PWG Jason Takes PWG 5/13/2005

Written by: Jim

Jason Takes PWG
May 13, 2005

Human Tornado w/Sarieha vs El Generico
I have no idea who Sarieha is, but she’s pretty hot. This happens to be the first show with Rick Knox’s arm in a cast. It seemed like he had a cast or tape around his left hand forever. They start out with a super pose down. It’s funny, but not nearly as good as their dance off from ASW Night 2. Highlight of the match occurs when Tornado bitch slaps Generico and Generico oversells it so much that Shawn Michaels couldn’t even top it at Summerslam 2005. Sarieha plays the role of Debra by distracting Generico with her looks while she’s on the apron. To take it one step further, she hits a Bronco Buster on Generico when the ref isn’t looking. Generico uses all of his strength to keep her on him though. Generico manages to block a DND and get the win following a brainbuster. The match was fine, but Sarieha just doesn’t work with a babyface Tornado. Distracting the face and attacking them? That’s straight up heel tactics. She would have worked fine with Tornado in 2007/2008, but she feels out of place at this point. Tornado’s much better off with a Candice LaRae, someone who’s willing to mix it up when Tornado’s heel opponent is cheating. Remove Sarieha and I imagine the match would have been better. Still, the comedy was gold. 2 1/2 Stars.

Ricky Reyes vs NOSAWA
This can’t be too long after NOSAWA stopped working for TNA. NOSAWA actually debuted for PWG back on the second show as part of the two night tournament to crown the first PWG champion. Not sure what happened, but this was originally supposed to be Puma vs Reyes. NOSAWA is a really unique sort of wrestler. I can’t tell if he’s doing comedy or if he’s just very eccentric. Eventually, NOSAWA starts doing famous wrestler’s holds after he says their name. This gets the crowd into it by yelling out random names. Benoit, Hart and Tajiri are all named. NOSAWA turns down the Tarantula sadly. After a fan yells out Cena, NOSAWA does the “You Can’t See Me” gesture, but Reyes counters the FU into a body scissors Dragon Sleeper to force NOSAWA to tap out. If you don’t like NOSAWA, this match isn’t for you as he’s the one doing 90% of the work. However, I found it fun and the finish of NOSAWA fucking around too much and Reyes making him pay for it smartly done. The right guy went over. 3 Stars.

Aerial Xpress w/Dino Winwood vs Ballard Brothers vs Hook Bomberry and Top Gun Talwar
Los Luchas were also supposed to be in this, but they no-showed like usual. I wonder who’s no-showed more? Briscoes or Los Luchas? This was exactly what AXP needed. They’re able to beat two established heel teams to get another win to rebound from a lackluster year (In terms of wins/losses) thus far in 2005. Tons of spots with only Bomberry looking bad. I’m not a Hook fan, but I know he’s capable of better than this. One highlight spot came when Shannon Ballard was spinning Top Gun (Maybe Bomberry) around and Scorpio Sky drop kicked Top Gun’s head as he spun around. Essentially, it was the KRS before the Kings of Wrestling even teamed up (Don’t quote me, I know they started teaming right around this time period). AXP gets the win with their low dropkick/piledriver combo. Pretty fun match. 3 1/4 Stars.

Kevin Steen vs Sexxxy Eddy
I can’t say I know too much about Eddy other that he wrestled Steen a lot in various promotions. He looks like the bastard offspring of Alberto Del Rio and Alex Shelley. As always, Steen steals the show with his antics. While Eddy has Steen in a headlock* “Why don’t you use you brain size now?!” *Steen eye pokes Eddy and gets out of the headlock* If the idea was to debut Eddy and make me want to see him again, they failed. That’s oddly the problem with Steen at this point. He’s too entertaining. If you’re a marginal worker and entertainer, you’re not going to get over while working with Steen. Steen gets the win with a weird head trapped Alley Oop called the Steenalizer. It’s about as awesome as Steen always is. At 15 minutes, the match feels too long for mostly just a Steen showcase. Still, it’s better than Steen vs Jonny Storm.2 3/4 Stars.

Super Dragon and Excalibur comes out. Excalibur is sick of the fake red Super Dragon. He blames Dragon losing the belt to Styles due to being distracted with all of the mind games from the red Super Dragon. It ends tonight though. Excalibur challenges the red Super Dragon to face the real Super Dragon in a Guerrilla Warfare match. As Dragon gets ready for his match, Excalibur turns on Dragon. Dragon is laid out with a double under hook piledriver. Once again on the mic, Excalibur blames Dragon for Excalibur being stuck in the opening match for months. PWG and the SBS has been more about Super Dragon and himself and Disco Machine. He knows who the red Super Dragon is, but he’s going to accept the match for red Super Dragon, leading to…

Excalibur vs Super Dragon – Guerrilla Warfare Match
A brutal match that sees some wicked chair and ladder shots. If both men were able to leave this match without a concussion, I’ll be amazed. If this had happened after the Benoit tragedy, people would be all up in arms about all of the unprotected chair spots. That being said, it is a pretty fun match without many down periods. It’s spotty and the selling is never great, but it’s that train wreck greatness that is what Guerrilla Warfare is all about. Once Super Dragon appears to have the match won with a top rope double stomp on Excalibur’s head (Which was laying on an open chair), the red Super Dragon runs out and attacks Super Dragon. Red Super Dragon unmasks himself to be Kevin Steen~!!!!!1! Package Piledriver to Super Dragon. Steen helps Excalibur position Super Dragon on a table for another double under hook piledriver, but the table breaks apart while Dragon is lifted up. If you remember the iconic image of that happening to Kurt Angle and Triple H from Summerslam 2000, it’s like that only so much scarier. Excalibur gets the biggest win of his career. If you’re only going to watch on Excalibur singles match, make it this. Despite the flaws in the storytelling, it’s still one hell of a fun match. 3 1/2 Stars.

Disco Machine runs out to look over Super Dragon. The SBS is now broken up into Super Dragon/Disco Machine and Kevin Steen/Excalibur. It’s a small thing, but it naturally sets up a tag match for the next show.

Arrogance (c) w/Joey Ryan vs Disco Machine and Mr. Excitement – PWG Tag Team Titles
Chris Bosh is strangely over tonight. It’s not as if Bosh isn’t normally over, but rather the fans are like…REALLY into him. Some even has signs. Arrogance talks about how they ran Frankie Kazarian out of PWG. Bosh makes an eerie comment about being willing to give Kazarian another beating in six months after the WWE fires him. Granted, it didn’t turn out exactly like that, but Kazarian would be back before then. Since Disco Machine was scheduled to team with Excalibur, he needs a new partner, bringing out the returning Mr. Excitement. Excitement’s pretty entertaining. Back and forth match, that turns out far better than I expected. Joey Ryan interferes a lot, including holding Excitement back from breaking up the winning pinfall. Arrogance wins their eighth title defense. There’s only two other PWG tag title reigns that has lasted longer. 2 3/4 Stars.

AJ Styles (c) vs Christopher Daniels (c) – PWG World Title/TNA X-Division Title Match
Both belts are on the line. In some ways, this is the perfect first defense for Styles. Daniels has been undefeated in singles matches thus far in 2005. His only loss came in the four way which he didn’t even get pinned. Thanks to their feud in TNA being carried over into PWG, they also have that going for them. However, instead of having the classic they’re capable of, they decided to go with the one hour draw. It ends up being such a boring match with very little actual action. At the end of the hour, there were two (!) attempts at a finisher. Daniels managed to hit his BME, but time ran out as Styles was struggling to hit the Styles Clash. Are we really supposed to believe that they’d only go for those big moves at the very end (It’s 57 minutes before we see the BME) when they normally go for them within the first ten minutes? The match ends up with plenty of dead spots where they’re noticeably just killing time. Remember all of those great headlocks in Joe vs Punk 1? When they somehow made headlocks exciting? These two managed to make much shorter ones loads duller. Despite being bigger stars, these two couldn’t even come close to having as great of an hour long match as SoCal’s Super Dragon and Joey Ryan. Hell, I’m not even a Dragon fan, yet it’s still better than this. This is my pick for the single most disappointing PWG title defense in history. Sure, there may be worst matches and it’s not as if Joey Ryan didn’t have his duds. However, they at least were short enough that you didn’t feel as if you wasted your time. I’d rather watch a shitty NXT Diva’s match that goes for 3 minutes and every move is botched than watch this borefest again. 1 3/4 Stars.

Overall
It shouldn’t be surprising that this is a fairly lackluster show. Typically, the first show after a major show tends to be fairly low key. This is true for PWG, ROH or even the WWE. The undercard isn’t bad though. Most of the matches are kept short and aren’t negatives to the show. The main event ends the show on a severely sour note. This show would have turned out a lot better had they scrapped the main event and just had Super Dragon vs Excalibur close out the show. Despite the problems of the show, Excalibur/Dragon match and all of the events surrounding the angle makes this show worth checking out. Damn if they didn’t make one of the biggest moments in the biggest angle of 2005 occur on a lame duck show. It’s a smart strategy. You almost have to buy this show to see what happened. Before spending the bucks on it, wait a while until PWG gets around to creating PWG Sells Out Vol. 3. If Excalibur vs Dragon is on that (It should be), there isn’t a single reason to watch this. At least for now, I’d rate this as the worst PWG show of 2005.

Worth Checking Out
Excalibur vs Super Dragon

Avoid
AJ Styles vs Christopher Daniels