Rick Knox as Deus Ex Machina: PWG Threemendous III Review

TH Style, folks.

Highlights:

• Joey Ryan, in the middle of his 87% campaign, choked out Famous B with the katahajime to get the win.
• Roderick Strong fended off a feisty TJ Perkins enough to nail him with the suplex backcracker for the win.
• In a match where the crowd turned against them, the RockNES Monsters used shady teamwork to get a backslide pin on Ryan Taylor to beat him and his "brother" Chuck.
• Brian Cage scored a mild upset over Eddie Edwards with the Weapon X (Gory Special Flatliner). Afterwards, he called out whoever came out of the World Title match.
• In a CERTIFIED HOSS FIGHT that featured Cage running in to waylay BOTH competitors, Kevin Steen finished off Willie Mack with the Psycho Driver.
• B-Boy defeated a debuting Drake Younger with a sheer-drop Air Raid Crash.
• Sami Callihan didn't wait for the bell to ring to assault Michael Elgin, but it would be the Canadian getting the last laugh, defeating Callihan with his buckle bomb/spiral bomb combo.
• With some help from a scorned and bloodied Rick Knox, The Super Smash Bros. retained the PWG World Tag Team Championships in a crazy three-way ladder match over the Young Bucks and Future Shock.

General Observations:

• Joey Ryan kicked the show off by interrupting Excalibur's show intro, which led the crowd to chant "Fuck TNA!" Remember, this was right after his Gut Check rejection and his "87 percent" approval rate on the Impact site poll.
• Rick Knox makes Ryan pay for his interruption by clotheslining him, allowing Famous B to get a beat on him to start the match.
• Famous B fanned on a plancha to start the match and then whiffed on a cross-body later on. They were spectacular (intentional) misses though, the first one setting up a cool fakeout on Ryan later on in the match.
• The only good that could come out of anyone having heat with Taz is that they might break out the katahajime and remind us all of the time before the guy became an awful announcer.
• There are few things more beautiful in context of a wrestling match than someone going hard to the mat with TJ Perkins. He makes the opening feeling out process feel exciting.
• Perkins at one point segued Strong into a figure four/single crab hybrid, which I felt like he totally wasted on doing it in the beginning of the match. I think that's totally a submission hold that could finish a match.
• Excalibur more than most likes to tout Strong as having "Freaky Roddy Strength." He showed the epitome of that here, hoss-tossing Perkins HARD into the corner. In what would be the theme of the night, the ring may have moved an inch or so on the impact.
• I wonder how many people are going to watch this match and get douche-chilling flashbacks to every WWE Rey Mysterio match when Perkins drop-toe-held Strong into leaning over the middle rope? I wanted him to do the 619 just to troll the shit out of everyone, but the springboard dropkick he did pull off was just fine.
• Ryan Taylor spat beer at the RockNES Monsters before their match began, which to me felt like an egregious waste of the holy liquor at whose altar I worship. I don't care if it probably was Miller Lite or some other variant. Beer's beer!
• Chuck Taylor scooped up streamers thrown in the ring and put them in the back of his trunks. A little later, he yanked them out and tossed them into Johnny Yuma's face.
• The Monsters had just come back from a tour of Japan (and boy, were their arms tired!), which the announcers noted throughout the match. They were unusually dickish during the match, including Yuma sprinting around the ring and yanking Chuck off the apron to prevent Ryan from making a tag.
• Chuck took a pitcher of beer and spilled it on a fan in the front row. The crowd began to chant "Party foul! Party foul!" It's about time.
• By the end of the match, the crowd had completely turned on the Monsters. I wonder if this was an intentional thing, since they'd gone as far as they could have by that point as fan favorites.
• Brian Cage started hossing shit up pretty early in the match, grabbing Eddie Edwards into a super long delay suplex, then scooping him up on bodyslam position and curling with him before finishing with a reckless fallaway toss.
• Cage brought the "People Tossing Their Opponent into the Corner Really Goddamn Hard" count up to two.
• Edwards did the "You can't see me" taunt with Cage in the corner, and got way more boos from the crowd for that than anything the Young Bucks would do in the main event. Not surprising.
• A "This is wrestling!" chant broke out, to which Excalibur replied "It says it on the marquee outside, you don't need to chant it." I smiled.
• Kevin Steen didn't wait for Willie Mack to even get to the ring before blindsiding him. It actually set a very good tone for the early part of the match.
• Steen sent Mack hard into the corner TWICE, which is probably the most believable combination of thrower and throwee that could legitimately move that ring. I wonder if it registered on the Richter Scale, and if it caused a statewide panic.
• Steen then missed his CAAAAAAAANONBAAAAAALLLLL which I'm sure moved the ring as well.
• The camera got a fortuitous close-up on Mack as he was mounting a comeback, showing some crazy, serial-killer eyes before launching himself into the corner for the MDX. It also bears noticing that MDX, or My Dick EXPLOOOODES, is my favorite name for a move ever.
• Steen busted out the Rock Bottom, which only got a two-count. Steen exclaimed "It worked for my best friend!" For reference, Steen and Rocky have a Twitter bromance going on.
• Steen knocked Knox down with Mack on the set up to his Deep Sea Diverticulitis (F5), and then dropped Mack right on top of him, eliciting a "YOU KILLED KNOX" chant from the crowd.
• The ref bump allowed Cage to come out from the back and drop Steen with an inverted TKO. Before he let anyone question why he'd help Willie Mack, he dropped Chocolate Thunder with a huge discus lariat. Equal opportunity match fuckery!
• The most surprising thing of this match? Had to be Mack kicking out of the Package Piledriver.
• I actually came into this show looking most forward to the Drake Younger/B-Boy match, and it ended up being a giant disappointment. It was basically a display of guys trying to be the most bad-ass guy in the room without paying the price for it.
• Then again, I'm pretty sure Younger bleeding was hardway taking a powerbomb from the apron to the floor.
• Sami Callihan nailed Michael Elgin with a headbutt and ended up selling it more than Elgin did. Hard head gimmicks never fail to amuse me.
• Elgin busted out (and missed) a corkscrew senton. I have no point to this except HE BUSTED OUT A GODDAMN CORKSCREW SENTON.
• Elgin showed some next level hoss shit by snatching Callihan running the ropes from his knees and getting him into Everest German suplex position. NEXT LEVEL, I said.
• Sami Callihan is brave, man, because I wouldn't take one buckle bomb from Elgin, let alone the two he took.
• Main event time, and whoo boy, the six guys involved couldn't wait to get their brawl on. I'm sure it made for a chaotic atmosphere live, but when you only have two cameras and not a lot of cut-tos between the two of them, it's a bit confusing for a watch at home.
• Nick Jackson took the ladder, placed it around his head, and did a ladder copter, taking out EVERYONE, including Rick Knox, on purpose (remember that). Including his partner too, but that was more a "hey, look at how cool I look!"
• And yes, Knox showed color on that. Even the ref bled! EVEN THE REF BLED!
• Player Uno broke out the FALCON PUNCH on Matt Jackson while Jackson was holding a chair. Uno didn't sell it, but I really don't think I cared at that point.
• Future Shock with the DOUBLE SUPLEX OFF THE LADDER on Matt Jackson through the table... whoa.
• Adam Cole got trapped in a ladder and thrown up against the corner, not being able to escape for the rest of the match. This will show up in the Great Moments in Torture Simulation in Wrestling or else my name is Roquefort G. Skellington.
• Hey, remember when I told you to remember Knox getting knocked over by Jackson with the ladder? Yeah, when all seemed lost and the Bucks were climbing the ladder to victory, Knox came up to knock the ladder over. Deus ex machina, thine name is PWG senior referee Rick Knox.
• Pretty sure that Cole is still trapped in the ladder, guys.

Match of the Night: Player Uno and Stupefied (c) vs. Matt and Nick Jackson vs. Adam Cole and Kyle O'Reilly, PWG World Tag Team Championship Ladder Match - This nominally wasn't a TLC match, but yeah, it was a TLC match. It may have been the best spectacle of a TLC match since the Dudleys, Hardys, and Canadian Blondes were given bountiful resources to create detritus around the ringside area at the turn of the most recent century. That's part of what made this match so great. It was TLC on a budget. Moneyball TLC. They forced fans out of their chairs so they could use them. They destroyed one ladder, trapped Adam Cole in another, and had to pull out the GIANT SIZED painters' ladder for the decision.

Yeah, let's ruminate on that for a second. Adam Cole spent the last five minutes or so of this match trapped between the jaws of a ladder stood up in the corner like it was an iron maiden (the torture device, not the British metal band). Uno continued his tradition of rocketing chairs right at the skulls of either Young Buck. There were apron spots, lord were there apron spots too. I'm not sure it would be a high-profile PWG match if guys weren't going hard into the hardest part of the ring.

And yes, the elephant in the room is that the referee was active in the decision, tipping over the ladder with the Young Bucks on it. If you look at it as simulation of an athletic contest, then what the fuck are you doing watching wrestling? For a company that doesn't build longterm stories, when they do, they're pretty darn good. It was only a subplot in a match where six guys simulated a car wreck in human flesh. But then again, mangled body parts are the new market inefficiency.

Overall Thoughts: Building an anniversary show around a referee might not sound like an all-too appetizing idea in most company's hands, but PWG has done interesting groundwork making Rick Knox-as-a-realized-character feel organic. He's not an overbearing part of the show, but it's just enough where he's an acceptable deus ex machina to keep the Young Bucks from winning the titles again, or that he's got the chops enough to be able to get busted open without it feeling like an awful mistake.

But unlike with companies in the mainstream doing referee angles, PWG had a more than solid slate of matches surrounding everything else. I mean, the Knox ladder shove was such a minor part of that insane main event that it really didn't matter what he did or how the Smash Bros. won. That was the perfect cap to a show that had a bunch of solid matches on it, some of them great.

I will say that I was a bit disappointed with the Younger/B-Boy match, as it pretty much distilled a lot of the shit I hate about the worst Davey Richards matches into red meat for a crowd that tolerates (read, loves) it more than I do. Still though, everything else on the show worked, so it's all good.