CZW Best of the Best VI
CZW Best of the Best VI (5/13/2006)- Philadelphia, PA
OPENING PROMO- Zandig and some referee establish the theme of this show, which was the ROH guys coming in to try to prove their superiority over CZW’s technical wrestlers by winning CZW’s annual Best of the Best technical wrestling tournament. Also, Zandig apparently has something against Canadians.
CHRIS HERO & NECRO BUTCHER (& SUPER DRAGON) PROMO- great… except that it was hyping up the main event ROH’s 100th Show, which had already happened.
CHRISTOPHER BISHOP & LIONEL KNIGHT PROMO- decent.
ALTAR BOY LUKE & MESSIAH ARGUE- good
CHEECH & CLOUDY ARGUE- good segment
DEREK FRAZIER PROMO- he takes a pointless shot at Triple H. Got to love indy wrestling.
GENERATION NEXT PROMO- good. One of the things that this did that I really liked was it guys who weren’t so involved in the war on the ROH side of things involved in the war.
ZANDIG & CLAUDIO BACKSTAGE- good
KEVIN STEEN PROMO- F*CKING AWESOME! Steen hating the CZW style was another awesome way to keep this feud going on CZW shows.
CHRIS HERO, NECRO BUTCHER, (& SUPER DRAGON) PROMO- great stuff for their feud against BLKOUT and ROH.
ZANDIG PROMO- pretty good
JIGSAW PROMO- very good
CHRISTOPHER DANIELS PROMO- great
RODERICK STRONG PROMO- great
LARRY SWEENEY PROMO- F*CKING AWESOME!
MESSIAH & LUKE PROMO- good
AUSTIN ARIES PROMO- GREAT, despite the person talking WAY too loudly in the background which was annoying.
CHEECH & CLOUDY SEGMENT… AGAIN- would have been good if we hadn’t seen something similar already.
DJ HYDE PROMO- good
Okay, it has now been HALF A F*CKING HOUR of NOTHING BUT SHORT PROMOS & SEGMENTS! DEAR LORD MAKE IT STOP! I thought this was Combat Zone Wrestling, not Combat Zone Talking. Seriously, though, we have even gotten multiple promos with the same people and multiple segments between the same guys putting over the same angles!
LUFISTO PROMO- AWESOME!
PANDORA’S BOX SEGMENT- A decent segment, but there were so many F bombs in the first twenty seconds here that you would think they were trying to suck up to Zandig.
RAVAGE PROMO- okay
ANDY SUMNER & DREW GULAK SEGMENT-okay
MATT SYDAL PROMO- good, but it would have been better if he didn’t freeze up a bit at the beginning.
BJ WHITMER PROMO- decent.
SABIAN PROMO- awesome! Not sure why we needed to see him pull the whole way out of the parking lot, though.
FINALLY! At the 42:34 mark, we get to the actual wrestling show! Even more frustrating is that most of these seemed like they were taped at the end of the last show and would have made a lot more sense on that DVD, rather than this one.
BEST OF THE BEST FIRST ROUND MATCH: Austin Aries vs. Jigsaw vs. B-Boy (w/Pandora)- 6/10
BEST OF THE BEST FIRST ROUND MATCH: Roderick Strong vs. Claudio Castagnoli vs. Jay Lethal- 5.5/10
WAY too much gaga from Roderick. Jay got â€"don’t come back!†chants from the crowd, which I thought was very unfair. He didn’t even botch anything.
BEST OF THE BEST FIRST ROUND MATCH: Matt Sydal vs. Sabian vs. Sonjay Dutt (w/Pandora)- 6/10
After the match Sonjay claims that Sabian pulls his tights and declares that he isn’t coming back to CZW ever again.
BEST OF THE BEST FIRST ROUND MATCH FOR THE CZW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Ruckus(c) (w/Robby Mireno) vs. Christopher Daniels vs. Derek Frazier- 6.75/10
Niles Young was supposed to be in this match and defend the Jr. Heavyweight Title but he refused to put the belt on the line so Maven Bentley kicked him out of the tournament and asked for any CZW wrestler who wanted to come out and enter the tournament. Hero and Ruckus both came out and said that they wanted in. Hero said that CZW guys need to stick together so he is willing to step aside and let Ruckus have this spot… if Ruckus agrees to give him a title match, any time, any place. Ruckus says that winning Best of the Best would mean a lot to him, so he agrees. Maven Bentley tells him that if he accepts the spot in Best of the Best, he would have to put the CZW World Heavyweight on the line in every match… and Ruckus agrees. A great segment.
So Daniels wins the match but says that he doesn’t want to win the belt by not pinning the champ so he gives the belt back to Ruckus and says that he would rather wait until they face off in the next round to win the belt. I really didn’t this. Rules are rules. If you won the belt, you won the belt. If they didn’t want Daniels to win the belt, have Ruckus get the damn pinfall!
RHETT TITUS & PELLE PRIMEAU vs. DREW GULAK & ANDY SUMNER- 4.75/10
WHOA! Once they got to the outside, they got F*CKING STIFF!
Major props to CZW for giving this as much time as they did. They could have had the ROH students lose to their own students in three minutes, but instead they gave them time to shine. Certainly more than they had ever been given in ROH up to that point.
WINNER OF THE FALL BECOMES #1 CONTENDER TO THE CZW JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Cheech & Cloudy vs. Ravage & Heretic- 5/10
BEST OF THE BEST SECOIND ROUND MATCH: Austin Aries vs. B-Boy (w/Pandora)- 7.25/10
BEST OF THE BEST SECOND ROUND MATCH: Roderick Strong vs. Claudio Castagnoli- 4.5/10
Extremely disappointing. Even worse, the announcers almost completely ignored the match.
BEST OF THE BEST SECOND ROUND MATCH: Matt Sydal vs. Sabian- 6/10
Garguilo says that he doesn’t watch ROH… and it shows, as he seems to be about three years behind on his angles. He still thinks Daniels is running around with The Prophecy.
BEST OF THE BEST SECOND ROUND MATCH FOR THE CZW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Ruckus(c) (w/Robby Mireno) vs. Christopher Daniels- 6/10
Another match I was expecting a lot more from
CZW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: BLK OUT (Eddie Kingston & Joker)(c) vs. Super Dragon & Necro Butcher- 6.25/10
The match felt very slow and disjointed. It was hard to keep interested at times. After the match, Super Dragon gets into a fight with a fan. Not sure if this was worked or not. Props to the camera guys for not cutting to it.
CZW WORLD JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Niles Young(c) (w/Chrissy Rivera) vs. Cloudy- no rating. Good segment. The finish looked sick enough to put Cloudy down after such a short amount of time and Cheech’s turn felt big.
LIONEL KNIGHT & CHRISTOPHER BISHOP vs. H8 CLUB (Nick Gage & Justice Pain) (w/the Dew)- 5.5/10
Nick Gage says that he and Pain are the â€"the two baddest mother*ckers in wrestling.†Personally, I wouldn’t say that. I have god grammar, so I’d say they are ‘the two â€"worst†mother*ckers in wrestling.’
There were some great spots in here and Knight and Bishop looked very impressive, but Gage and pain got in a bit too much offense, to the point where it felt like an extended squash at times. This match also contains THE WORST looking â€"duck the clothesline†spot I have ever seen, courtesy of Justice Pain.
Maven Bentley comes out and says that he and Zandig just had a meeting and decided that rather than do the two scheduled semifinal rounds of the tournament, they are just going to skip to a four way, one fall to a finish finals.
BEST OF THE BEST FINALS MATCH FOR THE CZW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT: Ruckus(c)(w/Robby Mireno) vs. Austin Aries vs. Sabian vs. Claudio Castagnoli- 7.5/10
A great match, but disappointing considering just how much was on the line here.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Chris Hero attacks Ruckus and says that he wants his title match right here, right now, so we get…
CZW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Ruckus(c) (w/Robby Mireno) vs. Chris Hero- No rating. GREAT SEGMENT!
GRR!!! Chris Hero is such an asshole! I don’t give a damn about CZW, but I really f*cking HATE Hero right now. Garguilo didn’t point out that the second ref (Brian Logan) seemed to be intentionally fast-counting for Hero.
AFTERMATH- Hero and Claudio bail, then Gen Next comes out and it looks like they are about to beat down Daniels when someone makes the save. Is it Ruckus’ stablemates in BLK OUT? No. Is it someone from CZW coming to save their top babyface from those jackass ROH guys? Nope. It’s Christopher Daniels. Daniels shoves Aries and Gen Next leave the ring. Daniels presents Ruckus with the Best of the Best Trophy… but then attacks him and hits a sick-looking Angel’s Wings onto the trophy. Daniels smashes the trophy and he and Gen Next beat Ruckus down. They pick up the big poles from the trophy to hit Ruckus with, but the four armed ROH guys are chased off by four unarmed CZW guys (BLK OUT), one of whom is only a manager.
This whole thing just smacked of Russo-esque overbooking. If Daniels was on ROH’s side all along (rather than, as he claimed, on no one’s side but his own), why didn’t he accept the CZW Title when he won it fair and square earlier on? And what was the point of the swerve with Gen Next? Anyway, this entire angle was never followed up on, as none of the ROH guys would appear in CZW again, and Ruckus never appeared for CZW during the ROH feud, and Eddie Kingston, when he did show up, never interacted with either Daniels or any of the Gen Next guys in any way.
Not a good show from CZW. It didn’t have many good match, and was very long and hard to sit through. I went in to this show super-excited but the FORTY TWO MINUTES OF PROMOS at the beginning (some of which were entirely irrelevant to this show!) just destroyed all of my excitement by the time the show started. They did some good stuff here, but both the tournament and the show as a whole were very disappointing.
OPENING PROMO- Zandig and some referee establish the theme of this show, which was the ROH guys coming in to try to prove their superiority over CZW’s technical wrestlers by winning CZW’s annual Best of the Best technical wrestling tournament. Also, Zandig apparently has something against Canadians.
CHRIS HERO & NECRO BUTCHER (& SUPER DRAGON) PROMO- great… except that it was hyping up the main event ROH’s 100th Show, which had already happened.
CHRISTOPHER BISHOP & LIONEL KNIGHT PROMO- decent.
ALTAR BOY LUKE & MESSIAH ARGUE- good
CHEECH & CLOUDY ARGUE- good segment
DEREK FRAZIER PROMO- he takes a pointless shot at Triple H. Got to love indy wrestling.
GENERATION NEXT PROMO- good. One of the things that this did that I really liked was it guys who weren’t so involved in the war on the ROH side of things involved in the war.
ZANDIG & CLAUDIO BACKSTAGE- good
KEVIN STEEN PROMO- F*CKING AWESOME! Steen hating the CZW style was another awesome way to keep this feud going on CZW shows.
CHRIS HERO, NECRO BUTCHER, (& SUPER DRAGON) PROMO- great stuff for their feud against BLKOUT and ROH.
ZANDIG PROMO- pretty good
JIGSAW PROMO- very good
CHRISTOPHER DANIELS PROMO- great
RODERICK STRONG PROMO- great
LARRY SWEENEY PROMO- F*CKING AWESOME!
MESSIAH & LUKE PROMO- good
AUSTIN ARIES PROMO- GREAT, despite the person talking WAY too loudly in the background which was annoying.
CHEECH & CLOUDY SEGMENT… AGAIN- would have been good if we hadn’t seen something similar already.
DJ HYDE PROMO- good
Okay, it has now been HALF A F*CKING HOUR of NOTHING BUT SHORT PROMOS & SEGMENTS! DEAR LORD MAKE IT STOP! I thought this was Combat Zone Wrestling, not Combat Zone Talking. Seriously, though, we have even gotten multiple promos with the same people and multiple segments between the same guys putting over the same angles!
LUFISTO PROMO- AWESOME!
PANDORA’S BOX SEGMENT- A decent segment, but there were so many F bombs in the first twenty seconds here that you would think they were trying to suck up to Zandig.
RAVAGE PROMO- okay
ANDY SUMNER & DREW GULAK SEGMENT-okay
MATT SYDAL PROMO- good, but it would have been better if he didn’t freeze up a bit at the beginning.
BJ WHITMER PROMO- decent.
SABIAN PROMO- awesome! Not sure why we needed to see him pull the whole way out of the parking lot, though.
FINALLY! At the 42:34 mark, we get to the actual wrestling show! Even more frustrating is that most of these seemed like they were taped at the end of the last show and would have made a lot more sense on that DVD, rather than this one.
BEST OF THE BEST FIRST ROUND MATCH: Austin Aries vs. Jigsaw vs. B-Boy (w/Pandora)- 6/10
BEST OF THE BEST FIRST ROUND MATCH: Roderick Strong vs. Claudio Castagnoli vs. Jay Lethal- 5.5/10
WAY too much gaga from Roderick. Jay got â€"don’t come back!†chants from the crowd, which I thought was very unfair. He didn’t even botch anything.
BEST OF THE BEST FIRST ROUND MATCH: Matt Sydal vs. Sabian vs. Sonjay Dutt (w/Pandora)- 6/10
After the match Sonjay claims that Sabian pulls his tights and declares that he isn’t coming back to CZW ever again.
BEST OF THE BEST FIRST ROUND MATCH FOR THE CZW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Ruckus(c) (w/Robby Mireno) vs. Christopher Daniels vs. Derek Frazier- 6.75/10
Niles Young was supposed to be in this match and defend the Jr. Heavyweight Title but he refused to put the belt on the line so Maven Bentley kicked him out of the tournament and asked for any CZW wrestler who wanted to come out and enter the tournament. Hero and Ruckus both came out and said that they wanted in. Hero said that CZW guys need to stick together so he is willing to step aside and let Ruckus have this spot… if Ruckus agrees to give him a title match, any time, any place. Ruckus says that winning Best of the Best would mean a lot to him, so he agrees. Maven Bentley tells him that if he accepts the spot in Best of the Best, he would have to put the CZW World Heavyweight on the line in every match… and Ruckus agrees. A great segment.
So Daniels wins the match but says that he doesn’t want to win the belt by not pinning the champ so he gives the belt back to Ruckus and says that he would rather wait until they face off in the next round to win the belt. I really didn’t this. Rules are rules. If you won the belt, you won the belt. If they didn’t want Daniels to win the belt, have Ruckus get the damn pinfall!
RHETT TITUS & PELLE PRIMEAU vs. DREW GULAK & ANDY SUMNER- 4.75/10
WHOA! Once they got to the outside, they got F*CKING STIFF!
Major props to CZW for giving this as much time as they did. They could have had the ROH students lose to their own students in three minutes, but instead they gave them time to shine. Certainly more than they had ever been given in ROH up to that point.
WINNER OF THE FALL BECOMES #1 CONTENDER TO THE CZW JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Cheech & Cloudy vs. Ravage & Heretic- 5/10
BEST OF THE BEST SECOIND ROUND MATCH: Austin Aries vs. B-Boy (w/Pandora)- 7.25/10
BEST OF THE BEST SECOND ROUND MATCH: Roderick Strong vs. Claudio Castagnoli- 4.5/10
Extremely disappointing. Even worse, the announcers almost completely ignored the match.
BEST OF THE BEST SECOND ROUND MATCH: Matt Sydal vs. Sabian- 6/10
Garguilo says that he doesn’t watch ROH… and it shows, as he seems to be about three years behind on his angles. He still thinks Daniels is running around with The Prophecy.
BEST OF THE BEST SECOND ROUND MATCH FOR THE CZW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE: Ruckus(c) (w/Robby Mireno) vs. Christopher Daniels- 6/10
Another match I was expecting a lot more from
CZW WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: BLK OUT (Eddie Kingston & Joker)(c) vs. Super Dragon & Necro Butcher- 6.25/10
The match felt very slow and disjointed. It was hard to keep interested at times. After the match, Super Dragon gets into a fight with a fan. Not sure if this was worked or not. Props to the camera guys for not cutting to it.
CZW WORLD JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Niles Young(c) (w/Chrissy Rivera) vs. Cloudy- no rating. Good segment. The finish looked sick enough to put Cloudy down after such a short amount of time and Cheech’s turn felt big.
LIONEL KNIGHT & CHRISTOPHER BISHOP vs. H8 CLUB (Nick Gage & Justice Pain) (w/the Dew)- 5.5/10
Nick Gage says that he and Pain are the â€"the two baddest mother*ckers in wrestling.†Personally, I wouldn’t say that. I have god grammar, so I’d say they are ‘the two â€"worst†mother*ckers in wrestling.’
There were some great spots in here and Knight and Bishop looked very impressive, but Gage and pain got in a bit too much offense, to the point where it felt like an extended squash at times. This match also contains THE WORST looking â€"duck the clothesline†spot I have ever seen, courtesy of Justice Pain.
Maven Bentley comes out and says that he and Zandig just had a meeting and decided that rather than do the two scheduled semifinal rounds of the tournament, they are just going to skip to a four way, one fall to a finish finals.
BEST OF THE BEST FINALS MATCH FOR THE CZW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT: Ruckus(c)(w/Robby Mireno) vs. Austin Aries vs. Sabian vs. Claudio Castagnoli- 7.5/10
A great match, but disappointing considering just how much was on the line here.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Chris Hero attacks Ruckus and says that he wants his title match right here, right now, so we get…
CZW WORLD HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Ruckus(c) (w/Robby Mireno) vs. Chris Hero- No rating. GREAT SEGMENT!
GRR!!! Chris Hero is such an asshole! I don’t give a damn about CZW, but I really f*cking HATE Hero right now. Garguilo didn’t point out that the second ref (Brian Logan) seemed to be intentionally fast-counting for Hero.
AFTERMATH- Hero and Claudio bail, then Gen Next comes out and it looks like they are about to beat down Daniels when someone makes the save. Is it Ruckus’ stablemates in BLK OUT? No. Is it someone from CZW coming to save their top babyface from those jackass ROH guys? Nope. It’s Christopher Daniels. Daniels shoves Aries and Gen Next leave the ring. Daniels presents Ruckus with the Best of the Best Trophy… but then attacks him and hits a sick-looking Angel’s Wings onto the trophy. Daniels smashes the trophy and he and Gen Next beat Ruckus down. They pick up the big poles from the trophy to hit Ruckus with, but the four armed ROH guys are chased off by four unarmed CZW guys (BLK OUT), one of whom is only a manager.
This whole thing just smacked of Russo-esque overbooking. If Daniels was on ROH’s side all along (rather than, as he claimed, on no one’s side but his own), why didn’t he accept the CZW Title when he won it fair and square earlier on? And what was the point of the swerve with Gen Next? Anyway, this entire angle was never followed up on, as none of the ROH guys would appear in CZW again, and Ruckus never appeared for CZW during the ROH feud, and Eddie Kingston, when he did show up, never interacted with either Daniels or any of the Gen Next guys in any way.
Not a good show from CZW. It didn’t have many good match, and was very long and hard to sit through. I went in to this show super-excited but the FORTY TWO MINUTES OF PROMOS at the beginning (some of which were entirely irrelevant to this show!) just destroyed all of my excitement by the time the show started. They did some good stuff here, but both the tournament and the show as a whole were very disappointing.