BRM Reviews wXw Drive of Champions 2022 (great!)

[Big Red Machine]

wXw Drive of Champions 2022 (11/22/2022)- Frankfurt, Germany


We got a nice, slick video package in the beginning running down the major matches and talking about what it means to be a champion.

MICHAEL KNIGHT vs. LAURANCE ROMAN- 6.75/10
A good babyface vs. heel opener with the heel getting a clean win, because if you do a good enough job being a heel, you don’t need to cheat to make the babyface vs. heel dynamic work.

ALISS INK VIDEO PACKAGE- decent babyface stuff. We probably should have gotten this right after she won the title.

DAN INTERVIEWS BABY ALLISON – good
She notes that when she lost her title to Aliss Ink, it was right after she had to see her boyfriend wrestle a handicap match because his jerk friend stood him up, so she was mentally off her game. Yes, this is an excuse, but it fits her character, and it creates something for her to be angry about that Ahura can plausibly say wasn’t his fault, even if it was the result of a domino effect. Her blaming Ahura for this (and it actually being slightly unreasonable) also gives a Ahura a little more ammo against her that Maggot can go along with and still seem reasonable if they want to drag the story of the Pretty Bastards splitting up out a little more.

wXw WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH: Aliss Ink(c) vs. Baby Allison- 6/10
This was a fun “knock your opponent down and then jump on her with a submission” kind of match that added a level of aggression that both of these women had been missing. The story was Allison managing to avoid the Dragon’s Tail, which had felled her last time, but Aliss Ink was able to win with a Kimura variation instead.

PETER TIHANYI & ELIJAH BLUM vs. AMBOSS (Robert Dreissker & Icarus)- 7.25/10
The babyfaces jumped the bell on Amboss, which works in a story like this, and does a good job of showing off the promised “different side” of Peter Tihanyi (and they showed us that promo in a video package right before this match). Tihanyi got lots of shine before the heels finally got the heat on Blum.
Tihanyi got warned to stay in his corner and hold onto the tag rope. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. I don’t love it, just because of how often it should happen and doesn’t, but it did at least try to show that Tihanyi was being more aggressive and showing less regard for the rules than he usually would.
Tihanyi got the hot tag and ran wild again. The heels finally brought some chairs in to try to deal with Tihanyi, but Tihanyi not only thwarted their attempts to use them, but he even turned the chairs on the heels, giving Icarus a Piledriver onto one. The finishing sequence was so awesome that I watched it multiple times. After Dreissker hit Blum with a chairshot, he went for one on Tihanyi as well, but Tihanyi avoided it, and Dreissker did one of the best “chair bounces off the ropes and comes back and hits the person who swung it” spots you’ll ever see. Then came the Piledriver onto the chair to Icarus, followed by Tihanyi avoiding a spear from Dreissker, resulting in Dreissker crashing into a chair wedged into the turnbuckle, and fished off with a 450 for the win. Then, for good measure, Laurance Roman tried to attack Tihanyi wound up eating a chair for his trouble. The goal of this match was to establish that this war with Amboss has brought out a new side of Peter Tihanyi, and it accomplished that in spades.

EARLIER TODAY, DAN INTERVIEWED AXEL TISCHER- good
He framed reuniting SAnitY for World Tag Team Festival as a failed experiment in the process of finding who he is again, and he built up tonight’s big rematch against Cara Noir, saying that getting his win back tonight was a must. He didn’t explicitly say it here, but that match was a big domino in terms of things going wrong for Tischer.

AXEL TISCHER vs. CARA NOIR- 7.75/10
They teased Cara getting the Black Swan early, which was how he won their previous match, but Tischer was able to avoid it. The went back and for forth about fifteen minutes in a match that did a wonderful job of showing us how much this win would mean to Tischer via his sheer determination and his facial expressions. The finish saw him get out of the Black Swan once via rope break and then again by dumping Cara on his head via snapmare before hitting a Shouten Kai for the win.

FAST TIME MOODO vs. ENDER KARA- 8.25/10
This was excellent. It was essentially your stereotypical Young Bucks/Ricochet/Lucha Bros. etc. match, but instead of flips/athleticism, it was almost all strikes… but because strikes are not something that requires as much cooperation and because there were only two wrestlers, it was much more believable. These two also have something of a rivalry, being young up-and-coming martial arts babyfaces, so there was an intensity here as well that those matches often either lack or have, but in a way that feels performative. Moodo got the win, so even after a learn excursion to Japan, Ender Kara still can’t beat him.

DAN INTERVIEWS LEVANIEL BEFORE HIS wXw UNIFIED WORLD WRESTLING TITLE SHOT- awesome
This match was only scheduled two days ago. The short notice is because Levaniel injured his neck in a training session at the wXw Wrestling Academy (conveniently being filmed for Instagram) and Director of Sport Norman Harras is trying to screw him. They also played Norman’s announcement of the match, which was great “heel authority figure with plausible deniability stuff.
Levaniel cut an awesome promo here about overcoming the odds and saying that maybe this match happening tonight instead of in December like he wanted is destiny.


wXw UNIFIED WORLD WRESTLING TITLE MATCH: Tristan Archer(c) vs. Levaniel- no rating, okay segment
Archer mocked Levaniel’s neck injury on his way to the ring. He worked over Levaniel’s neck, dominating most of the match and getting the win by referee stoppage in about five minutes. If you’re going to do this sort of thing, this is the way to do it (without it being advertised much beforehand), and I especially liked that the kayfabe reason for the shortness of the match tied into the kayfabe reason for it not being announced until days before the show.

FRENCHADORS INTERVIEW- meh
They explain that it was their idea for this to be a three-way based on the finish of the tag title match on We Love Wrestling #38.

wXw WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Frenchadors(c) vs. Rott & Flott vs. Pretty Bastards- 7.75/10
The match was mostly just action, but all done specifically to tease the Pretty Bastards winning the tag titles here in their home city, and with Rott & Flott breaking things up. Ahura eventually resorted to faking an injury and then cheating, poking Aigle Blanc in the eye and kicking Senza Volto in the nuts, but the Frenchadors persevered and retained their titles.


POST-MATCH SEGMENT- okay
Maggot and Ahura were left alone in the ring. There was a moment where it looked like Maggot might attack Ahura, but he didn’t. Instead they appeared to reconcile… and it went on and on and on until finally Ahura turned on Maggot, as we all knew he would. Setting it up with Ahura stepping on Maggot’s Shotgun Title to set up what I presume will be a unification match between them was a nice touch, but the rest of this didn’t work nearly as well as it should have for me.
Both the going forever before the turn and the tease of Maggot attacking Ahura (which would have subverted expectations) felt like they designed to make us think that Ahura would not turn on Maggot, but that turn has been built up for so long that I don’t think anyone was fooled. At that point, going forever just becomes annoying, which is obviously not great, but it’s ultimately harmless to the storyline. The tease of Maggot turning on Ahura, however, does damage the storyline by giving Ahura a justification that he doesn’t need. He’s turning because he’s a selfish asshole, and because he thinks he should be the rightful Shotgun Champion and his friend is walking around with a fake belt. That’s all he needs. Maggot teasing turning on him gives him something legitimate he can point to, and with his character, that’s something he shouldn’t have.


This was another great show from wXw, although the best matches on this big show are not quite were you’d hope they’d be in a landscape where you’re competing for attention with WWE, AEW, New Japan, All Japan, STARDOM, Impact, the occasional ROH show, GCW, etc. I’m not trying to say that all of those promotions are on the same level, and I’m certainly not trying to say that wXw anywhere near the level of AEW or WWE, but all of these promotions do compete for our time and attention, and in a world where things have shifted a lot more towards the axis of work-rate than the axis of storytelling (I’m not saying they are mutually exclusive! I’m saying that they are different axes altogether), you want to make sure that your big shows are delivering at as high of a level as you can on work-rate while not sacrificing any necessary “this is really a segment, not a match” moments that are key to your storylines.