RCW Collision Course
September 17th, 2011
Glengarry Community Hall, Edmonton, AB
The show opens with commissioner Dan Druff being introduced by the ring announcer. Druff insists that his last name is pronounced “Drowff” then goes on to announce that Ax and Smash, Demolition, will be headlining RCW’s October 15th offering, Rise of Legends. The placement of this announcement was a bit suspect, as it made the current show seem less important. “Yeah, you just paid for tickets for tonight’s show, but NEXT show we have Demolition.”
Ugg had several spinal surgeries in the following weeks.
Teddy Hart, the tonight’s headliner, made his way to the ring and, after seemingly shaking the hand of pretty much everybody in the audience, got on the mic. I’m not going to lie, I was more pumped to hear what insanity was going to come out of his mouth than I was to see him do ten thousand flips in the main event later on. Hart talked about returning to Canada after a long stint with Triple A in Mexico, which he claimed was the second largest promotion in the world, behind WWE. I have no idea whether or not this is true, but my instinct is that the second biggest promotion is probably in Japan. At any rate, Hart went on to talk about how the fans are vital in rebuilding the popularity of wrestling, then went on to take shots at PWA promoter Kurt Sorochan for turning the territory that Ted’s grandfather (Stu Hart) made the best in the world into a territory that draws 200 people a night. He rambled on about competition breeding excellence and at some point Evan Inferno showed up to say he had Teddy Hart’s back. Uh, okay. This promo was long and rambling, and for the most part didn’t feel all that necessary. I should also mention it’s the only time I’ve ever seen a wrestler cut a promo in sandals with socks. It’s not a very intimidating look. He also managed to swear in front of children less than five minutes into the promo, which I found incredibly funny.
Ugg vs. Bucky Briggs vs. Barricade
Our first match of the night turns out to be a triple threat match, which confused me because I think the announcer forgot to announce that prior to the third guy entering. Things started with Bucky Briggs attempting to take on both Ugg and Barricade, which was not a fantastic idea on his part. After the initial sequence, wrestlers took turns bailing/being thrown to the floor while the other two guys wrestled. So what I’m saying is it was a triple threat match. Ugg was briefly on the floor early on, which caused Officer Gordon to bellow “I didn’t let you out to watch!” which I thought was a nice touch. Once Ugg got back in the ring he took over, with Bucky Briggs and Barricade alternating as his victims. Whoever was on the floor would end up brawling awkwardly with Officer Gordon, which in the case of Barricade and Gordon looked like two bears pawing drunkenly at each other. Ugg was the most polished of the three in the ring, and managed to save a few mis-timed spots. Offensively, the highlight of the match was Ugg’s fallaway slam on Bucky Briggs. The finish saw all three men in the ring and Barricade on fire. He squashed Ugg with a running avalanche in the corner, taking the convict out of the equation, then countered Bucky Briggs’ ill-advised charge with a British Bulldog-style powerslam for the pin.
Winner: Barricade via powerslam.
Steven Styles chops Keishi up like the steaks that both of them have clearly consumed a few too many of.
After the match, Heavy Metal rushed the ring and laid out Barricade with the Mid-Heavyweight Championship belt, then got on the mic and told Kato, Barricade’s tag team partner, that he had no chance to take the Mid-Heavyweight Title, because Metal was going to do to him what he just did to Barricade. Kato hit the ring and chased off Metal before he could do any more damage.
Steven Styles vs. Keishi
Prior to the match, Keishi delivered a short promo, claiming that his loss in a previous tag team match against Steven Styles and Bucky Briggs was due to his partner, who he has now severed ties with, being awful. He claims he has never tapped out before, and it was his partner’s fault that he was forced to submit by Steven Styles.
The match began with a comedic opening in which Keishi decided that he needed to stretch a bit more before the match, but was unable to reach his feet to complete a toe-touch, at which point he asked the referee to help him out. After that he challenged Styles to a test of strength, then let out a piercing, girlish shriek when Styles overturned the knuckle lock. Once the actual wrestling started, Styles hit Keishi with a flurry of offence, punctuated by a big bodyslam and a double arm suplex. After a very brief brawl on the floor, Keishi managed to gain the advantage by attacking Styles’ knee. After a few minutes of doing damage to Styles’ knee, Keishi went up top and attempted to end Styles’ night (and ability to walk) with a moonsault onto Styles’ exposed leg. Fortunately for Styles, he saw it coming and was able to get out of the way, resulting in Keishi splattering himself all over the canvas. Loopy from denting the mat with his face, Keishi walked right into a flatliner, then tapped out to a Crippler Crossface.
Winner: Steven Styles via Crippler Crossface
RCW Heavyweight Championship Match
Jesse Youngblood © vs. Byron Wilcott
I’ve never seen Byron Wilcott before, but I want to again, because the dude is absurdly charismatic. He also looks like the
The canvas is terrified of what's about to happen to it when one of these monsters falls off the ropes.
lovechild of Booker T and Kofi Kingston. Being billed from South Beach in Miami, Florida, Wilcott worked an American heel gimmick (that’s right, American wrestling fans, in other countries you’re one of the evil foreigner gimmicks). After a bunch of very entertaining back-and-forth with various members of the audience, Jesse Youngblood came out to defend his RCW Heavyweight Championship.
The match had flashes of brilliance, but for the most part it seemed that the two grapplers weren’t quite gelling together. After some early back-and-forth, Wilcott found himself on the apron with an angry Jesse Youngblood coming at him like a runaway bus. Wilcott was able to cleverly spin under the clothesline, catching Youngblood’s arm and yanking it down across the top rope with a simultaneously vicious and flashy shoulder stunner. Wilcott maintained control through most of the bout, weathering periodic surges of offence from the champion. Towards the end of the bout, Youngblood attempted to polish off a reeling Wilcott with some sort of powerbomb, but he didn’t have the strength left in his shoulder to heft his opponent. Forced to improvise, Youngblood countered an attempted superplex by Wilcott and laid waste to the challenger with a frog splash from the second turnbuckle, the force of which squashed the fight out of Wilcott and, I’m fairly certain, made the ring tap out. The three count was merely a formality.
Winner: Jesse Youngblood via second rope frog splash.
Just prior to the intermission, commissioner Dan Druff, still lamenting the ring announcer’s continued inability to pronounce his name properly, announced that October 15th’s Rise of Legends card would feature Demolition (which leads one to wonder why the opening announcement happened at all, when all of the information from it was repeated here). He added that they would be taking on RCW’s own Supreme-adonnas, Heavy Metal and Tommy Lee Curtis.
Intermission. Some random fan got into the ring, apparently determined to find out what the mat and turnbuckles felt like. His actions led to me believe he wasn’t a member of the ring crew, although I kind of hope he was because otherwise some guy was just in the ring and nobody cared.
RCW Mid-Heavyweight Championship Match
Heavy Metal © vs. Kato
This is before they decided to just attack each other with ringside furniture.
In easily the best match of the night, Heavy Metal defended his RCW Mid-Heavyweight Championship against Kato. Metal attempted to jump Kato right off the bat, but Kato proved to be quicker and got the better of the champion, dumping him out onto the floor in short order with a hammerlock counter. He followed it up with a sort-of moonsault that saw him use the ropes to propel himself in a backflip over the top and onto Metal on the floor (a normal moonsault probably would have killed the first couple of rows). This ended up doing more damage to Kato, as the momentum from the ropes dumped him on his head on the apron. After getting back in the ring and exchanging some wear-down moves, highlighted by Metal hitting a hangman’s spinning neckbreaker (think Orton’s DDT, but off the top and a neckbreaker), Metal got himself hung in the tree of woe on the side of the turnbuckle, dangling above the ring apron. He ate a dropkick in the face from Kato, which sparked the beginning of a wild brawl on the floor. Metal reversed an Irish whip which resulted in Kato wiping out about a quarter of the floor seats on my side of the ring (Kato landed on the person sitting a chair to my left, who failed to recognize that getting out of the way would be smart). Metal attempted to suplex Kato, but was reversed, at which point I learned that the “splat” of a 215 pound man being suplexed on a hardwood floor ten feet away from me is very loud and kind of disgusting. Metal tried to escape, but Kato slingshotted Heavy Metal face-first into the bottom of the merchandise table, under which Metal was trying to hide.
After destroying most of the ringside area, both men finally got back into the ring. Metal managed to regain control, then proceeded to throw everything he had at Kato, culminating in a tiger bomb that flabbergasted the Commissioner of Hair Conditioner when Kato still managed to kick out before the three count. After eating a diving dropkick from the top rope to the floor (which resulted in Kato landing in the front row again), Metal finally snapped and grabbed the ring bell, determined to put away the Asian Assassin once and for all. Kato ducked the bell shot and landed a kick that loosened Metal’s grip on the bell, then drove the Guru of Shampoo face-first into the metal bell with an ace crusher, knocking the Mid-Heavyweight Champion out and ending his championship reign.
Winner: Kato via ace crusher on the ring bell.
Pistol Pete Wilson vs. Teddy Hart
Teddy Hart pretzelizes Pete Wilson. This is before Teddy Hart hilariously claimed he ruptured a testicle.
Things started off with some lucha style chain wrestling with a pretty quick pace and a lot of holds that turned into rolls and drags of various sorts. That went on for a couple of minutes before Teddy Hart all of a sudden suplexed Pete Wilson over the top rope to the floor from inside the ring! Never seen that before. After a brief brawl on the floor ending with Teddy Hart getting a faceful of ring post, the fight moved back into the ring and the two returned to exchanging holds and counter-holds, highlighted by Teddy Hart rolling through an attempt at a sunset flip from the top rope and somehow reversing directions and transitioning into a Canadian Destroyer! I’d never seen a Canadian Destroyer live prior to this, but I can now confirm that it looks like somebody was just murdered. A bit more lucha stuff ensued before a Cactus clothesline sent both Wilson and Hart crashing to the hardwood floor. Hart was smashed into the ring post once again, this time eliciting loud cursing and claims of an injury, which led me to the conclusion that he doesn’t quite understand how selling works, but in the most amusing way possible. Wilson didn’t ease up his attack, though, and used my seat as a springboard for a flying crossbody press after clearing out the row to give him room to get a running start. They nearly landed in a potted plant. Now firmly in charge, Wilson took the action back into the ring, where he attempted to end Hart’s night with a 450 splash. Hart had a little something to say about that, though, and drove his knees into Wilson’s sternum, which caused Teddy to start yelling to the referee that he broke Wilson’s ribs. This is what made it clear to me that Teddy has no idea how to sell, because Wilson looked pretty spry for a guy with allegedly busted ribs. You don’t see the average guy with busted ribs doing another 450 later, is all I’m sayin’.
I didn’t notice when he came out, but at some point Evan Inferno ended up at ringside to cheer on Tedward Hart. When the referee’s back was turned, however, Inferno entered the ring and destroyed Hart’s unborn children with a low blow. As Wilson ascended the turnbuckles to further punish Hart with a 450 splash, Keishi ended up at ringside for some reason. Even more inexplicably, a moment of sheer what-the-fuckery occurred as Inferno and Keishi hit the ring to assault Teddy Hart… causing THEIR OWN GUY TO LOSE by disqualification when he had Hart beaten, dead to rights. The referee’s hand was on its way down to the mat for the three, Hart wasn’t moving, and it would have been a huge pinfall victory for Wilson. But nope, he lost by DQ. Now, normally I wouldn’t mind a local guy losing by DQ to an international star, this finish was just so completely absurd that it killed an exciting match.
Winner: Teddy Hart via disqualification.
Inferno, Keishi, and Wilson continued to stomp the piss out of Hart for a moment until Big Jess Youngblood and Steven Styles hit the ring to make the save. Making the save actually took quite a while, as the heels continued to lurk on the floor for several minutes while Jess amused the crowd by assaulting Evan Inferno’s hat. Teddy Hart groaned and yelped that his testicles had been ruptured, which was honestly fucking hilarious. He even went so far with it that he dumped the content of a fan’s water bottle down his crotch, then had a hand down his pants while making agonized faces. There’s a masturbation joke in there that I’m far too classy to make (shut up), so feel free to fill in that blank yourself. After several surreal minutes of this, Hart and Steven Styles took turns on the mic with the upshot being that Hart would team with Styles and Youngblood to take on Wilson, Keishi, and Inferno in a six man tag team match at Rise of Legends in October. Due to the fact that this review took me forever to get finished, I have seen the advertised card for Rise of Legends, which adjusted the match-up a bit. Big Jess Youngblood and Evan Inferno have been removed from the match and put into a separate bout for Youngblood’s RCW Title. Bucky Briggs and a mystery partner, respectively, have been slotted into the six-man in their place.
Spot of the Night: The sunset flip counter into a Canadian Destroyer blew my mind, but this was actually a very tough call. Heavy Metal and Kato’s spots on the floor were fantastic uses of the environment, and Pete Wilson’s flying crossbody off of the seats was pretty exhilarating, since he took off from roughly a foot in front of me.
Match of the Night: Heavy Metal vs. Kato for the Mid-Heavyweight Championship, with Teddy Hart vs. Pete Wilson as the runner-up. Metal and Kato told an interesting story and put together a match that blended technical wrestling and wild brawling in a way that made sense in the context of the story.
