PWA ADRENALIZE
Saturday, May 21st, 2011
Century Casino Showroom, Edmonton, AB
On a hot May night in Edmonton, the PWA performed in front of the hot crowd in the Century Casino Showroom. There weren’t as many people in the audience as usual, likely due to the May long weekend, the people that were there got into the action early and stayed jacked throughout the night, making this show a lot louder than most of the more well-attended shows with names that make more sense.
Things started off with some of the wrestlers surrounding the ring while a ten-bell salute was sounded to honour the passing of Macho Man Randy Savage the day previous. After that, it was on to the first match of the evening.
Bobby Sharp vs. Nightmare #2
Since Nightmare #4 hasn’t been around for several months now, Nightmare #2 is introduced as “The Nightmare.” I don’t think I’ve seen Bobby Sharp wrestle without tag team partner Scotley Crue before. Nightmare takes it to Sharp early, but Sharp manages to low bridge a charging Nightmare and take control.
Sharp works the knee, using a variety of toe-hold variations and culminating in a figure four. Nightmare manages to reverse the figure four, then peppers Sharp with strikes after the hold his broken. With his foe reeling, Nightmare climbs the ropes and goes for a double axe-handle smash, but Sharp ducks out of the way and Nightmare’s knee buckles. Nightmare gets up gingerly and walks right into a uranagi bomb, which is enough to keep him down for the three.
I liked this match a lot as an opener. Nightmare is over with the fans, and Bobby Sharp’s name is easily mocked in chant-form (Booby and Barbie being the perennial favourites), so they got the crowd energized early and managed to keep them that way.
“T-Bone” Jack Sloan vs. M
T-Bone is the Mayhem Champion, although this is a non-title match. Like fellow heel Bobby Sharp, T-Bone also decides to work the leg of M after being made to look like a boob early on by the much faster M. The former Marky Mark made a few attempts at a comeback by hitting counter-moves whenever T-Bone moved away from his methodical attack on the knee. This played into the finish, as T-Bone looked like he was going for some kind of big slam which M countered into victory roll for the, well, victory.
After the match, M, grabbed the Mayhem Title and celebrated before ring announcer What About Ivan pointed out that it was a non-title match, so T-Bone kept the gold. Frustrated by this, M grabbed a microphone and told T-Bone that he might walk away with the belt, but he knows that he just lost clean twice in a row (apparently this was a rematch from last week’s Calgary show), then challenges T-Bone to put the gold on the line in a Mayhem match, which is a kind of weird term that the PWA uses to encapsulate a variety of different gimmick matches. T-Bone says he would relish the chance to rip off M’s head and tear out all the stuffing inside him. Gross. Anyway, this is later turned into a steel cage weapons match, which should be pretty exciting.
Valkyrie vs. Jordyn Brooks
Another rematch, although this one is from last month’s Hysteria show. And maybe the last Calgary show, too; the women’s division isn’t all that deep. In both matches I’ve seen with Jordyn Brooks, Valkyrie has been in a weird position where she comes off as the heel AND the face because her personality overshadows Jordyn’s so much. These two gals work pretty well together, but Valkyrie’s energy working the crowd really pushed this one to a higher level than it would have been at purely based on in-ring work. Jordyn Brooks seemed poised to put Valkyrie away after hitting a flatliner, but rookie referee Reginald Patterson got involved when Jordyn climbed up onto the middle turnbuckle to administer a ten punch spot. After the second punch, Patterson hauled Jordyn down off the ropes and started admonishing her for using a closed fist, which gave Valkyrie time to recover and roll up her opponent (after hitting her a few times for no reason).
Dylan Knight vs. William Saint
William Saint is new to the PWA, but I didn’t get a very good idea of what he could do in this match, since it was essentially a 6 minute-ish squash. Dylan Knight, who was the only PWA roster member involved in a main event with the Dudley Boyz and Lance Storm back in March, came out on the warpath and spent most of the match throwing Saint around like he was a child. Saint got in a little bit of offence to keep things interesting, but it wasn’t the kind of match that was going to showcase his moveset. Knight hit a modified death valley driver, which featured a throw-off into a landing reminiscent of a neckbreaker, and that was more than enough to end Saint’s night.
King Dusty Adonis & Paul Brown vs. Chucky Blaze & Yukon Jack
Paul Brown and Yukon Jack are local DJ’s at 100.3 The Bear, a hard rock radio station here in Edmonton, who are engaged in a charity competition that I don’t know the specifics of. Paul Brown and Yukon Jack are both hosts of The Paul Brown Show, the Bear’s morning show, along with Jillian Foote, who served as the guest ring announcer for the bout. King Dusty Adonis comes out first with Paul Brown and some schmuck in a powder blue suit straight out of the 1970s, then cuts a promo about how “Prince” Paul Brown is the only person he’s found that is worthy to tag with him. He passes the mic off to Paul Brown, who, as a guy who talks professionally, cuts a pretty decent promo about how the audience is poor and stupid. So, y’know, a generic heel promo, but with nice delivery. Also, he was wearing the toy
Dusty Adonis crown sold in the merch stands, which I found inexplicably funny. Chucky Blaze and Yukon Jack then came out and a very odd match took place. It had been talked about on the radio and in the build-up that Brown and Yukon had trained at the PWA academy, which leads me to believe that Paul Brown either didn’t bother to show up to those training sessions or is the worst student in the history of time. When he would tag out to Dusty… he wouldn’t actually exit the ring. He’d just stand there like a knob wherever he made the tag from while the referee yelled at him to get out of the ring. The referee eventually gave up. Inexplicably from a match construction standpoint, Yukon Jack, the radio host with only a few months of wrestling training, was the one who was isolated by heel team. I give him credit for being willing to take the bumps, but Blaze and Adonis really should have been in the ring for 90% of this thing. Eventually Chucky Blaze got the hot tag and hit a suicide dive onto Dusty on the floor which slammed Dusty and the security railing into the first row. Eventually Dusty Adonis was taken out of the equation with a superkick and Yukon Jack hit Paul Brown with something resembling the People’s Elbow with some Randy Savage flourishes. Yukon Jack then cut a promo that was essentially “I’m a wrestling fan and that’s okay!” On the way to intermission, one of the extra photographers tripped and tore down part of the entrance curtain. I laughed at his expense because I am a bad person.
Intermission
After the intermission, promoter Kurt Sorochan comes out and announces that the next Edmonton show will be Night of Champions (one of the PWA’s two biggest shows of the year, along with the anniversary show) in June at NAIT. He announces some of the card, including Tex Gaines’ final match before retirement against Chucky Blaze, a match to crown the first ever Women’s Champion featuring Valkyrie, Jordyn Brooks, and K.C. Spinelli, M vs. T-Bone in a Mayhem Championship steel cage weapons match, and a Money in the Bank match featuring Stryfe, Alex Plexis, Nightmare #2, Gama Singh Jr, Deryck Crosse, and King Dusty Adonis, as well as, potentially, others.
PWA Cruiserweight Championship Match
Andrew Hawks vs. Cam-ikaze ©
This is the third Edmonton show in a row to feature a Cruiserweight title match between Cam-ikaze and Andrew Hawks, and I’m totally fine with that. This was similar to their last match, but longer. I was happy that they didn’t copy any spots from previous matches, but instead gave the impression they were going to before taking things in a different direction. Cam-ikaze seems to have figured out how to do high flying moves without killing himself on the low ceiling (his solution, incidentally, is to do all the big high flying moves on the floor). Hawks tends to use a cruiserweight power arsenal against Cam-ikaze, including the double-arm backbreaker that Chris Jericho used to use in WCW all the time and a really cool Gory Special/Oklahoma Stampede combination (which I shall henceforth refer to as the Gory Stampede and probably steal to use in my comic at some point). I took a bunch of video during this match and threw it up on my YouTube channel, so I’ll refer you to that instead of trying to encapsulate most of it textually. Towards the end of the bout, Hawks started trying to lock in a Texas Cloverleaf, which probably would have benefited from knee work like in the first two bouts, although on the other hand, time ran out before Cam could give up, so perhaps it did make sense not to work the knee to support that. Either way, it went to a 20 minute time limit draw, which got Hawks good and angry. He cut a promo demanding a rematch, claiming that Cam was seconds away from tapping out and also that he deserved the Cruiserweight belt because he’d been screwed so many times (apparently throwing the ref in front of a dropkick results in a disqualification. Who knew?). Kurt Sorochan granted the rematch, with no time limit so there would be no excuses, but it’s Hawks’ final shot against Cam-ikaze.
Evan Adams & Eclipse vs. Flex On The Beach (Brady Roberts & Scotty Putty)
Evan Adams and Eclipse are the PWA Canadian Tag Team Champions (which still confuses me, as the tag titles are the only ones that have “Canadian” in front of them), but those belts aren’t on the line for this match. That seemed weird to me until after the show had ended and I realized that this match’s purpose was to inject some levity in between a pair of long, intense wars. Scotty Putty, who joined forces with surfer Brady Roberts at the last show, now rocks the same surfer-style trunks as Brady, and has also acquired some of Brady’s “being ambiguously gay is an instant source of heat” gimmick. The match starts with Brady insisting that Scotty needs sunscreen to wrestle, and rubbing it on his back to a chorus of boos and jeers. Once they had isolated Evan Adams, Scotty started doing crunches with Adams locked in a figure four head scissors. Shortly thereafter, he hefted Adams into a fireman’s carry and started doing squats before having a hard time and shouting for Brady’s help. Brady helped by groping Scotty’s nipples while helping him lift Adams. More boos. Adams would get his revenge, though. Brady missed a charge in the corner and slammed shoulder-first into the post. Scotty attempted to charge Adams, who ducked out of the way and shoved Scotty crotch first into Brady’s butt. That repeated a few times to raucous laughter. Eventually Adams got the hot tag to Eclipse, who hit a few falcon arrows, then awkwardly reversed an O’Connor roll for the three count. Scotty got caught blatantly pulling Eclipse’s trunks, and the referee would have none of that, allowing Eclipse to reverse the roll. Except that the reversal got Scotty tangled up in the ropes, so Eclipse had to drag him out to get the pin.
PWA Heavyweight Championship Match
Ravenous Randy Myers vs. Chris Steele ©
I`ve talked about how hot the crowd was for this show a little bit already, but this match really pushed things to the boiling point. Both Ravenous Randy and Chris Steele are faces, and going into this match I figured it would just be another in the long line of underwhelming Steele title defences. Boy was I ever wrong. Both guys started the match by trying to get the crowd on their side, which resulted in – I shit you not – roughly EIGHT straight minutes of duelling “let’s go Steele” and “let’s go Randy” chants. I’ve never heard anything like it. At the aforementioned eight minute mark the crowd started to get worn out and things devolved into a steady, dull roar. Before the five minute mark, both men had hit a plancha to the floor. Most of that five minutes was spent brawling, but after Steele slammed Randy on the floor and dropped him across the guard rail, things headed back inside the ring where the two traded flurries of offence. Ravenous Randy showed more offence in this one match than I think I’ve ever seen him deliver in total, and a lot of it was pretty cool, including a Northern Lights suplex, an interesting version of a tornado DDT, and flying elbow drop in tribute to the late Macho Man Randy Savage. After over fifteen minutes of action, Steele pressed Ravenous Randy over his head and splattered him on the mat with a gorilla press drop, then waited in the corner, gesturing for Randy to get up so he could spear him. As Steele started to take off for the spear, Dylan Knight ran out and pulled out his legs, then crotched him on the ring post before grabbing the PWA Championship belt and cleaning Ravenous Randy’s clock, ending the bout in a no contest.
After the match, Dylan Knight cut a promo while holding the PWA title belt. He claimed that it should be his belt, which prompted a brawl between the three wrestlers which took all four referees and management members Don “Sgt. Hazard” Ferguson, Kurt Sorochan, and Lance Storm to break up. Once things had settled down a little bit, Sorochan announced that he was sick of these three sticking their noses into each other’s business (wait, what? I’ve never seen these three interact before. If this storyline took place mostly in Calgary, paying it off in Edmonton probably isn’t a great idea), they would settle things at Night of Champions. In a triple threat steel cage match. And none of that “escape the cage” jazz, either.
Ring announcer What About Ivan ran down the Night of Champions card as the show ended.
Spot of the Night: Hawks’ Gory Stampede. I love that move.
Match of the Night: Andrew Hawks vs. Cam-ikaze. Steele vs. Ravenous Randy came reeeally close because of the crowd energy involved, but Hawks vs. Cam is the kind of match I’d watch over on DVD without it losing it’s magic.
Overall: This was the second best Edmonton show this year, behind the 10th Anniversary Show, which only Night of Champions will have a decent shot of dethroning, in my estimation. The only bad match was the tag team match with the guys from the Bear, but even that had some cool spots when Chucky and Dusty finally got into the ring together.
For more from Jeff, check out his acclaimed webcomic, HEAT: The Space Age of Pro Wrestling, and follow him on Twitter @HEATcomic.