Johnny Sorrow Posted January 24, 2022 Report Share Posted January 24, 2022 On 1/21/2022 at 5:02 AM, El-P said: GCW at Hammerstein Ballroom this week-end has quite the line-up, with Mox vs Homicide, Janela vs Cardona (who really has turned himself around as a character since his first appearance in GCW), Gresham vs Blake Christian for the ROH title, the Briscoes vs a surprise team (could it be FTR ?), a multi-men ladder match which includes PCO and Lio Rush among others plus Jeff Jarrett vs EFFY (WTF moment of 2022 already). I'm watching it right now. The multi man ladder match is on and it's a fucking mess. A fun mess, though. Vlad the superfan is at ringside , that's cool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Sorrow Posted January 24, 2022 Report Share Posted January 24, 2022 GCW show was super fun. They billed it as "The biggest Indie show ever" and there was a lot of Indie shit. But I really liked it. Well worth 25 bucks. And the production work is really great considering. The vignettes looked great, the camera work was sharp, it looked great. Well, that one fucker who PCO piledrived onto a ladder didn't look great. That fucker landed headfirst onto a rung and bent it, and his neck. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted January 24, 2022 Report Share Posted January 24, 2022 9 hours ago, Johnny Sorrow said: GCW show was super fun. They billed it as "The biggest Indie show ever" and there was a lot of Indie shit. But I really liked it. Well worth 25 bucks. And the production work is really great considering. The vignettes looked great, the camera work was sharp, it looked great It was only 10 buck on Fite, which in the end will only end up being 8 euros or so, and if I'm perfectly honest I'm glad it was. First half was tons of crazy fun which peaked with Janela vs Cardona. Honestly, that Cardona & Chelsea entrance was almost worth the 8 euros alone. The last third was kinda meh honestly, with a completely shitty main event. Also, the production wasn't that good. They AAAed a bunch of big spots and the ring was very poorly mic'd you could not even hear a chop or a stiff boot. But yeah, first half was great fun. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoS Posted January 25, 2022 Report Share Posted January 25, 2022 Yeah I am surprised at the production work being called "great" by any standards. It was quite rough. I know it's an indy promotion doing this for the first time, but it felt like a 3-hour version of the first Casino Battle Royale, with so many production flubs and mistakes. In one of the matches you could literally hear the producer say "Let's go home guys!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strobogo Posted January 25, 2022 Report Share Posted January 25, 2022 Ryder's new gimmick fucking sucks. I kept reading all this shit about his reinvention and he's doing the cheapest of cheap heatbullshit that literally any ex-WWE star could do and it'd be exactly the same. He's not even doing it well, his deliveries come off like parodies. That match was the worst of bad ECW bullshit with the worst of TNA bullshit with bad modern lol meme indie stuff, plus Jalena and Ryder aren't good in the ring, either. Janela especially is bad and I have absolutely no idea how he gained a following. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted January 25, 2022 Report Share Posted January 25, 2022 He's doing a gimmick anyone from WWE can do, yet no one out of the literal hundreds that have been released in the last two years has done. Dude has hustle, got himself over on the internet when WWE had him guard catering to the point he got punished over it. Janela gets over because he's charismatic and that's still like 90% of getting over in wrestling, It always has been, yet it's surprising so many folks for decades have been scratching their heads why their favorite technical wizard who has the personality of wet socks somehow never become massively popular. If I was running a wrestling school I'd focus on teaching the basics in ring and focus on getting folks out of their shell and becoming familiar with crowds. Have them work on promos, have them take acting classes. That helped Cody tremendously, not just wit his lisp, but just look at the way he carries himself now as compared to his WWE days. Some of that is getting away from WWE speak for sure, but his whole approach is different after he took those classes I'm shocked no one else has done it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clayton Jones Posted January 25, 2022 Report Share Posted January 25, 2022 There are very, very few ex-WWE guys who would have done that Gage match, which is what started all of this for Cardona. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strobogo Posted January 25, 2022 Report Share Posted January 25, 2022 5 hours ago, sek69 said: He's doing a gimmick anyone from WWE can do, yet no one out of the literal hundreds that have been released in the last two years has done. Dude has hustle, got himself over on the internet when WWE had him guard catering to the point he got punished over it. Janela gets over because he's charismatic and that's still like 90% of getting over in wrestling, It always has been, yet it's surprising so many folks for decades have been scratching their heads why their favorite technical wizard who has the personality of wet socks somehow never become massively popular. If I was running a wrestling school I'd focus on teaching the basics in ring and focus on getting folks out of their shell and becoming familiar with crowds. Have them work on promos, have them take acting classes. That helped Cody tremendously, not just wit his lisp, but just look at the way he carries himself now as compared to his WWE days. Some of that is getting away from WWE speak for sure, but his whole approach is different after he took those classes I'm shocked no one else has done it. I disagree with all of this. I think what Ryder is doing is hack and not even well execution, and I don't find Janela to have charisma at all. He's a black hole of "why the fuck is this guy in the ring" and his execution of all the wrestling stuff is straight up bad. Anyway, ladder match had some heinous bumps, lucha trios had some crazy spots, and the rest of the show was pretty bleh. The actual "GCW stars" are pretty universally bad and somehow I ended a show in 2022 being more interested in a Jeff Jarrett resurgence than anything else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NintendoLogic Posted January 26, 2022 Report Share Posted January 26, 2022 So Nick Wayne was booked for the GCW show but got pulled after someone stooged on them to the state athletic commission. Regardless of how you feel about 16-year-olds in the ring, the rule against it in New York appears to no longer be in effect. There was an old law prohibiting anyone under the age of 18 from participating in boxing and wrestling matches, but it was repealed by the bill that legalized MMA in the state. The current law only prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from participating in "combative sports" (i.e., boxing and MMA). NYSAC regulations explicitly state that pro wrestling is not a combative sport. However, the commission has a history of being clueless when it comes to pro wrestling (a commission rep tried to shut down an intergender match a few years ago by citing a rule that only barred intergender boxing matches), and GCW likely figured it wasn't worth the risk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rovert Posted January 26, 2022 Report Share Posted January 26, 2022 The Nick Wayne seems to be a part deflection about what a swing and a miss the PPV was. GCW should get their own house in order first IMO. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted January 27, 2022 Report Share Posted January 27, 2022 I didn't think it was that bad of a PPV, but stooging on a 16 year old is some petty bullshit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Migs Posted January 27, 2022 Report Share Posted January 27, 2022 Yeah, ultimately it seems like it was something of a success business-wise (most FITE buys ever at a higher price, obviously a sold out live show). Now, whether it was enough of a success to justify the costs, I don't know. And it certainly wasn't a blow away show, although I enjoyed myself and thought it was a good effort. I'd certainly line up for tickets if they did the Hammerstein again. Even it wasn't their best effort, I'd think they exposed a lot of people to a product they were unaware of (not all that different from Barely Legal in a lot of ways). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted January 27, 2022 Report Share Posted January 27, 2022 As someone who's only seen bits and pieces of GCW from videos and gifs on Twitter, I thought it was an enjoyable show. A little messy at times, sure, but the whole vibe of the show was amazing and that made up for some of the sloppier parts for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reel Posted January 27, 2022 Report Share Posted January 27, 2022 I caught the show when the Moxley match started, I'm not big on him so I was never gonna like it, and the last match having the surprise of Gage and Tremont, and not FTR, seemed like a bit of a dud. The other thing and I'm not saying the GCW show wasn't sold out, but it did strike me, as a person who has seen bands there, that you could fit a lot more people in there than GCW did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted January 27, 2022 Report Share Posted January 27, 2022 I get why someone would be a letdown, but to GCW fans it was very much a big deal since Nick Gage is basically the human embodiment of GCW. It would be like ECW doing their first show and not having the Sandman on it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MoS Posted January 28, 2022 Report Share Posted January 28, 2022 I do find it highly amusing how the promotion of apparently badass hardcore outlaws who dgaf about rules or people managed to get worked by one of wrestling's oldest conmen in Jeff Jarrett, and unlike Kevin Nash, not even a particularly good one. That stretch where every GCW homegrown lost their big PPV match, with their fans frantically justifying it by pretending that Jeff Jarrett is this massive star who obviously has to be put over, was certainly funny. I hope GCW does well and I hope there are more viable places for wrestlers to work, and there are a couple of wrestlers in GCW I do enjoy. Having said that, they kind of showed that day that they aren't ready to be the number three promotion of America. They need some work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zoo Enthusiast Posted January 30, 2022 Report Share Posted January 30, 2022 It was a very weird show to people who watch GCW regularly. It just did not feel like a GCW show at all. Aside from the Gage entrance, virtually everything else was so sanitized. I get that that’s the cost of running in NYC but I don’t really think they need to do it again since it limits so much of what they normally do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Migs Posted January 30, 2022 Report Share Posted January 30, 2022 5 hours ago, Zoo Enthusiast said: It was a very weird show to people who watch GCW regularly. It just did not feel like a GCW show at all. Aside from the Gage entrance, virtually everything else was so sanitized. I get that that’s the cost of running in NYC but I don’t really think they need to do it again since it limits so much of what they normally do. I really don't think it was that much of a difference outside the lack of a proper death match. If you compare it to the Chicago show the prior weekend, the violence level was pretty much the same all the way through (again, excluding the death match). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Migs Posted January 31, 2022 Report Share Posted January 31, 2022 Was anyone at BOLA? From what I've heard about PWG crowds, this sounds surprising. https://www.f4wonline.com/news/other-wrestling/llio-rush-fans-used-racial-slurs-hate-speech-at-pwg-bola Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blehschmidt Posted February 1, 2022 Report Share Posted February 1, 2022 1 hour ago, Migs said: Was anyone at BOLA? From what I've heard about PWG crowds, this sounds surprising. https://www.f4wonline.com/news/other-wrestling/llio-rush-fans-used-racial-slurs-hate-speech-at-pwg-bola Apparently there is a group of fans in that area of Cali that attend PWG, GCW, and the like and just get totally wasted, say terrible shit, and try to cause trouble. At one of the last PWG shows there was an incident where either a gay or trans fan (It was several months back and I can't remember which it was) was harassed and threatened by them in a bathroom. It appears that other audience members are afraid to engage them, and for some reason none of the promotions or buildings have done anything about it. I do wonder if this incident won't change that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted March 30, 2022 Report Share Posted March 30, 2022 So many great stuff on paper during Mania week, including Atsushi Onita's team vs PCO's team at Wrestlecon in maybe the most WTF booking moment of 2022. That being said, I feel like I'm already going through a burn-out (only watched two NJPW Cup matches and one of the Stardom shows, and did not get into it like I would have otherwise), so I dunno what I'll end up watching. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Migs Posted April 1, 2022 Report Share Posted April 1, 2022 From last night, Mox vs AJ Gray and Bandido vs Speedball Bailey were both great. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El-P Posted April 1, 2022 Report Share Posted April 1, 2022 Bloodsport8 was the best top to bottom to me. Always cool to see Masha Slamovich in any context. Shafir vs Zhang was quite good and yeah, AEW should definitely push Shafir in a very MMA way and not make her just another girl. Fine stuff on the undercard, with the highlights being Tim Thatcher vs JR Kratos and Mike Bailey vs Yuya Uemura, in very different ways. John Hennigan being called Johnny Bloodsport got a laugh out of me, I mean, of course he would. Kinda cool to see him in this context too. Barnett vs Jonah was a different flavor for sure, and although there was a lot of headlock spots(that did look heavy though), it developed into quite a good match. Suzuki vs Dickinson was terrific, Suzuki touring the indies is always a blast. Mox vs Busick was *awesome*. talk about making it look like a fight, it sure was the best of what Bloodsport is supposed to be. Busick bled a bucket too. Very fun show top to bottom. And yeah, Busick & Thatcher really should be on TK's radar at the very least for ROH, but really they would be perfect fit for the Blackpool Combat Club. Dickinson too, but I guess he's signed with GCW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
strobogo Posted April 1, 2022 Report Share Posted April 1, 2022 Bryan not doing a WM week tour of weird dream matches makes him a fraud and a coward. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dale Wolfe Posted April 1, 2022 Report Share Posted April 1, 2022 I really think bloodsport could benefit from a cage. The suplex spot on the outside in Moxley/Busick makes me think what's the point really? Even if they just did Pride rules in a normal ring I am nitpicking though it was a hell of a card. And the chop after the suplex is unbelievable to be fair I also hate "BLOODSPORT" CLAP CLAP "BLOODSPORT" CLAP CLAP but this is a bit old man shouts at a cloud, i know Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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