Road to 16 Carat Gold 2020: Bielefeld

[Big Red Machine]

wXw Road to 16 Carat Gold 2020: Bielefeld (2/15/2020)- Bielefeld, Germany


MARIUS AL-ANI AND JURN SIMMONS TALK TRASH BACKSTAGE- Marius was a jerk to Jurn so Jurn insulted him back. This… builds some heat for their match tonight, I guess.

THE ROTATION STRIKES UP A CONVERSATION WITH RUST TAYLOR HAS HE ARRIVES AT THE BUILDING- Rust needs to work on his delivery. He’s painfully bland. He talked The Rotation into going to the office to ask for a match between them where The Rotation’s 16 Carat Gold spot is on the line, because while Rust might be painfully bland, The Rotation is painfully stupid.

LUCKY KID vs. MARIUS AL-ANI vs. JURN SIMMONS- 7.5/10
A very exciting three-way using the usual three-way story of “the third man will always there to break up your pin/submission.”

AMALE & LEVANIEL BACKSTAGE- entertaining
Amale claims the stipulation of tonight’s match is unfair and thinks Karsten is punishing her for something. Levaniel sees preventing Melanie Gray from becoming a potential contender to Amale’s belt as his way too… get Amale’s belt off, if you know what I mean.

TIM STUBBING vs. NORMAN HARRAS- 5/10
Solid wrestling for the time it got, with Harras playing the role of the heel bully without needing to cheat.

ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS JURN SIMMONS- A very good “this is why I’m going to win 16 Carat Gold” promo.

WINNER GETS THE ROTATION’S SPOT IN 16 CARAT GOLD: The Rotation(c) vs. Rust Taylor- 5.75/10
The Rotation’s back got worked over but he overcame it and retained his spot in 16 Carat Gold. The Rotation works very well in this Cheeseburger-esque spot wXw has him in where he is an underdog babyface that fans can get behind even with the knowledge that he’s probably not going to win too many matches against upper-card wrestlers. That being said, the fact that they really put things into motion with him by having him beat Absolute Andy cleanly was a stroke of genius, as it gives us a touchstone moment to come back to in order to remind ourselves that while The Rotation probably won’t win against an upper-card wrestler, he always has a chance.

JAY SKILLET TELLS VOLLGASTEREN THAT ABSOLUTELY ANDY IS SICK TONIGHT AND CAN’T WRESTLE- odd
Skillet tells our babyfaces that he got a call from Andy saying that he was sick and couldn’t wrestle tonight. Skillet also made fun of both Andy and Leon’s age. Pace asked Skillet to step in and be their partner but Skillet refused, saying that he was focused on defending his Shotgun Title tonight against Avalanche. Pace wondered what they were going to do without a partner but Leon said he had an idea.
I wrote his name in the header for the match, so I’m just going to spoil the mystery partner right how: Avalanche. I was very disappointed with this whole turn of events, as I was so excited for Andy’s babyface turn that seeing him backtrack in such a cowardly heelish way makes this feel a lot worse than an average bait-and-switch.
There is one way out of this that has me crossing my fingers and praying, though, and that is as follows: We only have known heel Jay Skillet’s word that Andy really is sick, and Andy and Skillet have been at odds lately, with Skillet likely unhappy that Andy refused to help him in his title defense against Avalanche later tonight. My hope is that Skillet actually laid Andy out backstage and stuffed him in a closet or something like that, then went over to VollGasteren and spun this tail with the intention of mentioning Avalanche’s name to put a seed in their minds to get them to ask Avalanche, who is a fighting babyface and would be glad to wrestle twice, thus weakening Avalanche for his title match later tonight against Skillet. Or maybe Leon actually thought of someone else and that person said know, but Skillet knew that Avalanche, being a nice dude, would come out to help when he saw his buddies in trouble, because VollGasteren actually came out on their own and acted like they didn’t have any back-up for…

PRETTY BASTARDS & OLIVER CARTER vs. VOLLGASTEREN & “THE AVALANCHE” ROBERT DREISSKER- 6/10
The heels jumped the bell on VollGasteren and beat them up for a while. Pace was the babyface in peril. Eventually Prince Ahura grabbed a mic and started mocking the babyfaces for having no friends willing to help them. Babyface announcer Sebastian Holmichel went so far as to suggest that the heels went to Absolute Andy’s house and poisoned him so that he wouldn’t be healthy enough to wrestle this match. Andy Jackson diplomatically opined that this was “a little farfetched.” A more accurate description would have been “completely paranoid.”
The babyfaces fought two-on-three for a good ten minutes before Avalanche came out to be their partner. As great of a babyface in peril as Pace was during the heat, the punches he threw while up on Carter’s shoulders were equally awful, clearly not making anything resembling contact with his opponent’s head.
Avalanche eventually came out when Pace needed to make a tag but Leon had been taken out on the outside, and fans popped pretty darn big for the babyfaces finally getting some help… only for Pace to be pulled back into the heel corner before he could make the tag. That was certainly an unexpected turn of events. You would think this would have deadened the crowd a bit for when the hot tag eventually came because it loses the momentum of the pop Avalanche had gotten for coming out, but it actually didn’t. Avalanche ran wild, and the babyfaces go the win when VollGastered did a completely wacky monkey flip into a Canadian Destroyer combo on Prince Ahura.

OLIVER CARTER & THE PRETTY BASTARDS BACKSTAGE- bad
This was them being angry, but it just went on for way too long and didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. Announcer Sebastian Holmichel came up to them and thye made fun of him a bit, in really weird ways. This was three minutes of yammering of which only about thirty seconds were decent.

VOLLGASTEREN & AVALANCHE BACKSTAGE- They congratulated each other on the win and each said they were sure the other would win their big upcoming title match. This clarified that Avalanche was indeed the guy Leon asked to team with them tonight, but that just makes me wonder why he took so damn long to show up. In reality, though, this was just a set-up for…

VOLLGASTEREN, AVALANCHE, & JAY SKILLET BACKSTAGE- good
Skillet shows up to be a tremendous douchebag. He not only says that there is chance that Avalanche will win the Shotgun Title from him tonight but also that VollGasteren won’t be the next tag champs because he and Andy will be the ones to take the tag titles from the Pretty Bastards, as they will surely be named the #1 contenders once they defeat Jordan Devlin & Scotty Davis next weekend at Dead End XIX.
The babyfaces remind him the Oliver Carter & the Pretty Bastards made fun of Andy in Obertrauling last week and told Skillet that he should stand up for his tag team partner and join them in their fight against Bobby Gunns’ crew. Skillet walked off. This was a nice little segment to build to the eventual split between Andy and Skillet.

LEVANIEL PROMO- an entertaining way to set the stage for the next match. We also learned that Levaniel is certain that if his team wins tonight, he’s getting laid.

MIXED TAG TEAM MATCH IN WHICH IF THE ALPHA LOVERS WIN, MELANIE GRAY WILL BE ALLOWED TO WRESTLE IN OBERHAUSEN AGAIN: Alpha Lovers (Melanie Gray & Alpha Kevin) vs. Amale & Levaniel)- 6.25/10
Melanie’s facials on her way out were FANTASTIC. First a great big deep breath of “okay… here we go,” followed by a relieved and appreciative smile when the fans cheered for her, as the last time she wrestled she had been a heel and they had all cheered her being barred from wrestling in Oberhausen.
This wasn’t a great technical match or even a great brawl, but it told its dual stories (Levaniel trying to cozy up to Amale and Melanie trying to earn her wXw future back) extremely well, and was entertaining as hell while doing so, culminating in a meaningful moment for fans. Melanie pinned Amale to get the win, not only winning back her right to wrestle in wXw’s home base of Oberhausen again, but also catapulting herself into the title picture by pinning the champ.

BOBBY GUNNS SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW- GREAT!
An EXCELLENT counterpoint to the sit-down interview they did with David Starr on the previous show to build up to the big title vs. wXw career match in the main event of 16 Carat Gold 2020: Night 2.

wXw SHOTGUN TITLE MATCH: Jay Skillet(c) vs. “The Avalanche” Robert Dreissker- 7/10
This was a very good fifteen minutes that told a fine story about Avalanche’s size and Skillet using his speed to avoid the big splash type of moves, building up to Avalanche finally hitting the Vader Bomb to regain the title.

THE ALPHA LOVERS CELEBRATE WITH SOME FRIENDS BACKSTAGE- fine
I see Julian Pace in this gaggle but don’t recognize anyone else, so I assume these are people they trained with at the wXw school? Amale showed up to a bitch. They let her rant, then laughed it off when she left.

AVALANCHE PROMO- good
Over the last few months he and Bobby Gunns have each made fun of the other after the other had lost his title. Now they’ve both got their titles back so Avalanche suggests that they have a match in Hamburg to find out who the better man is. He says they don’t have to put any titles on the line (likely because he knows Gunns wouldn’t risk losing his title), but he is fine with that because he wants to prove his superiority as well as attempt to Bobby Gunns’ unbeaten streak in Hamburg, which is rapidly approaching three and a half years at this point.

This was a fun little show from wXw. Nothing was too great, but nothing was bad either. They moved the storylines along well and built to both next week’s big show as well as next month’s 16 Carat Gold tournament.