Monday, April 1, 2013

Wrestling Society X Episode 2 Review

Time to go back to the WSX bunker for episode 2!

This episode featured Three 6 Mafia as the musical/commentary guests, and three matches: Human Tornado vs. Luke Hawx, Team Dragon Gate vs. That 70's Team, and the main event for the WSX Championship, Vampiro vs. 6-Pac.

Three 6 Mafia open the show as a massive crowd of white people bounce up and down, a quick recap of episode 1's action, and we're down to the ring for the first match.

Fabian Kaelinis once again tries his best to sound like a coked-up Vince McMahon screaming down a WWF PPV card from the 80's. Luke Hawx is first to hit the ring, a former XPW death match champion, previously known as Alter Boy Luke. Since WSX, Hawx has about doubled in size, opened up his own school and promotion, Wildkat Sports, and was kicking ass in Extreme Rising.

There's one thing that has bothered me ever since WSX went off the air, what the hell is the Romper Stomper?  Let me explain; Hawx's nickname is the Southern Stomper and the Romper Stomper was listed as his WSX signature move. A google search on said move yielded no results; could it be like the Garvin Stomp or Low-Ki's Ghetto Stomp? I decided to go to the man himself and ask Hawx.
There you have it, the Romper Stomper could be anything. A broader google search for the definition of a romper stomper gave these results: 1. An Australian toy, hard plastic cup that would strap to the bottom of your shoes. 2. A nickname for platform boots and the Australian skinheads that fashioned them.

Back to the match! Human Tornado dances his way down to the ring and the match starts with a test of strength lock-up, Tornado gets out of it by an Akeem-styled arm jive. A pissed off Hawx sends HT into the ropes, pops him up, and then kicks him square in the nuts, Tornado no-sells the ball kick and the commentary team put over that he's got balls of steel.
Maybe Tornado trained with Duke Nukem, or practiced "internal control" with Pai Mei and mastered the ability to suck his testicles into his body and move them around at will. Who knows?
Tornado hits Hawx with a pimp slap after the nut kick, but gets caught with a HUGE t-bone suplex and eats a spin kick. 1-2-and HT kicks out.

Hawx gets tossed outside and sells a baseball slide that spills him over the crowd rail.  Tornado flies over the top with a front flip and throws Hawx back in the ring after they recovered from the splash. Hawx looks to take the lead with a roundhouse, but Tornado pulls out a tornado ddt after a series of irish whip reversals.

Post match sees Hawx Pearl Harbored by Aguilera, one half of Los Pochos Guapos, you may know him as the man who "stabbed" John Cena in a Boston nightclub.  Alkatrazz, Hawx's tag-team partner comes in for the save, but gets cut off by other other half of LPG, Kaos. The double team on Alkatrazz ends when Aguilera reveals his weakness: the mamacitas. Yes,some untimely flirting with the women in the crowd results with Kaos getting an enzurgira from Hawx and crashing through an in-ring table.

The match was decent for what it was; to show off some of the abilities of Hawx and Human Tornado, and to set up a feud between Hawx/Alkatrazz vs. Los Pochos Guapos. 

A video promo from the Filth and the Fury, the tag team of Teddy Hart and MDogg 20, I'm guessing Hart is the filth of this combination, since Mdogg is straight edge.

Second match of this episode is a tag team bout between That 70's Team( Joey "Magnum" Ryan and the Disco Machine) vs. Team Dragon Gate( Horiguchi and Yoshino)

That 70's Team are out first, complete with their own personal disco ball. Team DG are quick to hit the ring, and quick would be the best word to describe this match; Hori and Ryan start it off with a series of wristlock/headlock/hammerlock reversal. Double tag and we get a running the ropes dropdown spot that ends with Yoshi dropkicking the disco man, Disco Machine tags in Ryan and we get another run the ropes drop down spot, Ryan ducks a clothesline and goes for a dropkick, Yoshi ran out of fucks to give and walks away from it; pointing to his head and indicating that he's too smart to fall for it.

The match comes to a screeching halt as Ryan signals for a time-out and some inhaler action, a comedy spot that I feel was unnecessary. Ryan should of sprayed it in Yoshi's face and told him it was battery acid, you slime!  Disco Machine is back in and he shakes his stuff, which angers the men from Osaka(Pro?)
Unimpressed with his wiggling hips, DM gets a drop-toe hold-dropkick combo for his troubles. Horiguchi covers him for a 2-count!

Hori tries for a sunset flip and we get more dancing from the Disco Machine, who follows up with an elbow drop and a 2 count; double tag and Ryan and Yoshi are back in, Ryan gets his ass out from an attempted double-team sunset flip, then gets hit with the Lighting Spiral from Yoshi.  The count is broken up by Disco, who gets tossed out and slammed to the floor from Horiguchi's crossbody to the outside.

Ryan and Yoshino are still in the ring, Ryan reverses a tilt-a-whirl to a sidewalk for the 2 count, a superkick outta nowhere! gets the victory for That 70's Team; Horiguchi, upset over the lose, breaks the disco ball.

A good, fast-paced tag match with the only flaw being the inhaler spot, but it's part of Ryan's gimmick,so I guess it makes some sense.

*Trailer Park Boyz video promo. I don't have much to say on these guys, besides their a white-trash stable comprised of Josh Abercrombie, Nate Webb, and Johnny Webb, so unless you're big fans of CZW and IWA-Mid South, you aren't missing out on anything.

MAIN EVENT TITLE TIME: 6-Pac vs. Vampiro for the Wrestling Society X Championship.
Vampiro is being billed from the Darkest depths of Hell, which isn't too far from The Outer reaches of your Mind; Maybe he shares a duplex with Kane? Vamp happens to be wearing a biker vest decked out with Black Label Society patches,  the musicial guests from Episode 1. We get a long shot of a ringside coffin, and then the commentary line of the night.
Three 6 Mafia member DJ Paul had this to say about Vampiro, "That's one big white dude you DO NOT want to meet in an alley." 

This matches starts at 11 and never slows down; Pac throws a spinkick, delivers a few chops in the corner and tries to whip Vamp to the opposite corner, the resident of Hell blocks these attempts and delivers his own spinkick, which really looked like a spinning knee strike. The former 1-2-3 Kid kicks out of two and turns Vampiro's frankensteiner into a sitdown powerbomb for a 2 count.

Pac pulls off the Bronco Buster and then insults Vamp with the ol' crotch chop, he goes for the ass-tearing buster again and gets stopped by a big choke. Back on offense, Vampiro lifts Pac for the chokeslam and tries a reverse corkscrew from the top, Pac rolls and Vamp goes crashing to the mat. Syxx sends the Juggalo   to the outside with a dropkick, hits a frontflip splash, and gets a 2 count on the outside.

Vamp launches a running Pac into the turnbuckle post and we get multiple shots of this lady.

Vamp sets up a table and gets clotheslined when he turns around, Pac places the Canadian vampire on the table and climbs the turnbuckle, Vampiro briskly stands up and basically puts his head in Pac's armpit. Tornado ddt on Vamp and only a 2 count! The commentary team put over that falls count anywhere in WSX, I'm also guessing there's no DQ, because of the the first match nut kick.
X-Factor by the Lightning Kid, 2 count!

Time for the coffin spot; Vampiro grabs Pac and hits the tombstone piledriver through the coffin. The coffin must of been filled with proximity explosives and fireworks, cause the damn thing blew up like an early 90's WCW mini-movie( Spin the wheel-Make the deal was my favorite) Oh, and Vampiro wins!

When I started writing this, I didn't remember what the WSX title, thanks be to google for jogging my memory. Here it is, the Wrestling Society X Championship title

Haven't we seen this title before?


Well, that's it for episode 2! Don't know when I'll get around to 3.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Wrestling Society X: Episode 1 Review

Time to enter into the WABAC Machine, step into a phone booth a la Bill and Ted or Dr. Who, or just jump into your Delorean, rev it up to 88 mph and set the destination to the year 2007.
January 30, 2007 saw the debut the of Wrestling Society X on MTV, it was the brainchild of former XPW producer/co-owner/on screen goon, Kevin Kleinrock. Treated more like an experiment from MTV, WSX took the over the top aspects and soap opera story lines of pro wrestling and pushed them to the forefronts, but all the melodrama and crazy antics were backed by some of the best wrestlers on the Indy scene at the time; mainly comprised of Ring of Honor, CZW, and XPW alumni, WSX's roster was stacked with talent.

Wrestling Society X was about setting out to try something different, sometimes that brings success and sometimes, it unfortunately brings failure. Going head to head with the second half of WWE's newly revived ECW, WSX only had a run of nine episodes, it's 10th episode was never aired; I decided on a whim to review all 10 episodes. So here goes nothing.


Episode 1 kicks off with Black Label Society playing a snippet of some mumbling Yeeaaaah Rock; every episode featured a musical guest to start off the show, sometimes they would even join the commentary team of Kriss Koss and Bret Ernst. I'm still undecided on whether this was a good idea or not, I guess it helped give the show a little extra star power.

Match #1 Flippity floppity floop time as Matt Sydal, better known today as the WWE's Evan Bourne, is set to take on Teddy Hart's hetero life partner, Jack Evans. Now, here's one thing about WSX that I hated, their carnival barker of an announcer, Fabian Kaelin. He always sounds like he's trying to dupe someone into a game of Guess Your Weight; its cool to see a guy go bat shit crazy over wrestling, but he does it every time he's onscreen, so it loses some value to me.

What Valentine is usually dressed in
Sydal with the very preppy Lizzy Valentine is first out, followed by b-boy Jack Evans, who flips and break dances his to and in the ring. The action starts off fast as Evans goes for a frankensteiner and gets throw over the top and to the outside by Sydal, which is clear grounds for a disqualification and Evans should of been awarded the match immediately. Sydal hits a cartwheel missile splash and then catches Evans with a roundhouse in the ring when Evans tried a springboard; Sydal gets a 2 count.
Elevated octopus stretch on Evans leads to a flippy escape and some flippy kicks, sending Sydal to the outside, Evans goes for a big cartwheel dive to the outside as the commentary team put over that there's no mats on the floor, just all concrete, which is 1992 Bill Watts approved.
You should make Human Tornado the champ, it worked with JYD.
Back in the ring and Evans' standing corkscrew goes no where, Sydal takes this opportunity and drives Evans into the mat with a pump handle bombs, 2 count and then a standing moonsault gets another 2 count. 
Evans is back on his feet and Lizzy gets dragged into the ring as she was clutching his leg, Evans then uses her as a launchpad to hit a tornado ddt on Sydal, he goes up for his 1070 splash or whatever the fuck it is, and gets the 1-2-3.
The skinny b-boy catches Valentine's eye and commentary makes note of it. I'm not a fan of Jack Evans, I feel like he's always spot-monkeying around, Sydal, or Evan Bourne, did most of the actual wrestling, but it was the right choice to open up the season and show.

We then get a tag-team rundown of Keeping it Gangsta, D.I.F.H. (Doing It For Her), the Trailer Park Boyz, and Team Dragon Gate.

Promo time with Justin Credible. Is the Olive Garden joke still funny? I'll just post this photo instead.

We then get New Jack trashing talking Chris Hamrick, Teddy Hart proclaiming to be "the past,present, and future of wrestling", and the video segment ends with Los Pochos Guapos, the team of Kaos and Aguilera.

Back from the break and it's time for the WSX Rumble, the match that will determine who face off for the WSX Championship. The ring is surrounded by tables, an electrified fence, and a box rigged with explosives, so get ready for the special effects.
Justin Credible is first out and comes to the ring with E-C-Dub chants from the fans, Teddy Hart is man number two and starts off with a big dropkick; showboating and hot dogging doesn't pay off for Hart, as Credible catches him with a super kick after Teddy did his tributesault to uncle Owen. It doesn't take long for Hart to get back on the offensive, hitting Credible with a springboard splash.
#3 in the rumble is Kaos, the longest reigning XPW TV Champion, XPW was on TV? Moving on, both men attack the fresh Kaos. Hart brushes off a Kaos double clothesline that Credible sells, Hart hits a butterfly lock ddt and then a shooting star press.

#4 is Vampiro, who is listed as a WCW champ, I don't remember him winning any titles while he was in WCW, so I looked it up and he won the tag titles with the Great Muta. Vamp cleans house in the rumble with clothesline all around, Hart says fuck that and they get into a brawl, Vampiro cleans again, and commercial time!

Back from the break and we're treated to footage of entry #5 Puma trying a splash from the top,only to be caught and tossed by Vampiro. #6 Alkatrazz, being accompanied by Luke Hawx, springboard shoulder tackles Vamp.
#7 6-Pac is out to a chorus of boos, either this crowd knows about "X-Pac" heat, or they're being told when to cheer and boo. Pac immediately goes for Credible, hits the X-Factor on a couple of guys, and bronco busters Teddy Hart.
#8 High-flying Hamrick with #9 New Jack bringing it up the ass. Hamrick gets throw out by Jack and bumps onto a table, Jack doesn't give up on attacking Hamrick and the ref gets a toy guitar to the head for his troubles.
Best commentary line of the night, "the referee has gotta be dead!"
Up next is the series of spots: New Jack has Hamrick set up on a table and is ready to take a big dive, Hawx side suplexes himself and Kaos into the exploding box, right as Jack falls, Alkatrazz gets throw out and through a table, and finally, Hart hits a jumping top rope ddt on Vampiro.

The 10th and final entry in the rumble is Youth Suicide!
and Teddy Hart goes tumbling over the top; YS enters the ring with a bucket of tacks and the rumble becomes a 4 way ladder match, with the two title match contracts hanging from rafters(along with all the Ricky Morton fans and 90's Sting)
Vampiro bombs YS on the tacks and 6-Pac scurries up and grabs one of the contracts. Youth Suicide climbs the ladder next, only to get pushed off and into the exploding electrified fence. Vampiro is able to grab the second contract as he edges out Credible on top of the ladder, and the episode ends with Pac and Vamp brawling.

I think it was a great opening episode, they really squeezed in as much story line development as they could. Time constraint was what really plagued WSX, and if they only had an hour or aired on a different night, then I think WSX could of lasted longer than one season.

On to episode 2.