A Pay-Per-View event by GCW

Yesterday was night one of this duo of GCW Wrestling Pay-Per-Views (Read the review HERE), and I’m happy to report I enjoyed the show more than I expected. I won’t repeat myself, but I have largely ignored GCW because I assumed it was like CZW and did a bunch of deathmatches all the time. There was one deathmatch last night and it wasn’t ridiculous nonsense like I was dreading (plus G-Raver is pretty cool). I was wondering if this would be the bloodier show, but surprisingly this show is pretty balanced as well. It features a handful of normal matches, one deathmatch, and a Royal Rumble styled match.

I was happy to see that this show was not over five hours long like the previous one, although the apparently taped a Jersey Championship Wrestling show beforehand. Not sure I’ll be able seek that out, but great value for the fans in attendance. Without further ado, let’s see what this was all about.

For anyone wanting to watch this, I would recommend Fite.TV. you can get some FITE credits (10 dollars I believe) with the following code: “6m6lyyn”. I’m sure there are other ways to watch it, but FITE has a solid interface and has been worth it so far. I actually learned you can also use Google Play points to by shows through this app, which was great to find out!

The Card:

• – GCW Tag Team Championships: The Briscoes (Mark Briscoe & Jay Briscoe) (c) def. Blake Christian & Alex Zayne
• – Calvin Tankman def. Yoya
• – Joey Janela def. Scotty 2 Hotty
• – Jeff Jarrett hit EFFY with a guitar.
• – GCW World Title Number One Contender Do Or Die Rumble: Homicide def. Jordan Oliver, Tony Deppen, Jack Cartwheel, Dante Leon, Ninja Mack, Atticus Cogar, Nick Wayne, Dark Sheik, Matthew Justice, AJ Gray, Cole Radrick, Shane Mercer, PCO, G-Raver, Colby Corino, Allie Katch, Billie Starkz, Grim Reefer
• – GCW Ultraviolent Championship: Alex Colon (c) def. John Wayne Murdoch

My Thoughts:

As I’ve stated before, my methodology for this is to avoid giving arbitrary star ratings or anything. I usually go through the show and pull a half-dozen or so things that I thought were significant or that I liked. You might think some of my choices are dumb and that’s okay – we all like different things!

I guess I’ll Root for Dem Boys:

As you may have gathered, I’m not a huge Briscoes fan. I never mention them on my ROH reviews, and I’m not particularly excited for them to show up in AEW. They are incredible wrestlers, and I’ve seen them live a number of times, which was always cool. That said, Jay Briscoe (at least) appears to be a garbage person, and it’s hard for me to root for them because of it. I know he apologized, but I can’t imagine saying crap like that “in character”, I’m sure he’s the same dude as he was – hopefully he can prove me wrong. Anyway, It’s great that GCW has the Briscoes on their roster right now. It brings eyes to their product and helps elevate some of their young roster being able to go against them. Blake Christian & Alex Zayne were pretty impressive, but were no match for Dem Boys.

Tankman is a Beast!

Calvin Tankman has been a fixture on MLW for a while, and I always enjoy seeing him dominate in the ring. He’s one of those guys that would likely never get a shot in a place like WWE, but shows how much a great wrestler he is here in places like GCW. Very athletic for his large size, he reminds me Vader or something seeing that he does suicide dives and flips like men half his size. Yoya is every bit of 100 pounds (reminds me of Spike Dudley a tad), but his underdog antics were no match for Heavyweight Hustle.

Can’t Say This Match Was On My 2022 Bingo Card!

Joey Janela vs Scotty 2 Hotty is one of those matches you see listed on a wrestling card, and it immediately piques your interest. Coming out with his classic WWE theme, doing the Worm despite being older, and looking to be in great shape was the venerable tag team legend himself. It was cool to see Scotty get a huge pop from the crowd, and come off as the biggest babyface ever against the despicable Joey Janela. Hope Mr. Taylor stick around, GCW could use a man that can help train an entire new generation of up and coming stars.

J E Double F, J A Double R E Double T, Jeff Jarrett in the House!

Not sure why this happened, but it’s cool to see Jarrett pop up on here. This guitar shot randomly happened after Effy came out to speak to the crowd about why he came to GCW, his reservations about wrestling in the Bible Belt being gay, and other topics. It sounded like he was about to retire then announced “EFFY IS FINE!”. He called out guys randomly coming in and winning all the belts, then announced his intentions to go for the Heavyweight Championship, until Jarrett came out to attack him. I have no idea if this is leading to a match or something, but my interest is piqued.

Number One Contender!

In a match containing basically the entire GCW roster, it was cool to see Homicide win a shot at Jon Moxley (current GCW champion) in this Rumble. This was basically GCW’s answer to Royal Rumble, and contained twenty competitors. There were some surprises for me like seeing women in the match – I’m not sure if GCW usually does inter-gender stuff, but Allie Katch looks like she could easily hold her own in there! This was likely my “Match of the Night” for a few reasons – 1) Ninja Mack is awesome 2) Good to see Jordan Oliver post MLW 3) Dark Sheik cosplaying as Psylocke from X-Men 4) Love me some Homicide. Everyone got to get their spots in, and it was good to see some folks I liked from yesterday’s show again.

Buckets of Blood:

While not my favorite style of match, GCW hardcore matches aren’t too bad. I’ve seen too much heinous crap in the name of wrestling like weed-whackers, hypodermic needles, knives and other nonsense, that I have grown to avoid stuff like this. Thankfully, aside from light tubes or some random gimmicks that cause people to bleed, GCW isn’t too bad. I mean the match between Chris Jericho and Nick Gage on AEW Dynamite wasn’t too far from one of these.

Conclusion:

As a whole, this was probably the better show of the two this weekend, it was less cluttered and had a TON of surprises. I think the Women’s match from Til Infinity was the best match of all of them, but both shows were pretty solid. Buying these on Fite.TV as a package deal saved me about ten dollars, so if you plan to watch one of these, I’d say pop that extra Lincoln in there and get double the entertainment. GCW is still not my favorite company, but I respect them a lot more now, and plan to follow them to some degree.