Dark Pegasus Video Review: Pro-Wrestling Guerrilla — The Debut Show

PWG: The Debut Show by J.D. Dunn Twitter.com/jddunn411 Facebook.com/jddunn411 July 26, 2003 From City of Industry, Calif. Your hosts are Excalibur, Disco Machine and a largely silent Super Dragon. Opening Match: Charles Mercury, Sara Del Rey & Supa Badd vs. Topgun Talwar, Zokre & Ryan Drago. Del Rey is probably the biggest star here. Zokre is one-half of Los Luchas. Very luchaesque match with the opposing teams dividing into one-on-one rivalries and doing a mini-exhibition to open. Supa Badd looks like a short Gheorghe Muresan. He plays the powerhouse, which is kind of silly, but he’s taller than everyone, so it works. Del Rey plays face-in-peril and takes a womanly beating before hitting Talwar with a DDT and tagging out. CUE THE HIGHSPOTS! Everyone dives out on everyone else. Talwar hits Mercury with a spiffy 619 from the floor with a chair. Back in the ring, Sara Del Rey German Suplexes Drago for the win at 13:55. Typical indie lucha match down to the formula. Some cool moves set it apart, though. Not a bad choice for an opener. **1/2 Commissioner Paul T. interviews Sara Del Rey who is getting ready for a tour of Japan. Actually, she comes out, he explains where she’s going, and she leaves. Excalibur comes out and says he’s tired from setting up chairs, so he’s taking the night off by facing off with some rookie. Excalibur vs. Chris Bosh. Fast and furious action from the start. Bosh dropkicks Excalibur to the floor and works in the Misawa taunt. Back in, Excalibur works in the Tarantula headscissors and a cross armlock. Bosh makes the ropes. Bosh makes the ropes, but Excalibur goes with the reverse armbreaker. Bosh springboards into an armdrag, but Excalibur catches him with a lariat and finishes with the Tiger Driver DDT at 4:49. Nice little match in a short amount of time. Both guys had tight execution, and the Tiger Driver ’98 is an excellent finisher. **3/4 The Ballard Bros. vs. Scorpio Sky & Quicksilver. Sky and Silver are known as the Aerial Express, which is a bit bland. Excalibur makes his first racist comment… well, overtly racist comment by saying “those colored boys sure can jump.” The Express uses their quickness and skill early. The Ballards can’t even get out of each other’s way. They finally catch Quicksilver with a gutbuster to take over. The Ballard’s actually have crisp teamwork when they’re in control. Quicksilver blocks a backdrop and reverses to an armwringer STO. Scorpio gets the hot tag. The Express hits a doubleteam facebuster, but Shane makes the save. The Express finishes with a dropkick into a piledriver at 11:39. That finisher was VICIOUS. Loved the Ballards’ offense, which I usually don’t, and Sky & Quicksilver actually made decent babyfaces. *** Super Dragon vs. M-Dogg 20. M-Dogg is Matt Cross, who was in Ring of Honor for a while before they realized he didn’t have much personality and had even less accuracy in the execution of his dangerous high spots. We see an example of that here as he knocks Dragon to the floor and follows with Space Flying Tiger Headscissors. Dragon actually has to step toward him, catch him, and flip to complete the move. I know the opponent always has to do that, but here it was really obvious. Dragon gets his knees up to block a split-legged moonsault. Dragon Screw leads to an STF. Cross makes the rope. The Gedo Clutch gets two, and Dragon turns Cross over into the legscissor Full Nelson. Dragon hits a Kappou Kick, but a second charge hits the post. Cross flips out onto him and locks him in a Tarantula with the crowd barricade. Back in, Cross hits a corkscrew for two and a flipping DDT for two more. A Tornado DDT puts Dragon down, but Cross can’t cover. Dragon goes up, but Cross kicks him and… I’m not sure exactly. It looks like he tried to do a front flip into a huracanrana, which doesn’t make sense prima facia, and it’s even worse in that Dragon has to jump through the air and sell the move himself because Cross doesn’t make contact. Dragon nails him in the back of the head with a springboard spinning wheel kick. That sets up the Phoenix Splash on Cross at 15:15. Cross lived up or down to his reputation, depending on what you think of him. Dragon actually carried him through the match, making up for two noticeable misses. They worked in several great spots. **3/4 TARO vs. Babi Slymm. TARO lays out an open challenge before the match. Babi Slymm manhandles the much smaller guy (despite TARO thinking he’s a giant). TARO comes back with a spear. A neckbreaker puts Slymm down, but Slymm catches him with a chokeslam. ONE, TWO—Babi pulls him up. Slymm hits a swinging sideslam and grabs a chair. He sets it up in between the ropes and tries to spear TARO through it. TARO moves, allowing Slymm to brain himself. TARO covers and gets the win at 6:36. Just a squash with a fluke pin by the underdog. *1/4 Apollo Khan & Hook Bomberry vs. Disco Machine & Mr. Excitement. Just in case you’ve never seen these guys before: Apollo Khan is the guy who looks like Apollo Creed; Mr. Excitement is the guy who’s dressed like Apollo Creed. They even get into a boxing contest in the middle of the match until Khan decides to end it with the STO. Khan spears him off the second rope for two. Disco and Hook tag in. Disco dropkicks Khan into an Excitement Exploder. Disco hits Triple Verticals on Hook and ends it with a sitout facebuster. Hook charges at him but gets powerslammed into the turnbuckle. Disco tries a chokeslam, but Hook counters to a jujigatame for the submission at 14:15. In contrast to the earlier tag, this felt like four singles wrestlers in a tag match rather than two tag teams, which allowed everyone to show their personality a little more. Hook’s tiny submission specialist gimmick is good. His team with Khan seems a bit disjointed, though. *** Hardkore Inc. (w/C. Edward Vanderpyl, El Jefe & Jason Allgood) vs. The X-Foundation. Big brawl to start, and the babyface X-Foundation clears the ring. The X-Foundation is Joey Ryan, Scott Lost and Billy Kim. Hardkore Inc. is Adam Pearce, the Hardkore Kidd and Al Katrazz. Yes. “Al Katrazz.” Pearce nails Lost with a spinning wheel kick for the heels to take over. It’s Joey Ryan who assumes the face-in-peril role moments later, though. Katrazz works in the Undertaker ropewalk forearm. Excalibur is in rare form here as we get references to Blossom, Bette Midler and Hilary Duff’s sodomized corpse. The match breaks down, which doesn’t bode well for the babyfaces since there are three guys waiting to interfere in the heel corner. Sure enough, Vanderpyle tosses a title belt (the UPW Tag Title?) in to Pearce. Pearce waffles Lost with it and picks up the win at 12:10. Never been a big fan of Kidd and Katrazz, but they looked pretty badass in there. Pearce looked like an asshole, which is what he does best. The babyfaces actually looked and acted appropriately babyfacy and got an appropriate reaction for it. ***1/4 Samoa Joe comes to the ring and announces he’s dropping out of tonight’s show due to injury. A.J. Styles vs. Frankie Kazarian. You’re better off turning off the commentary for this one because it has the potential to be a great match if you don’t get distracted by Excalibur’s rambling references. AJ works in all his usual stuff early so they can get to the meat of the match. AJ goes for the Styles Clash, but Kazarian slings him into the corner. AJ counters a suplex to a brainbuster. AJ blocks the Wave of the Future and counters to an STO. Kazarian tries a running rana, but AJ powerbombs him to counter. AJ hits a discus lariat and the Quebrada DDT for two. They exchange counters until Frankie goes for another huracanrana which AJ counters to the Styles Clash at 11:41. Awh. Looked rushed and thrown-together. They work very well together, but they either needed to simplify their spots or they needed more time. **3/4 Kazarian puts AJ over as the best wrestler he’s ever faced and hypes the tournament to crown the first-ever champion.

The 411: A fun, briskly wrestled show with no bad matches and quite a few good matches. The only big knock on it is that so many of the matches were of the same style, but that's what you get when you start a promotion with local talent used to wrestling a certain way (see CHIKARA). If you're easily offended, I wouldn't advise listening to the commentary track. In fact, even if you're difficult to offend, I wouldn't recommend it. It's more often distracting than anything else and almost never adds anything to the match. Excalibur is pretty funny at times, though. Overall, a good start to the promotion. Thumbs up.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]