jawing at the crowd. But it says a lot about a match
when both guys put on nerve holds as a rest spot. That said, Douglas does sell
it really well. They work an armdrop spot around it, with Douglas selling it as
having lost all feeling in the arm, desperately trying to slap some life back
into it. The end is a bit hokey, Douglas catching a flash belly-to-belly whilst
Kingston argues with the ref, but this was fine.
Nation of Intoxication (Danny Havoc & Connor Claxton) vs
Notorious Inc (Devon Moore & Drew Blood)
This is for the first H2O tag titles, and is no DQ. This
breaks down pretty early, with guys fighting on the outside prompting Blood to
go for a suicide dive that hits more fans than wrestlers. The camera work is a
little off, as we get told by the commentators about fighting happening on the
other side of the ring by a pairing, whilst we’re looking at something less
interesting on the other side. Things improve as we get back in the ring, with
Notorious Inc doing some nice double teams. Fun spot as Havoc has blood on his
shoulders in an electric chair position and drops him towards Claxton, who
boots him in the balls as he lands. Havoc superplexes Moore through a table,
and though Blood tries to fight back, he’s soon wiped out with a running DVD
and a top rope leg for the victory. Fun stuff.
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