So let’s see how the new landscape of RCW works, with the new heel GM looking after the two champs as well as commentating, and a lot of new faces appearing on the shows. Crowd is okay – 210-ish – but going up against the more popular of the two local football teams playing at home against one of the form teams of the competition, to be expected. (For the record, Adelaide, the home team, were hammered by Sydney, my team. Not good to be a Sydney supporter in Adelaide at the moment!)
Your commentators are Todd Eastman and JD Armour. JD is playing such a stereotypical, OTT heel it is rather comical. Armour guarantees Voodoo will retain the title and so Todd threatens him. Todd makes fun of Armour’s lisp, and the crowd is not sure what to make of this.
Match 1: Ryan Rollins v Luke ‘Showtime’ Santamaria. Showtime? Really? Rollins is off to try his luck in AAA shortly, so good luck to the guy. Rollins riles up the crowd. Chain to start, then into a fast series of reversals. Rollins takes over. Long beat-down on Santamaria follows. Luke comes back, starting with an atomic drop. Luke hits a playmaker for the win. Fun match to start the night. Rollins as a wrestler is definitely growing on me.
The Rude Ones come out with a mic. Marvel runs down Johnny Barnes after having his mask stolen last week, Del Taurino joins in and they call out Barnes. Suddenly El Presidente attacks Taurino and Marvel, then unmasks himself to reveal himself as Barnes! Nice swerve! Barnes with the mic and he threatens them right on back. Interesting.
Match 2: Synn, Mike ‘The Answer’ Wheeler & ‘The Furious One’ Fuzion v The Benchwarmers (Damo Damo & Shannon Jarvis) & Big Brodie Marshall. There’s way too much smoke tonight. JD Armour talks to Mike Wheeler, and threatens him – tonight is Wheeler’s last chance to stay with the Armour stable (‘Those With Heart’). Eastman makes lisp jokes and Armour gets annoyed. The heels start by ganging up on Jarvis. Jarvis comes back on Wheeler and Damo takes over. But Wheeler tags Synn – a big guy (275lbs they said). He does some stuff, Fuzion in (Fuzion needs to be wrestling higher up the card! But I’ve been saying that for a year or more and he’s still in mid-card purgatory), then Wheeler, and a face tag isn’t seen. Still working Damo over. Hot tag to Marshall, he cleans house and pins Wheeler. Match felt like a 20 minute one condensed into 8. Odd. Not bad or anything, just… odd.
JD Armour confronts Wheeler. He fires Wheeler. Wheeler just walks to the back. And…?
Match 3: Andy Phoenix v Chris ‘Mimic’ Basso. The smoke is crazy. Hard to see the action in the ring. Feeling out lasts for a while. A long while. Things pick up a little. Serious botch breaks their flow and concentration. Match is slow and a little disjointed. Arianna Snow (the girl whose name I didn’t know last show, Phoenix’s valet) interferes. Mimic comes back and the pace picks up, along with the crowd. Match still feels odd. Phoenix locks in a rings of Saturn submission. Mimic rolls it over in to a pin attempt. Mimic misses a 450. Phoenix hits a front suplex/facebuster type move for the win! Huge win for Phoenix. Match was not the best.
Match 4: Rupert Holmes v Ladybeard. No, not the singer of ‘Escape (The Pina Colada Song)’, though that might have been interesting. Holmes comes out as a stereotypical British nerd, glasses, shirt, tie, etc with God Save The Queen as his entrance music; Ladybeard is in a purple dress and with two Heidi plaits. My God, Ladybeard is over! Comedy match. Holmes has his pants pulled down revealing Union Jack undies and his shirt pulled open. He is hung by his tie. Holmes kicks Ladybeard in the groin numerous times, Ladybeard does a splits. This is going on too long for what it is. Ladybeard with an airplane spin that dizzies them both. Ladybeard sits on Holmes’ face. Ladybeard with a spinning head kick for the win. Well, that was certainly different for RCW.
Schill for the new Grimmic DVD set. When I’ve got the cash, I’m getting it.
Video of the Mean Street Wrecking Crew threatening the Armstrongs until the insane fangirl (Isabelle Shaw) turns up . Hammer leaves, but she won’t. Odd. Again. But at least they’re using the video much better now.
Match 5: Mean Street Wrecking Crew (Brad Smyth & Hammer) v the Armstrongs, Nick & Jett. Hammer is apparently “the biggest tool in the box” (Eastman). Brad is outwrestled by Nick, Jett is overpowered by Hammer. Double team on Hammer backfires as he hits a double suplex on both Armstrongs. Brad becomes your heel in peril. Some nice moves from the Armstrongs. Double stomp to the Brad elbow. Long face beatdown on Brad until a Hammer blind hit on Jett turns the tide. Now we have a heel beatdown on Jett. Jett tries to come back but a nice Hammer belly to belly stops that. So many near tags, but Jett just can’t quite do it. Finally he gets one, and Nick explodes. Dropkick to Hammer on the apron and he is unhappy. Spinning Superman punch gets 2. This ending is hot. Heel miscommunication sees Hammer hit Brad. Hammer and Nick fight, Jett joins in for a double team superplex on Hammer. Hammer catches a Jett ‘rana attempt outside and giant swings him into the steel barricade. Hammer in with a hammer and hits Nick for the DQ. Armstrongs win by DQ. Man, even with that over-used finish, still match of the night (and my son agreed).
We get that strange video we had last month, only this time with the mask from V For Vendetta. Everyone is acting like they don’t know what’s happening, so this is a strange but intriguing development.
Match 6: Johnny Barnes v Marvel. Marvel jump-starts the match. Jimmy Barnes allusions from the commentators abound. (For non-Australian readers – Jimmy Barnes is our Bruce Springsteen.) Back and forth. Bad over the rope botch and crowd let them know. Crowd not into it really. Back and forth until Barnes takes over. He grabs Marvel’s old mask (the one he stole) and puts it on. Barnes is in control for a long time. Marvel comeback but Barnes goes out. The rest of the Rude Ones come out and force him back into the ring. Now the crowd comes alive. Marvel reverses a suplex into the dragon sleeper for the submission win and the crowd pop huge. Post-match Barnes tries to remonstrate with them and they hit a 3-man tequila sunrise on him. Well, that was apparently a quick feud.
Match 7: RCW Women’s Championship: Arianna Snow v Kellyanne English v Savannah Summers v Eliza Sway (c). Kellyanne is also off to AAA soon. Too fast and too much happening at once to call. Somersault plancha by English takes all of them out. Outside Sway and Summers kill each other. Too fast. Just so much happening. Tower of doom spot! Arianna turns a Samoan into a crucifix submission. English hits some nice moves. Sway with some great stuff, and Summers hits hard. This is great! Summers from the top turnbuckle onto Sway outside. More back and forth with everyone until Sway hits English with a nasty bomb for the win to retain. Well, that came out of nowhere. Match felt at least 5 minutes too short! We wanted more dammit! WWE wishes their women could wrestle like this.
Match 8: RCW Championship Match. We start with a Grimm video threatening Voodoo after the match is called. Interesting and certainly different. Anyway… Matt “GD Grimm” Basso v Andy “Voodoo” Roy (c). Back and forth to start, very intense. Grimm’s chops echo through the hall. Voodoo in control, cutting off Grimm’s every move. Crowd rallies behind Grimm. Grimm with a hangman’s sleeper, then a top rope front electric chair. Ouch! Back and forth again, and then Grimm with a helicopter border toss type move. Ouch again! Backcracker gets 2 for Voodoo. Top rope double knees from Voodoo. Match is intense. Back and forth, until, with Grimm in control, Armour pulls the ref out. Mean Street Wrecking Crew runs distraction and Voodoo hits the Canadian Destroyer for the win to retain. Crowd is deflated, and the clusterf**k ending really brought it all down. They all beat on Grimm after the match. Armstrongs out to make the save. Apparently the MSWC are now members of Those With Heart.
Grimm with the mic. He lays out a challenge – Armstrongs and Grimm v Voodoo and MSWC next month. JD Armour accepts and the RCW title is on the line for any of the faces who get the pin. Smyth corrects him and says that it will result in only a title shot the month after. Methinks there was an error there.
Eastman verbally attacks Armour yet again, and he’s suspended from the next show.
End show.
Okay, let’s look at this objectively. Show was only okay. Not great. Match of the night was the tag match (even with the screwy hammer-assisted ending), but the women’s match would have been if it had been longer. The JD Armour character is getting X-Pac heat (TM Scott Keith) (sure a few were on his case – mainly kids – but most were groaning), and the character doesn’t fit with the Sway and Voodoo and what they’ve portrayed themselves as, nor the MSWC. Basically, the show felt like it was trying too hard. I understand them wanting embrace more of the sports entertainment but… Look, it was just okay.
I guess I expected more than that.
