Cero Reviews DEFY 1: Legacy

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cero2k
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Cero Reviews DEFY 1: Legacy

Post by cero2k » Jan 16th, '18, 13:32

DEFY 1: Legacy
January 13, 2017
Seattle, WA

Steve Migs Intro - Hypes the crowd and introduces the show/promotion. Has a big Jim Smallman influence.

"MDogg" Matt Cross vs King Khash - 5.5/10
Khash is the big heel going against the smaller, faster, Cross. Early in the match Cross goes for a standing corkscrew on Khash, who gets his knees up and Cross takes the counter straight on his knee, and so Khash focused the rest of the match working that knee. Cross made a quick comeback, hit a cutter for a really near fall, almost botched count. A foot stomp later, he won the match. Short match that made me wonder if Cross was actually hurting, Cross's selling was also really good. This being DEFY's first ever match, it was a bit underwhelming.

Mr. Fitness vs Eddie Van Glam - 4/10
These two used to be a tag team, that broke up, and are now taking their feud to DEFY. This is cool for the locals, but trying to start an OnDemand promotion with someone else's feud of two unrecognizable names is weird. Anyway, for someone who calls himself Mr. Fitness, he's really not that fit, especially just after a Matt Cross match. Van Glam's gimmick is that he is wearing a thong and gives himself an atomic wedgie wearing the thong as shoulder straps. Match was back and forward, kinda boring. Fitness won with his move Muscle Confusion and pulling the thong during the pin. This was as indie as indie can get.

Loser Leaves Seattle Match
Mike Santiago vs Ethan HD - 5/10
During Ethan HD's entrance, the announcers did one big pet peeve that I have with small indie promotions claiming that things are bigger than they are. They called Ethan HD an 'internet darling', he was even announced as such during intros, and I'm sorry, i've heard of him, he's been wrestling for 10+ years and he has never been relevant and especially not an 'internet darling'. Also, who the fuck debuts a promotion with a 'loser leaves town' match!?

Match was more of a brawl, announcers are telling me there is a lot of beef between them and they're being more violent than normal, but all I see is a well wrestled brawl. All back and forward, and just by watching the match, I wasn't able to distinguish who the heel and face is, at the end I figured the babyface was Ethan since he is the 'Internet Darling' and was slightly more flashy, while Santiago had more momentum-cutting moves like mule kicks. Santiago won with a knee to the face, so the babyface, who people may want to see again, just lost a loser leaves town in his debut. Fans even chanted the 'goodbye' song. Ok match, but stupidly booked.

"The Devil Himself" Drexl vs Carl "The Catch" Cunningham vs Nick Radford vs Kate Carney - 3.5/10
Straight from the get go, there was some kind of alliance between Radford and Carney for being babyfaces. Naturally, the heels would end up teaming too, and I don't think at any point we saw either of these pairings fighting each other, so this was arguably a tornado tag match. This match was green as ripe avocado, they completely botched a tower of doom spot and they just gave up on it. The match just kinda broke down and they called stuff on the go but were not that good on it, it ended like one of those indie battle royals to have the rookies debut. Carney won the match at the end.

Post-match - Drexl attacks Carney, drops her with a terribly and unsafe looking Fisherman suplex. Out came Davey Richards for the save, no one recognized him and the announcers have zero talent to put it over. It was until the Steve Migs said it on the mic that people reacted.

Davey Richards cuts a promo saying that on DEFY 2 he is entering (and announced) the tournament to crown a champ. Let me just repeat this, Davey broke the news on the tournament, not the promotion.

Big Jack vs "Mr. Athletic" Jeff Cobb - 5.5/10
So is Mr. Athletic and Mr. Fitness going to be a tag team? They should at least wrestle. Big Jack on his side, he's wearing a terrible attire, imagine MVP's singlet, but fat, skin tight, and wearing an under armor shirt underneath. Cobb was announced as 'former Lucha Underground Champion', way to kill kayfabe DEFY.

Match was somewhat of a hoss fight. Match started really slow with several test of strength hints, the usual shoulder block spots with big lads, and stuff like that. Big Jack worked on Cobb for a while, and after missing a top rope leg drop, Cobb made his comeback, tossed around Big Jack and got the win with a freaking roll up. A freaking roll up. Good strength display for Cobb, but that was about anything good in this match.

Greengo Loco & Batboy vs Los Sexi Mexis - 4/10
So again, apparently these teams have beef with each other, but as a debuting promotion, I don't even know who these guys are, so why don't you tell me why they hate each other? where have they fought before? why are they even fighting? all that stuff.

The match was one of the better wrestled matches so far, aside from a really ugly botch where one of the Sexi Mexis landed butt-first into Greengo's head, everything looked good, and that is taking in account the ring is not elevated, so the dives to the outside where not high at all. There was a stupid near fall where the taller Mexi straight up just asked the ref not to count and then kicked the guy doing the pin. This followed by an even worse thing as the smaller Mexi took his mask off, tossed it to Batboy and the tecnicos(?) got DQd as the finish.

Post-match - Sexi Mexis attack the other two. Big Jack comes out and kills Greengo and Batboy with a table.

Share Strickland Vignette - It's like a 'Shane returns to Seattle' mini movie. It was good. Strickland was born in Washington but hasn't been there since he was two weeks old, that shouldn't count as 'coming home'. Production value was awesome, but it was in my opinion, longer than it had to be, there was an interview part of it which could had been edited down a bit and if that is the main part of it, don't waste so much time with the wrestling showcase part (which was all in slow-mo by the way).

GFW Nex Gen Championship Match
"Swerve" Shane Strickland vs "The American Nightmare" Cody Rhodes (C) - 8.5/10
So you're telling me that you're building this promotion around Strickland, huge vignette and all, and he's wrestling for a title that he will most likely not win since it's another promotion's title? Why can't they just get someone to fight Strickland that will give him a big match but also a win, and let Cody work another match, main event even? There were a lot of 'fun' stupid shit going on before the match started including Cody and the ref doing the 2Sweet and Strickland hinting to superkick the ref, so we're just gonna assume this match doesn't have biases now?

This was easily the best match of the night. Both men worked babyface, but Cody did do some heelish Bullet Club stuff. They went back and forward from the start and at a fast PWG-style pace. They didn't really work on any limbs or anything, they just slowly escalated the viciousness of their moves working up to the finishers Ref took a sick looking dropkick from Sweve, and after hitting a cutter, he had a clear win. Cody hits the Cross Rhodes for another near fall once a new ref made it in, and at this point these two decide to 2Sweet each other, trade strikes and end with a roll up by Cody for the win as he retains the title. Great match, but a bit of a bad finish to a debuting show.

Post-match - They shake hands and hug. Cody puts over Shane.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
My first impressions of DEFY are that there is a lot of potential here, mainly in the production department, but they really need to address some stuff. One year ago I saw this promotional video for this show, trailer looked awesome, so I was really interested in watching a cinematic looking show, but after watching this show, it was REALLY underwhelming, hell, it was bad. I'll give it another shot with the hopes that it gets better. If it's for the sake of cinematic wrestling, i'll just go watch Riptide Wrestling if DEFY doesn't work out

Commentary (Matt Farmer and someone else I never got his name) need to stop pretending like DEFY has this long history and are already at the top of the food chain. We don't know whatever local feuds you're booking. If your target audience for the onDemand product is Seattle, then I'll shut up, but if you're pretending to appeal to other parts of the world, then be smarter.

Roster and booking was give and take. I can't complain for using local talent since they're barely starting, but that comes with its own issues as getting green guys or generic gimmicks. I think this will slowly get better as they start getting more money and they get better wrestlers. Also, who the fuck books a Loser Leaves Town match in a debuting match?

Also, I never knew why the show is called 'Legacy'. Was it because of Cody?
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