[2000-08-12-CZW-Blood, Sweat & Violence] Madman Pondo vs Nick Gage

[soup23]

Cool beginning with Pondo pretending to be a masked cameraman and retrieving the stop sign from under the ring before demasking. I liked that the crowd immediately knew it was him. The brawl itself is around as good as you are getting from Pondo. It is short and has some neat bumps including the culminating superplex through the light tubes and pane of glass. Pondo brings back the scissors which is nasty to watch. Wifebeater interferes and we get our second shit finish in a row as the match just stops with all three brawling to the back. **3/4

[AstroBoy]

This was a solid garbage stunt show. The carving with nails and scissors was pretty gruesome and the big layered glass and light tube spot came off well. Wifebeater runs in for a fuck finish, continuing the overly complicated and needless finishes CZW has been giving us. All three guys brawl to the back. At least it was crowd pleasing while it lasted and the reveal of Pondo was actually pretty well done.

 

**

[GSR]

Z-Barr introduces Nick Gage as he claims he’s got an exclusive interview with the new CZW Iron Man champion.  As Barr goes about conducting that interview, pretty unsuccessfully I may add, his camera man suddenly hits Gage over the head with the video camera.  He collects a ‘Stop’ sign from under the ring, the majority of fans having now guessed what’s going on, before unmasking to reveal himself as Madman Pondo.  For clarity, Pondo was the most recent Iron Man champion but no showed a prior event and was subsequently stripped of the belt, Nick Gage then defeated Wifebeater to become the new champion.  Pondo throws Gage to the outside where he whips him into several rows of chairs.  When he tries to repeat it Gage blocks the attempt and powerbombs him onto them instead.  Bloody hell, a fan has bought a glass mirror with the letters ‘CZW’ written on it, those letters being made out of four inch nails!  Gage takes it from the ringsider and shows it off, however as he does so Pondo kicks him in the ribs.  The Madman gets someone to pass him a chair, sets that up in the corner and stands the mirror on it.  The champ reverses the Irish whip and sends Pondo chest first into it.  You can see him try to brace himself, still that can’t have been pleasant.  Diving headbutt for a two.  Sunset flip by Gage but Pondo waffles him with the ‘Stop’ sign to prevent himself from being taken down.  Fuck, he’s now carving Gage’s forehead open with a pair of scissors.  Pondo ties him in the ‘Tree of Woe’, places the sign in front of his face and then blasts it with a chair.  He heads to the back, returning with some fluorescent light tubes and builds a two tiered contraption; the light tubes and a pane of glass bridging across two chairs stacked on top of a table.  That ends up working against him though, Gage eventually recovering due to how long Pondo was taking setting everything up and superplexing him from the top turnbuckle through it all.  The crowd are losing their shit at that.  With both men down out runs Wifebeater who breaks light tubes over the pair.  It looks like Pondo and Gage are going to work together against him but they end up fighting each other too as the three go at it all the way to the back.

There is every chance that the opening angle may well end up being the highlight of Pondo’s year, really well done and better than any match he’s had.  As for the match, I’m afraid it was another that I didn’t think much of.  I don’t know whether it’s the lack of urgency he always seems to have or what, but disappearing mid-match to the dressing room to collect light tubes, the slow build on that contraption for the finish, it doesn’t feel like I’m watching a match.  Superplex at the end looked great though and I’m imagining we’re getting a three way on the next show.