PROGRESS Chapter 102: Bang Tidy

CHRIS RIDGEWAY vs. ELIJAH - 7.75/10

This was two men simply having a sporting contest to determine who was the better striker and grappler. This is what I like to see. Clean, realistic, professional wrestling. Ridgeway got the win, and the announcers told us that he has been announced for this year’s Super Strong-Style 16 tournament and wondered if this would be his year due to his new, more aggressive style.

ROBBO’S RULES MATCH FOR THE PROGRESS PROTEUS TITLE:
Paul Robinson(c) vs. Danny Jones - 5.5/10

The bigger, stronger Jones threw Robbo around for a while and eventually worked his head over. The big spot was a piledriver on the apron, but Jones couldn’t actually pin him after this because the rules don’t allow for pins. Instead he had to wait for the ref to check on Robbo, then made the mistake of not following up in a timely manner and giving Robbo a chance to recover. Robbo survived a big boot and a guillotine choke, then just went nuts all over Jones (starting with a low blow, which certainly helps) and won by referee stoppage. It’d be nice to see some sort of rematch where Jones feels more ready for the technically legal but still dirty-feeling low blow out of Robbo. Robinson used some of Kyle Fletcher's mannerisms, which gave away that he's wasn't losing the belt here, or at any point until he faces Fletcher, so hopefully that match happens soon.

ILJA DRAGUNOV vs. MARK ANDREWS (w/Eddie Dennis) - 6.5/10

The two stories of this match were Eddie Dennis’ interference and Andrews working over Ilja’s knee. The match was very good, but would have been a lot better if Ilja hadn’t just ignored that first extended heat when he started to go on offense the first time. Dennis pulled off a turnbuckle pad which Ilja ran into knee-first to set up Andrews hitting a shooting star press for the finish. Ilja and Andrews are now 1-1, so we’re set up for a third match.

EDDIE DENNIS PROMO - Good. He calls Cara Noir an �"impostor champion,” setting up the inevitable title match when Eddie, the former champion, returns from his injury.

GENE MUNNY WANTS TO BE IN SUPER STRONG-STYLE SIXTEEN - Meh. Gene Munny is the guy who handles PROGRESS’ social media. He’s handing out fliers, saying he only needs one chance. If they were trying to make this some sort of kayfabe grassroots type of thing, then they totally f*cked it up by playing music for him when he was done.

PROGRESS WORLD TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH:
Scotty Davis & Jordan Devlin(c) vs. the Anti-Fun Police (Chief Deputy Dunne & Los Federales Santos Jr.) - 7.25/10

The titles were on the line here, so the comedy team dropped the bullsh*t and spent the whole match trying to win the titles. No stupid finger-gun spots or any of that other crap.

PROGRESS WOMEN’S TITLE MATCH:
Jinny(c) vs. Gisele Shaw vs. Dani Luna - 7.25/10

They did a lot of three-way stuff, but aside from one or two moments in early on, their timing good enough to make it not feel like completely implausible that they were not working together. Jinny retained her title, pinning Luna, with Shaw sliding in a second too late to break things up, which resulted in her and Jinny having one hell of an intense stare-down while still on the mat, barely moving from the moment of the pinfall until the referee handed Jinny her belt, and Shaw kept starting a hole in Jinny afterwards.

PROGRESS WORLD TITLE MATCH:
Cara Noir(c) vs. Chris Brookes (w/Kid Lykos) - DUD!

Brookes jumps the bell on Cara Noir with a springboard dropkick to the back during his entrance, sending him to the outside. They proceed to fight on the outside forever without getting counted out. As you might have guessed, the referee for this match is none other than Chris Roberts, and of course we’ve got to get sh*t in for him, such as Brookes menacing him around on the outside for quite a while, just so Roberts can shove him. And of, course, this didn’t do sh*t for the match, as Brookes still wasn’t afraid of getting in trouble, and when he got back to Cara Noir. He continued to dominate him for several minutes, so this didn’t even buy the babyface enough time to recover.

Eventually they strung together a few very good minutes of reversals and clever little things like Brookes stomping on Cara Noir’s bootless feet… and then they killed all of that moment to give us a ref bump so that we could have a visual pinfall for the babyface champion. Kid Lykos ran out to hit Cara Noir with the cookie sheet, then Brookes hit a double-underhook piledriver and went for the win. A new referee came out and counted �"ONE! TWO!” and then got pulled out of the ring by Chris Roberts. Why did Roberts interfere with this other referee doing his job?

Well… the answer is that he apparently saw Kid Lykos hit Cara Noir with the cookie sheet. That’s a more than valid reason for him to have done so, as such an action warrants an immediate disqualification and it would be a true shame if the title changed hands due to something like that. It seems like I owe Mr. Roberts and apology for doubting him. I’ll write a nice, paragraph-long apology to him as soon as he calls for the bell to disqualify Brookes’ due to Lykos interfering and using a weapon.

*SPOILER ALERT*

If you’re about to scroll down looking for that apology, you’re going to be very disappointed. Probably about as disappointed as I was when instead of doing his job correctly and calling for the DQ, Roberts just let them keep going, in no way negating the villain’s ill-gotten advantage by hitting Cara Noir with a piece of metal.

Brookes went out to go argue, which only happened so that Cara Noir could hit a big dive onto the pile. Lykos managed to escape it, and immediately handed Brookes a chair, which Brookes then chucked at Cara Noir’s head, connecting solidly. See: If you don’t punish the heels for cheating, they’re just going to keep doing it!

Now Brookes has a bag of thumbtacks. I guess both of the referees got hit in the dive? They didn’t seem like they got hit at all, but they’re both now down.

Cara Noir managed to intercept Brookes before he could pour out the thumbtacks and we had some actual wrestling spots without any bullsh*t, but then Cara Noir, while trapped in the octopus, grabbed hold of the bag of tacks and poured them out instead of continuing the few inches forward to try to make it to the ropes. He poured them out right in front of the referee, who didn’t react AT ALL.

Cara Noir’s bare feet eventually landed in the thumbtacks. Then Brookes tried a running move but Cara Noir reversed it into his deadly rear naked choked. Brookes sentoned down into the thumbtacks, forcing Cara Noir to break the hold… but then Cara Noir just popped right back up, locked the move back in, and got the submission victory. So, for those of you keeping score at home, THE THUMBTACKS DIDN’T DO SH*T FOR THE STORY OF THE MATCH! Every time Cara Noir went into them, he would just pop back up and counted the next thing done to him.

This match SUCKED! This was two guys deciding that they were going to just go out there and have a match without DQs or count-outs even though it was just supposed to be a regular match. Then you had the idiocy with Chris Roberts, and finally you had two wrestlers completely fail to use a gimmick in any kind of way that made sense or told a story. If you just pretended the thumbtacks weren’t there, it actually would have made more sense.

Final Thoughts
This was PROGRESS’ debut in Wales, and I not a show I’d want to debut in a new market with. There was some very good stuff, yes, but nothing was really blow-away, and the main event sucked. Those poor Welsh. Within a few months they have first ROH and then PROGRESS debut in their country, and both pout on very sub-par shows. I hope PROGRESS’ next effort is better, both in Wales and overall.