Pro Wrestling Revolution Workrate Report 4/25/15

More matches from their most recent show, the 2/28/15 San Francisco show.

1. Kianna Rivera vs. Savanah Riley

Who wants some ref shenanigans!? Not anybody! But as we all know, PWR is a big time fan of referees being the primary focus of a match. Yeah, sometimes is riles the fans up. But I bet if you asked every single fan in attendance if they'd rather see these two work a normal 7 minute match, or a 7 minute match with heel ref schtick, I would be shocked if anybody would request the latter. It's never something that makes a match better. It robs us of actual match time and replaces it with Rivera (who works more commonly as Nicole Savoy) having to argue with ref Sparky Ballard, complain about unfair treatment and slow counts. It also forces Savanah Riley to work like a total putz as due to all of the slow counts to put the ref over, she appears to have had 5 visual losses in just 7 minutes. Both wrestlers are okay workers, but hamstrung having to play second fiddle to the ref. Rivera hits a nice dive (that falls a little short) and keeps going for a KO kick, which eventually lands and must have been one hell of a kick as it keeps Riley down for an 11 second 3 count. I'm just thankful we didn't get Sparky pulling up with a bad shoulder. So in that respect, they fooled me.

2. Vaquero Fantasma vs. Gallo Tapado Jr.

This match is instantly notable as they completely edit out the ring entrances and start with both men in the ring. The main problem with this show is normally how poorly edited it is, with full entrances and unintelligible mic work and "which side of the crowd is louder" being shown in their entirety. This is one of the only times they edit out those things, which have never added one bit to the actual shown matches (that stuff is obviously only shown because the fed does not have enough material for a weekly show, so therefore must streeeeeetch every single match out for content). This shows they actually know how to properly edit a match for maximum impact, and they just choose to not ever do that.

Match itself was weird as we start with some serviceable armdrags and a crossbody exchange, but Tapado appears to get his bell rung taking a crossbody and things seem disjointed and odd the rest of the way out. Tapado is slow getting up, and Fantasma tries picking him up but Tapado clearly does not want to be picked up. But Tapado keeps bumping and going through spots, just much slower and clunkier. A couple of times Fantasma has to put himself into pins. There was supposed to be a pin reversal that ending up seeing Gallo not move a single muscle, so Fantasma had to wiggle himself into position to make it look like his shoulders were down. Then we just cut immediately to Gallo locking on a submission for the end. So....something happened here, not sure what it was. But it looked weird.

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Pro Wrestling Revolution Workrate Report 4/11/15

1. Damian 666, Vaquero Fantasma & Cazador del Alma vs. Gallo Tapado Jr., Piloto Suicida & Anarkia

This was from the 10/4/14 King City show, the last match they could wring from that card, and it was both amusing and a complete sloppy mess. I had not seen Anarkia or Cazador before this, and I believe they're both PWR trainees. They did not look very good, but we'll chalk that up to being new at this. There was a corner chop exchange between the two of them that seemed like it would never end. Damian, to the shock of nobody, doesn't really "show up" for these matches. He whips people with his belt, and puts about as much effort into his rope running as modern Super Porky does. Gallo Tapada is a guy I always like, because even though he has obvious physical deficiencies, the dude very clearly ALWAYS tries. Sometimes stuff doesn't look good, sometimes it does! But he puts in effort and the matches he's a part of are NEVER bad because of him. Here he stooges for all of Damian's belt spots, and breaks out a few springboard crossbodies that look like they hit with a thud. They don't look pretty, but they look effective. Fantasma runs a little hot and cold and here he was kind of stuck as Damian's lackey, but towards the end of the match he gets to break out a real nice tope. Piloto Suicida was a pleasant surprise as a guy I've seen several times in SoCal indies but hadn't seen in years. A lot of his stuff had a polish to it that the match really needed. Damian did have some fun rudo moments, my favorite being him begging off from Piloto, getting down on his knees to beg, kissing Piloto's boots...and then punching him right in the dick while he was kissing boots. Overall things were just a little too sloppy, bad lucha exchanges done in almost comical slow motion. But it still had its charms.

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Pro Wrestling Revolution Workrate Report 1/24/15

This match was from the 6/8/14 Watsonville show.

1. Virgil Flynn & Famous B vs. Willie Mack & Ultimo Panda vs. Brian Cage & Colt Stevens vs. Gallo Tapado Jr. & Orion

Seems like an odd resource allocation to bring in a bunch of talent and then just dump them all in to a 4 team tag match, but we'll see how it all goes. Virgil Flynn, who wrestles a lot all over the Bay Area (and even won the main event of the inaugural Phoenix Pro Wrestling show that I did commentary for) is billed only as "Virgil" here, and appears to always just go by Virgil on PWR shows. That's strange since he wrestles everywhere as Virgil Flynn, which makes me think that PWR is doing the world's most hilarious bait and switch, trying to lure Wrestling Superstar Virgil's biggest fan. And wrestling shows draw some weird people. People who aren't up on current names and could very well think they're seeing the same Virgil who they barely remember from two decades prior. We once saw three weird obese racist triplets in their 60s at a WWE show screaming at the black wrestlers. People are weird. I saw somebody rent War of the Worlds 2 at a Redbox because they loved Tom Cruise and didn't realize he had made a second one (he did not). People are dummies. But potentially using the name Virgil as a means to lure somebody is really something. This is a promotion who booked several Hijo de Rey Misterio matches, and while they never stated "WWE's own Rey Misterio", I''m positive that most kids and even many adults were expecting Rey Misterio based on the way they advertised him. But I mean, at least that's Rey Misterio. I'm endlessly tickled by the idea of trying to game unsuspecting ticket buyers with Virgil.

The match itself was plenty fun, although as I predicted there were too many guys so some stuff was rushed and the eliminations coming as quickly as they did was predictable and silly. Going through each of the guys, Flynn didn't get tons of time but looked good when in. He and Panda don't match up very well as Flynn is tiny and Panda is not very good. So those parts weren't the best. But he got to hit one of his awesome cannonballs into the corner on Gallo and hit a big somersault dive to the floor. Willie Mack always shines in multi man matches and this was no different as he has great looking offense that really fits a tag type setting. Cool flying offense for a big'un and at one point he took a nasty bump off a Cage clothesline. Always love seeing Mack. Panda was really in this too much. There's 8 guys, and even with the match spread across 7 other guys his act started wearing thin. A bunch of comedy spots with ref Sparky Ballard isn't my cup of tea, and Panda is just really clunky at times. Cage is humongous here compared to how he's looked recently on Lucha Underground (which was likely taped a couple months ago), and he always shows a bunch of ass in PWR. So far he's been a monster in LU, so it's weird seeing him selling Panda comedy one day and mowing through fliers the next. Colt Stevens wasn't really in enough to make an impression. Gallo Tapada is arguably the weirdest luchador to have gotten a few working dates in America. I don't know if I'd call him "good" but he always tries and that counts for something. I actually thought he was going to do a crazy dive onto everybody towards the end divetrain, but he kinda wisely pulled back and did more of a crossbody. But the guy leans into offense (didn't flinch while taking Virgil's nasty cannonball) so I never mind seeing him. Orion was your kind of workrate-y indy guy who did a couple nice things, but didn't make a huge impression on me.

Match was fun but had eliminations the way they always do in those ciberneticos: the match goes on for awhile with no eliminations, and then suddenly all of them happen within 2 minutes. I hate that, like they got the call to go home and are like "Crap nobody is eliminated! 'Sko!!" There was also a fun divetrain that was kinda sloppy, everybody was really bad at catching everybody else. Maybe I'm spoiled watching King Cuerno regularly demolish Drago, but it was kind of funny watching almost every dive end with a guy mostly missing a sea of bodies.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 8/16/14

Another match from the 5/18/14 Morgan Hill show.

Atlantis, Gallo Tapado Jr. & Mascara Sagrada vs. Damian 666, Zokre & Vaquero Fantasma

Gallo Tapado Jr. may be the weirdest lucha fly-in I've ever seen. I'm unsure how big a star his dad was, but his dad likely retired in the 80s or early 90s. I think I've seen this guy on an IWRG undercard, maybe. But that's a weird way to bring in guys. "I think this guy may have worked an IWRG undercard before! Fly him in!" Damian gets on the stick and talks for a few minutes, and literally 80% of what he says is muted. Then Sagrada grabs the mic and the same thing happens. I have no clue what they said, but apparently it was a) bad enough to be unsuitable for TV, and b) so important that it had to be left on the broadcast, even if you couldn't understand what they were saying. And so here we are, 10 minutes into a 30 minute broadcast, with no wrestling having occurred. This would be like Raw starting their first match at the 40 minute mark. Is this why the "Revolution" is in Pro Wrestling Revolution? I'm still completely unclear about what exactly is supposed to be revolutionary about any of this. It's a name that's dumb enough to get angry about if you actually think about it. How, in any way at all, is anything they do revolutionary, or even just a change from the norm?

Match itself was not great, but decent. Sagrada looked enormous here, and I've seen him before in this fed and he was as lazy and selfish as you remember him being. But here he really busts butt and seemed like he was really trying to not dog it. He was slow (his majistral took forever) but he took some big bumps for a fat guy crammed into a bodysuit (nice backdrop bump and a nice spill into the ropes) and while he didn't look great, he tried and that's worth something. Gallo Tapado was probably the best of the bunch here as he really worked from bell to bell, always doing something. It was not a performance I was expecting and he really tried to make this match into something more than "let's work around Damian stooging for Atlantis". He really worked hard to turn it into a tecnicos vs. rudos battle, threw some fine armdrags, nice apron work, did a nice springboard body press onto Damian onto the ground (which always looks extra great when it's outdoors and into dirt, like this was). So yeah, sorry for making fun of you up above Tapado. Damian kind of worked like 2014 Damian would work, which is wander around and punch people, take a couple spots from Atlantis, and then hit the floor to jaw with fans. Zokre had a weird billy goats beard sticking out of the bottom of his mask (unsure if it was real beard or beard on mask) but Atlantis had several fun spots involving him ripping at the beard. I especially liked Atlantis holding the beard while climbing up to the top, then doing a cool leverage "beard drag" jumping off and flinging him. The whole match is essentially arm drags, leading to multi-man pinfall attempts (the estrella, the triple sunset flip, etc.), with the big springboard body press by Tapado being the big high spot. Not a mind-blowing match, but fun enough to air for sure.

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