BRM Reviews wXw True Colors (2022)

[Big Red Machine]

wXw True Colors 2022 (5/28/2022)- Dresden, Germany


AXEL TISCHER VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- AWESOME!
This was absolutely tremendous build for the main event, with Tischer laying everything out from his point of view, which is, in theory, the babyface point of view, but that last line that “you will see my true colors” seems to indicate a heel turn (which feels like it has been coming, anyway).

AIGLE BLANC vs. SENZA VOLTO- 7.5/10
This was a great babyface vs. babyface action opener. Senza won by roll-up, so the two partners are 1-1 against each other in wXw, so we’ll have to have a rematch at some point. I am greatly looking forward to that.

FAST TIME MOODO UPDATES US ON STEPHANIE MAZE’S CONDITION- fine
Steffi is injured again and isn’t medically cleared. Moodo was given the chance to pick a replacement partner for tonight but refused in the hopes that she would be cleared in time for the show, but she won’t be. As he has been saying for the past two years, he fight’s at Stephi’s side, or he fights alone. That part of this was good. Then he went into a hometown babyface routine that was way to corny for me (“you, Dresden, will be my tag team partners!”. Uch.).

LEVANIEL PROMO- good
The usual pre-match fun, but he also managed to work in an apology for any “negative consequences” his actions in the world title match on the previous show might have had on Jurn Simmons (i.e. costing him the wXw Unified World Wrestling Title). It’s nice to see someone acting like a real person and apologizing for a screw-up, even if it was purely accidental.

BOBBY GUNNS vs. LEVANIEL- 5.75/10
Gunns wins cleanly. I’d have like this to go a few more minutes, just as a way of marking Levaniel’s growth and progression up the roster over the past year.

IVA KOLASKY PROMO- This was very good for someone not speaking their native language. She got the emotions in there, even if the pronunciation was rough at times and the cadence was stilted. This was much better than what we’ll often get in this situation (especially in WWE, but other places, too), where someone is memorizing words in a language foreign to them and they have to put so much effort into remembering these strange sounds that they can’t act at the same time.
She says she’s going to win the title back, and vents a bit at Baby Allison having inexplicably wound up with a title shot in the first place, crashing what was supposed to be a one-on-one rematch. I don’t blame her for being angry, and I can sympathize with her claims that no one really cares about Baby Allison, either.

wXw WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Baby Allison(c) vs. Iva Kolasky- 5.25/10
This was good for the time it got, minus the big spot at the end where Iva was supposed to miss a moonsault but still landed mostly on Allison anyway because I guess they didn’t determine in advance which way Allison was supposed to roll and whether Iva was going to undershoot or overshoot to help ensure the miss. They worked the match as if Iva was the heel, which drove me nuts., because the promotion seems to have decided that Baby Allison and Maggot should be babyfaces now, and so they are just magically babyfaces without actually doing anything to show us a change (or to split them off from the still-heel Heisenberg). They didn’t turn, the booker just moved their names from one column to the other, and that’s terrible storytelling. Hell it’s not even storytelling at all because there is no story!

AVALANCHE SIT-DOWN INTERVIEW FROM EARLIER TODAY- good
He explains his heel turn as built-up frustration with others boiling over when, in the finals of 16 Carat Gold this year, the locker room came out to watch the match from ringside, and most of them were cheering for Jonathan Gresham instead of him, even after all he has done for wXw.
Then the boom mic accidentally lowered down into his face and he got angry. He yelled at the boom operator, then recognized her as Orsi, a Hungarian wrestler who is here because she is wrestling on “the small show” tomorrow (explaining why someone not booked on the show is here when she lives several countries away), and the demands to know why someone put her in a role she clearly isn’t trained for. He turns to yell at her again, but she doesn’t back down, so he says he will go to the Director of Sport and get her a match on tonight’s show, too. Against him.

TORNADO TAG TEAM MATCH: Fast Time Moodo(c) vs. Arrows of Hungary vs. Rott & Flott- 6.75/10
Words cannot express how happy I was when the Arrows went for the Crossfire on Moodo, only one member of Rott & Flott popped up and dragged only one Arrow out of the ring. SOOOOO many wrestlers today would have been tempted to do the it simultaneously on both sides because “ART!”, ignoring the fact that engaging in this kind of “ART!” too much makes things feel choreographed, which damages immersion. Then I was even happier that instead of questioning where his partner was, Dover just went and hit his knee to the head on Moodo anyway. Then, when Nikita Charisma came into the ring, instead of having him toss Dover out of the ring to try to steal the pin, Dover just took him out, too, and went for the pin on Moodo.
The match was very good, doing a great job with the story of Moodo fighting alone. After managing to take out both Arrows, he got hit with Rott & Flott’s finisher, and with no teammate to break the pin up, that was it.
I am a little wary of Rott &Flott winning the tag titles, as it doesn’t feel like too long ago that we had a heel stable in Die Raucherpause running around with most of the belts, but this certainly elevates Rott & Flott as a much-needed heel option in the tag division now that Maggot and Heisenberg seem to no longer be together, and whether Stephanie Maze’s injury is legit or worked, it is certainly time to move to the next phase of this story that has been Moodo’s insistence on this slightly strange fidelity to Stephanie as his one and only tag team partner has now cost them the titles. I assume he will turn on her for being a “weak link,” but there are one or two other directions they could take it that would make sense as well.

DAN INTERVIEWS ROTT & FLOTT- meh
They were bragging heels, reveling in their title win.

ORSI vs. “THE AVALANCHE” ROBERT DREISSKER- no rating, good segment
Orsi put up a decent fight, but the larger veteran overwhelmed her. Then he pulled her up at two to continue the punishment, which brought out her mentors, the Arrows of Hungary. Avalanche jawed with them and kept slamming poor Orsi around, eventually pinning her right in front of them. Orsi sold everything very well.

wXw SHOTGUN TITLE MATCH: Maggot(c) vs. Peter Tihanyi- 6.5/10
Solid action. Maggot wins clean. He had refused a handshake at the beginning of the match, but the offered Tihanyi one after the match, which Tihanyi accepted.

AXEL TISCHER INTERVIEW FROM YOUTUBE- good
He says that Tristan Archer can’t beat him in a fair fight, so he asks management to ensure that their match is fair, and warns that if it isn’t, “Tristan might have some trouble getting out of Dresden.

wXw UNIFIED WORLD WRESTLING TITLE MATCH WITH TWO REFEREES: Tristan Archer(c) vs. Axel Tischer- 8/10
The two referees was management’s way of trying to assure a fair fight. It mostly worked. It worked quite well until Rott & Flott came out, and even then, the outside referee did a great job of holding them at bay. They did eventually manage to get involved, putting Archer’s foot on the ropes to break up a pin in a spot that all three guys (Charisma, Schenkenberg, and the referee) deserve credit for pulling off so well.
When the referees decided to eject them from ringside, Rott & Flott were able to distract both of them long enough for Archer to get a low blow in. Tischer was able to kick out, but Archer controlled the match from then on, hitting big moves until eventually Tischer just couldn’t kick out.
They had great intensity here and told a great story about Tischer taking everything he could until he just couldn’t take anymore. I guess the “true colors” that Tischer showed us were that he is still a babyface (at least for the moment) rather than the semi-heel turn I expected (though, in hindsight, any heelish move here by Tischer would have been justified based on Archer & Friends’ past actions, so the best way to continue the story of a heel turn is for management’s plan to prevent their cheating to fail, which is what happened here.


This was a very up-and-down show from wXw. Or maybe it was more of an “up-and-meh” show, as there wasn’t anything here that was really bad so much as just meh. That’s not a bad place for a promotion to be, either, especially when the main events are delivering, and the main event/world title scene has been the most consistent thing for wXw this year.