SoCal Blood Money
By Justin Crast
RevPro and XPW
Xtreme Pro Wrestling's announcement that Revolution
Pro was now a developmental territory shocked a lot of people although
the two feds had been working together for some time. At the King
of the Death Match show in Pico Rivera, the second ring was RevPro's,
American Wild Child and Street Style have worked in XPW for some
time, and there has been minor XPW involvement in a couple RevPro
shows already.
The announcement, though, seems to tighten the
relationship and make everything "official". As many people
have already pointed out, it does Revolution Pro absolutely no good
to partner up with XPW. RevPro's paid attendances actually are along
the same as XPW's already and their fanbases are completely different.
One has to wonder why RevPro's owner is so obsessed with tightening
a deal with XPW. Already, a slew of fans have stated they will not
attend RevPro anymore due to the relationship. I, myself, have no
desire to support XPW (something that I decided long before the
Messiah incident, btw) and am somewhat torn with RevPro. On one
hand, its been my favorite fed since 2001 when I first started getting
into indy wrestling. On the other hand, supporting RevPro can indirectly
support XPW.
I feel sorry for some of the wrestlers that detest
XPW and Rob Black but also have close relationships with AWC. They
are put in a difficult position since they won't want to "betray"
their friend in AWC, but to follow him might actually be against
their morals.
Another problem for me is AWC's confusion over
his fan base. RevPro's "Japanese style" main events obviously
have always catered to a select few in the region. Those select
few carry certain characteristics that get them labeled "smartie"
or "smark" or whatever. AWC doesn't like those fans. But
at the same time, that is his main fan base and it is those fans'
money that has supported his promotion. He is either going to lose
the fan base that has been loyal to him for three years or be forced
to change his product. We'll see what he chooses.
EPIC returning?
I don't really get the talk about EPIC running
another show. Or at least I don't get the talk of Gary Yap running
another show. The reason EPIC folded was because Yap never had any
money. I don't think he meant to be a con man but what he pulled
definitely was a con. Maybe he wants to atone for what happened
but he can't do it himself. Maybe he'll find an investor but in
this day and age, when pro-wrestling is on the downswing, that's
extremely tough to do.
So Yap isn't going to be running any time soon.
For gods sake, NOSAWA isn't even the only person that he owes money.
He's got to find another camera too, since the one he was borrowing
was returned broken.
Five Star Wrestling
This show's coming up. Yep.
Super Dragon in Japan
From what I hear, Japanese training is pretty hard.
Lots of punishing cardio and work outs. But it does not include
17 exploders in ones own vomit.
Meltzer weighed in on the Dragon/Fuego vs. Hayashi/Yang
tag match on the AJPW PPV. He rated it ***¼ and said it was
a fun spotfest, but specifically said Dragon and Fuego were "green
at the AJPW style". That'd be fair enough if the guys were
wrestling "AJPW style", although based on reports of the
match, it was anything but. Paul T. has talked about how Dragon
is being forced to work what I'd call "WCW Nitro" style
spotfests. It definitely isn't the AJPW style most people know that
Kawada, Misawa, Kobashi, and the rest did throughout the 90s and
into this decade.
That seems to be a reoccurring theme to Dragon wherever he goes.
Every time he enters a new fed, he doesn't work his "style"
and people gripe about how poor he looks. It happened in UPW, in
APW, and now AJPW. His improvement in APW was probably most likely
due to 90% of its roster jumping ship and Dragon being one of the
only "name" guys that chose to work there instead of PWI.
He was able to bring in his "rag dolls" from RevPro to
let the fans see him work his style at its best, then branch that
off against other APW opponents. He won't be able to do that in
AJPW, so it remains to be seen how successful he'll be there.
At least he got to do double team moves with Abdullah
the Butcher.
Challenge
Bo Cooper was the first, Threat was the second
(although I don't remember him doing it there is video proof)….
What wrestler will be the next to do a "typing motion"
and shout "write about this on the net!" during their
match towards me? I will also include Steve in on this game but
not Scrub since everyone loves Scrub and don't like doing obnoxious
things to him.
I look forward to the next!
Justin
--
Neojmc@cox.net
IM - neoJMC
