BRM Reviews wXw We Love Wrestling- Open-Air Live in Kutenholtz (disappointing)

[Big Red Machine]

wXw We Love Wrestling- Open-Air Live in Kutenholtz (8/29/2020)- Kutenholtz, Germany


JURN SIMMONS FINDS PRETTY BASTARDS IN A RESTAURANT- weird
Pretty Bastards have come to the same city the show is in even though it’s their day off. Maggot thinks this is a dumb idea, but Prince Ahura insisted, so they did. Please remember that wXw is a “pretend the cameras aren’t there” promotion, so you can’t say that they were playing dumb to fool the cameras into thinking they wouldn’t interfere in a match later or whatever.
Jurn Simmons walked up to them. Maggot asked “how did you find us?” and I’d like an actual answer to that, too, as all Jurn said was “you guys aren’t hard to find.” Having Maggot ask that question and then not giving a concrete answer makes the question itself feel like a wink at the camera, and thus I don’t like it, as I find it immersion-breaking.
Jurn tells them that they have all been signed to a match tonight where Pretty Bastards will defend the wXw World Tag Team Titles against Jurn Simmons and a partner whose identity is unknown even to Jurn. This definitely seems like the sort of thing Absolute Andy would do just to f*ck with everyone.
Then Marius Al-Ani shows up and asks Pretty Bastards why they are hanging out with a loser like Jurn instead of someone cool like him. He tells that they can kiss their titles goodbye because he got a text from Andy telling him that he is getting a tag title shot tonight with a mystery partner. Al-Ani says he doesn’t care who his partner is, even if it’s “the biggest dork,” he’s still going to win the titles. Jurn did a tremendous face-palm at this. Pretty Bastards got a text from Andy verifying to them that this was actually booked, and then started laughing. They said they would see Marius and his partner later, and left.
Jurn then explained to Marius what Andy has done. Marius finally accepted this, and then told Jurn that everything will be fine so long as Jurn follows his instructions. Jurn sarcastically agreed to this, simply for the sake of avoiding an argument. I will give them credit here for because the “you just do everything I say” bit felt like it actually came about naturally instead of the usual pointless bickering, and I liked that Jurn- the babyface- was the adult in the room. Plus, the “we all know we’re going to fight about this later, so there so no reason to fight about it now, too” approach fits in with Jurn’s personality quite well.

EMIL SITOCI vs. RAMBO- 5.5/10
Rambo’s didn’t look very good early on, but he shaped up by the end. Rambo worked the back while Sitoci worked the midsection. Sitoci won with a diving elbow drop.


BOBBY GUNNS VIDEO PACKAGE- excellent (though I’m almost certain they had previously shown us this during a season one episode of Shotgun 2020.

DAS HIMMELSCHLOSS WITH SPECIAL GUEST DIETER MURCK- kind of pointless, but I might be missing something here.
Deiter Murck is a very rotund older gentleman who must work for wXw because he already had a microphone and was wearing his own t-shirt… but he was seated with the fans. He said some mean things to Levaniel, then told Levaniel that the people here in Kutenholtz want to see action. This brought out Baby Allison for…

BABY ALLISON vs. LEVANIEL- -0.5/10
This was REALLY bad. It was a combination of meh comedy and wrestling, and about half of the wrestling looked bad. The fact that it only went three and a half minutes was a mercy. Levaniel was rude to Allison in the beginning to get heat, but the announcers reminded me that Baby Allison betrayed Sara Leone at Shortcut to the Top and she also licks people’s faces against their will, so this was really heel vs. heel in my book.

EZEL (Abdul & Aytac) (w/Metehan) vs. ANIL MARIK & VINCENT HEISENBERG (w/“The Avalanche” Robert Dreissker)- 4.25/10
Before this match we got a replay of the segment from Shotgun where Normal Harras and Metehan formalized the “we won’t go for your belts if you don’t go for ours” truce between their two factions. The announcers said it wasn’t healthy for competition and said that management is trying to find a solution to it.
All of these guys other than Heisenberg are pretty green, so the match definitely was not as crisp as one might like. Ezel worked over Anil’s arm a bit, and they got the win after Metehan got involved on their behalf.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- decent
Ezel kept beating Marik down after the match, so Avalanche leapt into the ring to make the save for his trainee. He cut a promo on Metehan for not imparting honorable values to Abdul & Aytac. He challenged Metehan to defend his title tonight and they traded barbs, with Metehan eventually being goaded into putting his title on the line.

IVAN KIEV vs. THE ROTATION- 5.75/10
The Rotation was hoping that beating a former Shotgun Champion Kiev will boost him to getting another shot at that title, but it was Kiev who came out with the big win. They told a fine story making use of the size difference between them.

wXw WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Pretty bastards(c) vs. Marius Al-Ani & Jurn Simmons- 7/10
There was lots of gaga in the beginning from both teams. Jurn and Marius did competing poses in the corners so the crowd could cheer for Jurn and boo Marius. Pretty Bastards eventually took advantage of this to jump their opponents and start the match. Throughout the match they did a good job of telling the story of Marius and Jurn not being on the same page and not being happy working together, but they were adults about the situation. Pretty Bastards worked over Marius’ injured arm for a bit, and their use of double-teams served as a good contrast with Marius and Jurn. The finish saw Jurn accidentally hit Marius whatever he’s calling his version of the Claymore Kick, then get rolled up by Prince Ahura for the pin.
I was extremely shocked that Marius and Jurn’s argument after the match didn’t turn physical. Looking at the roster, I think we might be heading for these two forming a tag team, just because there really aren’t any high-level teams in the promotion to challenge Pretty Bastards right now, and in the wake of speaking out they lost members of their two other top teams at the moment (Jay Skillet from Jay-AA/Jay-FK and Julian Pace from VollGasteren), as well as the Scotty Davis/Jordan Devlin team that had just started up and seemed like they were headed for Jay-AA.

MARIUS AL-ANI PROMO- great!
He complains hat the interviewer didn’t come out to interview him like he was supposed to (this was filmed at first from a camera resting on a table and Marius stormed in and yelled at the cameraman to start filming him) then blamed tonight’s loss on Jurn. Marius is tremendous when he rants.

wXw SHOTGUN TITLE MATCH: Metehan(c) (w/Ezel) vs. “The Avalanche” Robert Dreissker (w/Anil Marik & Vincent Heisenberg)- 6.5/10
Metehan jumped Avalanche from behind to start things off. They got some good drama out of him working over Avalanche’s shoulder later on, but I thought the shine went on for too long and would have been better spent working on the shoulder. The finish saw Ezel get involved, stopping Avalanche from hitting the Vader Bomb and buying Metehan time to recover and hit his finisher. It looked pretty clear to me like they were touching Avalanche and thus it really should have been a DQ. The fact that the students pulled them off quickly enough doesn’t negate the fact that they interfered in the match.

DIE RAUCHERPAUSE (Bobby Gunns & Norman Harras) vs. PRUGELBRUDER (Mike Schwarz & Alpha Kevin)- 7/10
Tremendous douchebag heel antics from Bobby and Norman before the match. They had a brawl which just barely passed my threshold for an acceptable main event, which is actually disappointing when you consider that the match went twenty minutes. Schwarz pinned Harras, which both helps to build Schwarz up for his title shot at Bobbby Gunns and gives the rest of Die Raucherpause something to tag on Harras for.


This was a disappointing show from wXw. This was their first show back with a sizable number of fans, so I was expecting something better. Everything on the show seemed to serve a purpose, but it felt like another episode of Shotgun 2020 rather than a real named show.