PROGRESS Chapter One: In The Beginning...
No intro, no music, Jim Smallman has hair. straight to the fight.
PROGRESS Title Tournament Semi Final Match
Little emo kid Noam Dar. Fast paced opener with Dar working the leg and keeping Ligero grounded with kicks and submissions. Ligero made a comeback at the end, hit a tree of woe foot stomp and a swinging DDT for the win.
PROGRESS Title Tournament Semi Final Match
Kennedy is a 6 ft 6 in 300 lb mass of a man, he's somewhat green, but he's so big a small experienced man could wrestle around him and have a great match. Most of the match was Kennedy dominating the smaller Cruz with overall power, until Cruz manages to start working the leg of Colossus and bring him down to his back, at which point, Cruz dominates the big man. After that, Kennedy while selling the leg quite nicely, made a smallish comeback and they fought back and forward until Nathan connected a kick to the face for the lackluster win. There was a great visual of Kennedy headbutting Cruz over and over again, he's so large that it look great. I liked this match.
PROGRESS Title Tournament Semi Final Match
In Mason's picture, he looked all rough and shit, and then inside the ring, he's a little dude being towered by Cabana and Smallman AND the ref. Mason is a last minute replacement for RJ Singh, so it was somewhat surprising that he won at the end, I guess at this point PROGRESS could only afford one Cabana match. This was a typical Cabana match with 80% comedy offense and 20% comedy selling.
PROGRESS Title Tournament Semi Final Match
Leaders of the New School fighting each other. You know how sometimes you have two friends or tag partners fighting and then they just 'get serious' or betray themselves and shit, well in this match (which is all not uncommon between Sabre and Scurll), they start with an slight rivalry, but this rivalry just kept escalating throughout the whole match, more and more, until it spilled out of control. Scurll worked the leg, Sabre the arm. Scurll wins with a roll up of all things. Awesome match, doesn't matter if young or old timers, these two will forever have great fights.
BWC Scarlo Championship Match
At one point in the future, Gibson and Smallman would both find themselves in the same accident that would render them bald. This was a really X-Division-ee match, with tons of 3-men spots and the three guys staying together for most of the match. Finish saw Allen hit a badly miscalculated (he landed with his knees) 450 on Gibson, Xander came in and punted Allen on the head and stole the pin on Gibson to retain.
Jim Smallman Presents The PROGRESS Championship Staff - Fans call it a Nazi Staff, it does kinda look like a Nazi Staff. Smallman argues that anyone can hold a belt (Santino Marella has one in WWE right now), but not a Staff.
PROGRESS Championship Elimination Match
This is a 4-corner survival style match, where you have two guys outside waiting on a tag to come in, but you can tag whoever you want. This match quickly became a 4-way brawl all over The Garage, through the bar, the stage, the fans, everywhere. First time a wrestler came inside a ring was about 10 minutes after the start, and it was Scurll sitting in a chair chugging a beer.
Ligero was the first eliminated by Cruz, quickly after that Scurll eliminated Mason. I was actually wondering how the corner survival match worked with only three, but eliminating both of them close together fixed that issue. Cruz and Scurll went long, all inside the ring to contrast the start of the match. Back and forward for most of this part of the match, biggest thing was a ref bump that gave Scurll a clear pin, but while trying to revive the ref, Cruz hit Scurll with a low blow for a near fall. They traded some moves afterwards until Cruz hits the running kick for the win.
For a first time show, this had tons of great wrestling, mostly using guys from other promotions, but still. The production quality was bad, I'm not gonna lie, but it didn't make it unwatchable like some other promotions, and they managed to hide those things that tend to make a promotion look small. I'm not a big fan of crowning a champ on the first show, but you can't hate them for doing it. Looking forward to see who else comes into the promotion.
PROGRESS Title Tournament Semi Final Match
Noam Dar vs El Ligero - 6.5/10
Little emo kid Noam Dar. Fast paced opener with Dar working the leg and keeping Ligero grounded with kicks and submissions. Ligero made a comeback at the end, hit a tree of woe foot stomp and a swinging DDT for the win.
PROGRESS Title Tournament Semi Final Match
Colossus Kennedy vs "The Showstealer" Nathan Cruz - 7/10
Kennedy is a 6 ft 6 in 300 lb mass of a man, he's somewhat green, but he's so big a small experienced man could wrestle around him and have a great match. Most of the match was Kennedy dominating the smaller Cruz with overall power, until Cruz manages to start working the leg of Colossus and bring him down to his back, at which point, Cruz dominates the big man. After that, Kennedy while selling the leg quite nicely, made a smallish comeback and they fought back and forward until Nathan connected a kick to the face for the lackluster win. There was a great visual of Kennedy headbutting Cruz over and over again, he's so large that it look great. I liked this match.
PROGRESS Title Tournament Semi Final Match
"Loco" Mike Mason w/Becky James vs Colt Cabana - 6/10
In Mason's picture, he looked all rough and shit, and then inside the ring, he's a little dude being towered by Cabana and Smallman AND the ref. Mason is a last minute replacement for RJ Singh, so it was somewhat surprising that he won at the end, I guess at this point PROGRESS could only afford one Cabana match. This was a typical Cabana match with 80% comedy offense and 20% comedy selling.
PROGRESS Title Tournament Semi Final Match
Zack Sabre Jr vs "Party" Marty Scurll - 9/10
Leaders of the New School fighting each other. You know how sometimes you have two friends or tag partners fighting and then they just 'get serious' or betray themselves and shit, well in this match (which is all not uncommon between Sabre and Scurll), they start with an slight rivalry, but this rivalry just kept escalating throughout the whole match, more and more, until it spilled out of control. Scurll worked the leg, Sabre the arm. Scurll wins with a roll up of all things. Awesome match, doesn't matter if young or old timers, these two will forever have great fights.
BWC Scarlo Championship Match
"Dazzling" Darrell Allen vs Zack "Diamond" Gibson vs Xander Cooper (C) - 7.5/10
At one point in the future, Gibson and Smallman would both find themselves in the same accident that would render them bald. This was a really X-Division-ee match, with tons of 3-men spots and the three guys staying together for most of the match. Finish saw Allen hit a badly miscalculated (he landed with his knees) 450 on Gibson, Xander came in and punted Allen on the head and stole the pin on Gibson to retain.
Jim Smallman Presents The PROGRESS Championship Staff - Fans call it a Nazi Staff, it does kinda look like a Nazi Staff. Smallman argues that anyone can hold a belt (Santino Marella has one in WWE right now), but not a Staff.
PROGRESS Championship Elimination Match
El Ligero vs "The Showstealer" Nathan Cruz vs "Loco" Mike Mason w/Becky James vs "Party" Marty Scurll - 7/10
This is a 4-corner survival style match, where you have two guys outside waiting on a tag to come in, but you can tag whoever you want. This match quickly became a 4-way brawl all over The Garage, through the bar, the stage, the fans, everywhere. First time a wrestler came inside a ring was about 10 minutes after the start, and it was Scurll sitting in a chair chugging a beer.
Ligero was the first eliminated by Cruz, quickly after that Scurll eliminated Mason. I was actually wondering how the corner survival match worked with only three, but eliminating both of them close together fixed that issue. Cruz and Scurll went long, all inside the ring to contrast the start of the match. Back and forward for most of this part of the match, biggest thing was a ref bump that gave Scurll a clear pin, but while trying to revive the ref, Cruz hit Scurll with a low blow for a near fall. They traded some moves afterwards until Cruz hits the running kick for the win.
OVERALL THOUGHTS
For a first time show, this had tons of great wrestling, mostly using guys from other promotions, but still. The production quality was bad, I'm not gonna lie, but it didn't make it unwatchable like some other promotions, and they managed to hide those things that tend to make a promotion look small. I'm not a big fan of crowning a champ on the first show, but you can't hate them for doing it. Looking forward to see who else comes into the promotion.