Saturday, 5 January 2019

Wild Zero Wrestling - A Means To An End

Tuna vs Jeremy Jensen
Tuna is a female wrestler, accompanied by manager Anthony Gaines, a guy with a very smackable face. You really feel like she’s going to have to change that name if she wasn’t to get anywhere. This felt like a competently worked rookie match. I don’t know how experienced either of these two are, but both felt like they knew what they were doing, whilst also both lacking the refinement that comes with experience. Aside from an early roll up, nothing is fluffed, but there’s a slight hesitancy throughout from Tuna. There’s also hesitancy from Jensen, but this is part of the storyline, where it seems like he doesn’t want to hit a female wrestler who has no problems hitting him. They work some early mat stuff before she surprises him with a big forearm, and maintains control from there. When Jensen does get on offence, his clothesline and back elbow are (deliberately) super light. However, just as he decides to fire up, Tuna hits him with a rolling elbow and a Samoan Drop to get the win.

Colin Delaney vs Orange Cassidy
Far more experience here, both guys looked super comfortable in a match where neither really had to stretch themselves. Cassidy’s laid-back schtick gave them both plenty to work with, and Cassidy bumping with his hands in his pockets looks both super smooth and visually impressive. I like how Cassidy’s comedy stuff serves to frustrate Delaney, which then allows Cassidy to shock him with sudden bursts of offence, and I like how he lures Delaney into a chop battle, throwing weak slaps and allowing Colin to wind up for a big chop, only to duck and nail a superkick. I also dug Cassidy taking a mouthful of orange juice to “fire up”, then about half a minute later spitting it into Delaney’s eyes for a nearfall. They exchange roll ups, with Delaney getting a leverage advantage enough to keep Cassidy on the mat for three. Fun stuff.

Team Tremendous (Bill Carr & Dan Barry) vs Killer Instinct (Jacoby Riddick & Mike Skyros) vs Wrestling Liberation Front (Cloudy & Krist Worthless)
Enjoyable match, if you choose to ignore the inherent issues in teams tagging out to other teams in a triple threat tag. Killer Instinct impressed on the last Wild Zero show, and here they both bump impressively to make a hackneyed “one wrestler gets hit with a move that causes him to accidentally DDT his own partner” spot come off well. Nice spot where Skyros trips Barry whilst Riddick runs the ropes and hits a low dropkick to his head. Worthless looked decent too, a big ugly guy who hit hard and seemed to have good movement. The two heel teams, Killer Instinct and WLF, argue on the floor, providing a nice set up for a big Barry dive. Bill Carr follows with a huge flip dive of his own, which looks great for such a big guy. Carr hits a nice clothesline and Black Hole Slam to the KI guys, which they bump huge for, before Team Tremendous hit a neat Doomsday Sliced Bread, However, before they can make the pin, Cloudy rolls up Barry for the sneaky heel win. Logic gap aside, this was neat, everyone worked really hard.

Jay Freddie vs Daniel Garcia

I really wanted to like this – I liked what I’ve seen before of Freddie teaming with John Silver as the Thick Boys and I really liked the big match feel, with both guys have entourages and a big fight introduction. The problem is that I don’t think this was a very good match. Alarm bells started ringing when they kicked off with a clumsy looking forearm exchange, which I hoped in vain was just getting that nonsense out of the way. Unfortunately, they went back to these strike exchanges seemingly as a way to fill time or when they needed to transition to the next part of the match. This match went almost half an hour, so there was a lot of time to fill and a lot of strike exchanges used to do it. They also do too many non-selling mirror sequences, where one would hit a back suplex then they’d both get up and the other would hit a back suplex. They even exchange sharpshooters at one point in the match, with no sign of any long term damage. Really felt like two guys trying to have a “fighting spirit” epic, when the truth is that this would have been much better without these parts and with ten minutes taken off the run time. There were definite good bits – loves Freddie’s early dive, thought Garcia tripping him on the apron looked good, liked the driven knees that Garcia hit to the ribs by diving across the ring and Freddie hits a nice cannonball and Fisherman Buster. These were all positive bits, but the layout of the match really affected it. By the time Freddie finally gets the tap out with yet another sharpshooter, I was just willing it to be over, which isn’t a good sign. A missed opportunity.

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