RCW Goldrush
March 10th, 2012
Glengarry Community Hall
This show review is going to be a little different, because this show was a little different. It was great fun in the same way that watching Botchamania is great fun: it was so bad it was hilarious. One thing to note off the top, because it comes up quite a bit, is that the bass on the sound system was up too high, so all of the mic-work sounded muffled. Not that being able to hear it clearly would have made most of it make any more sense.
To begin the show, Teddy Hart comes out to cut a promo. Crap. He has apparently recovered his kidnapped wife and cat since the last show, and cuts an unnecessarily long and rambly promo about how guys can’t make a living in indy wrestling unless they’re getting international gigs, then starts talking about how he’s going to bring the winner of the opening match to AAA Mexico with him. Okay. Knowing for a fact that both guys in the match are already booked to go to AAA in the spring makes this seem like a goofy thing to add to the match, and I can only imagine how little a fan who didn’t know that would care. Because you know what fans love? Hearing about wrestlers having matches in places where they can’t see them.
This announcement brings out Heavy Metal, who is also booked on that AAA tour. He claims that Teddy Hart is trying to politick Metal off of the tour by giving his spot to the winner of this match, and should be added to this match to defend his place on the tour. Did I mention all three guys are already booked on the tour? Anyway, it’s a match.
Winner Goes to AAA Mexico
“High Risk” Andrew Hawks vs. “Hotshot” Danny Duggan vs. Heavy Metal
Being three of the best workers on the card, this match is really good until the ending. We’ll get to that though. Hawks and Duggan, being faces, double team the heel Heavy Metal until he ends up on the floor, where he stays for a while. Instead of selling being super injured by the small amount of offence that he absorbed, Metal just stands there and watches the faces beat the tar out of each other, which was a wonderful little touch of smart storytelling. Danny Duggan nearly won the match after hitting his finisher, a double knee drop from the top rope, which killed Heavy Metal. Most of his sternum touches his spinal column now. Hawks broke up the pin, then smashed Duggan’s injured arm (he banged it up at a show a couple of nights before) into the ring post. Hawks and Metal went at it, with Metal somehow being able to move after the double knees. Apparently a functioning torso isn’t that important to his style of wrestling. Metal smashed Hawks into the post, which busted him open, then body slammed him on the floor. After dragging Hawks into the ring and locking in the camel clutch, RCW commissioner Dan Druff had the referee stop the match, explaining that their insurance wouldn’t cover somebody leaking that much blood all over the place. “No insurance, clap clap clapclapclap” chant, which highlights the value of being at a show with about seven people: it’s really easy to start chants for your own amusement.
Winner: No Contest.
So the match is a no contest. Metal thinks he won, because he was in control. Teddy Hart returns, claiming Hawks never tapped out. After a whole bunch of hard-to-follow arguing, an eight man tag team match is set up for the main event. On one side is Teddy Hart, “Pistol” Pete Wilson, Andrew Hawks, and Kato. If they win, Teddy gets to shave Heavy Metal’s head. On the other side is the Rock ‘N’ Roll Revolution, comprised of Heavy Metal, “Mr. TLC” Tommy Lee Curtis, Byron Wilcott, and Pete Powers. Wait, who the hell is Pete Powers? He’s not in that stable. Anyway, if they win, Metal goes on the tour AND is Teddy Hart’s tag team partner, which is apparently the spot that Duggan and Hawks were wrestling for. If Teddy Hart’s team wins, Teddy Hart gets to shave Metal’s luxurious locks.
Duggan isn’t in the eight man tag, because his arm is too hurt. SO WHY WASN’T THAT THE FINISH!?!?!? If Metal and Hawks would have worked over Duggan’s arm they still could have done the doctor stoppage finish AND they wouldn’t have had Hawks bleed FOR NO REASON, then wrestle another match later. Argh.
And now we have a ten minute or so intermission as the janitor mops Hawks’ blood up. There’s a lot of it. I don’t know if he bladed wrong or what, but he was bleeding profusely and it got all over the place. So after a late start and a match of less than ten minutes, we’ve got an intermission.
Aaaand we’re back with the new C-Block line-up in action, which I’m looking forward to seeing.
This is basically the only not-terrible photo that I got over the course of the night. Enjoy.
C-Block w/ Officer Gordon vs. Tyler Colten & Marius
I don’t know which is which on the Colten/Marius team. We referred to them as flame pants and headband. C-Block has added Vince Austin as Ugg’s partner, as Slammer won his freedom a while back. This is the first I’ve seen of Vince Austin, but he stole the match with a flipping senton off the top rope to squash everybody on the floor. The fact that he somehow managed to avoid landing in the audience, which was about two feet away from the ring, was impressive. Ugg did his usual Ugg stuff, and capped things off with the 5 Star Ugg Splash, which was the second coolest thing to happen behind Austin’s flip.
Winner: C-Block via 5 Star Ugg Splash.
Dan Druff is back in the ring. Crap. For a guy whose entire position revolves around being able to talk, he’s not all that good at it. He’s got a Woody Allen-esque character that I kind of enjoy, but the fact that he spent the entire promo with his back to the hard camera bugged me. Anyway, the gist of it is that Steve Rivers, the RCW Heavyweight Champion, has been suspended for beating him up last month, and the following triple threat match will determine the number one contender. The participants are announced and I get sad.
#1 Contendership Triple Threat Match
Bonecrusher vs. Barricade vs. Steven Styles
Steven Styles takes a clothesline and bails to the floor, selling like he was shot in the face. The whole thing was kind of a clusterfuck. Styles, the owner and booker, apes AJ Styles but without the talent and with about a hundred extra pounds. Barricade is inexperienced but improving steadily, and Bonecrusher is still pretty green (his beard, however, is a veteran). This match was so bad that the retired wrestler sitting next to me got up and left because he couldn’t bear to watch it after about two minutes. The booker won, by the way. Indyriffic.
Winner: Steven Styles. I forgot how.
Oof. That was rough. Hopefully this next match will be a good palate cleanser. And then the participants are announced. Shit.
Andre Williams vs. Bucky Briggs
I don’t mind Andre Williams as a worker, and Bucky Briggs is serviceable in the role of “guy who gets brutalized and occasionally throws a dropkick,” but after the… thing… that I just watched, this isn’t the kind of match that’s going to grip my attention and reel me back in. Williams cut a promo that was probably about wanting the referee to count all of the falls in French, but I couldn’t really understand most of it due to the sound system muffling it. He had a French/English dictionary that he gave to the referee to help him out, which was funny. I didn’t really pay attention to the beginning, but towards the end Williams started busting out cool stuff to crush Bucky with, so that got my attention. He hit a nice spinebuster and powerbomb before missing a big splash from the second rope, which looked fantastic. And painful. Bucky escaped a Canadian backbreaker and won with a roll-up, ending Williams’ long winning streak with no build. I didn’t even know Williams was on a streak of any significance until the ring announcer mentioned it after the match.
Winner: Bucky Briggs via Roll-Up.
Intermission.
Slammer vs. Big Jess Youngblood
Slammer won his freedom from C-Block at some point over the last few months, and is now competing as a singles wrestler while Vince Austin fills in as Ugg’s tag team partner. Chants of “naked Slammer! Clap clap clapclapclap” led to Slammer tearing off his prison jumpsuit to reveal his new gear. I was told prior to the show that he was wearing Steve Austin-style black trunks now, which turned out to be a heinous overstatement of the amount of clothing he was wearing. They weren’t wrestling trunks, they were a black Speedo with the brand name scratched off. Then the match starts and he and Big Jess beat the bejesus out of each other. I’m not sure if Slammer even did a move the entire time, he just punched, kicked, choked, stomped and bellowed angrily. Big Jess did a moonsault which may have killed the ring. The finish came when both men were brawling on the floor and got themselves counted out. With a clean finish this probably would have been the best match so far, but as it was it was still pretty good and set up a lumberjack match down the road. I’d personally rather see a No DQ match, because lumberjack matches kind of suck, but a lumberjack match is what we’re getting.
Winner: Double Count Out.
After the match, Slammer and Jess continued to brawl on the floor, bringing several wrestlers and staff out to break things up. This is what led to the lumberjack match decision, and ended with the absurdly ramshackle entrance position taking a hard enough bump to bring the whole thing crashing down. The promoters are lucky it didn’t land on anyone in the audience (which it almost did). Also, whoever came up with the idea of building the entryway out of stacked up folding tables needs a smack, because that’s unnecessarily dangerous to everyone involved.
Some half-hearted attempts were made to rebuild the structure, with seeming uncertainty over whether to bother, then they gave up. But then spent a solid five minutes or so doing the 50/50 draw. If they knew they were going to do that, they might as well have just rebuilt the entryway during that time.
Teddy Hart, “Pistol” Pete Wilson, “High Risk” Andrew Hawks, and Kato
vs.
Heavy Metal, “Mr. TLC” Tommy Lee Curtis, Byron Wilcott, and Pete Powers
Pete Powers is part of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Revolution, apparently, despite having never appeared with them on an RCW show, or appearing on an RCW show at all in the last year or so (in Edmonton, at least). Kato is also added to this match with no explanation, instead of just having these two guys who aren’t involved in the Revolution vs. Teddy Hart feud wrestle a singles match. Okay then, moving on. Danny Duggan is in the corner of Teddy Hart’s team, since he wasn’t allowed to wrestle due to his arm injury. That’s important later. Kato looks SO high during his entrance that if he knows where he is or how he got there it’s a borderline miracle. Naturally, we wanted to see him get into the ring and botch so hard Maffew’s spidey-sense starts tingling from across the Atlantic, but he was just as good as he always is, so apparently he was just highly aware that his inclusion in the match made no sense and he was just there to kick some people. That was slightly disappointing, but then he did a bunch of cool stuff and everyone was happy.
Teddy Hart doesn’t get involved until the very end, and Andrew Hawks is only involved sparingly, which I suppose I can’t complain about overly much since most of his blood found itself on the mat instead of inside of him earlier. How much can you really expect a guy with no blood to do? I’m no doctor, but apparently that stuff is pretty important. He was still more exciting than half of the opposing team. Heavy Metal really carries the match on the heel team, as Byron Wilcott, while a solid worker, has a few chemistry issues and TLC and Pete Powers are pretty bland. Basically, when Metal is in the ring, things are going quite well. For the most part it’s a decent 8-man punctuated with plenty of whole-team brawls and chaos. There’s another attempt to kidnap Teddy Hart’s wife, who is sitting in the front row next to Danny Duggan, who does exactly nothing about it. Teddy Hart is able to step in and break things up, preferring using his violence to entertaining the idea of perhaps not putting his wife in proximity to people who had already kidnapped her once very recently. Speaking of Teddy Hart, he doesn’t get into the ring until very late in the match, at which point he comes in and hits his finisher, a powerbomb onto double knees (ROH fans will know it was Project Ciampa), roughly ninety-four times in a span of two or three minutes. Seriously, I’ve seen that move more times live from Teddy Hart than I have IN TOTAL in any other circumstance. Transitions? Pfft. Transitions are for dicks. POWERBOMB. Teddy was in the ring for two or three minutes total, and hit some neat stuff, and botched some attempts at neat stuff. He hit Heavy Metal with a short piledriver out of a rope-draped position sort of like Randy Orton’s DDT, which was pretty cool, but tried to hit some kind of swinging DDT thing from the top rope on Byron Wilcott and Pete Powers that resulted in somebody spinning the wrong way and the whole lot of them going down in a heap.
The match ended shortly after a spot straight out of lucha libre, which was appropo since half the guys in the bout would be working for AAA Mexico in the next few months. After some of the heels spilled out to the floor, everybody else took turns hitting big dives to the floor, highlighted by a TLC moonsault (perhaps the most interesting thing he’s ever done) and Andrew Hawks hitting some kind of corkscrew thing. Metal and Kato ended up back in the ring, when all of a sudden Danny Duggan got involved, getting into the ring and distracting Kato, which allowed Heavy Metal to punch the Asian Assassin in the balls which in turn gave Danny Duggan the balls to pop Kato square in the jaw. Kato went down, Duggan bailed, and Metal got the three count.
Metal made a big show of trying to get Teddy Hart to raise his hand in victory, and made several attempts to shake Hart’s hand before he finally gave in and accepted his handshake, saying that he was a man of his word and would honour his promise to take Metal to Mexico as his partner if he won. The Danny Duggan heel turn thing kind of got swept under the rug. I’m not sure why he turned on Kato instead of Hawks, since a turn on Hawks would instantly escalate the little feud they’ve been building into something major. But “why did they do that?” was the question of the night, so, I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m asking it again.
Spot of the Night: Vince Austin’s somersault senton to the floor. The lucha-style “everyone dives” spot from the eight man tag was probably more impressive, but Austin’s dive was more surprising and so gets the nod.
Match of the Night: Slammer vs. Big Jess Youngblood. This was actually a hard choice. The eight man tag had the most impressive moves, but the storyline surrounding it had a lot of holes that bothered me. C-Block vs. Marius and Colten was well-executed and accomplished what it needed to, but it was basically an extended squash. Slammer vs. Big Jess was well-wrestled and told a good story, building logically to the next step in their feud, so it gets the nod.
Overall: What an odd clusterfuck of a show. Was it an entertaining clusterfuck? Yes. Was it entertaining for the reasons intended by the promoters? Probably not.
