BRM Reviews wXw We Love Wrestling #14 (6/4/2021)

[Big Red Machine]

wXw We Love Wrestling #14 (6/4/2021)- Oberhausen, Germany


SOMEONE NAMED DAN INTERVIEWS PRINCE AHURA- great!
Ahura is lounging around, smoking his hookah. He says general Prince Ahura stuff in his usual laid back but still heelish demeanor. He notes Maggot’s run on his own is doing meh, Norman Harras burned out to the point where he went crazy and Ahura was able to take his title form in in a matter of seconds, and Bobby Gunns has been nowhere to be seen since failing to regain n the wXw Unified World Wrestling Title from Marius Al-Ani. Ahura is the only one with a title, so he should be the leader.
And that’s when Bobby Gunns showed up, demanding to know why Ahura was sitting in his spot in his lounge. They had something of a confrontation that Gunns seems to have temporarily won by pointing out that he was the world champion for over two years while Ahura hasn’t even defend his title once yet. They both then ragged on Bobbys opponent for tonight, Gulyas Junior, although Bobby’s criticisms of Gulyas were similarly-phrased to his criticism of Ahura for not being a “proper wrestler,” although with Gulyas it’s for his looks and with Ahura it was more for what he focuses on (smoking and partying rather wrestling).

DAN THE INTERVIEWER INTERVIEWS ENDER KARA- fine
This Dan guy needs to take that backwards baseball cap off. You’re a grown f*cking adult.
Ender Kara says he is ready to return from injury. He says he has learned from his mistakes against Moodo last time and while be able to beat him this time. His primary goal for now is to prove that he belongs here in wXw.

ENDER KARA vs. FAST TIME MOODO- 4.5/10
This was good for the five minutes or so it got, but guys like these need to be given more than that. Moodo won clean via Black Belt Kick.

ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS FAST TIME MOODO- fine
He puts over Ender Kara, then tells us that his tag team partner Stephanie Maze’s recovery from her knee injury, which he says is going well.

EARLIER TODAY, ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEW DELIA- meh
She’s a polite young babyface ready to make her wXw debut.

DAN INTERVIEWS NICKY FOXLEY- fine
She’s a happy-go-lucky, slightly hyper babyface.

NICKY FOXLEY vs. DELIA- 4.5/10
Both looked fine.

DAN INTERVIEWS TEAM wXw WRESTLING ACADEMY- AWESOME segment
Avalanche asked the office for some time on today’s show to publicly address something that has been a hot topic of conversation both backstage and among the fans: Why has he, the head trainer at the wXw Wrestling Academy, been so “laid back” with his protégé’s development. Well… that wasn’t a direction I was expecting this to go in. He says that he has seen so many people get praised early on and then quit the first time something goes wrong, so he doesn’t praise his students very much, but then he puts Anil over huge.
This touching moment between student and teacher was interrupted by Marius Al-Ani, because… well… Marius is a dick and likes to be the center of attention. This got more and more heated, as they began discussing Marius ordering wXw Wrestling Academy student Feyyaz to carry his trophy around for him and how Avalanche went to the office to make that stop (Marius defended his actions with the amazing line “he’s got dues to pay, and he’ll pay them to me!”), and a few other things. The end result was them agreeing to have a match tonight… and it’s the first time in a while that I think Marius’ winning streak might come to an end.
(Because I’m me, I do have one nit to pick, which was that it was weird that Marius interrupted this by saying that the show should always start with him even though this was far from the first segment on the show.)

DAN INTERVIEWS TEAM FRANCE- bad
They say that they won’t fight Maggot while he is hurt, but they want their mask vs. hair match rescheduled for as soon as he is healthy. They also said some nice words about their opponents for later tonight. This should have bee re-shot. It came off like “Aigle Blanc practices his English.” If the guy isn’t good enough at English to cut a promo, then just let him speak French and subtitle it.


LEON VANGASTEREN & TIM STUBNING vs. AIGLE BLANC & SENZA VOLTO- 6/10
A solid match with a bad finish. Aigle Blanc injured his knee, so the referee left the match to go help him to the back. Every other time when someone is injured, the referee checks on them, then just leaves them there for medical personnel to help, but this time the referee abandon his post to bring someone to the back?
This, of course, was all done to set up an interference finish. Senza Volo had the match won but Maggot’s group came out. Maggot and Heisenberg distracted Senza as he was on the top turnbuckle to allow Baby Allison to throw powder in his face and make him fall off the top turnbuckle. This took FOREVER, and it would have been so much better and so much simpler (never mind less detectable, as there was white powder all of Senza’s black mask) to just have them push him off the top rope! Hell, why not have then hit him with Maggot’s crutch to do it, just for some extra heat?
Leon was down the whole time, so he didn’t see this. He recovered and hit his finisher, and the referee of course ran right back to count the pin. Uch.

BOBBY GUNNS vs. GULYAS JUNIOR- 2/10
Bobby won in three and a half minutes with a penalty kick.

ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS BOBBY GUNNS- fine
“Daddy’s back” is his new mission statement.

EARLOER TODAY, ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS DENNIS “CASH” DULLNIG- bad
He claims he threw Hektor Invictus a “birthday party” and that Hektor showed up and walked out, leaving only his flag and his jacket. He came across like a good. He said that Hektor would be with him in spirit and dedicated this match to Hektor. The only way this is savable is if it turns out that Dennis finally got the message that Hektor doesn’t want to team with him and so he attacked Hektor and took his stuff. During Dullnig’s match, announcer Dave Bradshaw noted that it was “very unclear why Dullnig is in possession of Hektor’s ring gear and flag,” so I think that is at least close to the direction they are actually going in.

wXw SHOTGUN TITLE MATCH: Prince Ahura(c) vs. Dennis “Cash” Dullnig- 6.25/10
They were on the outside for way too long without a DQ, which was no good. I also thought that Ahura pushed the rules way too much in terms of using a foreign object without actually “hitting” the opponent with it. I’m happy to buy the “plausible deniability” argument that “I just whipped the guy in that direction. I wasn’t intending to throw him specifically into the steps,” but when you’re putting a microphone in someone’s mouth and trying to then slam their face into something, that should be DQ. You are clearly intending to use the foreign object to cause harm.
That being said, I did at least appreciate that Dullnig used the bell to give Ahura a headache and Ahura sold it like his ears and brain were ringing, rather than the dumb sh*t you see where someone hits the bell with the hammer and the opponent sells it as if someone swung the bell at them and hit them with it.
This essentially turned into a New Japan match with way too much crap on the outside while the referee didn’t do much, and the little he did was inconsistent and slightly dumb (either a metal truss in the ring is a foreign object and bending someone’s leg around it is a DQ for using a foreign object, or it’s not a foreign object in which case it’s a legal move and you shouldn’t be applying a five-count. It’s not like Ahura was choking Dullnig or doing anything else that would have been inherently illegal.
Ahura worked the leg and Dullnig sold it well. This got quite good, and served to show the audience that they put the belt on Ahura for more than just storyline reasons (not that there is anything wrong with just putting a belt on someone for storyline reasons, but if you’re a promotion with a reputation for work-rate, it’s nice for any champion you’re planning on having the belt on for any length of time to be able to deliver a great match when given fourteen minutes. I probably would have given this a 6.75/10 if the first six minutes hadn’t been so bad, and maybe even a 7/10 if Dullnig were a babyface who someone would actually want to root for and not a creepily obsessed with being poor Hektor’s tag team partner.

ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS PRINCE AHURA- fine
We’re now getting a public drawing of the lottery. His challenger next week will be The Rotation.

ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS TRISTAN ARCHER- not good
He gets his title shot in three weeks on Fans Appreciation Night 2021: Night 1. This interview went on for WAY too long. Archer comes across like a generic babyface. They need to help us have a reason to see him win as opposed to the many other babyfaces running around.
The important notes here were that he lost to Marius Al-Ani in the block finals of Catch Grand Prix via referee’s decision, and that he spent so much time talking about Emil Sitoci that I doubt that feud is over.


MARIUS AL-ANI vs. “THE AVALANCHE” ROBERT DREISSKER (w/Anil Marik)- 6.25/10
I really wish they had given this more time than it got (it went just under ten minutes) because it was ramping up so well, but the finish was an angle, so I understand them wanting to keep it short and simple. I just wish they hadn’t done this in the main event slot.
The beginning of the match was them wrestling evenly and then brawling evenly. Marius got the ankle lock and Avalanche got to the rope but was immediately pulled back. They acted like the referee didn’t see it, which seemed impossible to me, but it also often happens that if you pull someone off the ropes right away, the ref will just let you keep the hold on, so this didn’t bother me too much.
Anil hopped up on the apron to tell the referee that Avalanche had gotten to the ropes. I didn’t see this during the actual match, but the way the announcer told it (and it does make sense with the replay) was that Avalanche had gotten himself into position to roll out, but Anil was in the way and I guess would have gotten knocked off the apron by either Avalanche or the flung Marius, so Avalanche didn’t want to and tried to get Anil to move, but this allowed Marius the time to notice what was about to happen and he stomped down on Avalanche’s back to prevent it, and Avalanche had to tap.
I assume that they’re going to use this as another illustration that Avalanche cares about the wellbeing of his students while Marius will say that Avalanche was being foolish for caring about other people (and especially trainees)… but I must admit that in this case I do think Avalanche was being foolish. Anil would get knocked off the apron? So what? He’s a pro wrestler. He can take it. Yes, a serious injury could result, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, someone who takes that bump has mostly recovered in a few minutes..
Obviously they didn’t want to end Marius’ streak here, and this is a way to do so while still protecting Avalanche, and it also lets you create some heat between Avalanche and Anil so we can wonder if they will be able to work together to defend the tag titles as well as gives Marius a talking point to harp on to keep building Avalanche vs. Marius up in the background until they’re ready for a big moment with more fans in the building to see the guy who feels like the undisputed #1 babyface right now get his big title shot.

ANDY JACKSON INTERVIEWS MARIUS AL-ANI- awesome arrogant heel stuff from Marius on both Avalanche and Archer.


This was a pretty good episode of We Love Wrestling, moving lots of storylines along well (the bad finish to the tag match aside). Looking at the card for next week’s show… well… I hope there is some good storyline advancement on that one, too, because the lineup looks rough.