The Magnus Analysis- PWG Battle Of Los Angeles 2006 Night 1

Pro Wrestling Guerrilla based out of California presented it’s annual Battle Of Los Angeles tournament. This is the second year of the tournament, having been won by Chris Bosh in 2005. Some of the participants in Night 1 of the tournament include Chris Sabin, CIMA, Dragon Kid, Roderick Strong and more. That doesn’t include the huge main event 8 man tag team match.

For a start I’ll mention that the menu’s on these DVD’s are superb, among the best I’ve seen from any indy promotion, as they are complete with moving images of the tournament participants and some music in the background. That’s giving a great impression of the company straight away to any new fans who purchase this event.

The optional commentary for this event is done by Disco Machine and Taro

Match 1
BOLA Round One Match- Chris Sabin vs ‘Classic’ Colt Cabana
A hot opening match, which while it didn’t go as long as some of the other matches on the night, fulfilled it’s purpose of getting the crowd into the show. A bit of comedy involved in this match as you would expect, with Cabana involving the referee to great comic effect. At the same time we saw a good clash of styles, with Sabin wrestling fast and high impact, while Cabana wrestled using his European style, and by trying to get into Sabin’s head with some comedy. Chris Sabin managed to advance in the tournament when he pinned Cabana with a rollup from a slingshot over Cabana’s head over the turnbuckle- *** (¾* for comedy value)

Match 2
BOLA Round One Match- ‘The Generic Luchador’ El Generico vs Delirious
I enjoyed this match a lot, it provided a huge amount of entertainment value thanks to these two men’s unique personalities and top notch wrestling skills. I would however say that the match they had with each other in IWA-MS was a step above this one (maybe because Delirious was wrestling a heelish style compared with the IWA match), but still this was good. If anything it had a slightly different dynamic to the first encounter, and a bit more of a methodical pace that built on that match. El Generico was able to advance when he pinned Delirious after two Big Boots to the face in the corner followed by a Half Nelson Suplex- ***1/4 (¼* for comedy value)

Match 3
BOLA Round One Match- CIMA vs M-Dogg 20
Pretty good stuff here, this is one match that seems to have been overlooked by a lot of people, and I highly enjoyed this. I felt the bout was well wrestled, as all the moves were hat crisply and things flowed well from start to finish. It’s certainly not a match your likely to see again unless M-Dogg heads over to Japan for Dragon Gate. While it’s almost certain that nobody would have though M-Dogg stood a chance coming in, he stepped up here and came close on several occasions to getting a surprise win and looked like he could genuinely beat CIMA (although the crowd didn’t seem to believe in that at all). But we would see CIMA advance to Round 2 when he pinned M-Dogg with the Schwein. A match that shouldn’t be sleeped on- ***1/4

Match 4
BOLA Round 1 Match- Kevin Steen vs Matt Sydal
Good enough match, but I felt their TPI 2005 Final match was better than this. Strangely enough we get some comedy in the opening minutes of the match. Sydal and Steen keep striking poses, and then the referee joins in. Anyway, because of the more light hearted feel this match had, I felt that it wasn’t as good of a wrestling match as it could have been, as is the case with a lot of Steen’s matches. And for whatever reason I’ve never felt that these two click as well as some wrestlers I’ve seen. Still, not too bad. Steen won to advance to Round 2 via pinfall with a Top Rope Powerbomb – **3/4

Match 5
BOLA Round 1 Match- Dragon Kid vs Quicksilver
This was the match I was looking most forward to from the first night of Round 1 matches, and I enjoyed this one a lot outside of a few sloppy spots. I liked it not only because of the two’s similar high flying styles, but because they managed to wrestle very crisply without botching anything. Again, if I had any problems with this match, it would be that the crowd felt quiet at times, and didn’t seem to take Quicksilver seriously as a credible threat to beating Dragon Kid, a lot like the CIMA-M-Dogg 20 match earlier on. Still, these are minor gripes in an excellent first round bout that matched my expectations. Watch out for a sick Spike Piledriver by Quicksilver near the end of the bout that may be the sickest move of the match and of the entire night. Dragon Kid advanced via pinfall with a Springboard Hurracarana (this wasn’t the Dragonrana as the announcers said)- ***1/2

Match 6
Roderick Strong vs Rocky Romero
Another excellent match, my pick for the match of the night. A hard hitting contest, with Strong bringing the hard chops and backbreakers while Romero used kicks and submissions. There was a lot of stiffness, as you would expect, and it’s quite easy to see why these two were paired together in the No Remorse Corps in ROH. But there was good matwork here too in the early going in-between some heated exchanges, plus the match for the most part had a quick pace that got the crowd more and more into this. I would say the big highlight of the match was Strong hitting Romero with a Backbreaker on the apron. Strong would end up advancing with the Boston Crab submission- ***1/2

Joey Ryan cuts a promo before the next match. I won’t go into what he said since I couldn’t hear this very well (as is the case with so many of these promo’s on indy events)

Match 7
Non Tournament- Excalibur, Human Tornado and the Strong Style Thugs (B-Boy and Homicide) vs The Dynasty (Joey Ryan, Chris Bosh and Scott Lost) and Petey Williams
Personally, while Joey Ryan is the PWG champion, and Arrogance are the tag team champions, this match in my opinion had no place being the main event, and should have happened earlier on since this show is supposed to be about the tournament itself. Looking past that, I thought the match was pretty decent, but I’d say it was the weakest of the night, so a little bit disappointing as a result. It just seemed to be too slow in the early going, although picked up towards the end (but by that time the crowd had gone quiet). The match was won by Excalibur’s team when Excalibur pinned the PWG Champion after Petey Williams turned on Ryan, hitting him with the Canadian Destroyer- **1/2

There was a big brawl after the match with the Briscoe’s running in to fight with both The Strong Style Thugs and Arrogance. Homicide showed his dominance by throwing a chair at Jay Briscoe, then smashing him in the head and back with it, before smashing it into one of the staff workers. This was to setup a three way tag team match on Night 2.

The 411: I enjoyed this event a lot. Top to bottom it's a very solid card of wrestling. There's nothing MOTY worthy, but with five tournament matches rated ***+, then you know your getting something good when buying this show. I highly recommend this show, along with Night 2 and 3 which I will review sometime in the future.
Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]