BRM Reviews PWG All-Star Weekend XII: Night 2 (RODDY vs. SABRE JR.!)

[Big Red Machine]

PWG All-Star Weekend XII: Night 2 (3/5/2016)- Reseda, CA

CHUCK TAYLOR vs. MARTY SCURLL- 7.25/10
This match felt like it went a lot longer than it did, but this time I mean that in a good way. Lots of good false finishes that really made you believe Chuck’s streak was going to end right here tonight.

EVIL UNO vs. MARK ANDREWS- DUD!
Uno took Andrews down by biting him on the penis. Yes. You read that correctly. Anyway, instead of disqualifying Uno these not one but TWO blatantly illegal actions, the referee just dropped down into position to count the pin. PWG Senior Referee Rick Knox was on commentary and he even comment on how illegal this was. Instead of being outraged that the heel cheated, the PWG crowd just chants “that was evil,” which is beyond ironic because such a thing being “evil” only matter if the fans react to it the way they would if they saw something heinous.
Evil Uno later proceeded to perform a back rake and a stomp to the groin all in front of the referee with no disqualification. Is it really that hard to do a freakin’ ref bump if you want to do this sh*t? Uno kept doing this sh*t and finally Excalibur and Knox said that maybe Uno was coming close to crossing a line should get DQed. What are they waiting for? Uno to pull out a gun and shoot Mandrews with it?
Other than this sort of thing they just did moves and kicked out of stuff with nothing resembling a story behind it. Terrible match. There were more nut-shots in this match than I think I’ve seen in WWE all year, and every last one of these was right in front of the referee.

DREW GALLOWAY vs. TREVOR LEE- 5.25/10
Trevor Lee tries to convince Drew that they shouldn’t wrestle each other tonight. Well if that’s how you feel then why did you even show up? Fortunately, Drew got about as sick of Trevor’s crap as I was so he threw him into a turnbuckle, and started the match.
They fight on the outside and Drew gets some fans to restrain Trevor for him. If this was a real professional wresting promotion Drew would be DQed and those fans would be ejected. Unfortunately this is just PWG so this behavior is tolerated. And apparently so are chairshots, because now Lee is hitting Drew with a chair.
Lee ties Drew up in the ring skirt and kicks him in the face a bunch of times, but Drew defiantly flips him off and tells him to “SUCK MY DICK!” I guess he must have him confused with AR Fox. Oh. Apparently there are count-outs in this match (at least at this point). But chairshots are okay? After that point they had Trevor get his heat, then Drew made a comeback by throwing Trevor around, and then we got an extremely abrupt finish.

MATT SYDAL & RICOCHET vs. DEATH BY ELBOW (Chris Hero & JT Dunn)- 9/10
Chris Hero appears to have found his Mini-Me. Also, some helpful fans informed us that f*cking with Mr. Hero would be highly inadvisable.
Do you like hard strikes to the head and crazy displays of athleticism? Then this match is for you! It probably went a teeny bit too long and the sequence where Hero kicked booting/elbowing both Sydal and Ricochet in the head at the same time because their heads were touching got too cutesy, but other than that this was completely crazy. I MUST seek out more Death By Elbow matches!

ADAM COLE vs. TRENT?- 5.5/10
On commentary, Chuck Taylor referred to Trent? as “Greg.” Dammit, Chuck! If you keep saying things like this to confuse him he’ll never work up enough confidence in his memory skills to take that question mark off the end of his name!
Anyway, this started off with good heat by Cole, but they killed it for me when Trent? started his comeback with an entirely unnecessary shot to the groin for which there was no DQ. Then they did a bunch of stuff. Cole hit a Package Piledriver on the apron, which apparently isn’t good enough for a finish in PWG. The actual finish was Cole hitting a super Panama Sunrise… and then Trent? caught him with a crucifix when he went for the pin and rolled Cole up. Yeah. The f*cker takes a SUPER CANADIAN DESTROYER… and fifteen seconds later he has pinned his opponent for the victory. That’s not wrestling anymore. It’s just doing spots to make the fans go “OOOOHH!”… and then once they’ve said they’re big, surprised “OOOOHH!” the fans go right back to not taking anything seriously. They did a spot where Cole when for the Panama Sunrise but Trent? countered it into his finish and Cole JUST BARELY GOT HIS FINGERTIPS ON THE ROPES… and the fans did their “OOOOHH!” of surprise… and then started chanting “RING AWARENESS!” That’s not appreciating the match. That right there is trying to get yourself over.

PWG WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: The Young Bucks(c) vs. reDRagon- 7.75/10
There were times when this was really great and times when it was just way too much. The defiant, fighting spirit spot with the reDRagon on their knees taking the superkicks and the stuff after the air freshener blinding spots definitely crossed the line.

PWG WORLD TITLE MATCH: Roderick Strong(c) vs. Zack Sabre Jr.- 9.75/10
Roderick Strong’s PWG World Title reign ends the way it began 449 days ago: with a Match of the Year candidate. Roddy worked over Sabre’s ribs while Sabre spent the whole match meticulously picking apart all four of Roddy’s limbs in ways that will make you cringe. Roddy did a beautiful job of selling both the pain in his limbs and his frustration at not being able to put Zack away (which was only made worse by the heavily pro-Sabre crowd). Lots of fantastic awesome and emotion, all culminating in the sort of fantastic moment that can only come from that final, beautiful babyface victory.
This would have been a 10/10 if not for that stupid spot where Sabre Jr. took his boot off for no reason. Roddy took his off because he was frustrated and he threw it right into Zack’s face. Zack just took his boot off and pulled up his sock because PWGLOL.

A very up and down show from PWG, but because of the two superb matches I can’t not recommend it.