SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
Have you noticed all of the new streaming sites for wrestling? There’s Facebook, Twitch, Fite, Highspots, Powerbomb, and a bunch more. They offer thousands of matches ranging from free to 50 bucks, Who has time to watch all of that?
I do.
Okay, maybe not “all,” but some. More than is healthy (according to my wife). So the goal of this column is simple. I’ll watch a bunch of stuff and tell you about the best (and worst) of it. Hopefully, I’ll help you spend your time & money smarter than I do. Most weeks I’ll try to cover a free show, a one-time PPV, and a subscription service. I’ll keep that up until my wife, Mrs. Not-A-Fan, notices the credit card bill.
A couple of provisos: I just want to share a few things to help you get the most from the articles. (1) It’s safe to assume that I spent my own money. If there ever is a situation where I get a free stream or whatever, I’ll disclose it. (2) I like stories, characters, and over-the-top silliness. I know all the cool kids are into “920 Double Shining Star Planchas off the Empire State Building,” but I’m not cool or a kid. I’ll certainly mention cool spots if I see any, but I don’t seek them out. On the other hand, I’m all in for characters: space aliens, drones, hypnosis, mind control, dual personalities and any other crazy stuff that seems amusing. You’ve been warned. 3) Given the option, I don’t leave my recliner. There is some chance, however, that I’ll actually report on a live show if one gets sufficiently close. I won’t make it a habit.
Okay. The recliner is locked in viewing position, let’s get started.
Story 1: “A Saturday Night in Kentville, Nova Scotia” (Free Show)
On April 28, it seems that approximately 75 people paid 20-25 bucks to see the Ultimate Championship Wrestling show. I actually don’t know any of the folks on the undercard, but the main event is free on Youtube. It features the Intergender World Championship with former WWE talent James Ellsworth vs. Maddison Miles.
This is precisely the kind of old-timey, corny, carney match that makes wrestling great. Ellsworth is a fantastic comedic weak heel. He unleashes the entire heel book of tricks in hilarious fashion. For folks old enough to remember, he is the wrestling equivalent of Bobby Riggs (young folks can Google that). He manages to get more heat from 75 folks than some heels could get in a huge arena. I’m unfamiliar with Maddison’s work, but I think that Ellsworth could have worked this one against a mannequin and been entertaining. Based on her attire, I’m guessing she works heel most of the time. On this evening, however, she couldn’t have drawn a boo if she bit the head off a puppy.
The wrestling is, um, unremarkable. Given the inherently awkward nature of intergender matches, there is about as little actual contact as one could get into a 17 minute match. But wrestling wasn’t the point of this match. This is about a “big star” coming to a small town and entertaining the people. From the crowd reaction, it’s clear he did his job. They were entertained and so was I.
The Sum-Up:
Cost: Free
Stream Quality: 1 fixed cam, decent lighting, a distant microphone.
Match Quality: Old Time Indie Goodness without any pretense of actual sport.
Overall Rating 2.5/5 Recliner Potatoes
Story 2: “I Blame Alan4L” (Subscription Service: Club WWN)
I love Alan4l’s podcast. He is so passionate about wrestling that it is infectious. I was especially taken by his podcasts about his WrestleMania trip. He described SO Many shows. I had no idea that it was such a crazy weekend. I was almost inclined to leave the recliner and go join the fun. Almost, but not quite.
Since that’s crazy talk, I decided the next best thing is to watch the streams. They’re kind of spread out across several services, but I decided to start with the WWN service, ClubWWN.
ClubWWN is $9.99/month. For that, you get unlimited Video on Demand from promotions like Evolve, Shine, Dragon Gate, FIP, and more. You also get 50% off live Pay per Views (They show up on VOD about 2 weeks after broadcast). It seems like you might also get some discounts in the store.
Sign-up was very easy. The interface is easy to understand and use. Overall, the service seems pretty professional. I watched on PC, but I understand they have a Roku app. I’ll check on that and report back.
For my first show, I fired up Mercury Rising 2018. I had heard that this was one of the best shows of the weekend and I was excited to see it. The video quality is very good, certainly better than some competitors (I’m looking at you, ROH) and, frankly, better than I was expecting. The lighting is good. They switch between a hard cam and mobile cams that provide excellent close-ups. I like the camera work as much as any show I’ve seen. The announcing is spot-on: Informational without being annoying. My first impression was very positive. The only downside is that the sound from the ring is hard to make out.
Mercury Rising absolutely earns its acclaim. It’s one of the better shows I’ve seen this year. It has everything: High Flying, Technical Wrestling, Strong Style, and just about everything else. The show is well paced and booked to keep things interesting. It’s honestly worth 9.99 by itself. Getting a month to watch the other stuff is a tremendous bonus.
Highlight Matches:
Sawa vs. Zack Saber Jr.: One of the best wrestlers in the world against a living legend. Although I wouldn’t say this is one of Zach’s best matches ever, it’s certainly good. He and Sawa clearly have tremendous mutual respect. Sawa seemed legitimately touched by the post-match ovation. Overall, very entertaining.
WorkHorsemen vs. The End vs. Catch Point (New Orleans Street Fight): If you like it rough, this is for you. Tables, ladders, batons, a million chair shots and just plain carnage. Super tough match made all the better by the camera work. My one knock on this match is that there was clearly some backstory that simply isn’t described. Since this type of “Super Show” is likely to draw casual fans, it seems like it would make sense to show a video package to re-cap. Or, at the very least, have the announcers tell the story. I think that context would have added a lot to the experience.
That said, these guys totally sell that they don’t like each other. The brutality seems real without being grotesque. A decent hard core slobberknocker kind of match, if that’s your thing.
Matt Riddle vs. Will Ospreay (Evolve Championship): Two more really hot wrestlers working the main event. Osprey comes out selling an injury from the week before, setting up the underdog story line. Riddle looks incredibly fresh for a guy that wrestled about 20 matches in the preceding 2 days. This is a tremendous contrast-of-styles dream match. It’s a really good back-and-forth contest with a worked in-ring injury that looked pretty legit. I’ve seen this match awarded 5 stars. I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s definitely in the 4 range. Totally worth watching…
There are, of course, several other matches. There’s a good six-man, a woman’s championship, a tag championship (with Walter!) and a couple of others. Every match is at least good and some are very good. All-in-all, I liked this show a lot.
The Sum-Up:
Cost: Free with $9.99 monthly subscription
Stream Quality: Really good except some muddied sound from the ring.
Show Quality: Very good. However, I sort of share Alan4L’s concern about the collection of “dream matches.” Obviously, it’s fun to watch really good wrestlers do their thing. But it’s hard to sell each match as an athletic endeavor when everyone knows they’re worked. It was fine for 3 hours, but I can imagine it would get old after a day or two. I’m sure it’s hard to tell more complicated stories without weekly TV, but other promotions are using various social media outlets to cut promos, build heat, and evolve the characters. WWN doesn’t seem to be using that approach heavily, yet, but they certainly could benefit from it. This is especially true for inter-promotional matches where fans have to be educated about distant rivals and the match has to be designed to mean something.
Overall Rating: 4/5 recliner potatoes.
Story 3: “The Backlash After Riyadh” (Subscription Service: Club WWN)
Most WWE PPV days have some indie PPV early in the afternoon to take advantage of ravenous wrestling fans that might want to watch something before the main show. Today, on Backlash Day, I really couldn’t find anything. However, since I have my shiny new ClubWWN sub, and it’s raining like Heck, I thought I’d see what I could find.
I decided on a show that I was kind of interested in attending. Shine 48 ran not far from me in January and it was advertised more heavily than most indie shows. Unfortunately, even the promise of a high-end Cuban meal was not enough to entice Mrs. Not-A-Fan to cross the Bay for the event.
Given the recent hubbub about Riyadh and such, I thought that an all-woman show would be a good way to close out this week.
Before I get to the matches, let me say that I am, again, very impressed with the quality of the video. It’s really well done. The audio is better than the Mercury Rising show, but there’s only one announcer. He’s calling it pretty straight.
As with most indies, the show is running in front of a small crowd at a nightclub. Here are some high-and low-lights:
Stormy Lee vs. Tesha Price: Classic overpowering heel vs. smaller face. Pretty basic stuff except for Stormy taunting Price’s mom at ringside the whole match, which was sort of funny.
Dynamite Didi vs. Holidead: I saw Holidead in Mercury Rising, and she was OK. She runs a horror gimmick that includes some pretty cool face paint, creepy music, and the usual wild-eyed expression that comes with these characters. She has a pretty cool ring entrance that involves touching the faces of several fans before doing sort of a seductive zombie dance. Dynamite Didi’s entire gimmick seems to be centered around shooting off a confetti cannon. Holidead is a mildly entertaining heel, talking-wise, but this was a slow, not very good match that went too long.
Brandi Lauren vs. Leva: Brandi has one of the worst ring entrances ever. She looked confused about why she was there. Maybe she’s working a belly-dancer angle, or not, hard to tell. Leva runs a cosplay cartoon-type character from Overwatch. Pretty fun entrance. This match was just bizarre. Brandi working as the mean girl heel against Leva, who just is crazy. Leva kissed Brandi for no apparent reason, wandered off from the ring, and babbled incoherently the whole match. Definitely a spectacle, but not in a good way. Really bad match. I sort of hate myself for watching the whole thing.
Cutie Pie Club vs. Priscilla Kelly & Vanessa Craven & Ariel Monroe (Six-woman Tag Team War): This match started hot with brawling in and out of the ring. There’s a definite improvement in quality in this match. Ariel Monroe looks great. She’s fast and agile and has tons of charisma. Kiera Hogan from CPC also looks like she is pretty skilled. And Dementia Rose has the nickname of the “Weapon of Ass Destruction,” which is money with or without skills. Overall, it was a fun match. Lots of action, a decent story, and enough quality not to be distractingly bad. Definitely watchable.
Lady Chardonnay Darcy & Isla Dawn vs. Las Sicarias (Tag Team Championship): Pretty decent tag team action. Both teams showed some coordinated moves early. It slowed down after the fast start, and there were a few rough spots, but this was an OK match.
Lufisto vs. Rain (Shine Championship): I’ve seen Lufisto a couple of times and she’s a pretty good heel Champ. In this match, she faces former Champ, Rain. The announcer’s sold Rain’s auto crash injuries hard to set up the match. Lufisto went for the beat down and dominated early. This was definitely the hardest-hitting match of the night, with both women doing damage inside and outside of the ring (including the Merch table). This match was way more brutal than anything else on the card, and really pretty good.
The Sum-Up:
Cost: Free with ClubWWN Subcription
Stream Quaility: Excellent
Show Quality: Meh. This is a case where an hour’s worth of talent was stretched into a 3 hour show. The entire first hour was bad. The 6-woman match and the Championships were all OK. This was not a great show. I’m glad I didn’t have to buy an expensive dinner to see it.
Overall Rating: 1.5/5 Recliner Potatoes.
Okay, folks, that’s it for this week. I’ll start digging for good stuff for next week. In the meantime, leave comments & requests below. Thanks for reading this!
I get more stuff on Youtube for free. like Defiant Wrestling, Reality Of Wrestling, West Coast Wrestling Connection, AMW, House of Bricks, jujst to name a few and they have weekly shows with ongoing storylines. Check those out as they have youtube channels, why pay for something when you can see it for free. :)I have a wrestling group on FB where I feature all those every week, and more.