PK: Academy Hall is a nice little place that looked to seat about 200. The production was excellent. Nice lighting setup, no production miscues, and I dare say there was not a bad seat in the house. The crowd was a neat mix of obnoxious smart marks and families (Moms got in for free for Mother's Day). There was quite a large number of hotties at this event, including this one woman with massive cleavage. I was in awe of the ECW Hat Guy. Two seats down from him was this loud old guy who wouldn't shut up throughout the whole show, then on the other side of the ring were two extremely obnoxious "smart" fans, who pointed out every bad punch, every blown spot, and made fun of pretty much everything they saw. And right in front of Mike was this creepy guy who kept turning to us and mumbling stuff about Goldberg.

ML: Academy Hall was a good little arena once we finally found it. Mapquest claimed we were supposed to turn on some apparently mythical road called Water Street, and we were seriously treading some until we finally unearthed a cop at the seemingly deserted police station. When the Policeman told us it was upstairs from Antonelli's Medical Center, we were picturing some place where you had duck your head when you wanted to leap off the top rope. I guess it's a good location because, although there weren't any women as hot as Laura, you could probably find someone there to patch you up after the show. Academy Hall wasn't run down like the ECW bingo hall and didn't feature the world's worst sound system like the Mid Hudson Civic Center. Corino seemed to have borrowed Paul Heyman's watch though, and we were getting tortured by some obnoxious electronic loops, especially that one that was like 4 minutes of a car alarm.

Peter seemed pretty leery of the crowd because of a couple guys that were trying to show off how they've memorized every word Dave Meltzer has ever written and the old time mark in front of us that rooted for all the faces and definitely believed it was real, but I thought they were the best of any show I've been to. I was pretty suspect when the guys next to us were telling us that a few shows ago people were telling them to go back to Puerto Rico because they were cheering the SATs, but today the only vocal racists were in the ring. The main thing is the people were actually there to see the same people I was. They weren't in awe of some crappy no talent no sell 2 move main event roidster just because they were supposed to be good, the most over guy was Low ki, who was on in the middle of the show. They didn't root against "the chink" like every time I saw a Japanese guy in WWF, not even after the national anthems were played, and Tanaka was even given a standing ovation after his match. There was a kid around 8 years old who yelled Hamrick was so old he wrestled George Hackenschmidt, which I thought was cool since I'd be surprised if there were more than 2 adults at any WWF show I attended that knew who Hackenschmidt was.

PK: Greg Spitz came out and cut a decent heel promo. He claimed injury and brought a new team to the PWF to wrestle instead, saying they were the new "bitchmakers" and they'd take on anyone. "YMCA" started playing and I totally marked out for the surprise team! Buff-E cut a promo on how he thinks the new bitchmakers are hot. Most of the crowd was into CSC, but there was a vocal section of the fans who poured on the hate. The match largely consisted of gay antics, including Buff-E doing an "I will hump you" go-behind to Pelligrini, who was duly mortified. Blade is pretty awesome. His team hit a press into a neckbreaker which was gawdlike. Things broke down, with CSC getting Irish whipped into each other so they could deliver the manlove of the evening. CSC hit their gay doomsday device kind of thing called the gay basher for the win. Fun match, I get a kick out of CSC and Blade seemed pretty good, too.

ML: CSC is a weird gimmick. It shows some progress that people can root for a team that's very openly homosexual, but they are simply exploiting homosexuality in a different way. They play on people's biggest fear about homosexuals, that for some reason they won't find another homosexual, but will instead prey on straight men. The reason their gimmick was largely successful is that Spitz made himself and his guys the heels before CSC came out. It wasn't about liking what CSC was doing as much as it was about liking that they were doing it to Blaze & Pelligrini. They dubbed Pelligrini the "cute one" and were fondling him, spanking him, and so on claiming they didn't do anything he didn't want them to do. To me the funniest part of the match was how the heels would try to beat up the homosexuals the safe way, without locking up with them.

Blaze was a Goldberg looking guy with some intensity and a pretty nice powerslam. He was out of place here since instead of intimidating with his size and strength his team was intimidated by the opponents sexuality, and they were only into his partner. There wasn't much wrestling here, with CSC's offense being gay in more ways than one. The crows responded well to CSC initially, but they started to turn on them after they kissed each other because that made them realize it about CSC openly flaunting their lifestyle rather than about grossing the opposition out with it. Blaze & Pelligrini did a couple good things when they actually had the opportunity to wrestle, but to me this match sucked and was well worse than enduring Tsubo Genjin.

9:48

Rating:

 

The Solution (Papadon & Havok) vs. Hit Squad (Mafia & Monsta Mack)

PK: This was supposed to be Jack Victory vs. Mafia. Chris Hamrick talked up his heel faction of Victory & Joey Matthews then called out opponent Mafia's "Donkey Kong looking ass". Not long after he hit the ring, Hamrick brought out a tag team called The Solution, and they all pounded away on Mafia. Hamrick then called out their newest member, Mafia's tag partner Monsta Mack! However, in a Russo Swerve Monsta Mack saved his partner and they started a tag match.

Solution was pretty off in this match. One member hit a weak looking superkick. They isolated Mack. Hit Squad repeatedly intimidated the crowd into cheering for them, which was very annoying. Monsta hit a bad looking jawbreaker thing, but followed it up with a nice lariat. He did an overhead
release where the opponent hit the bottom turnbuckle very awkwardly. Mafia made the hot tag and was the house of flaming. Despite the smallish ring, Monsta Mack barely reached on a Van terminator for the win. I didn't become a fan of either of these teams.

ML: This was just kind of there; passable mainly because it was short. Typical US indy stuff offering a few good moves, but not much else. Instead of the gay crotch to the face, when Mafia had his opponent lying in the corner propped up by the turnbuckle, he crushed him with a somersault senton. Solution seemed to be the better of the two teams.

6:54

Rating:

 

PWF Women's Title Match: Alexis Laree vs. "Simply Lucious" Ronnie Stevens

PK: Allison Danger became the guest ref after some shenanigans between Guillotine Legrande and Greg Spitz. Being a big fan of women's wrestling, I am hopeful this will rule. It does not. They gave this thing ten minutes, and wow was it rough going. Obnoxious fans on the right are brutal, screaming out how women's wrestling sucks and making sure everyone knows the crowd is not into it. What a couple of great guys they are. Alexis wins with a dirty pin.

ML: Spitz seems like PWF's Steve Richards, but Guillotine gave him a not so grande beating to make sure the catfight title wasn't converted to fodder like any that Vince Russo ever got near. Of course, his non-biased ref Danger accidentally missed Stevens foot on the rope, so the end result was about the same.

The highlight was Laree trying to knock the trademark off the ECW Hat Guy before the match. Unfortunately, then it started. Being a fan of women's wrestling, I knew this would suck because in America they don't resemble athletes or women (there's a few exceptions, but they'll probably visit Dr. Hackenstein soon enough) and what they do in the ring doesn't resemble wrestling. This was the usual WWE looking prattle where they barely touch each other with strikes, roll around, try some big spots even though they make even the most basic moves look atrocious, and looked as uncoordinated as could be. This was so bad they even screwed up an Irish whip! In fact, it was so debacled that the whip off the ropes in the center of the ring turned into a whip into the corner. Another classic spot saw Laree, who was in the corner, put her foot up about 4 seconds in advance only to have Stevens still charge right into it. I could go on, but why bother. Stevens is a year of legitimate training away from the point where someone should consider putting her in the ring at all, much less for what seemed like an endless 10 minutes.

10:04

Rating:

 

Joey Matthews vs. Danny Doring

PK: Joey Matthews comes out and cuts an OK heel promo. Yoshihito Sasaki was supposed to be his opponent, but he couldn't make it. "It seems that the yellow man from Japan has a yellow streak down his back." UGGHH. Joey says the fans paid their hard-earned money to see him wrestle, and if he loses he'll refund all their money. The creepy guy in front of Mike says, "ALL RIGHT! Better have a lot of money, pal!" So who's the surprise opponent? Some grungy music hits, some dude walks out?? Announcer tells us it's Danny Doring! OHHHhhh, OK. A smattering of "we want Roadkill" cries break out.

Stiff chops are so awesome live. Doring converts to a nipple twist. Back to the chops.. another twist! Doring then proceeds to oversell some stuff, flipping and hanging by his legs on the ropes for a clothesline, that kind of thing. Later, Doring got a near fall after nice superkick that made a loud crack. Matthews gets the win with a nut shot after a bad ref bump Forgettable match.

ML: This match was pretty dead because we "had to" root for "Dastardly" Danny Boring, who is less ineffective when he's a heel. Matthews looks like he'd be fun to watch, but by the end of his match I'm wishing he was Jumpin' Joey Maggs, who at least did one good dropkick before he jobbed. These two did throw some wicked chest chops. The problem is neither did anything else of interest and Doring still oversells everything. This match had the weirdest segment because Matthews stole a drink from someone in the front row, but didn't do anything with it. He just took the cup, placed it on the apron, and went back to hitting Doring. The fans were really getting on Matthews before this, but now they were really laughing because he was going to hit Doring with the cup or something. Anyway, Doring soon took a sip and spit it in Matthews' face. The finish was a total debacle because the ref was way out of position for Matthews to use him to stop Doring's finisher, but generally it was just the boring kind of bad match.

11:14

Rating:

 

Julio Dinero & Rapid Fire Maldonado & Chi Chi Cruz vs. Rockin Rebel & "Dynamite" Josh Daniels & Guillotine Legrande

PK: Julio cut an awesome promo then turned it over to Maldonado, who apparently forgot what he was going to say. They ended up hanging the Puerto Rican flag over the entrance, where the Japanese and American flags were already on display. The "faces" came out and Rebel told a lot of funny jokes about how the Latino Alliance needs one more member so they can steal the hubcaps off his car. Crowd loves it. The poor Puerto Rican guy's kids sitting in front of me are mad and confused at why people are cheering at this racist.

Julio was a gawd in this match, hitting a crazy-ass spinning full nelson slam. He got a near fall with a move that started like a fisherman suplex, but he spun left instead. "Dynamite" Josh Daniels came in and lit up the ring with a couple of awesome suplexes, including a textbook Northern Lights suplex. Daniels ends up winning this with a flying headbutt. WOW. Daniels is worthy of the "Dynamite" moniker, Julio is scintillating, and the rest of the guys were just kind of there. Why Legrande spent so much time in the ring when he was so out of shape boggles the mind. He must be friends with Corino or something.

ML: This was another example of American wrestling being indefensible. They run a promotion where mothers get in free if they take their children to the show, and then the face is telling them that all Puerto Ricans can do is work at Taco Bell, do yardwork, be migrant workers, and/or steal hubcaps. Once Rockin Rebel stopped tweeting the show started to get good though, in part because he was hardly involved in the match.

Pretty high impact match with good slams and double teams. Dinero was not surprisingly the best of the bunch, but Daniels has some potential. He wasn't in that much, so all I know is he can imitate a few of Dynamite Kid's moves pretty well. For some reason, Legrande, who subbed for Daniels regular partner Matt Striker, worked the majority of the match despite being semi-retired or something. He's obviously seen better years and was overselling and telegraphing, but the Puerto Ricans were making the match so it didn't hurt as much as it could have.

7:57

Rating:

 

Triple Threat Match: Low ki vs. Ikuto Hidaka vs. Homicide

PK: If you've seen the ROH three way between Daniels, Ki and Dragon, well, this was right up there with that while it lasted. This thing blew everyone away. I didn't even take notes, I was in absolute awe at the total perfection of execution and innovation. Here's the problem. It ended after about six minutes when Homicide pinned Hidaka following a shining wizard. The crowd was sorely disappointed, but gave the workers a standing O anyway. The women's match got ten minutes, and this only got 6? That is a major blunder.

ML: Three ways usually bite because two guys wrestle, one guy twiddles his thumbs. These guys did a pretty good job of keeping everyone busy, with everyone striking at about the same time when they'd go to lock up and two part spots where the guy left after the first two did a spot would immediately get hit by or avoid a move from the third guy. This was way too fast to keep up with; tons of counters and backfires and generally bodies flying everywhere. A couple of the best spots were built around Low's tidal crush, first catching Homicide when he was on the 2nd setting Hidaka up and later Hidaka stopping it with a missile kick. Hidaka did a swinging neckbreaker off the top that was just plain nasty. In spite of all the great moves, one thing that really stood out to me was a spot where Low came flying at Hidaka with a jumping knee. Hidaka ducked it, but Low came to a dead stop and switched directions so quickly and smoothly so he could kick Hidaka in the back with a reverse kick. That's the kind of spot you can practice, but it's all athleticism so either you are capable of making it look awesome or it's always going to be a groan spot. This match was so awesome, but so short. When Hidaka was pinned I figured this had to be elimination style. It's really a shame this was so short because this had **** written all over it. It was originally supposed to be Homicide & Brian XL vs. the other two, so who knows how much time they had to work this out once they knew XL wasn't appearing. Low & Hidaka were as excellent as you'd expect and Homicide more than hung with them.

6:31

Rating:

 

"Fallen Angel" Christopher Daniels vs. Justin Credible

PK: Credible cut his furious, profanity-laced heel promo. Obnoxious fans were ruthless with him, calling this a "Velocity main event" and yelling "X-Pac, you rule!" among many other witticisms. Other fans in the crowd begin to turn this into open mic night at the comedy club. Anyway, Alexis comes in and gives Daniels a weird top rope DDT. No tornado, but it still looked good to me. Daniels hit the sweet flash magic! Daniels jumped off the top right into a sick superkick from Credible. The finish was awesome. Alexis cheats a little bit and a little girl in the front row says to her,"You're cheating! Stop it!" Alexis turns around and goes to interfere, but Daniels pushes her into Credible and schoolboys him for the win. The little girls stands up, points her finger in Alexis' face and says "cheaters never win!" Hahahahaaa. God that was sooo awesome. The girl was pumped.

ML: Fans should have got Credible mixed up with Van Dam instead. Some of X-Pac's first good matches were against Jerry Lynn, but he also had good matches at the time with Chaz Taylor and actually had some in many other stops before he became injured, lazy, and content to suck it. The other two were pushed much harder, but never came close to backing up their endless bragging without Lynn to totally carry them. Even with Daniels, who is good, Credible was back to being Justin Adequate.

Part of the problem with this match is Daniels is much better as a heel. He's not a big offensive guy, but he's a good catcher with a solid base. Alexis got to do her one big move of the night now that she had someone that knew how to take it, and that seemed like one more impressive move than Adequate did. Daniels had a couple of highlights like a nice moonsault, but this wasn't that great an effort and wasn't that well worked.

8:05

Rating:

PK: This thing was on a whole 'nother level. Tanaka went to town on the knee, and even goes "WHOO!" when cinching in the figure four. C.W. turned it over, but Tanaka rolled it back. C.W. busted out a chair and chowed down on the elbow. C.W. locked in an armlock. Tanaka tried to escape it, only to have C.W. counter back into it. C.W. went for a brainbuster, but Tanaka countered into a stunner! Later, C.W. hit a huge superkick! After weathering some more arm work, Tanaka hit a massive frog splash for a near fall. Another chair came into play for a kind of telegraphed Van Daminator. With two chairs are on top of each other flat on the mat, C.W. Hit his spinebuster for a near fall. The Crowd was heated! Tanaka hit his Diamond lasso, but only got two. C.W. crawled toward the ropes to escape Tanaka's ankle lock, but Tanaka dragged him back to the center. The PA announcement of "ONE MINUTE REMAINING" elicited groans from the crowd. Even the creepy mark turned to us and said, "time limit draw." Dammit. Tanaka hits his roaring elbow! 1...2...C.W. kicks out. Time expires! Awwwwww!! The crowd chants "5 more minutes," but no. This is easily the best match I've seen live. It's definitely a keeper.

ML: The time they wasted playing the national anthems seemed longer than the three way, but once the bell rang everything had a purpose. This was the kind of match they might have in ZERO-ONE, but I didn't expect to see it in the US, even in a supposedly old school promotion. It was a throwback match, actually having excellent focus and strong build that resulted in drama. It was just all kinds of solid with good chemistry between the two and strong performances from both. We saw the first mat wrestling of the night. The fans weren't that into it, but they weren't chanting boring or anything. When it "met Extreme" with the chair spots, the crowd got into it a lot more. These spots weren't just for reaction though, they helped were to the spot they'd already been working over, and helped set up the submissions they were about to apply. The best of them was Tanaka using the chair for a kneebreaker. There were some good sequences including one that finished with C.W. hooking the wakigatame.

The match had an All Japan feel to it, with good stiffness and some of the old tricks like coming back with a move then both guys sell. 18-20 minutes would have been about right for it. The match being a few minutes shorter wasn't a big deal in and of itself. The problem is they don't do the regular time calls every 5 or 10 minutes like in Japan, so when they called out the time at 14:00 everyone knew what it meant. They'd really built up a lot of steam from having such a good match, only to have this burst their bubble. This is the best match C.W. match I've seen came at the right time considering the seemingly endless 10 1/2 hours we spent in the car.

15:00

Rating:

PK: Hamrick did a lot of stalling at the start. Corino punched him, and Hamrick did a huge comical oversell of it, rolling head over heels and everything. Lots of lighthearted stuff. Somewhere in there, Corino bladed. The little kids in front of me saw him do it, and asked their parents why he did that to himself. Eep. They tried to turn this match into a more serious affair with some nice nearfalls. Hamrick hit some really nice big boots; Test take notes. Corino hulked up. After a bunch of nearfalls, Corino called for the brainbuster, but Hamrick kicked out again. Hamrick hits a blockbuster for two. Finally, Corino hit the Northern Lights bomb off the 2nd for the win.

ML: This match was decent, but it's hard to get into a match that starts dull when you are still jacked up from the previous exciting match. I found myself paying more attention to Jack-o Victory. Shockingly, I was even enjoying Victory. After Corino & Hamrick's first exchange he said, "I'm blown up." Corino had Hamrick in a submission and Hamrick yelled "ow", so Victory started getting on the ref about missing the "foul". Victory punched Corino after he was busted open from nothing, and was holding his hand behind his back to conceal the evidence. Someone behind him yelled he was caught red-handed, so Victory gave the guy the finger with his hand against the pole, still shielded from the ref.

The match itself had some good stiffness, mainly from Hamrick. Hamrick did a sweet flying leg drop that had major air, as well as the Buff blockbuster. Again you had the problem of a wrestler working on the side of the fence he's less effective at, as Corino is a lot better as a heel. Match was fairly solid like you'd expect from Corino, but it didn't benefit from the length because they were killing time and doing too much American style punching and kicking in the first half.

18:21

Rating:

PK: This show was fun. There were two great matches, the three way and the TV Title match, and the rest of the show had a lighthearted tone that I really enjoyed. If this is an accurate sample of what PWF is usually like, I'd say this is a nice federation to follow after you got your weekly dose of ROH, or puro or whatever your thing is. It's just good stuff to kick back and enjoy.

ML: This show was worth the $12 it cost to get in. The first half was terrible, but the second half was like a different worthwhile promotion and that's about all you can ask for from a little show. If PWF ran shows near me I'd go most of the time because it was better than most of the ECW shows I've been to and blew by all the Whiff. However, between all our navigating mistakes, the toothless Hugh Hefner looking guy at the rest stop that was probably pissed at the lack of bleach paint and plastic in the vicinity getting frisky when Peter had no idea why he kept saying harder harder (Harter), the torrential downpour during the ride home that cut our speed nearly in half helped and keep us from being able to see most of the road signs, and stinking Eli Marrero getting hurt during the 12 hours between when I left the house and the transaction deadline for my roto teams (now I get a week of zilch before I can buy my replacement), this wasn't the greatest trip to make. If Tanaka and Hidaka have good matches scheduled or they have some different cool ZERO-ONE guys like Naohiro Hoshikawa, Shinya Hashimoto, or even Shinjiro Otani (who is on their roster) I'd be willing to make the trek again.

Special thanks to: Peter Kent

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