1/8/17
Rob Lias vs. Dan Magee 7:03
Josh Bodom vs. Eddie Dennis 10:45
Josh Wall & Kurtis Chapman vs. James Castle & Sha Samuels 1:43
Dave Mastiff vs. Tyler Bate 13:27
Trent Seven vs. Zack Gibson 11:46
RevPro British Tag Title Match: Charlie Sterling & Joel Redman vs. James Davis & Rob Lynch 16:32
Zack Sabre Jr. vs. RJ Singh 14:54
Marty Scurll & Pete Dunne & Travis Banks vs. Shane Strickland & Ryan Smile & Will Ospreay 25:27
4/13/17
Chris Brookes & Travis Banks vs. Martin Stone & Sami Callihan 11:57
Jay White vs. Angelico 13:44
Hirooki Goto vs. Zack Gibson 13:46
Hiromu Takahashi vs. Marty Scurll 15:02
RevPro British Cruiserweight Title Match: Will Ospreay vs. Josh Bodom 16:25
No Disqualification Match: James Castle vs. Sha Samuels 6:09
RevPro British Heavyweight Title Match: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. KUSHIDA 26:56
Kenny Omega & Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson vs. Lio Rush & Ryan Smile & Shane Strickland 20:26
Zack Gibson vs. Dan Magee 11:01
Timothy Thatcher vs. Gideon Grey 10:21
James Davis & Rob Lynch vs. Josh Wall & Kurtis Chapman 11:32
Marty Scurll vs. Luke Phoenix 19:00
Ryan Smile vs. Travis Banks 12:43
Dave Mastiff vs. Eddie Dennis 14:52
Interim RevPro British Cruiserweight Title Match: Josh Bodom vs. Oliver Carter 8:24
Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Mike Bailey 22:22. This is the kind of match I want to see on a small show. They didn't kill themselves early, but they didn't need to because they told a good story, combining old school technical wrestling with a modern MMA striker vs. grappler foundation. If anything, they actually went harder than they needed to trying to make it a great match late, adding a lot of excitement but somewhat negating the story they were telling, even if the finish was right. They approached this like an MMA match with 4th degree taekwondo blackbelt trying to use his movement to get a big kick in, while grappling ace Sabre tried to get hold of him so he could get into his submission game. People who just want action will hate this opening because in a sense, nothing was really happening, but that lack of progress was the story, and they told it fairly realistically, actually using something resembling the footwork, entries & exits you'd see in a real fight rather than just standing around & letting each other do what they wanted. The match took off when Bailey bowed after breaking cleanly on the ropes only to have Sabre kick him in the chest. An annoyed & disrespected Bailey then fired up & threw a massive flurry middle kicks, landing strike after strike until Sabre was forced to abandon his mat aspirations & fire back to defend himself. Bailey had really good impact on his strikes today & was overwhelming Sabre in standup until he got caught with Sabre's requisite leg catch trip out of the leapfrog & Sabre began debilitating Bailey's left leg so he couldn't kick him anymore. This totally turned the match, and set up the story of the 2nd half where Bailey kept trying to push through to mixed results. Bailey did his best selling in the few minutes after the injury occurred, hobbling around & grimacing if not falling after every kick. Sabre got an ankle lock in the bleachers, and when Bailey tried to climb down the steps to reenter the ring, his leg gave out & he tumbled down them. As Bailey's health continued to degenerate, Sabre was no longer apprehensive to strike with Bailey, and began winning even these exchanges. They started to lose me when Sabre challenged Bailey to the usual annoying 1 for 1 exchange to determine who could stand there & let the opponent hit them harder, but the match picked up tremendously when they sped up the exchange & finished it with Bailey eating a penalty kick but doing a kip up into a tornado enzuigiri. From here, Bailey did all his highlight reel stuff to make the match memorable and we can debate how much of it was just having stuff to do. The more interesting debate would be how we wanted Bailey to sell, but whether it was too much in the middle or not enough toward the end, what we didn't get here was consistency as Bailey was practically crippled throught the body then fired up & was hitting double tornados & a corkscrew running shooting star press so the stretch run would be lights out. Granted this was to set up him reinjuring the knee on his triangle moonsault, but he still reentered 1st & tried a shooting star press only to run into Sabre's European uppercut. Bailey got his ultuma weapon in, but Sabre ducked a soccer ball kick & went into his orienteering with napalm death to finally do Bailey's leg in & force him to tap. The story was stronger early, and there was some great crazy action late even if it didn't always serve it. In any case, I just loved the inevitability of this match. Bailey could will himself to continue & throw all his somewhat compromised offense at Sabre, but Sabre just had too many options & eventually was going to break Bailey at his weak point. ***3/4
Jay White vs. Sami Callihan 12:04
Martin Stone vs. Jeff Cobb 10:36
Gideon Grey vs. Swoggle 2:06
Marty Scurll vs. Ricochet 16:42
Josh Bodom vs. David Starr 12:27
Will Ospreay vs. Rey Fenix 12:41
Ryan Smile & Shane Strickland vs. Brian Cage & Michael Elgin 16:18
RevPro British Heavyweight Title Match: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Penta El Zero M 15:42
British J Cup First Round Match: Marty Scurll vs. Tiger Mask 11:56
British J Cup First Round Match: Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Josh Bodom 2:21
British J Cup First Round Match: KUSHIDA vs. Kyle O'Reilly 21:27. With two matches in NJ & two matches in the RPW, we can now pretty easily categorize the KUSHIDA/O'Reilly matches by saying the former are must see match of the year level encounters while the later are fun technical matches that lack the intensity & all out effort. This certainly doesn't mean you should skip the UK ones, these guys have so much talent & their styles mesh so beautifully they're still better than the best match on most shows anywhere in the world even when they aren't trying to make the encounter anything truly special. Though they didn't do as many high spots here, the grappling was excellent, and with so much focus on it, you believed O'Reilly would win with a leglock or KUSHIDA would win with an armlock. The match wasn't always outstanding, but the action was consistent & really solid with very little waste. Due to it being such a hard fought serious match that went back & forth so many times, the drama really began to escalate as the match progressed. Highlights included KUSHIDA springboarding off a chair to dropkick O'Reilly who was sitting on another chair, O'Reilly countering KUSHIDA's moonsault with a triangle, & O'Reilly turning KUSHIDA's Back to the Future into a guillotine. The finish saw KUSHIDA hit a crazy hoverboard lock off the 2nd, which O'Reilly eventually fought his way back to his feet on & was kneeing a prone KUSHIDA repeatedly as KUSHIDA was still fighting for the submission until KUSHIDA switched it up, catching a knee & going into his Back to the Future for the win. I liked this finish because while KUSHIDA won with a big power move rather than a submission, the submission allowed him to be opportunistic in finding the perfect spot to hit a move in that was a little out of the scope of what they were generally doing here (in this case, I would have liked it more had he not failed on it earlier) in to get the kill shot. ***3/4
British J Cup First Round Match: Will Ospreay vs. Ryusuke Taguchi 13:26
Sho Tanaka & Yohei Komatsu vs. Josh Wall & Kurtis Chapman 9:33
RevPro British Tag Team Title Match: Chris Brookes & Travis Banks vs. BUSHI & Hiromu Takahashi 8:30
Tomohiro Ishii vs. Matt Riddle 11:47. Energetic Ishii sprint exchanging strikes & suplexes until someone caved in. Riddle is one of those wrestlers I'm not sure whether to be impressed or unimpressed by. He's such a good athlete that he's very far ahead of the curve for his 2+ years experience level in pro wrestling at the time of this match, but what's frustrating is he just adopted all the bad habits of pro wrestling rather than carrying anything over from what would have been a 10-3 MMA career had two of his wins not been overturned due to his reefer madness. Seeing someone who is a quality striker in a real situation roll out one of the most embarassing series of middle kicks you'll ever see here & be blown out of the water by the striking of someone whose athletic background is low level baseball is somewhat tough to take, but Riddle is a game opponent who, for the most part, fit into the very narrow scope of what Ishii tries to do quite well. There's not a lot of depth here, but this is the kind of undercard match I want to see, it's short, but that's fine since both guys really bring it for the time they have, and thus the match is intense, the outcome seems somewhat meaningful, and the brevity seems reasonable given the level of violence. That being said, I thought the finish was rather uninspiring with Ishii just kicking out of 3 big Riddle moves then straight up winning with his vertical drop brainbuster. ***
British J Cup Final Four Way Match: Jushin Thunder Liger vs. KUSHIDA vs. Marty Scurll vs. Will Ospreay 23:00
6/28/15 Cockpit Theatre: Will Ospreay vs. Marty Scurll 18:37
9/5/15 Cockpit Theatre, RevPro British Cruiserweight Title Match: Will Ospreay vs. Josh Bodom 14:23
8/17/17
Martin Stone vs. Eddie Dennis 13:02
Street Fight: Bully Ray vs. Sha Samuels
Zack Gibson vs. Dalton Castle 12:06
Jay White vs. Travis Banks 12:43
Jay Briscoe & Mark Briscoe vs. Ryan Smile & Shane Strickland 18:56
RevPro British Cruiserweight Title Match: Josh Bodom vs. Jushin Thunder Liger 7:14
RevPro British Heavyweight Title Match: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Chris Brookes 12:22
Marty Scurll vs. Rey Mysterio 19:16
12/8/17
RevPro British Cruiserweight Title Five Way Match: Morgan Webster vs. Kurtis Chapman vs. David Starr vs. El Phantasmo vs. Ryan Smile 11:33
Jinny vs. Martina 8:48
RevPro British Tag Title Match: Trent Seven & Tyler Bate vs. Josh Bodom & Zack Gibson 10:38
ROH World Title Match: Cody vs. Jay Lethal 25:26
Pete Dunne vs. Eddie Dennis 14:54
Martin Stone vs. Dave Mastiff 7:53
RevPro British Heavyweight Title Match: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Matt Riddle 16:58
Marty Scurll & Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson vs. Chris Brookes & Travis Banks & Flip Gordon 24:44
Ryan Smile & Shane Strickland vs. Josh Wall & Kurtis Chapman
Jeff Cobb vs. Mike Bailey 13:40
Jack Swagger vs. Dave Mastiff
RevPro Undisputed British Cruiserweight Title Match: Josh Bodom vs. Bubblegum vs. David Starr
Rob Lias vs. Sha Samuels
Will Ospreay vs. Zack Sabre Jr. 18:48
Gideon Grey & Rishi Ghosh vs. Josh Wall & Kurtis Chapman
Zack Gibson vs. Mike Bailey
Jinny vs. Veda Scott
Morgan Webster vs. Josh Bodom
David Starr vs. Eddie Dennis
Ryan Smile vs. El Phantasmo
RevPro British Tag Title Match: Chris Brookes & Travis Banks vs. Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis
RevPro British Cruiserweight Title Three Way Match: Josh Bodom vs. Ryan Smile vs. BUSHI
Gedo & Toru Yano vs. Gideon Grey & No Fun Dunne
Matt Riddle vs. El Desperado
Tetsuya Naito vs. Marty Scurll 15:32
Yuji Nagata vs. Zack Gibson
Chris Brookes & Travis Banks vs. Rocky Romero & YOSHI-HASHI
Tomohiro Ishii vs. Keith Lee 15:42. Lee is your basic a pre steriod era offensive lineman turned regional pro wrestler. He's not in any way inept, but he's been wrestling 12 years and only has the most remedial skill & move set plus a moonsault. Ishii did his best to lead him through this really basic match that was just striking & a few simplistic high impact moves where Lee just stood there & threw him around, but was really off himself. Ishii seemed to struggle to reach up to hit Lee, in any case, he had no zip & no impact on his strikes today, and violence minus impact doesn't really work. The announcers were shilling for this to the most annoying & ridiculous purportions, everything was the biggest (insert move name) ever even though Lee is a lot closer to Roy Nelson than Giant Gonzales. Match was adequate, but it doesn't even warrant consideration for Ishii's top 100 matches, so let's not confuse this with Ishii/Shibata.
Hirooki Goto & Will Ospreay vs. Minoru Suzuki & Zack Sabre Jr. 22:20. Ospreay was set to challenge Sabre for the British title on tomorrow's show, so Suzuki-gun used the standard 80's tag template of isolating him & trying to take him out. The focus should have been on the Brits, but Suzuki is such a dominant force that he takes over the match, as usual. That's not a bad thing, of course, since Suzuki is so good, crafty, and annoying in the way a quality heel should be, and did a good job of guiding Sabre through all the double team sequences. To an extent, Suzuki's methodical pace made the Ospreay/Sabre sequences seem all the more explosive & dynamic, but those amazing fast counterladen sequences were what we wanted, and they were mostly saved for tomorrow. Suzuki & Goto did some good stuff early, Suzuki throwing the low kicks when Goto wanted to lock up is great because it's both clever & dickish, but some of Suzuki's flatfooted strike exchanges were trecherous with guys just standing there for 20 seconds waiting to be hit. If Suzuki vs. Goto and even Ospreay was characterized by a lot of standing around, Ospreay vs. Sabre was perpetual motion. What I love about their work is their ability to maintain the same pace while combing styles. When Suzuki & Goto were striking, that's what they were doing & everyone knew what was coming from a mile away. What's so great about Sabre & Ospreay is a sequence starts as one thing, and then delves into many others, with moves of all styles coming from any angle or setup. Right off the bat, Sabre turned a rope running sequence into a mat sequence when he caught Ospreay's leg on his leapfrog & tried to go into a bow & arrow, but Ospreay spun out & tried a high kick, but Sabre ducked & tried a snapmare, but Ospreay landed on his feet & hit a dropkick. The match picked up tremendously when Ospreay finally managed to tag out with an energized segment from Suzuki & Goto, but Ospreay & Sabre still seemed to be in fast forward, getting about 10 strikes in to Suzuki & Goto's 1 before going into Sabre's submission work & Ospreay's high flying to close it out. Ospreay ultimately pinned Sabre to set up tomorrow's challenge. Although the match was nowhere near the level of that title match, it fully succeeded in its goal of making the audience eager for it without spoiling too much prematurely. ***1/4
Chris Brookes & Kid Lykos & Travis Banks vs. Gedo & Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI
Toru Yano vs. Zack Gibson
Josh Bodom vs. Rocky Romero
Tomohiro Ishii vs. Dave Mastiff
RevPro British Cruiserweight Title Match: Ryan Smile vs. El Desperado
BUSHI & Tetsuya Naito vs. Keith Lee & Yuji Nagata
Minoru Suzuki vs. Matt Riddle 15:03
RevPro British Heavyweight Title Match: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Will Ospreay 25:00. What's so great about Sabre & Ospreay working together is they want to do different things, Will wants fast paced aerial sequences & Zach wants to chain submissions, but can also do each other's style so well they are able to meld both styles together seemlessly into a chain wrestling spectacle while at the same time using their individual styles to tell the story of who is purportedly in control of the match. I say purportedly because the match is countering, recountering, then countering the recounter, so for the most part most advantages are momentary & fleeting. Will can be said to be winning when they are running & jumping around & Zach can be said to be winning when things have slowed down & they are twisting & contorting each others bodies, but most of the time a flying move leads to a submission hold or vice versa. I mean, their early match stuff included Sabre finding an opening for a flying triangle, but Will cartwheeling out into a dropkick, and they were able to blend the styles is crazy ways such as Will missing his burning star press then Zach slingshotting himself into the ring and catching an armbar as he landed in a forward roll. The whole match wasn't dashing around as Sabre would pretzel Ospreay with his traditional British technical wrestling & put the boots to him while he was prone since he's the heel, with Will answering with some strikes of his own, but they established early on that they weren't going to just pad the match with a lot of the usual stalling, with Sabre scurrying back into the ring & cracking Ospreay with a penalty kick when Ospreay did his pose after faking the dive. Ospreay has some of the most spectacular twisting, turning, spinning high flying moves ever performed, but this match was awesome because almost nothing was done in a vacuum. They had to outmaneuver & out react the opponent to actually hit anything, and both have amazing speed & body control so their entries, exits, and bumps are often even more awe inspiring than the holds themselves. The match never felt like a stunt show because everything developed out of sequences, & thus felt opportunistic rather than the usual 1 guy stands/lays around for a minute waiting for the other guy to eventually jump at him, wash, rinse, repeat, and when Ospreay took too long on his corkscrew shooting star press, he somehow landed in Zach's triangle. This was absolutely a match that worked because the timing & chemistry they have together allowed them to reach new heights in what can be done in lightning fast, super athletic pro wrestling sequences. One of the great things about the match is they aren't simply going, while they aren't telling deep stories, they have a simple determination to both be one step ahead of one another & to impose their will by actually hitting their moves, so when something was countered they often found a way to make it succeed or to do something even better because it didn't. It's not the moves they did, but the way just kept chaining one counter after another so where other guys would just throw out a move then lay around, whether they are doing something as basic or insane, it takes them one or two handfuls of steps to get to that point, and then another sequence starts as soon as they're back to their feet. Sabre wound up retaining his title, but it felt like both men were winners because the match was simply a joy to watch. ****3/4
RevPro British Cruiserweight Title Five Way: Morgan Webster vs. Kurtis Chapman vs. David Starr vs. El Phantasmo vs. Ryan Smile 11:33
Jinny vs. Martina 8:48
RevPro British Tag Team Title: Trent Seven & Tyler Bate vs. Josh Bodom & Zack Gibson 10:38
ROH World Title: Cody vs. Jay Lethal 25:26
Pete Dunne vs. Eddie Dennis 14:54
Martin Stone vs. Dave Mastiff 7:53
RevPro British Heavyweight Title: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Matt Riddle 16:58
Marty Scurll & Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson vs. Chris Brookes & Travis Banks & Flip Gordon 24:44