Pro Wrestling Phoenix Wrestlerama report

Review of the Pro Wrestling Phoenix out of Omaha, NE Wrestlerama show

The show opened with a fun match of Con Ar Tist v. a guy whose name I didn’t catch.  The crowd was very into this match.  Con Ar Tist was a face (who would have guessed) and had a specialized theme song that had people chanting.  He dominated most of the match and hit his Choo-Choo finisher in the corner, and then when the crowd asked him to do it one more time he obliged.  Great opener.  Con Ar Tist was super over with the crowd, and he made a special point of coming back during the intermission to say hello to my 13 year old.  He immediately became my boy’s favorite.

The next match was Dalton Lee Roth and Purple vs. Rising Phoenix Champ and an Australian rule football guy with a very cute manager.  It was kind of an odd match as clearly PWP had been teasing a break up between Roth and Purple, but the heel tag team were not exactly a real tag team.  They smacked each other around.  In the end, the heels won, the Rising Phoenix champ looked strong, and Roth made the heel turn.  I wish the turn had been better executed.  Someone messing something up to give a reason, getting in each other’s way, or just frustration showing through the match. 

Then came Pat Powers, who is running for President.  He got mic time and was pretty good.  He teased a VP pick later, and wrestled a great match against Paco, who may have been a new guy.  Both showed good skill, but Powers pulled an injury card, and after the ref threw up the X sign (to who was a question), Powers hit his finisher on Paco and won the match.  Nice heel tactics, but it took a little too long to pull off.  Good in ring wrestling.

Then was the last match before intermission and it was for the PWP Tag Titles.  The Daniels brothers led by Axel Greece against Guns n Beer.  Guns n Beer are a fun tag team and were also pretty popular.  They did a good job.  One time holding out the whiskey bottle to encourage the stretch for the tag and it worked.  Fun stuff.  The Daniels brothers worked over a hurt shoulder and ended up with the win after manager help.  Nice match with a heel win. 

Opening the second half of the show was KLD (Kenneth Lee Davidson) against the Canadian Hercules.  This was a good story.  Was Hercules strong enough to overcome the very large KLD.  They did the shoulder block test, they did a test of strength (long time since I saw that and it made sense for the match), they did trying to suplex each other bit, and pulled out a very under used kick out at 1.  The wrestling was strong guy wrestling, but it was a beautiful story, and KLD picked up the win in the end with a very powerful looking chokebomb finisher. 

Then was Zac James against Devin Carter.  This was another great story match.  Carter had attacked James last time when teased retiring because of head injuries.  So the story was head injuries.  It played for the vicious nature of James’s opening.  Carter eventually shrugged him into a ring post and it then became a question of would James make the 10 count as he was motionless.  When he was going to make it Carter would go out and bang his head again.  Carter yelled at him to just lay down and quit many times.  It was perfect story telling.  Eventually Carter was overthrown with a sliced bread and was set up for a top rope finisher, but Pat Powers came out and clipped the feet.  This led to a Carter superplex and victory.  Nice match.  Carter is now the VP candidate, which was a little weird, and made the post match promise of revenge in a tag match also a little strange, but great over all. 

This led into the main event with the PWP champ, , putting the belt on the line against local legend Hype Gotti and Unbreakable Michael Elgin.  Elgin and Gotti can really go.  Both men showed great athleticism.  The champ is a bigger fellow and wrestled in that way, so the match of styles was sometimes harsh.  Hit a Vader Splash in the corner on Gotti, which was neat.  Gotti suicide dived on Elgin out of the ring then ran back into the ring and dove out the other side on the champ.  It was a small bar, so it was gutsy stuff.  Elgin showed amazing strength when he picked up the champ on his shoulders.  Of course his chops were awesome and a couple of the lariats I thought were going to take a person’s head off.  They did a superplex, powerbomb out of the corner combo with Elgin doing the superplex, but taking the bomb from the champ leading to the champ hitting his finisher on Gotti to retain.  Harder to tell the story when the three guys in the ring were all faces and it was kind of a one off, but a very good main event.