----Mark Sterling beat Mike Sydal. Not a great match, but this was Sydal’s 10th match, so what can you expect. Sterling tried, but didn’t get much out of him. Good psychology and Sydal has some great facial expressions. Sydal did a standing moonsault at one point. He also did the Tajri springboard off the ropes spot, but then fell between the top and middle rope on the other side of the ring. It looked nasty, but he was ok and Sterling started the heat. Sterling ended with a sharpshooter. [*1/2]
----Bishop with Rashard Devon beat Reggie B Fine. A lady fan tried to get in the ring after Devon and Bishop. She got up to the apron and almost in the ring. Not sure why they had such crazy heat, but that lady hated them. Perfect psychology and Bishop looked good. Fine is Fine with nothing special, but had a solid match. Bishop beat him with a chain. [**]
----Gauntlet Match for Cruiserweight Title: Match started with “Rockin” Randy vs Gaylon Ray. Randy pinned Ray. Enter Shannon Lee – Randy pins Lee. Enter Erik Hayes – Hayes misses a moonsault [yes, his big ass did a pretty moonsault] – Randy pins Hayes. Enter Chris Rocker – Rocker twists his knee and goes to the dressing room. Enter Slim Pickens – real good exchange from these two – Randy pinned him with a superkick. Enter Greg King JR [kid throws a pretty dropkick!!] – Randy pins King after King does a flying press from the top rope and Randy rolls with it into a pin. Enter Baron Malkavain. Great pop for him and it was good while it lasted. After a ref bump [Kaleb] , Rocker entered the ring again with a chair and heel ref William Gibson. Rocker hit Malkavain HARD with a chair and ended up pinning Randy for the win. Randy was the work horse here and worked very hard. I didn’t like the finish, but overall the match was good. [***]
----Bishop with Rashard Devon beat Ike Tucker in less than a minute. Nothing wrong, but just a quick squash. [DUD]
----“3G” Eric Wayne/Kid Nikels beat Pokerface in a Handicap Best 2 out of 3 Falls match. Poker came out to announce that Rude had a family emergency in Missouri and could not make it. I was wishing they found Poker a partner, but these three guys worked this bout with perfect smart psychology. First fall got Poker DQed when he used a chair on Kid Nikels. Nikels went to the back with a hurt knee when Poker slammed the chair on it. Poker vs Wayne was good. Second fall came out of nowhere with Poker beating Wayne. Poker had the Texas Cloverleaf on Wayne and Nikels returned breaking it up. It ended up with Poker putting the Cloverleaf on Nikels. Just before that Wayne entered the ring and just set a chair up and then got out of the ring. When Poker put the hold on Nikels, then Wayne ran back in and slammed Poker’s head out of the hold onto the chair for Poker to lose the third fall. [**3/4]
----Chris O’Neal/Drew Donavon beat Cody Melton/Dell Tucker to retain the TLCW Tag Team Titles. Cody comes off as a natural heel. Melton did the old Lawler bump from over the ropes hitting his head on the ring apron after being closelined. Real good bout and could have easily been match of the night, if only O’Neal would have had a good partner. Tucker is still one of my favorite undercard guys. Tucker and Melton worked their asses off and Melton looked 10 times better than the last time I seen him. O’Neal was on also and took the heat for the team. Hot tag to Drew and it turned into a clusterfuck. It was like Donavon had no idea what to do and he got all tangled up with both Tucker/Melton and he shouldn’t have. Heels got the pin, but Bill Rush restarted the match and punched ref William Gibson. Huge POP when O’Neal/Drew won!! [**3/4]
----“The Golden Boy” Greg Anthony beat his “Mystery Opponent” Flex. Flex got a huge pop coming out. Good solid match. Some comedy spots in the start with TGB slapping Flex a couple of times and then Flex spitting water on TGB. Flex was ready to jump from the second rope and TGB pushed him causing Flex to get his knee caught in the top rope. It looked good and TGB started the heat here with working on the knee. Flex tried a Gorilla slam at one point for a hope spot and then fell selling the knee. TGB used the figure four leglock and it got reversed. TGB hit an elbow from the top rope. TGB ended it by clipping Flex and a forward roll up for the win. No pop for the finish and for some reason they lost the crowd about ¾ into the bout. [**3/4]
----Flash Flanagan beat Albino Rhino by DQ to retain the TLCW Title. Albino was announced as TLCW champion twice during the show, but he isn’t the champion!! He stole the belt. Rhino has awesome theme music and comes out in full riot gear. Flash has good music also. Rhino comes off as a total big ass killer heel. I wrote “Bundy vs Hogan” in reference to this match in my notes. LOL Crowd was hard to get going in the bout. Flash took heat and made his “Flashamania” comeback BODYSLAMMING Albino and then hit a springboard legdrop from the end. But, then Alex Krisis jumped in with Dustin Starr making the save for Flash. [**3/4]
----Barbwire Match: “Hot Topic” [Derrick King/Stan Lee]/Dustin Starr beat “Black Label Society” [AJ Bradley/Robbie Douglas]/Tatt2. You surround the ring with barbwire and put 6 guys in the ring; what’ca going to expect other than a clusterfuck?? Believe me it wasn’t much to it when it comes to wrestling, but it was a wild bloody brawl that had great heat. Crowd was into every minute of it and that is saying a lot when it is past 11:00 PM and the show started at 5:30 PM. Everyone one bled except Starr. I think Robbie was the first to bled, but you couldn’t even tell it after the match. AJ bled good. Lee took a “Hotshot” into the barbwire. Lee’s arm was bleeding. Dustin brought a kendo stick in and hit everyone with it and got a huge pop. At one point Lee pitched Douglas over the top and then did a flip dive over the top to the floor. Tatt2 kicked out of almost every finish, which didn’t look good since he was piledrove, superkicked and even frogsplashed and didn’t lose. DK hit Douglas with a chair for the pin and win. [I think..it was crazy] At this point Tatt2 [who had not juiced yet] got on the mic and said they were ready to start the fight over. Heels jumped in and Tatt2 [photo above] ended up juicing with it squirting everywhere. [***3/4]
NOTES
----150+ in the crowd which must have been a disappointment to crew. If you go by paid numbers, the crowd was pretty much the same with a 40% increase in ticket prices…Starr got a huge babyface pop when he won the Horizon Star Award…Mike Sydal is the brother of Matt Sydal, who has worked for ROH and is under contract with the WWE now…If a fan gets up on the ring, then that fan should be thrown out the door. The reason being is that then another fan may try the same thing and think it is ok. It then could be a problem…If I just voted on awards for one night – Devon would be “Manager of the Year” just for the heat…Why would two guys have to cheat to beat one guy?? Poker could have lost clean and it would have not hurt him. Wayne putting the chair in the ring and getting out with just phony looking. All three guys worked very hard though…Cody Melton is easily going to be a star in this area. I always heard he had a bad attitude the first few months in the business, but nothing but good things from everyone I talked to now. This is not a knock on Kevin White and White would probably love the compliant, if Melton keeps improving he might be a better worker than his trainer…The lead singer of the band challenged Melton before Melton’s match and DK went over to tell him to not do that kind of stuff…William Gibson was throwing a fit after the tag title match in the ring and the look on DK’s face was hilarious. It was like, “WTF??” LOL…It was 10:00 PM when the Flex vs TGB bout was starting, so that might have been why the crowd was dead?? And also later for the Flash vs Albino bout…Flash/Starr vs Albino/Krisis next week…Most of the guys in the Barbwire didn’t think much of the bout, but if you were sitting in the crowd the heat was tremendous and some of the spots and blood in the match put it at least a [*] better than anything on the show…Two barbwire matches for Starr – not a lot of blood in the first one and zero in the second one…The Commercial Appeal was there doing a story on the show…6 hour show including the awards, Just way too long!!...It would be hard pressed for me to vote this group as Promotion of the Year again this year so far, but it does have a lot of candidates for awards – Most Improved [Albino], Rookie [Robbie Douglas front runner with Cody Melton and Greg King JR], Performer [Stan or AJ], Gimmick [Malkavain], Tag Team [BLS] and still has five of the best overall workers in the area [TGB/DK/Flash/Stan/AJ]…Dustin Starr gave the NBW Tag Team Title back to Allen Walker. [photo below]...Thanks to Tim and the whole crew at TLCW. I had a great time and thanks for putting over the awards, even though they were in WOODEN frames. LOL
Photos by Kayte Tramel
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