BRM Reviews AAW Take No Prisoners 2017 (awesome!)

[Big Red Machine]

AAW Take No Prisoners 2017 (5/6/2017)- Chicago, IL

SIX-PACK CHALLENGE MATCH: Aeroboy vs. Connor Braton vs. PACO vs. Myron Reed vs. Jason Cade vs. Space Monkey- 5.75/10
An entertaining spotfest of an opener that takes you back to the early 2000s. The fact that Jason Cade’s hair makes him look like Special K-era “Hydro” Jay Lethal doesn’t help. I can almost hear Gabe and Doug’s sh*tty commentary in my head. Myron Reed is definitely someone I’d like to see more of. Aeroboy picked up the win here in his AAW debut and I should be happy for him but one of the announcers pointed out that his mask makes him look like Ultron, which I now can’t un-see, and thus I never want him to win.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- AAW Heavyweight Champion Sami Callihan comes out and lays Aeroboy out. He signals that he is going to unmask him but Rey Fenix comes out to make the save and lays Sami out with a Mexican Destroyer. That part of the segment was good. Then ACH runs and despite Sami being at a clearly disadvantaged position, the referee just orders the bell to be rung for the…

AAW HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Sami Callihan(c) (w/JT Davidson) vs. ACH- 7/10
ACH immediately hits the Buster Call but Sami kicks out. He sets up for it again but Sami rolls to the floor. ACH kicks Sami from the apron, rolls him into the ring and sets up for the Midnight Star but Sami rolls to the outside again. ACH goes for the same kick as before but this time Sami catches his leg, pulls him into a fireman’s carry and gives him an AA into the front row to cut him off.
They kept that same intensity up, although Sami did slow the pace down when he was in control. At one point he hit ACH with a weapon and I could have sword I heard the bell ring but the match still seemed to be going on and no one said anything about a DQ. We also later got the referee being pulled out of the ring as well as a blatant low blow, so I guess there are just no DQs in AAW? Sami started to work over ACH’s leg and eventually got the win with the Stretch Muffler, though ACH did get some very convincing false finishes in.

MARTY DEROSA INTERVIEWS BOBBY FISH- he is excited to make his AAW debut. He wants to win championships. Marty Derosa said that Fish had been a champion in Mexico, which a quick search of the internet proves to be untrue. In fact, Cagematch.net has no records of Fish ever having competed in Mexico at all.

TREVOR LEE vs. BOBBY FISH- 6.25/10
Another match that was very good for the time it got. Lee won with a handful of tights, and it’s also possible that Fish’s shoulder was up. Lee has now won three straight, so there will hopefully be some sort of title shot in his future.

EDDIE KINGSTON PROMO- AWESOME, but also really depressing. Eddie basically said that he’s depressed and hates wrestling but just doesn’t know how to stop so he is waiting for someone to come along and end his career via injury.

IT’S COLT CABANA’S BIRTHDAY- Marty Derosa gets the fans to sing Happy Birthday to him. The festivities are interrupted by Ethan Page. He says that he has brought Colt a present- “the greatest thing to ever come out of Canada: Ethan Page. In the ring. Tonight.”
Insults were exchanged. Page had let everyone know that he, a former AAW Heavyweight Champion was unhappy with having been booked in the opening six-way match tonight (he apparently pulled himself out of the booking in protest) so Cabana needled him over this.
Cabana’s parents showed up in the crowd at this point and Colt acknowledged them as “Marcia & Steve Cabana.” Are you paying attention there, NXT? You don’t have to break kayfabe by calling someone’s parents by their shoot last name. Just kayfabe it!
More barbs were flung back and forth until Page shoved Marty into Cabana to knock him off balance and then attacked Cabana, leading to…

ETHAN PAGE vs. COLT CABANA- 4.5/10
Colt held Page so that Mr. & Mrs. Cabana could punch and slap him. That’s kind of heelish, don’t you think? Also, it should have been a DQ. And if AAW has no disqualifications the announcers should be reminding us of that fact so that I don’t keep harping on this.
Anyway, the match was a little bit of action, a little bit of comedy, a little more action, and then the babyface going over clean in his home town on his birthday.

STEPHEN WOLF, TRY MIGUEL, & CHUCK TAYLOR BACKSTAGE- weird, but kind of great, too.
I think the idea here was them making fun of WWE backstage segments, but I haven’t seen enough AAW yet to know if this is just a very weird style that they use on a regular basis. Basically what happened was that Wolf & Miguel were talking to each other saying very obvious things in language that felt very scripted. Then Chuck Taylor showed up, said “are you just going to pretend that there isn’t a camera here?” and then cut a very Chuck Taylor promo in which he said “I’m gonna murder Davey Vega, that dick-biting S.O.B. and then I’m gonna murder Mat Fitchett even though he’s done nothing to me and I kind of like the kid.”

ZACK SABRE JR. vs. MICHAEL ELGIN- 9.25/10
Zack worked the arm and used his technical prowess to try to be Elgin while Elgin tried to use his power to put Zack down. This was almost twenty minutes of two men doing nothing but using their God-given strengths to beat the other and both determined to not be the one to go down, and the crowd ate up every moment of it.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Elgin cut a promo about how much he loved wrestling in AAW and was a complete and total babyface… except for when he randomly went out of his way to heel on a woman about three rows back, saying that she had sent him a DM on Twitter about getting with him after the show but shutting her down “because I’m a married man. And she’s a ten; you’re a two.” Then he went right back to cutting his promo about how much he loved AAW and the crowd… “even you, sweetheart- but not the way you want me to.” It was just so out of place. There must be some sort of secret vendetta here. Like this woman works at a local Starbucks and accidentally spilled MsChif’s coffee one day earlier this week or something and MsChif saw her in the crowd before the show and told Elgin to heel on her.

MARTY DEROSA INTERVIEWS SPACE MONKEY- he will continue to have exciting matches in AAW only if the fans bring him bananas and cookies.

DAVID STARR vs. EDDIE KINGSTON- 6.5/10
We got some pre-match talking to establish that Starr is the heel, Kingston is the babyface, and that Kingston is going into this match with an injured neck. Starr then worked that neck while Kingston fought back in the way that only Eddie Kingston can.

EDDIE KINGSTON PROMO- very weird. This was very worked shoot-y but at the same time Eddie didn’t actually say anything that doesn’t make sense within the world of kayfabe as well. There could theoretically be kayfabe people who think wrestling is fake, and the idea of Eddie telling Starr to stay away from his neck makes sense in a “you’re supposed to try to win the match, not cripple your opponent” kind of way- and yet it also doesn’t feel like Starr did anything wrong as Kingston himself even put Starr over for doing “what he had to do to win.” Basically Eddie cut a very emotional promo about having lost his love for wrestling and also said that he has a neck injury that sometimes causes his left arm and leg to go numb, and now he’s going to have to see a doctor (with the unstated implication obviously being that something Starr did here re-aggravated the injury and that Eddie might have to retire. Eddie’s delivery was superb. That’s not anything new for Eddie Kingston, but I feel the need to point out that Eddie’s delivery was good enough that I immediately started to scour the internet to see if this really was a retirement speech.

PENTA EL 0M PROMO- in case you were wondering how the artist formerly known as Pentagon Jr. could get any scarier, the answer is to have someone teach him the word “motherf*cker” and encourage him to shout it at the end of sentences. As Penta himself accurately stated, Keith Lee is both big and strong, but after watching this promo, I fear for his life.

CHUCK TAYLOR, STEPHEN WOLF, & TREY MIGUEL vs. ALEX DANIELS & THE BESTIES IN THE WORLD (Davey Vega & Mat Fitchett)- 7.75/10
Well holy crap. I went into this expecting comedy and instead we got a great PWG-style trios match!

MARTY DEROSA INTERVIEWS TREVOR LEE- awesome heel promo by Trevor Lee! He also guaranteed that he would be AAW Heavyweight Champion by his twenty-fourth birthday, which is September 30, 2017.

AAW HERITAGE TITLE MATCH: Penta el 0M(c) vs. Keith Lee- 5.5/10
This was very disappointing. They started to tell the story of Lee ring bigger and stronger than Penta and manhandling him like no one has before… and then Penta just hit two Mexican Destroyers and won the match. I get the idea that two straight destroyers should be a death move, but finish telling your story first! This was like reading the first chapter of a book and then just skipping to the last page.

MARTY DEROSA INTERVIEWS DAVID STARR- good heel stuff from Starr

AAW TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH WITH NO TIME LIMIT: The Killer Kult (Jake Crist & Sami Callihan)(c) (w/JT Davidson) vs. A.R. Fox & Rey Fenix- 8/10
The actual tag champs are Jake & Dave Crist but Dave is injured so stablemate Sami Callihan is filling in for him via Freebird Rule.
This is what Rip Rogers was talking about. The first two minutes were basically all superkicks and destroyers. Then we got the dives. More spots happened. Then they decided to use some chairs. Crist tried to give Fox a Tombstone Piledriver while standing on an unfolded chair but he slipped, resulting in him legitimately giving Fox a Tombstone Piledriver onto a chair. This was one of those bumps where you just pray the guy can get up again. Thankfully Fox was up and doing spots again within two minutes. Not having learned anything, Callihan and Fenix went to do a piledriver of some sort on a table so rickety the referee had to hold it in place for them.
This match had some absolutely spectacular stuff in it, especially towards the end, but it was a complete and total spotfest. If they had built up to this stuff it would have been an amazing match, but because they started off with six destroyers and guys were up from them and doing their own destroyers moments later it made everything that came after that point feel a lot less meaningful. You just expected them to kick out of everything, so the finish was more an “oh. I guess that’s it” moment than a “there’s no way he’s getting up from that. This HAS to be the finish” moment.

MARTY DEROSA INTERVIEWS KEITH LEE- awesome promo by Lee to both plant the seeds for a rematch with Penta and to build up his match against Donovan Dijak when he returns to AAW.

ACH PROMO- he did an excellent job of getting across his disappointment at failing to win the AAW Heavyweight Title tonight.

MARTY DEROSA INTERVIEWS MICHAEL ELGIN- started off great, but started to go downhill. He build up to a match against the man formerly known as Jack Swagger at the next show as well an AAW Heavyweight Title match with Sami Callihan at some point in the future.

FENIX & FOX PROMO- they celebrate their win. Then Penta el 0M shows up to celebrate with them and cuts a promo where he declares them all to be the best in the world and tells Sami Callihan “f*ck your whore mother.”

An excellent show from AAW. Elgin vs. Sabre Jr. is definitely worth going out of your way to see, as was Kingston’s promo, and if you like spotfests you’ll definitely want to make sure that you see the main event. I’m thoroughly enjoying my foray into AAW, but I have been quite disappointed with Penta el 0M’s title defenses. That’s a trend I’d like to see turn around.