Paragon Pro Wrestling 9/19/15 Review

1. Leather Strap Match: Whirlwind Gentlemen vs. American Gunz (Ethan HD & Mike Santiago)

Hey this is probably the best match in the fed so far! That's not meant to be a backhanded type of deal, I genuinely liked this and thought they had some cool violent strap spots. It was tornado style obviously so you had guys beating each other around the ring, choking each other out and most of it worked. Santiago was really good at little things, like wrapping his fist in the strap before throwing punches, or getting choked violently with the strap wrapped painfully over his nose or fishhooking his mouth. All of the guys eat rough strap shots, everybody somehow avoids getting in the way of the others. Ending kinda stinks as it's that same 4 corners strap ending where the heel is dragging one of the faces around while he touches the corners, unaware the face is also touching the corners. But aside from that this was really fun.

2. Kevin Kross vs. Gentleman Brawler Eric Right

I like both of these guys and this was as good as expected, but it all lead to a pretty lame DQ finish. Kross has some of the best strikes in the fed, and knows how to do some cool throws, and Right knows how to work within his abilities and get a lot out of a smaller moveset. The match doesn't really have much time to flesh out, as Kross dominates him, Right gets a nice hope spot leaping onto Kross' back with his sleeper, and also almost gets to his tonic. I really appreciate how Right doesn't go for his miracle tonic every single match. He's really only gone for it a couple times during their TV run. It actually makes it work way better as a final desperation spot, establishes that he's confident in his abilities but understands when the situation is getting dire. Right gets the tonic and Kross barely gets it away from him, considers taking some himself, but opts to put it down in the corner. I like that. I like the sci fi element of him curious to try it, but nervous what would happen to him if he went down that path. Then Kross just gets DQ'd by hanging Right in the corner and kicking him a bunch. Lame.

Amusing Caleb Konley promo where he says he's gonna knock Crash Test Cody's good eye out of his head.

3. Crash Test Cody vs. Caleb Konley

It is humorous that they're now pushing Cody as a guy "with one good eye" as they've never mentioned that before, but I noticed weeks ago he had one weird eye. I dig it. And damn, maybe THIS is the best Paragon match they've done. Both guys kick the hell out of each other and it's awesome and relentless. No dull moments, just both guys going after each other with super stiff shots. CTC brought it and Konley responded in kind, hitting some real sick elbow shots. And that's the story of the match. Every move each guy did had some real stiffness and immediacy to it. Cody hits a mean cannonball in the corner, take a nasty throat first bump in the ropes, comes back with some cool wrenched in submissions (which one of the announcers refers to as the "Crippled Crossface". Eeeeeeeeesssh) and more nice strikes. Both guys looked really good here, and the whole thing was no bullshit. This fed loves doing bullshit finishes, so it's awesome that here we just get asskicking, with one guy winning decisively with his finisher. How about that? What a concept. So right now we have the fed's best and second best match, all on one show. Am I just having really great coffee this morning or am I crazy? (Shout out to Philz Coffee Jacobs Wonderbar dark roast. It's goooooood.)

I use the power of fast forward to skip allllll the way past Wes Brisco's heartfelt sit down talking about....well, whatever he was talking about. Whatever it was, I had zero interest in watching him say it. Even if he was confessing to all of his probable assault charges I would rather just read about that confession later.

4. No DQ: Hammerstone & Chamberlain vs. Wes Brisco & Jessy Sorensen

The announcers inform us that "this match will get physical". I mean...I hope so. It would be weird if a pro wrestling match somehow avoided getting physical. It's probably the one actual guarantee when watching pro wrestling. And boy this match stunk. Talk about killing all my lovely positive lovey dovey feelings for this episode. This is a No DQ match, that is worked the entire time like a totally normal, boring tag match featuring four boring-to-bad wrestlers. Even the announcers are confused as one guy regularly comments on how he was expecting this to break down at any moment, or wondering why guys were still tagging in and out and why the teams weren't just going at it. All of his thoughts were all legit questions. It's like nobody involved with the match knew that it was No DQ. So as a No DQ match it couldn't have failed more. But as a normal tag match it also totally failed, just because it wasn't good. The ending was maybe the dumbest possible ending the promotion has done, and there have been some monumentally dumb endings in this fed. Let me lay this out for you: Hammerstone and Chamberlain control almost the entire match. Brisco gets dominated (not bad as then we don't have to see Brisco offense, but at the same time that means we have to see his FIP face which is just horrifying) and then as Sorensen tags in, Chamberlain lays out Brisco with a belt shot. This is a thing that has been established for the team of H&C. When things go poorly in their matches, they bail with a belt shot. So this makes sense, and since it's a No DQ, it's obviously expected. Why weren't they beating these chumps with their belts from the bell? But then, instead of pinning Brisco, Chamberlain demands to be DQ'd. The ref shrugs, Chamberlain gets rolled up by Sorensen. Yuck. None of this made sense, and not only did it not make sense, but they went far out of their way to actually try hard to make it nonsensical. This was bad, awful, visibly stupid pro wrestling right here.

Two really fun TV matches, followed by maybe the dumbest match in the fed's history. What an emotionally confusing episode of television.