wrestling / Video Reviews
Csonka Reviews Pro Wrestling Guerrilla’s BOLA 2014 (Night Three)
Image Credit: PWG
Loading...Introduction
As a reminder, this will not be another traditional recap, but instead it will be a mash up of the Rs, Instant Analysis and my usual Twitter ramblings I would do during the shows; completely uncensored and as the ideas flow unfiltered to the old keyboard. Remember, this is a review; and I am here to review the show. As always, I encourage discussion and even disagreement, just do so in a respectful manner. I will be doing the review for Raw and most PPVs and iPPVs going forward.
Note: Over the past few years, as I have covered a ton of PPV, people have always asked why I haven’t covered Pro Wrestling Guerrilla’s Battle of Los Angeles Tournament. I have watched a lot of older PWG, but eventually moved away from it. It was never anything against PWG; it usually came down to time, money and the fact that it wasn’t available via iPPV. But over the past few years, I have noticed that many consider the tournament one of the “major shows” of the wrestling year. With that being the case, I have opted to include it into my coverage of the year’s major shows. Please keep in mind, like Lucha; I watch a limited amount of PWG. I am going in knowing the performers, but not a lot of specifics on all of their histories in PWG. It is up to the commentary and the wrestlers to tell me the story and to get me invested in the product.
Pro Wrestling Guerrilla’s BOLA 2014 (Night Three)
OFFICIAL RESULTS
~ Johnny Gargano defeated Candice LeRae in a quarterfinal match [**¾]
~ Ricochet defeated TJ Perkins in a quarterfinal match [***]
~ Trevor Lee defeated Michael Elgin in a quarterfinal match [**½]
~ Kenny Omega defeated Matt Sydal in a quarterfinal match [***½]
~ Roderick Strong defeated AJ Styles by DQ in a quarterfinal match [***½]
~ Kyle O’Reilly defeated Zack Sabre, Jr. in a non-title quarterfinal match [***¾]
~ Mount Rushmore (Adam Cole and The Young Bucks) defeated ACH, Brian Myers, and Chris Sabin [***¾]
~ Johnny Gargano defeated Trevor Lee to advance to the finals [***½]
~ Ricochet defeated Kenny Omega to advance to the finals [****]
~ Chris Hero, Joey Ryan, Rich Swann, Chuck Taylor, and Willie Mack defeated Biff Busick, Drew Gulak, Cedric Alexander, Bobby Fish, and Tommaso Ciampa [***¼]
~ Ricochet defeated Johnny Gargano and Roderick Strong to win the 2014 Battle of Los Angeles [***¾]
2014 Battle of Los Angeles Quarter Final Round Match: Johnny Gargano vs. Candice LeRae: Gargano was another great choice to work with LeRae. He’s a great wrestler, but his size won’t overwhelm her and will allow things to be believable. Early on Gargano didn’t want to punch was LeRae and was content to use his grappling and size advantage to take out LeRae. But when LeRae was more than he anticipated, he was more than willing to step things up. Gargano won with the Hurts Don’t It in about 9-minutes. This was a fine opener, but the finish came across as botched as people thought LeRae kicked out at 2. This led to a deflating feeling, following good work by both.
2014 Battle of Los Angeles Quarter Final Round Match: TJ Perkins vs. Ricochet: Commentary played up the fact that Ricochet is in a match with someone as fast as he is, which is a rarity. Perkins focused on the submission work, and specifically the left arm of Ricochet early. Unfortunately he abandoned it late, which made no sense. Also, the crowd never really bought into Perkins’ near falls, and neither did I. Ricochet won at about 10-minutes with the Benadryller. This was another fine match, but you can feel the change in the feel of the matches as they are setting up for the guys to work multiple times.
2014 Battle of Los Angeles Quarter Final Round Match: Trevor Lee vs. Michael Elgin: On commentary, Excalibur and Joey Ryan were joking early about “getting your shit in” and that was the feeling I got from a lot of this match. Elgin has to do his power stuff and hit the other guy hard just because, and while he was so busy doing that; they really didn’t take the time to build an effective wrestling match. And due to that, I never got into what they were trying to do. Hitting hard, MOVEZ, play to the crowd for cheers, and repeat. Word is that this was a match that upset ROH, because Elgin was champion and lost here. That I don’t care about. They did a lot of shit, it appeared that they were (eventually) trying to tell the story of Lee overcoming the odds of the bigger competitor, but this simply didn’t click for me at all. I find myself more and more not getting into Michael Elgin matches. I know a lot of people that enjoyed this, which is cool; I just never got into it at all. Lee wins at 13-minutes with the roll up.
2014 Battle of Los Angeles Quarter Final Round Match: Kenny Omega vs. Matt Sydal: They worked the basic back and forth early, until Sydal took out the knee of Omega with a dropkick. Really fun match between these two, they worked in Omega’s wacky comedy with some great displays of athleticism, a nice pace and the crowd was into both guys, because there was a feeling either could easily win. During this match I felt as if the things that they did mattered and you could feel the match build through out. Omega scored the pin with a driver out of the electric chair (not Croyt’s Wrath) at about 14–minutes. That was a good pick me up match.
2014 Battle of Los Angeles Quarter Final Round Match: Roderick Strong vs. AJ Styles: These guys should have a great match. So the finish was the old smoking gun with the chair ala Eddie Guerrero finish. On one hand I absolutely hate that kind of finish in a tournament like this, but on the other hand when you bring in so many top independent guys, you have a lot of masters to serve. With Styles being the IWGP Champion here, he wasn’t doing any clean jobs, and I get that. I personally feel that having Styles in the tournament strengthened the field, and even if he didn’t light the world on fire, it worked from that aspect. Strong of course worked the back breakers, and some submissions to ground Styles. Strong also came off as a completely unlikable dick here, which is the goal with him between his work and the commentary. They did some damn fine work here, and Strong had the crowd buying the gut buster/sick kick combo as the finish. I felt that was great work by him, because earlier they weren’t buying the near falls. The finish came off fine because it played into the persona that they had been pushing with Strong thus far (especially on commentary), but the live crowd wasn’t pleased, which I also understand. I need to see them have another match soon where they can go all out, I was really enjoying that
2014 Battle of Los Angeles Quarter Final Round Match: Kyle O’Reilly vs. Zack Sabre, Jr.: Both guys have been having a great weekend, especially Sabre, so I am expecting good things if they get time. Both guys have a style influenced by MMA and love to work a technical style, but won’t shy away from strikes. One of the benefits with this style, and there are a few when done right, is that when they bust out cool suplex or high impact move, it feels as if it means so much more because you haven’t watched 20 suplexes prior to that. Both guys worked armbars during the match, but I felt as if the sell gin got dodgy down the stretch; again, if you’re going to spend so much time on that you can’t abandon that if you’re working that serious, real sport style. O’Reilly won at about 16-minutes after brutalizing Sabre and locking in the triangle choke. Not on the level of the match with Cole, but another good outing for Sabre, and I’d call it the best match on the show thus far. Sabre has been the star of the weekend. Post match, Strong attacks and takes out O’Reilly with a dump suplex onto chairs followed by the Strong Hold. They let us know later that O’Reilly will not compete in the finals. Strong has been booked as a spectacular asshole this weekend, and taking out O’Reilly to give himself a better chance of winning was a nice addition. Also, you don’t have to protect the champion to the finals and have a built in title match later on when O’Reilly wants revenge.
Six-Man Tag Team Match: Adam Cole & The Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson) vs. ACH, Brian Myers, & Chris Sabin: Ring announcer’s revenge tonight as Cole held him for superkicks, but he moved and Cole got laid out. He then hit a double clothesline to the Bucks and gave them crotch chops. From that you knew this would be fun, and it was. This was designed to do nothing but provide a fun buffer match between the tournament matches. Myers did the Normal Smiley style body slams on the heels, then his teammates. He tried to do it on the ref, who countered into a sunset flip and Cole counted the near fall. Crowd loved it. ACH crowd surfed and ate superkicks, we got lots of dives, a tower of doom spot, ACH and the Bucks doing 450s at the same time and of course, superkicks. Cal it a car crash match, call it a spotfest, but I feel that this is exactly the type of match the show needed to break up the seriousness of the tournament, while still giving the crowd a very entertaining outing in a very different way. That’s the great thing about pro wrestling, the variety in which you can present the art and make people enjoy. The Bucks and Cole won at about 12-minutes.
2014 Battle of Los Angeles Semi-Final Round Match: Johnny Gargano vs. Trevor Lee: I felt that Lee did a really good job of selling of selling the wear and tear of the tournament and especially his last match with Elgin. Not every match needs to be sold (in this format) like you’ve been through hell, but the match with Elgin saw Lee get the piss beat out of him, so the selling of that here was appreciated. From what I have seen this weekend, I feel they have done good work building up Lee. The win over Steen, then Alexander and Elgin were all important. Gargano has been great the last almost three years now (the EVOLVE/DGUSA stuff specifically) and the fact that Lee had a strong and competitive match here adds to the work they’ve done. There was the great spot of kicks, counters and reversals at about 9-minutes in, which ended with Lee hitting a sweet deadlift German suplex for a great near fall. I feel that goes into the build of Lee that I talked about, they bought the near fall there, and that was cool. They also had another great near fall when Lee hit this great cross body counter (he basically catches the guy and moonsaults back all in one move) and then hit the orange crush. It did feel a bit slow at times, and the crowd wasn’t into this as much as I would have hoped. This was another quality (but not great) match that with a bit of tightening up (and maybe that would have kept the crowd a bit more involved) this comes across better. Gargano won at about 15-minutes via submission.
2014 Battle of Los Angeles Semi-Final Round Match: Kenny Omega vs. Ricochet: Omega was booked strong here in his loss. He controlled the majority of the match, Ricochet played the valiant face and survived the attacks of Omega. Ricochet eventually was able to fight back and survived Croyt’s Wrath to hit the 630 and then the Benadryller for the win at about 19-minutes. It was another good match, but a bit too long as I felt they could have trimmed a few minutes. The work was really good, and it was another good match on a show that’s been good. But it never quite got to that next level I feel they would have had in a non-tournament match, which happens when you have so many tournament matches in one night. With all of that being said, this was still very, very enjoyable.
Ten-Man Tag Team Match: Cedric Alexander, Biff Busick, Tommaso Ciampa, Bobby Fish, & Drew Gulak vs. Chris Hero, Willie Mack, Joey Ryan, Rich Swann, & Chuck Taylor : again, I appreciate the thought and placement of the match to break up the tournament format and to give the crowd a break from that. While I didn’t like this as much as the other tag match, I appreciated it because it was fun and also different with the mix of technical wrestling, high flying and slow motion stuff. Things like that, done in small doses, can be a lot of fun, but at the some time some will loathe it. The crowd was into this a lot, like the other tag match, likely in part due to this (at the time) being Mack’s farewell match. This was a tremendously wacky and fun match.
2014 Battle of Los Angeles Final Round Match: Johnny Gargano vs. Ricochet vs. Roderick Strong: I loved this match on paper. First of all O’Reilly is out so you don’t have to protect him booking wise in the match, and you have a built in match with Strong coming out of the tournament, and then if someone else wins you have two matches set for O’Reilly. Gargano was THE GUY in the WWNLive universe for over two years, having great match after great match and really coming into his own as a performer. Ricochet is having an awesome year and also continues to grow and evolve as a performer. As then you add in Strong, one of the most consistent performers on the independent scene for the past five years or so. The story was that Strong was the freshest man, due to having a bye when he took out O’Reilly, while Ricochet and Gargano had to wrestle two times tonight. Strong controlled the majority of the match, using the traditional keep one guy on the floor while working over the other guy. This played into the fact that he’s fresher than the others, and made sense. They thankfully we’re slaves to the formula, and went into some fun encounters involving all three men. They then went into desperation mode, and started to unload before they had nothing left to win the tournament. The closing stretch was really good, but at the end of the day this was a really good, but not great main event. Ricochet won with the Benadryller in around 15-minutes. They teased all weekend that Strong was always the bridesmaid and never the bride, as he had made it to two BOLA finals without a win, and was denied again here. They played off of that well with the post match attack of Ricochet, and the classic destroying of the trophy angle. I wish Ricochet would have sold some anger in his post match promo about that, because without that, Ricochet, by winning BOLA, the NJPW Best of the Super Juniors, DGUSA’s Open the Freedom Gate Championship and Dragon Gate’s Open the Dream Gate Championship has made a huge case for the 2014 Wrestler of the Year Award.
“Byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye Felicia!”
I’d certainly recommend picking up the full three days. Day two is a real gem of a show, and at the end of the year, day three may be an important footnote for Ricochet’s Wrestler of the Year candidacy.
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