BRM Reviews PWG The Ernest P. Worrell Memorial

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews PWG The Ernest P. Worrell Memorial

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 12th, '22, 22:30

PWG The Ernest P. Worrell Memorial (3/12/2005)- City of Industry, CA


Hello everyone, and welcome back to BRM’s Monthly “This Day in Wrestling History” Review Series! Because it worked out so well last month, we’re going to continue with just grabbing a DVD off of my shelf that I bought while in college and expected to have time to watch but never got around to. This month we travel back to the year 2005 and the relatively early days of Pro Wrestling Guerrilla for PWG The Ernest P. Worrell Memorial!


Okay… that random Banana in the middle of the screen has to be the most obvious Easter Egg I’ve ever seen. But don’t click on it before you watch the show, because it will spoil some of the matches for you.

OPENING SEGMENT- bad
Excalibur and Super Dragon and in the ring. Excalibur says that Super Dragon is the only loyal member of SBS and says that Disco Machine is on a power trip because Disco Machine suspended him for a month recently. He calls Disco Machine out and tells him he’ll have to choose between being a member of SBS and being PWG’s Interim Commissioner. Disco Machine came out… and as he was coming out, Super Dragon attacked Excalibur from behind and ran off.
The fans wanted Disco Machine to dance, so he did, but Excalibur shoved him and told him to “STOP THAT SH*T!” They shook hands and Disco Machine said they were better together than apart and declared his loyalty to PWG, to Excalibur… and also to Super Dragon, who had just attacked Excalibur. This didn’t bother Excalibur for some reason, and they hugged.
Hook Bomberry and Top Gun Talwar came out. Talwar yelled a lot and said something I couldn’t understand, but they all appeared to be on the same page. This was very low rent, and most of that was due to everyone involved feeling like people who were playing characters and giving speeches rather than regular people.

TOP GUN TALWAR, HOOK BOMBERO, DISCO MACINE, & EXCALIBUR vs. CHARLES MERCURY, RONIN, & THE BALLARD BROTHERS- 4.5/10
There was some good athletic stuff in here, but there was WAY too much of both wrestlers and fans making annoying noises seemingly just for the sake of making annoying noises. There was also a lot of comedy, which ranged from meh to bad. Aside from Excalibur, everyone in this match came across as someone having fun playing pro wrestler rather than actually being pro wrestlers.
Talwar attacked Disco Machine to lead to the finish.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- decent
Top Gun Talwar and Hook Bomberry beat up Excalibur and Disco Machine. Talwar reveals that he was the one who stole the tag title belts because he was upset that he wasn’t booked in the tournament. Disco Machine brawled to the back with both heels.

CHRIS SABIN vs. RICKY REYES- 7.75/10
This was a great wrestling match with a crowd that, while they clearly had no rooting interest, were highly responsive to and appreciative of everything the wrestlers did.

LOS LUCHAS vs. HUMAN TORNADO & SCORPIO SKY (w/Dino Winward)-6.75/10
There was some really great athletic stuff in here, but it felt like it was dragging quite a bit as well.

FOUR-WAY MATCH FOR A PWG TITLE SHOT LATER TONIGHT: El Generico vs. AJ Styles vs. Kevin Steen vs. Christopher Daniels- 6.75/10
This just didn’t work for me. It never really came together to feel like one big match instead of a series of short singles encounters.

ARROGANCE PROMO- absolutely terrible
It’s their usual stupid racist (and similar) stuff that doesn’t even work for heat because everyone seems to be having fun with it. This was just a giant waste of time (about TEN MINUTES, a full twelfth of the DVD) made worse by it being in poor taste. Kaz also got to cut a promo playing into the Arrogance promo, which was meh. He then brought out his mystery partner for tonight, the returning Joey Ryan, who is Scott Lost’s former partner

PWG TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Arrogance (Chris Bosh & Scott Lost)(c) vs. Frankie Kazarian & Joey Ryan- 5.5/10
Kaz got to do some cool stuff, but mostly this was just meh. Kaz stopped Joey from using a chair on the heels, which allowed Bosh to absolutely DESTROY Joey with a chairshot to the head (somehow I don’t feel too bad about that one) for the win.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT-
People check on Joey Ryan, who doesn’t appear to have moved since taking an unprotected chairshot to the head. Eventually he is able to get up with Kaz’s help, but then he kicks Kaz in the nuts. He starts to stomp on Kaz until Excalibur comes out to pull him off. Arrogance come back and start to stomp on Kaz, and they attack Excalibur as well when Excalibur tries to check on Kaz.
Joey then cut a promo explaining his actions. He said that Kaz, just like all of the fans, expects him to be the good guy, but that hasn’t gotten him anywhere. Up until this point, the promo was good (with one caveat that I will get to in a moment). Then Joey just went fully ridiculous cartoon heel, blaming the fans for cheering him more than Lost when they were teaming together, thus creating the friction that led to their break-up and to Joey losing his “best friend.” Ryan apologized to Lost and they hugged. The crowd did not take this seriously at all. Kaz came back and chased them all off before being tackled by referees.
My caveat on Joey’s promo is as follows. Whether he was actually hurt or was just selling really well, the dude just got hit in the head with a chair, and this turn was a spur of the moment thing. It strained credulity to me hat he could have had such a coherent speech prepared. This would have worked a lot better as a promo at the end of the show.

PWG TITLE MATCH: Super Dragon(c) vs. Kevin Steen- 8.25/10
Steen jumped Super Dragon from behind during his entrance. The first few seconds of this were muted. You might think that that’s PWG getting around copyright issues by muting licensed music, but I have it on good authority that it wasn’t muted, and what we were hearing on this night was an experiment they ditched after this one show, which was to use an a capella version of Super Dragon’s theme, sung by Super Dragon himself.
The video got screwed up when they brawled in the crowd. There was a guy in the front row in a rather offensive shirt. He wanted to hug Steen but Steen shoved him. There was also a lot of language in here that people won’t like nowadays. Just letting you know.
Steen got Super Dragon back into the ring so we could officially start the match. They had one hell of a brawl with some tremendous nearfalls. Steen got a little too arrogant at the end and tried to go for a Psycho Driver of some number but Super dragon slipped loose and gave Steen a taste of his own medicine with a Pack Piledriver for the win.

EASTER EGG BANANA:
EXCALIBUR & DISCO MACHINE PROMO- bad
Excalibur and Disco Machine cut a promo on Hook Bomberry and Top Gun Talwar for turning on them. Ronin came through and showed them respect, so Excalibur put them over. His promo was a little too over the top for me, and then throwing in the accusation of steroid use killed this for me.

CHRIS SABIN PROMO- fine
He’ll be back in PWG, and he teases bringing in some buddies.

HOOK BOMBERRY AND TOP GUN TALWAR PROMO- very bad
They plan to “go to Tijuana, kill a hooker, and do a line of coke off her ass.” They made reference to Jose Canseco’s accusations of steroid use on the part of… well… everyone. Without the comedy, this would have a fine promo, but there was just too much goofball crap here.

JOEY RYAN PROMO- Ah. Here is the better version of that promo.

ARROGANCE PROMO- horrendous and embarrassing
They are interviewing the fan they accused of being mentally disabled before (they used a different word though. For “mentally disabled,” I mean. Not for “before”). I was so thankful that there was no one else around when this came on. Don’t even watch this. It’s just gross. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.


This was a bad show from PWG. Despite two excellent matches and short two-hour run-time way too much of the show drags… and then, of course, there is the stuff that is downright awful. This was a useful reminder of what early PWG was like. Fortunately, they would continue to improve over the next few years until they really peaked in the early 2010s, before just giving up on putting any effort whatsoever into storylines and just booked a bunch of work-rate matches with the results being pretty much irrelevant (and certainly irrelevant in comparison to Dave snowflakes). Next month, we’ll look at a show with one of those matches every fan really “should” see, but I haven’t gotten around it yet, because… well… it’s two guys whose stuff I don’t enjoy, from a time period that I also really don’t enjoy.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

Upcoming Reviews:
FIP in 2005
ROH Validation
PWG All-Star Weekend V: Night 2
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ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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