Paragon Pro Wrestling 10/3/15 Review

Okay so I fell a bit behind on this once I lost my man Dean's support, and also because of all the Wes Brisco eyeball assault that was happening weekly.

1. Mikey O'Shea vs. Kevin Kross

"O'Shea could be the Harvestor of Sorrows for Kross" and "It's all about for Whom the Bell Tolls for Kross".....okay? Apparently the two announcers just got their first taste of speed metal and gotta shoehorn it into conversations? Neither man has any sort of connection to Metallica that I can see. I mean shit I love Ride the Lightning as much as the next guy but this just came off like Awful Announcing and two guys pulling each other's puds. O'Shea is finally starting to work MORE FAT with senton attempts and corner avalanches and belly to belly slams. Also dug O'Shea's corner body blows and big chops. Kross usually comes off better and he seemed to be holding back a bit on O'Shea. Wasn't expecting O'Shea to come away with the clean pin here, but this fed has also backed themselves into an annoying little win trade/parity corner.

2. Ethan HD vs. Mercurio Jr.

The announcers have a real annoying habit of pushing every single wrestler in the fed as a "real student of the game" and saying things like "Mercurio has a proclivity to start fast". They use just so many unnecessary words, really filling every single bit of empty space with just WORDS. Every single guy is a "student of the game" or a "ring general" or a "technician" with no regard to what those words mean. Mercurio can just be the resident luchador, he doesn't need to also be a student of the game who is a technician who is in the middle of having a phenomenal see-saw match up. Every goddamn match is a "incredible match up" or a "phenomenal match up". This got called both of those things within the first three minutes. They are just so terrible. HD is a guy I like, always leans into offense, and Mercurio doesn't have great offense so he really works hard to make Mercurio look somewhat competitive. YES that's problematic because not every worker deserves to look competitive, but again this fed is obsessed with every worker splitting every match 50-50, every win getting paid back, every guy looking like he has a shot in every match, so HD fits the fed's needs. He also takes a real nice delayed bump over the top to the floor. Mercurio has lousy faux lucha (faucha?) offense, dropkicks that don't land flush, slow arm drags. They do a silly rolling cradle section with a bunch of nearfalls counted despite nobody's shoulders ever being down, and then the match terribly ends in a double KO, despite neither taking anything that should keep either down for a dual ten count. This was just all around poorly conceived. But sometimes that's what happens with real students of the game.

3. Gangrel vs. Darin Corbin

We get an amusing pre-match vignette of Darin Corbin celebrating out on the town with his American Title, eating dinner with it and dancing down the streets with it. Tim Sylvia would wear his UFC belt to the grocery store, so this seems more believable by comparison. This match furthered Corbin as a guy who keeps his title by either fluke or nefarious means, as Gangrel controlled the whole match until Corbin bailed, looked at his shiny belt with adoration, and clocked Gangrel with it for the DQ. Corbin looked good bumping around for Gangrel, and Gangrel threw some nice punches and was able to do non-stop offense for a few minutes without gassing out or taking a chinlock break. That sounds backhanded, but it's important. Gangrel has been a guy with decent offense but no perfect way to tie it together, so really this was a fine use of his structure. And I am starting to dig Corbin as goofus who knows how to keep a belt.

4. Jessy Sorensen & Wes Brisco vs. Hammerstone & Chamberlain

I keep getting scared they're gonna load Sorensen and Brisco up with title belts, and yet H&C keep awesomely retaining the belts by cheating! I love it. It provides actual drama for me, since I don't want Brisco walking around as a champ, and they regularly have authority call out H&C for cheating (actually had a funny pre-match promo where the Paragon president or CEO or GM or booker or whomever calls them out on how they win matches, and they sheepishly say they do it through hard work, watching tape, etc.). A key to why their cheating works so well for me, is that they aren't really portrayed as guys who cheat because it's their only way to win, they clearly cheat because they just like to cheat. The other week there was a No DQ match where they tried to cheat, and then it threw them when cheating wasn't called out by the refs. It seemed stupid at the time, but seeing how much they love to win by cheating, it kind of works within their characters. Nobody in the match is necessarily GOOD, though Hammerstone has potential. I liked his low clothesline on Brisco and an even cooler deadlift pumphandle fallaway slam. Brisco has a lousy crossbody block. But I just kinda love H&C controlling a lot of the match, and the first moment things start going wrong they just hit a guy with a belt or - in this case - hold down Brisco's legs so he can't kick out of a pin. What will the federation do to stop it?? It's weird and good that I actually care about the answer to that.