Big Time Wrestling 7/29/16 TV

1. Christopher Black vs. Andre LeVeaux

Hosts Dragon Dave and Hank Renner Jr. keep telling us that the debuting (?) Christopher Black has a "worldwide reputation for violence" which, well...seems like a dubious claim. But I liked him, so that counts for something. Match was only 5 minutes but they accomplished enough to make the short time worthwhile. I've never seen Black before and only seen a little LeVeaux. They start with some amusing twisting wristlock reversals, silly but I liked the outcome. Black gains advantage by yanking LeVeaux to the mat by his dreads, which seems like an appropriate thing for a mean bald dude to do to gain an advantage over a guy with dreads. We get a couple of moments where Black transitions away from LeVeaux by yanking the dreadlocks, which is a great thing for a heel to do, but rarely has an opportunity to do so. I really liked LeVeaux's big comeback down the stretch, hitting a nice lariat and a really hard back elbow, then spiking Black with a dropkick in the corner. Black hits a big boot with nice follow through to end it in satisfying fashion, with LeVeaux going limp on contact, making me buy it. I'd really like to see more of these two, or shoot just know more about where they came from, how long they've been working, etc. (**Apparently they just debuted in April, which is really impressive**)

2. Victor Sterling & Jack Madison vs. Rik Luxury & Will Roberts

Man Hank Renner Jr. sure does say the word "kisser" a lot. Nobody can be punched in the face, it's always gotta be his "kisser". "Take a look at Rik Luxury's kisser." There's no way he just naturally talks like this. His shtick is...tiresome. You can also count on hearing "well-oiled machine" many times during every tag match. And this tag match was really good. Really, really good. But woefully short. They go 7, and I easily could have been down for 17. What we got was really good, but so cruel to have it taken away so quickly. Roberts and Luxury are a fun team (I dig teams with size differences) who kind of do a reverse Ricky Morton, with Roberts being in the ring more often but as a heel. It never went full heel-in-peril but it was an interesting layout. Sterling and Madison have some polished double teams and Sterling in particular had some of his best move execution all throughout. A simple Madison drop toe hold into a seated Sterling dropkick looks real great when executed so well and timed so nicely. Sterling throws some nice knees and Roberts makes offense look even better, I dug Luxury doing a sort of fisherman's suplex on Roberts to flip him onto Sterling, and the finish stretch was real good and excellently timed. But again, so cruel to keep this so short. Easily could have gone twice as long.

3. Christina Von Eerie vs. Davina Rose (6/26/09)

Davina Rose is obviously now Bayley, and this is a smart move by BTW to unearth a couple of her matches and showcase them. Eerie ambushes Rose to start and I don't know how Renner thinks it's ok to keep saying "Pearl Harbor job" over and over to describe what happened. When a really large wrestler gets knocked over does he call it "a realll 9/11"? He has an extreme problem just calling objects what they actually are, always has to have some quaint colloquialism for every damn thing. Von Eerie's boots are called "stompers". Good grief. yet he doesn't seem to know what any actual moves are called. "Guy who likes Gorilla Monsoon commentary and adds shitty changes to it" is never going to sound good. This is really early into Bayley's career, she probably had less than 10 matches at this point, and it shows. She's decent at selling and can get over vulnerability, but she doesn't know how to land when doing offense and doesn't really know how to take moves. She gets confused a couple times one time falling out of a bodyslam in a way I've never seen anybody fall out of a bodyslam before. Eerie looked better here than I think she presently looks, seemed like someone who got to a certain level and stopped trying as hard. Announcer Dragon Dave is a creep in this as he keeps bringing up Eerie's ass crack and complimenting the camera man on his nice work. We also cut to the crowd to see someone with a Quagmire sign saying "Alright Ladies". Yuck. Good move to show this match and let a new audience see Bayley's beginnings, and a terrible idea to not redo the commentary.

This was another good, tight episode. I know I keep saying they're good at filling their time, but it really is important when you only have 30 minutes to work with every week. Both new matches they showed were good, and while the final match was not good it's totally understandable and smart that they would show a Bayley match.

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Big Time Wrestling TV 7/8/16

All the matches on this episode are from the BTW Academy, which isn't ideal as the sound is terrible, and the fans are all on one side of the ring (off camera), so wrestlers have to work to one side of the ring, which is the side away from the announcers. So that lead to a couple moments where the announcers were talking about what a wrestler was doing, but you knew they couldn't physically see that from where they sat. So there were problems, the audio especially.

1. Pitbull Wellman vs. Jack Madison

Short match, under 4 minutes. Both guys are fairly green, especially Pitbull. Madison had a nice powerslam and big scoop Michinoku Driver, Pitbull did an amusing pinfall where he pressed across Madison's chest and lifted his leg, but this felt like a 3 minute student match.

2. Shotzi Blackheart vs. Beatrice Domino

Shotzi comes out to talk about the upcoming Dangerous Damsels tournament, and mentions they might as well just give her the belt and save her from having to go through 3 women who are "crap". Beatrice Domino comes out to a huge reaction, and says that they might as well just give her the belt, because she worked hard. It's weird to run this match a week before the Damsels event, since these two are in the tournament and could face off, but as someone who likely can't attend the show, I don't mind a bit. It looks like they got lost down the home stretch as there were some awkward moments and some time stand still moments, but Shotzi is new and they handled things fine enough. I really liked Domino here as she kept things moving, and recovered a couple of the awkward spots. In one Shotzi stood still while Domino came off the ropes, and to cover things up Domino muscled her up with minimal help and delivered a cool rydeen bomb. She also leans into a nice Shotzi high kick. Shotzi throws low on a missed clothesline, which I always like, and leans into Domino's hard clothesline. Shotzi also hits a sweet cannonball and ends the match with a killer senton off the top. I had no idea what she was doing up there, and se looked a little unsure on the top rope, but the senton landed great. I can't wait to see a match between them in a year, as they've both improved every time I've seen them. Also cool job by the promotion filming the senton from a totally different angle, higher up and looking down across the ring. Made the finish look cooler.

3. Kikyo Nakamura vs. Christina Von Eerie (2/19/16)

I don't really think Eerie ever got good, as she seems to be about the same level as the first time I saw her wrestle 6 years ago. But Kikyo is a good match up for what Von Eerie can bring skillwise. Kikyo looked really good throughout, she bumped big for Eerie's stuff, caught her on a dive, hit a great northern lights, went up for a back suplex, nice shoulderblocks, big German. Eerie really didn't look good. Her offense is either to convoluted for her to pull off clean, or she just awkwardly gets up for stuff. But again, really great Kikyo performance. Oh, and at one point in the match the camera panned slowly away from the action and moved to a long crowd shot, before slowly panning back. The whole time Kikyo had a Fujiwara armbar locked on and you could hear Von Eerie's screams. I'm sure they didn't intentionally mean to make me think about Michael Madsen cutting a guy's ear off in Reservoir Dogs, but man was I dying. I mean, Kikyo starts working the arm, we slowly pan away, hear screams, and slowly pan back. They really should have been playing Stealer's Wheel, but oh well.

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Big Time Wrestling TV 6/24/16

1. Ruby Raze vs. Kahmora (2/19/16)

They've added a "ref cam" for a couple parts of this match, which is wholly unnecessary. I don't think a ref cam has ever looked good. Modern ref cams come off looking almost exactly the same as when they first toyed with this gimmick 25 years ago. The benchmark is still early 2000s AAA ref cam which would have an ear piercing BEEP sound every couple of seconds while we were in ref cam view. Anyway, I had seen these two on the opposite side of a Premier tag match last year, with Raze and Kikyo opposite Kahmora and Savoy. I really liked that tag, but this fell a little short. A lot of strikes whiffed, there was some miscommunication moments, Raze had some awkward moments backing into position for moves and sandbagging Kahmora on a German. It went pretty early into big move epic feel, with a DDT on the apron, big neckbreaker with Kahmora draped over the top (which the hilariously inept Hank Renner Jr. calls "out of nowhere!" even though she carefully set it up for several seconds, and the only other move she can do from there would have been a high angle DDT), and then planting Kahmora with a nice back suplex for the win. I could see them having a better match, as several moments seemed a step off. They do each seem better in a tag setting though.

2. Jack Madison vs. Tyler Bateman (5/13/16)

Bateman is a guy I really like, who often seems to match up against opponents who aren't really used to his style. I did see an awesome match with Thatcher once and loved it, but typically he's working nasty wrist locks on vanilla babyfaces. Here he is working nasty wristlocks against a vanilla babyface with a Top Gun gimmick! Disappointed that Bateman cut off his long locks, I really liked his jerk ponytail. Now he just looks like a skinnier modern Anthony Kiedis. But the arm and wrist work is still nasty. This match was real fun with Bateman wrenching on Madison's arm, bending his wrist at some seriously sick angles, bending and biting at his fingers, while leaving plenty of room for Madison to make comebacks. Bateman would always come back to the arm and Madison was game for selling it. At one point Bateman had Madison's arm over the top rope and was pulling hard on it back through the middle rope, really rough stuff. Finish was pretty standard 80s babyface stuff, selling for 85% of the match and then hitting a couple moves to win, but the moves looked nice and Bateman got nice height taking a rydeen bomb. Madison really needs to figure out how to do a legsweep though, as it looked far more like Bateman dropped him with a DDT. Madison is pretty new though, so hopefully he grows out of the phase where he looks like he does moves to himself. Bateman is a real fun talent and I hope he pops up on TV more. I always dig seeing him.

Hank Renner Jr. is just the worst though, officially one of my all time least. Everybody is a "student of the game" or some shit, and whatever his phony ass Gorilla Monsoon catchphrase gimmick is, it's failing badly.  His vocal and verbal presence on TV is a net negative.

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