MMWA Special Comment

Packed house at South Broadway, though it's apparently the norm for their January shows...

T.V. Champion Dave Vaughn was announced as being out with the flu...he'd been absent from the past few shows due to Missouri licensing issues.

Sorry to say, this wasn't the best show in the world...right off the bat, they overcomplicated things with regards to the Heavyweight Title match with the "gauntlet" mess. The show started with Battle Royal Champion Chase King facing Andrew Wilder; the winner of that match would challenge Gary Jackson for the big belt and then the winner of THAT match would defend against Dave Osborne. They had announced Jackson-Osborne ahead of time, so why not just do that and King-Wilder? The show ran pretty long as it was...

On the note of show length, it seemed like EVERYONE got promo time...hey, there's no other way to get mic experience, I suppose.

King-Wilder was a solid opener...Chase's axe kick finisher looked good and I liked the double-team finisher he and Matt King used. They mentioned something about the Tag Team Title situation regarding next month's show...Chase was co-champ with LaMarcus Clinton but the belts seem to be vacant now.

A bit surprised to see Mephisto back at MMWA, but his main issue was with Keith Smith and Keith's no longer associated with them. Moondog is OVAH and I accept that his matches are "schtick" for the most part.

Was always a big fan of A.J. Williams...he messed up his knee a few years ago and he'd been doing commentary for the MMWA TV show since then. Really cool to see him back and he looked good considering his long layoff...quite a test to do a twenty-minute draw! If he keeps his head in the game, he'll be a great asset to the local wrestling scene...Espinosa-Williams was definitely the highlight of this show.

From "cool, a non-finish means they'll wrestle again"...to Stevie K vs. Big Texan. This was one example among others on this show where a match got more time than necessary to accomplish the same result...longer matches aren't ALWAYS a good thing.

As previously mentioned, Matt King has a good look but is still green...his match with Brian James was another one that could have gone better with less time. Face vs. face is tough for even experienced wrestlers.

The ring malfunctions are really getting old...how many will it take before they finally fix things? Will someone need to get badly hurt before they get the message? I could tell right away that the top rope on the broadcast-table side of the ring was really loose...it was a turnbuckle on that side that popped loose on an Irish-whip spot. Gary vs. Chase never really got back on track after that.

The main event was fine but seemed to be shorter than some of the other matchs on the show...shouldn't it be the other way around? It did have the non-finish to continue the three-way feud with Espinosa...this is the most they've done with the Heavyweight Title situation in a LONG time.

Anywho, that was the start of my indy wrestling year...the rest of the month has SICW(Ricky Cruz vs. Ken Kasa for the Classic Title) and MECW(Eric Allen vs. Davey Richards). Good times.