BRM Reviews RevPro Live at the Cockpit 27

[Big Red Machine]

RPW Live at the Cockpit 27 (3/4/2018)- Marleybone, Greater London, UK

OPENING SEGMENT- fun
Rishi Ghosh is out and happily informs us all that the original Legion of Lords, himself and his best friend Lord Gideon Grey, are back together tonight, and they are going to take the tag team division by storm and win the tag titles. Lord Gideon came out and informed Rishi that there had been a change of plans: they would not be teaming together tonight because “I’ve got more important things to worry about because my best friend No Fun Dunne” is challenging Kurtis Chapman for the Cruiserweight Title, which will be the first of many titles that the Legion of Lords will win. This understandably made Rishi Ghosh very sad, but Lord Gideon tells him not to worry because he has found Rishi a new tag team partner, “the newest member of the Legion of Lords, and your new best friend: Los Federales Santos Jr!” After a few tense moments, Rishi decided that “I LOVE HIM!” and everything was copacetic in the Legion of Lords once again.

NEVER SAY DIE (Alex Cupid & Dillon D’Angelo) vs. THE LEGION OF LORDS (Rishi Ghosh & Los Federales Santos Jr.) (w/Lord Gideon Grey)- 0.5/10
Never Say Die’s stuff looked weak and they were very sloppy. They did nothing to make me ever want to see them again, and quite a bit to make me not want to. Thankfully they lost.

ADAM BROOKS vs. DAN MAGEE- 6/10
Magee had things won but some guy whose name I didn’t catch distracted the referee so that he both didn’t see the pinfall and didn’t see Brooks hit Magee in the groin, allowing Brooks to win.

EDDIE DENNIS PROMO- he’s got to go in for pectoral surgery tomorrow, so he won’t be able to wrestle for a while. He says that while there are some places he feels he can contribute to the product without wrestling, RevPro isn’t one of them because RevPro has always been about the competition. He promises that he will be back, but it will be a while, so he wants to thank everyone for all their support thus far, even though he hasn’t won a single match. He vows to break his losing streak when he returns. This was very a very real segment, and is the sort of thing that I would rather see promotions do than just having guys disappear without explanation.
Then Josh Bodom came out, bragged about injuring Eddie, and called him a failure. Eddie hit him, so Bodom went after Eddie and they had a brawl that Bodom won due to Eddie’s injury. This was a good way to get some heat on Bodom, but I hope nothing they did aggravated Eddie’s injury.

JOSH BODOM & ZACK GIBSON vs. TEAM WHITEWOLF (Adam Chase & A-Kid)- 5.25/10

RPW BRITISH CRUISERWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kurtis Chapman(c) vs. No Fun Dunne (w/Lord Gideon Grey)- 6.25/10
Dunne worked over Chapman’s head… and not just Chapman’s, as when Lord Gideon had the referee distracted, Dunne flat-out punched the ref in the back of the head to knock him out. This led to a beat-down by the entire Legion of Lords that Chapman was able to overcome, and he eventually got the victory. While I can see how Santos’ kick accidentally hitting Lord Gideon (combined with things said in the opening segment) could lead to a split in the Legion of Lords at some point down the line, the most important thing here is that for the first time since he won the belt three months ago, the bookers finally booked a finish that allowed Chapman to look like a worthy champion instead of a fluke.

AUSSIE OPEN vs. CCK (w/Kid Lykos)- 5.5/10
There was a lot of stuff here that didn’t look good, either for reasons of logic or execution, and the rest of it was mostly just spots.

DAVID STARR PROMO- He’s still going on about there supposedly being a “conspiracy” against him. He ranted on and sounded like a crazed madman, which is what he was supposed to do, but it got grating very quickly and always felt like there was no end in sight.

DAVID STARR vs. JODY FLEISCH- 6.75/10
A very good babyface vs. heel match. Fleisch clearly isn’t what he once was, but is still capable of putting on something great from time to time. I think with more time and in there with someone exciting like Ospreay he could have one last truly great match.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Fine
Brooks and his pal from earlier attacked Jody Fleisch, then cut a promo explaining that they hate Will Ospreay and thus they attacked his hero Jody Fleisch. They challenged Ospreay to face them when he gets done with his international commitments.

ZACK SABRE JR. vs. EL PHANTASMO- 7.25/10
They started off with El Phantasmo showing that he can hang with Zack in terms of technical skill but he got too cocky and all-business Zack took advantage. El Phantasmo made a bit of a comeback but Zack was able to cut him off and reestablish dominance every time… until El Phantasmo caught him with a roll-up for the upset win.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Zack immediately tried to rain on El Phantasmo’s parade, saying that he wasn’t trying as hard because it was a non-title match and that El Phantasmo would have no chance against him in a title match. He says he is willing to give El Phantasmo a title shot, but it’s right here, right now… or never. As if to answer my question about how Zack would have the authority to make this decision, Zack noted that he’s headed to Japan this Wednesday “and I’m taking both belts with me, and if they make any matches that I don’t like, I’m not coming back. And if I don’t come back then Suzuki’s not coming in, so go f*ck yourselves.”
El Phantasmo of course accepted the challenge, so we got a…

RPW BRITISH HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Zack Sabre Jr.(c) vs. El Phantasmo- 5/10
This was one of better five-minute matches you’ll see, with the set-up making every single nearfall believable. It was really just a little mini-match cutting out the shine. The action was enjoyable and the crowd was hot, but booking-wise, I don’t see what the purpose of having win clean here is. Obviously they wanted to let us know that El Phantasmo is capable of pinning Zack or else they would have just had Zack win and not done a second match (which would also give the first one an extra seven or eight minutes which would have made it even better), but the only reason I can see to let us know that Phantasmo is capable of pinning Zack is to set him up as a challenger, but having him lose cleanly here completely undoes that. I just don’t get it.

This was a meh show from RevPro. One of the things that RevPro does better than anyone else is use the fact that many of their usual top names won’t be at a certain show due to outside commitments in order as an opportunity to give newer guys a chance to shine (compare this to, say, ROH, who at this point seem almost afraid to run a show in the US when New Japan is on tour in Japan, and thus take the majority summer off for the G1 rather than using it as an opportunity to see how well they draw without certain guys who also work New Japan and to give guys like Martinez, Gresham, Josh Woods, Kenny King [and in recent years Dijak, Rush, Cedric, ACH, Dalton Castle] a chance to prove that they can deliver in a big spot if given the opportunity). Unfortunately, though, sometimes the guys don’t prove themselves as well as you would hope for, and although Phantasmo showed he could deliver and RevPro showed us that they are serious about the push of Brooks, most of the lesser-established talent on this show did not do anything to make me care to see them again. I think this show will wind up being relatively important from a storyline point of view, but the in-ring action- which, as Eddie Dennis said, is the heart of RevPro- was a let-down.