A Pay-Per-View by GCW

You might be wondering why I’ve gone back to such an old show for a review. Well, I am attempting to catch up on some of these, and I wanted to watch this to see if I missed anything crazy. This particular show is from before the big string of shows around WrestleMania weekend, and aside from the main event has a lot of lower card stuff. That isn’t to say this is a bad show or anything, but it’s definitely one of the more low-key ones. That’s what I like about GCW, it represents so many different styles of wrestling and so many different types of fan that there’s usually something for everyone.

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.

The Card:

• Singles Match Jordan Oliver defeated Alec Price.
• Singles Match ASF defeated Drago Kid.
• Singles Match Blake Christian defeated Ninja Mack.
• Death Match Cole Radrick defeated Orin Veidt.
• 6 Way Scramble Match Jack Cartwheel defeated Jimmy Lloyd, Bryan Keith, Colby Corino, Marcus Mathers and Billie Starkz.
• Tag Team Match The Second Gear Crew (Matthew Justice & AJ Gray) defeated Joey Janela & Marko Stunt
• Singles Match 2 Cold Scorpio defeated Gringo Loco.
• Death Match For The GCW World Tag Team Championships The H8 Club (Nick Gage & Matt Tremont) (w/Dewey Donovan) (c) vs. The Rejects (John Wayne Murdoch & Reed Bentley).

My Thoughts:

As I’ve stated before, my methodology for this is to avoid giving arbitrary star ratings or anything resembling the typical ratings people give in wrestling reviews. 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!

Drago Kid:

Despite his stature, Drago Kid is around twenty years old, and was previous known as Aerolux down in Mexico. He was recognized for his immense talent and was granted the ability to be the “mini” version of Drago, a wrestler that many my remember from Lucha Underground in the US Market. For those unaware, Lucha Libre has a tradition of of having smaller versions of popular wrestlers, called Mini-Estrellas, some of which we have seen prominently featured on US TV. According to Wikipedia, “the term Mini-Estrella (Spanish for “Mini-Star”) is used in lucha libre to describe a division of short professional wrestlers or luchadors, some of whom have dwarfism.” It was cool that GCW featured this match, and I loved seeing the fans toss money into the ring like they do in Mexico. Great atmosphere all around, and hope he’s brought back.

Solid high-flying match:

Ninja Mack and Blake Christian had the sort of match that made me fall in love with smaller guys way back in 2002 with the inclusion of TNA’s X-Division. This match was almost like watching a videogame play out, and as with any Ninja Mack match, the dude was on fire the whole time.

Somehow not bad:

I’ve talked a few times about how I generally do not like hardcore matches in GCW very much largely because they usually turn into nothing more than 20 minutes of people building little structures with light tubes and then falling into them while gushing blood everywhere. Something like that is cool as a climax in a match, but modern deathmatch wrestling seems to revolve around it. This match, however, was actually pretty entertaining despite having light tubes involved. It honestly played out a lot more like an oldschool Japanese hardcore match versus any of the more modern things. Yes, both guys were drenched in blood almost immediately and we had some silly spots that make no sense, but for this being touted is almost like a junior version of a deathmatch, it’s funny that I liked it more.

Heyyyy, I know those guys:

While it sucks that both Joey Janela and Marko Stunt are gone from AEW, it seems like they fit in better here at GCW and can do what they want to do. Not a ton to say here, other than good to see them doing well!

One Can’t ignore how much the fans love Gage:

While this match was no by means the sort of match that I enjoy too much, one really cannot deny the bond that the GCW crowd has with Nick Gage. Honestly, I would imagine most wrestlers probably dream of having this sort of bond that he has even though the bond is so strong because he counts his fans as being part of a gang that he is the leader of LOL. Gage is basically GCW’s version of The Sandman or Sting, in that all he has to really do is come out and everybody loses their mind. I just hope the guy is staying healthy and away from the bad stuff that kept him in trouble for all those years in the past.

Conclusion:

Overall, this was a decent little show considering that it really did not have too many big marquee matches on it. GCW always runs these shows in groups, and generally one is more low and mid card stuff while the other one has more of the big names. Highlights for me were a lot of the lucha style matches and surprisingly the lower card death match in the middle of the show. Maybe for me that’s what clicks, not having someone that is widely known as a “deathmatch wrestler” doing a death match, because it seems like spots actually matter and they sell it more than somebody that literally gets stabbed in the chest with glass for a living. I’ll have to keep an eye on both Cole Radrick and Orin Veidt for any future matches they have. Stay tuned for more wrestling reviews as I should have a lot more coming these next few weeks.