XPW Review - March 1st, 2003
By Steve

XPW made it's return to Southern California last weekend after what has to be considered a horrible showing in Philadelphia over the last few months. I wasn't able to attend their first show on February 28th, but pretty much all reports from the show had it as being "disappointing". Needless to say I didn't have high hopes for the March 1st show, especially as I haven't been to an XPW show that I would consider good since March 2001. Well, what I saw on March 1st was not only most likely XPW's best show in history, but a show that was really good for an indy show altogether. 2003 isn't very old, so it's not really a fair statement, but I'd go as far to say that XPW's March 1st show was the best show I've been to this year. Anyway, on to the show.

The show had an 8:00 PM bell time, but with XPW that normally means the show will be starting sometime around 9:30. I arrived at the building about 7:55 and called someone who was inside, from the parking lot, and he told me that they haven't let fans in yet and wrestlers were still going over their spots in the ring. So to make a long story short, the show didn't start on time.

I'm not sure what time they actually let people in, or what time the show started, as I really didn't keep track of it as I was talking to various people in the building. The building itself is a paintball field with a dirt (mud) floor. It was funny watching the floor seats sink into the ground during the show. Attendance was about 500 to 600. The seats were pretty much filled, though there were a few open ones, and a little space on the bleachers, but the place had a lot of open room. XPW originally said that the building can hold about 1,500, but I'm sure, especially with recent events, there are some sort of fire codes about how many people can be fit in the building.

Kriss Kloss comes out says something about this being XPW's home, Philly sucks, then the show begins.

First out is J-Love (Valentina) who is tired of Pogo the Clown harassing her, so she has hired bodyguards. Of course this leads to Pogo coming out and destroying the bodyguards then taking J-Love out. Pogo then leaves after putting them all in a pile. If that's the only Pogo I'm forced to see that's fine with me.

Youthanasia (MDogg/Josh) over Team Futura? (Jardi Frantz/Bobby Quance) [6'16]
Bobby Quance and Jardi Frantz worked under masks and were given different names, but I don't really remember them so whatever. This is the first time I've seen Matt (M-Dogg) or Josh since I went to CZW's Best of the Best 2, and while I was pretty impressed with Josh, M-Dogg still hasn't convinced me he is anything special. He seems to do a lot of flips, but in spots he miss times them, such as when Quance kicked him in the head, and then there was a half second delay, then he does a flip. That stuff just seems comical. Plus his transitions leave a lot to be desired. I'm sure you can put Mary Lou Retton in the ring and she can do a lot of impressive spots too. The other three were very solid however and really put forth a great match. Matt won with the shooting star press on Quance.

Vic Grimes w/ Lucy over Salem w/ Luke (Devon Storm) [12'55]
I thought this was an above average match. Storm did a dive about 30 seconds into the match, but other than that it was pretty solid. Lucy (Daffney Ungar) does a great job as a valet, as she gets the crowd into the match, but doesn't take away from the match (the reason I mention this will come up later on in the show). This was probably Grimes best match in XPW since his match with Psicosis (though I haven't seen most of his Philly stuff). After the match Luke gets involved, which leads to Jonny Storm running out, which leads to…

Jonny Storm over Luke [6'51]
I've been really impressed with everything I've seen from Storm, and I've thought Luke was good for as little experience as he has, but he didn't not look very good at all in this match. I know I mentioned M-Dogg's transitions earlier in the review, but Luke's are a hundred times worse. He rarely even tries to transition between moves. A lot of his spots seemed really sloppy too. Luke can do a phoenix splash though, so people love him. Storm looked crisp through out the match however and did a good job of keeping the match together, so it came about to be an OK match.

Shark Boy & Angel over Scorpio Sky & Quicksilver [7'42]
I liked this slightly better than the opener. Shark Boy and Angel are hugely over, and Scorpio Sky was runner up for rookie of the year in SoCal for 2002, and Quicksilver is one of the frontrunners for 2003 rookie of the year. Before the match I was telling someone that I didn't expect it to be a good match, but I'll be the first to admit I was wrong. Really a good match, and while it was a spotfest as to be expected, everything was nicely timed and fit within the flow of the match. In my opinion Angel is the best wrestler of what I'd consider the home-grown XPW guys (though no one in XPW is really home grown). Already this has turned out to be the best XPW undercard I've seen.

Jerry Lynn over Super Crazy [11'53]
This was an excellent match, as most people would expect. Pretty much everyone I talked to said this was their match of the night, though I liked the Sean Waltman versus Juventud match more. Really fast paced and cleanly put together, though it did get a little slow for a minute or two towards the middle. Still, most XPW shows I've been to haven't had a single match even approach this caliber. I was actually pretty worried about the rest of the card after this match, as I figured the show was about to seriously go downhill. I was wrong.

Justice Pain over Chris Candido [11'49]
I really expected this match to be terrible. I have never been a fan of Pains, and Candido's better days are long behind him. It didn't help matters how out of shape Candido looked when he came out to the ring. Prior to the match they cut a promo where they did a good job of building the match while putting each other over. This was definitely the sleeper of the night, as I don't think anyone in the building expected this to be good, yet it was. They even did the spot where Candido had him up in the air for the suplex for thirty seconds (and for whatever reason Douglas did the exact same spot later in the show). Sunny runs out, and a lot of people are bagging on how she let herself go, but I'd say she's still decent for her age. Sunny hits Candido with a chair on purpose, and Pain gets the win. After the match Candido and Pain shake hands, then Candido gets upset at Sunny.

Southern Comfort (Chris Hamrick/Tracy Smothers) over Mexico's Most Wanted (Damien 666/Halloween) in a 2 out of 3 falls match. [10'13]
I didn't really care for this match much, but it wasn't bad per say, just not my cup of tea. Smothers is a God by the way. For whatever reason XPW's website lists Mexico's Most Wanted as winning, but that isn't what happened at the show.

Sean Waltman over Juventud Guerrera to retain the XPW TV Title [8'18]
Waltman was announced first, and he was announced as X-Pac. I figure XPW is hoping WWE would sue them for a little bit of publicity, but now they are just calling him "X" on XPW's site. Terrible name. Juventud then comes out and does his "Juice Bar" segment, which is one of the funniest things ever. The match started and these guys had an excellent match. Juventud has normally been pretty lazy in XPW, but he really worked hard here. Post match Kaos and GQ Money ran out and attacked Waltman. They laid Waltman out with a belt shot, then danced around and cut a promo for ten minutes, while Waltman was still laying there. I think GQ really loves wrestling, but he needs to watch some tapes and study how to be a better manager and a better heel. In most of the matches where he comes out with Kaos, his antics take away from the match, and in this case he tried starting "X-Cock Sucks" chants. Kaos then got on the mike and his promo sounded like a Macho Man promo, but I doubt it was intentional. Post Kaos and GQ antics, Waltman gets back on the mike and calls Kaos a "green rookie mother fucker" among other things and says "this is a shoot" and wants Kaos and GQ to get in the ring now. Kaos and GQ leaves and Waltman apologizes for his language.

Justin Credible over Shane Douglas via DQ [11'12]
I expected this to be bad, as I haven't seen a good Douglas match in years, but I'd say this was a good Douglas match. Credible really made Douglas look good with his selling too. It was funny that they brawled out of the ring for several minutes, used a guard rail in the ring, used powder to the eyes, but Douglas was DQ'd for a belly to belly on the ref. They did a Dusty finish by announcing it was a DQ after the pin. Using that type of finish on a regular basis is proven suicide for a promotion. The match would have been better with a clean finish, but still a good match.

Now we take the second intermission of the might, at midnight, while the ring crew sets up the no rope barbed wire death match. Forty five minutes later we are ready to begin.

Supreme over Ian Rotten in a Barbed Wire Death Match to retain the XPW KOTDM Title [11'09]
This is pretty much what you would expect, two guys hitting each other with lights and other things. How weak does Candido look losing to a chair shot when Ian Rotten can't even be pinned getting suplexed through six light tubes? Then again Supreme once no sold an exploding ring. Paul T. once said how wrestling is like music, and some people like punk, some like rap. Same goes for wrestling, some like deathmatches, some like technical etc. There have been deathmatches that I've enjoyed (even one with Supreme in it), but this wasn't one of them. I'm sure others in the crowd liked it though. However I do want to add one thing. They spent forty five minutes setting up the ring with barbwire, then the barbed wire was only used a couple of times. The exact same match could have been done without the barbed wire. I think a good idea for future shows would be to ask the wrestlers if they plan on using the barbed wire before setting up the ring, or even telling them too rather than keeping the audience there till 1:00 AM needlessly.

Overall I thought it was a really good, solid show. There are some things XPW definitely needs to work on, but the good easily outweighed the bad this night. It will be interesting to see how XPW follows up on this show in their next SoCal appearance.