iPPV Review: PCW Tribute to the Troops 3 - Samuels v Galloway (James Marston)

It was a historic night for European wrestling as PCW presented the first iPPV event to be broadcast in HD. With 3000 fans on hand at the Preston Guild Hall and their usual mix of imported and home-grown talent, could PCW host a show to match this history making feat? Let's see.

Drew Galloway challenging for Sha Samuels' PCW Championship acted as the show's main event, with Galloway having earned his title shot earlier in the month in a ten man gauntlet at PCW's regular venue, Evoque. The first few minutes would involve some interesting pieces of booking as Samuels' faction, The Firm (The London Riots & Sammy Smooth) would end up getting removed from the ringside area for continual interference. This would be followed by ring announcer and Co-General Manager, Joanna Rose, announcing that she'd "just been informed" that the match was now a "No Disqualification". I struggled to work out the logic of having The Firm removed from ringside to then have the match declared No DQ before they'd even made it behind the curtain. Surely, The Firm just turn straight back around and head to the ring at this point? 

Galloway and Samuels would seem like a good fit inside the ring and when they got the chance to get at it, they did manage to show just a slice of what they are capable of. The duo brawling around the crowd was a difficult thing for the PCW cameras to pick up, especially with the seemingly poor lighting of the guild hall, but what could be seen looked like a lot of fun as the two really went for each other. There was a great sequence of action inside the ring also, perhaps the best piece of wrestling on the entire show as well, where Galloway would pull off a butterfly suplex out of the tree of woe position, before Samuels would duck a Claymore Kick attempt, only to leave himself wide open for piledriver from Galloway for a strong near fall. 

The closing part of the contest played up the No DQ element with The Firm finally coming back out and Samuels nailing a low blow on Galloway. There were a lot of twists and turns with Galloway able to take out both The London Riots and Sammy Smooth with a tope conhilo, before escaping the aforementioned sleeper hold. Galloway got a strong reaction for his near fall off a Tombstone Piledriver, which seemed to have convinced Preston that the match was over. After such a strong near fall, I was hoping to get a stronger finish that would manage to push the bout to the next level, instead Samuels simply locked in another sleeper hold to claim the victory, which felt just a little flat to me. 

Lots of things would happen after that and eventually we'd see Noam Dar win the PCW Championship for the first time, fresh from competing in the WWE Cruiserweight Classic in Orlando. The last part of the show was a real clusterfuck, with The Firm attacking Galloway, T-Bone, Bubblegum and The Hooligans would make the save, before PCW owner Steven Fludder would get on the mic and demand a re-start, also adding Dar to the match. Firstly, Fludder said he didn't want a "screwjob" finish on his first iPPV, when there wasn't actually a screwjob finish. Then I don't quite get the kayfabe logic of bringing Dar out after the first match had taken place. Dar would win by locking the Champagne Super Knee Bar on Samuels, whilst Samuels had a sleeper hold on Galloway. 

Oh my life, The Hooligans vs. The New Age Assholes was a painful 25 minutes of television. 25 minutes. 25 minutes. But the match itself was way under five. So what exactly happened the rest of the time? I don't even know. My notes say "much dicking around". That's about right. Mr. Anderson dicked about for a bit, Billy Gunn dicked about for a bit and The Hooligans dicked about a lot. There was a lot of dicking about. Anderson and Gunn somehow even managed to make the combination of their pre-match schtick painful to watch as they both dragged it on for forever. Having come directly after a non-wrestling segment, to have this much fannying around was more than frustrating. 

It was great news to find out the Zak Knight can do a back flip, despite being by his own admission "fat". It would have been better news if he did it in the match and that this didn't lead to everyone else in the bout going to the top rope to pretend to do a moonsault. This was after the Hooligans had aimlessly wandered around ringside drinking beer and looking like The Bushwackers if the Bushwackers were from Norwich. I've seen these guys put in great performances in the ring for PCW, but I'd much prefer to see them focus on what they do in the ring than whatever this was. Maybe it came across better in the hall, but this kind of thing is not well suited to iPPV. 

So, after so much stalling, the match itself would be good right, right? Think again squire, the match was probably worse than all the stalling. I'd have preferred everyone in the building to have tried to do a backflip than watch this match again. The finish was perhaps the only notable piece of action as Roy hammed it up, with wobbly legs and such, en route to falling between Anderson legs, before Gunn would deliver a Famouser. I don't think my description does justice to just how bad this was to watch. The Hooligans would go on to win with a school boy roll up on Gunn, taking advantage of the shenanigans. This was everything I've ever complained about PCW for, tied up in one match. 

Rob Van Dam continued his undefeated record in PCW, making his first appearance since April 2015, to defeat Lionheart in a solid encounter. This was the case of a fairly simple bout, that was done well, with the crowd being at their loudest for the entire night. The duo kept things simple, with RVD able to run through a number of his back catalogue of moves, first as part of the opening face shine and then later en route to sealing his victory with the Five Star Frog Splash. It wasn't particularly exciting as home viewing, but I'm sure it fulfilled most of the fans in attendances needs in an RVD bout. 

I've been fairly critical of Lionheart in the past, but he played his role well here, allowing the crowd to get their hit from the RVD bong and putting in a good showing when called up to go on the offence. He looked vicious on the attack, throwing RVD into the ringpost multiple times to add a bit of urgency to what was a fairly pedestrian bout in general. This was arguably the best booked contest of the night, making the most of it's two competitors and showing up their strengths well. Whilst RVD remains undefeated in the company, Lionheart has now lost six matches out of seven over the last three month for PCW.

For me, the best action of the night could be found in a three way bout between Toni Storm, Carmel Jacob and the debuting Saraya Knight. The three women produced a hard-hitting clash, with some big impressive moves and plenty of action. Kicking off with a lovely German Suplex from Storm, we'd go on to a fisherman's suplex from Knight onto the wooden floor, a nice suicide dive from Storm onto her two opponents and a nasty looking rope-hung DDT from Knight and Jacob to the outside. 

The match did at times feels a little bit disjointed and despite having some cool moments of action, I felt it struggled to buckle down and hit it's stride. This wasn't helped by Knight constantly jumping the barrier to get into it with fans. Perhaps this was due to how the show was presented on iPPV, but there was more than once when we'd miss what was going on in the ring to see Knight throw some beer over a fan. This got even weirder when following Storm being able to pin Jacob for the victory, we'd see Knight jump the barrier again to snog a fan before pushing him to the floor and covering him in booze. I'm all for getting involved with the crowd to generate heat, but this felt like it was to detriment of the action, rather than improving it.

One of the matches that I was most looking forward to on this card was Team Single vs. London Riots as I'm a big fan of both teams and thought that their styles would suit each well and bring us a brutal tag match, with both teams beating strips off each other. On that count I came away feeling a little disappointing with the action. The two teams didn't seem to connect inside the ring as I was hoping they would, with the final few minutes of the match especially ending up in a bit of a mess. T-Bone slipping in a coast to coast attempt, with his opponent in a tree of woe position, before repeating the spot a few moments later was particular let down. 

Where I think the match could have been saved was an early piece of story-telling that seemed to be thrown away way too soon. Rampage Brown would go for a piledriver on the wooden ramp, only to have the move reversed and take a painful looking back-body drop onto the wood. The London Riots could then take advantage of T-Bone and begin to control the match. I was beginning to get into this idea and was hoping we'd get to see some real moments of drama as Brown looked to recover, whilst T-Bone had to fight against both Rob Lynch and James Davis, therefore allowing the crowd to get more and more behind the babyfaces. Unfortunately, Brown seemed to recover way too quickly and the hot tag didn't feel as exciting as it should. Team Single would retain their belt after T-Bone hit an awkward dragon suplex and Brown closed the deal with a piledriver.

The opening contest would be a four corners match with Martin Kirby, Charlie Garrett, Sammy Smooth and Bubblegum all squaring off. This was a tasty start to the show with the four men working hard to produce some pacy action that would warm the hall up nicely. The bout started off slowly, mainly focusing on introducing the face/heel divide as we saw Kirby and Smooth align with each other as Garrett and Bubblegum attempted to fight passed their underhanded tactics. It took a while to really get going, but I feel it was worth it to get the live crowd settled and accustomed to the show style. 

There was some nice exchanges in the latter half of the contest, as the match became saturated with near falls. There was a clever moment where Kirby was unable to complete a tower of doom spot, so had to call upon his tag partner, Joey Hayes, to help him, with Hayes distracting the referee, Joel Allen, by throwing his chest protector into the ring. Hayes would later play apart in the finish, as Garrett would attempt to chase him from interfering in the bout, causing the distraction that would allow Bubblegum to hit a 619 and then a beautiful Shooting Star Press to claim the victory. Based on his performance in the match, I was more than happy when I saw Bubblegum get the win, as he had been the matches MVP in my eyes, pulling out the best looking offence and looking very crisp in everything he did.

So, it was supposed to be Joe Hendry vs. Joey Hayes, but it turned into Joe Hendry and some guy off Britain's Got Talent and Joey Hayes and Martin Kirby. It was bad. Very bad. Firstly, I had no idea who the heels were supposed to be. Kirby and Hayes had been heels in the Four Corners match earlier in the night, but Hendry was singing and bringing out talent show contestants. The Britain's Got Talent fella even did some singing of his own, trying to get the crowd to sing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle's theme, but with the tune being so unrecognisable from the original, I doubt the crowd could even work out what it was. This is a guy that won a competition for singing. Hendry and his BGT friend would win the match after throwing Hayes and Kirby into each other. Yeah. Yeah. 

Chris Masters also made his return to PCW to answer Iestyn Rees' "AlphaLock Challenge". Basically, Rees had been playing a Masters rip-off gimmick and Masters was back to claim it for his own. Masters at least bought some intensity to proceedings as he tried to get at Rees, I suppose. I wasn't a major fan of Masters last babyface run in PCW, so I didn't really get much out of this segment, as he would go on to batter Rees for hesitating to much in putting the AlphaLock on. At least, I got to shout "Dave Rayne" in a room on my own, as Rayne would be the one to re-introduce his former Legion of Boom partner to the promotion.

Finally...

ATPW Scale Rating - 3.24/10

Yup, that's the lowest score I've given for a Brit-Wres show. Only Halloween Havoc 1998 currently sits lower on the ATPW Scale leader board. This show was not a good showcase for British Wrestling and I do hope that anybody who was checking out their first Brit-Wres show on PPV hasn't been turned off by the shambles that was Tribute to the Troops.

All credit to PCW for trying something new with the iPPV gimmick and the stream was reliable and clear throughout the show. Plus I suppose for £3 for the iPPV and most tickets being free, I guess there is a case to be made for "You get what you pay for here". However, with a huge crowd in attendance and the chance of a whole new audience online, I can't help but feel that PCW should have gone all out and put on at least one match that would create a buzz.

There is a specific market that an online PPV will play to and therefore that market needs to be catered to when choosing this business model. I'd like to think of myself as part of that market (well I bought the show, so I am), but this show definitely wasn't for me.

Live Review: PCW/ROH SuperShow of Honor II - Show 3

Would PCW and ROH be able to keep up things and improve on the previous two shows that weekend? Dave Mastiff would defend his PCW Heavyweight Championship against PCW Cruiserweight Champion Adam Cole in a Thirty Minute Iron Man main event, Noam Dar would tackle surprise opponent Drew Galloway, F.W.B. (Bubblegum, Iestyn Rees & Team Single) would engage with Dave Rayne, The Hooligans and X-Pac in eight man tag action, with six other matches including the likes of reDRagon, Dalton Castle, Martin Kirby, Roderick Strong and Cedric Alexander all also in action. 

Just like Show 2, a six way contest was used to open up the show, with Dalton Castle, Cedric Alexander, Silas Young, Martin Kirby, Ashton Smith and Charlie Garrett battling it out. Slightly longer than the first six man, I was a little confused that performers were having to tag in and out of the contest, whilst the previous six man was a free for all. My confusion didn't last long however as the bout was blink and you'll miss it fast, chock full of flips and big moves, just what you'd want from this kind of bout. Both Dalton Castle and the Interracial Love duo of Charlie Garrett and Ashton Smith stood out in particular with The Peacock of Professional Wrestling continuing to have the crowd in the palm of his hands with his silly antics and IRL using the match to put a spotlight on the relationship between the tag team, including a cheesy hand-holding dive to the outside. A big thumbs up for Castle getting the victory as after hitting his Bang-a-Rang spinning facebuster to Silas Young! Like a broken record, however, I have to point out how much I'd love to see the bouts go a little longer and also have some kind of consequence behind them.

ROH World TV Champion Roderick Strong and Lionheart's singles bout was a strange one for a number of reasons. A section were both men attempted to hit the Styles Clash on each other was cool, but I felt super uncomfortable when a section of the crowd began to chant for AJ Styles, due to the NJPW star actually injuring both men with the move. However, the crowd were on form for the rest of the contest and gave it a real boost, as they turned Strong's shitty little boots babyface, seemingly out of sheer disdain for the PCW regular. Unfortunately, it felt like the pair didn't manage to get out of 2nd gear, and despite the wrestling being perfectly fine, at times I felt like the duo were treading water until the finish. Lionheart walking out of the contest and getting counted out was a frustrating watch, but should hopefully increase the heat levels for the former PCW Heavyweight Champion heading into 2016 and give the former Champion more storyline involvement in 2016.

The next match was the first chance for the PCW faithful to get a good look at what War Machine (Raymond Rowe & Hanson) can do as they went two on two with IWGP Tag Team Champions reDRagon (Bobby Fish & Kyle O'Reilly), after the duo had been in the middle of an eight man tag on Show 1 and then a Four way tag on Show 2. But boy was it worth the wait. This was sheer unadulterated silliness, as the two teams went back and forth with various striking combos, whilst War Machine provided a number of power moves that made it look like the ring could collapse at any moment. Hanson's deadlift german suplex and samoan drop combination was stupendously well executed, and made the big man look like an absolute beast. As the near falls rolled in, the crowd got hotter and hotter, and whilst the well-known reDRagon remained the most popular of the two, the cheers for War Machine became noticeably louder as the contest went on, creating a great atmosphere inside Evoque. Hanson and Rowe went on to pick up their second victory of the weekend, following a Powerbomb and Splash combination, with Fish and O'Reilly allowing the big men to look incredible as they head towards an ROH Tag Team Championship bout with The Kingdom at ROH's next PPV, Final Battle.


The first and only singles bout of the weekend for former PCW Cruiserweight Champion, El Ligero came opposite former ROH World Tag Team Champion, Kenny King. The biggest talking point coming out of the contest was an angle where The Pretty Boy Pitbull seemed to have tweaked his knee off a dive, and was being carried away at ringside, only for him to attack Ligero from behind. There was some decent heat for King and the moment added the fuel that the contest needed, with The King of the Night dominating for some time. Ligero fighting from underneath allowed for some lovely action inside the ring as the Mexican Sensation attempted to find a comeback from somewhere. When Ligero did manage to pick up the win with the C4L, I couldn't help but feel that the match would have been so much better with an extra five or even ten minutes of action. The two were just about beginning to explore what they could do together in the ring and given some extra time they could have produced something really quite special.


BONUS MATCH, BAYBAY! Yes, unannounced before the show, F.W.B's T-Bone, Rampage Brown, Bubblegum and Iestyn Rees turned up and with Joanna Rose questioning whether their scheduled opponent Dave Rayne had been able to find any partners, we were about to witness something pretty damn special. The former PCW Cruiserweight Champion had an ace up his sleeve and announced The UK Hooligans (Roy Knight & Zak Knight) and the duo got the crowd going nuts, returning to the Evoque for the first time since early June. But if the crowd thought that was it, they were sadly mistaken as Rayne made easy work of a promo introducing, former WCW World Cruiserweight Champion, X-Pac! The crowd couldn't have gone more nuts if the Hooligans were handing out Snickers. Okay, maybe that's a lie because there was even more nutty goodness when 4 time WWE Intercontinental Champion, Scott bloody Hall was announced as the manager for the babyface team! That's one hell of a bonus match.


The crowd were stupidly hot for the tag bout, keeping up an energy throughout as they ran through their song book for the various competitors in the match. It was clear that all eight men were having a lot of fun out there and this reflected back on the bout, which was so very fun to watch. After a short face shine from X-Pac, it was Roy Knight who worked the Hooligan in peril role, with F.W.B. taking advantage of a ringside brawl to take control and then using a number of classic heel tactics to stay in control. I love me some old-school heel tactics in a tag match, keep the ref distracted and then take advantage and keep the ring cut in half, lovely stuff. The one disappointment for me, was that the hot tag that had been building for a while was completely wasted as the crowd was busy singing Bohemian Rhapsody to wind up Iestyn Rees (who looks a bit like a modern Freddie Mercury) and what should have been a big moment with a giant pop was left feeling flat. Partly down to some fans being easily distracted by a sing-song and partly down to the performers not paying enough attention to the ebb and flow of the crowd. After awkwardly standing at ringside for most of the match, it was awesome to see Scott Hall get involved, as Rees gave him some abuse and got a tooth pick to the eye for his trouble, before taking an X Factor and staring at the lights. 

Jay Lethal and Joey Hayes' ROH World Championship match was a strangely structured contest. Hmmm...I'm not sure that's the correct description, but basically Jay Lethal was mainly cheered, whilst Joey Hayes was getting some decent heat, whilst both had been presented as heels (or at best tweeners) on the earlier shows. But we got Lethal locking on chinlocks and steadily wearing down Hayes, before Hayes launched into a babyface comeback (Even shouting "I'm a babyface" whilst doing so, clearly noting the lack of crowd support). This meant that the crowd became weird throughout, how exactly are they supposed to cheer Lethal whilst he's working a wear down hold? Maybe the pair were expecting the crowd to quickly side with the underdog Hayes, but from the entrances it was clear who Evoque was behind and the two should have had enough experience to change things on the fly to suit the crowd. Despite all the moaning, the finishing sequence of the match showed some real quality, as Hayes went for a number of Crossfaces, with Lethal managing to escape and hit a Lethal Injection to retain his title.

Continuing the theme of his weekend, Sha Samuels dominated Delirious in a character driven contest. The pair chatting to each other in their trade mark style made for an entertaining spot, with Delirious' insane rambling matching up well with Samuels gruff and speedy cockney. Delirious running around the ring to evade Samuels was a highlight for me, as it was so simple in it's execution, but allowed both performers to show off the psychology of their characters. In his longest contest of the weekend (just over 7 minutes), Samuels continued his unbeaten streak as Delirious succumbed to the Sleeper Hold, like so many before him. 


Ever heard of Jack Baron before? No, neither had I when the PCW trainee cut a promo on the big screen revealing himself as Noam Dar's opponent for the evening. But as the skinny and excitable lad made it to the ring, he was attacked by a mystery assailant. That mystery assailant was Drew Galloway! A great surprise appearance, that got a big reaction from the crowd, before Galloway delivered a killer, curse-laden promo. The former WWE Intercontinental Champion's delivery was pitch perfect, rising and falling at the right points, full of passion and there couldn't have been a better way to fly straight into the third match of the series than Noam Dar coming out to get some. 


The two Scotsman put on a contest that was completely different from anything that we'd seen across the week end. Full of fire, the two made it feel like the genuinely hated each other as they brawled around the nightclub, battering the shit into each other. The Chosen One hitting a Crucifix Powerbomb through a fire exit looked amazing and may very well have been the stand-out spot of the weekend (that's if you could see it from your seat). The action inside the ring was just as good, if not better, as a battered Noam Dar worked the plucky underdog role nicely, fighting valiantly against the bigger man with the crowd well and truly behind their regular. Following some very near falls for Drew Galloway and some added drama with a ref bump and the re-appearance of Jack Baron, Dar was able to take advantage of Galloway suffering an injured leg after colliding with the ring post, by locking on the Champage Super Knee Bar and getting a submission victory. Galloway's selling prior to the move was spot-on, just liked we'd seen in their previous two bouts earlier in the year and therefore made the finish just that a little bit more satisfying. A huge moment for Dar in PCW, in what had been a marquee weekend for the 22 year old. PCW rarely does bouts with this much aggression behind it and that's why matches like this feel so special. 

Main event time, bay bay! Adam Cole and Dave Mastiff had arguably put on the best match of the 2014 weekender and seeing the pair in a 30 minute Iron Man match with the PCW Heavyweight Championship on the line, was a mouth-watering prospect. It's difficult to review a match like this, because half an hour is such a long time for a wrestling match in 2015 and so much can go on in that amount of time. The crowd were particularly interesting within the first half of the contest. Evoque became pretty quiet and you could hear many people chatting, I would suspect this was down to them knowing the match wasn't going to end for quite some time and that anything particularly important wouldn't be happening for quite a while. This is an experienced crowd who I'd guess have seen way too many Iron Man bouts than they should have and therefore know how things usually go. 


Iron Man bouts are made or broken, on how they are structured, there needs to be accuracy down to the second to keep the crowd engaged and to tell the most interesting story. The wrestling for the first twenty minutes was perfectly fine, but I'm not convinced by where and how the pinfalls came from. Adam Cole took a 2-0 from a small package and superkick combo by the time 8 minutes had passed, but Dave Mastiff had things tied up just 11 minutes later. This sort of meant the bout was back to where it began, with just over 10 minutes to go and whilst both men looked pretty tired, there was no narrative that could have been carried over. As soon as things were even, The One began to work over Mastiff's leg, which made things even more frustrating. I feel if we'd have seen something like this earlier on in the bout then we'd have had a much more compelling outing, especially with the quality of selling that Mastiff is capable of and leading to an even bigger moment when Cole locked in the Figure Four Leg Lock with the clock ticking.


I mentioned those last 10 minutes, with Adam Cole working the leg, and they were much more reminiscent of the bout they had last year, with the two upping the pace and working a number of slick reversals and big strikes, including one outstanding sequence. The crowd began to come to life at this point and gave the contest a boost having soaked up all the action for the previous 20 minutes. The Figure Four Leg Lock from Cole, with Dave Mastiff leading 3-2 was a marvellous moment with Evoque rocking and wanting to see more action. Cole holding onto the hold whilst Mastiff managed to roll to outside of the ring looked bloody awesome. The timing of the final fall was spot on as well, with Cole managing to pull a vertical suplex and drop it into a neckbreaker on his knee to even up the score. A slow burner for sure, but one chock-full of world-class wrestling and with a hot closing sequence.


Of course, that was never going to be it was it? Oh no, siree. After some debate, the contest was restarted under sudden death rules. The section after the restart was blisteringly good, with the two not holding back and at all in trying to get the victory and take the title, with Preston potentially on the brink of destruction. Then it was taken away from us, when that bloke Sha Samuels entered and beat down both guys. It was such a frustrating finish to a match that had gone over half an hour, and whilst it didn't even make that much sense (Why did Samuels wait until the sudden death?) it still got The East End Butcher a whole load of heat and added another chapter in his on-and-off feud with Dave Mastiff. I'd love to know why (in kayfabe) Mastiff and Cole didn't just restarted the match again, instead of getting up, shaking hands and then walking to the back. As much I'd have loved to have had a definitive victory here, here's hoping that Mastiff and Adam Cole will get to wrestle again sooner rather than later in PCW and settle the score....

Finally...

ATPW Scale Rating - 6.75 (Good-Very Good)

This show was just shy of the high bar set by the first event of the weekend, but was still definitely a good evening of wrestling. The main event contributed massively to the rating because of it's length and whilst I had a couple of criticisms, I still feel that the bout was a quality main event with a nice slow burn build and raucous finish, Noam Dar and Drew Galloway's bout bought an aggression not seen elsewhere across the weekend and Galloway's surprise entrance was worked out very well, the Eight Man Tag Team contest was a lot of fun to watch, plus of course some more surprises in the form of X-Pac and Scott Hall made the in-ring segment incredible to have been a part of and the tag bout between  War Machine and reDRagon also deserves a mention.


Whilst Roderick Strong and Lionheart's contest had it's moments, there's no denying that the bout dragged the ATPW Scale rating down just a little bit, simply because it never really got going. The finish of the show with Sha Samuels causing the Double DQ in Cole and Mastiff's sudden death outing was a little disappointing, especially coming at the end of the show.


There's one more show left to review from the Weekend and that's of course, Show 4. With ROH World Champion Jay Lethal facing ROH World Television Champion Roderick Strong in the main event, Interracial Love tackling Martin Kirby and Joey Hayes, Dalton Castle going one on one with Silas Young as well as five other matches featuring the likes of reDRagon, Adam Cole, Cedric Alexander, Noam Dar and Delirious. Could PCW and ROH end the weekend in style? We'll have a review up very soon.