BRM Reviews NOVA Pro Commonwealth Cup 2018: Part 2

[Big Red Machine]

NOVA Pro Commonwealth Cup 2018: Part 2 (6/9/2018)- Annandale, VA



EMMA LOU & JORDAN BLADE vs. GOTHICC (Terra Calaway & Harlow O’Hara)- 3.5/10
Emma Lou & Jordan Blade are our babyfaces… and they look like gigantic dorks. The psychology here was solid, even if neither the work nor the babyfaces were particularly inspiring. The important fact here was that Emma Lou made a blind tag soon after she had been the babyface in peril and already made the hot tag, and she wound up getting beaten. Jordan Blade would later blame her for their loss and declare their tag team over.
As forgettable as the in-ring work was, though, there are two things that I will always remember this match for. The first was Angelus Layne’s run-in at the end, in which she did such a wonderful job of getting there, doing her thing, and then getting out again that when she attacked Jordan Blade on the outside, even one of the announcers almost missed her.
The second thing I will always remember this match for was an excellent line by the heel commentator. I’m not sure if he is playing a character or this is just the way he talks, but his voice sounds like your stereotypical “gay comedy character” voice but without the lisp. Part of his heel shtick is the Bobby Heenan-esque total denial that the heels are cheating and interpreting everything in the most pro-heel way possible. Thus, when Jordan Blade, in fresh off the hot tag, finally knocked the big Terra Calaway down and all of the fans were clapping, he made some comment about how wonderful it was that the fans had finally decided to support Terra and were clapping for her getting back to her feet. It was probably the funniest thing I’ve heard a non-Jurn Simmons commentator say in quite a long time.

WOMEN’S COMMONWEALTH CUP 2018 FIRST ROUND MATCH: Faye Jackson vs. Mia Yim- 6.25/10
The match was pretty good. Mia played a good heel despite being the smaller woman. Jackson… comes across as a very nice person, but just doesn’t have the fire to really grab me as a babyface.

WOMEN’S COMMONWEALTH CUP 2018 FIRST ROUND MATCH: Rachael Ellering vs. Jordynne Grace- 6/10
Shorter than I was hoping for, considering that these two are up-and-coming names, but one of these women will have to wrestle at least one more time today, so I can understand keeping it on the shorter side. These two do work well together, so

WOMEN’S COMMONWEALTH CUP 2018 FIRST ROUND MATCH: Veda Scott vs. Allie Kat- 4.5/10
Veda decided that the best way to combat a woman named “Allie Kat” and who paints her face like a cat would be to become a “crazy cat lady.” The match was less silly than I was expecting it to be, so that was good.
At one point Allie started raking Veda’s skin, because she’s a cat and therefor has claws. The heel announcer quite correctly pointed out that this should be illegal. The babyface announcer defended it by saying “are you going to put a cat in the ring and tell it it can’t use its claws? It’s the natural order of things.” This argument is bullsh*t. After all, we put humans in the ring all the time and tell them they can’t use their nails or teeth or closed fists, so why should any other animal be allowed to do so?
Their big spot at the end saw Veda get a bag of kibble from under the ring which she dumped out onto the mat. I figured that Veda would entice Allie to eat the cat food and attack her while she was doing so to gain an advantage, much like Hornswoggle did in his famous battle against the Swagger Soaring Eagle, but instead they just pretended they were thumbtacks and set up a big bump into them for the finish.

WOMEN’S COMMONWEALTH CUP 2018 FIRST ROUND MATCH IN WHICH ANGELUS LAYNE WILL LEAVE NOVA PRO IF SHE DOES NOT ADVANCE: Angelus Layne vs. Barbi Hayden- 6/10
They had a very good match for the less than eight minutes they were given. The stip with Layne was a condition of her being allowed into the tournament due to the contentious relationship between her and NOVA Pro. In fact, “contentious” might even be an understatement, as the babyface announcer told us that she has “tried to burn the promotion to the ground, figuratively and literally.” She literally tried to burn it to the ground? Did she try to set fire to the office and the ring and the regular venue?
Angelus Layne did, in fact, win. She has really been impressing me this weekend, even with relatively short time to shine. The heel announcer was also excellent here. More promotions should use both him and Layne.

ASPYN ROSE vs. JAKE HOLLISTER (w/Beau Crockett)- no rating, bad segment.
The fans are chanting “BEAU: LEAVE!” I have waited years for that wonderful chant to make a comeback and finally my day has come!
Aspyn Rose’s gimmick is that she is a mermaid… except she has legs, so she doesn’t look like a mermaid at all. She’s just a woman with some weird facepaint. They did two or three spots where Hollister looked incompetent, then he got pinned after a stunner, which he took a ridiculous bump for. Rose tried to trash-talk Crockett after the match, but somehow came off sounding like a heel even though she’s the babyface. She left, then Crockett started to complain to the referee about the count like a manager arguing with an umpire (they even did the “kick dirt” spot) so the referee ejected Crockett from… what, exactly? The match is already over, isn’t it?

WOMEN’S COMMONWEALTH CUP 2018 SEMIFINAL MATCH: Mia Yim vs. Jordynne Grace- 5.75/10
The awesome heel announcer is “Dennis” from Squared Circle Sirens (fun fact: it took me several tries to spell “Sirens” correctly because I kept trying to spell it like Theresa Cassidy from X-Factor). The match started off very well, with Yim brutally working over Jordynne’s knee… and then Jordan stopped selling it and made her comeback and won in a disappointingly short amount of time.

WOMEN’S COMMONWEALTH CUP 2018 SEMIFINAL MATCH: Angelus Layne vs Allie Kat- 6.75/10
Layne is apparently nursing a back injury so Allie Kat worked that over. Layne sold it well and did a good job of using her size and power to be the big, mean, dominant heel. They built things up to a huge spot where Layne gave Allie a BRUTAL Spider Suplex that almost spiked her on her head but Layne was too weak to follow up (she couldn’t even pull herself back up the turnbuckles and just hug there for a while and then fell down instead). When she finally made the cover, Allie Kat kicked out. Layne kept up the offense, but eventually got frustrated that Allie wouldn’t stay down so she just kept pounding on her and got herself DQed for… using a closed fist too many times, I guess?
This finish was extremely lame. They did a great heel beat-down afterwards with all three members of Gothicc triple-teaming Allie until babyface reinforcements arrived, but they could have done the same thing while also giving us a clean finish by just having Allie win by roll-up. Are there directions they could take this where doing a DQ like this is better than doing a clean finish? Yes. But there was still no reason for this to be the main event if you were going to do a DQ here. There was no reason you couldn’t have given Yim vs. Grace the time it needed to really deliver and let that be the main event instead.

This was… mostly a fine show for what it was. It’s the first two rounds of a tournament for which the winners will have to wrestle a third time later today, so I understand keeping things short, but that DQ at the end really killed my positive feelings towards this show. Hopefully we won’t see anything like that later today in both the men’s and women’s finals during Commonwealth Cup 2018: Part 3.