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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 11/5/16)

Respect Goes Out The Window 

– As the weeks continue, there has been an up in production value. Now, it has spread to the show’s theme song and montage. It was changed to Muse’s “Uprising.” It feels empty, guess we’ll have to get used to it. We liked the old West Coast Wrestling Connection theme as it hit hard and gave you the feel of what it all was about. The only thing about that was that a lot of talent featured in that montage were outdated, so this was probably to fix that problem. We’ll see how we feel about it by next week, if it’s still the theme.

– On the commentary side of things, we still had the team of Morty Lipschitz and Jeff Akin. Kris Kloss was mentioned to be “on vacation” and would return in the middle of the month. That remains to be seen, but hopefully he’ll come back. He began to elevate the show’s quality. That said, without him, we guess Akin is as good as you can get. As far as the first bout, we had Beast The Butcher’s debut, almost a WCWC take of Darth Maul if he were to get facial piercings. With an attempt to get on the “Braun Strowman” bandwagon, they decided they needed a dominant monster. He said no words, but surely had a unique look and great theme music. His opponent was Damien Drake of The Midnight Marvels. In what could’ve been mistook as a match to establish Drake by having him beat up monster-like opponents which fits the superhero theme, this was the opposite. Nothing special, but we liked the idea of BTB going over with his finisher deemed “Death In Motion.” How lovely. We can see BTB aligning with Gangrel and Sinn Bodhi for some reason, but he appears to be cast as a heel, so perhaps he’ll be an opponent for them.

– The backstage promo from The Wrecking Crew about a “bounty” on Mikey O’Shea wasn’t anything new. In fact, they’ve done this bounty stuff before, but we guess it was an okay way to push the upcoming WCWC Tag Team Championship #1 Contender’s match. In their sinister plan was also to take out Marcus Malone after O’Shea. For a cool visual, we seen WCWC Pacific Northwest Champion Grappler III unmasked, but with his head turned from the camera. In the end, it didn’t matter, but it was a unique way to begin the segment.

– The WCWC Tag Team Championship #1 Contender’s match between Kassius Koonz/G3 and O’Shea/Malone had a vibe of high animosity between the opponents with the “bounty” storyline and they had a great chemistry that kept the action fresh with high spots and energy. If anything, the crowd was most responsive to this match on the show’s card. That should tell you how over that Malone/O’Shea are. We also found it entertaining in the way that Koonz slipped a note to commentary on nicknames he preferred to be called by, which included but wasn’t limited to “The Titan Of Tennessee.” It was Malone and Koonz that particularly impressed us in this effort, as Koonz pulled off a lot of nice high-impact maneuvers and Malone sold his heart out and hit some stiff chops on his own. In the end, O’Shea was “hot tagged” by Malone and he used some athleticism (jumped off the top rope) and worked his way to a Gunslinger on Koonz that won his team the match. That meant a future date with WCWC Tag Team Champions The Bonus Boyz, which should be fun TV. We just honestly hope that they pull the trigger on a Title change for O’Shea/Malone. It’s what the show needs.

– After the controversial way that WCWC Legacy Champion Ethan HD retained his Title in the ladder match against Eric Right, it appeared he was ready to move on. After an okay pre-match promo where he referred to the rest of the locker room as “Basic AF,” he sought to establish pure dominance. His message was met with Gangrel’s presence, which apparently started a Non-Titled sanctioned match between the two. The Gangrel-Ethan match was good for what it was, yet didn’t overstay its welcome. It was apparent that they wanted to establish Gangrel as Ethan’s next challenger and they did a good job of that. Not much of the action was memorable outside of Ethan’s sunset flip powerbomb and missed 450 splash, but that led to the finish where Gangrel took advantage and hit the Impaler DDT to get the win and what we assume to be a future Title shot.

– They continue to make Matt Striker one of the card’s more intriguing heels, as he strays away from promos where he avoids screaming and looks to stay as far away from the WCWC mold as possible. As we saw with his brutal beatdown of Ian Sutton, he can be an excellent vicious heel. His backstage promo spoke about his main event opponent in Adam Thornstowe and how he had respect for him, but wasn’t afraid of him. He claimed the respect could go out the window if he wanted to. It was an inserting promo that built off their previous interactions.

– The backstage promo from “The Rock God” Ricky Gibson and Mr. Tubbs hyped his match with Right, as the heels tried to convince Right to forfeit the match if he still hadn’t gotten over his injuries from his ladder match. Another lousy rock pun when Tubbs mentioned “The Final Countdown.” Guess we had it coming to us.

– The Gibson-Right match had the right idea on paper as Right was out to get his momentum back after an imposter fan dressed in his likeness cost him the WCWC Legacy Championship. The match itself was forgettable outside of Right’s brief interaction with Janice, Gibson’s beloved guitar. Luckily, the finish played into the “Fan” as he came out from the entranceway and subbed out Right’s magic tonic for something else. Once Right drank the substance, it didn’t “power him up” and instead left him prey for the Power Ballad for the loss. Commentary did a fine job of asking the right questions about the Fan and why he came from the locker room. Their mentions about security being so lackadaisical was alarming though. Right showed enough anger in his post-match actions and how he dismissed Interviewer Cristy Olsen’s question about the Fan. By far, it’s the best storyline on WCWC TV and we hope it’s handled delicately.

– While it seems not many people would be crazy about it, we loved the Striker-Thornstowe main event for its old-school technical wrestling mat work. Slick maneuvers throughout, though it just didn’t generate enough crowd interest and we weren’t sure why. Another critique was that the action felt in slow motion at points. We also felt that they didn’t utilize the “respect” angle in the ring much, which made Striker’s promo feel worthless. Again, a well-wrestled match, but we had no reason to attach ourselves emotionally. On the plus side, this propelled Thornstowe further in the main event scene as he kicked out of a Pedigree and hit a reverse Scum Stomp to get the win. It’ll be interesting to see if they follow this up somehow.

Quick Results

• Beast The Butcher def. Damien Drake via pinfall 
• WCWC Tag team Championship #1 Contender’s Match – Mikey O’Shea/Marcus Malone def. Kassius Koonz/Grappler III (w/Jeremy Blanchard) via pinfall 
• Gangrel def. Ethan HD (w/Kate Carney) via pinfall 
• “The Rock God” Ricky Gibson (w/Mr. Tubbs) def. Eric Right via pinfall 
• Adam Thornstowe def. Matt Striker via pinfall