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Tag: pro wrestling

  • Revolution Pro results: AJ Styles vs. Zack Sabre Jr. plus a potential MOTY

    Submitted by Joe Lemon 

    Flash Morgan Webbster vs. Peter Dunne

    Not an especially great opener. Both guys are still inexperienced & hadn’t previously wrestled on one of the big York Hall shows. Was by no means bad, but wasn’t the best opener. 

    Big Damo vs. Speedball Mike Bailey

    I’ve see Bailey a few times & had really enjoyed what I’d seen. Was curious here as to how he’d gel with Damo & they really delivered. Damo sold Bailey’s kicks well throughout & helped in Bailey getting over in front of a crowd who weren’t overly familiar with him. Damo won with an inverted Bloody Sunday DDT. Bailey took a lot of punishment throughout. Post match both guys shook hands in a show of respect. 

    Colt Cabana vs. Doug Williams

    Really fun match here working mostly British style. Both guys seemed to really enjoy the fact that they had the crowd when using British style. A fun back & forth match with flashes of comedy thrown in at points. Both guys exchanged various pin fall attempts & Cabana got the three. Post match Cabana cut a promo about his history in the company & claimed he wanted the British Heavyweight belt again. I’m assuming he & Zack will work a title match using British style down the road at some point. At this point Cabana was attacked by Lord Gideon Grey who was wearing the Mat Classic mask. Grey cut an awesome, angry promo on Cabana to set up a match between them next month.

    Marty Scurll vs. Will Ospreay

    This is where the show went into absolute overdrive. The stipulation was that the match was for the number 1 contendership for the British Heavyweight belt. All I can say is that these guys made the belt come across as one of the most valuable in the world with the way they worked this match. It was wrestled & put over as a big match & they used several tropes seen in major WWE/New Japan matches. We had the back & forth punches with the ‘yay’ & ‘boo’ chants, we had lots of fighting spirit, headsets, guys kicking out of & reversing signature moves & we even had Ospreay putting Scurll in his very own Chicken Wing. The match was crazy & ran for almost half hour. It ended when Marty used the Bryan Danielson elbows that he always used as ROH champ & then put Ospreay into the Chicken Wing which he passed out in.

    I’ve attended every major Rev Pro show for over two years now & this was by some distance the most invested I’ve ever seen the crowd in a match. What made this even better was the fact it was two Brits that managed to put the crowd at fever pitch. I’ve been to a lot of live shows & I can honestly say this is the best match I’ve seen in the UK since Bryan Danielson vs Nigel McGuinnes at the first ROH Liverpool show in 2006. 

    Jay Lethal vs. Mark Haskins 

    Lethal wasn’t that over & he didn’t come across as a major star in the way outsiders often do. It was announced that it was for the ROH Title but that made no difference & the fans hardly reacted as if this was a big deal. The match absolutely fine, but I feel they suffered going on after Marty & Ospreay. The crowd was still very much calming down making the match hard to follow at points. I really think this would have benefited from opening the show. Lethal won with the Lethal Injection.

    Sha Samuels, James Castle & Josh Bodom vs. Jimmy Havoc, Tyson T-Bone & Bram

    This was exactly what it needed to be. An all around the venue brawl with lots of weapons & big spots. Havoc is super over based on his Progress work which helps his Rev Pro match’s. He’s done little in Rev Pro but most fans who attend the shows follow both promotions. Bram turned up as a surprise. He got a much bigger reaction than expected on his entrance, but once the match started this died down. Some solid comedy spots with the heels almost doing slapstick comedy at points. Havoc got the pinball on Bodom.

    AJ Styles vs. Zack Sabre Jr

    This was a very good match. It was very different to Marty vs Osprey in terms of pacing & style using a less is more approach. AJ very much wrestled Zack’s style of match here & really hung in there with him. Very technical throughout. Zack worked over AJ’s arm which he sold to great effect throughout. AJ looked very tired. I’m assuming the gruelling week he’s had wrestling was taking effect on him. The finishing sequence wasn’t quite as epic as I thought it was going to be. Zack did kick out of a one armed Styles Clash as well as a Bloody Sunday DDT. The match ended with Zack making AJ submit after trapping his arm.

    *****

    I’m sure you’ve seen AJ’s post match speech but it was a great way for him to leave the UK after a year of performing in Rev Pro. The AJ goodbye needed to close the show, but ideally the entire show would have benefited from Marty vs Ospreay going on last. Post show all anyone was talking about was just how great that match was. Again, I encourage you to check out Marty vs Ospreay! 

    A great show with variety throughout & booked at a pace that used that variety to mostly positive effect. Scurll vs Osprey was on another level. Quite simply myself & 1200 other fans where blown away by their efforts.

  • WWE Hall of Fame tickets on sale now!

    Act quickly, as tickets are currently on sale for the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony on 4/2 at the American Airlines Center in Dallas.

    The ceremony is advertised for a 6:30 p.m. local start time and will be headlined by Sting. 

    The pre-sale started this morning and we have received two different codes, being WWEVIP and AACVIP.

    Tickets will be available until 11 p.m. Central time tomorrow night before they go on sale to the public on Friday.

    Tickets for the event are expected to sell out quickly as the set up is usually about 10,000 seats and with so many people coming to the host city, the shows are a routine sellout.

    As has become a yearly tradition, there is a group from this site that usually attends together. You can look for that thread on the Board~! under the Empire Get-Togethers “folder” or create your own. For more information on our website’s Wrestlemania meet-up info, you can email EdinSanantonio at F4Wfan@hotmail.com – yes, Ed is the one keeping hotmail alive. 

  • James Storm’s future, card for tomorrow’s TNA debut on Pop

    It appears that Impact Wrestling’s James Storm is not going to WWE with AJ Styles, Shinsuske Nakamura, and the Bullet Club. After doing a few TV dates with NXT, James Storm is scheduled for TNA’s TV tapings all week in Bethlehem, PA, concluding in a PPV Friday. 

    Storm was put on television without signing a WWE deal, which was highly unusual. He worked a taping, missed a taping, then was back for another taping, and then hadn’t been seen again.

    The listing of the Doll House as Marti Bell, Jade and Rebel in the advertising for a match against The Beautiful People on tomorrow night’s Impact didn’t include Taryn Terrell.  Terrell today confirmed in a video she is not returning to TNA, stating it was a personal decision, noting that she had gotten married, and the path her life is on TNA is not the right fit for her anymore. As noted earlier, Angelina will not be wrestling but will be appearing because she is pregnant. 

    Don’t forget to tune in tomorrow to TNA on POP TV, featuring a new opening song performed by Smashing Pumpkins.

    Event card:

    Bobby Roode defends the King of the Mountain Title

    World Title Series Semi-Final Match: Ethan Carter III vs. Bobby Lashley

    World Title Series Semi-Final Match: Matt Hardy vs. Eric Young

    World Title Series Final match to crown a new TNA World Heavyweight Champion

  • WWE NXT Breaking Ground Episode 8: Crossroads; Scott Hall dops by, plus Sami Zayn, Dana Booke, and Apollo Crews

    Breaking Ground Episode 8: Crossroads 

    Submitted by: Ryan Pike

    Big Takeaway: Tino Sabatelli takes a step backwards, Sami Zayn works on his shoulder rehab, and Dana Brooke gets injured by Asuka’s ass on another chaotic episode of Breaking Ground.

    Show Recap: As with last week, an unfocused journey through NXT.

    Building off last episode’s cliffhanger, Triple H commends Bayley and Sasha Banks for their performance at TakeOver Brooklyn, notes that he thinks they left some “story on the table,” and asks them to main event the next TakeOver event in an Iron Man match. They (obviously) accept.

    Scott Hall visits the Performance Center for a week and is asked by Matt Bloom to work a bit with Baron Corbin. He gives him a few pointers as far as working heel goes, but aside from that and giving Apollo Crews some pointers on doing interviews – don’t make it seem like you’re cutting a promo, just speak like you usually do – he doesn’t really do much of anything.

    Sami Zayn is back at the Performance Center working on his shoulder rehabilitation and hopefully to get closer to a return. He’s not cleared yet and he does some resistance exercises that are designed to test his shoulder. Regal still thinks Zayn has a ways to go yet as a performer and wants him to focus on the basic notion of pro wrestling: at its core, it’s two people competing. Since he’s not cleared yet, he focuses on helping Tyler Breeze tutor Eva Marie. He offers her this advice on using pin-fall attempts to pace a match: “If we’re selling a story, these [sequences] are sentences, [pinfalls] are the punctuation.”

    Tino Sabbatelli is given a match, his second match ever, on a house show against Apollo Crews. He develops his character by looking at sweet suits. Tino does not look great in his match with Apollo. His striking looks terrible and he turns away from contact on a drop-kick in a way that almost endangers Apollo. Bloom gives him a rundown of what he did wrong, emphasizing paying attention to details and his striking (Vince’s motto is apparently “Men throw punches.”). Corbin pulls him aside and gives him some advice, too (noting that he’s had two matches and to put in the work). After the show, Bloom tells Tino that he’s being put back in Robbie Brookside’s beginners class (presumably so he can work on some fundamentals).

    Dana Brooke works out with the new Australian girls – Billie Kay is specifically identified – and talks about not being intimidated working with Asuka, who’s finally identified on this show. Anyway, immediately after talking about not being intimidated, she’s knocked loopy by an Asuka hip attack in a work-out and that’s the big cliffhanger: did Asuka’s ass kill Dana Brooke? (Spoiler: no.)

    In less important news: Josh from Tough Enough’s wife and daughter move to Florida finally, Nia Jax designs her ring gear for her TV debut, and Mojo Rawley has a party.

    Final Thoughts: Sadly, it was another fairly unfocused episode, as it included way too many NXT personalities for any of them to really register as important.

  • TNA Impact debut on POP TV ratings, January 8th PPV confirmed

    TNA’s debut on Pop TV last night drew 111,000 viewers for a “Best of” show which had little going for it past Internet and social mediapromotion.

    TNA and Pop TV had been pushing 1/5 as the debut of the show, built around the final four in the world title tournament.  It was only in the past week when the announcement was made that it would debut with taped programming last night in its new Tuesday at 9 p.m. slot..

    The audience was barely half of the “Days of our Lives” show that did 211,000 viewers.

    While the lack of publicity and fact it wasn’t a new episode means the number really can’t be taken as a strong sign of where they will end up, it is a number that points to where the TNA base audience is at this point.  Between the change of network and change of day, and TNA, with the exception of the move from late Saturday to Thursday prime time, has always taken a hit when changing days, it took take some time before TNA gets to where it will probably be.

    However, the idea that they will get back to Spike levels, which Pop TV execs spoke of, doesn’t seem likely.

    It has been confirmed by TNA that there will be a live PPV show on Friday, 1/8, from Bethlehem, PA.

    inDemand literature had come out advertising the show, taking place three nights after the debut on Pop TV, for a show called “One Night Only Live.”

    That was the name of the show that was originally planned to be taped in India during the canceled tour, as a live special in that country, and would air starting 1/8 as the One Night Only show in the U.S.

  • Tommy Gilbert, Tennessee wrestling legend, passes away at 75

    Tommy Gilbert, a mainstay in Tennessee wrestling during the 60s, 70s and 80s, passed away earlier today at the age of 75.

    Gilbert and Eddie Marlin were a regular babyface tag team in the 60s, battling the top heel teams of the era like The Interns and the Von Brauners. He also formed championship tag teams with Bearcat Brown, Ricky Gibson, Sputnik Monroe, Tojo Yamamoto, Ron Wright and did a father-and-son tag team with son Eddie Gilbert.

    Gilbert’s father, Arlie was a pro wrestler and his sons, Thomas Jr. (Eddie), who passed away in 1993, and Doug, who still wrestles, were wellknown wrestlers.

    He worked most of his career for promoters Nick Gulas and Jerry Jarrett in Tennessee and Alabama, as well as Puerto Rico. He also used the name Johnny Starr while wrestling in Texas in the 70s.  His son Doug wrote, “Earlier this morning, my dad Tommh Gilbert left us and is now home in heaven with Eddie.  Prayers during this difficult time are appreciated.”

  • Josh Nason’s Punch-Out episode 16: The History Of Pro Wrestling Tees

    Continuing our two-week look at the combat sports wear industry, we go to the squared circle in the 16th episode of Josh Nason’s Punch-Out for a look at the history of Pro Wrestling Tees, one of the fastest growing success stories in pro wrestling t-shirts over the past few years. 

    Longtime employee Jeremy Meyer joined Josh Nason for a 40-minute interview for Wrestling Observer subscribers that touched on the following topics:

    – How the company came to be

    – How the influence of CM Punk and Colt Cabana has helped the growth

    – How they attract pro wrestlers to do their own shirts

    – How the design process works

    – What WWE could do to help their t-shirt game

    – Who Jeremy would love to design a t-shirt for

    – A look at Armbar Apparel and what they hope to accomplish with it

    – What brought Jeremy back into wrestling

    – Who is coming up next for new shirts

    – And more!

    It’s a special post-wedding anniversary edition of JNPO. Enjoy!

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