PWG Battle Of Los Angeles 2022-First Stage Review By Alex Kalil
Battle of Los Angeles 2022 First Round Match: Rey Horus vs. Aramis: Not a great match up. Some nice lucha spots and quick back and forth wrestling. Aramis isn't a smooth worker to me. He reminds me a lot of Aero Star. Naturally Aramis gets the win after hitting a top rope version of his finisher. **1/2 Battle of Los Angeles 2022 First Round Match: Wheeler Yuta vs. Blake Christian: This was more like it! Nice battle of two modern day technical wrestlers. Lots of back and forth counters. Blake hurts his knee on a tombstone on the floor, which Yuta is able to take advantage of and get the quick pinfall win. This was very fun. ***1/2 Battle of Los Angeles 2022 First Round Match: JONAH vs. Buddy Matthews: This was a weird one. Mattews uses his speed and strikes to control almost all of the match against the massive JONAH. Even with JONAH as the babyface, I feel like he should have been in control of most of the match. Some good stuff as the match went on and JONAH started to fire up and take over. Referee gets bumped out of the way and Buddy hits a low blow to take back over. Makes sense. He hits a series of Stomps but JONAH won't stay down so he hits one on a chair in front of the referee for the win. Um... DQ? Bad booking for the overall match and the finish hurt this one. **1/2 Battle of Los Angeles 2022 First Round Match: Daniel Garcia vs. Kevin Blackwood: Another very enjoyable match. Both men start off with some mat wrestling and technical wrestling before Blackwood lands the first strike, and Garcia responds with a barrage of strikes. Blackwood lands a back suplex and drops Garcia on his head, so Garcia piledrives Blackwood on the apron. Everytime Blackwood changes the complexion of the match, Garcia ups the intensity. Blackwood is able to rock Garcia with a shot to the ear and gives him an opening to land a series of German suplexes. Garcia is able to withstand the shots Blackwood throws to nail another piledriver and choke out Blackwood for the win. This was a great showing by both. ***3/4 Battle of Los Angeles 2022 First Round Match: Lio Rush vs. Jack Cartwheel: This was another fun match. Lio slaps the shit out of Cartwheel for showing off, which was hilarious. Lio uses his unique quickness and speed to make Cartwheel's own speed and quickness for some fun back and forth. Lio uses some Bobby Lashley offense to get a nice nea-fall before a Frog Splash by him ends it. *** Battle of Los Angeles 2022 First Round Match: Black Taurus vs. JD Drake: Big old Hoss fight here from these two. Lots of hard strikes and some nice lucha style offense from both guys. Problem was this match was just there. There was no real flow or structure to the match. It was just two guys doing moves and went on a little long for my taste. Taurus gets the win after a nasty piledriver move. ** Battle of Los Angeles 2022 First Round Match: Alex Shelley vs. Lee Moriarty: A fun veteran vs. younger wrestler match. Technical wrestling to start out with Moriarty taking control due to his speed and quickness before Shelley's experience allows him to slow him down and work him over. Some good back and forth wrestling and selling by both men all match but the crowd was not into this match. No idea why that was. Moriarty starts rolling and looks for the submission win by Shelley is able to roll him up for the sneaky win. *** Battle of Los Angeles 2022 First Round Match: "Speedball" Mike Bailey vs. Bandido: Easily the match of the night. These two went all out in- this match and the crowd was into it almost the whole time. Lots of great counters and exchanges as both men give it their all. Nice little story of Bandido being the stronger man but Bailey is faster and more lethal with his kicks. The match does suffer from move spamming and a lack of an overall flow but with the crowd energy it does make it feel more like a classic PWG match. Bailey gets the win after a big counter out of the 21-Plex and hits Ultimo Weapon. ***3/4 PWG Battle Of Los Angeles 2022-Final Stage Review Battle of Los Angeles 2022 Second Round Match: Black Taurus vs. Aramis: Much better match from both men this time. Taurus is a great base for Aramis to do his lucha spots while Aramis is smaller allowing Taurus to toss him around and hit some big moves of his own. This match really got the crowd into it for the first 7 or 8 minutes.... and then they just kept going and the spots got more and more stagey for me and the crowd. Taurus hits a big piledriver for 2 but the ref thinks it's 3 at first so there is a weird pause. Aramis gets and immediately gets some more offense in before Taurus hits the piledriver again and this time for the 3. No idea what happened there. Cut this match in half and it's awesome. As is, it's good but not great. *** Battle of Los Angeles 2022 Second Round Match: Alex Shelley vs. Daniel Garcia: Classic pro wrestling here. Shelley was the classic Southern territory heel all match: cheap shots, begging off Garcia, stalling, all great stuff. Garcia finally gets a hold of him and works him over until Shelley drops him on his head and starts working his neck. Garcia sells nicely before getting a hold of Shelley again and going to the knee. Garcia goes for the Scorpion Deathlock but Shelley counters out into the Border City Stretch, which Garcia escapes. They go back and forth before Garica again gets the Scorpion but when Shelley goes for the same counter again, Garcia traps his arm and Shelley is forced to tap out. A ton of fun! ***3/4 Battle of Los Angeles 2022 Second Round Match: Buddy Matthews vs. Lio Rush: Matthews cuts a generic heel promo before the bell and some "fans" throw their drinks in the ring. What a bunch of assholes! Match was pretty good. Simple enough as Matthews uses his power to beat down Rush while Rush uses his speed and quickness. Some good back and forth stuff before Matthews hits a Curb Stomp and Rush seems to hurt his shoulder. Weird pause as Rush tries to get his shoulder back in place. Matthews grabs a chair and goes to stomp Rush like he did JONAH last night but the ref stops him and gets shoved. Matthews gets DQed. I guess that's one way to get out of this match. Injury aside this was a good match but didn't click with me too much. *** Battle of Los Angeles 2022 Second Round Match: "Speedball" Mike Bailey vs. Wheeler Yuta: A really solid match between a striker and wrestler. Speedball uses his kicks to pick at Yuta who looks to ground and work over the quicker man. Nice back and forth battle before Speedball misses his double knee moonsault on the apron and hurts his knee. Yuta goes right after it and works it over before Speedball catches him with a Crane Kick, shout-out to The Karate Kid. Speedball sells the knee well while still fighting back. Yuta tries to get his Backpack Roll-up on him but Speedball counters out of it. He rocks Yuta with a kick and quickly hits Ultimo Weapon to get the win. This was a lot of fun. ***1/2 Battle of Los Angeles 2022 Semi-Final Match: Black Taurus vs. Daniel Garcia: More of a storyline match. Taurus opens up with strikes on Garcia and uses his power to work him over, going after the neck and shoulders of Garcia, who sells perfectly. Garcia keeps getting hope spots before Taurus shuts him down. Taurus goes high risk to finish off Garcia but misses and hurts his shoulder. Garcia sees this and goes after it. He grounds Taurus and hammer fists Taurus' head and shoulder before locking in a choke. Taurus is out. Garcia survives the monster. **1/2 Battle of Los Angeles 2022 Semi-Final Match: "Speedball" Mike Bailey vs. Buddy Matthews: Another storyline match! Matthews cuts a promo and says Lio Rush is hurt and can't compete so Matthews is in this round. He attacks Speedball before the bell and bashes his knee with a chair. Bailey says he can go and the bell rings. Speedball rolls up Matthews for the 3! Massive pop! This was very good and sets up a nice story going into the finals. N/A Bandido, Jack Cartwheel, JD Drake and Lee Moriarty vs. Blake Christian, JONAH, Kevin Blackwood and Rey Horus: This was the typical multiman match on a BOLA show. Lots of good action, some comedy spots and some crazy dives. Everyone got a chance to shine. Nothing much to this match, It served its purpose. *** Battle of Los Angeles 2022 Final Match: "Speedball" Mike Bailey vs. Daniel Garcia: The finals are here. Bailey comes in with a hurt knee but quickly gives Garcia a kick to the face for asking him to not wrestle. Garcia goes right to the knee and attacks it. Story of the match is Garcia working Bailey's knee and Bailey trying to bite down and fight through the pain to win but every time he starts to get momentum, Garcia goes back to the knee. Some really great stuff here if a bit too long and Bailey's selling starts off great but as he gets rolling it gets less and less. Bailey lands a series of kicks and big moves on Garcia. He goes for the killing blow with Ultimo Weapon but Garcia gets his knees up! Scorpion Deathlock is in! Bailey taps out and Garcia wins the Battle of Los Angeles. Best match of the tournament for sure. **** While I enjoyed parts of this tournament, it was still a MASSIVE step down in quality from years before. I know it's not fair to the guys involved but the fact remains: PWG is not the top tier in-ring promotion it used to be. There is some good stuff but it seems like guys don't know how to work this crowd or want to go so long just to show they can that they lose the crowd. Might be the last PWG show I buy for a long time.
تعليقات