Monday, August 17, 2015

PWG: Self Titled Review

After the 2006 Battle of Los Angeles, PWG returned to Reseda on October 6th, 2006 for "Self Titled"! Davey Richards took his BOLA win and used it to get himself & Super Dragon another shot at the PWG World Tag Team Titles that belong to Chris Bosh & Scott Lost. That match goes down in the main event of the evening.

Disco Machine & TARO are on commentary. The lighting is much better than at BOLA. The legion hall looks exactly like it does currently in 2015. This is cool.

Quicksilver is in the ring for some reason to start the show. I'd find out later that he was named "interim commissioner" for the evening. He doesn't say anything of note aside from joking with a few fans before going to the back.




1) Ronin vs. Chasyn Rance
The crowd is being just as hard on Ronin as they were at BOLA by chanting "Fuck him up, new guy!" towards Chasyn Rance. Things were a little rough to start out, but this ended up being a fairly decent opener. Rance got to put his offense on display which was nice and included a driver variation, a dive, and a spikerana. Ronin ends up putting him away with a death valley driver if I remember correctly.

Match rating - **1/4

2) TJ Perkins vs. Rocky Romero
If you've seen these two face off before, you already know this was superb. They are so familiar with other and have such talent in the technical/scientifc aspect of wrestling that this was just a clinic. Lots of mat work and awesome counters. It wasn't a match with a story so to speak. It came off more as a clinic between two skilled technicans and the out of nowhere ending with a pinning combination played off that. Good little contest.

Match rating - ***1/4

3) Murder City Machine Guns (Chris Sabin & Alex Shelley) vs. Cape Fear (El Generico & Quicksilver)

I'm SO ready for this. MCMG had just began teaming at this time and had acquired the Zero 1/NWA Light Heavyweight Tag Titles. They played the heels here and did so very well. The match begins with a bunch of mat work between all four guys. Quick & Generico start busting out more fast paced offense and of course get the upperhand because that's their thing. This leads to Sabin & Shelley resorting to cheap tactics such as biting to get the advantage. They work over Generico for awhile until Quicksilver gets the hot tag and starts cleaning house. The final stretch went well over five minutes, I'd say it was probably close to ten. It's not a spot-near fall-spot-near fall formula, it was well placed out with each spot getting proper build. Both duos displayed great team work on various occassions. The ending was not only awesome for what happened, it was also awesome because it tied into Sabin & Generico's past contest at BOLA. El Generico defeated Sabin in the second round with a top rope brainbuster. Here, Generico goes for it, Sabin blocks and CRADLE SHOCK OFF THE TOP ROPE! This allows Sabin to pick up the win for his team. Fantastic tag team wrestling from start to finish with a simple heel heat segment and hot finishing run plus a callback to a previous encounter? This was great.

Match rating - ***3/4

4) Frankie Kazarian vs. Scorpio Sky & Jade Chung - First Blood Match
This is an ongoing story that has been primarily featured since prior to BOLA which makes this pretty intriguing. There was a fair amount of steam behind this as well. Kazarian has two chairs with him to start the match, but Jade & Scorpio manage to get them away from him. First Blood matches are typically not that hypeworthy because they can get repetitive. This was pretty fun, though. They brawled around ringside and stuff. Alot of the offense was based towards the heads as you'd probably expect. One cool spot saw Kazarian hit the Wave of the Future on Scorpio off the stage. The only negative here essentially was that the finish came off as kind of weak because Kazarian didn't bleed much at all, you could barely see it. Enjoyable brawl, none the less.

Match rating - **3/4

5) Joey Ryan (c) vs. El Snowflake/Human Tornado - PWG World Title Match
Snowflake gets taken out before the match starts which leads to Quicksilver & Generico coming down. It looks like Joey isn't going to have an opponent then Tornado re emerges as himself and things get going. Crowd is still hot for Tornado just like at BOLA. Joey gets a bunch of heat and it's great. He even gets into it with a lady in the crowd and the security gets in between them. They do stuff for seven or eight minutes with Joey controlling most of it. Tornado makes his comeback and SUPER TND OFF THE TOP ROPE! TORNADO PINS JOEY! NEW CHAMP!! What the hell?! I was not expecting this at all. Massive pop from the crowd. Then came the downfall. Joey gets the mic and says his contract said he was facing El Snowflake with the title on the line and not Human Tornado. Decision is reversed and the audience is pissed. I'm enjoying Joey's title reign much more than I expected. He gets so much genuine hatred from the audience and Tornado is beloved. I like it. I'm stoked to see where this goes because much like at BOLA, it feels like they're building to a big title victory for Human Tornado. Some may not like the finish, but I didn't mind it.

Match rating - **3/4

6) Arrogance (Chris Bosh & Scott Lost) vs. Super Dragon & B-Boy - PWG World Tag Team Title Match
Wow. Turns out Davey Richards wasn't able to make it to this show so the momentum he had coming off of BOLA isn't going to come to any fruition, it seems. That's a real bummer. It got screwed up because the show date was changed so it's whatever. B-Boy makes sense as a replacement since he has beef with The Dynasty. This was a pretty good main event. It's not going to blow you away however it's a solid little tag match. It did feel like they never got out of second gear, though. That's what held it back the most for me. They started hitting some good stuff in the closing sequence, it just felt like something was missing. Some highlights include Scott Lost going for a spear in the corner and Dragon catching him off the top rope with a double stomp to the back, a few crazy dives, a ddt on the apron, and Dragon & B-Boy hit a killer combo where B-Boy basically back drop/propelled Scott Lost onto Dragon's shoulders for a driver variation. Speaking of Scott Lost, the more of watch of him, the more I'm astonished that he's not an absolute star somewhere right now. He was so good at pretty much everything. Shame he had to retire in 2010. Dragon & B-Boy end up winning the belts here. Kind of a lackluster victory, but I'd say it was satisfactory as a whole.

Match rating - ***


Overall thoughts: This wasn't a bad show at all. It's not must see and no matches reached four stars, but it was an enjoyable watch. MCMG/Cape Fear and Rocky/TJP were the best bouts of the night. The main event was solid even if the title change didn't come across the way I thought it should have when it finally happened. The Joey/Tornado stuff was fun too. On the surface, this is a passable show. If something on here interests you though and you can find this for a few bucks, it's a pretty good watch.


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