"I'M PRO CHOICE!": AIW Straight Outta Compton Review

Hailey Hatred, showing why she's got such a strong stake to the vacated Queen of Wrestling throne
Screen Grab Credit: Smart Mark VOD

In the TWB style

Highlights:

• In a nice opener, Mat Fitchett and Davey Vega defeated Evan Gelistico and Pierre Abernathy, Fitchett pinning Abernathy with a running shooting star press.
• The Submission Squad came out to jump The Duke during his match with Jock Samson, but Da Latin Crime Syndicate evened the score, helping Duke get the win with a roll-up.
• Marion Fontaine appeared in the middle of the match between Michael Facade and Colin Delaney in time to take the fall from Facade via a reverse suplex into a tombstone.
• John Thorne picked Drake Younger as Rickey Shane Page's poison for this evening. Younger, with help from a well-placed but unwanted Thorne light tube shot, defeated RSP with Drake's Landing.
• In a match where Sugar Dunkerton broke his arm, Eric Ryan pinned both Gary Jay and Alex Colon with package piledrivers to win the four-way elimination match.
• RSP picked Hailey Hatred as his poison for Thorne, and as a receipt, helped the First Joshi of AIW get the win over Thorne with a Death Valley Driver into light tubes.
• Dave Crist ate a Drunken Driver from Josh Prohibition and a shooting star press from Matt Cross, as the Irish Airborne failed in their attempt to win the AIW Tag Team Championships.
• In one of the finest matches all year, ACH successfully ran out the clock by holding onto the ropes on AR Fox after reversing his La Mahistrol Cradle for a pinfall, winning their half-hour iron man match, 2 falls to 1.
• In the main event, Flexor Industries were able to eke out a win over the United Front of Tim Donst, BJ Whitmer and Johnny Gargano, as Bobby Beverly nailed Whitmer with a beer bottle for the pin.

General Observations:

• Y'know, the quickest way to my heart is doing simple moves in new, exciting ways. Fitchett did what I can only describe is a basement armdrag that put Abernathy on his face.
• There really isn't anything more cringeworthy than watching Abernathy spit or snot on people though.
• Gelistico went for a Russian leg sweep but then transitioned into a side guillotine. Huge fan of arcane submissions like that, by the by.
• Abernathy is highly regarded as a comedic wrestler, but dude has a sick lariat.
• Fitchett pulled off a springboard blockbuster on Gelistico while he was on Abernathy's back. It only got a 2 count, which was a little annoying.
• "The Duke is a spot monkey!" -- Aaron Bauer. "Duke hasn't left his feet in four years!" -- Matt Wadsworth.
• Jock Samson's gimmick of being stuck in the '80s is absolutely brilliant. I really hope this guy keeps doing what he's doing.
• At Gauntlet for the Gold, Samson lost his shit because Duke threw him over the top rope. Duke, having learned his lesson, tossed Samson through the middle rope this time. It's the little things.
• Samson Tebowed! The show happened in April, so it wasn't totally out of style yet.
• Delaney came out for his match with a 40 and a sign that said "WWE Superstar." Keep that sign in mind for later in the review, plz.
• Delaney and Facade went to the back fairly early in the match. Facade came out shrugging as Fontaine came through the side door kicking Delaney's ass.
• Delaney gave up on the match to let Fontaine get pinned. I thought that was pretty neat.
• RSP had on a Coke Zero shirt. Not sure if that's ghetto or awesome.
• With all the chair use, I didn't know if Younger was acting as RSP's opponent or his chiropractor.
• Gary Jay was billed as being "Well over 7,000 lbs." They should have inspected his beard.
• Dunkerton busted out a boom box and blared up "Intergalactic" by the Beastie Boys, causing a dance-off. Ryan busted out a white boy Worm. Colon started doing the Robot, but he and Jay had to be all party poopers and attack Ryan and Dunkerton, respectively.
• The insane spot of the night went to Jay, taking a power bomb from Dunkerton assisted by a Ryan spear over the guardrail and into the crowd. Colon followed up with a plancha that seemed to have injured Dunkerton. He broke his arm.
• Thorne kicked Hatred right in the tits to start the match. That, more than anything the announcers said, cued to me that this was a blood feud rekindling.
• The Hatred/Thorne match got pretty gory pretty early. Thorne broke out a spike and colored Hatred's forehead. Even bloodied though, she still was strangely cute.
• Hatred had Thorne on the ground and found a sign. She mounted Thorne's back, smiled, blood gushing from her forehead and held it up. It was Delaney's "WWE Superstar" sign from eariler.
• Thorne grabbed a staple gun, pointed towards Hatred's inner thigh and screamed "I'm pro choice!" Thankfully, Hatred kicked it away before he was able to do any damage.
• Hatred pulled out a barbed wire-wrapped 2x4, put it against Thorne's crotch ad baseball-slid into it. Revenge for the boob kick, I suppose.
• Really impressed with both teams' teamwork in the Tag Title match. It almost felt like synchronized violence.
• I had no idea that Prohibition and Cross were in XPW. None.
• I think AIW should get a Nobel Prize in some area for booking ACH and AR Fox for 30 solid minutes. Seriously.
• Seriously, if ACH is the best thing going right now, Fox is probably not too far behind. Very few people can keep up with ACH, and Fox has now done so in two promotions to date.
• Lo Mein Pain is such a bad-ass move, "flippy" shit or not.
• The only thing more bad-ass that happened in the match was ACH's cloverleaf big swing though.
• One of ACH's signature spots is the double shining wizard. In this match, he replaced the shining wizard to the back of the head with Luigi-from-Super Mario Bros. 2 stomps to the back of Fox's neck. Brilliance.
• As time got thinner, both guys started doing roll-up spam trying to get quick pins. I loved the psychology of this.
• The Chad was the latest victim of fans getting involved by chopping wrestlers. I am not sure I approve of this, because all it takes is one errant chop from an untrained fan to cause an incident.
• Donst's Purple Nurple is one of my favorite moves, and I marked so hard when he did it on Flexor, followed up by Gargano and Whitmer joining in the fun.
• The action spilled to the outside, where they battled on a horse trailer. Donst did a tope con hilo from the top of a truck.
• At one point, Flexor's team stuffed Donst and Gargano into someone's trunk.
• The beer bottle shot from Beverly that finished the match was absolutely brutal. It didn't sound like a bottle, which led me to believe it was something thicker.

Match of the Night: ACH vs. AR Fox, 30 Minute Iron Man Match - This match was supposed to feature Fox going up against Uhaa Nation. The two had a pretty intense feud in AIW, but when Nation got hurt 'Mania weekend in DGUSA, they had to scramble for a replacement. I am so glad they picked ACH and even gladder that they kept the 30 minute iron man stipulation, because this match was the rare one that deserved every allotted second it got. Here were two men who were known more for their aerial prowess going into the fray not only showing superior athletics and acrobatics, but outstanding psychology, pacing and a grasp of the moment.

The psychology came mostly at the end of the match. With the time winding down, the two started trading roll up and flash pin maneuvers to try and get the decisive pinfall that might win them the match. It wasn't just the fact that they were doing the pin attempts with the lightning quickness, but they showed great urgency as well. It's one thing for guys to trade roll ups and to have the announcers superimpose a narrative over it, but it's another for you to be able to see that even with the commentary muted. Both guys displayed frantic nature superbly. Then, when ACH got the final pin on the reversed Mahistrol, him going to the ropes and trying to run the clock out may have been my most favorite thing in any match this year to date. Fox trying to yank him from the ropes reeked of desperation. It was perfect, sublime.

But that isn't to say this match was all the kinds of things that you had to look for. There were some pretty goddamn fantastic spots in this match as well. You come to expect that from guys the caliber of ACH and Fox. These guys make their bones on doing mind-blowing shit that even Neo in The Matrix would be jealous of. My favorite athletic thing they did in the match was when Fox followed ACH out of the ring. ACH hurried over, tripped his legs out from under him, causing him to fall seated on the apron HARD. ACH then hit a bulldog lariat and I think I nearly went into apoplexy. It's hard for me to pick out every good thing in this match, because I'd just be transcribing it verbatim. This match needs to be seen to be experienced fully. I am doing it no justice at all.

Overall Thoughts: I thought this was a very uneven show. The bottom-tier stuff was blase, not bad per se, but nothing to write home about. However, the opener and the four matches starting with the four-way match and ending with the epic Fox/ACH iron man were blowaway great. Each match brought its own thing that it did excellently. The four way had the best comedy spot of the night with the dance off. The Hatred/Thorne match was as great a hardcore brawl as you'll find on any card. The Tag Title match was a damn good a new-style indie spot-based sprint. And I've already written at length about how orgasmically divine the iron man match was.

My main problem with the show is that I really don't buy Flexor Industries as anything more than a sideshow. It would be if The Embassy were in ROH main events in 2012 right now. I have no doubt that Bobby Beverly could headline a card (much in the same vein that I think RD Evans and Tomasso Ciampa could in ROH with better booking), but Chest Flexor and The Chad? They should be tangling with The Duke and Da Latin Crime Syndicate. That, and I thought the hardcore stuff went a bit overboard in the RSP/Younger match. That line is a very delicate one to tread I think, and it's almost indescribable why I thought RSP/Younger made me cringe while Hatred/Thorne was pitch-perfect.

Still, this card was one of the strongest ones of the year I've seen to date, AIW or otherwise. When you have several strong matches, especially in a row, you build really strong equity, at least with me. I'm starting to get why AIW is the leader of a strong indie wrestling scene in Cleveland through shows like these.