Pro Wrestling Revolution Workrate Report 5/16/15

Brian Cage vs. Bestia 666

This is the last match from the 2/28/15 show in San Francisco, milked to its entirety (with 6 matches stretched to fill FIVE WEEKS! of programming), so I'm excited to see what we get next week. This was a good match, the best match on that 2/28 card, and could have been a very good match if not for  rudo ref shenanigans, or if Cage had sold anything whatsoever. There was a little awkward miscommunication towards the very end, but mostly they worked together really well, except for Cage not selling anything whatsoever.

I'm not sure why but Cage always looks so much more gassed when he works this fed. His Lucha Underground body looks slightly leaner, and his PWR body looks significantly more bloated. I don't understand it. And let me explain what I mean by Cage not selling Bestia's offense: He would take moves, and do little things afterwards such as shake his head, stumble around, etc. to show that the moves has done SOMEthing to him, but then he would always immediately go back on offense. I don't think there was any point in the match where Bestia hit two moves in a row. He was working from underneath the whole match, which made the awful heel ref schtick even worse and more pointless since Cage was never in any point in danger of losing. So we get Cage dominating, and being cheated for, but we never get to see any sort of Bestia comeback. Just a slow plod towards the inevitable. And what is life but a slow plod towards the inevitable?

I liked how they started, with Bestia trying to shoulderblock Cage a bunch. I like when guys don't back down on shoulderblocks. Bestia quickly realized he wasn't going to budge him, so led him into some cat and mouse which led to a great spot, with Cage chasing him around the ring, Bestia rolling back in and fluidly hitting Cage with a legdrop off the middle rope while Cage was rolling back in. It was timed perfectly, with Bestia fluidly hopping up to middle rope and legdropping him right as Cage was rolling in (so Cage in theory wouldn't have seen it happening). Usually that kind of thing seems much more cooperative and here they nailed it. Bestia also had several cool armdrag variations throughout, which Cage took really nicely. Cage himself had a pretty nifty legdrop, working in a couple of quick sliding legdrops like Waltman used to do. The "big slams" portion of the match is fairly uninteresting, and the heel ref stuff kills any interest in the home stretch of the match, but there was good work within, and you could tell the framework of a good match was in there somewhere. I enjoyed it.