wrestling / Video Reviews
Jack’s RevPro Wrestling Live in Orlando
Loading...So, Wrestlemania weekend is winding to a close, and you’ve potentially watched as many as 13 live PPVs in the space of four days. You’re lying on your sofa, almost comatose, stuffed full of pro wrestling. You’ve shed a tear as John Cena proposed to NIkki Bella in the middle of the ring, you’ve toughed out that appalling Triple H-Seth Rollins match, you’ve felt your blood pressure soar through the roof with the sheer frustration of trying to watch the PROGRESS show, you’ve watched Joey Janela’s Spring Break and wondered if you were suffering from a fever dream. And now, as you reflect on the last few days, your overriding thought is “well, yeah, it was fun and all, but the one real flaw with the whole four day festival was that there wasn’t enough live pro wrestling going on.” WELL, YOU’RE IN LUCK! Because certain unbelievably efficient promotions who ran at Wrestlemania weekend but decided not to risk the headache of doing an iPPV have ALREADY managed to get their events online for us to watch at our leisure. One of those companies is UK stalwarts RevPro, whose Live in Orlando event looks absolutely mouthwatering. Fenix, Marty Scurll, Michael Elgin, Pentagon Jr., Ricochet, Sami Callihan, Will Ospreay and Zack Sabre Jr. are all going to be in action. It’s going to be a complete and utter delight. Let’s get to it!
1- SAMI CALLIHAN VS. JAY WHITE
Callihan starts the match by booting Jay White in the face and wiping him out with a suicide dive, which is a perfect example of why Sami Callihan is great. Jay White can only respond in kind with a suicide dive of his own! This leads to most of the early part of the match just being a brawl around ringside, and it’s very good fun. The pace doesn’t really relent that much once the action hits the ring either, and while it’s nothing that will stand out in the veritable ocean of wrestling that is this weekend, it still makes for an exciting and well conceived opener. Lots of smooth, tough striking sequences broken up with the occasional stretchy submission hold thrown in there. Callihan decks White with a lariat, drops him with a sit out powerbomb, and then when White kicks out immediately transitions into the stretch muffler! White survives it though, and counters another attempt at the hold into a Boston Crab! Callihan taps! *** 1/4. Really likeable, frantic opener.
2- MARTIN STONE VS. JEFF COBB
I wasn’t particularly excited for this one; I don’t remember finding Cobb hugely exciting outside of the odd impressive display of power or athleticism on the admittedly few occasions I’ve seen him. On the whole though, this match overdelivers. It’s relatively brisk, Stone shows plenty of personality, and Cobb gets quite a bit of eye catching offense in. His Cyclone Back Suplex in particular is very nifty. The finishing stretch sees both guys just throwing bombs at each other, and is really bloody great. Cobb hurls Stone in the air, catches him as he’s about to hit the mat, and then spins him into a Deadlift German Suplex! Wowzers! But it’s Stone that picks up the win in the end, dumping Cobb with the London Bridge for the win. What a pleasant surprise! *** 1/2 . I thought that would have been much more methodical and at points during the early stages that seemed to be the way it was going, but they kept it relatively short and cut loose with a fantastic finishing stretch!
Lord Gideon Grey shambles his way to the ring- not sure what kind of angle they’re doing with him, I only know him playing a stuck up aristocrat character, but he shambles down to the ring looking a bit dishevelled and depressed. He explains he’s furious because Colt Cabana and Swoggle have turned him into a joke, and demands Swoggle come down to the ring and proves he’s a man! Swoggle obliges. This is probably going to be terrible.
3- SWOGGLE VS. LORD GIDEON GREY
Swoggle bites Gideon Grey on the bottom and then persuades referee Chris Roberts to do it as well. Five German suplexes to Gideon Grey! Five! Grey fights back with the 50 Shades of Grey powerslam, and that’ll do it. This wasn’t terrible! It was entirely harmless! And too short to rate, really.
4- RICOCHET VS. MARTY SCURLL
Jesus, Marty Scurll gets an incredible ovation! It’s just super to see how beloved he is in America.
I’d imagine the opening part of this match will prove divisive, since it’s full of light hearted spots and Scurll enthusiastically indulging in his villain schtick. It worked for me though, especially since both guys could barely contain how much fun they were having. And, eventually, it does turn into a really great wrestling match, with all the delightfully slick sequences you could want. It drags on ever so slightly too long and they lose the crowd just a little, but get them back in time for the conclusion. Ricochet is a good opponent for Scurll because he’s far too cool to fall first time for any of his signature spots, so Marty has to come up with inventive ways to get him with the superkick (just kidding) and chicken wing. He has to land the former while Ricochet is in the middle of a handspring, and doesn’t get the latter till the finishing stretch. Ricochet refuses to let him lock his hands on it though, and hoists him up onto his shoulders for the Benadryller! He tries to follow that up with the Handspring Ace Crusher, but Scurll catches him in mid air and drops him back into the Chicken Wing! Ricochet taps immediately! *** 3/4. It really did feel like this was two guys going out and doing exactly what they felt like doing for 20 ish minutes, and it’s a testament to how good and likeable they both are that it didn’t feel self indulgent at all. A massively enjoyable match, albeit nothing like a Match of the Weekend contender or anything.
5- DAVID STARR VS. JOSH BODOM
This was scheduled to be for Josh Bodom’s Interim Cruiserweight Championship, but Bodom has at the last minute refused to put the belt on the line, and even claims he hasn’t brought the title across to the United States.
This seems a fairly basic match to ease people back from intermission, although business does pick up when David Starr decides to crash into Bodom with three suicide dives. Bodom’s response is a stunning somersault senton off the top turnbuckle to the floor! He gets such great air on it! This cues up a good, competitive finishing stretch, although the near falls ultimately get excessive. Starr does gets a great one off a DDT across the ring ropes and then a lariat, and then Bodom also comes mighty close to victory with the Bodom Breaker (Project Ciampa). We then get a ref bump, and Bodom tries to use some sort of spare support beam for the ring as a weapon. The referee recovers at the last moment to stop him from using it. The distraction allows Starr to come close once more, but Bodom survives, and soon picks up the win with the Bliss Buster (a sort of facebuster/piledriver hybrid with the opponent hanging off the middle rope. Not the best explanation, I admit). ** 3/4. The amount of near falls felt jarring considering how relatively low key the early stages of the bout were; the ref bump in particular felt like an attempt at epic melodrama in a match that didn’t need it. Still a fine match though.
6- REY FENIX VS. WILL OSPREAY
HOORAY! This is more or less what you’d expect. If you were looking forward to this match, you’ll enjoy it, and if you weren’t, well, we’ve probably got polarised tastes in wrestling and these reviews will be of little value to you. Basically, there’s a little under five minutes or so at the start of the match where Ospreay works Fenix over carefully, and this isn’t super interesting or even relevant because the rest of the match is all crazy dives and head dropping and insanity, so who are they trying to win over with a cautious opening couple of minutes? Happily, both men soon lose their inhibitions and are flying around the ring with a gusto. Of particular note is a spot where Fenix hits a Reverse Rana, and Ospreay just no sells it and hits one of his own instead! I don’t want to do a blow by blow account of every cool dive but suffice to say there are lots of them and it’s always so impressive how gracefully they pull them off and how much height they get on them. There’s one or two sloppy moments, but considering the complexity of what they’re trying, the athleticism is just mind blowing. Ultimately, Ospreay catches Fenix with the Revolution Kick, and the ever gorgeous Os-Cutter secures the victory! This was on the brink of absolute greatness, but Ospreay’s match with Ricochet in New Japan last year remains the undisputed high watermark for this style. Still, a comfortable **** for this one.
7- SHANE STRICKLAND & RYAN SMILE VS. THE UNBREAKABLE F’N MACHINES
Ryan Smile is a very fun high flyer who seems on the precipice of breaking out in a major way. He flew all the way to Orlando for the U.K for this one match and then flew back home again, which is a pretty insane level of commitment.
This is absolutely fantastic! And this is in spite of the slightly weird atmosphere surrounding Smile, who the American fans in the crowd do not take to at all. This is understandable because he does a lot of goofy high pitched yelping, eats a Super Elgin Bomb and an F-5 from Cage and still kicks out at two, and generally comes off a little bit cocky in the way that Will Ospreay often does, but doesn’t have Ospreay’s obvious insane talent to mitigate it. As good as Smile can be, he works much better as a heel, and this was the wrong match to try and break out in because he’s just not quite on the level of any of the other people in the ring with him. Don’t let this make you think that the match is anything other than a total joy, though. The Unbreakable F’N Machines are in blistering form, rattling off insane power move upon insane power move like it’s nothing. It’s brilliant how relentless they are, there’s rarely a dull moment between the two of them, no obvious resting. Shane Strickland, however, ends up providing the moment of the match- Elgin is dazed and leaning against the ropes on the apron, Brian Cage is on the floor, so Swerve leaps off the top turnbuckle, propels himself head over heels off Elgin’s chest like it was a wall or something, and wipes out Cage on the floor with a moonsault! Madness! Sheer madness! The finishing stretch is the utter frenzy of big moves you’d expect, and the power vs. speed dynamic makes it particularly fresh and compelling. In the end, Smile puts down Elgin with a Frog Splash to a chorus of boos. It feels a bit odd to rave about a match that obviously failed in its main objective, to give Ryan Smile some positive buzz stateside, but this was just marvellous anyhow. **** 1/2.
8- RPW BRITISH HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP- ZACK SABRE JR. VS. PENTA EL ZERO M
Fuck, Zack’s got a rap theme in RevPro, and it’s, um, not quite right for him.
This is one of those dream matches where just seeing the wrestlers perform their signature offense on one another is a satisfying enough novelty, and as such that’s basically what we get. Although, that doesn’t mean that either man takes the opportunity to slack off. Zack is working as a heel in RevPro though, and it’s good fun to see him wave his middle fingers in the air while applying a bridging submission to Penta. He’s clearly just the nicest guy, and so it’s particularly fun to see him enjoy behaving like a total dickhead. Penta comes back with a Fear Factor on the ring apron! Fuuuuuuck! In the ring, Zack retaliates with a bloody Canadian Destroyer, and then right into one of his twisty stretchy submissions! Penta’s resistance strategy seems just to be to raise his middle finger, but that doesn’t quite work out. Zack wins! ***. Exactly what it needed to be; short, sweet, and both guys got to show off their distinct personalities and movesets. It was an exhibition, but a strong example of one.
