Sunday, December 4, 2011

Quick Review: Beyond Wrestling's About Time

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Evans can wrestle, yo
So I checked out Beyond Wrestling's first ever live and open to the public show About Time. I've really stopped reviewing DVDs on here for good reason. I find it's a lot harder to really take notes and give the DVD the attention needed. Plus, live shows don't have the Internet, a dog, my son and a bunch of other stuff to distract me like home life does. Still, I like giving attention to promotions that deserve it, and I feel like Beyond deserve to get a shoutout.

SO yeah, About Time was a pretty promising show. It had eight matches, and a varied lineup of guys known from Chikara appearances and those who were new to me. The wrestling was solid at the very least. I had no complaints about it. Even the guys who felt like they were green didn't try to do too much out of their comfort zones, and there was a lot of really good spots from a few guys. I thought the strongest point here were the amount of colorful characters. They booked RD Evans, the Super Smash Bros and the Throwbacks. A lot of the "new" talent I saw had great characters too. There was Josh Thor, a modernized viking whose finisher should have been called Mjollnir, being a hammer blow to the side of a head of a kneeling opponent. There was a guy who did magic named Jarek 1:20. In the greatest gimmick of them all, there was a guy named Glaad Badd who was a gay biker. If ROH is working with an 8 pack of crayons, Beyond has the full 128, with Glaad Badd being Purple Mountain's Majesty.

But that says nothing about the actual matches. There were two standout matches. The first one was right before intermission, featuring Evans against Jarek. This was a really good, hard-hitting match where Evans, who usually is known for his comedic stuff, really showed his chops as a wrestler. One thing to note about every match was that the building was literally a hothouse. With the weather and the lights and the assumption that the AC either wasn't strong enough or being broken at the Heirloom Theater. But yeah, Evans was really strutting his stuff with the posturing and the evasion and the subtle cheating. Jarek had some really good comeback spots as well. At one point, he hid under the ring and sprayed Evans with his cards. I loved that. Really entertaining fare.

The second match I really enjoyed was Mat Fitchett against Johnny Mangue. It was another match where one guy, Mangue in this case, worked the strong heel type, but Fitchett was this crazy high flying type. At one point, he had Mangue on all fours and then did a SSP on his back. Holy shit. Mangue brought the cocky strong style, and I thought Fitchett bumped and sold for him really well. It ended on Fitchett going for the SSP, but eating knees and getting rolled up in a small package. There were other highlights, like a guy eating a DVD from the second rope to the outside in a crazy four way tag match.

The other thing to note here were the production values. I'm imagining things were kept low rent by design, because Beyond feels a lot like wrestling's version of Fight Club. The shaky cam didn't bother me, but the actual camera work left a lot to be desired. Like they got only 20-35% good shots and missed a lot or got subpar shots on other spots. The lighting was okay though, and I really liked their announcer. Denver Colorado has a good voice for announcing and a good handle on what's going on. I felt like he needed a color commentator at times though. I understand he was probably going for the Joey Styles vibe, but Styles never really tried to talk all the time.

That being said, I was left with an overall positive impression of Beyond Wrestling from this DVD. They're a fresh concept and feature great talent. There are some flaws, but no promotion is perfect. It's entertaining and fun, and that's what wrestling should be.

Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein - Please visit his site to view the plentiful amounts of pictures he's taken for DGUSA, Chikara and other indie feds: Get Lost Photography