After watching night one of the 16 Carat, I can’t say I was all that enthusiastic about the rest of the tournament, and really, the first match didn’t do anything to raise my hopes. The first quarterfinal pitted Eddie Kingston against Shinobu, a match that went less than eight minutes and felt just as perfunctory as most of the first round matches the night before. Kingston wrestled a bit more like a heel, and the crowd responded by treating Shinobu as an underdog heel. Kingston broke out his finishing offense before succumbing to the shooting star press. Not exactly Kingston’s most inspired work.
Up next next was the first non-tournament match of the night, a six man tag featuring a couple of men already eliminated from the tournament and others who weren’t seen on night one. Keel Holding of Sasa Keel, Michael Isotov, and Aaron Insane wrestled Paul Tracey, Sebastian Sage, and Toby Blunt. Blunt is a high flyer who wears Hawaiian style pants. That’s the best way to describe him. Blunt is a decent enough high flyer, but his look and some general awkwardness in the ring are preventing him from being a top level wrestler. Keel Holding did a solid job as the heels getting themselves over as such and working over Blunt, the smallest wrestler in the match. Pace picked up after the hot tag, and the action was just good enough to the match was worth checking out. Blunt won the match with a swanton bomb on Insane. This wasn’t a great match but still solid.
Up next was another outstanding high flyers affair as Ricky Marvin defeated Jay Skillet. The match went only ten minutes, but they packed in as much action as they possibly could and really made this non-tournament match mean something. Lots of stiff strikes gave way to high flying and dives. I also liked they some of what worked for Marvin on the first night didn’t on night two. The biggest examples were the referee not assisting with the enziguri and Skillet with counters on some sequences. This was tons of fun and with a few more minutes could have easily been four stars or more. Marvin ultimately won with the cradle tombstone piledriver.
By the next match on night two, I felt like I was actually getting into things for the first time. Helps when you have Zack Sabre Jr. wrestling in matches. Even though this went under eight minutes, I was okay because Robert Dreissker and Sabre probably shouldn’t be having long matches. Sabre went to work right away with forearms, but Dreissker responded with power offense. Sabre again tried to work over the left arm, but the story was Dreissker’s power proving to be too much as he bucklebombed the hell out of Sabre to escape the hold. Dreissker again went for the Vaderbomb to finish the match but missed it this time. Sabre used a series of kicks to get the victory in an enjoyable match.
Up next was basically a Karsten Beck special as he defeated Super Crazy with the belt. This was a very average match. Nothing brought me into the match completely. The finish was pretty dumb as Crazy first brought a title belt into the ring for use on Beck. The official obviously saw that and took it away. Beck used the distraction opportunity to hit Crazy on his own. Just a non-sensical finish meant to forward Beck’s storyline of cheating to win storyline instead of actually entertaining the audience. Crazy’s moonsault was one of the few highlights of the match.
If feels like I gave half the matches on night two three stars, but up next was another match that was good but not great. I was expecting a hardcore battle between Masada, Bad Bones, Michael Dante, and Yuji Okabayashi, but this was a pretty straightforward brawl. Dante and Masada started out exchanging wristlocks, which caused me to laugh. Lots of strikes among all four men. There was some crowd brawling but nothing else in the way of foreign objects. Masada was the first eliminated after a roll-up out of nowhere by Dante. Okabayashi dumped Dante quickly with a lariat. Bones connected on an Omega Driver on Okabayashi (pretty damn impressive visual) to get the win. The action was good enough, particularly during the ending sequence, to warrant the rating I gave it.
The final tournament match of the weekend saw Tommy End advance over another high flyer in Jonathan Gresham. This was slightly better than End’s first round match with Ricochet. Gresham was actually given some hope. What marred the match a bit was End’s partner in the Sumerian Death Squad, Michael Dante, interfering toward the end. These two also kept up the trend of having a crowd brawl being built into the structure. I can understand one match, particularly if it’s a hardcore or Falls Count Anywhere stipulation, going into the crowd, but otherwise crowd brawls are useless. They usually never lead to anything important, and most of the audience can’t see what’s going on anyway. That goes for the live crowd and the people watching on DVD. Gresham tried to finish End with a 450 splash but missed this time. It proved to be what did him in given the context of the match as End quickly hit a brainbuster and double foot stomp to get the three count in a fun match.
It’s funny to think of how many times Chuck Taylor and Ricochet have wrestled each other, yet here they actually teamed up. I have no doubt their never ending feud will continue some place, but it was nice to see them have a fun match with a rapping tag team by the name of Hot and Spicy. Sadly and disappointingly, Curry Man was not involved in this match, but Axel Dieter Jr. & Da Mack looked more than competent against Team Kentucky. The best way I can think of to describe the match is a sort of slowed down version of a Dragon Gate tag team match. Neither team seemed willing to go full heel, but both teams wanted to break out all their cool stuff. Hot and Spicy kept up with Ricochet and Taylor. Very good match that showed off both teams.
If you’ve ever read my 2010 and 2012 wXw 16 Carat DVD reviews, you know I am not a Big Van Walter fan. He wrestled in the main event of night one as the challenger for the wXw world unified title against Axel Tischer. Given some of the tournament matches couldn’t even get ten minutes, I was appalled this went 26. There were moments where I enjoyed the match, but this was at times boring and other times a sloppy mess. Tischer finally won after choking his challenger out. I’m sad this night couldn’t have had a better ending because I enjoyed this night significantly more than the night one. There were a lot of good wrestling matches and a couple of borderline great ones. This was worth my money and time for the most part. My only hesitation would be the lack of a really defining match to bring it all together and a main event which had a lot to be desired.
Grade: B-
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-Taped from Oberhausen, Germany
-2013 16 Carat Gold Tournament- Quarterfinal #1 Shinobu defeats Eddie Kingston by pinfall after a shooting star press./7:48/**1/2
-Paul Tracey, Sebastian Sage, and Toby Blunt defeat Keel Holding (Sasa Keel, Michael Isotov & Aaron Insane) by pinfall. Blunt pins Insane with a swanton bomb. /12:22/***
-Ricky Marvin defeats Jay Skillet by pinfall with the cradle tombstone piledriver/9:49/***1/2
-2013 16 Carat Gold Tournament- Quarterfinal #2: Zack Sabre Jr. defeats Robert Dreissker by pinfall after a series of soccer style kicks./7:28/***
-2013 16 Carat Gold Tournament- Quarterfinal #3: Karsten Beck defeats Super Crazy by pinfall after a belt shot/10:09/**1/2
– Bad Bones wins a four way eliminator over Yuji Okabayashi , Michael Dante, and Masada. Dante sneaks in and rolls up Masada for the first elimination. Okabayashi pins Dante after a lariat. Bones pins Okabayashi after an Omega Driver/13:47/***
-2013 16 Carat Gold Tournament- Quarterfinal #4: Tommy End defeats Jonathan Gresham by pinfall with the double stomp/11:25/***1/4
– Chuck Taylor and Ricochet defeat Hot and Spicy (Axel Dieter Jr. & Da Mack). Ricochet pins Da Mack after the 630 splash/15:56/***1/2
-wXw Unified World Heavyweight Championship: Axel Tischer defeats Big Van Walter after a choke-out/26:03/**
16 Carat 2013 was a pretty big disappointment all around, after two great years.