Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

By Nicholas Jason Lopez

“Notes In Observance” features random thoughts and analysis on recent television shows. Quick results can be found at the bottom of the post.

(Aired 7/23/16)

Fight Fire With Fire

– With a handful of talent deflected over to the West Coast Wrestling Connection’s sister promotion, Paragon Pro Wrestling, this episode marked the end of a two-year tradition in the form of Jeff Akin, as this was revealed to be his last broadcast. With his departure came the on-air debut of Kris Kloss (not Kriss Kross, don’t jump around) as the new play-by-play announcer. With a voice muffled somewhere between The Miz and Joey Styles, he’d take some getting used to. It did help that Morty Lipschitz provided color commentary in contrast to Kloss, who sympathized with the faces.

– The WCWC Legacy Championship match between Champion Ethan HD and Spyder Warrior revolved around the storyline of how Akin “pulled some strings in the back on his last night” to be able to allow Ethan to select his own opponent. Of course, the brash heel and his couture valet “settled upon” Spyder Warrior, an obvious easy choice they disguised as difficult. Before this, Ethan had been scheduled to face Eric Right, but Right wasn’t medically cleared, which Akin provided documentation for and threatened to call security on the sling-clad mustachioed brawler. For some reason, we thought Ethan would settle for Lemon Drop but alas, it’s not how it went down. Nevertheless, it allowed another Right-Ethan encounter to take a vacation at least for a week, while we got to see the Champ rip out his meanest maneuvers from his repertoire, as Carney provided commentary. The story was decent, as it painted Spyder as someone who could briefly hang with the Champ, but those hopes were eventually “Blacked Out.” Hardy har har. The Champ retains.

– A ho-hum debut for “Adrenaline” Adrian Matthews as he took on JJ Garrett. As for Garrett, he has comfortably settled into his role as a charismatic flashy heel who continues to insult his mentor Mr. Tubbs for his size. Matthews’ promo was awfully generic and his in-ring style wasn’t solidified enough to keep our interest. Luckily, the finish of the bout was another cheap finish as Tubbs tripped Matthews so that Garrett would fall atop him and cover him with pulled tights. The funniest part of it all was Lipschitz’s continued denial of the heel tactics, even upon obvious instant replay.

– Rock music was the obvious theme of the next bout, which featured “The Rock God” Ricky Gibson and Adam Thornstowe. Tubbs tried to go 2-0 for the night as he repeatedly intervened on Gibson’s behalf. Even without all the outside hoopla, this match aimed to please and did just so. Chops galore. Who knew these guys had it in them? We were feeling the near-falls there for a moment, until the “turnabout is fair play” finish, as Tubbs overthrew his cane and it landed in Thornstowe’s hands, as he walloped Gibson out cold to get the win. To their credit, the bickering between Kloss and Lipschitz was entertaining. Kloss definitely fits the face commentator role better than Todd Keneley did. Maybe some tensions were meant to play out between Gibson/Tubbs as evidenced by the post-match promo from Tubbs, but we doubt it leads to anything.

– We got good hype for next week’s main event for the WCWC Pacific Northwest Championship between Champion Grappler III and Gangrel with an appropriate Gangrel in-ring promo where he again reminded us that if The Wrecking Crew intervened, G3 forfeited the belt to him. Nevertheless, he was ready for the battle and came across as one friendly vampire.

– The Khash-Damien Drake match felt inconsequential to the show despite the other half of The Midnight Marvels in action. We could understand why Spyder Warrior wasn’t there, but why was Julian Whyte absent? Some explanation on that would’ve been nice. Despite Drake showing off his aerials and winning with his fierce Code Red finisher, nothing to write about that we haven’t seen before.

– The backstage promo from WCWC Tag Team Champions The Bonus Boyz was okay for what it was, even though it was more about them than the fact that they were out for a main event match. They demanded respect and tooted their own pimp horns. At least they can be taken seriously now.

– In a quest for victory, the road has been tough for one Marcus Malone and Mikey O’Shea as a team. They come together with united untapped potential, but discouraging losses hurled any momentum they mustered out the window. With the need for a signature win, they battled BB in the main event, non-Title of course. How did they get in that position to begin with? Anyways, a nice main event where it got a good 10-12 minutes of back-and-forth action. It looked for moments that it’d be another “close but no cigar” loss for the faces until Malone finally pulled off the Kiss The Sky and they got their big win everybody waited for. Even better, it put them right in Title contention. We won’t get our hopes up for a Title change, but at least we can take them a bit more seriously as a team now.

Quick Results

• WCWC legacy Championship – Ethan HD (Champion) (w/Kate Carney) def. Spyder Warrior via pinfall to retain
• JJ Garrett (w/Mr. Tubbs) def. “Adrenaline” Adrian Matthews via pinfall 
• Adam Thornstowe def. “The Rock God” Ricky Gibson (w/Mr. Tubbs) via pinfall 
• Damien Drake def. Khash via pinfall
• Mikey O’Shea/Marcus Malone def. The Bonus Boyz via pinfall