BRM Reviews RPW Live at the Cockpit 12 (Great!)

[Big Red Machine]

RPW Live at the Cockpit 12 (1/8/2017)- Marylebone, Greater London, UK


ROB LIAS vs. DAN MAGEE- 5.5/10
The Tattooed One (Lias) worked over the leg of The Other One (Magee), but Magee was able to overcome it and get the win... or did he? Lias claimed that his foot was on the rope for the count (it was hard to tell from our position. It looked like he might have grazed it) and asked for the match to be restarted. The idea here was that he is exploiting his friendship with Magee to get the match restarted. When it was, he immediately rolled Magee up for the win. Good angle.

EDDIE DENNIS vs. JOSH BODOM- 6.5/10
Solid match.

JOSH WALL & KURTIS CHAPMAN vs. THE REVOLUTIONISTS (Sha Samuels & James Castle)- no rating, GREAT segment.
The Revolutionists continue to have problems getting along. The finish here came when Castle tagged himself in despite Samuels having things well in hand. He hit Kurtis Chapman with a few moves, but then too a little bit too long showboating and had his brainbuster reversed into a small package for the upset. After he match Samuels got in Castle’s face, berated him, and even slapped him. Samuels dared Castle to hit him back. Castle looked like he might at one point, but ultimately he didn’t. At least not tonight anyway. This break-up has been a long time coming, and it finally feels like it’s really about to happen.

DAVE MASTIFF vs. TYLER BATE- 5.5/10
This was a big-man vs. little-man match, but Bate isn’t much of a high flyer so instead they build up to him finally managing to pick Mastiff up, and he hit him with… an airplane spin, then put him back down. Then he once again struggled to pick him up before finally managing to do so to hit a German Suplex. If you’ve had so much trouble picking the guy up, why the hell would you hit him with a f*cking AIRPLANE SPIN instead of a Samoan Drop or something that actually HURTS HIM… and if you’re goal was to hit a German Suplex, then why did you try to set it up with an AIRPLANE SPIN?

MARTY SCURLL INTERVIEW- He said he was going to embarrass Zack Sabre Jr. at High Stakes 2017, then win the British Heavyweight Title from Shibata and be a double champion. It was a very good promo.

MARTY SCURLL & PETE DUNNE vs. RYAN SMILE & SHANE STRICKLAND- no rating, decent segment.
After the heels had been introduced and as Smile was making his way to the ring, he was jumped from behind by Travis Banks. Shane Strickland came out to help, but the numbers game as getting to him. Will Ospreay then came out to even things up. The babyfaces proposed that this become a six-man tag. Smile in particular cut a great promo. He was justifiably quite angry about being jumped from behind as well as getting attacked three-on-one, and he made sure everyone knew it. The six-man tag was booked as the new main event.

TRENT SEVEN vs. ZACK GIBSON- 6.75/10
Gibson tried to cut a pre-match promo but was drowned out by boos the entire time (think BJ Whitmer in 2015 in ROH, but just with booing as opposed to “SHUT THE F*CK UP!” chants). After Gibson finished talking (which took quite a while, with the fans booing the whole time), the heel announcer said “I, for one, have no idea what he just said, but I’m sure it was brilliant.” RevPro’s commentary team is SOOO great because they always get the simple things right.
They billed Trent Seven as “one of the pioneers of British Strong Style,” (a reputation he lived up to the last time I saw him) and here he is, starting off the match with dumb comedy. Once they got past that crap, the match was very good.

RPW BRITISH TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Charlie Sterling & Joel Redman vs. The London Riots (James Davis & Rob Lynch)- 7.5/10
This was one of those matches where they really got you biting on the possibility of a title change, but you’re not really even sure why. It just kind of felt like it could happen.

ZACK SABRE JR. vs. RJ SINGH-7.75/10
The story here was that Singh, in an effort to prove himself, bit off way more than he could chew by asking to face Zack. The very first spot was Singh charging in at Zack and immediately being caught in a cool armbar. The next nine minutes or so were all Zack completely dominating Singh, but Singh showed a lot of heart by never giving up, no matter how Zack bent his body. This did a great job of getting you behind Singh the relatively unknown Singh when he made his comeback. Zack eventually picked up the clean submission win, but it was Singh who really got over here. This was a fantastic example of how to get someone over while beating them cleanly. Take note of this, every promotion in North America that isn’t booked by Gabe Sapolsky.

ZACK SABRE JR. PROMO- awesome promo to build up his match against Marty Scurll at High Stakes 2017.

MARTY SCURLL, PETE DUNNE, & TRAVIS BANKS vs. SHANE STRICKLAND, WILL OSPREAY, & RYAN SMILE- 9.25/10
CRAZY match! We had a double heat here with first Strickland and then Ospreay getting the chance to play babyface in peril, and they actually set up for Ospreay’s turn during Strickland’s by having him get bumped off the apron to prevent Strickland from tagging a couple of different times and in one or two very vicious-looking ways. Ospreay got overkilled with combination moves and I can see some people thinking he did too much after taking all of that, but I thought they did a great job making it feel like he was running entirely on adrenaline, and when you consider that he really only did about five things in the ten minutes after getting overkilled, I thought it was fine.
The one thing I didn’t like was Smile doing that stupid spot where you repeatedly flip your opponent off and let him superkick you instead of trying to, you know, BLOCK THE SUPERKICKS. It annoyed me even more that the way they finished up this spot was with Scurll finally putting him down with about eight superkicks in rapid succession… and then Smile kicking out and doing the big fiery comeback after that. It was one of those spots where it feels like they were doing a fighting spirit spot for the sake of a fighting spirit spot rather than because it felt like a natural part of the match. But aside from that minute or so at the end, this was NUTS.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- GREAT!
Zack Sabre Jr. comes out to get in Marty Scurll’s face, then repays Marty for the kick in the nuts Marty gave him back at Global Wars UK in November.


A GREAT show to start off the year from RevPro, with solid wrestling all up and down the card, a great story in the semi-main event, and an absolutely crazy main event on top.