BRM Reviews PWG BOLA 2013: Night 2

[Big Red Machine]

PWG Battle of Los Angeles 2013: Night 2 (8/31/2013)- Reseda, CA

BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Drake Younger vs. Brian Cage- 5/10

BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Kevin Steen vs. Johnny Gargano- 7.5/10
Steen works over Garnago’s midsection, Garnago works over Steen’s neck. Good story, good action.

BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES QUARTERFINAL MATCH: Michael Elgin vs. Roderick Strong- 7/10

BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES QUARTERFINAL MATCH: ACH vs. Kyle O’Reilly- 8.75/10
AWESOME! Especially that finish!

B-BOY, WILLIE MACK, & TOMASSO CIAMPA vs. JOEY RYAN, CHUCK TAYLOR, & TRENT?- 6.5/10
Lots of fun CHIKARA-style comedy in here. Towards the end of the match, Ciampa got ready to powerbomb someone onto a bunch of chairs, but the other wrestlers pleaded for him not to do it. Ciampa was going to do it anyway, but then Brian Cage, who Ciampa had done the same thing to last night, came out to stop him, and I got all excited because I thought PWG was actually going to do a feud… but then it turned out to be idiotic because Ciampa just bent down and let Cage powerbomb him onto the chairs.

BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES SEMIFINAL MATCH: Michael Elgin vs. Johnny Gargano- 8/10
Awesome! That crossface spot was AMAZING! The whole time I was on the edge of my seat with no idea whether Gargano would tap or not.

BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES SEMIFINAL MATCH: Drake Younger vs. Kyle O’Reilly- 6.5/10
Kyle’s selling of his neck was pretty bad here. Drake kept working his neck over but it didn’t really seem affect Kyle at all, other than the standard “oh. I just got hit with a move” selling. And speaking of bad selling, Kyle also decided to adopt Nigel’s stupid “fighting spirit of the rebound in the ropes” spot. It was dumb when Nigel did it and it even stupider now. I was also a bit confused about the rules. It is okay to use a steel chair, but not okay to do a fishhook? Why are both not equally illegal?

ADAM COLE & THE YOUNG BUCKS vs. A.R. FOX, RICH SWANN, & CANDICE LERAE- 8.5/10
A super-crazy awesome match. It is rare that you see a crowd so into a match. The crowd was just ultra-hot for this match, especially the three babyfaces. There was some f*cking crazy stuff in here, too, including a Poison-Dragonrana, amazing dives, some ridiculously hard superkicks, and Candice simultaneously hitting both Bucks with one-handed ballplexes.

BATTLE OF LOS ANGELES TOURNAMENT FINALS: Michael Elgin vs. Kyle O’Reilly- 7/10
They stole that stupid spot from that overrated Ishii vs.Shibata G1 match. I hated it then, and I hate it even more now because they are just blatantly ripping off a stupid spot instead of just doing one (you can find my reasoning for disliking that spot in my upcoming review of New Japan’s G1 Climax 23: Day 4. If I haven’t posted it within a week, bother me).
I get that the wrestlers love the creative freedom, but I think that PWG really needs an agent (or at least more communication between the wrestlers). This is the tournament finals, and when I saw someone kick out at one, my first thought wasn’t “WOW!” It was “already seen that tonight.” Fighting spirit out of a German Suplex? I saw that about nineteen times in the second f*cking match of this tournament. These spots would have been great here if I hadn’t seen them already so recently.
I also really didn’t like the finish for a few reasons. First, it seemed to be pretty much Kyle vs. ACH match from earlier. Second, Kyle had spent the entire f*cking match (aside from the G1 rip-off spot) working over Elgin’s neck with guillotine chokes and DDT’s and even a brainbuster… but then Kyle goes to the arm and all of a sudden gets the win? Yeah, I know that Excalibur pointed out that it was the same arm that Gargano had worked over earlier, but then why not go after the arm all match?

AFTERMATH- Adam Cole comes out and mockingly congratulate Kyle on his victory, so Kyle kicks him in the head. The Young Bucks come out and beat Kyle down. Candice LeRae tries to make the save but is quickly taken out. Then Joey Ryan shows up and tells them that he is the only one allowed to beat on Candice. He superkicks Cole, but eats a double superkick from the Bucks. Then Drake Younger came out and he got beat down, too. Finally Rick Knox showed up with a chair and held the heels at bay while Kevin Steen left the announce table to back him up… but then Steen turned on Knox and hit him with a Package Piledriver.
Steen then hugs the three non-masked people he hates the most in the world, gives Candice a Package Piledriver, kicks Joey in the ribs, and then breaks the BOLA trophy. Then an army of babyfaces shows up way too late to make the save.
Kyle gets on the mic and then cuts a generic babyface promo about how winning tournaments is the reason he became a pro wrestler, and about how they all do everything for the fans. He then says that he wants to challenge Cole for the belt. This really should have been some sort of fiery promo about getting revenge, not some sort of “thank you to the people who have given me this opportunity” type of speech.

I was also hoping there would be some sort explanation for why Steen joined up with three people he hates, but there was none. I know they shot a promo about it. Would it really have been that hard to tack it onto the end of this DVD?

Overall, an AWESOME show from PWG. Awesome matches and a big angle to close the show… but is it the Show of the Year? If I compare it to my current Show of the Year, ROH Manhattan Mayhem V, just based on average match score, the ROH show has a slight edge, but the thing that really put the ROH show above this for me is that this show was pretty difficult to sit through. It took me about three sittings to get through the whole thing. I couldn’t just sit down and enjoy it the whole way through like I could with Manhattan Mayhem V. Your opinion may differ of course, but while this isn’t my Show of the Year for 2013, it is definitely my runner-up, and is absolutely worth buying.