Paragon Pro Wrestling 7/4/15 Review

Came across this show almost completely by accident. It airs on the Pop! network, which I only knew about because we recently watched a TV show called Schitt's Creek on the network. I checked yesterday on the off chance they were showing repeats of the show, and saw the next morning they were airing a pro wrestling show. Looked it up, and as fate would be it is the first show that has aired.

This fed runs out of Las Vegas and does shows at the Sam's Town Casino. This may be the first time that Casino wrestling has aired on TV since death days AWA. The crowd looks awesomely touristy. There really does not appear to be many actual wrestling fans out there. It's all older white men in golf shirts, fanny packs and cameras around their necks. This truly looks like a 1996 WorldWide audience and it's glorious.

1. #1 Contender Battle Royal

Woof. First match of your first episode of TV, and you start with a battle royal. And it determines the #1 contender to the title, no less! During most of the entrances they show how Jessy Sorensen won the title from Caleb Konley in a lumberjack match, so then we get back to the ring and suddenly 15 nameless guys are standing around. I recognize Gangrel, Joey Ryan, Konley, Darin Corbin, nobody else. There is a large black guy they call Tyshaun Prince, he threw a nice punch at one point, big overhand right. There's a big fat white guy wearing a neon green singlet, but he gets effortlessly tossed to my eternal disappointment. There is another guy with a handlebar mustache who I assume is working some sort of babyface mixologist gimmick. Konley ends up winning this thing. I guess it got all of the talent on TV, but pretty pointless since nobody gets to look good in a battle royal, and everybody got eliminated too fast to learn many names. That was a rough start to your first episode of TV.

2. Darin Corbin vs. Crash Test Cody

The announcers inform me that "we are STILL reeling over that epic battle royal". I mean, it was a 6 minute long battle royal. Cody has a weird milky right eye. His left eye is brown, and then the right eye appears to be reallllly light blue. It looks creepy. Now, when a guy comes out working a crash test gimmick, I would expect him to be a wild and reckless bumper, but Cody hardly bumped at all. He did throw some ugly forearms, though! Corbin is a guy you know. He's a guy you've seen turning up on indy cards for over a decade. And he still isn't a guy you get excited about seeing. He didn't look offensive at all, but outside of his finisher amusingly being called the Ginger Snap, he offers nothing. CTC misses a nice cannonball into the corner. That was the most interesting thing that happened here.  Naw I take that back, Corbin took a drop toe hold into the bottom turnbuckle really nicely, really went mouth first into it. So two interesting things.

We get a bad Jessy Sorensen promo and then an amusing Joey Ryan interview where he grooms his impossibly lush beard and talks to himself in a mirror and then gets a towel delivery from room service.

3. Espiritu vs. Mercurio Jr.

This is clearly not CMLL's Mercurio, nor is it AAA's Espiritu. I have no idea who either man is. I do know, however, that the ring audio is off and appears to be about 3 seconds ahead of what's actually happening in the ring. The commentary is synced up properly, but yeah you can hear crowd reactions and them thumping around on the mat when nothing is going on. Espiritu looked fine here, I wouldn't mind seeing more of him. Mecurio did some slow mo lucha-ish spots and looked pretty low rent. Espiritu at least knew how to engage a crowd and had some polish.

Lisa Marie Varon does an in ring promo to hype up Kevin Kross, calling him the most vicious shooter and that anybody who faces him will DIE.

4. Kevin Kross vs. Sugar Brown

Sugar Brown looks like Bad News Allen and wears boxing shorts with fringe so I'm already liking Sugar Brown. Kross has some size and works some nice strikes, threw a good running knee, really great deep scoop overhead belly to belly, nasty Saito suplex to end the match. Sugar was here more to put over Kross, but got to do a fun tornado avalanche in the corner (that got no sold, but whatever). This at least established Kross as a tough dude, and made him look good in the process. He's really the first guy this whole show who actually came off as important.

5. Joe Graves vs. Jessy Sorensen

Graves is a guy I really like, and Sorensen is a guy who broke his neck in TNA, got told they would pay his medical bills, and then never paid his medical bills because TNA. If I had serious medical bills to pay I'm pretty sure "continuing to professionally wrestle" would not be one of the ways I would choose to pay them off. Graves looked really good in this, throwing some real fine knee variations, like his nice knees from the clinch and an even better sliding knee. Sorensen looked okay, threw a nice neckbreaker, seemed to be in position for everything. I loved Graves working him over with knees, and choking him out with his wrist tape. To my surprise, Graves wins the title with a choke....ohhhhh but then another ref comes out and reverses the decision to give the title back to Sorensen. Well. Nothing like having your babyface champ get dominated and lose the title on your first show, only to get it back on a technicality.

Well, okay. First show. Things moved along at a quick pace, so that's a plus. The wrestling was not inoffensive. The production was surprisingly slick. They aren't really bringing anything unique to the table, but there were a couple guys I dug. This is a strange show to be on TV in 2015.

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NWA Classics On Demand - Price Tag Reviews

Pretty cool idea as the NWA has gotten a hold of Paul Bosch's Houston wrestling archive and is putting it up on demand. Lots of previously unavailable stuff here, and some very cool on paper matches. I figured I would get the first month for $9.77 and see if it is worth it. So I am going to rate each match by how much it is worth to me, and see if gets to $9.77, if it does, I'll kick in for another month


Chris Adams v. Kevin Von Erich 1/18/85 $0.10

Really fun six minute sprint, both guys really went after each other. Adams looked awesome, as he is very good at timing some super violent looking superkicks, including catching Kevin with one as he was coming into the ring, and blasting him with one to the back of the head for the pin. Looks like the folks running this put in new commentary, and while it isn't awful, it is pretty generic, full of cliche and amateur sounding. I liked this match a bunch, but it was on the DVDVR 80's set, I am mostly interested in seeing new stuff so I am only going to give this match a dime

Nick Kozak v. Apache Bull Ramos 1/7/79 $0.05

My all time favorite band The Mountain Goats put out an amazing all wrestling themed album Beat the Champ earlier this year. One of the songs "The Ballad of Bull Ramos" is about the ending days of Bull Ramos's life, and the joy one can find in your memories, and how even death isn't sad when you've lived a great life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRZHsqvoJMM

This match wasn't much, the kind of match people who say they hate 70's wrestling are talking about, lots of nerve holds and criss crossing, Ramos wins with a terrible elbow drop. Still giving this a nickel for giving me an excuse to post this song, and listen to it a couple of times.

Wahoo McDaniel v. Terry Funk
Wahoo McDaniel v. Gino Hernandez 2/6/81 $2.50

A bit of a bait and switch as this is listed as a Terry Funk v. Wahoo McDaniel and that match is the semi-finals of an elimination tourney to wrestle Harley Race for the title. The Funk v. McDaniel section is only about three minutes as Funk jumps Wahoo at the bell, smashed his headdress (Wahoo must have bought the headdress's in bulk, for all the times they got ripped up) and threw him around the ring, before Terry got quickly rolled up. Gino runs in and they both beat on Wahoo a bit before the start of the final match. Wahoo v. Gino was a pretty great double juice brawl, with Gino really doing a grizzly blade job. Wahoo is so great a just leveling people with chops, and Gino is awesome as a pinball heel. he flies over the top rope a couple of times with true abandon. A little bummed I didn't get to see more of a Funk v. Wahoo dream match, but Wahoo v. Gino was really good and the kind of hidden gem I want this project to unearth. Easily worth $2.50 or so

After the first three matches of the month we are at $2.65, pretty good start as I have waited on watching some truly juicy looking stuff

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