FAST TIME MOODO & STEPHANIE MAZE ARRIVE AT THE BUILDING- a fine hook
They’re excited to be able to do intergender wrestling in wXw. As they arrive, they see Norman Harras talking to a member of Ezel and are suspicious. Once they leave, we cut to that meeting just in time to see the two of them agree to some sort of deal. Hmm…

THE SMOKE BREAK WITH DIE RAUCHERPAUSE- fine
Bobby Gunns cut a promo on Absolute Andy, 16 Carat Gold winner Cara Noir, and Shortcut to the Top winner Mike Schwarz. Also, there was some regionally-based teasing of Norman Harras for coming from a small town and not a big city. Gunns made some comments about taking advantage of numbers which could be a reference to the deal Harras made with Ezel. I’m also getting the vibe that Harras is getting sick of these assholes and might have some sort of secret deal with Ezel that he hasn’t told them about.

PRUGELBRUDER WORK-OUT VIDEO- bad
They’re going way too goofy for what is supposed to be build to Mike Schwarz getting a shot at the wXw Unified World Wrestling Title.

JURN SIMMONS & ABSOLUTE ANDY IN ANDY’S OFFICE- odd
Jurn says he “hasn’t missed wrestling” and seems to be contemplating retirement. Andy convinces him to wrestle one more match. This felt out of nowhere and very out of character for Jurn, but then again, it’s entirely realistic for so much time away to actually change someone, so I can’t say it’s bad. I assume he’s sticking around and whatever that “one last match” is winds up leading to a feud that will pull him back in.

A STUDENT WANTS TO LEARN FROM MARIUS AL-ANI BY HAVING A MATC WITH HIM- fine
Marius is kind of a dick about it, but seems accepting. He’s probably just torture the kid during the match. I think the student was Anil Marik, but I could be wrong.

FAST TIME MOODO vs. STEPHANIE MAZE- 5.75/10
This was solid for what it was, which was a nice intense but respectful professional fight. There were a few times where you could tell they were going slow to make sure their sequence went off as planned, resulting in it looking like an exhibition and not something competitive, but they made up for that with the execution of the finish, which was a double-KO via head-kick from both competitors where they did about the best of job it I’ve ever seen. Personally, I would have put Maze over to help post-facto justify her getting a title shot just handed to her by Killer Kelly back at 16 Carat Gold.

KILLER KELLY SUGGESTS THAT FAST TIME MOODO AND STEPHANIE MAZE FORM A TAG TEAM- sure, why not? They both seem to like the idea.

EZEL BACKSTAGE- fine
They’re angry at Andy’s decision to allow intergender wrestling because they don’t want to hit women. They spun this in a way that worked for their “family first” characters. Metehan then warned Abdul and Aytac that if they failed again, there would be big problems.

AVALANCHE AND HIS STUDENTS TRAINING FROM EARLIER THIS WEEK- AWESOME!
He catches Anil Marik choking someone else with the ropes after getting an advantage. He asks Maril why he’s going it and Marik says that he watched some Marius Al-ani tapes and Marius does it. Avalanche says that it’s not worth doing because it doesn’t gain you anything, at which point Anil responds that Marius made Avalanche tap out. Avalanche explains that when he was young and stupid, he used to never tap out, and while he might win those matches, they would always result in long-term injuries. He calls not tapping out “false pride,” saying that a wrestler needs to be able to know when to tap out to preserve his health. He kicked Marik out of training and told him that he would make a call to Absolute Andy and get a match booked to teach Marik not to run his mouth.

“THE AVALANCHE” ROBERT DREISSKER vs. ANIL MARIK- no rating, good segment
Marik got to be the athletic young punk in the beginning but Avalanche used the veteran trick of faking rolling into the ring to get Marik to commit to an elbow drop that would miss to take advantage and start pummeling him. Marik got an ankle lock in after Avalanche missed a Vader Bomb, keeping the story of Avalanche’s injured ankle going, but Avalanche made a comeback and won. Marik left the ring quickly after his loss, not showing his trainer any form of respect after the match. This was short enough and so focused on the storyline that it was more of a segment than a match.

JURN SIMMONS & DIRTY DRAGAN BACKSTAGE- very mixed feelings
These two had a feud that ended two years ago and they hadn’t been in the same place at the same time from the moment their feud ended until the previous show, when they passed on the ramp. This was them making up, with Jurn- the heel at the time- admitting fault. It was very touching and very human.
There was just one problem with it. The reason they haven’t been in the same place at the same time for so long was because their blow-off match had a stipulation where Dirty Dragan would have to leave wXw if he lost! Jurn even brought this up, with the first thing he said to Dragan being “I thought you were gone forever.” And Dragan didn’t have a good answer. Or any logical answer! I know that technically the stipulation was only that Dirty Dragan had to “leave wXw” without a “forever” being tacked on, but the fact that Jurn- one of the participants in the match- was under the impression that Dragan had to be gone forever and the fact that that’s the way things usually (theoretically) work in wrestling means that it’s not unreasonable that fans would have assumed the same thing (I certainly did) and thus this is going back on a stipulation. This is the second time wXw has done so in 2020 alone… and 2020 is a year where they missed five months due to COVID! In the previous instance I was unhappy with it but okay with it because they at least had Melanie Gray earn her way back to being allowed to wrestle in Oberhausen, but this one I cannot get behind. This, to me, is just flat-out disregarding a stipulation, and the fact that you’re acknowledging it without a logical reason doesn’t make it any better.
I’m temped to give them more latitude because of COVID, but going back on the Melanie Gray stipulation makes it a lot harder for me to do that. I would sill be willing to so, but if I’m going to do that, wXw needs to meet me half way and just come out and say “Dirty Dragan is back because needed a full roster during COVID.” That’s all I ask. Acknowledge the issue (and then, if you have long-term plans for Dragan, you use the COVID period to have him somehow earn his way back onto the roster).

DAS HIMMELSCHLOSS WITH SPECIAL GUESTS DIRTY DRAGAN & EMIL SITOCI- meh
This started off with an announcement that the Himmelschloss must remain “clean, innocent, and magical” and therefore everyone not fitting that description was asked to leave. I laughed at this joke… and then stopped laughing, leaving my mouth agape, as I saw all of the fans get up and leave.
My assumption is that this was a pre-tape and this was their way of explaining why there were no fans, and they either got these shots earlier with plants or asked the fans to cooperate for this one shot.
Anyway, these guys want to be a tag team again… but we already knew that because they’re being advertised in a #1 contendership match later and had issues with the tag champs at Shortcut to the Top. This segment was entertaining at times, but mostly it just felt pointless.

PARIS INTERVIEW- GREAT!
He’s a recent graduate of the wXw Academy with a hell of a life story. His parents always told him that he wouldn’t make it because he was too small and weak so he joined the Greek special forces. Then he decided to move to Germany for two reasons: to train at the wXw Academy and to be near his girlfriend… and the first day he got to Germany, she dumped him, and put him out on the street. This was very emotional, but really made you want to see the guy succeed.

JURN SIMMONS vs. PARIS- no rating, good segment
So I guess we can add Absolute Andy to the list of people who don’t believe in Paris, as based on his earlier conversation with Jurn, he seemed to think that Jurn will obliterate this poor kid.
That being said, they did give Jurn a nice video package before the match that didn’t go too hard into it, but would have served as an adequate salute to his career if this was indeed to be to his last match. I liked that little touch a lot.
Paris really took the fight to Jurn early on, but Jurn cut him with a spear, then hit the piledriver and got the win. There are a couple of different directions both guys could go in from here, and I look forward to seeing which path each man takes.

JURN SIMMONS INTERVIEW- didn’t like it
Jurn has asked for a post-match interview, which has been Marius Al-Ani’s gimmick as of late. Jurn says he’s a “real” professional wrestler while Marius isn’t (not sure what he means by that) and that he, and not Marius, is the BODAY (has the best body) in wXw. This was a fine promo to continue the Marius vs. Jurn feud (other than the “real” comment, obviously), but if this is what they were gong to do, what the purpose of the whole retirement tease?

MIKE SCHWARZ VIDEO PACKAGE- good white-meat babyface stuff to build him up for his title shot and help us get to know him as a person.
They also made sure that this featured Alpha Kevin so that new viewers would know that Mike and Kevin are buddies before we saw…

ALPHA KEVIN & MELANIE GRAY WALK IN ON DIE RAUCHEPAUSE BAD-MOUTHING MIKE SCHWARZ- okay
They were also trying to break into a cigarette vending machine. That’s the sort of thing I would normally think is stupid and makes these supposedly important wrestling stars look low-level for doing, but I can totally see the Pretty Bastards (and especially Prince Ahura) being immature enough to do it.
Kevin lectures them that if a vending machine is broken, the venue might kick wXw out. Reasonable. They also argue over Mike Schwarz’ wrestling prowess. Barbs were exchanged. Bobby Gunns said he needed a warm-up match, so he challenged Kevin. Kevin accepted and warned Bobby not to take him lightly… then made himself into a joke by responding to Gunns’ “you won’t last two minutes” with “I’ll last at least three.” The best part here was Kevin having named his pecs “Billy” and “Gunn.”

ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS THE PRETTY BASTARDS- good
Andy asks them what Norman Harras was talking to Ezel about. They get defensive, but Prince Ahura accidentally lets it slip that they are “divvying up wXw.” He tried to backtrack and claim that he was talking about a pizza the two groups shared.
Andy then asked them who they would like to see win tonight’s #1 contendership match: Dirty Dragan & Emil Sitoci or Ezel? They got annoyed because this question was again about Ezel, and then told Andy they had on preferences. Then they told him to stop asking questions and piss off.
After Andy left, Maggot yelled at Prince Ahura for letting things slip. This would have been better if they had looked up and seen the cameraman and told him to piss, too, and that was how the segment ended. Because this is an interview, I don’t think you can use the “pretend the cameras just aren’t there” approach, even in a promotion like wXw which uses that approach all the time, because if we’re supposed to pretend that the camera isn’t there, then who is Andy talking to when he frames the interview?

#1 CONTENDERSHIP MATCH: Dirty Dragan & Emil Sitoci vs. Ezel (Abdul & Aytac) (w/Metehan)- 5.75/10
I don’t like Dirty Dragan and Sitoci being put in a #1 contendership match without having won any matches first. Having a confrontation with the champion shouldn’t be enough for an undercard team (Sitoci has been a big deal in the past, but Dirty Dragan is definitely an undercard guy) to be put in a #1 contendership match. That being said, I am willing to give them a little bit of leeway due to COVID and having a limited roster (though I still think it would have been better to have them squash some masked jobbers first. It’s not even like this was a real #1 contendership match, either, as a totally different team would be getting the title shot on the next show, so you had time to give them a win.
The fans taunted Abdul by chanting “SUPER MARIO!” at him because his moustache does make him look like Mario. We got a bit of shine, a bit of heat, and then a comeback and clean win for the babyfaces. This went less than eight minutes, which I think was a mistake. I realize that Ezel had be in this spot and then lose to allow for the teasing of the mystery in an organic way, but they’ve lost so much already that I felt they really needed at least a very strong showing here, and they weren’t given the time to get that at all.
Metehan grabbed them by the ears after their loss and yelled at them, which also makes them look like undercarders, and thus not people Metehan should think he can rely on for useful support, and also not really people that Die Raucherpause should be involving themselves with as allies. The announcers told us that what Metehan had yelled that them about was “a problem {they} have to solve for {their} friends,” which has the plausible deniability built into it that it feels like it fits in with Ezel’s mission statement, but it pretty clearly seems to be an allusion to whatever deal their have with Die Raucherpause.

NORMAN HARRAS & PRETTY BASTARDS ARGUE BACKSTAGE- very good
Harras is angry at Prince Ahura for spilling the beans earlier. Pretty Bastards fire back at Harras that his plan failed anyway. Harras assures them that just because things didn’t work out in the short term doesn’t mean that it won’t work out in the long term. I’m really loving this dynamic, as they have made me feel such sympathy for Harras because, while he is still clearly a heel, he is very much an ambitious and intelligent young man trying to prove himself by accomplishing something that will greatly benefit his team, and yet he keeps taking flack from people who are either lazy (Pretty Bastards, Carter) or the leader who seems to see value in Harris’ idea, but is so confident in himself that he won’t put the effort in to help, and who is happy to join in with the rest of the team putting peer pressure on him to smoke when Harras is trying to actually handle business.

ANIL MARIK APOLOGIZES TO AVALANCHE- great!
Marik apologizes for his dickish behavior, and Avalanche not only accepts his apology, but gives him a pep talk, like any good coach would with a youngster.

LEVANIEL & AMALE HAVE A SKYPE CALL- fine
He exaggerates how well he did in Shortcut to the Top and sucks up to Amale. As part of this sucking up, he tells her about the other two French wrestlers on the show that night, Senza Volto and Tristan Archer. Upon hearing this news, Amale tells him that she has to go and hangs up on him.

THE ROTATION COMES TO SEE EZEL- mostly bad
This started off with just Ezel in their locker room. They’ve got a big couch there, but only Metehan gets to sit on it because the couch isn’t for people who don’t get the job done (that’s what Metehan told them). For some reason there is also two stations connected by a velvet rope in front of him. When The Rotation showed up and tried to undo the rope, Abdul asked him what he was doing. The Rotation said he wanted to talk to Metehan. Metehan okayed this… so The Rotation undid the rope and stepped through it. That was very cartoonish.
Rotation told Metehan how ten years ago he attended his first wXw event as a fan, and promised himself he’d do something big within ten years. Alas, injuries have held him back. He tells Metehan that he has always seen him as an inspiration, as they are both smaller wrestlers who always had to face bigger opponents and have been through very tough times. But Metehan always persevered and came back and he won 16 Carat Gold and now he has won the Shotgun Title, and would he pretty please give The Rotation a shot?
I was liking this until The Rotation uttered the sentence “I deserve it.” Sorry, pal. This is wXw. It’s a pretty darn fair place. If you deserved a title shot, you’d get one. Sure, they have been a little loose with title shots recently (I have on idea what Senza Volto did to earn his, for example), so maybe you could argue that if he can get one then sure The Rotation can have one as well, but as a general rule, “I deserve it” is a heel line.
Metehan responded to this plea by laughing in The Rotation’s face, and telling him that he will that little boy who was in the crowd ten years ago. He then yelled at The Rotation to leave, and The Rotation slinked away with his head down. Metehan was great here, but The Rotation came off like a TERRIBLE babyface in this segment.

MARIUS AL-ANI vs. DENNIS ZINNER- 4.5/10
A good showing for the rookie Zinner, but still a solid win for Al-Ani.
In his post-match interview, Marius was angry at the interviewer for agreeing to Jurn Simmons’ request for a post-match interviewer. Marius claims to be the only “real athlete” in the company, which he has said in the past means that he trains better than everyone else, and thus he should be the only one to get interviewed. Marius behavior here was over the top arrogant to the point of being a little cartoonish, but he never lost his air of menace, which is what is really important.

ABSOLUTE ANDY & NORMAN HARRAS BACKSTAGE- weird. Or maybe just bad. I can’t tell. Probably bad though.
After some banter and Harras trying to play the political game a bit with Andy, he asks why he hasn’t been signed for any matches for Season 2 of Shotgun 2020. Andy tells him that it’s because he accidentally “left your file in the branch office.” He swears he’s not kidding and tells Norman that if he goes and gets it, he’ll sign him to a big match. Norman left to do so, and Andy laughed about it.
Norman’s reaction here makes me think that Andy’s story is at least plausible, as he isn’t the type to fooled like this. Maybe he’s letting Andy think he’s fooling him, but I don’t see how that gets Norman anywhere in this case, so I don’t think that’s what’s happening. And if Noman is being fooled, that’s just really bad on wXw’s part, because he’s not wrong when he says that he’s money. Of everyone currently available to wXw, he’s one of the ones who most carries himself like a star (others who jump out at me as doing so are Bobby Gunns, Jurn Simmons, and Marius Al-Ani).
Being me, I was fascinated by the idea that this story is plausible, as it would actually answer some long-standing questions about pro wrestling and match contracts. If Andy’s statement isn’t total bullsh*t, then I think it’s fair to assume that promoters have files with blank signed contracts from each wrestler and they use these to make matches on the fly (as opposed to matches where specific contracts are signed for them) or just as a crutch so that if a promoter wants to sign a match, the wrestlers doesn’t have to come all the way to the office from wherever they’re living just to sign it, and the promoter can advertise the match without worrying that when the day of the show comes, one of the participants will refuse to sign the contract for whatever reason and the match won’t be able to take place.

NORMAN HARRAS GOES TO SEE EZEL- fine
Norman brings Metehan a fancy watch as thanks for giving up his Shortcut to the Top spot. Norman also thanked Abdul & Aytac for eliminating so many people in that match, but Metehan took credit for that. I don’t understand why he would do this, as it’s just so ridiculous. It also adds to the impression I’m getting that Abdul & Aytac are just big, dumb goons he has hired rather than anyone who I should really care about.
Norman brings up their failure to win tonight’s #1 contendership match and Metehan apologizes for his stablemates’ failure while also laughing the whole thing off. He assured Norman that their deal was still on, and the deal was thus finally revealed to us viewers: Die Raucherpause stay away from the Shotgun Title, and Ezel will stay away from the tag team and world titles. “Everybody wins. Everybody earns.” So yeah. The deal was exactly what we thought it was, but that’s fine. Things being predictable is fine- nay, good- so long as the way fans were able to predict them was by looking at what the logical possibilities could be.


This show was… an okay watch. I was wiling to accept the short matches on the fifty-minute version of Shotgun we got last season, but if we’re going to go two hours, I’d like to see some longer and more competitive matches. In terms of storylines, things remain the same. wXw moves things along nicely and does a great job at keeping a lot of different balls in the air, but there are definitely things I wish were taken more serious (anything involving Andy, really) or were made more clear (like why Dirty Dragan is allowed to come back).