Wednesday, July 18, 2007

WrestleSTOCK: Night One

Yep, giving this the flagship treatment. Before you flay me, Katz, I will get to Night 2 of WrestleBowl. I'm still trying to get through the last match.

Anyway, flagship review means SEG BY SEG REVIEWAGE for the EPW/NEW Supershow, which should prove as one of the big moments of the year on the FW calendar.

Intro

Solid intro, can't complain about it. Gives the event its due gravity.

Stalker Gets an Appetizer

Good building segment for the match. Things like this may seem overdone, but I can't get enough of them. Interested to see why Stalker is after Daymon though.

Stalker/Hiroshi

BAH GAWD what an opener. I think the length and the intensity of the match fit the RP period very well here. I loved some of the spots, especially the chili to the face and of course, the flaming spin kick through the big screen TV. Absurd spot, but hey, it works. I had a few problems with the match though. One, the matchwriter has a touch of Milleritis... too much CAPSLOCK. Two, the CAPS sections tend to punctuate some pretty egregious spelling errors that might have been hidden better if they were in lowercase. Three, even though I appreciate the attempt at full PBP (my preferred style of reading), I thought that it read too much like a plain-prose transcript with Thomas' PBP. Also, when did Kin Hiroshi go heel? Four... you had Eli Manning make an appearance and NOT take a HLB or an Evenflow DDT? C'mon, the little punk deserves it! :p Despite the flaws though, it was a great opener, and I was thoroughly entertained.

Unlucky 13 Match

First off... that stipulation is ESS-EYE-SEE-KAY SICK! So you know I love it ;) This was a very fun match, very kitschy, and not a lot of actual wrestling, but who cares? It's garbage wrestling all the way, baby! I might have spaced this match out a little from the opener, because giving two hardcore-themed matches in a row might be overkill. Back to the positives though, I loved some of those one-liners from the NEW crew. Good match.

HPSC vs. Brown/Foxx

Wow, no intros? I know I've harped on overly long intros, but this is a bit much, I think. Big mistake right away in the early action with Neels calling Farnswirth cheap without condoning it. Methinks EPW matchwriters need a tutorial on Neels from these first two matches ;) At least it's rectified quite early. Dean's also not jiving with me in that he seems to be a second PBP announcer. It's a problem I see fairly often, actually. I've seen it in TEAM and NFW too. I wonder if it's because people don't really watch a whole lot of wrestling on TV anymore but still participate in eW (then again, sometimes, it feels like WWE broadcasts have two color commentators rather than a PBP and a color). The action was pretty good, and I really liked how the writer protected the Market Crash and still had Foxx logically be able to kick out of it (where Karl interrupts the count). It was quite a non-face thing for Karl to do, but it was smart, and I think that really brought out the cerebral and techincal nature of the Dragon. A lot of positives and negatives for this one, but it'll do for what it was.

Cat's Meow vs. Wells/Starr vs. Doe/Davis

Again, I'm a huge fan of the Doe/misogyny angle. When I saw Cat's Meow's combined weight, I laughed to myself seeing that probably half the eW characters out there are that weight or above. Actually, no, I mainly chuckled to myself imagining Lamont Hollywood saying "285 pounds? I have bowel movements that weigh more than that." Don't ask me why I thought of that, but hey, this is the same person that brought you Spoils vs. KVC vs. Ryan... VS. THE WORLD~! Aaaanyway, enough about that and onto the match. I thought the action was great and the commentary fit. The writer really played into the angle well, and it really made for an entertaining read filled with psychology. The run-in at the end was nice too. I really do expect big things for Doe now that he's found his way.

And a little something extra from Chaos' opponent tacked on at the end of the match

Nice promo, really gets the interest stoked for who this mystery guy is.

Dope

New guy in EPW. He sounds dark and brooding, but in a different way than your typical generic Goth guy, at least so far. He can write monologue, that's for sure. Interested to see who he is, since he's talking about revenge. I think it's probably a previous character looking to get back at one of the big guys. Either way, a welcome addition to the roster it seems.

James Irish vs. Shawn Hart

Wow. THAT's the EPW matchwriting I know and love. Great action all throughout, and Neels was heels all the way through. I liked how Neels kept harping on the bail-out aspect the whole match. It's definitely something he'd do. Some really cool spots in there too, like Hart with the Cloverleaf on James, and of course, I always mark for the Headbangers' Ball. Always appreciate nods to TEAM happenings too. The end was unexpected and a great way to protect Irish's heat without taking the strap off of Hart. Very interested in seeing where the Scott/Hart team is going to go.

A Woman's Ambition

Hm, a narrative segment. Kinda breaks up the flow of the card, but it's something Karl and Amy have been doing for the last couple of cards now. It does set up something big, a title match between Foxx and Karl Brown. I'm interested at the friendly rivalry aspect of things... wonder if anything huge is going to happen at the match, since this is the kind of misdirection that always results out of these things.

Chaos vs. Mystery Man

And the mystery man is... Trevor Cane. I'm a bit underwhelmed by the name, no offense to Trevor, but the angle was well-thought out, so maybe this will give him a rub. As for the match itself... man, this night is turning out to be CZW levels of gory, isn't it? Gotta hand it to everyone involved here, because tonight would make all the hardcore wrestling fans drool between this match and the opening two. I thought the finish might have killed Cane (literally) a bit, but still, Chaos earned this one.

War of the Daymons

Ummm... I have no idea what to make of that. I guess it's the blowoff to Daymon's angle in EPW over the last few months? Neat way to do things though, although I thought there were way too many wrestling moves in there for it to be an impromptu street fight. It was entertaining though.

JA vs. Stevens

I can in no way objectively look at this match. Once again, congrats to Jamar, you deserved this. I do have to admit seeing the loss deflated me a lot, moreso than usual. It was a kick in the gut after all that unpleasantness with the ToC. It's one thing to lose a match. That's acceptable, people HAVE to lose or else the hobby is really worthless. However... to lose that match AFTER having everything melt down from the ToC... I felt pretty bad as both a booker and a handler. It's not fun. But I'm over all that now. Looking forward to XXX and the Champion (not spoiled for the three of you who haven't read the show yet :p)

Bored of Edukashun vs. the Inner Circle

Well, at least the match was well-written, but then again, what can you do with a double no-show? Planning could have been better; maybe this match could have been night two, especially with Lindz having to worry about defending her EPW Championship on the same night. Ah well, at least they can drag the Tag Title stuff out until Banned in the USA.

Lindsay Troy vs. Joey Melton

If this were "real" wrestling, Troy would be getting super brownie points from the Internet smarks right now ;) Two matches in a row, and away we go. The match stared with Neels channeling Lamont Hollywood and Sammy Benson, which is a bad thing, seeing that Neels isn't supposed to be written with a tenth of the wit of the best color men in eW. That's his charm really, that Neels is a dim-witted heel shill who likes to harp on things repeatedly. We also got a recap of the divorce angle, which set things up nice for the match. I definitely LOLed at Melton coming out to "I Will Survive." Steve always has a way of representing Melton with such a paradoxical self-deprecating bravado... and I can't believe I just used that sentence describing an imaginary match that's the fantasy equivalent of the fakest sport this side of boxing :p The match itself had good action. Reading it more and more, it feels like I'm reading a booth with two Beanfries/Hollywood or Buckleys/Benson. The broadcast booth doesn't feel like an EPW team. Taking that for what it was though, the action was great and it totally felt like a World Championship match. The ladder was a good touch too. The end swerve though... I thought the masked man not being Beast was brilliant... and the twin brother thing was something Steve would only pull off and make work, but I'm still leery about it. I have the utmost faith that this will deliver, especially in angles and segments, where the Melton character excels. However, this angle does seem a bit more like "daytime soap opera" than "male soap opera" that wrestling has been described as over the years. I'm waiting for Donaven Winters to come back from the dead now and claim that Caitlyn Daymon is pregnant with his baby after reading that. Still though, it was entertaining, and the after promo was gold. I wish Steve wouldn't save those diatribes for on-cards and put them in his RPs :p

But in closing, let's give Lindz a big round of applause for her title reign. She pretty much proved everyone wrong, and while her biggest naysayers spend each week thinking of excuses why their big show still hasn't gone up and their forums should remain active, she's on top of the eW world.

In Conclusion

Very, very strong card. Some weaknesses, but a joint card of this magnitude is bound to have them, even with everyone getting up for it. Still, the matchwriting was silky-smooth and easy to follow, the finishes and angles hit on every cylinder and of course, the segments were entertaining and not superfluous. Can't wait to read Night 2.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm waiting for Donaven Winters to come back from the dead now and claim that Caitlyn Daymon is pregnant with his baby after reading that.

I don't know what fed he's in, but Grover brought Winters back. So, yeah, he never died or something. I dunno. *shrug*

And thanks, Tom.

Anonymous said...

The fed is SCW.

I guess we were all wrong about Troy Windham's piss chemistry. >=)

--MUSTdie

Anonymous said...

In response to your criticism...

One, the matchwriter has a touch of Milleritis... too much CAPSLOCK.

WHAT?! YOU CAN NEVER HAVE ENOUGH CAPSLOCK!!!!

But seriously, yeah, it's a pretty overdone thing. I guess that's a bad habit I picked up from feds preceding my time in EPW.

Also, it was a bit of a throwback to IWF, which I used to co-owned with Jason (Stalker) years ago. The fed was more focused on the "hardcore" garbage aspect of wrestling than actual wrestling, so things tended to get over the top and blurred the lines of reality and fantasy.

Two, the CAPS sections tend to punctuate some pretty egregious spelling errors that might have been hidden better if they were in lowercase.

Damnit, I HATE making typos! (I'm pretty sure I misspelled the first word in that sentence, too)

Three, even though I appreciate the attempt at full PBP (my preferred style of reading), I thought that it read too much like a plain-prose transcript with Thomas' PBP.

Not sure if I follow you on this one. Then again, I think I failed the "plain-prose" part of my poetry class in college. Give me something to compare it to, and I can probably pick up on it then.

Also, when did Kin Hiroshi go heel?

When did he go face?

I regret being out of the Hiroshi loop for the past year or two (even though now he's practically my favorite character). I still sort of remember him as the devious Muffin Man from the GXW days of yore, and figured Neely would favor a guy of his caliber.

I dunno... I'm still trying to get used to how the commentary team works. Back in my day, there wasn't a Dean Matthews to work with--it was straight Face and Heel commentators. Now I've got a third party to worry about...

Four... you had Eli Manning make an appearance and NOT take a HLB or an Evenflow DDT? C'mon, the little punk deserves it! :p

Come to think of it... yeah, you got a solid point there. What the HELL was I thinking?

DIET PEYTON should have been on the receiving end of that flaming roundhouse kick to the face!

All in all, appreciate the review. I'll consider those flaws and work on improving them for future match-writing, Otherwise, glad you enjoyed it. :D

PeytonAllen said...

Hey Pansy, :)

Thanks for the props. I have at least a good 15 years writing with Benson/Buckley...and have written the last two/three years with NFW's team. Fair comment about the PBP. But, hopefully some reading got a laugh.

The Melton angle comes from watching the "Prestige" lately, and being a dinosaur where part of the fun was surprising people with angles, especially in ME spots (as long as the fed head approved.) Katz practically created the GUNS character in pulling off an angle in the early days. You know of what I speak Jon.

I wanted to pay homage to Lindsay for pulling off two big shockers. Dis and the Troy Windham angle. Today, I think most people want to know. There's less surprise. Less, here I think this could be good, let's roll with it.

I thought the after rp sold it as real as it could be. Sure, i'll have fun with it, but Melton's reasoning, I thought took it less from Days of Our lives and tried to bring some level of truth to it.

Maybe it's just out of place in EPW, though I love Brunk being on board and liking the angle. I don't know if Yori runs the dildo time travel angle everywhere (and its great he should) but I don't know. Maybe the same people who think this is too much, think the same about some of what goes in in NFW and elsewhere.

Eitherway...I like the angle. I like the fact that you can look back at Melton in the 80's and think that might not be him wrestling is interesting.

And yes, big hug and handpound to Lindsay. Great reign. She's one of the best characters in the fed right now. I'd be shocked if she doesn't have more runs with the title.