It looked good. It felt good. It was good. Deadlock Pro, DPW, was on Fire (handily, the name of the programme) but seemed over as soon as the PPV in January, ‘You Already Know’, was done.
I didn’t cry or anything, but it was a shame. The Fire shows looked so good, that orange and grey design was striking, the DPW crowd seemed febrile, riled up, sweaty. And they introduced me to new wrestlers like Kidd Bandit, who is simply phenomenal and should be a breakout star.
And Now Here We Are Again
And it’s like DPW have never been away. That look? Still there, the grey and orange, with those in the crowd wearing orange lanyards with their ID on them, sounds odd, but they seemed picked out and that continues the brand.
The look was as sharp as before, expensive looking. The sound was good. The atmosphere was of people into something special – that’s hard to do.
So What Did They Offer?
Some expected stuff and some unexpected stuff.
The Expected: Bojack didn’t get the chance to celebrate his DPW heavyweight title win at the PPV. He didn’t even get the chance to speak. Why?
JTG came out. He did the requisite ‘well done and you deserve it’ chat, but we knew what was coming. He wanted the title match.
And so did Bojack. He accepted. His first championship words on DPW Fire were to accept his first defence. Odd, but it just seemed to work.
Myles Mason v BK Westbrook
Oh look, BK tells us, another tattooed white guy. And Mason is, with slightly less of a showing than the flamboyant, arrogant Westbrook who comes on like a baby Andrew Everett. That’s good.
His moves were good too; beautifully graceful shooting star press, lovely springboard elbow, nice TKO and a very sweet moment when he had Mason in the spine buster position, pretended to smoke a cig and stub it out on his back; nasty.
Mason won with a rather special tornado DDT, almost scuttling across the top turnbuckle to hit it, but this match was Westbook’s.
2 DPW debuts and bloomin’ good ones.
NDA v Holliday & Kemp
H&K, from the Indiana scene, are so impressive here. Yes, NDA work well together and I enjoyed them when I saw them on the last DPW Fire progs, but their opponents showed so much.
The sight of Holliday holding a stiffened Chance Rizer (it’s not what you think) at belly level and turning him one way, then the next, the Kemp moonsault off the ropes to hit both of NDA, Nigel McGuiness slingshot lariat are all so impressive. And an odd finisher with one holding the opponent in powerbomb position as the other runs in and turns him round is…strange.
NDA are no slouches either, Rizer may be the smallest dog in the fight here, but he got Kemp (I think) in a Samoan Drop, Patrick Scott hit a gorgeous Destroyer, they finished off with a double Neutralizer, but there was some DPW discussion about whether they kicked out at 2 or not…
Oh yes, and YouTube sensation Chris Danger was there too, making himself a menace and enjoying it far too much.
The Unexpected : Sawyer Wreck. She won the battle royale at the DPW PPV. And she is both;
a. Impressive
b. No nonsense
And so the debutant Genesis surely wasn’t going to last long. And he didn’t ’t, tasting a chokeslam and a pin in short order.
But Sawyer wasn’t done, she wanted more. It was an open challenge. Trip Gordy answered it and was described as a very happy person. He didn’t look so happy after a rather awkward backpack side effect move and the chokeslam for another pin.
Well, that was…hang on, was Sawyer Wreck calling for more? Yep, and Tenshi X it is, he’s popular with the fans. The DPW commentary team? They kept repeating ‘he’s just a boy…’. Sawyer didn’t care, she dumped him on the mat and hit that de rigour chokeslam for her third win of the night.
Sawyer Wreck; 4-0.
She left jawing at the fans, still challenging, looking good, looking impressive, not ideal in grappling terms, but as a character – oh yes.
Please DPW, Can We Have Some More?
The worry is that this will be a run of excellent DPW Fire programmes until the PPV arrives and then there’ll be a hiatus. And I’ll take that. But I hope it’ll continue because this looks and feels special.