Cero Reviews PROGRESS Chapter 62: Fear No More, Come To Dust

[cero2k]

PROGRESS Chapter 62: Fear No More, Come To Dust
January 28, 2018
Electric Ballroom, Camden, Eng.

Jim Smallman Intro - Someone's kid passed away. There was a little for their family. It was weird following that with the normal shtick. There was a really exchange with some fan that is a writer until he got 'boring' chants. Anyway, Jinny got injured during the previous week, and so did McKenzie, so tonight Toni Storm goes against a mystery opponent. Oh, and Don't Be A Dick.

Natural Progression Series V First Round Match
Chris Ridgeway vs Omari - 7/10
Ridgeway is slowly becoming one of my favorite guys to watch. This match was the embodiment of British Strong Style, tons of striking, tons of supleys, and tons of grappling. This was back and forward, and if Ridgeway hadn't been in the previous shows, I'd say Omari had a good chance to winning. Omari tapped out at the end. Great opener.

Roy Johnson vs Pastor William Eaver - 6/10
Wow, I completely missed the announcement of this match. I'd say these are two big returns, I know we saw Pastor not long ago in that multi-man match, but this feels more like a proper return being singles. I figured this match would have a lot of comedy, but it got slightly more serious early on. Eaver started with control of the match, but soon after a bad fall with a plancha to the outside, Johnson came back and won with the Wavitonic. Seems like Johnson may be coming back for a push. Ok match. Pastor may have actually injured his leg, he was helped to the back, so the sudden win by Johnson may have also been an audible.

Trent Seven vs Zack Sabre Jr. vs Chris Brookes w/ Kid Lykos- 8.5/10
The match started with some comedy showing Trent eliminating Brookes and Sabre and winning the rumble. Then the actual match started with all three men exchanging their stronger strikes, this amped up until Seven delivered a chop to Sabre that literally flipped him over and one that almost made Brookes puke and so they teamed up and delivered a double chop that took Seven out for a bit.

Once they started fighting, it was awesome, a lot of strong style comedy. Seven was the powerhouse striker, Brookes had the high spots, and Sabre obviously the technician with submissions out of nowhere. Similar to the striking sequence from the start, the match escalated into high impact moves. Finish saw Seven take out Brookes, only for Sabre to come in, take him out and and pin Seven with one of his crazy looking moves.

PROGRESS World Championship Match
Travis Banks (C) vs TK Cooper - 8.5/10
South Pacific Power Trip Clashes! This was a great version of 'these guys know each other very well' match, they played around Cooper's injury and fear of high spots; and while they were cheap shooting each other and going all out, it never really seemed outside of their normal relationship, at least until the big climax. Neither man could put each other out, reaching the point where Cooper went for the title belt, just like Chris Brookes did on this title challenge, but Brookes came out and took the title away just like Cooper had. Cooper and Brookes started to antagonize each other, where Travis capitalized on the distraction taking out Cooper and making him submit to the Lion's Clutch. Once again we get a slightly messy finish, but this had to happen as the actual feud here between Cooper and Brookes evolves.

Post-match - Brookes and Copper get in a brawl, when trying to separate them, Cooper accidentally takes out Banks, so the champ just goes straight for Cooper pushing Banks, so Brookes and Banks get in a fight too. All three men start brawling and get in a huge pull-apart with all the staff. All three man will collide in Chapter 63!

PROGRESS Women's Championship Match
Toni Storm (C) vs Jinny?
Jinny came out when challenger was supposed to come out, she has her arm in a sleeve and seems to be meotional. She cut a promo saying that this was supposed to be a huge night for her and no one can deny that she had worked for this. She said that she hated the idea that HER opportunity was given to everyone's favorite Millie McKenzie, and she makes it seem like she took out McKenzie, and so as the Queen of PROGRESS, SHE gets to pick who Toni fights until she is good to go. Jinny announces that tonight, Toni goes against...

I loved how she started getting sympathy by the fans and quickly turned it around on them.

PROGRESS Women's Championship Match
Toni Storm vs Chakara - 6/10
I don't really know why Jinny would be ok with this being a title match since she is the one that wants to take the title away from Storm, I guess because Jinny knows very well that Chakara is an underdog going into this match. Chakara initially worked on Storm's back, Storm made a comeback and hit the piledriver to win.

Post-match - Jinny attacks Storm until Storm gets back up. Suddenly Nina Samuels (!!), she attacks Storm from behind and all three heel ladies gang up on Storm. New female heel stable! They all pose over Storm's dead body. Overall a good angle from start to finish.

Mark Haskins & Jimmy Havoc w/Vicky Haskins vs Mark Andrews & Danny Jones - 6.5/10
Before the match started, Eddie Dennis came out and cut a huge promo against Mark Andrews, he tells Danny Jones to not trust Haskins, and keeping his promise to mess with Andrews until he gets his match. He then proceeds to sit with the commentary team. Anyway, Danny Jones is the $5 Wrestling Welsh version of Demon Balor.

Match was mostly H&H killing Jones until Haskins got the hot tag, then all men getting in the ring until Jones got distracted by Vicky Haskins and so H&H took him out with the Acid Rainmaker Combo. There was a slight story here that Haskins and Jones were doing a lot of FSU's tag moves and commentary was selling this as FSU2.0, all obviously messing with Eddie Dennis head.

Post-match - Eddie Dennis once again got in Andrews' face. It's only logical that Eddie gets in a fight with Jones and after kicking his ass, Andrews finally accepts.

Doug Williams vs Flash Morgan Webster - 7/10
But Flash quit last time didn't he? Announcers tell us that apparently the office talked to Flash about doing this one show, and it's special because he is going against the only other losing streak in PROGRESS. So at least there will be one broken streak, or a tie and both men may as well just tag team together.

Match saw a far superior technician and powerhouse in Williams, while Flash was quick and hard to catch, but with high impact moves. Finish saw Williams have the match won, but Vicky Haskins came out and distracted the ref and Williams. Flash doesn't notice her, but he does capitalize on the distraction to finish off Williams for the submission win.

Post-match - Webster finally notices Vicky and is both pissed and confused that he won this way. Williams calls him out on that and Webster does kinda blow her off and explain that he had nothing to do with it. Do remember that Webster ended up being the catalyst to Haskins and Havoc's story.

PROGRESS Atlas Championship Match
WALTER (C) vs Timothy Thatcher - 9.5/10
Ringkampf collides, and finally one-on-one. The last time these men talked to each other, they just said to each other, 'we're gonna beat the living shit out of each other, ok?'...and well...they did just that. Announcers played it out as Thatcher had actually avoided being with WALTER, even rejecting his handshake before the start of the match. This is the only reason why I forgive them to coming out to the same entrance, I've been hoping to see a tag team come together before their match.

Anyway, as mentioned, this was an all out fight, the stiffest match you'll probably see this half of the year. WALTER chopped Thatcher to hell, but Thatcher dodged a chop outside the ring and WALTER hit the ringpost destroying his own hand. At that point WALTER worked on Thatcher's head/chest/torso while Thatcher worked on WALTER's right arm looking for a submission win, which was likely Thatcher's only chance since from early on they showed that WALTER's weight was slightly too much for Thatcher to be tossing him around. The violence started at 100 and stayed there until the very end. The only one complain that I have was that the match felt a lot about WALTER, and all the time I felt Thatcher was doing the job, and maybe it's due to Thatcher's AMAZING (probably real in this case) selling, but several of the near falls felt less credible. Having said that, this match was amazing and should be watched by anyone that likes wrestling.

Post-match - Thatcher was friendly and respectful to WALTER, who kinda came off a bit dickish. They hug and Thatcher leaves WALTER to enjoy the glory.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Another great show top to bottom. Storyline wise, the escalation of the SPPT/CCK saga was awesome, Jinny getting herself some help opens an interesting door towards the women's division, and while the Andrews/Dennis and the H&H&H stories were somewhat underwhelming, it did at least take a step forward.