BRM Reviews wXw Broken Rules XVIII

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews wXw Broken Rules XVIII

Post by Big Red Machine » Dec 24th, '18, 22:21

wXw Broken Rules XVIII (11/17/2018)- Dresden, Germany

wXw UNIFIED WORLD WRESTLING TITLE UNIFICATION CONTENDERSHIP MATCH: Absolute Andy vs. Bobby Gunns- 6.75/10
To translate, Andy was the wXw Unified World Wrestling Champion but got injured and had to pull out of a scheduled three-way match against Gunns and Ilja Dragunov, so instead of not having a title match, wXw decided to go ahead with Gunns vs. Ilja and have that match be to crown an interim champion. It was later booked that the winner of the scheduled Ilja vs. PCO interim title defense later tonight will face the winner of this match (who will then be the linear champion) to determine who is the one true wXw Unified World Wrestling Champion in just six days at Shotgun Live Tour 2018: Hamburg.
Both guys worked the arm. The match was good, but was definitely missing something, like things were just a half step off. Andy won via heel tactics, which sends Andy to the unification match in Hamburg while keeping Gunns alive as a title contender.

KILLER KELLY vs. KRIS WOLF vs. AUDREY BRIDE- 3.75/10
This match started off with the fans chanting “MEAT!” as Kris Wolf evaluated her two opponents’ thighs. She found Kelly’s to be satisfactory for a meal, but found Audrey’s to be only so-so. Why the f*ck am I even typing something this weird for a professional wrestling review?
The match was decent for the time it got. The story seemed to be that whenever Killer Kelly was in, she would just wreck everyone, but would inevitably get taken out, giving the other two ladies an actual chance. Kris Wolf managed to seize on one of these chances and pinned Audrey with a cool-looking, reverse not-quite-Fisherman’s-Suplex kind of thing. Kelly, who was on the outside at the time, was both horrified and furious that she had lost this match.

THE CROWN (Alexander James & Jurn Simmons) vs. “THE AVALANCHE” ROBERT DREISSKER & LAURANCE ROMAN- 5.5/10
If there is some sort of greater significance behind Avalanche recruiting Laurance Roman to be his mystery partner then hopefully commentator Andy Jackson will explain it to me, because my reaction on seeing him was “that guy? Really?” The Crown had a similar reaction, and nothing was mentioned on commentary. I guess it could just be as simple as “he’s a hometown guy so he’ll get a good pop from the crowd” but it’s still kind of disappointing. This was a fine tag team match. Avalanche and Roman worked together fine but Roman got pinned cleanly in the end, so maybe this whole thing was just a delaying action. The heels went for a post-match beat-down but Avalanche ran him off.

TIMOTHY THATCHER vs. WALTER- 7.75/10
This was a slow plodding “clobbering” type of match, with the big story being that Thatcher would not stay down, and Thatcher eventually took advantage of WALTER constantly going for strikes and turned one into a flash pin for the victory. If you were looking for some sort of moment where things would get super-heated and we’d be teased with the idea of RingKampf exploding, you didn’t get anything close to that… at least until the…

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good, but…
Thatcher put his RingKampf logo scarf down in the ring and knelt in front of it to show respect. He invited WALTER to do the same with his, but WALTER instead through his down and left. Unfortunately, wXw’s way around the use of copyrighted music is to license one song and play that as the audio track on the stream during everyone’s entrance, so we couldn’t hear the crowd reaction or anything Thatcher and WALTER said to each other during all of this.

wXw WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Jay FK vs. Coast 2 Coast vs. The Arrows of Hungary- 6.5/10
They brawled all over and did some decent babyface vs. babyface vs. heel stuff, with the heels running away from one babyface team only to run right into the other, and other similar spots. One of the Arrows of Hungary did a big balcony dive. Jay FK retained the titles cleanly, pinning LSG.

wXw WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Melanie Gray(c) vs. Toni Storm- DUD!
I should probably rate this as a segment, but I really wasn’t in the mood to... and the reason I wasn’t in the mood to is that before this match started, we wasted several minutes with Melanie Gray singing. First she sang Let It Go in English, then she sang what I believe was Bear Necessities from The Jungle Book in German, then she sang the Batman theme in… well… it’s probably the exact same in both English and German because the only words are a nonsense musical syllable repeated over and over, then a proper noun.
After Melanie stopped signing, she gave the referee the belt, he ordered the bell rung, Melanie turned around to face Toni… and was immediately kicked in the stomach, hit with Strong Zero and pinned. That was your whole title match right there. Then Toni rudely kicked Melanie’s fallen body out of the ring during her celebration even though Melanie had not done anything to her.

STREET FIGHT FOR THE wXw INTERIM UNIFIED WORLD WRESTLING TITLE: Ilja Dragunov(c) vs. PCO- 8.5/10
They start off by showing us that PCO’s massive, freakish size means that he will have a major strength advantage over Ilja, so Ilja goes to get a chair to equalize… but he’s such a babyface that he wants to play fair so he gives PCO a chair as well… and then they swing their chairs and no one connects, and Ilja just staggers PCO and sends him out of the ring with an enzugiri… so what was the point of the chairs? And from that point on, they seemed to forget all about PCO’s size advantage, too, so what was the point of this whole bit?
After that point this got awesome. Basically it was all of the usual crazy weapons match stuff you’d expect. Crazy bumps, lots of weapon use, a large Quebecer flying through the air trying to squish a Communist. The usual stuff. Ilja was an excellent babyface as always (and, being Ilja, he bled a lot) while PCO did a wonderful job of playing up his “monster” gimmick. This was one of those matches that makes you believe PCO when he claims to not be human. But while PCO might be not human, Ilja Dragunov showed us once again that he is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not breakable- unbesiegbar.

This was a decent show from wXw. It moved the stories along well and set up for the next big show, but it definitely left something to be desired from an in-ring perspective. This had the potential to be one heck of a card, but only the main event really came through. Even so, I think the storyline significance makes this one must-see for anyone trying to keep abreast of the goings-on in continental Europe’s top wrestling promotion.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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