PWG Chanukah Chaos (The C’s Are Silent) 12/3/2005

Written by: Jim

Chanukah Chaos (The C’s Are Silent)
December 3, 2005

TJ Perkins vs Christopher Daniels
If only all openers could be like this. Here we have a match that didn’t wear out it’s welcome (Just under 15 minutes), had a basic story, and was just straight up quality grappling. The story of the match is that despite being the underdog, Perkins manages to surprise everyone and control the much bigger star. There’s a lot of times where Daniels is struggling to not be pinned. For Daniels, he has to use his experience to outsmart Perkins whenever he can. One such moment was when Perkins sat on the top turnbuckle (Tornado DDT?), but Daniels quickly counters it into a DVD. Daniels once again manages to avoid a strike and surprises Perkins with the Koji Clutch, to force Perkins to tap out. 3 1/4 Stars.

Chris Sabin vs B-Boy
According to the old press releases, Sabin is possibly replacing an injured Chris Bosh here. This is the first step in B-Boy’s quest for a PWG Title shot. It’s the speed of Sabin vs the hard hitting style of B-Boy. As Jim Ross would say, Sabin is as quick as a hiccup. This was still a period where I consider Sabin a great talent and he backed it up. It’s kind of a shame this was more of a showcase for B-Boy because Sabin was better in every way. I felt as if the story could have been a little better. The action was great and all, but the whole “Back and forth” wrestling isn’t the most compelling of stories a lot of the time. Likewise, it went on a touch too long, partially because of the lack of story. B-Boy ends up beating Sabin with a Shinning Wizard to win this hard fought contest. Man, I miss old Sabin. 3 Stars.

El Generico and Los Luchas vs Ronin, Nemesis and Alex Koslov
Man, this is sorta the ultimate melting pot of my favorite and least favorite old PWG acts. I believe this is the debut of Nemesis. In a lot of ways, this reminded me of the six person tag at Fear. The early comedy was good with Nemesis instantly making himself a memorable lowcarder with some really fun antics. The crazy non-stop spots at the end was good until it went into overkill territory. Unlike the Fear match, the match isn’t nearly as long, so the length doesn’t affect your enjoyment too much. Los Luchas were pretty damn passable here and Ronin was his usual decent self when it comes to tag matches. Generico wins the match for his team with the top rope brainbuster on Koslov. Predictable winners aside, this was a lot better than what I expected. 3 Stars.

Kevin Steen (c) vs Joey Ryan – PWG World Title
PWG‘s two biggest heels of 2005 colliding. The one is evil for turning friends on friends while the other isn’t afraid of turning on friends to help his cause. In typical faux Technical Wizard fashion, most of the story is based around Joey getting an unfair advantage (Slamming Steen’s arm down on exposed steel) and then Ryan works on the body part like he’s a technical genius. I thought this story did a great job at keeping the match interesting until the crazy ending. After Ryan realizes after all of this work, he still can’t beat Steen, he takes out the referee so he can nail Steen with a chair. This brings out the ultimate tweener, Chris Bosh, to take the chair away and nail Ryan with it as payback for Ryan costing Bosh the belt at ASW 2 Night 2. However, as Steen is covering Ryan, Super Dragon runs out and pulls the ref out of the ring. That sets Dragon up to hit two Psycho Drivers on Steen to allow Joey Ryan of all people to win the PWG World Title. A really fun little match that had enough interest before the ending and the ending helps continue two huge feuds. 3 1/4 Stars.

AJ Styles vs Chris Hero
A ROH dream match that never happened. Sadly, if this is the quality of match we were depraved of seeing in ROH, we didn’t miss out on much. I can appreciate some slow building matches, but this didn’t click for me. It clocks in at twenty-eight minutes and a good deal of that was just grappling on the mat. While Hero can be entertaining in that role due to his creative submission holds, it’s very clear Styles is just killing time. Styles is best when he’s flying around and creating an exciting match. Up until the final few minutes, the crowd is fairly quiet, only making the occasional (And random) chant. The fact the match ends with Styles surprising Hero with a simple roll-up just further backs up the idea that it’s an effortless match. I really should have had more realistic expectations. With this being Styles’ final PWG match of 2005, it sums up his year nicely – boring and too long. Hero made this halfway decent entirely on his own. 2 3/4 Stars.

Dino Winwood comes out to talk on the mic. Eventually, Disco Machine and Excalibur comes out as well. The mic is so bad that I only pick up the occasional word. From what I gather, Quicksilver and El Generico were booked to challenge for the tag titles, but Quicksilver isn’t here. Upset that Steen lost his belt, The New SBS wants a tag title shot. Winwood gives them it, but if they lose, they can’t challenge for the belts again for six months.

Super Dragon and Davey Richards (c) vs The New SBS – PWG Tag Titles
It’s angle time, baby! The early going shows Dragon bringing the hate. When Disco Machine rolls out of the ring to escape Davey in the opening seconds, Dragon is so enraged that he runs in the ring and nails a suicide dive to the outside. ****ing awesome. Poor SBS takes a huge beating in the first half before they finally make a comeback by focusing on Davey. When the SBS seems to have the match won after killing Davey with a spike Tiger Driver, Kevin Steen runs out and attack Dragon drawing the DQ. This match is really short (Under 13 minutes), especially compared to the fact that every other SDDR title match up to this point was over twenty minutes long. The angle takes away a little from the match quality, but the the angle was never about Dragon and Disco/Excalibur, so it doesn’t really matter. Good for what it was. 3 Stars.

After the match, Steen and Dragon have the brawl of all brawls. Steen attacks both Excalibur and Disco Machine when they try to pull him off of Dragon. The locker room clears out, but that’s barely able to stop the two guys from fighting. Poor El Generico takes a few good punches and chair blocks from a crazed Dragon. Even when they’re separated, both guys are finding random little objects to throw at each other. In other words, they brought the hate in a HUGE way. Finally, Steen gets on the mic and challenges Steen to a Guerrilla Warfare Match at the next show. This was awesome.

Scorpio Sky vs Scott Lost – I Quit Match
The culmination of their long feud. This one had the early brawling of a Guerrilla Warfare Match (See: Throwing each other in chairs for minutes on the outside), but then kept most of the remaining match in the ring. Weapon wise, it was mostly just chairs, a chain and a table spot late in the match. I love that they made note that you can’t win if your opponent passed out (Only by saying ‘I quit’) and then playing on that late in the match. After Lost passes out in a triangle choke, Scorpio uses a bottle of water to revive him. Scott Lost shinned with some of his ideas. The best spot of the match would be his trademark Superman Spear. On the outside, Lost jumped over a group of chairs to collide with Scorpio. Later, Lost put Sky in a tree of woe and then wrapped a chain around Scorpio’s head, and pulled back with the chain in Sky’s mouth. The ending is pretty great as well with Sky forcing Lost to say ‘I Quit’ with the Sharpshooter. This entire feud was based around Lost humiliating Scorpio, so it only made sense for Sky to humiliate Lost by beating him with his own move (And the move of Lost’s idol). A great feud ender that smartly kept things tame so it wouldn’t take away from the next show’s Guerrilla Warfare Match. 4 Stars.

In one of the post-show interviews, Excalibur suggests the New SBS split up and go their own ways. RIP New SBS 2005-2005.

Overall
Despite just coming off of All Star Weekend 2 and the huge Astonishing X-Mas to come, PWG made Chanukah Chaos an important show for 2005. Joey Ryan’s reign of horror begins. Depending on how you look at it, that’s either great or terrible news. The major feud of Scorpio/Lost comes to an end. Meanwhile, Steen/Dragon once again has a show stealing angle and the end of their feud is now set. The undercard is okay, but nothing too great. As usual, AJ Styles disappoints me, but that’s nothing new outside of TNA. I found a lot of the undercard matches were given too much time while Super Dragon was oddly in the shortest match. How often can you say that? The big thing is how they’ve set-up the next show and the next PWG Title feud. Up until the Dynasty is created, the PWG Title is centered around Joey Ryan vs Chris Bosh. Yay for angles!

Worth Checking Out
Super Dragon/Kevin Steen Brawl
Scorpio Sky vs Scott Lost

Avoid
Chris Hero vs AJ Styles (Not as good as you’d imagine)