BRM Reviews NEW Redemption (Omega vs. Fenix!)

[Big Red Machine]

NEW Redemption (11/9/2018)- Poughkeepsie, NY


NEW HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE #1 CONTENDERSHIP “GRAB FOR THE GOLD” LADDER MATCH: Hale Collins vs. Jake Manning vs. JT Dunn vs. Christian Casanova vs. Keith Youngblood vs. Wrecking Ball Legursky- 8.25/10
If Manning hasn’t won a match in NEW over ten years, how the hell did he wind up in a #1 contendership match?
Anyway, these guys had an awesome Ladder Match. The story was a combination of the “guys hitting each other with weapons to try to put each other down” mixed in with the idea that Wrecking Ball Legursky was this big, scary, monster who had to be dealt with before anyone had a chance of getting the contract, and who had to be taken down with weapons. The highlight of the match was a Tombstone Piledriver that obliterated an unfolded chair.

DAVID ARQUETTE PROMO- He was supposed to be on this show to continue his feud with “The King” Brian Anthony, but he won’t be able to make it tonight. But he has secured a replacement: Jerry “The King” Lawler.

VITO MARCHITTO, BRIAN ANTHONY & OTHER HEELS PROMO- Goofy.
This was a reminder of why I had previously decided not to watch NEW. Both Mike Quackenbush and early 90s Vince McMahon would see this promo and tell these guys that’s they’re too over the top with this “king” gimmick.

KAREN Q vs. KATIE FORBES- 1/10
For those of you looking for the last vestiges of the Divas™ era, it’s Katie Forbes. She did some basic stuff and was mostly competent (aside from one handspring back elbow that did not look good at all), but she wore very little, got her babyface pops by shaking her butt, and didn’t appear to have much of a personality otherwise. Karen was a fine heel, but they didn’t get time to do much, and most of the offense that consisted of anything other than heel tactics went to Katie, so Karen didn’t get to do much of her own stuff.

JERRY LAWLER INTERVIEW- fine
He’s not happy that this other guy is calling himself “king” and doing the gimmick so cheaply. The ironic part is that this guy’s stupid “king” gimmick feels a lot more like a rip-off of “King Booker” with his court than it does Jerry “The King” Lawler.

CROWN VS. CROWN NO DISQUALIFICATIONS MATCH: Jerry “The King” Lawler vs. “King” Brian Anthony (w/Baron Von Vito)- 0.5/10
A few weeks shy of his sixty-ninth birthday and having already died once in his life, Jerry Lawler was still able to throw a dropkick. It wasn’t great or anything, but it believably hit his opponent in the chest with enough force to knock him down. The match was mostly punch-kick-choke, with a few weapons shots and low blows.
So NEW booked this match where Brian Anthony, a former three-time NEW Heavyweight Champion and the longest-reigning champion in the history of the promotion’s top title… spent 90% of the match getting beaten up by a near-septuagenarian. His heel enforcers finally ran in to help him, only for one of them to be taken down by a 47-year-old actor in David Arquette, who it turns out could make it to the building after all. The heels then focused their offense on Arquette, but the save was soon made a by a 53-year-old Mick Foley, who had trouble running down the aisle.
Lawler threw a fireball at the largest of the heels, which the camera missed because it decided to focus on Foley, even though the only action going on was this guy walking towards Lawler. Arquette then took another heel out with the Diamond Cutter, then Jerry Lawler hit Brian Anthony with a Stone Cold Stunner for the pin. So the lesson of this match is that old guys>NEW longtime star and current tag champs. And everyone be sure to come back next month to see these indy geek losers. I wonder why no one seems interested in coming back?

The heels did the spot where one of them holds the babyface and the other throws powder in his eyes. Lawler did not avoid the powder and began to sell it, while Anthony did not sell as if powder had gotten into this eyes, and the idiot babyface announcer decided to insist that the powder had “backfired” despite their being zero evidence to sup[port this, and all of the evidence supporting the opposite position.

“THRILLRIDE” JIMMY PETERSON PROMO- he rambled on forever using every single cheap heat trick in the book. It’s one thing to bury the local sports teams, it’s another thing to cut a five minute promo on each one of them. The fans eventually stopped caring and started chanting “BORING!” and “WE WANT WRESTLING!”
Vik Dalishus eventually came out, making his return after being out for a year with various injures. Peterson made fun of him for taking so long to recover and for not being able to get down to play with his kids, so Dalishus beat him up. This was long and boring.

NEW HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Brad Hollister(c) vs. PCO- 6.5/10
PCO’s Tron says “PCO is not human” so at least he’s admitting that. It also rules out that he has been enhanced by CHIKARA’s evil scientist Dr. Nicodemus, so there goes that theory to explain his crazy longevity and ability to do look like he does and do the things he has been doing at his age.
They had a solid match, but nothing more, which is not what you want when your top championship is on the line.

DARBY ALLIN vs. PENTA EL 0M- 7/10
They played an EXCELLENT video of Darby making the challenge for this match. Darby is a very underrated talker. The referee was very lenient with his counts on the floor, and extremely lenient with weapon use… by which I mean he just let Penta hit Darby with a weapon right in front of him and didn’t do squat.
There were lots of MOVEZ in this match, though it was really more Penta hitting the MOVEZ and Darby kicking out of them. Most of them did target Darby’s head so there was some sort of story there, and they had some exceptionally close false finishes.

ROB VAN DAM vs. JACK SWAGGER- 6.75/10
The story of this match was that when it was a wrestling match, Swagger (the wrestler) was winning, but when it was a hardcore match, RVD (the ECW guy) was winning. Why it was ever allowed to be a hardcore match I have no idea, but the referee just seemed to give up on enforcing the rules. It really seems unfair, too, because if Swagger knew this was going to be a weapons match he would have brought the Gauntlet of the Gods with him and defeated Rob easily. Rob appeared to hit the back of his head on the ringpost during a dive from the apron to the floor but didn’t show any sort of ill effects afterwards, so hopefully it was just a bang and not something more serious. Rob got the win.

KENNY OMEGA vs. FENIX- 9/10
These guys had the predictable awesome match. The story was Fenix constantly being able to counter the One-Winged Angel, but there was a lot of other great stuff in here, too, including Fenix hitting the single sickest-looking Rikishi Driver I’ve ever seen. This is definitely one of those matches you need to see.

A pretty great show from NEW, but mostly on the strength of the non-regulars. NEW is a money-mark promotion, and this was definitely a big-money bring-in show. Many of the big names they brought in elevated the show, but the booking of the NEW-focused stuff reminded me why this is not a promotion I have added to my regular (or even occasional) viewing list despite often having big-name match-ups on their shows.

[cero2k]

So is it true that Buddy Murphy vs Mustafa Ali was highly inspired from Omega vs Fenix?

[Big Red Machine]

So is it true that Buddy Murphy vs Mustafa Ali was highly inspired from Omega vs Fenix?

I didn't notice it one bit. The stories in the matches were WAY different. Dave seemed to specifically be talking about the knee-strike counter to a springboard move (and also said that he had seen it in other matches this weekend, too), but I've seen that a bunch of times before Omega and Fenix did it, too. I think it's just as likely that they saw it elsewhere (didn't Gargano and Black do it at TakeOver, too?), or that it's just an idea that came to them independent of everything else. It really feels like more of Dave metaphorically sucking the dicks of his favorite wrestlers.