PWG: 2006 Battle of Los Angeles Night Three Review

Night One was solid. Night Two was crazy. That leads us here to Night Three. What adjective will aptly describe what takes place on this night? On the surface, it looks to be superb. 11 matches that will encompass the quarter, semi & final round matches. Talent from the Indies, Dragon Gate, & TNA. PLUS a star studded multi man match. I can't wait any longer.

1) El Generico vs. Chris Sabin - Second Round Match
This was such a fun match. Sabin tried to play into Generico's offense early on by trying arm drags and stuff. Generico outdoes him and Sabin heads to the outside. They traded momentum a lot in this opening contest and got the show off to a great start. Generico went for the helluva kick and was met with superkick which made for an awesome counter. Sabin would set Generico up for the stalling dropkick in the corner only for Generico to follow him across the ring and nail him with a helluva kick. This was the beginning of the end as Generico perched him up top and executed the top rope brainbuster for the win.

Match rating - ***

2) Kevin Steen vs. CIMA - Second Round Match

PWG: 2006 Battle of Los Angeles Night Two Review

Night 1 saw Chris Sabin, El Generico, Dragon Kid, CIMA, Kevin Steen, & Roderick Strong advance to the second round. There weren't any outstanding match ups despite Roddy & Rocky Romero putting on a very good contest and everything else being solid. On this event, we find out who else will advance to the quarterfinals on Night 3 as well as who will walk out with the gold in PWG as The Dynasty puts all their respective titles on the line. Joey Ryan defends against Human Tornado, Excalibur, & Petey Williams and Chris Bosh & Scott Lost defend against B-Boy & Homicide and The Briscoes.

Excalibur & Bryce Remsburg are your hosts on commentary. Last night's head commentator Disco Machine is in the opening match of the evening against Austin Aries!

1) Austin Aries vs. Disco Machine - First Round Match
Disco does some dancing early on only to get serious with some fast & furios offense as he hits a Super Dragon esque dive through the ropes at the corner of the ring onto Aries. That was about the peak of this one though, to be honest. Considering that was in the opening minutes, that tells you where this went from there. Well, actually, it didn't go anywhere from there which was the main thing that held this one down for me. It just stayed in second gear after the opening moments, it felt like. Aries picks up the win.

Match rating - **1/4

2) Davey Richards vs. Ronin - First Round Match

PWG: 2006 Battle of Los Angeles - Night 1 Review

The sixth edition of PWG's anthology sets just made it's way into my DVD collection. It covers the final 8 shows of 2006 including the 2006 BOLA tournament as well as All Star Weekend IV along with the first 2 shows of 2007. This is the first show in the compilation and it's the first night of the 2nd annual Battle of Los Angeles Tournament.

The historical significance of this show is big as it's Pro Wrestling Guerrilla's debut in the legion hall in Reseda that has become so synonymous with amazing wrestling in recent years thanks to the folks at PWG.

Disco Machine & TARO are on commentary for the evening with Rick Knox & Bryce Remsburg taking care of refereeing duties. The line up is loaded, so much so that Disco & TARO are saying this is the biggest set of shows in PWG at the time. The fact that Chris Sabin and Colt Cabana are facing off in the opening contest just goes to show how stacked things are. And to think Bryan Danielson was supposed to be invovled prior to injury. He would have perfectly rounded out this line up that also originally included Mark & Jay Briscoe. So, enough talking about it, let's see if this could live up to expectations.

1) Chris Sabin vs. Colt Cabana - First Round Match
This was a pretty fun opener. It's hard to go wrong with anything these two did in 2006 respectively so it's no real surprise that they put on an entertaining contest here despite it being fairly short. Cabana did some comedy however he didn't over do it. Sabin got most of his signature stuff in including my personal favorite, the running stalling drop kick in the corner. I don't think this was the best match that Sabin & Cabana could have as it ended rather abruptly after the two traded pinning combinations although it was a decent start to the show.

Match rating - **1/2

WWE: WrestleMania X7 Review

Earlier this week, I had the urge to watch some early 2000's WWE stuff. It was one of my favorite times in wrestling which probably comes as no surprise since it's what I grew up watching. This led to the question of what to watch. Unfortunately, I don't have the network so my catalog isn't as wide as most of you however I recently got the WrestleMania anthology that features WM's 16-20. I've watched three of them so I decided to go with one that I hadn't watched at all and 17 stood out so here we are!

The downfall to this anthology is that it has the same menus & music for every Mania instead of a unique set up for each of them. That's a minor gripe, of course, because it's only the selection menu, but hey, let's move on. They air the video package hyping the event. JR & Paul Heyman are on commentary - ohhhh yeah! I picked the right event!

 
1) Chris Jericho (c) vs. William Regal - Intercontinental Championship Match
They showed a video package highlighting what led to this match which was a nice touch considering I had no clue of any back story. Regal was the commissioner at this time and Y2J kept screwing with him by peeing in his tea cup and such. That led to this match where both men came hot out of the gate. Regal slows things down by targeting Jericho's injured shoulder and slamming it into the ring post. I say he slowed things down, but they never really slowed down per say. Certainly not long enough to tell much of a story. This was a decent opener albeit somewhat anti climatic. I feel like these two had a much better match in them. It just felt like they tried to fit everything into the small time they were given and it came off as rushed. Y2J wins rather abruptly with a lionsault.

Match rating - **

Backstage, there's a limo pulling up. There's a WCW 1 tag on it. Oh fuck! It's Shane McMahon. To my surprise, the Monday before this was when Shane announced that he'd bought WCW. I bet the buys were through the roof for this PPV after that!

PWG: Threemendous II Review

With Threemendous IV, the 12th Anniversary show, on the horizon. I decided to throwback to a few past events in the weeks before the upcoming celebration. On July 31st, 2009, PWG celebrated six years as a company with their event Threemendous II. The event is headlined by a Guerrilla Warfare Match as Joey Ryan tries to stop Chris Hero's World title reign from eclipsing his record championship run in 2006. Excalibur is on commentary with Joey Ryan to start the evening.

1) Johnny Goodtime, Jerome "LTP" Robinson, & Brandon Gatson vs. The Cutler Bros & Charles Mercury
This was the perfect way to start this show considering PWG has always been known for having crazy multi-man opening tag matches. This match mainly consists of newcomers to PWG at the time and they certainly made an impression. There were some not so smooth exchanges here and there, but for the most part this was a highly entertaining opening spotfest. Just a bunch of crazy stuff to get the crowd going. I really miss Johnny Goodtime & LTP in PWG. Here's to hoping they'll start getting booked again sooner or later.

Match rating - **3/4

2) Alex Shelley vs. Scott Lost

Best on the Indies: Chris Hero - Interviews With A Hero DVD Review

Best on the Indies: Chris Hero - Interviews with Hero (Deluxe Edition) Review

I've been wanting to check out Smart Mark Video's Best on the Indies series for quite some time and I figured there'd be no better place to start than with this huge six disc set chronicling Chris Hero's career up to 2011. The main features are two shoot interviews, one conducted in 2003, the other in 2011. All together, it adds up to over 7 hours of interview footage where Chris discusses everything from his training in 1998 all the way through his Independent career in the 2000's up to right before he signed to WWE in 2011.

Disc 1: 

2003 Interview
 
The presentation begins with the first ever shoot interview that SMV did with Hero in 2003 and holy throwback! They start things off discussing how he got into the wrestling business and his childhood/teenage years as a fan. Hero says he got out of wrestling around 9th grade until his senior year when he started watching again which led him to wanting to get into it after graduating high school. His first real training came at Les Thatcher's school despite having some prior, but it was from a guy who didn't know what he was doing. Interesting notes from this area of discussion include the fact that Nigel McGuinness and BJ Whitmer were both at the same training class Hero attended at Les Thatcher's school. That's really cool seeing how far all three guys have come.

IWA Mid-South is the next topic and really, the main topic considering that's where Hero worked prominently in 2000-2003. His feud with Punk is discussed and Hero reveals that their 93 minute 2/3 Falls match is his favorite of their series. I recently watched that match and can attest that it is a must see encounter. Hero talks about his friendship with Punk and tells the same story he would tell years later on the documentary that WWE did on Punk where he brought up the Deftones to start a conversation with Punk only to be shut down with a "Oh yeah? The Deftones suck."