CWF Mid-Atlantic Worldwide Episode 140

Episode 140

Arik Royal vs. Jesse Adler

PAS: We have Royal putting together about the best possible match you can have with Jesse Adler. Royal is so good at getting a crowd roiled up, and Adler is pretty good at selling, so having Royal dominate and talk shit, while Adler sells is a good match layup. There were a couple of fancy spots which Adler didn't fully pull off (with the reverse rana in the Ultra J match, Splash mountain semi botch in the Attitude match, and Dragon Rana here, maybe they should stop trying to jack 1993 Rey Mysterio spots without 1993 Rey Mysterio). That final cut block looked great with Adler flying and a big impact

ER: The reign of terror is over! The match was the best match involving Adler that I've seen, although you had to buy into Adler being at minimum on an even level or higher than Royal, which I just could not do. I kept getting worried that I jinxed he result, as I stated when the match was set up that I just couldn't see any way that Adler beats Royal. And I was so adamant about it that it felt like I was giving the universe prime opportunity to show me why I specifically don't deserve nice things. But even with way too many shenanigans (far more than it should have taken for Royal to leave with the belt), I was not let down by the result. Some of the equivalency spots were cringe, like Adler somehow German suplexing Royal (i.e. Royal just leaping backwards on his own) or really any of Adler's big shots being treated as equal. Royal was great and Adler took a nice beating, and sold the leg admirably (after Royal catches a plancha and just whips him leg first into the ringpost). The leg injury made a couple things problematic, as really Adler shouldn't be able to suplex Royal with two good legs, let alone with a bad wheel. I weirdly thought the dragon rana spot worked, even if it was ugly. The ugliness kind of worked to its advantage, as this was no liquid smooth Rey flip into a faster Eddy flip, this was an ugly flip caught by Royal, and then forcing his body to roll through it as Adler's weight hung around Royal's neck. We get the visual pin from the standing shooting star press that I assume is supposed to connect, and it's silly we need Coach interference to get Royal a win over Adler, but this whole reign has come off kind of silly. That said, I thought the structure of the match worked, you just had to buy Adler as equal to or better than Royal, which....well there I go again.

Trevor Lee vs. Roy Wilkins

PAS: There was a bunch of individual stuff I really liked in this match (it would be hard not to have some cool stuff with guys this good), but as a match it never really came together for me. It is hard for me to be that engaged in a 3 on 1 match, especially because it made no sense that no one would ever come out to help Trevor. All Stars have run wild on the fed for years, and no one feels like evening the odds? Lots of triple and quadruple teams with Lee fighting out. When it was down to Lee v. Wilkins it was good stuff, but then the interference would come again. I really didn't like the finish either, having the main event of your biggest show determined on the Coach missing and hitting his own guy is pretty lame. I did like Lee's intensity, coming out with "No Matter What it's Still Going to Hurt" painted on his body was pretty badass, I also really dug all the hand work, it made a bunch of sense to stomp and crack someone's fingers if they are going to be using brass knucks. Still I thought this was pretty disappointing, the overbooked main event worked last year, but here it really hurt the flow of the match.

ER: CWF does overstuffed and overblown main events better than anyone else, but this never worked for me. First Blood matches are just about my least favorite stip match (out of stips that are used regularly), so I'm really eager to know if there are actual good ones out there. They seem so backwards. They really should do WarGames rules, where once one of the participants is bleeding, THEN the match officially begins. All the best brawls happen after the guys are already bleeding, so a First Blood match is essentially a "Match Immediately Stops Once Something Cool Happens". Additionally, they don't allow guys to make much sense psychologically, as 90% of things done in a First Blood match wouldn't draw blood. A First Blood match should pretty much be a 90 second long Frye/Takayama punchfest, with guys trying to bust open a nose or brow. That wouldn't be very interesting, so you have to work a mostly normal match, that just ends with no actual build to blood, just "Oh he's bleeding, match over!" So it already had things working against it, and the interference just made no sense to me. Sometimes they would wait until Redd Jones' back was turn, other times they would just all run in at once. It's why southern heel cheating rarely made sense in ECW. You have Coach setting up a cool timed spot where Jones gets distracted with Trevor on the top rope, Coach clips him in nasty fashion and Lee takes a nasty spill...but a few minutes later they're all just in anyway. If you have three guys interfering for you and that's fine, then why weren't they all four just brandishing chairs and gunning for Lee's head? Why didn't Wilkins/Royal/Li hold Trevor down while Coach takes a boxcutter to his forehead? If you're going to give a tainted title reign to someone, don't blue the lines. Now, I don't know if this actually will be a title reign or if it's just a "Wilkins stole the belt but Lee is the champ" situation, and if it is, who wants that? If they had pulled the trigger, had the All-Stars cheat like hell to get that belt, you could have Lee seeking sick sadistic vengeance on every one of them as he fights back to the title. Instead we might just get promos where someone is claiming to be champ but isn't. Everybody involved is good, and the match had several "main event of big show" moments. The final stretch battles of all the brass knux, with knux getting kicked out of hands, knux getting scrambled for, Lee baiting Wilkins into crawling for knux only to catch him in a powerbomb, and Brad Stutts leaving CWF on a high note with a great call of "Just how many pairs of knux we got in this place!?" The Cincinnati Destroyer spot was insane, and would have been a huge moment in a normal title match...but since this is First Blood, again, wouldn't it have made sense to just beat the holy hell out of your opponent's face with one of those chairs, instead of setting them up for a big spot? Why didn't Wilkins come out wearing a crazy Otto Schwanz face mask to protect his head? There were just too many things that didn't add up, and because of that I could never connect with any of it.