Melbourne City Wrestling

A little while ago I was talking to a friend about the possibility that he might move to Australia. We discussed (what we believed at the yime ro be) the lack of great wrestlers and feds. Then in December’s wrestlecrate I got a free show from Melbourne City Wrestling. It was ther “Best of 2016”, it’s 3 and a half hours long and it’s phenomenal..we had been terribly wrong in our discussion. I don’t know what we were thinking to be honest, Australia produces world beating superstars at every other sport – of course they would produce good wrestlers!

Slex vs Tyler Bate (January)

Great match, massively bizarre to hear aussie accents commentating on wrestling! First time I have seen Slex, he is a great wrestler that I hope to see more of him. Tyler Bate I have seen more of, although usually as part of a tag team. He looked great in this match and reminds me more and more of a young Doug Williams – who incidentally is one of my favourite wrestlers for all time. Great match.

Dowie James vs Adam Brooks (Feb)

This match was for the “Inter-Commonwealth” Title.  These two are both brilliant. The match was fast paced and told a great story of two former tag partners, and best friends, torn apart by jealous of a singles title.  The commentators elevated a fantastic match to another level for me by feeding the back story to certain moves and to the feud. I’d love to see more of both of these guys.

The Estate vs Juice-X-T (March)

What an amazing match! Two teams of great wrestlers who put on one hell of a match. Fantastic heel work from the estate. Great bits of tag wrestling, cutting the ring in half, hot tags, distracting the ref to get an illegal advantage. And then there was a brand new twist on a classic sleight of hand Eddie Gurrero move. Ace match, I hope to see more of both these teams. I’d especially love to see The Estate take on the London Riots!

Kellie Skater vs Kelly Anne (April)

Great fast paced start. Well worked match from 2 super talented wrestlers. The crowd were into it and it was a real back and forth that was a great advert for the MCW women’s division and for women’s wrestling as a whole.

Sid Parker vs Locky Hendrix (April)

Great video package filling in the back story. Locky “not medically cleared” but here for a fight hardcore brawl. Great heel work from Sid Parker. Brutally destroying each other for the majority of the match, but enough great moves for it still to be an awesome wrestling match, not just weapons for weapons sake. They continued the storytelling from the videoe package, and they was complemented by the awesome commentary team who called the shots phenomenally, helping to sell every move as well as filling in back story as we went. This was an amazingly brutal and great wrestling match.

Elliot Sexton vs Hartley Jackson (April -Ballroom Brawl)

Good match between 2 heavyweights. I felt the actual match ended before it really had chance to shine, but what was there was good. The aftermath was brutal. TMDK showing how a real brutal heel stable can destroy a locker room, and a referee, and a wrestling ring!

Dowie James vs Jonah Rock (May)

Solid match between two good workers. A classic monster heel vs lighter baby face. Told a great story and had a good finish for the story.

TMDK (Slex and Marcus Pitt) vs Panic (Sid Parker and Psycho Cowboy) (July)

This was an awesome match in which all 4 competitors showed real talent for wrestling. There was some great spots, some superb matt sections, great tag team work,  an awesome hot tag and some great storytelling. Sid Parker may very well be becoming one if my favourite wrestlers.

Josh Shooter vs Mark Davies vs Robbie Eagles (June)

Great match from 3 wrestlers would like to see more of. All three very talented and worked a great triple threat match. Great spots and great ability on show all round

Evie vs Kelly Anne (September)

Solid fast paced match. Some good spots, awesome back and forth and some great heel work from Kelly Anne. Another great advert for women’s wrestling.

Mr Juicy vs Jonah Rock – August

Two behemoths collide.  Some awesome power moves on show in a well worked match that told a great story that had had the back story laid out well in a video package and by the commentators. Both these guys are also really agile and there were some brilliant high flying moments too. This was quite an awesome match to end what looked like a great feud.

Mary Scurll vs Mark Davis – Semi final of Melbourne City Invitational -October

Awesome match – of course it was, it had Marty Scurll in it! Both wrestlers looked good. Some classic Scurll moves and I was enthralled the entire time. Match started at 100mph and didn’t slow down. The commentators informed me that there is a Marty Scurll vs Adam Brooks match in MCW, and this has just been added to the top ofy “matches to watch” list.

Robbie Eagles vs Ryan Rollins vs Adam Brooks

Amazing match. Three phenomenal wrestlers who put on a great show. some great mat moves and some superb high flying stuff. Great ending.

All in all this was 3 and a half hours of amazing wrestingaches and it has ignited an interest in me to see more MCW matches and events. I’m going to start with Scurll Brooks but I intend to watch a lot of MCW in 2017, and I hope to see a lot of these guys hit the UK.

White Rose Wrestling Podcast : Chapter 1 – 2016 in review

As 2016 comes to an end Chimera Rouge  (@ChimeraRouge) and I (@AtlasWrestling) decided to put together our first wrestling Podcast. 

We called it White Rose Wrestling as it is a wrestling podcast based in the White Rose County – Yorkshire, although we discuss wrestling from around the world.

Chapter 1 looks at wrestling in the year 2016 and can be found on Soundcloud  here or cast box here.

In it we discuss

• Top 3 WWE moments of the year
• Tag team wrestling 
• Women’s wrestling and Intergender Wrestling 
• Chimera Rouge talks NJPW
• Atlas talks PROGRESS
• Live events from RISE, TCW, PROGRESS and PCW
• Awards for 2016
• WWE UK Championship 
• Hopes and preditions for 2016

Do give it a listen, and let us know what you think either in the comments or via Twitter. 

TLC

So I just realised that I never actually published this write up of TLC! Here is my write up:

Pre show

Great match for what it was. Couldn’t have gone any better. Great spots and great wrestling showcasing some of the talent that should be involved in storyline higher up the card.

Tag titles.

Decent match. Could have been longer.  Story line issues – like why are two non-tag teams fighting for the belts when the likes of American Alpha and the Vaudevillians are trapped in preshow hell?!?!?!?

Nikki Bella vs Carmella

Great match. Again could have been longer. Told a good story and seemed a fitting end to a good feud. Presumably Nikki will move on to Nattie – given the least shocking revelation ever at the end (edit: having now seen Roadblock I can say the outcome of that tag titles match was less shocking than this….).

IC title

Awesome match. Gave us something different. Miz holding himself up was a real impressive show of strength. These two have really raised the bar since the brand split. And it’s amazing that they have managed it given the amount of time they have spent feuding in the past. I hope they both get main event pushes in 2017.

Chairs match.

A great match. The mismatch was worked really well. Both wrestlers surely built themselves up in the eyes of of everyone watching. Enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting to.

Women’s title

Another great match. I’m more and more impressed with Alexa every match she has, and I’ve long been a Becky Lynch fan. They built a good story, had some good spots and showed of some.great wrestling talent. A good finish to ensure both characters stayed strong.

Main event

Great match. Match of the night. It was always going to be given the quality of the talent involved. This match was well worked from the get go and had an incredible twist that I wasn’t expecting. Ambrose and Styles are probably the two wrestlers I’ve enjoyed most in WWE in 2016 and I look forward to seeing them in 2017.

I didn’t have very high expectations of this show but they were massively exceeded and I very much enjoyed it as a whole. Having since seen roadblock it strikes me that Smackdown are getting more things right at the moment than Raw. I did think it must be different creative teams but I’m told that it’s the same team, so it makes me wonder why? The only think I can think if is that Ambrose, Styles, Miz and Ziggler are perhaps just loads better than any of the men on Raw (I’m enjoying both women’s division’s at the moment.).

PROGRESS Chapter 39 – The Graps of Wrath

Out seems a tad silly posting this now as it was a few weeks ago and I’ve been to a couple of shows since, including abother chapter. But the main reason I started writing this blog was so I’d have a place to store.my thoughts on the events I’ve seen and how I felt about them at the time, so I want to put some things down now.

Firstly, I feel.I shod comment on the name, it is my favourite name of any wrestling event ever! Well done Jim, John and Glenn. I love the names they come up with always, but this is my favourite by a mile.

Now the matches:

FSU vs SPPT

How can anyone not love FSU? They are such good fun at all times and the perfect way to start any show. As well as being fun, they are both awesome wrestlers and they were against two other awesome wrestlers in Travis Banks and TK Cooper. A great match to start a superb card. 

Joe Coffey vs The Pastor

I’m a big, big Joe Coffey fan. In whichever promotion I see him in he always delivers the goods. And he was up against Bill Eaver who is a solid performer who gets better each time I see him. This was another solid match although I feel it was slightly eclipsed by its predecessor. I look forward to seeing more of these hm guys going forward, and to seeing where the Pastor/Sebastian story will lead.

Tag Team Titles

Two of my favourite tag teams in BSS and the London Riots and they put on a clinic in tag team wrestling, as one would expect. I could watch these two teams wrestle each other every night of the week. And how does a man the size of Rob Lynch deliver such amazing “Flippy Shit” from the top rope?!?!?

Riddle vs Ospreay

What a year these two have both had. They have seen success and great matches in promotions all across the world. This was probably the best sub 10 minute match I’ve ever seen – so good I find myself watching it whenever I have 10 minutes to spare! I look forward to seeing both these guys more next year.

Havoc vs Scurll

This is a bit of a dream match for me, and it was perfect. The start of the match was an excellent take on the recent Goldberg vs Lesnar match that had me laughing and the end was a homage to the late, great, Eddie Gurrero – my all time favourite wrestler.  The match wasn’t very long, but I didn’t mind too much because it set up a no DQ rematch at chapter 40 and I already had a ticket!

Nixon Newel vs Katey Harvey

Over the course of 2016 Progress have build an incredible Women’s division, which includes some phenomenal wrestlers and the natural progues sion series has me genuinely excited. This was another superb match. I’ve seen a lot of Niton before and she’s always impressive (whether it be wrestling guts or girls!), this was the first time I’d seen Katey Harvey and I hope to see more of her in the future. 

Main Event

After Mark Haskins bad news and (I hope temporary) retirement from wrestling the PROGRESS title was vacant. This meant that an new cHampton needed to be crowned and the way this was done was to put the winners of all the males matches into a 7 man match for the championship. This was a great match, it had some brilliant spots and some great wrestling and story telling.  And I don’t care what Dave Meltzer says, the finish was great and not Russo – esque in the slightest.

Another great event from my current favourite promotion.

WWE Roadblock – End of the line

Pre show. 

I genuinely net cannot believe that Rusev and Cass were bumped to the preshow.  I have issues with the way all the wrestlers involved in this story are being booked and the story as a whole is abhorrent. That said, I hoped these two talented wrestlers would put on a great match. But they weren’t given enough time to do that and the finish was weak.
Tag titles

Not a bad opener but it was far too predictable and has been for seemingly months and it highlights wider issues with the way the wwe are using, or failing to use, the plethora of supervision tag teams they have at their disposal. They have 2 main roster tag divisions and stacked tag team rosters, yet both sets of titles are on tag teams made up of singles wrestlers.

Sami vs Braun

Good enough for what it was. Not a story line I’d got overly invested to be honest. I’m not sure either of these wrestlers will benefit that much from this feud.

Seth Y2J

Good match from 2 great wrestlers. I thought it was a tad short and it felt a little restrained but certainly a match I enjoyed and a pairing I’d happily see wrestle again and again.

Cruiserweight

Not a bad match, but again it felt shorter and more restrained than it soul have been. The booking of the CW division hasn’t really set the world alight and now they are filming 205 live in front of main roster crowds instead of its own crowds I worry it might fall flat. I liked the angle after the match and can’t wait to see whee it goes.

Women’s title.

Another good match between two super competitors. They built it well and told a really good story. Probably the match of the night. I do have issues around the 4th fall and the likelihood of that happening.

I also have issues around the match length. Is seems too short. Why a 30 minute iron man match when they’ve been going 30 minutes in other 1 fall matches on other PPVs and on Raw? An hour would have been a more sensible time.

That said, an enjoyable match nontheless , as they all have been throughout the feud, and a fitting end to said feud. I’ll look forward to seeing what’s next for both of these and also to the day this feud reignites somewhere down the line.

Main event

Not a bad match from two decent competitors. Although I have seen both of these have better matches this year. The booing of Reigns is beginning to annoy me. He’s a really good worker and is loved by the kids, thus he sells a shed load of merchandise and is well worth his spot in the upper card. His matches have improved vastly of the last few years and there really is no need to boo him.

I worry about KO and how his reign seems marred by the lack of clean wins. I felt that Y2Js reign as the first undisputed champion was similarly marred and it feels like WWE are repeating past mistakes.

All in all I’d say it was a decent PPV, but probably one of the weaker ones this year. I had high hopes of Raw after Clash of Champions but the PPV quality has been falling each time. The women and Jeriko are keeping Raw afloat for me. They need to sort it out.as they have a massively talented roster.