BRM Reviews wXw World Tag Team League 2017: Day 2

[Big Red Machine]

wXw World Tag Team League 2017: Day 2 (10/7/2017)- Oberhausen, Germany

BLOCK B MATCH: The Briscoes vs. EYFBO- 7.25/10
For the second straight night, EYFBO have their first-ever meeting with a team they’ve looked up to their whole careers, but unfortunately tonight they fell short, putting both teams at 1-1. This was pretty much everything you want in an opener.

FOUR WAY DANCE FOR THE wXw SHOTGUN TITLE: Ivan Kiev(c) vs. Alexander James vs. Bobby Gunns vs. “The Avalanche” Robert Dreissker- 4.25/10
Not much to say here other than Kiev retained his title.

JINNY PROMO- she buries Melanie Gray and says that no one backstage right now can beat her. Out comes Killer Kelly and we’ve got…

JINNY vs. KILLER KELLY- 3.5/10

BLOCK A MATCH: A4 vs. THE YOUNG LIONS (Lucky Kid & Tarkan Aslan)- 6.75/10

BLOCK B MATCH: Ringkampf (Timothy Thatcher & WALTER) vs. The Rottweilers (Low Ki & Homicide)- 7.75/10
Rico Bushido referred to the match-up of Low Ki vs. WALTER as “a pit-bull taking on a grizzly bear.”
I guess they just decided to ignore the rules for this one, as they brawled on the outside forever with no count-out, and Homicide hit WALTER first with a low blow and then with a chair, both in front of the referee, and was DQed for neither. If you can ignore all of that, this was a very good brawl, and even better, it was the type of brawl that only these two teams could have had. After that, they got back into the ring and did your standard “the referee has lost all control of this match” action, with no one caring who the legal man was. The stuff they did was cool though. I LOVE seeing Low Ki do his Low Ki stuff. He’s still awesome. He gave WALTER a Ghetto Stomp/Warrior’s Way/whatever he calls it now from the top turnbuckle down onto the ramp. That was CRAZY. The Rottweilers won with a Doomsday Ace Crusher to bring everyone in the block to 1-1 going into the final night.

BLOCK A MATCH: The Spirit Squad (Mikey & Kenny) vs. Massive Product (David Starr & Jurn Simmons)- 2.25/10
The Spirit Squad came out wearing great “sWo” now-style t-shirts, which has got to take the cake for the worst nWo rip-off group/shirt in history, and think of how much ground that covers.
They did comedy, including turning this into an arm-wrestling match. Spirit Squad tried to cheat with illegal leverage like it was an abdominal stretch or something. They lost when the ref kicked Kenny’s hand away to break it up. It was dumb.
They did some actual wrestling for a while, then had a very good finishing sequence, with Massive Product winning, meaning that their match with The Young Lions tomorrow will decide who wins the block.

wXw UNIFIED WORLD WRESTLING TITLE MATCH: John Klinger(c) (w/RISE) vs. Ilja Dragunov- 6.25/10
RISE tried to jump Dragunov before the bell but he fought them all off. Then the referee ordered them ejected not just from ringside, but from the entire building, so this match will be one-on-one the way it should be! And just to be damn sure they don’t show up and interfere anyway, he declared that if they don’t obey his directives, Klinger will not only be disqualified, but also stripped of the title!
Despite this, there was a guy at ringside in a RISE shirt that they kept cutting to. Maybe he’s just a conveniently-placed fan? I don’t know. We’ll get to more on this later.
Something else I didn’t like was the fact that they’ve now apparently switched to New Japan-style count-outs, by which I mean there are only count-outs when someone wants to tease a count-out. Is it that hard for people to be consistent with this stuff?
Anyway, they did stuff and it was very good for a while. I actually liked their big spot with all of the no-selling because it doesn’t feel totally gratuitous when you 1) build up to it and 2) don’t do it in every match.
Then RISE came back… and the referee did not call for the DQ like he had said he would. Instead, the babyfaces (A4 & Massive Product) came out to face them. They had a bring brawl and it was all really cool if you ignore the fact that the referee just ignored something they spent the entire beginning of the match establishing.
During the course of this brawl, Klinger grabbed his title belt and went to hit Ilja with it but Da Mack came out and nailed Klinger with the belt. Da Mack then gave the belt to Ilja… and the referee turned around and saw Ilja with the belt and assumed that he had hit Klinger with it. Ilja told the ref that he didn’t and the fans said that the ref shouldn’t DQ him, but the ref asked Da Mack and Da Mack said that he was the one who hit Klinger, and thus there should be a DQ, so the ref disqualified Ilja.
I’m going to make a division between the things that happened before this point and after it (which will be covered as the “post-match segment”) for two reasons. The first is that this specific finish really annoyed me. After the ref had made such a big deal about DQing RISE if they even returned to the building and then not doing anything when they did, then letting RISE and the babyfaces all brawl in the ring and not calling for a DQ, why did he finally decide to call for one on Ilja right now?
The other reason is that I think that up until this point Da Mack was still a babyface. If his plan had been to join RISE all along, he would have hit Ilja, or just not stopped Klinger from hitting Ilja. But at this point, I think he makes the decision to just join RISE, realizing that he has probably just pissed off all of the babyfaces who have been fighting RISE, as well as the fans, by screwing Ilja out of this title shot. Obviously attacking Klinger probably annoyed Klinger and RISE as well (even if the end result was Klinger winning and retaining the title) so he decided to cut his losses and just join RISE so that at least he wasn’t going to be getting it from all sides.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- So yeah. Da Mack chose to join RISE, and Klinger even let him be the one to lay Ilja out with the belt. Julian Nero came out to try to make the save for Ilja and got beaten down as well. Then “The Avalanche” Robert Dreissker came out and cleaned house on RISE. He offered Ilja his hand and Ilja accepted, thus reforming Cerberus. This part was good. I also do like the booking of Da Mack joining RISE, as it plays off both his insecurities that have been exposed over the past few months (in this story with Nero and Dreissker, no less), and it is a heel be felt by the fans, as Da Mack was quite the over babyface. It also helps to extend RISE’s run in general, and Klinger’s run as their leader and heel world champion.


A disappointing show from wXw, despite the efforts of the Block B teams. I really wish they would have found a way to do Da Mack’s turn and Cerberus’ reunion that didn’t create so many logical holes in the main event.