In defense of the PRIME/GCW inter-card

Along with NFW's WrestleBowl 2 and the long-awaited CSWA Gold Rush, the most anticipated and lauded event on the FW calendar this year was the joint EPW/NEW PPV, WrestleStock. Both Brunk and Edmunds spent good time promoting it, despite the event coming up right before a regular PPV in each company. Not many feuds were blown off during the event, and actually, the only thing that I thought was resolved during the whole card was EPW's King of the Cage tournament. Looking at the card, there was reason to believe that the event could result in a disappointment, but it didn't. You know why? Because the RPers for the most part promoed their asses off for it, and the people writing the card on both sides put the time and effort into making it a special event despite the fact that it was coming right before major events on each fed's calendar. And do you want to know how many inter-fed matches there were on the total card? Zero.

Now, the PTC community has its own interfed event coming up on the calendar. PRIME and GCW are promoting their own supercard, the combined Devil's Night/Great American Nightmare. Like EPW and NEW, this event isn't taking place at a major PPV for either company. GCW has NC-17 coming up, and PRIME is about ready to segue into its Jewel in the Crown tournament. Unlike their FW counterpart though, there are going to be interpromotional matches on this card. Much like the FW show, there could be a chance that this event might disappoint, but once again, I feel that with the people involved in the proceedings, it won't.

There are those people who are clearly parked in the disappointment camp though. This thread is a clear example of that. Now, don't get me wrong. Some of these criticisms do have sound basis in them. Sure, some of the interfed matches don't seem like they have build behind them, and yeah, it would have been nicer if a GCW World Championship match was there to stand side by side with the PRIME Universal Title match already booked. Still though, I can definitely see what Ben and Matt were doing when they put this card together. So what if there weren't more interpromotional matches? Really, if one of the big criticisms was that some of the cross-fed matches didn't have build, shouldn't you hold off on the REALLY BIG matches like Lia Ambrosi vs. Lindsay Troy or Rich Rollins vs. Jason Snow until you've had a chance to build more heat in those categories? And outside of feds mutually invading each other, wouldn't the best way to build that heat be a slowburn across one or two interfed shows before the much larger one?

Besides, WrestleStock proved that you don't need interpromotional matches for a crossfed card to be successful. I applaud the folks involved for putting on these matches, but they didn't need to. The point of the whole thing, at least to me, was to take two "minor" PPV events, combine them, make them "major" by association, get people talking about both feds and give each fed's audience some exposure to the other's. For PRIME and GCW, the exposure part is bigger since PTC feds have more of their own "exclusive" readers than the FW feds seem to have.

Honestly, you can dwell on the hype, or lack thereof, all you want when it comes to Devil's Night/Great American Nightmare. Any event can fall flat on its face if the people involved in preparing it let it. However, interfed matches or no interfed matches, big name matches or no big name matches, the quality of any card is judged by how it's RPed for and how it's written. I have full faith that the combined crews for this card will deliver in a big way, and everyone will end up being pleasantly surprised when the show's over.

October's Wrestler of the Month

Yes, there's still one day left in the month, but other than the TEAM results, which have no bearing on the winner or runner-up for this month, I don't foresee any other results going up. So without further ado...

October's WotM takes this award for an unprecdented third time in a year, and it's mainly for an event that happened in the CSWA. Hell is freezing over as we speak, now that Gold Rush is finished, and at the end we saw an AMAZING swerve with Gold Rush winner Troy Windham being challenged to a match... and defeated by this month's winner, Dan Ryan. He's the new UNIFIED Champion, adding that to the A1E World Championship he won last month. Congrats, Brunk, and let's hope there isn't another 18 months between CSDub cards ;)

This month's runner-up is Vivica J. Valentine. Valentine capped off her month in GCW with winning the Dangerous Games battle royale to claim the number one contendership to Lia Ambrosi's World Championship. Job well done!

Honorable mentions - Fusenshoff (TEAM Events), The Sergeant (EPW), Jason Snow (PRIME, PTC Events), Eron the Relentless (CSWA), Bruce Richards (NAPW), Mike Randalls (TEAM Events)

Previous Winners
January: Dan Ryan (A1E, NFW)
February: Clinton Sage (FUSE, PTC Events)
March: Nova (NFW, PRIME)
April: Dan Ryan (2) (A1E, NEW, TEAM Events)
May: Big Dog (A1E)
June: Lindsay Troy (PRIME, EPW, NFW, TEAM Events)
July: Nova (2) (PRIME, TEAM Events, NFW)
August: Lindsay Troy (2) (PRIME, EPW, TEAM Events)
September: The Illustrious Face-Eater (PTC Events, PRIME)

eW Six Pack: Best Secondary Title Runs

Before we get to the main entry, a correction and a plug. Firstly, as pointed out by Bobby Nickens and BenCaldera himself, Outlaw Pro will not be run by Ben, but it will be supported and hosted by Ben. Still though, I have to endorse it, seeing that his endorsement is good enough for me.

Second, speaking of CalderaBen, he's gone out and gotten himself a blog. For those of you looking at more of a PTC-centric view on things, there's your blog.

Thirdly, I'll have more on the GCW/PRIME supercard, but I will say that this is the event the PTC community has been waiting for for a long time. With GCW back strong, now's as good a time as any to do this. I'll be looking forward to it.

And now, for something completely different...

Jeff Paternostro has been doing "Six Packs" on his regular blog, and I ganked that from him. Now, I'm going to bring the idea here, mainly because it's a good content filler for when I'm busy or feeling somewhat removed from current events like I am now. Trust me, things are hectic for me right now, but maybe I'll get caught up on some feds while I'm in Virginia.

Anyhow, Six Packs are basically just lists of six for a given topic. They may be numbered, but assume that all of them are in no particular order. Tonight's Six Pack...

The Six Best Secondary Title Reigns I've Seen

1. Torment, A1E Cyber Championship

Back in the early days of A1E, the Cyber Championship was kinda passed around like a hot potato. At one point, I think it changed hands three straight cards. Then, this force burst onto the scene and just started mauling people. Torment, a guy who topped out as a tag guy in MBE, came over and he was this irresistible force, bursting his way into a Cyber Title shot within five matches. He summarily dispatched Xavier Storm and he brought an air of stability to the Cyber Championship that no one really could bring before. It was incredible. There was one angled title switch at the first Vengeance, but other than that, no one could beat the guy. For those who remember him in his later A1E times less than fondly, it might come as sort of a shock that he'd pull off something like that, but still, back then, it was a sight to behold.

2. Karl Brown, EPW Intercontinental Championship

This is a current reign, and what a reign it is. Say what you will about the frequency of EPW's cards, but to keep a title like that for two years is almost unheard of, no matter what. To think, you have to stay on your game and be sharp, even over long layoffs. That can be harder than defending in a "quick" fed, especially since you can build up some momentum and get into a real groove. Whoever defeats Karl will end up having a big rub and it'll free Karl to go up to the main event, where he can try to get to the next level.

3. Rat, MBE Extreme Championship

People think that Torment doing what he did with the Cyber Championship "came out of nowhere," but in retrospect, he did have a good run in MBE, and he showed some flashes there. Rat though... his handler, Mikey Nunes, made a career being the lovable jobber in A1E as Mikey F'n W. Sure he improved to the point where he was a vital part his team with Snake, but no one ever thought he could pull off dominant. And yet, there he was as Rat, just owning everyone with this superb gimmick, a mentally tortured decrepit young man with a bitch girlfriend who controlled him. He could have taken the character so much further, but as with many of us, his own ambition undid him. When he introduced Spyder, a very mediocre cocky character meant to be Rat's brother, it took some intensity and focus from Rat, and both characters suffered. Shame, but it was a really sweet run while it lasted.

4. Chip Friendly, A1E Cyber Championship

If Torment brought the Cyber Championship into the modern ages, then Chip Friendly could very well be its definitive holder. He held onto that title for over a year, I believe, and he took out everyone. He beat Big Dog in a program, and a few months later, Dog became World Champion. Even when Canuck FINALLY wrested the strap from him, it wasn't necessarily because he was better than Chip. It was the equivalent of a mercy killing, the voters taking the title from Chip to elevate him. Still, one thing that confounds me to this day is how Chip was never given the chance to follow up that career-making reign with a strong World Title program.

5. Vangelus Olsig, PRIME Intense Championship

I came into PRIME at the tail end of this run, but still, Tywon held onto the belt for over a year. PRIME's a pretty competitive fed, and PTC feds seem to put more focus on the competition than the angles. I don't know how much of this was due to Tywon's inactivity, but still, you'd think if he was really lagging, they'd have stripped him of the title. An impressive run no matter how you slice it.

6. Jared Wells, BAD Championship (WFW)

This was another starmaker run, and Wells went through a lot of challengers, both established and upstart, to keep this title and make it nearly as prestigious as the fed's World Title. His run with this belt has seemingly made Barry Clark into a main event-level talent without having won a World Championship. It's a shame that both the feds he's in are lagging right now, because there's no doubt in my mind that he'd have gotten there by now.

Some shows... TAKE TWO

Since Blogger was douchebaggish and ate my original post...

We're going to get some showage out of the way...

First up, I wanna pimp NAPW. They've been hitting on all cylinders the last couple of weeks, and it's produced some really good reads.

Tuesday Night Fights, 7/4
Friday Night Action!, 7/7

My one complaint with the matchwriting is the block text narrative paragraphs can be too long and the announce team, which is pretty good, seems to be underutilized. Other than that, these are fantastic, easy to read cards. Personal highlights for me were Team Man, the goings on with D!, Evan Cartwright and Carter Owens, KETCHUP~! in the ring and of course, the debut of Promo. I'm also really digging this F*NAPW thing they've got going, although I'm not sure how it started. Maybe I could get a little background from certain readers ;)

Next up in the queue is a long awaited show from GCW.

Warpath

Let me preface this by saying this was my first GCW show ever. I won't be too analytical of the deeper angle stuff, seeing as there's a lot of context I've been missing out on, but I will comment very bluntly on the matchwriting. It was underwhelming, and that was disappointing, especially seeing that as a fed, you should showcase your matchwriting at the PPV.

My biggest complaint was that a lot of the matches didn't have enough gravity behind them. I mean, it's hard to explain what I feel is gravity enough, but it didn't feel like a PPV, especially a PPV that's been brewing for a few months. For one, in nearly every match, the intros were too long and focused too much on reprinting lyrics rather than what they should be for, which is providing the annoucers time to give a little backstory for the match and gauging the crowd reactions for each wrestler. The intros in most cases took away from the matches.

Secondly, some of these matches were too short and didn't have enough oomph behind them. The main culprits here were the main event, which is your World Championship, for crying out loud, and the gauntlet match. I felt a lot of these two matches was just thrown together. In both cases, it took away from LeStatt Knight's and Jacob McKail's big moments. I thought, and this is totally a manner of personal taste, that some of the writing was awkward and forced.

I'm not going to dump on the whole show though. I thought the US Championship match was well-written. I liked the Masked Man's interactions in the show, as well as Dorian Ryan's promo. I also thought the interaction between Dawn McFarlane and Shadow was provocative, although I'm a bit perplexed as to why the faction's leader is only at the CW title level. That's probably one of the contexts I missed out on, but it still strikes me as odd.

Anyway, this definitely was not a show that GCW needed after a long layoff, and hopefully, they can rebound. Their roster is too good not to.