BRM Reviews wXw Dead End XVIII (GREAT!)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews wXw Dead End XVIII (GREAT!)

Post by Big Red Machine » Mar 4th, '19, 19:17

wXw Dead End XVIII (2/15/2019)- Hamburg, Germany


WINNER GETS TO CHOOSE HIS OPENING ROUND OPPONENT IN THE 16 CARAT GOLD TOURNAMENT: David Star & “The Avalanche” Robert Dreissker vs. Jurn Simmons & Timothy Thatcher- 7/10
A great opener that used the dissension you would expect when seeing the stipulation to get over its importance, but managed to do so without going over the top with it or having any of the wrestlers act out of character.

FAYE JACKSON vs. KILLER KELLY vs. TONI STORM- 5.75/10
Good for the time it got. Those months of Kelly losing three-ways when one opponent pinned the other while Kelly was stuck on the outside finally paid off with a great false finish here. Kelly eventually pinned Faye to win.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- very good
Kelly intercepted and posed with Toni’s belt, which pissed Toni off. Kelly did seem apologetic and when she realized what she had done, and the posing felt like her acting on an impulse, but Toni’s anger is totally understandable. Kelly and Toni have a stare-down. The ref tries to defuse things by calling for a handshake. The fans, on the other hand, are giving a booking suggestion by chanting “SIXTEEN CARAT!” Kelly extended her hand but Toni responds by sapping her in the face, then kicking her in the head. Toni leaves as Kelly recovers and fumes in the ring. This should be one hell of a match.

JAY FK PROMO- This was pretty much the same promo they cut on the last show to build up to this match. They blamed their past failures and losing the titles on being put in multi-team matches rather than the standard two-on-two, and insist this time they will win because it is just two-on-two. Not only did we have subtitles for this, but also for the fans’ chants. That was fun. It’d be nice to have that as often as possible.

wXw WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: RISE (Peter Bouncer & Ivan Kiev)(c) vs. Jay FK- 6/10
Heat on Bouncer, hot tag, comeback, finish. Not much else to write.

WALTER vs. VEIT MULLER- 8.75/10
Almost twenty-five minutes of WAR during which Muller finally earned WALTER’s respect. Throw in a few good little callback spots that the small package and the crowd being 100% behind their hometown boy and you’ve got a wonderful pay-off to this story.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- great
Muller wants a handshake but WALTER walks off, then comes back and offers him what looked like the official Catchpoint handshake instead. Have RingKampf been using that, too, and I just never noticed? Before Muller could accept it, David Starr decided to come out to inform WALTER that Starr was choosing him to be his opponent in the first round of 16 Carat Gold. WALTER went to go confront Starr, which was nothing more than a harsh stare-down, then went to the back, meaning Muller still hasn’t gotten his handshake. This did not go unnoticed by Muller, who gave Starr a “what the f*ck, dude?” look, for which Starr seemed to apologize.

LUCKY KID vs. DA MACK- 6.75/10
This is a grudge match that he requested. Lucky Kid should not be his usual jovial self on the way to the ring. And he shouldn’t be his old goofball self in the ring, either. This is not good. This feels like early 2018 Lucky, not the guy we saw transform over the second half of the year into someone we wholeheartedly believed could win a championship. This eventually turned into the brawl that it should have been and Lucky got the win.

IF A4 WIN, AL-ANI GETS A WORLD TITLE SHOT AT 16 CARAT GOLD; IF GUNNS & DRAGUNOV WIN, GUNNS GETS A WORLD TITLE SHOT AT 16 CARAT GOLD: Bobby Gunns & Ilja Dragunov vs. A4 (Marius Al-Ani & Absolute Andy)- 8.5/10
Early on they fought on the outside FOREVER with no count-out, but other than that, this match was awesome! It’s really nice to see partners actually get along even when there are issues between them. This match was very exciting, and they did an excellent job of making both Marius and Bobby look like possible #1 contenders (and Ilja looked strong as usual as well).
The other potential negative to this match to some people was the one very literal “false finish” that they did. You know you’re doing too many screwy finishes when my first thought after “yay! The babyfaces won!” was “unless it was Andy ringing the bell.” If the babyfaces had not won the match in the end then this would have bugged me, but because they did I had no problem with it. That being said, given the preponderance of screwy finishes in wXw main events as of late, I can’t fault anyone who got annoyed by this spot.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- very good
Bobby Gunns cut an awesome babyface “I’m going to take your title” promo on Absolute Andy, so Andy superkicked Bobby’s brother Vinny.


A GREAT show from wXw, moving some stories along, bringing others to a close, and delivering two AWESOME matches in the most anticipated matches on the card. Everything that wasn’t awesome was at least fun to watch and the show was a breeze to sit through. Tomorrow night we’re on to Bielefeld where the build to 16 Carat Gold 2019 will continue.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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ROH/CMLL Global Wars Espectacular: Day 3

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