Pro Wrestling Revolution Workrate Report 1/24/15

This match was from the 6/8/14 Watsonville show.

1. Virgil Flynn & Famous B vs. Willie Mack & Ultimo Panda vs. Brian Cage & Colt Stevens vs. Gallo Tapado Jr. & Orion

Seems like an odd resource allocation to bring in a bunch of talent and then just dump them all in to a 4 team tag match, but we'll see how it all goes. Virgil Flynn, who wrestles a lot all over the Bay Area (and even won the main event of the inaugural Phoenix Pro Wrestling show that I did commentary for) is billed only as "Virgil" here, and appears to always just go by Virgil on PWR shows. That's strange since he wrestles everywhere as Virgil Flynn, which makes me think that PWR is doing the world's most hilarious bait and switch, trying to lure Wrestling Superstar Virgil's biggest fan. And wrestling shows draw some weird people. People who aren't up on current names and could very well think they're seeing the same Virgil who they barely remember from two decades prior. We once saw three weird obese racist triplets in their 60s at a WWE show screaming at the black wrestlers. People are weird. I saw somebody rent War of the Worlds 2 at a Redbox because they loved Tom Cruise and didn't realize he had made a second one (he did not). People are dummies. But potentially using the name Virgil as a means to lure somebody is really something. This is a promotion who booked several Hijo de Rey Misterio matches, and while they never stated "WWE's own Rey Misterio", I''m positive that most kids and even many adults were expecting Rey Misterio based on the way they advertised him. But I mean, at least that's Rey Misterio. I'm endlessly tickled by the idea of trying to game unsuspecting ticket buyers with Virgil.

The match itself was plenty fun, although as I predicted there were too many guys so some stuff was rushed and the eliminations coming as quickly as they did was predictable and silly. Going through each of the guys, Flynn didn't get tons of time but looked good when in. He and Panda don't match up very well as Flynn is tiny and Panda is not very good. So those parts weren't the best. But he got to hit one of his awesome cannonballs into the corner on Gallo and hit a big somersault dive to the floor. Willie Mack always shines in multi man matches and this was no different as he has great looking offense that really fits a tag type setting. Cool flying offense for a big'un and at one point he took a nasty bump off a Cage clothesline. Always love seeing Mack. Panda was really in this too much. There's 8 guys, and even with the match spread across 7 other guys his act started wearing thin. A bunch of comedy spots with ref Sparky Ballard isn't my cup of tea, and Panda is just really clunky at times. Cage is humongous here compared to how he's looked recently on Lucha Underground (which was likely taped a couple months ago), and he always shows a bunch of ass in PWR. So far he's been a monster in LU, so it's weird seeing him selling Panda comedy one day and mowing through fliers the next. Colt Stevens wasn't really in enough to make an impression. Gallo Tapada is arguably the weirdest luchador to have gotten a few working dates in America. I don't know if I'd call him "good" but he always tries and that counts for something. I actually thought he was going to do a crazy dive onto everybody towards the end divetrain, but he kinda wisely pulled back and did more of a crossbody. But the guy leans into offense (didn't flinch while taking Virgil's nasty cannonball) so I never mind seeing him. Orion was your kind of workrate-y indy guy who did a couple nice things, but didn't make a huge impression on me.

Match was fun but had eliminations the way they always do in those ciberneticos: the match goes on for awhile with no eliminations, and then suddenly all of them happen within 2 minutes. I hate that, like they got the call to go home and are like "Crap nobody is eliminated! 'Sko!!" There was also a fun divetrain that was kinda sloppy, everybody was really bad at catching everybody else. Maybe I'm spoiled watching King Cuerno regularly demolish Drago, but it was kind of funny watching almost every dive end with a guy mostly missing a sea of bodies.