wXw Road to 19th Anniversary: Dresden

wXw SHOTGUN TITLE MATCH:
�"The Avalanche” Robert Dreissker(c) vs. Veit Muller vs. Jay Skillet (w/Francis Kaspin) - 6/10

Skillet is getting this title shot as a sub for his injured stablemate Absolute Andy. Veit Muller is getting this title show because… um… I’m actually not sure why he is getting this title shot. More important right now, though are these new rules that Karsten Beck has implemented for three-way matches that Andy Jackson just mentioned. You can’t put off telling me about these new rules, Andy! If I need to know them to understand what is happening in the match, you need to explain the new rules to me BEFORE the match!

Said rule changes are that there are now DQs and count-outs in multi-man matches, and someone who gets DQed or counted out is simply ejected from the match. Hooray! I’ve been asking for this rule change forever and I finally got it somewhere!

The match itself was eight minutes of fun wrestling. It was probably really just an excuse to introduce us to the new rules.

wXw WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH:
Pretty Bastards(c) vs. Julian Pace & Oliver Carter - no rating, good segment

Before this match they showed us the footage from the previous show that set up this title match. In that footage they offered Julian a title shot with a partner of his choosing, and Julian immediately phoned up Oliver Carter. And now those damn Bastards jump Carter from behind during his entrance and take out his knee. Unfortunately, the execution of the chop-block looked horribly weak, but it still came off as heinous. Julian was so enraged that he said he would fight them two on one.

Pace fought valiantly for a bit but was overcome. Just when he was in the most trouble, however, Oliver Carter bravely limped and hopped down to ringside. And the crowd all chanted �"NXT!” For a f*cking NXT UK jobber! GRRRRR! Well… they got what they deserved here.

Yup. Carter turned on poor Julian Pace. This explains the weak-looking shot to the knee before as well as covers the plot hole of why Carter waited so long to come forward with this footage. I still want to know why he was the only one who tried enhancing the picture and zooming in to identify the Pretty Bastards in the background. Maybe you could say that he was the only one who knew to look, but this is the internet age. I’m sure some fan on the internet would have poured over the footage on their own computer and found it, too. Pretty Bastards definitely did get lucky that Pace didn’t decide to ask Veit Muller or Timothy Thatcher or whoever to be his partner, but I’ll give it a pass because the heels did set Pace up to pick Carter as well.

PURGE CLUB PROMO - Great! We finally get their reasons for turning on Lucky: Pete was angry that Lucky and his Schadenfreude buddies were getting all of the internet hype and the attention from the office. Ivan says that he finally saw the light when Lucky didn’t help him against Schadenfreude at Shortcut to the Top. Pete then said they would slaughter the office’s �"golden calf” in their matches against him this week.

PETE BOUNCER IS BARRED FROM RINGSIDE:
Ivan Kiev vs. Lucky Kid - 6.75/10

Lucky’s back got worked over but he overcame that and made Ivan tap out in about nine minutes. Bouncer is the real big bad here and the one Lucky needs revenge on the most so I’m fine with this match not going so long because that’s the big one, but I think Ivan and Lucky are capable of having the better in-ring match, so it’s a little disappointing to see them not get that time.

TASSILO JUNG TRIES TO CONVINCE JURN SIMMONS THAT HE NEEDS TO FIND A TAG TEAM PARTNER FOR TONIGHT - Fine. Jurn says no one will team with him so he’ll just have to fight Alexander James and Tayler Colton on his own, and he doesn’t care if he gets his butt kicked two on one again. The Rotation comes up to Jurn and offers to be his tag team partner. He’s upset because Alexander James called him a child. We know that AJ is huge dick, but in his defense, The Rotation does actually look like he’s at most sixteen years old. Rotation says that he has been cleared to compete after getting his butt kicked by these same heels recently. Jung tells Jurn that The Rotation is the best choice of a partner he has, so Jurn accepts the offer.

OLIVER CARTER AND THE PRETTY BASTARDS HANG OUT BACKSTAGE AND BRAG TO THEMSELVES ABOUT HOW WELL THEIR EVIL PLAN HAS WORKED - They are saying here that it was Carter who did the attacking of Leon and Julian, not Norman Harras, as I had suspected.
The heels all cackled and congratulated themselves for being so devious. Then Alexander Wolfe showed up and the fans watching in the arena went nuts. He said that what they had done was terrible and disrespected the sanctity of the mat. Because of this, he went to Karsten Beck to get Oliver Carter penciled in as his opponent tonight to replace the injured Ilja Dragunov. More barbs were exchanged, then Wolfe left, at which point Carter assured the Pretty Bastards that he could handle this.

AMALE WINCHESTER & SKYE SMITSON vs. KILLER KELLY & LITTLE MISS ROXXY - 6.5/10

This was a solid ten-minute tag with a finish so shocking that I can’t help but question the booking. How the hell do you beat Smitson so early and how the hell do you give Little Miss Roxxy that pin? Yes, Skye is big, but I don’t think she has even been established as enough of a juggernaut yet for this to really do much to make Roxxy. This damages the feud the crowds have been hot as hell for (Kelly vs. Smitson) and doesn’t set up the match you seem to have been setting up for most of the year (Kelly vs. Amale for the title), so why the hell would you do it?

ALEXANDER JAMES & TLYER COLTON vs. JURN SIMMONS & THE ROTATION - 7.25/10

They actually showed us a clip of Tyler Colton powerbombing The Rotation a bunch of times from a house show last Friday. It’s always a good idea to do things that make fans think that the shows they go to matter, even if they are just house shows.

This was a great babyface in peril match with the added story of The Rotation’s injured back being worked over by the heels again. This match went a lot longer than I was expecting and Colton took a lot more offense than I was expecting him to and Jurn got his hands on James a lot more often than I was expecting him to… and then it went to a damn DQ. If you were just going to do a DQ, don’t go so f*cking long and don’t have Jurn get his hands on AJ (and especially not give him a damn Blood Eagle) and don’t have Colton sell so damn much for the f*cking Rotation. I just don’t understand the justification for doing this. It’s not even like attacking people with a weapon is The Rotation standing up for himself and �"proving that he is a man and not a child” because he wasn’t fighting fair.

JURN SIMMONS & THE ROTATION BACKSTAGE - Fine. Apparently Jurn disagrees with me and thinks that this, in fact, constitute The Rotation �"showing some balls,” and considering that Jurn is large, scary, and threatened to come into the crowd and kick my ass when I taunted him about his losing streak at the show in New York City over WrestleMania weekend, I’m going to take the high road here and let the Wookie win. Jurn tells The Rotation that he likes his new attitude so much that he has already talked to Director of Sport Karsten Beck and get a rematch booked for next week in Hamburg. The acting here was good (well… Jurn was great and The Rotations was not so good, but it balances out to good), but I can’t really get excited about a match that they have just told me is probably going to end in another DQ because the heels are known cheaters and the babyfaces care less about winning than hurting their opponents.

wXw UNIFIED WORLD WRESTLING TITLE MATCH:
Timothy Thatcher(c) vs. Bobby Gunns - 7.5/10

They fought on the outside forever without being counted out. Instead the referee just followed around and yelled impotently, as if this was a New Japan match. Once they finally got back inside they had a GREAT match, with lots of working on the arm and Timothy Thatcher winning with wrestling hold in the end, just like he should have, because he’s a WRESTLER.

ALEXANDER WOLFE vs. OLIVER CARTER - 7/10

The perfectionist in me would have liked some sort of comment about how the reason this match was going on after the world title match was so both men had ample time to prepare, rather than the message we got here, which was that Alexander Wolfe is a bigger star than our two current top singles stars. And maybe you could say that Axel Tischer is a bigger star than Bobby Gunns, but not than Timothy Thatcher is to the crowd right now.

They had a passable main event for a smaller show like this. Wolfe/Tischer got the win to make the fans happy… but you’ve now beaten Carter within hours of turning him heel.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT - Hated it. The Pretty Bastards run out and attack Wolfe. Carter joins in on the beat-down. Julian Pace runs out to try to make the save but gets overwhelmed. Then Ilja Dragunov comes out to make the save and fights off all of the heels on his own even though he is too injured to be cleared to wrestle. I guess this was a babyface turn for him? I don’t like the booking here one bit. Well… that’s not quite true. I think the guy who runs out to help but gets overwhelmed is definitely the right role for Julian Pace in this situation, so I think it’s more fair to say that I liked the booking here one little bit and greatly disliked the rest of it.

ALEXANDER WOLFE PROMO - This was apparently his first match here in his home city in over five years. He thanked the fans for always supported him, then thanked Pace for saving him, even though Ilja was the one who really did the saving. He said that Pace was proof that wXw is where superstars are born.

AMALE WINCHESTER & TASSILO JUNG BACKSTAGE - Amale is complaining about her teammate, Skye Smitson, getting pinned tonight. She demands to know where Karsten Beck is. Tassilo tells her that Karsten �"took the weekend off.” I guess Karsten failed to inform his secret girlfriend/f*ckbuddy/whatever about this vacation. Hopefully this is proof that he is trying to break up with her so that we don’t have to see their often-painful backstage segments anymore. Wait… apparently Karsten had been asking Tassilo what Amale was wearing, both in the ring and backstage, so I doubt he’s trying to passive-aggressively break up with her. Dammit.

Tassilo tells Amale that, per Karsten’s orders, she is defending her title next week in Hamburg ins a three-way against Little Miss Roxxy and Valkyrie. Valkyrie is getting a title shot because she was second place in the fan-voting for who should get a title shot at FAN 2019- Du Entscheidest, and Little Miss Roxxy is getting this title shot because she pinned the champion’s tag partner tonight. Is that really the best we can do? For the first time, I find myself siding with Amale. Neither of these women deserves a title shot. And keep in mind that this is coming from someone who has repeatedly questioned the decision to have Toni Storm drop the belt to Amale and advocated for Valkyrie to win the belt from Toni instead.

Amale got angry and started ranting in French. Little Miss Roxxy showed up and cut a promo on her. Wipe that smirk off your face, Roxxy. You don’t deserve this title shot!

AVALANCHE, JULIAN PACE, & ALEXANDER WOLFE ARE CONFRONTED BY BOBBY GUNNS & PALS BACKSTAGE - Fine. Pace was ready to start a fight but the two veterans held him back. Quite frankly, I think a brawl should have started. Maybe wXw has rules in place that heavily fine people for brawling backstage. That’s about the only reason I can think of that some of these confrontations go down without a brawl starting. I appreciate that they’re consistent about it, but at the same time, I really wish they would separate these people more.

Anyway, barbs were exchanged and we got challenges made for Oliver Carter & Pretty Bastards vs. Avalanche & VollGasteren and Bobby Gunns vs. Alexander Wolfe in Hamburg. Both should be good matches, with Gunns vs. Wolfe having potential to be quite awesome. I chuckled at Wolfe calling Bobby Gunns �"Billy,” but I really don’t hope they let Wolfe break Gunns’ undefeated streak in Hamburg, which is up to about three years now.
Norman Harras was once again absent from the heel group. Is he injured or something?

Final Thoughts
This was an odd show to evaluate. In some ways it feels like it exceeded my expectations going in, but in other ways it feels disappointing because it exceeded them up to the point that it was creating new expectations that it then failed to meet. I also found a lot of the booking rather questionable, which I don’t think I’ve ever said about wXw before. It definitely did a good job of feeling like it was part of the road to the 19th Anniversary Show while still setting up an interesting card for the second �"Road to…” show, but I also say that not knowing what the exact card for the Anniversary Show is and only making educated guesses (Jurn vs. James in a gimmick match of some sort, Avalanche defends the Shotgun Title against Absolute Andy if Andy is healthy enough, Killer Kelly vs. Amale for the women’s belt, VollGasteren challenging Pretty Bastards for the tag titles, and the winner of the Thatcher vs. David Unified World Wrestling Title match in Hamburg has to be defending against WALTER at the Anniversary Show, right? Or maybe we get one more Thatcher vs. Gunns match for the title or Thatcher vs. Lucky Kid, and somehow get to Starr vs. WALTER without having to do something like Starr leveraging the belt to get wXw to book him against WALTER).