Date: May 9th, 2010Commentators: Excalibur, Rick Knox, Chris Hero, & Chuck Taylor
Champions:
PWG World Champion - Davey Richards
PWG World Tag Team Champions - The Young Bucks
1) The Young Bucks vs. Johnny Goodtime & Jerome LTP Robinson - First Round Match
OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD, WHY AREN'T GOODTIME & LTP BOOKED IN PWG ANYMORE? This was awesome and the best possible opener you could ask for. This caught me completely off guard as I'm used to seeing Goodtime team with RockNES Monsters partner Johnny Yuma only to find out he worked as a singles guy and with a LTP for nearly a year prior to that. I'm certainly happy I found this out because maaaan, this shit rocked the house. I can't say much more. Fantastic opener. I'll likely go back and watch this one again. We're only one match in and everyone has a tough act to follow.
Match rating - ***1/2
2) El Generico & Paul London vs. Chuck Taylor & Scott Lost - First Round Match
2010 was Scott Lost's final year in PWG as he would retire during the summer. With that being said, every match the founder had around this time felt special. On paper, I overlooked this one for some reason, but once it was in front of me, I realized how great this could be. All the competitors have crossed paths in some form or another over the years and it's always been quality. That chemistry carried over to this match as we got a combination of awesome wrestling and comedy that arguably no one in PWG history does better than these four. From Lost mock masturbating with Generico's arm which led to London shouting insults at him with a megaphone to Paul London setting off a siren in the middle of the match - this was sports entertainment at it's finest. The action here delivered as well. Extremely fun match all around.
Match rating - ***1/4
3) Roderick Strong & Ryan Taylor vs. The Cutler Bros - First Round Match
At this time, Roddy was undoubtedly the king of DDT4. He's a 3x finalist and a 2x tournament winner. This makes the rookie Ryan Taylor, one lucky bastard. The Cutler Bros were pretty over at this point after having a great 2009 which made for the crowd being into this match despite it being the least hyped first round bout. This was a decent little tag match although it felt sort of disjointed. Maybe because Roddy & Taylor are a new team and The Cutlers aren't the best at carrying a match caused it, but this just felt a step below what it should be considering the names involved. The weakest first round match however it's not necessarily a bad bout.
Match rating - **1/2
4) The Briscoes vs. Akira Tozawa & YAMATO - First Round Match
What a combination of crazy characters. This made for a pretty exciting match that ended up being the start of something special in the form of Akira Tozawa. YAMATO put in a solid performance, but it was Tozawa who made a huge impression and really wowed the audience in his debut. Pretty cool looking back on this considering how popular Tozawa would become in the remainder of 2010 & 2011 in PWG. Solid match here.
Match rating - ***
5) The Young Bucks vs. The Cutler Bros - Semi Final Round Match
It's Bucks/Cutlers so this delivered. It always delivered. This match goes back to the first round of the 2009 DDT4 Tournament as the Bucks defeated The Cutlers to advance. Since then, The Bucks have changed. They aren't fan favorites, they are the most hated duo in PWG. At this time, they legitamately were as this was before their heelish antics became popular and got them over around the world. This was a nice change of pace from alot of YB matches today as they completely isolated one of The Cutler's in a great heel heat segment that lead to the explosion of epic exchanges in the final minutes of the match. From a wrestling standpoint, this was the best match of the night. I loved how they had some callbacks to their previous encounter from last year's tournament although they have met since then. Awesome stuff here.
Match rating - ***3/4
6) El Generico & Paul London vs. The Briscoes - Semi Final Round Match
This was a sprint for the most part aside from a few rest holds here & there. I don't think this one even reached the 10 minute mark and they packed some nice action into that time. The finish was really cool to as The Briscoes went for the doomsday device only for Generico to counter out into a victory roll for the victory out of nowhere.
Match rating - **3/4
7) Chris Hero vs. Brandon Bonham
I didn't really know what to expect here. I've seen people rate this from two stars all the way to four stars. Beyond that, Hero & Bonham pretty much total opposites. I've only seen a bit of Bonham's PWG work and while I enjoyed, I never saw him on the level of a Chris Hero by any means. Well, he really took a step up in my eyes here. It doesn't really matter now though considering he's retired, but still, this match was pretty damn great. They beat the shit out of each other for a good 15 minutes an exhausting contest. We saw Bonham pull out some toughness that many fans probably didn't know he had. If Bonham had been more over and they had done a better job of making it feel like he could pull off the win, this could've been a four star match. The action & story was there, the atmosphere was lacking though. That's something that's rare for PWG, but everything can't be perfect and honestly can't blame the audience considering Bonham had been on a short absence from PWG prior to this. None the less, this was really good.
Match rating - ***3/4
8) The Young Bucks vs. El Generico & Paul London - Final Round Match for the PWG World Tag Team Titles
This one started off good, then just as they began to hit their stride, an awkward pinning sequence threw everything off. I don't know what happened so I won't blame anybody for a botch. The whole audience just went silent afterwards because everyone thought it was over then they were like, there's no way it's ending this quickly and they were right. Things finally get back going and they make up for the slight slip up. We get another Rick Knox moment that brings every single person to their feet as he floors The Young Bucks with a clothesline. The finishing sequence of moves was epic due to how hype the crowd was at this moment. Generico & London win the belts and end The Bucks reign of terror over PWG. Amazing moment right there.
Match rating - ***1/2
After the match, Paul London puts over PWG big time by saying the tag belts are earned by hard work and that they're steroid free as well as dick sucking politic free - the way wrestling should be. Generico & London talk for a bit & celebrate after this huge win.
Overall thoughts: The 2009 tournament was one of my favorite PWG shows ever and while this didn't rank up there with that one, in my opinion, it was still an enjoyable show. You had multiple moments worth looking back on including the highly entertaining Peligro Abejas/Chuck Taylor & Scott Lost, Rick Knox flooring the Young Bucks, and most notably, El Generico & Paul London ending The Bucks' dominant reign as champions. As a whole, this was a very good event that I can easily recommend despite it not being something that will blow you away like we get alot of times from PWG.
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