wrestling / Video Reviews
Euro Fury: Fight Club Pro Breaking Into Heaven
Fight Club Pro Breaking Into Heaven
October 22 2016
We’re in Manchester and this is Fight Club Pro’s first show in the Northern city, basing itself regularly around Birmingham, specifically Wolverhampton. This is new venue for FCP. It’s all almost seated, which is totally weird, and the crowd aren’t on top of the ring. It doesn’t really have the same feel. FCP’s normal venue, the Fixxion, is an absolute shit-hole. I adore it as a wrestling venue. ECW never would have been as good if they’d not run a shitty bingo hall. Fight Club Pro’s ambiance is aided by the venue. That said, this show has a good atmosphere to it.
Fire Ant vs. Chris Brookes
Brookes, being a legendary shithead, works over Fire Ant’s horns. Fire Ant responds with armdrags. Multiple. If you’re playing the lucha drinking game you’d be hammered by the end of the second sequence. It makes me wonder if the counting game at this show was for armdrags. Brookes is hilarious throughout this, getting upset with Fire Ant for stealing his moves, singling out fans to spit water on and generally being a dick. He’d not be welcome in Progress. They only have one rule and it’s “don’t be a dick”. Everything Brookes does is dickish. Including the wet willy, although he can’t do it here because there’s no hole to stick his finger in! It’s always nice to see a new crowd get completely disgusted by Brookes’ drool covered digits though. Brookes does sterling work in keeping up with Fire Ant. He’s another in a string of UK wrestlers who look completely at ease when facing high calibre imports. Brookes even wins here via submission. Good effort from both guys, both in terms of the grappling and the entertainment.
Final Rating: ***1/4
Nixon Newell vs. Kimber Lee
The women in Fight Club Pro have been killing it on these shows. Nixon vs. Kimber vs. Kay Lee Ray was great. Nixon vs. KLR was great. Now we have Nixon vs. Kimber. They had a match for WCPW not so long ago, which was really quite bad but sometimes you botch and it wrecks everyone’s rhythm. This is immediately a lot better. Both ladies look more comfortable. They’re clearly energised from the excellent three-way two nights beforehand and everything clicks beautifully. It’s a shame they didn’t get to do that match in front of the iPPV audience. This is goofier at times, like everyone doing a pointless forward roll but they don’t kill time with that as it’s brief and then they get on with the graps. They even chop the shit out of each other. It’s proper strong style. Even the women work like bastards in Fight Club Pro. The timing is so much better on everything here compared to WCPW. It’s like night and day. Either FCP put something in the water in the changing rooms or they had an off day on iPPV. This is so evident when they’re doing spots they blew in WCPW and nailing them. They absolutely batter each other with big spots. Huge suplexes and strikes a plenty. Nixon eventually kills Kimber with a Canadian Destroyer. This was so much fun. Another in a string of great women’s matches in FCP.
Final Rating: ***3/4
Dan Moloney vs. Ethan Silver vs. Drew Parker vs. TK Cooper
Moloney is a FCP regular. Parker is better known for his work in Attack. TJ known for his work in Progress. Silver is a prospect who I’ve not seen before but people I trust have him pegged as a man to watch. On the whole you’ve got four guys who are the future of BritWres. It’s kinda exciting to have them meet up like this, ahead of the natural order of things. Parker is a literal child, he’s around 18 years old, and it becomes clear that this won’t be the cleanest of contests due to the inexperience of those involved and their lack of familiarity with each other. After a few fumbled exchanges Moloney thinks ‘fuck it’ and goes strong style on everyone. If a match is falling apart then just legitimately twat people and it’ll get things back on track. Whenever someone tries something ambitious it doesn’t quite go according to plan, which is a pity because if everything was clean in this match it would be pretty fucking incredible. But Silver and Parker both make a lot of mistakes, mainly due to inexperience and that hurts the match. They both show enough promise to suggest they’ll get better and having matches with talented wrestlers will help. Moloney looks like an utter beast in there, hitting a stacker powerbomb on the two kids before pinning TK with another powerbomb. Moloney is on the verge of breaking out in UK wrestling. Watch out for him in 2017.
Final Rating: **3/4
Travis Banks vs. Shane Strickland
This weekend has done an excellent job of promoting Banks as a great wrestler who can’t win matches in Fight Club Pro. So now he’s got a losing streak gimmick and that won’t end in Manchester, away from the crowd that’s already emotionally attached to it. Travis looks terrific again here, hanging with Strickland and matching him for speed and athleticism. Keeping in mind Shane is one of the best in the world at both of those attributes. It’s an incredible performance from Travis, who’s spent his entire time in Fight Club Pro hanging with whoever turns up. Regardless of who that is. There’s one spot that goes wrong, with Strickland going to hit a tornado DDT but he slips on the ropes and they effortlessly cover for it. If you didn’t know any better you wouldn’t even notice. Then they go into a fucking phenomenal sequence that pops the shit out of Manchester. Strickland does some tremendous work in trying to evade Travis but Banks is relentless and chases him down, closing the spaces and being super aggressive. He’s so naturally good at everything when it comes to professional wrestling. Not only that Travis is great at showing these little minor bits of frustration when he can’t get the pin as he can’t win in FCP. The action is so good here with Travis hitting his world-beating tope and Shane responding with a DVD on the apron (it’s the hardest part of the ring, people). Strickland has to win, to preserve Travis’ losing streak, but that doesn’t prevent the match being wonderful. It is wonderful. I love wrestling.
Final Rating: ****1/4
Mikey Whiplash vs. Trent Seven
These two generally batter each other and it tends to produce the best Mikey Whiplash matches known to mankind. If you’ve only seen Whiplash during his hugely disappointing Progress run Fight Club Pro could open your eyes to his potential. This is a typically robust demonstration of the beloved British Strong Style with a combination of strikes and throws and swearing. The no selling German suplexes sequence in this match is fucking ridiculous. In the best possible sense of the word. It’s so brutal. They absolutely destroy each other. If I had to define the kind of wrestling that I really, truly love, it would involve two blokes just beating each other up until one of them could no longer stand. That’s how Trent Seven wrestles. Whiplash takes a hellacious beating off Trent, including a piledriver off the ropes that he has the fucking temerity to kick out of. Who do you think you are? Roadwarrior fuckin Hawk? These two pound each other and no sell the abuse until eventually Trent counts lights for a piledriver. This was so, so harsh.
Final Rating: ****
The Hunter Brothers vs. Orange Cassidy & Ashley Clementine
Cassidy is from Chikara, the same place Fire Ant is from. This is totally not related at all, honest. His tag team partner is Kimber Lee in a different gimmick. Hope she got paid twice lads. Cassidy has a languid style, reminiscent of drunks trying to do wrestling when they’re so drunk they can barely even stand. At least Kimber doesn’t have to work too hard for her second paycheque. Half the match is in literal slow motion. Lee Hunter makes me laugh by shouting advice to Jim Hunter who seems oblivious to the piss-take that’s occurring in the ring. Both the ‘heels’ bail and sit in the crowd because they got chopped. The fans have to carry them both back to the ring to prevent a count-out. If you think Naito is a bit laid back in his gimmick, he’s got nothing on these two. If ambien was a wrestler, it’d be Orange Cassidy. I chuckle at the top rope ‘splashes’ and the tuning up of the band, followed by Sweet Shin Music. The Hunters then win with two superkicks. The first of which is no sold. This match was bizarre. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a gimmick like the one Orange Cassidy and Ashley Clementine do. It’s unusual to say the least. I think I loved this match but I seriously doubt I can rate it on the normal scale. This match breaks the concept of star ratings.
Final Rating: Purple, gracefully sliding backwards through time
Falls Count Anywhere
Fight Club Pro Championship
Pete Dunne (c) vs. Clint Margera
Peter is unimpressed with Clint’s credentials, because he’s a death match guy, so Margera brings the strong style but also declares this to be a ‘falls count anywhere’ match. This Manchester venue has horrible plastic chairs, unlike the Fixxion, which is loaded with black folding metal chairs. The Manchester crowd have discovered that it’s quite easy to trigger Pete Dunne by simply yelling “Peter” at him. Dunne looks every inch the champion in this match, taking it to Clint in his type of match and beating him up all over the arena. In between this he gets into banter with the fans to the point where he’s chasing people around. Fans are genuinely scared of Pete Dunne, like they used to be with Scott Steiner in WCW. He has taken to biting fans that persistently insult him so it’s probably better to scarper if he heads your way. This crowd really try and trigger him too chanting “mom’s swimming costume” at him, criticising his choice of ring gear. The action is almost secondary to Pete vs. the crowd. Which is not a bad back up to have in your locker. If you can draw that much heat it’s good for business. The meat of the match is Margera taking a shoeing and staying alive to mount plucky comebacks. It’s a fine demonstration of what Margera can bring outside of the death match setting. He showed this during the tag on night one of this tour as well. He’s very capable of brawling in the strongest of styles. The antics get going as Joel Allen stands up to Pete, bites him and then takes out Chris Brookes for good measure. In the midst of this Margera gets choked out and Dunne retains.
Final Rating: ***1/2
Post Match: Margera takes a beating from Brookes and Dunne so Seven runs out to save, only for him to get bitten and wet willied at the same time. It looks as if the heels will stand tall to close the show but here’s Jimmy fucking Havoc. Brookes eats an Acid Rainmaker and Havoc poses with the belt. Already very excited for that match.