BRM Reviews wXw We Love Wrestling #20 (8/13/2021)

[Big Red Machine]

wXw We Love Wrestling #20 (8/13/2021)- Oberhausen, Germany


DAN’S INTERVIEW WITH PRINCE AHURA IN THE SHISHA LOUNGE IS INTERRUPTED BY BOTH NORMAN HARRAS AND BOBBY GUNNS- bad
They all argue, this time about their infighting resulting in none of them winning Shortcut to the Top. I’m getting a little sick of these guys just arguing. Death by a thousand cuts is not always interesting to watch.
Maggot’s name was drawn for the Shotgun Title match lottery. He and Prince Ahura went to a time-limit draw in the previous title defense, so good booking there by fate. Norman got angry and grabbed at the lottery balls but Ahura snatched them away. I don’t know if we’re actually supposed to think that Ahura is rigging it to keep Norman from getting a title shot if or Ahura is just upset about Norman bothering him, but I really hope it’s the latter, because if it’s the former that means that wXw is being exceedingly negligent in keeping these lottery balls secure.

DAN INTERVIEWS AVALANCHE- fine
He is asked how his quest for answers from the office about why his student Feyyaz Aguilla was booked in a match when Avalanche had said that he was not ready. He said he got wishy-washy answers and he’s pretty angry about it, but there isn’t anything he can do about it at this point. He also put over his opponent for tonight, Dennis Dullnig.

“THE AVALANCHE” ROBERT DREISSKER vs. DENNIS “CASH” DULLNIG- 4.5/10
Dullnig pulled out some brass knuckles and managed to hit Avalanche with them undetected, but Avalanche bounced off the ropes and fell on him and he couldn’t kick out. I’ve been expecting Avalanche to be Marius’ next big challenger after Jurn, so this is quite the curious finish unless it’s just a quick angle to set up a match at next week’s 20th Anniversary show, but even then I think it would have been better to set up a bigger match for Avalanche for that show.

ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS THE ARROWS OF HUNGARY- meh
I’m fine with building up a match with a promo, but sometimes these interviews feel so pointless. “Yes, our opponents are good competitors and this should be a tough battle, but we will work hard to prevail,” and so forth over and over again can get pretty boring.

PARIS BALLIS & THE ROTATION vs. ARROWS OF HUNGARY- 2.5/10
The Arrows won a short match cleanly, pinning Paris.

DAN INTERVIEWS FEYYAZ AGUILLA- fine
Feyyaz is confident that Heisenberg won’t completely obliterate him. He has to fight Heisenberg because he needs to stand up for himself.

VINCENT HEISENBERG vs. FEYYAZ AGUILLA- no rating, odd segment
Feyyaz charged at Heisenberg but Heisenberg stopped him by grabbing his hair, hit him with a clothesline, then gave him a bodyslam and got the pin. I liked that because it proves Avalanche correct that Feyyaz wasn’t ready, which is important for Avalanche’s integrity and wisdom, which a mentor/trainer character needs to have.
What disappointed me was the lack of attempted brutalization after the match. I was expecting Heisenberg to start trying to kill the kid, based on the way he had been acting in the build-up to this match. All he did was laugh in Feyyaz’s unconscious face. A deranged character with a sort of strange integrity is interesting, but they need to be very careful with how they follow up.

DAN INTERVIEWS HEISENBERG- fine segment
Dan starts in with “are you happy with what you’ve done to this kid now?” as if Heisenberg had brutalized him, but like I said above, he really didn’t. He hit him with two moves and beat him. He didn’t punish him or torture him in any way. This might as well have been Goldberg hitting someone with a spear and a jackhammer.
Heisenberg got annoyed that Dan kept looking over at Feyyaz, and got even more annoyed when some undercard babyfaces came out to check on him, so he beat them up, then asked the unconscious Feyyaz “Do you think everything is all about you?” and then hit him with his finisher. He shoved a referee during all of this, too, so that should get him in trouble with the office.

DAN INTERVIEWS MAGGOT- good
Dan asks Maggot if he has any control over Heisenberg. Maggot doesn’t care. Dan says that Maggot must be unhappy with Heisenberg going crazy because they are a team, but Maggot says he doesn’t want to talk about that. He wants to talk about his title match instead. Dan obliges, and Maggot says that he made a mistake calculating the timing in his previous title shot, resulting in the time-limit draw, but he won’t make a mistake this time.
Dan asks Maggot why Baby Allison isn’t with him. Maggot says that they are having “a little disagreement on our strategy over a certain thing that I don’t want to bring up on here.” With those two, it could be Heisenberg, but it could just as well be a sex thing, or any other number of things. Dan tried to get more out of Maggot but Maggot wouldn’t oblige.

wXw SHOTGUN TITLE MATCH: Prince Ahura(c) vs. Maggot- 5.25/10
These two were having a pretty good match for a few minutes until Norman Harras came to ringside and yelled at both of them. He had a minor breakdown and tried to steal the Shotgun Title, so we got a few minutes of the Pretty Bastards reuniting to beat Norman (Norman never once managed to hit either of them, so there was no DQ). They went to do their handshake but Ahura caught Maggot with a surprise kick to the face and knocked him out for the win.

DAN INTERVIEWS PRINCE AHURA- decent
Ahura saw the fallen Norman Harras on the outside, so he decided to sit on him for his interview. He made fun of Norman, then blamed wXw for “allowing” Heisenberg to smash the lottery-drawing apparatus, which apparently happened during Heisenberg’s earlier rampage. He also yelled at the timekeeper for not being able to keep Norman Harras away from his Shotgun Title belt.

AIGLE BLANC vs. ENDER KARA- 7/10
This was an EXCELLENT ten minutes of two young athletes determined to prove their worth, both in kayfabe and out. Both guys worked the head and neck. These are the guys wXw should be giving time to instead of the Paris Ballis’ of the world

ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS TRISTAN ARCHER- bad
Tristan Archer is SOOOOO boring. Get him a manager.
They highlighted that he beat Michael Knight a few weeks ago. Andy asked if his knee was all healed up after his battles with Marius Al-Ani. He got very defensive about it and insisted that it was fine.

AXEL TISCHER VS. FAST TIME MOODO VIDEO PACKAGE/PROMO- good
This was the first time we have heard Tischer talk since his return was announced. Moodo is a good first opponent for him, as he is someone with enough credibility that this doesn’t feel like a waste of a big match while still being someone who can get a rub from losing cleanly to Tischer in a competitive fashion (and, with the announcement that Stephanie Maze is scheduled to return from injury in time for September’s Catch Grand Prix, I imagine that any singles losses Moodo suffers between now and then will be forgotten as he and Maze try to reclaim the titles that Maze’s injury forced them to vacate.
The one thing here that I didn’t like is that they kept using the non-kayfabe taping date for this show instead of the date it’s going to air, which came off as extremely awkward because when this aired, that date had already passed.

DAN INTERVIEWS MICHAEL KNIGHT- good
He wants to build on his momentum from beating Bobby Gunns a few weeks ago. Dan mentions that Bobby was the one who eliminated him from Shortcut to the Top. Michael points out that they are 1-1, so a rubber match should be coming between those two.

MICHAEL KNIGHT vs. TRISTAN ARCHER- 7/10
Archer’s knee got worked over and he eventually had to tap out. He should be sympathetic, but he was so insistent that he was okay before the match and then did a spot early on that almost mocked the idea that his knee was vulnerable (and then got kicked in the knee right after, beginning the work on his knee), so I was happy to see him get his comeuppance. I don’t know if this is what wXw intended, but it’s definitely a direction he should go in. Archer has been a flop as a babyface, so a heel turn is probably a good idea.

POST-MATCH STUFF- great
Knight tried to offer Archer a hand up but Archer pushed him off and rolled out of the ring.
Dan then interviewed Knight. He focused on Knight keeping a hold in on the ropes to add damage to the knee. While this is certainly illegal, it’s the sort of thing that happens so regularly that it didn’t feel like a big deal to me. Knight explained it away as killer instinct, so a heel turn could be coming for him, too… but it certainly won’t come before a rubber match with Bobby Gunns, which cut a promo making a challenge for.

AN UPDATE ON FEYYAZ’S CONDITION- The preliminary report from the doctors is a concussion and two broken ribs. Again… more evidence that Avalanche was right that the kid wasn’t ready to be in the ring yet.

DAN INTERVIEWS ROTT & FLOTT- meh
They came off as undercard delusional heels in a main event spot. This was a promo 2.0 would have cut.

LEVANIEL PROMO DURING HIS ENTRANCE- decent
In their promo, Rott & Flott had suggested that it would be better for Jurn to just focus on his wXw Unified World Wrestling Title match against Marius Al-Ani instead of waste his time helping Levaniel. When Levaniel introduced Jurn during this promo, Jurn didn’t come out. This, of course, harkened back to Marius Al-Ani standing Levaniel up as a tag team partner during the tag title tournament earlier this year… but then Jurn came out and gave Levaniel the big “GOTCHA!” and all was good.

JURN SIMMONS & LEVANIEL vs. ROTT & FLOTT- 6.25/10
This was a good babyface-in-peril tag team match, with Levaniel as Ricky Morton and Jurn as… not Robert Gibson. He was Jurn f*cking Simmons, the human wrecking ball. The babyfaces won clean, with Jurn getting the pin to build him up a title bit for his shot at the Unified World Wrestling Title at next week’s 20th Anniversary Show.

JURN SIMMONS CALLS OUT MARIUS AL-ANI- bad
This might be the worst I’ve ever heard Marius be on the mic. Compounding this issue was the “Generic championship Match Go-Home Segment #3” feel to it, complete with Jurn challenging Marius to put the title on the line right now and Marius responding with the nonsensical “I’m the champ and I call the shots, so we’ll fight on my time,” line, which is pretty much always code for “the booker gave up trying to think of a reason.” A much better answer would have been Marius saying that he hadn’t warmed up yet but Jurn already had a “warm-up match” so it wouldn’t be fair. All in all, it would have been much better to just let Jurn cut a promo, and to have Marius have cut a promo on Jurn earlier in the show.


This was a good episode of We Love Wrestling, with much better wrestling than usual. The storylines continue to range from good (or at least interesting) to “tedious, but still logical.” I will admit that I’m not particularly interested in any of the matches on the Anniversary Show, but with the Catch Grand Prix coming up right after it and it coming so close to the big show that proceeded it, it does have a kind of “night after WrestleMania” feel where you’re both wrapping up loose ends like obligatory rematches and starting people off in their new directions, so I am still excited to see what happens.