BRM Reviews RevPro Live At The Cockpit 26 (disappointing)

[Big Red Machine]

RPW Live at the Cockpit 26 (2/4/2018)- Marylebone, Greater London, UK

RPW BRITISH CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kurtis Chapman(c) vs. “Flash” Morgan Webster vs. Chris Brookes (w/Kid Lykos)- 4.5/10
Not going to lie: I never really thought of Brookes as a Cruiserweight. The match was pretty disappointing. The inexplicable sabotaging of Chapman continues, as Webster was about to hit his big top tope move but David Starr came out to distract him. This allowed Chapman to cut him off… for about five seconds until Webster knocked him down again and his a senton bomb. Then Starr got into the ring and tried to hit Webster with that dumb football helmet he carries around for no reason. Webster avoided it and took Starr out, but this second distraction allowed Chapman to roll Webster up for the pin. I guess it’s a step forward that Chapman actually actively did something to retain his belt this time, but it wound up feeling like the entire purpose of him utterly failing to capitalize on the first distraction was to make him look extra bad in order to make up for him looking slightly better on this finish than on the last one.

ADAM BROOKS vs. EL PHANTASMO- 5.75/10
Brooks attacked Phantasmo during his entrance. The fans responded to this by chanting “DICK MOVE!” Can’t we just boo to express our disapproval? They had a match that got spotty at times but was otherwise pretty decent. Brooks won after a low blow and his finisher.

JOSH BODOM vs. DAN MAGEE- 4.5/10
The match started with Bodom shoving the Magee off the turnbuckle and down to the floor during his entrance… which is the exact same way the previous match started. Magee got to work the head a little bit including hitting Bodom with his own finisher, but Bodom picked up the win in what felt like a shorter match than it was.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- fine.
Magee offered a handshake but Bodom kicked his hand away so Magee pie-faced Bodom and they had a pull-apart.

DAVID STARR PROMO- bad
Starr came out with Webster’s stupid helmet. He argued with individual fans in the way that way where it gets really annoying and you wish the fan you just know his/her place and just boo or chant or whatever instead of trying to engage the performer as an equal player. This was part of- but not the only- thing that made Starr take f*cking forever to build up the simple fact that he’s getting a shot at the RPW Crusierweight Title at the next show. Most of it was just Starr ranting on about pointless things like claims that RevPro doesn’t include his promos in the show. That’s the sort of thing that, shoot truth or not, shouldn’t be said unless it’s going to become relevant to the storyline, because it really makes the promotion look like crap.

DAVID STARR vs. “SPEEDBALL” MIKE BAILEY- 6.75/10
Starr and Speedball had a fine match that ended when Webster randomly decided to choose a bad time to come out to get his dumb football helmet, so the referee didn’t see Bailey pinning Starr. Starr then rolled Bailey up with illegal leverage for the win. I cannot bring myself to care about any of this. This felt like a frustrating WWE/TNA-style feud that is designed to give us sh*tty finishes rather than a feud that uses dirty finishes in an intelligent way in order to build things up and feel like a progressing story.

SAMMII JAYNE VS. NINA SAMUELS- 6/10
They had an otherwise decent match except that we got YET ANOTHER distraction finish, this time with Jinny costing Nina Samuels the match.

JINNY PROMO- like the David Starr promo, this had the same “fan problem,” and took forever, but Jinny’s promo was better than Starr’s.

LORD GIDEON GREY PROMO- he’s upset that RevPro has made him choose between his “very good friend” Rishi Ghosh and his “best friend” No Fun Dunne to be his tag team partner tonight. He claims RevPro is trying to break up the Legion of Lords by forcing him to make this choice, but he claims to have outsmarted them by picking Dunne to be his partner and compensating Ghosh by paying for a him to take a vacation to New York City. That Lord Gideon is very clever.

AUSSIE OPEN vs. THE LEGION OF LORDS (Lord Gideon Grey & No Fun Dunne)- 6.5/10
Aussie Open overcome the Legion of Lords’ cheating ways to win the match.

ZACK SABRE JR. vs. TRAVIS BANKS- 8/10
Excellent WRESTLING.


A disappointing show from RevPro, brought down more by the booking than by anything else. At this point in RevPro it feel like anything that doesn’t involve the tag titles of the heavyweight title (which are have been pretty much merged into the same thing for the past two months), has been erratic at best. Banks vs. Zack saved this show from being a total flop, but the direction is not an encouraging one.