Pro Wrestling Revolution Workrate Report 5/2/15

1. The Grapplers (Grappler III & VI) vs. Los Campesinos vs. Anarkia & Cazador del Alma vs. Los Chicanos (Memo Cuevas & El Pistolero)

You know you're hilariously bad at pacing your TV show when the show starts with ring entrances, then has to take a commercial break in the middle of the ring entrances, only to return for the rest of the ring entrances. I mean damn, guys. But you know? This match was actually quite good. Sometimes their multi mans can be kind of a mess, and this was still kind of a mess but had plenty of good. The Grapplers looked really good here. They're Rik Luxury and Bay Area vet Bobby Hart under masks with their long ponytail braids popping out the back. They're both the biggest guys in the match, but that doesn't stop them from breaking out some large dude topes. Hart has some cool offense and nice presence, his Psycho Driver looks crushing and rightly gets a pinfall, and I dug him slingshotting Anarkia into an ace crusher. He and Luxury bump around nicely for bigger guys. The dive train in this was a nice one, Anarkia especially had a nice one getting backdropped to the man pile. Oddly the match felt a little clipped, which would be amusing if they clipped the match but showed full ring entrances. Pistolero only got in towards the end, and other things felt rushed or skipped. Some of the match was designed to put over new valet Sada Simone who is a curvy pretty gal who apparently was on a TV show called The Real L Word, which existed, and she was on it. I don't know if it was reality or scripted reality or a drama or what. But she was on it. It is kinda funny to book a woman as distracting and foxy to men, when she's most famous for being a lesbian. The distraction spots were all clunky, through no fault of her own. The finish comes when a Campesino has Cuevas pinned for the likely win, but boneheaded referee Tom Castor stops counting the pin to tell Sada to get off the apron. I'm....unsure why he couldn't have finished counting the pinfall, as she was several feet away on the apron and not affecting the finish in the least. But then of course, as a tecnico, that Campesino has to threaten to forcefully tongue kiss Simone, while the announcer creepily chants "Beso". This leads to him losing. Woof. Still, with this fed it's best to ignore as much of the braindead stuff as possible and try and enjoy the good, and this match had more good than most. A bunch of big dives, really good performance from the Grapplers, some fun armdrags, and some decently paced action (until the too-quick eliminations).  This may have actually been the quickest paced match I've seen from this fed. Normally there is a lot of cliched rudo stalling, or ref shenanigans, or just guys that aren't good at working fast. Here they made good use of having a lot of fresh guys, as multi man matches always should. A pleasant surprise.

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Pro Wrestling Revolution Workrate Report 3/14/15

1. Vinny Massaro vs. El Dinamita

This was billed as being from the 10/4/14 show in King City, but I couldn't find any actual record of this match taking place. It seems like it would have been earlier than that, as Vinny looked pretty flabby here, and when I saw him a week ago he looked fairly slim (for him). It's possible that he's done some hard work the last 5 months, but this fed has also pretended matches are from more recent cards before. Who knows. The match only goes about 5 minutes, and Dinamita looked really bad. Vinny always takes nice bumps and throws stiff strikes, but Dinamita looked sloppy and loose. Massaro is always really firm on things like shoulder blocks, but Dinamita kinda took a lot of this and he just throws weak chops, loose slams, attempted the Flair turnbuckle flip and didn't really pull it off, real ugly somersault senton, etc. No good. At one point Vinny did a spot where Dinamita tried to flip him into the ring from the apron (the old slingshot maneuver) but Vinny just let go of the ropes and slugged him. It made me feel all nostalgiac as the only guy I've ever seen do that was Mike Modest. I assume Modest trained Vinny in APW, and it's a great play on a traditionally silly wrestling spot, so I'm glad Vinny is keeping it alive. I know Mike was real proud of coming up with that one.

2. The Grappler III & The Grappler VI vs. Los Campesinos

The Grapplers even have trunks that say Grappler III and Grappler VI, and they're even billed as being from Portland. What a weird little in joke that none of the mostly hispanic crowd would understand. Grappler III is clearly Rik Luxury, not sure who the other guy is as he's larger than Luxury but similarly built. Los Campesinos are one of those "lucha" teams that PWR has that don't actually wrestle anything like lucha style. Instead of armdrags and playing to the crowd they do hammerlock go behinds and body slam exchanges. They're dressed like luchadors, like head to toe bodysuits and masks, but they wrestle like fucking Well Dunn. Every luchador in this fucking promotion wrestles like Rex King. It's like watching a bad southern tag under the guise of a bad lucha match. Oh shit there was a frog splash!? Why the hell do I watch this show!!??

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Pro Wrestling Revolution Workrate Report 12/27/14

More matches from the 6/8/14 Watsonville show, more hilarious use of paid time. Show starts off with a 3 minute Mariachi promo, then him standing in the ring while a loooong Mexican fight song plays in its entirety, then La Migra comes out and beats him down, and then commercials, and then more wrestlers get their full entrance for a match, and then they cut looooong promos. And our first match of the half hour program ends up going on 17 minutes into the show. Last week they had advertised Mariachi vs. Sanders mask vs. hair, but I assume with so little time left in the show that all we'll end up getting is that opening "Mariachi stands in ring while music plays". Think about that. Let's break it down. Let's say they get their time REALLY cheap. I have no idea what paid TV time on a Saturday morning costs, but let's say for this exercise it costs $200 per half hour. Now 8 minutes of that half hour is commercials, so really it's $200 for 22 minutes. You showed a guy standing in the ring while listening to a Mexican fight song for 150 of your 1,320 seconds. That means IF you are paying $200 per half hour of programming, then you just paid over $20 to air that. This kind of time wasting blows my mind.

1. JR Kratos & "El Chicano" Memo Cuevas vs. Los Campesinos

Well, this match happened. It was kind of clunkily structured as we start with a long heel-in-peril segment with both Campesinos working over Cuevas. I have seen one other not good match with Los Campesinos, and here they looked somewhat better but still sloppy. They both throw really ugly and poorly timed armdrags. I would have been somewhat hesitant to blame the armdrags on both of them, as Cuevas could have been responsible for taking them poorly, but they threw them this badly in the other match I saw them in. Again the promotion is obviously billed as lucha libre, but nothing in this match (or most of their matches) would ever be mistaken for lucha style. This match was just bad American indy wrestling. Campesinos may dress like luchadors, but they aren't fooling *THIS* guy. They just do a bunch of bland dropkick/arm drag/arm wringer spots. They basically wrestle like an AWA jobber tag team. Kratos is a big local guy I like a lot, and he got some fun moments of throwing Los Camps around (big deadlift fallaway slam is impressive, as Los Camps weren't tiny guys). Cuevas was more of a sneaky heel but he doesn't really have schtick, he just had to run into Los Camps (often) poorly timed double teams. He took their implausible double arm lift slam finisher with speed and impact. This whole thing just wasn't much.

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Uprising: Lucha Libre Workrate Report 8/9/14

More matches from the 5/18/14 show in Morgan Hill.

1. Los Campesinos vs. The Persian Dynasty (Kia and Cyrus)

I'm not sure I've seen either team here before (although I have seen Welsh indie pop band Los Campesinos before…), but I immediately appreciate that the show starts with the Persian Dynasty attacking Los Camps at the bell. No ring entrances, just brief intros. That's maximizing your short time! Good. Campesinos are called Numeros Uno y Dos. Not sure which Persian guy is which. One has a mask and the other doesn't. Camps wear full red and white body suits, and I think I've maybe seen the chubby one before. Match itself wasn't much to write about. It went about 6 minutes, nobody looked very good. The fed really pushes itself as lucha libre, obviously, but it's weird as most guys in the fed don't work anything close to a lucha style. It's pretty standard wrestling, only the guys wear masks most of the time. I mean…I guess Los Campesinos did dropkicks at one point, but they were kind of sloppy. Both teams were pretty sloppy in general. Persians controlled with bodyslams, Kia (I think) hit an ugly leg drop at one point, and some not good chops and wimpy elbows in the corner (but they kinda looked like the type of elbows that look really bad, but probably actually hurt the other guy). Kia hits a nice yakuza kick at one point. On the hot tag one of Los Camps does these goofy uppercut things, that I'm not actually sure what they were supposed to be, and the match ends shortly after with double sunset flips. Huh. This was not good.

2. Battle Royal!

Bunch of people coming out for this, with Ultimo Panda, Famous B, JR Kratos, both of the tag teams from above, Savanah Riley and another woman. Kratos immediately goes after a woman, which is a really odd thing for the biggest face in the match to do, considering there's at least a 120 lb. difference, and there are several actual males in the match. But yeah, good guy, you go grab that woman by the hair! The ring announcer also regularly states over the mic for parents to keep their children in their seats so they don't get hurt. Where would both the children and wrestlers be going during this battle royal that would involve children getting hurt!? This was a pretty standard battle royal (read: not interesting to live crowd or television viewers) with people wandering around until it was time for eliminations to take place. Pistolero tried bringing extra stuff to it by attacking women, and then women getting their revenge. Famous B also tried bringing some personality by hiding behind Savanah. Spot of the match was probably JR Kratos press slamming the other gal out of the ring onto one of Los Campesinos to eliminate her. So…I guess all the good spots involved men beating up women, which…yeah.

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