FCW House Show Report
June 9, 2010
Melbourne, Fla.
Report by Jimmy Eaton, PWTorch Reader

On Wednesday night, I attended the Florida Championship Wrestling developmental show for WWE in Melbourne. My grandfather and I sat third row from from ringside. Usually, there are about 7-8 rows total on each side. Not a whole lot you'd think at first, but the crowds in Melbourne are usually FCW's biggest. I wanted to give an overview of the FCW house show experience for anyone looking to attend in the Florida area.

6:30 p.m. - Arrive at the Melbourne Auditorium. Get lost trying to figure out which line if for Gold Circle (Ringside) tickets, as well as the one for autograph signings.

An interesting note here is that wrestlers who aren't on the card for the show are put on staff duty. Talk about moving up the ranks. I give WWE credit in this regard as it keeps costs down and also allows young talent to "pay their dues" in a respect.

6:50 p.m. - Get in line for the autograph signings. Try to stay in the line as it merges with the concessions area. They're also showing an autographed ringside chair signed by Rey Mysterio from the Great American Bash. You could pay $5 for six raffle tickets and the winner is drawn at the end of the night.

7:30 p.m. - Met Christian, Miz, Bryan Danielson, Heath Slater, Justin Gabriel, and Jamie Noble. All were really nice and class acts. Danielson seemed tired, but he was great with his die-hard fans. Christian was being rushed by staff, but he was still as nice as when I met him in Melbourne at a TNA signing a few years ago. Noble was as classy as the other NXT stars. The biggest surprise for me was The Miz. He was probably the nicest guy there. Before we got there, he was great with kids. It was a credit to him playing a fantastic heel on TV.

8:00 p.m. - Show begins pretty close to on-time. They have a decent looking set in the background where oddly enough people have to walk out and around down stairs to get to the ring. There are two female ring announcers, the main one being Jamie Keyes. She's training with A.J. Lee, who I think was a bit better. Keyes got a bit screechy, as evidenced by her work on NXT Season Two.

Here's a quick match rundown from memory.

(1) Yoshi Tatsu beat Conrad Tanner. Seeing Yoshi was a nice surprise and the crowd went nuts for him. He had some mic work at the beginning to get heat on the heel and the match went around six minutes. Tatsu picked up the win with a spinning heel kick off the top rope.

(2) Curt Hawkins & Vance Archer & Mason Ryan beat Michael McGillicutty & Percy Watson & Johnny Curtis in a six-man tag match. The crowd was way over for Percy Watson wanting him to dance. (It was scary that adults were saying this more than kids.) The heels won with some nice teamwork from Archer and Hawkins. Hawkins got the pin for the win. Archer and Hawkins have improved a lot in my opinion. I haven't watched Smackdown enough to be any kind of judge, but females were into Hawkins a lot and he was a great personality. Not a bad match at all, I'd say it was just over ten minutes.

(3) Naomi Night & Aksana beat Tamina & Liviana in a Divas tag match. This was one of the worst matches of the night and to be honest one of the more annoying for me simply because of some drunk people behind us were screaming at the top of their lungs and yelling a bunch of, let's just say, non-PG things to the ladies in the ring. I feel bad for parents with kids around as the crowds typically aren't like that at FCW shows. It was a decent-length match with a fair share of botches, but they were trying their best it seemed. After about seven-to-eight minutes, the face team got the win.

(4) Bo Rotundo beat Donny Marlow (w/G-Rilla). Nothing really special, as I was still dealing with ringing ears from the people behind me.

(5) Jamie Noble beat Tyler Reks in a Special Challenge match. By far, this was the surprise match of the night. It was very good with Reks coming across as a pretty entertaining heel. I forgot how good Noble is in the ring. He's a bit of a cross, as many know, between a Davey Richards and Chris Benoit. At least in his wrestling style. The match had a lot of nearfalls and the crowd was eating it up the whole way. I think it was about 12 minutes or so with Noble getting the win. Oddly enough, I saw a flying headbutt for the first time in a while. Probably the second best match of the night.

(6) FCW Tag Team champions Dos Equis & Hunico beat The Uso Brothers to retain the FCW Tag Titles. These teams always put on a good show. I saw both of them in Orlando last month when the Usos were the title-holders. Good back and forth match with both teams having good chemistry together. The Usos got more of a face reaction than I would have thought, but overall a fun tag team match. Tamina was good in the Uso's corner as well. The champions retained after a pretty good contest.

9:30 p.m. - 15-20 minute intermission.

(7) FCW Hvt. champion Alex Riley beat Lucky Cannon (Johnny Prime) via count-out to retain the FCW Hvt. Title. Riley plays a good heel and Lucky Cannon (formerly known as Johnny Prime) had some good face reactions. It was a simple back-and-forth match with the end being a count-out and a Riley win after a nasty-sounding bump outside involving the steel stairs. Not a bad match, but a bit of a down spot in the show as it was just after intermission.

(8) Christian & The Miz vs. Daniel Bryan & Heath Slater went to a No Contest in the main event. This last match took the cake. It pretty much worth the price of admission alone to be honest. It was advertised as Miz and Bryan vs. Christian and Slater. To start the entrances, Miz's music hit but he didn't show. Christian then came out to some odd, Heath Slater-like music afterward and cut a great promo thanking FCW for playing his ring entrance music from six years ago. He called out Heath Slater on the "cowardly" acts Monday night on Raw and said that he never returned his phone calls. There were chants of "Cena Sucks" and he witfully replied, "He's the champion, so I'll have to disagree."

Heath Slater came out to a ring of boos and had a good exchange with Christian for the next few minutes about how he didn't like the answers Christian gave him when he called before and that fourth place wasn't acceptable for him. The crowd blew up when all of a sudden Bryan Danielson hits the ring and decks Christian from behind. He and Heath put the boots to him and then out runs Miz for the save. He cleared house before Danielson and Slater get the better of him. It was here that Danielson whipped out the "N" armbands. This got a ton of heat from a small crowd of maybe about 100-200 people. It was a great moment with the continuation of a major storyline from TV. Eventually, though, Miz and Christian recovered and challenged them to a Pros vs. Rookies match.

This match went about 15 minutes and was an absolute blast. Ring psychology was fantastic and there were a handful of fun moments with Miz and Christian playing for laughs. They both also did the clapping, crowd-pleasing action that Christian does during every match about half-way through. It was also a lot of fun to see Danielson as a heel. He and Slater were all over the crowd and got a lot of good, solid heat. I was shocked to see Miz cheered so much even by kids. To me, this shows that NXT angle is already working where the crowd is getting behind the "WWE Pros" no matter who they are. I'll be interested to see if they use Miz as a face-figure now on TV since his angle with Danielson has seemingly evolved into this faction storyline.

The match had some good heel tactics and great overall tag team action. Near the end, the crowd blew up again when the rest of NXT Season 1 made their way to the ring lead by Wade Barrett. Christian and the Miz got back to back and took the beating like men but got outnumbered by the "Rookies." Another funny spot here was the referee taking off his shirt and joining Miz and Christian. After a good laugh from the crowd, he was tossed out of the ring. The crowd was all over them and the reaction was fantastic for an independent show-size group of fans. They laid out Christian and Miz before tearing the area around the ring up a bit and threatening the two ring announcers and Tom Prichard. They all lined up on the stage to close the show as the crowd booed and Dr. Tom Prichard went in the ring to help Christian and Miz, who got a great standing ovation. Most of the crowd was on their feet for the whole main event.

10:40 p.m. - Left the show. Ironically, as people left, the wrestlers/event staff were giving out a promotional card for the "American Dream Tour" for the show in Melbourne on July 2. I ran into Wes Brisco and after I told him I already had one, he said just take it. It was a bit odd seeing someone in the ring one night and doing this the next, but I give him credit for doing this and not acting completely miserable.

Show Rating - 8.5. Some matches were too close to duds, but was still a great show.

Experience Rating - 9.5. I'll be attending FCW shows as long as they're around. Anyone who has the chance to go for a fairly cheap price and a change of pace, I highly recommend it.

All in all, FCW is flawed with minor stuff like any "independent show" and sometimes it's laughable, but little things like the main event get people buzzing, excited, and looking forward to what's to come, especially in the way of the NXT Invasion angle.

For pictures from the event, click on the link here.

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