BRM Reviews wXw We Love Wrestling #31: Slam in den Mai (newsworthy)

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Big Red Machine
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BRM Reviews wXw We Love Wrestling #31: Slam in den Mai (newsworthy)

Post by Big Red Machine » Jun 9th, '22, 22:53

wXw We Love Wrestling #31: Slam in den Mai (4/30/2022)- Weyhe, Germany



FAST TIME MOODO vs. SENZA VOLTO- 6.75/10
Senza won a solid opener cleanly, but I really wish they would give guys like these two time to have matches that really get attention. These are your up-and-coming, upper-midcard babyfaces who are going to be the next generation of top guys (Senza in particular). Give them fifteen minutes, not nine and a half.

EARLIER TODAY, DIRECTOR OF SPORT NORMAN HARRAS TAPED A SIT-DOWN CONFERENCE WITH “THE AVALANCHE” ROBERT DREISSKER- TREMENDOUS!
These two are both heels now, but their antagonism is still there, as it should be. Norman is absolutely the kid of guy who will hold a grudge and who will abuse newfound power to do so, and he was the first of a bunch of Avalanche’s trainees to become a bad apple, leading to frustrating experiences that would eventually result in Avalanche becoming the embittered heel he has become, with a grudge towards both his trainees and the company for supposedly not giving him the respect he deserves.
I loved how they made amazing use of the tools at their disposal- Norman’s attitude, and particularly Avalanche’s suspension to illustrate Avalanche’s change in attitude towards his students. You’d think he’d be happy for Norman to lift his suspension a day early and give him a chance to wrestle Oskar tonight after their confrontation at the previous show with Avalanche as a “paying customer,” but instead he was indignant because he didn’t have his gear with him, and commented that he didn’t bring his gear with him because he’s not some simpering rookie praying for a spot on the card… and then to have Norman turn him around and give him the small elbow pads and scold him for not having his gear was tremendous.
And it’s not just Avalanche who was great here. I’ve said many times how ridiculous I think it is that Norman could have gotten this job, but setting that logical issue aside, Norman’s performance was fantastic. Having the post for this show- made “months in advance” by the marketing the department- there with Avalanche’s picture on it would, under a babyface authority figure, clearly be the babyface authority figure, trying to appeal to Avalanche’s sense of duty to get him to become a babyface again, but with Norman it’s clearly just there to taunt Avalanche, using the above reason as plausible deniability that he’s not being a jerk. In fact, pretty much everything Norman does here is exactly what a babyface would do in this situation, except with Norman, we know that despite the professional façade he’s putting up, his real intention here is just be a jerk towards someone he has a grudge against.

LEVANIEL vs. VINCENT HEISENBERG- 4/10
Before the match, Levaniel cut a very fun, very Levaniel promo in which he said that his road back to title contention starts tonight.
They did some good stuff based on the size difference. Heisenberg won by count-out in a little over six minutes after dropping Levaniel face-first onto the apron and Levaniel couldn’t get up and back into the ring.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- good
Heisenberg went to beat on Levaniel some more until Jurn Simmons ran out to make the save, eventually knocking Heisenberg out of the ring with a belt shot. Jurn then cut a promo telling Heisenberg he’ll be coming for him for after he finishes dealing with Tristan Archer later tonight.

ROTT & FLOTT vs. ONLY FRIENDS (Michael Knight & Bobby Gunns)- 6.75/10
Rott & Flott shocked everyone with a win here. The announcer tried to frame it as dirty because Knight got hit in the throat, but that never seems to be illegal in wrestling when the ropes aren’t involved.

DAN INTERVIEWS ROTT & FLOTT- fine
They point out that they now have two wins in a row (in regular tag matches) and say they hope Director of Sport Norman Harras takes notice.

LAURANCE ROMAN vs. AIGLE BLANC- 6/10
Roman worked the head but Aigle Blanc countered his crossface and caught Roman in a roll-up for the win. Roman was a heel during the match, but then showed Aigle Blanc respect afterwards, which confused me, as Roman has been pretty much neutral before this, so him being a heel for the match and then a babyface afterwards felt forced and random.

DAN INTERVIEWS TRISTAN ARCHER- fine
He’s got a plan that he says will ensure he wins the wXw Unified World Wrestling Championship tonight.

wXw SHOTGUN TITLE MATCH: Maggot(c) (w/Baby Allison) vs. Rick Salem- 5.75/10
Maggot wins in just under seven minutes, but Salem had a good showing.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- groan
Maggot and Baby Allison celebrated. Norman Harras came out and said he noticed some “inconsistencies” in the lottery and thus the drawing was “invalid,” so they’ll have to do it over again… and, of course, Norman wins it. I REALLY hate this. Unless it is revealed that the Board of Directors has been taken over by some uncaring conglomerate, it makes no sense that Norman would be allowed to continue in his position while constantly abusing his power like this. The stuff he has done with Avalanche is a perfect example of how a heel authority figure can get away with things within what is supposed to be a management system run by inherently good people interested in providing fair competition. This stuff with Norman and the Shotgun Title is the opposite. It’s just ignoring a clear and obvious issue because you really want to tell a certain story, and you’re too lazy to come up with an explanation for an obvious issue. It doesn’t matter how much you want to tell a particular story. If you can’t make that story make sense, don’t tell it.

wXw SHOTGUN TITLE MATCH: Maggot(c) (w/Baby Allison) vs. Norman Harras- no rating, bad segment
Maggot was obviously upset about this, so he charged up the aisle at Norman to start this off with a brawl on the outside. This was the first time I’ve felt behind Maggot since this strange babyface (lack of) turn he and Baby Allison have done recently. Hopefully the endgame with all this is him realizing that Norman’s bullsh*t is no different from what he and Allison have done, and they renounce their previous behavior.
Maggot won in under a minute with a Cutter… so all this did is show us that Norman is a total loser. It doesn’t show us that he’s abusing his power, because we already knew that. All this segment did is make Norman Harras look pathetic once again.
I hate to go this far, but the use of Norman over the past two years has been, quite frankly, WWE-esque. You have a super-talented wrestler (especially on the mic), but someone decided that he’s so good at being the heel who talks a big game and thinks he’s so smart but always winds up getting humiliated, so that’s all they do with him. I think some of the wrestlers who have risen up the ranks in the past two years (Senza Volto, Aigle Blanc, Anil Marik, Heisenberg, Michael Knight, Fast Time Moodo, Stephanie Maze, Levaniel, Tristan Archer, Maggot) are very good, but Norman Harras has the potential to be a bigger star than all of them (other than maybe Senza Volto) and in a quicker period of time, but wXw has spent two years now cutting Norman’s legs off, to the point where I’m not sure it’s possible for him to hit that peak in wXw anymore without leaving a establishing himself somewhere else first.

DAN INTERVIEWS NORMAN HARRAS- This was a wonderful example of everything I talked about above. Dan asked Norman about the “coincidences” with the Shotgun Title. Norman cut a wonderful, angry promo telling us why the Shotgun Title is not a want for him but a need, and declared that he would do anything in his power to get it back. He announced that the lottery was now over, which seems to go against his best interests, as that was how he was getting himself so many undeserved title shots with some (admittedly horribly flimsy) plausible deniability, but Norman was so angry here and his mind has been so warped on the issue of the Shotgun Title that I can actually believe that he thinks the issue is exactly what he said: When the lottery is involved, fate itself is somehow favoring Maggot. It’s crazy, but Norman made me believe that he has become that crazy where this one subject is involved. The only thing here I didn’t like was Dan claiming that the lottery has been a “solid part of wXw.” It hasn’t been. It has sucked.
So yeah. This would have been awesome if I had any faith that they were actually going to do anything with Norman other than treat him like a clown.

“THE AVALANCHE” ROBERT DREISSKER vs. OSKAR MUNCHOW- no rating, necessary segment
Avalanche was in his street clothes (plus the small pads that Norman gave him) because he didn’t bring his gear because he wasn’t expecting to wrestle. And this wound up paying off for him in the end. He got DQed in 2:14 for a questionable low kick (he claimed it was to the inner thigh, but it was a Shattered Dreams position, so it was pretty clearly a low blow). He got upset with this and started to head off, only for it to be announced that Norman Harras has ordered the match restarted as a…

STREET FIGHT: “The Avalanche” Robert Dreissker vs. Oskar Munchow- 8/10
One of the things that has continued to impress me in wXw over the years is how they do so many little things that make things work that much better. In any other company in the world, if you read what I wrote in the previous paragraph, everyone’s assumption would be that this was a plan all along, and that while Norman and Avalanche’s discussion earlier might have been genuine, they made contact later in the day and came up with this plan to turn Avalanche not having his gear into an advantage for him.
But not in wXw. wXw was sure to have Avalanche not want to have a Street Fight, because as far as he was concerned, he wrestled his match and got screwed… and, of course, because he doesn’t want to have to face a pissed off Oskar in a match where weapons are legal. This way, we still get the babyface (Oskar) being put in a disadvantageous position (wrestling a dangerous and much more experienced opponent in a weapons match, right after getting kicked in the nuts, and with Avalanche being dressed for it and Oskar not) but the heel authority figure (Norman), but without sacrificing any of the tension and animosity between Norman and Avalanche (and in a situation where that tension and animosity would be sacrificed for the sake of getting to a match that they could have gotten to a number of different ways). This is Quackenbushian. This is the kind of thing that AEW thinks they’re doing but aren’t. And this is the kind of thing that makes the crap with Norman and the Shotgun Title so frustrating to me, because I know wXw is capable of so much better.
Okay. Now for the actual match. It rocked. Yeah, it was a weapons match, but this was still an excellent showing for young Oskar. He sold well, had great babyface fire, and felt like he belonged in the ring with one of the company’s best-established stars. Avalanche became the first person to kick out of Oskar’s Michinoku Driver, which really isn’t all that impressive when you consider that Oskar has only been around for a few months and hasn’t hit said finisher on anyone who you would expect to kick out of a finisher, but it still made for a good nearfall.
The finish was something I hadn’t seen before, which is rare. Oskar set Avalanche up for the Shattered Dreams as revenge for earlier, but while he turned around to fire up, Avalanche pulled the middle turnbuckle pad off, so that when Oskar kicked it, not only was there less contact with Avalanche’s groin, but also it hurt Oskar a lot because he kicked the uncovered metal. Oskar sold his foot big, Aalanche smashed it with a chair a few times, then locked on his rear-mounted reverse neck crank (whose name I should probably know but don’t) until Oskar passed out. Avalanche getting the win here keeps his heat for the eventual match with Gresham that should be coming, and prevents it from feeling like Oskar is getting too much too soon, which would risk creating some resentment among fans.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- GREAT!
During the match, a toolbox had been pulled out from under the ring to use as a weapon. Avalanche opened it up and got a hammer, then grabbed Oskar’s wXw Academy Cup and smashed it.

wXw UNIFIED WORLD WRESTLING TITLE MATCH: Jurn Simmons(c) vs. Tristan Archer- 7/10
This was a solid, hard-hitting match, with both guys working over the mid-section, but that all just to kill time before the big ending.
Archer pulled the ref in the way of Jurn’s Spear. Jurn blocked a low blow and hit a Claymore-style flying big boot, then went for a Piledriver, but Rott & Flott attacked him. Levaniel came out to make the save, laying them out with Jurn’s title. Archer and Levaniel got into a tug of war over the belt, which Levaniel won… but in doing so, accidentally hit Jurn with it. Archer then took out Levaniel, hit Jurn with his finisher, and got the pinfall despite the groggy referee’s slow count.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT AND THOUGHTS ON THE TITLE CHANGE- good
Archer celebrated with the belt, taunted Levaniel, and left. Levaniel went to check on and apologize to Jurn. Jurn pushed him away and left. I was happy that they didn’t have Jurn turn on Levaniel because Jurn is a great babyface and is really the only top-tier babyface they have now that Axel Tischer is slowing turning heel, Avalanche is fully heel, and Bobby Gunns doesn’t quite feel fully babyface yet.
This title change is clearly a necessary step in a story they are trying to tell, but I must admit that I’m getting quite worried about how much the title is changing hands. That’s three big shows in a row now. Hopefully this story is worth it.


This was a decent show from wXw. The stuff with Avalanche was all great, the stuff with the Shotgun Title was all bad, and everything else was perfectly acceptable, but not stand-out. That sounds disappointing for a show with an actual name- and, in a way, it is-, but realizing that the next show is the actual big show (not just an episode of We Love Wrestling with a tag line tacked on), I think this was perfectly acceptable for a set-up show they were trying to flag for you as one you really needed to make sure to watch before True Colors 2022.
Hold #712: ARM BAR!

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