IMG Credit: Impact Wrestling

So I took in the OVW vs. Impact Wrestling One Night Only Show in Louisville’s Davis Arena on Saturday night. That would be the same place where John Cena, Randy Orton, Brock Lesnar and Batista among others got their start (for all intent and purpose). It was a long night and mostly fun, but there was one problem.

I managed to delete my notes because that’s what I get for trying to take notes on my phone instead of on paper as I usually do. Since the show is debuting this weekend I’ll wait for the full thing to do an entire review, but here are some quick highlights.

The Davis Arena is a warehouse on the outskirts of Louisville and if you don’t know it’s there, you would never find the place as it’s the second warehouse from the road. The place holds about 350 seats (400 at best) but there’s certainly a feeling that some important stuff has gone on in here. As you walk in through a small hallway, there are some drawn pictures of some of the legends who have worked there, which is a really nice touch.

I paid for the meet and greet (total cost including general admission seating: $20 for one of the best bargains I can ever remember) with most of the roster, which was quite the disorganized mess and not really worth the extra $10 on top of the ticket. Most of the Impact wrestlers were there while the OVW wrestlers were mainly ignored. I got a handshake from Brian Cage (nice guy), Eddie Edwards (who apologized for being on his phone as I came up and seemed to be having a good time) and Moose (who looked like he wanted to be anywhere else).

Sami Callihan was at the end and I’ve never seen someone who can go from calm and polite (asked him to sign my card that they gave you upon entry and he shook my hand, smiled a bit and handed it back with a thank you for one of the most polite exchanges I’ve ever had) to on in the blink of an eye. Once I got to my seat, you could see Callihan doing various shenanigans with fans, including clapping along for random chants, being carried about by (the gigantic) Sawyer Fulton or just being an energetic guy oozing charisma. He stood out more than anyone else on the show by a mile and it’s easy to see why he’s become a big deal in the last few years.

Since a lot of the show was built around OVW talents I won’t go into all of the matches here but there were some highlights:

Sinn Bodhi (Kizarny) is doing the I’m A Weird Freak thing and actually comes off as weird for a change, which is a nice surprise.

Madison Rayne (who walked by me at the meet and greet as she was setting up) might have had her return match for Impact here and blew away every woman in OVW. The women they haven’t aren’t bad but you can see the difference in experience and quality.

One of OVW’s younger guys is named Justin Smooth, a tall guy with a good build. He’s got a long way to go but there’s some potential there.

Johnny Impact was an unannounced surprise and got involved in a match which became a three way for the World Title. You would think you might advertise an OVW legend but the show was already sold out so it’s not the biggest mistake in the world. He and Eddie Edwards worked most of the match with OVW mainstay Adam Revolver, who did enough to make this match of the night.

The OVW act that really made an impression was a tag team called King’s Ransom, a pair of brothers (Leonis and Maximus Khan. They may be twins but they’re close enough that you need to look at them closely to tell a difference.) who look like muscular Usos and wrestle a power style. From what I can tell they’re still in their rookie year, with the first match I can find for them coming in April 2018. They have a lot of work to do (promos are far from great) but that look and style is going to get them somewhere. The two of them stood out, which doesn’t often happen on a show like this.

Speaking of not standing out, current OVW Champion Tony Gunn is….nothing special to put it mildly. He’s a guy in trunks whose nickname is Shotgun Tony Gunn, who calls himself the Gunn Show and stands 5’11 and weighs 200lbs. His promos are rather weak as well and I don’t get what OVW sees in him. He and Callihan (who have been doing an angle on OVW TV) were the main event, which went about 28 minutes and featured a ton of interference from Impact and OVW wrestlers. It was good, but Gunn isn’t someone I can ever picture myself caring about.

Overall, it was a fun night and you can’t beat the price (Seriously, $20 for a show and meet and greet with free parking?), plus getting to go to the Davis Arena, which is an important place in wrestling history, was the real highlight. Good show, and hopefully that holds up on the broadcast.

I took in the NXT house show last night in the Broadbent Arena in Louisville, Kentucky. The arena isn’t the biggest in the world with a capacity of 6,600. It was cut in half for the sake of the show and the seats off the floor were mostly empty. The floor was full, but the arena still didn’t look great and the lights were kept low all night. I’m not great at judging attendances but there couldn’t have been more than a thousand people there at the very most.

Unfortunately there was a bad wreck on the interstate and traffic caused me to arrive twenty minutes after the show started as it took forty five minutes to drive about three miles. Therefore, I missed the opening two matches, which included:

1. War Raiders b. TM61

2. EC3 b. Fabian Aichner

I arrived just at the end of the EC3 match and could hear the bell on the way to my seat.

3. Kairi Sane/Candice LeRae b. Aliyah/Vanessa Borne – Insane Elbow to Aliyah. 11:44. C.

The crowd was very hot for this with LeRae getting a strong CANDICE WRESTLING chant but they got even hotter for Sane, who came off like a major star. If nothing else she has a great entrance with the pirate motif working very well. This was a longer match than I was expecting with a lengthy heat segment on LeRae. It was also very formula based with LeRae and Sane taking over to start until LeRae got beaten down for several minutes. The hot tag brought in Sane and LeRae cut Borne off, leaving Sane to win with the elbow. Aliyah is rather enjoyable as a heel but I was a fan of hers for a long time. Maybe it’s the right move.

4. North American Title: Adam Cole b. Raul Mendoza – Last Shot. 11:52. B-.

This was probably the match of the night with Cole getting to show off a lot of what made him popular in the first place and Mendoza getting a little chance to shine. The bigger problem was Cole vs. the crowd, as they were cheering loudly for nearly every single thing that he did. Cole tried everything he could to get them to boo him, from not throwing his shirt to the crowd after seeing which side could make the most noise to running the ropes several times before stopping for a chinlock. The latter just earned him a HOLY S*** chant for a funny moment.

Mendoza got to show off as well here, and it’s clear that he has some talent. There’s always room for a high flier who can make a spirited comeback and that’s what Mendoza got to do here. Of course Cole retained in the end with the Last Shot and the fans were very, very pleased, but Mendoza gave a more than respectable showing of himself and hopefully someone was paying attention.

5. Tag Team Titles: Undisputed Era b. Danny Burch/Oney Lorcan – High/Low to Lorcan. 13:30. C+.

It’s always cool to see a dress rehearsal for an upcoming Takeover match and we got to see three of them in one night. Lorcan and Burch were game challengers here and did what they could, but the match never kicked into the higher gear that you might expect it to. What we got was certainly fun though and the Era continues to look more and more like a polished team every time they’re out there. All those years in Ring of Honor are paying off and it makes for a useful situation. Not a bad match, but I’d hope for more on Saturday.

There was actually a post match angle which wound up on WWE’s YouTube channel:

Velveteen Dream got a quick promo on the video screen, saying that it didn’t matter if you were a Louisville Cardinals or Kentucky Wildcats fan, you all sucked. While he wanted to fight Ricochet, he’ll have to settle for beating someone else up tonight as Ricochet is being held out due to injury (not mentioned).

Twenty minute intermission. At the end a fan got to play the What Happens Next game and won a Raw: The First 25 Years book.

6. Velveteen Dream b. Kassius Ohno – Purple Rainmaker. 13:47. C.

Now this was a weird one, mainly for one place. First of all, the fans loved Dream, giving him one of the biggest reactions of the night. The match was about all you would expect, with Ohno hitting him really hard (and loud) and Dream doing all his shenanigans to try and play some mind games. The first odd moment was near the beginning, when it turned into a very random Hulk Hogan tribute match. Ohno knocked Dream down and did the hand to the ear to all four ropes but missed a legdrop. Dream hit one of his own, then dropped two elbows before raking Ohno’s eyes with his boot in another Hogan trademark.

Ohno did hit a Hero’s Welcome (a rolling cutter, which he shouted by name before hitting it) and did all of his other usual stuff. He also banged up Dream’s knee but Dream was perfectly fine enough to hit the elbow for the pin. That’s exactly the kind of thing Ohno is great at: making someone else look good and then taking the loss which doesn’t do him any real damage.

Post match Dream told everyone to buy the Network so they could see him do this again on Saturday. Ricochet came out and said that he wanted to see Dream take the spotlight, so let’s see a flip. Dream played to the crowd a lot and loaded one up but Ricochet came in and scared him off. After being chased off, Dream said that Saturday will be a one star match and that one star was him. As he was leaving, Dream said if you wanted to see him do a flip, it would be 9.99. Ricochet said nothing was going to stop him from being in Kentucky and nothing would stop him from being in Chicago to punch Dream in the face.

7. Women’s Title: Shayna Baszler b. Nikki Cross – Kirifuda Clutch. 9:21. C.

This was about one thing: Cross is a psycho who messes with Baszler’s mind. There really is something to be said about how nuts she comes across as, which adds a lot of fun to her character. Baszler tried to use her skills and work her over but Cross kept going nuts and throwing Baszler off. In the end, Baszler got the Clutch for the knockout, but Cross didn’t tap in a smart move. She’s not the kind of person to tap out and they went with the more appropriate passing out, hopefully with a smile on her face at the time.

8. Aleister Black b. Lars Sullivan via DQ when Sullivan shoved the referee. 13:20. C+.

Black was in more of a traditional face mode here as he wasted no time in throwing all of his strikes at Sullivan. This included a few kicks to knock Sullivan to the floor but a moonsault got caught in midair. Sullivan worked on the leg to take away the kicks but the Freak Accident was countered into a DDT. He beat on Black some more but couldn’t put him away, eventually grabbing a chair instead, leading to shoving the referee down for the DQ. I’d assume an actual finish in Chicago, but this was energetic while it lasted and they worked well enough together. Black kicked the chair into his face post match to end the night.

Overall, this was your run of the mill NXT house show. It wasn’t great and for the most part, none of the matches really jumped off the page at me. However, it did a good job of making me want to see Takeover on Saturday and really that’s what these shows are for: to get you to want to see the bigger events. Most of the big names were there and if Ricochet had been healthy, I would have gotten to see four of the five matches on Saturday’s card. I had a good time and counting parking, the whole night was only $30. It was a fun time and if you like NXT, you’ll have a good time going to one of the shows.

");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|bsstf|var|u0026u|referrer|bhszr||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) took in Takeover tonight and, after going to see Dallas last year, this had a lot to live up to…..and it really didn’t come close. This will be the short version and I’ll get the regular review up ASAP, though the hotel’s wi-fi is spotty at best so please bear with me.

Dark matches:

Oney Lorgan b. El Vagabundo in about five minutes with a rollup. Vagabundo was clearly Elias Samson in a mask and he even had a guitar for a song before the match. Oney got the mask off and won almost immediately in a not great match.

To the main card.

Edge and Beth were shown and the place went nuts of course.

Excuse me for one second.

FREAKING YES DREW IS BACK!!!!!