After last month’s RCW100 show, let’s see what RCW101 has to offer! Smaller crowd than last month, but with football on at the same time featuring the more popular of the home teams, maybe that’s to be expected. Still, disappointing.
We start with a video highlights package from RCW100. Man, some of that ladder match stuff still looks brutal.
May the 4th… and so we open with a Star Wars styled opening scrawl on the big screen of the matches. Nice. Commentators are Josh Armour and Todd Eastman. They’ve cleaned up the sound system. Sounds great.
Match 1: Mean Street Wrecking Crew (Brad Smyth & Hammer) v The Benchwarmers (Damo Damo & Shannon Jarvis). There’s a strange little fan-girl in the front row who’s all over Brad when he enters. Damo is still the most over guy in the company. Hammer has a go at the fan girl. Shannon and Brad start. Shannon with a kick to the head for a 2 count only 10 seconds in. Damo in and he’s in control. Slight mistiming; that looked awkward. Some interesting moves happening here. Blind tag to Hammer. Hammer destroys Jarvis with some great strength moves. Double stomp by Brad gets 2. Hammer in; crowd is calling for Damo. Damo in and he’s a house of fire. Hammer in to break up a count but hits Smyth instead. Hammer catches a fly Damo fly cross-body, but a Jarvis dropkick sends him out. Jarvis and Hammer both out and hurt. The fly Damo fly is caught by Brad into a backbreaker, chokeslam combo. Smyth goes to pick up Damo but he rolls him up for the win while Jarvis holds Hammer back outside. The Benchwarmers win! Crowd explodes. Good match to boot.
Insane fan girl runs into the ring to hug Brad and she chases him all the way to the backstage area. “You know, I always thought it’d be boys chasing after him,” says Todd.
Match 2: Johnny Barnes v Del Taurino. The ref confiscates Barnes’ beer before the match. How is that fair? Barnes jump-starts the match, back and forth until it goes outside. Barnes tackles Taurino and it’s just a brawl. Taurino in control, but he plays to the crowd and eats knee. Security brings insane fan girl back out to her seat to cheers/jeers. Match is still back and forth. Crowd not into it. Barnes is wrestling in his bum-bag (Fanny-pack). Really? Match slows down with a few sleepers from Barnes. Suplex from Taurino and both men are down. Up at 9. Barnes runs in, Taurino rolls him up for 3. Another roll up? Match felt slightly disjointed. Post-match Barnes takes out Del Taurino. He goes to unmask Del Taurino until the rest of the Rude Ones storm the ring and run him off.
Match 3: (“The first of our main events for the night.” Really? Third match on the card?) RCW Women’s Title. Eliza Sway (c) v Kellyanne English. English is a bit of an unknown – she’s fought under that name at least once before – but is automatically treated as the face, showing how effective Sway is as a heel. English is going off to Mexico soon to fight in AAA, so we wish her all the best. Loose start. Outside quickly and Sway just beats on English. Nice spinebuster from Sway. Crowd is losing its interest. Long beatdown. English tries some chain but Sway beats her down again. English tries an eat da feet, but doesn’t quite connect. Roll through by English gets 2, then enziguri. English slowly goes up but Sway catches her into a sort of spinebuster, but English then locks on a triangle choke. Both up and Sway hits a package bomb for the win to retain the title. Loose match.
Strange symbol appears on the big screen.
Match 4: The BFFs (Carlo Cannon & Ryan Rollins) v The Armstrongs (Nick & Jett). Rematch from RCW100. BFFs jump start the match, but double dropkicks from the Armstrongs turn the tide. Stereo moves for a while, up to an Armstrong double somersault plancha. Nice height, too. I like starts like that. Now we’re into the wrestling. Armstrongs dominate to start. Rollins in and the timing misses a little, but, man, is it fast. Jett becomes your face in peril. Some nice double team moves. Long beat-down, though. Cannon in with a nice jumping elbow. Jett dropkicks Cannon out but still can’t make the tag. Crowd is livid. Beatdown continues. Jett hits a tornado DDT and finally the hot tag. Nick is on fire. It breaks down. Everyone’s in the ring, everyone’s pinning everyone and the ref is doing nothing to restore order. A four-high tower spot pops the crowd hugely. All four men are down. Cannon tries a cover… for 2. Jett looks to have injured his shoulder. But he still grabs Cannon and Nick turns a Rollins crossbody into an RKO. The Armstrongs then hit a sliced bread-powerbomb combo for the win. Hot ending, even if the rule keeping made no sense. And Jett’s selling of the arm injury is so impressive he comes out in a sling to sign autographs after the show. Bravo, sir! BFFs hug it out in the ring afterwards.
That symbol appears again on the screen.
Match 5: Josh Shooter v GD Grimm. Shooter’s entrance is so close to Cannon’s it looks… odd. Back and forth until a testicular knee swings it in Shooter’s favour. Shooter in control for a while. Grimm back, Shooter back. Chops a go-go. Shooter in control again. Shooter playing with Grimm. Grimm hulks up and chops the skin off Shooter’s chest. Shooter’s chest is red. Grimm hits a front face suplex. Big boot wins it for Grimm. Not a bad match.
Match 6: Fuzion (with mask, without manager) v Marvel (with mask, with manager – El Presidente). Technical match, which surprises me, until Fuzion hits a Greco-Roman thumb to the eye. Spinebuster from Fuzion, and a solid one, too. Crowd aren’t into it, but screw ‘em, it’s a good match. Fuzion in control. Marvel back with a reverse DDT. Marvel thrown out via ring post. Ouch. Fuzion back in control. Fuzion sets up for the chokeslam, but Marvel gets out of it. He locks in the dragon sleeper, but Barnes comes out and decks El Presidente, then runs in and breaks up the sleeper for a Marvel DQ win. Barnes takes out the ref as Fuzion walks to the back. He tries to take off Marvel’s mask and does so, but EL Presidente is there to cover Marvel’s face. Del Taurino out to make the save. Barnes escapes through the crowd. Great match, odd ending, but at least it’s setting up something in a different way we haven’t seen in RCW before. We’ve seen it in WCW, WWE and Chikara, but not RCW.
Match 7: Andy Phoenix (from Dublin, Ireland, making his RCW debut, with a leprechaun girl) v Luke Santamaria. Andy has a mic. He says he’s come here to face the best Australia has to offer. He decries the person RCW has put up against him. Crowd down on him big time. Chain wrestling to start. Luke takes over, but the leprechaun girl interferes. Double underhook overhead snap suplex by Phoenix was a sweet looking move, for two. Leprechaun girl keeps on interfering while Phoenix distracts the ref. Another case of “the ref is blind/stupid”. Exploder suplex gets 2 for Phoenix. Some good wrestling, but match flow is disjointed. Awkward backslide bomb from Luke. In rope armbar from Phoenix. Yakuza kick gets 2 for Phoenix. Face first front suplex gets the win for Phoenix. Again, not a bad match.
Match 8: Main Event: RCW Championship Match: Andy ‘Voodoo’ Roy v Big Brodie Marshall (Strength Cup holder) v Chris ‘Mimic’ Basso (c). Two faces and a heel. Interesting dynamic they’re playing with here. That strange symbol appears again, along with some odd talking. No-one in the ring seems to know what’s going on. We start fast with a triple roll up. And, sure enough, Voodoo is soon out and it’s a 1-on-1 match. A slow one, at that. Chain wrestling, then chop-swapping. Brodie brings Voodoo in the hard way. A 3-way dance until Voodoo hits Brodie with the back-cracker and is thrown out. Voodoo-Mimic now. The intensity picks up somewhat. Back and forth between them until Voodoo dropkicks Mimic out to the floor. Brodie in now, so it’s Brodie-Voodoo 1-on-1. Back and forth again, I like the way they’re doing this one so damn evenly. Anyone could literally win. And 10 minutes in we get our first resthold. For 10 seconds. This is non-stop. Voodoo makes a pin but Mimic saves. All three in the ring. Too fast to call. Brodie with some odd looking punches on Mimic. Brodie throws Mimic into a moonsault onto Voodoo outside. Wow! Voodoo goes for a stalling elbow on Brodie, but Mimic takes him down as he delivers it. Christ! Sit out F5 by Mimic on Brodie gets 2. Mimic moonsault eats Brodie’s knees. Brodie turns both men inside out with clotheslines. Brodie powerbombs Mimic onto Voodoo’s back, but only gets 2. Voodoo hits the destroyer on Mimic, Brodie breaks up the pin. Stalling elbow on Brodie gets 2 for Voodoo. Sway runs out, But Mimic makes sure Voodoo runs into her. Another destroyer, another save. Crowd is on its feet. Marshall Law on Voodoo… for 2. Brodie goes for Marshall law on Mimic, but a Voodoo dropkick to his knee drops him like a sack of spuds. Ref runs away for help! WTF? Josh Armour is out there, distracting Mimic long enough for Sway to hit him with her belt. Voodoo pins Mimic and wins the title. One month title reigns rock, apparently. Despite that, a really good match.
The new General Manager of RCW is now announced as Josh Armour.
Out comes Grimm. He threatens Voodoo and is using his key to the city right now. But JD Armour says no. Grimm threatens them all.
Well, that was odd.
Overall, the show was a bit of a letdown after RCW100, with some good matches and some ones that felt strange. Disjointed flow marred some of the matches. Look, certainly not a bad show – I’ve been to a lot worse than this – but I have seen better. Still, much better for the most part than Raw or Smackdown at the moment.
