We’re back for another dose of RevPro’s 2015 YouTube series – and some excellent matches to build up the promotion’s Summer Sizzler!
Episode 5
We’ve a change of pace here, as it’s just Andy Quildan in front of the green screen, standing so far off centre you’d be forgiven for thinking they’ve airbrushed someone out. He’s still leaning, so either he’s naturally tilted, or the tripod’s still buggered.
Jump cuts ahoy lead us to some build for Rev Pro’s 2015 Summer Sizzler… by way of a match from 2014?! Namely, a match from High Stakes 2014, as the Swords of Essex (Will Ospreay and Paul Robinson) defend their Rev Pro tag titles against the pairing of Ricochet and Rich Swann.
We get clips of prior events at York Hall, including Prince Devitt vs. Jushin “Thunder” Liger (with an appearance from Mark “Rollerball” Rocco), Bret Hart raising the hand of Hiroshi Tanahashi, and the reunion of 2 Cool. Yeah, that one perhaps isn’t something that sticks in the mind these days.
We’re taken back to At Our Best, where Gideon Grey demanded a tag match where he and Rishi Ghosh would face Matt Classic and Colt Cabana – in a way to prove that Matt was Colt – with the stipulation that if Matt and Colt won, Cabana would be allowed back in Rev Pro. That’s been set for the Summer Sizzler…
There’s more build for that show, with Quildan plugging matches for Tomohiro Ishii and Shinsuke Nakamura – the latter facing Ricochet at the Summer Sizzler. He also announces AJ Styles vs. Marty Scurll for the Rev Pro title, with “politics thrown out the window”. We’re eleven minutes into this, and so far it’s been nothing but shilling for the June Summer Sizzler.
Finally, a match!
Revolution Pro Wrestling British Tag Team Championships: Inner-City Machine Guns (Ricochet & Rich Swann) vs. Swords of Essex (Will Ospreay & Paul Robinson) (c)
We start with Ospreay and Ricochet – some two years before their famous match at Korakuen Hall… they start with a mock sword fight, because Swords of Essex, before Ricochet takes down Ospreay with a toe hold.
Ospreay escaped with a spinning headstand, before he escapes some grounded headscissors at a fast pace. Both teams tag out, so we get Swann and Robinson – the former, mocking the latter’s “wrestling!” yell, as Swann gets an early advantage, before getting taken down with a wristlock.
After working free, Swann flips over a monkey flip as he takes down Robinson as the pace quickened – much how you’d expect with these four guys. The Swords send their challengers to the outside for a criss-cross pair of dives – a Robinson tope and a Space Flying Tiger Drop from Ospreay, who ran into the crowd to celebrate afterwards.
A staggered double axehandle off the top sees Ospreay slow things down for a brief moment, as he briefly held a Dragon sleeper before working on Swann’s arms. Robinson stands on Swann for a moonsault that gets a two-count with Ricochet breaking things up. The Swords continue to wear down Swann with quick tags and varied strikes, before Swann took down the champions with a standing backflip into a double Ace crusher, as he finally rolled out to tag in Ricochet.
Ricochet rebounded between Ospreay and Robinson with running strikes, before nearly falling down from a bow and arrow backbreaker to Robinson, before dropping Robinson into a facebuster. After antagonising Ospreay, Ricochet gives Robinson the People’s Moonsault for a near-fall, before both challengers come in to pepper Robinson with kicks to the front and the back for another near-fall.
Swann continues to help rile up Ospreay, and that just keeps Robinson in the ring for longer as he absorbs a slingshot somersault kneedrop from Ricochet, who then tries to bite at him. A double crossbody sees both men collapse, and finally Ospreay gets the tag in as he takes down Swann and Ricochet with a handspring double overhead kick.
A flipping neckbreaker from Ospreay takes down Swann, as he looks to mock John Cena… by doing a springboard corkscrew moonsault for a near-fall. Swann goes for a ‘rana out of the corner, but Ospreay lands on his feet… then gets spiked with a DDT after landing. Swann follows up with a Rolling Thunder, but Ospreay gets up and turns it into a powerslam before the Swords blast Swann with kicks.
Ricochet comes in and targets Robinson with an elbow, before a Meteora gets Robinson a near-fall on the rebound (or on the ricochet… ho-ho!) Ricochet hits back with a northern lights suplex into a vertical suplex for a two-count, before springing to the top rope for a shooting star press that misses. Some kicks from the challengers, leading into an axe kick and a standing shooting star gets Ricochet a near-fall as Ospreay broke up the cover.
The champions take over with a corkscrew kick into an Ace crusher onto Ricochet, before Robinson flies off of Ospreay’s shoulders into a big splash for a near-fall. Ospreay and Ricochet trade shots again, before Ricochet ducks and replies with a roundhouse, then a pop-up slam as Swann hits a frog splash for another near-fall. A big boot from Ospreay sets up Swann for a drop toe hold and a diving corkscrew kick from Robinson, who then takes an axe stomp from Ricochet as we get a parade of kicks from all four men.
Everyone beats the ten count, at least until Swann’s dumped out side with a back body drop as the Swords target Ricochet, who takes a spike DDT and a shooting star press for another two-count as Swann returned at the last second to make a save. We repeat that with Robinson getting sent to the outside, before Ospreay and Swann trade blows, until Ricochet leaps into a dropkick in the corner on Ospreay.
Swann gives Ospreay a ‘rana to land onto Robinson off the top rope, then a somersault plancha onto Ospreay outside the ring, as Ricochet goes for the Benadryller. A superman punch connects from Ricochet, who gets the Benadryller at the second attempt, and that’s it – we have new champions to end a remarkable contest! Absolutely superb stuff from both teams, as we got more than a sneak peek into what we’d get two years later from these folks! ****¼
We see the new champions celebrating as the crowd chant “that was awesome”, and we actually don’t’ fade to black, as we have a closing segment as Andy Quildan tells us to “look up what happened the next night” as the champions would lose their belts 24 hours later. One final plug for Summer Sizzler later, and we’re out for another week, as Shinsuke Nakamura is teased for next week.
Episode 6
This episode starts off with either a massive light shining Andy Quildan’s way, or they’ve messed up the white balance, as he’s looking really pale. As is his suit. The sound’s also a little bit low too, as we get more hype for the Summer Sizzler event.
Andy teases our main event by saying that they put the entrance up for this match on YouTube a few months earlier, getting “22,000 views” for it – that’s since swelled to over 90,000 at time of writing, but it’s still small fry for some. They’re giving the whole match for free later tonight, and it’s time for some backslapping as Andy explains why they’re giving away these matches for free on YouTube.
They show a video package from Sting’s appearance at High Stakes in 2014, which leads to a music video from the rest of that event, featuring the likes of Mark Andrews, Ricochet, the Young Bucks and for some reason, a dancing Chris Roberts. Who isn’t doing his job.
Cue a Rocky Romero t-shirt plug, back when Rev Pro did more of their own merch, and a rather abrupt cut back to Andy in the studio as he talks about Rev Pro’s tie with New Japan. Good God, there’s a brief clip of Hiromu Takahashi back before he went all punk and licky… yeah, it’s a build up to the Rev Pro debut of Tomohiro Ishii at the Summer Sizzler show, as he’d be facing Big Damo. More plugs for Summer Sizzler follow, and it looks like this is going to be a one match show with a tonne of plugs for an event that’s six weeks away. They build up a stipulation where Colt Cabana and Matt Classic are teaming up, with the idea that they’re both the same person… but if Colt can disprove that, then he can return to Rev Pro.
Finally, a match! We’re off to Summer Sizzler 2014 for this one…
Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Shinsuke Nakamura
Shout-out to the guy sitting next to the aisle who made a concerted effort to look as far away as possible from the entranceway! Sabre’s out with his half of the GHC Junior tag team title, as we’ve got a weird NOAH vs. New Japan outing here!
The crowd is on fire before the pair even locked up, and we’ve a cagey opening as both men try to throw kicks only for Nakamura to nonchalantly take Sabre into the corner. Somewhere in here, Shinsuke’s name changes to “Nacamera”, which just sounds weird given that everyone else in the world calls him “Nakamura” bar Oliver Bennett… There’s a respectful exchange of pinfalls, before Nakamura rolls to the outside to escape a submission attempt from Sabre.
That respect ends in a blink of an eye as Sabre gets blind sided and sent to the outside, with the pair quickly heading into the crowd, as Nakamura throws Zack into several rows of seating. Zack takes a knee as he was draped over the apron, before another kneedrop in the ring gets Shinsuke a near-fall.
More knees in the corner rock Sabre, but he comes back with a kick to the chest to knock his Japanese opponent down, and that’s the turning point as a series of uppercuts lead to a springboard enziguiri out of the corner as Sabre nearly took the win there. A rolling armbar is instantly broken in the ropes by Nakamura, who rebounded with a Capoeira-style kick as the pair started a lengthy back-and-forth striking battle.
Nakamura drapes Sabre across the top rope for a Bomaye knee strike (or Kinshasa, if you wanna go by the WWE-ised name!), but Sabre somehow snapped back into it with a bridging Dragon suplex! An armbar follows from Zack, who torques away at the wrist as well, but Nakamura headbutts free then lands a back cracker and a release Regalplex… but Sabre comes back immediately as they battle for armbars, ending with Zack landing a PK for a near-fall… then another armbar follows.
Somehow Nakamura rolls him up for a near-fall, but after the kick-out it’s back to the armbar, only for Shinsuke to get out and blast Sabre with the Bomaye. FOR A ONE COUNT!
Another one’s attempted, but Nakamura misses and gets caught in another armbar, before countering it into an ushigoroshi! A diving Bomaye off the middle rope follows, before a running Bomaye gets Nak the win! Beautiful stuff, exactly what you’d expect from these guys as this happened before the current era of 30-minute Sabre matches at York Hall. ****¼
From there, it’s back to Andy Quildan in the studio to wrap things up, without plugging to anything in particular!
Out of these two episodes, we got two really good matches… but therein lies the problem. A lot of the studio pieces felt really vague. For instance, after that stellar Nakamura match on episode 6, we’re told he’s on the Summer Sizzler card, but not against whom. Although it’s probably because the match announcements were, as they usually are, drip-fed, it just feels halfbaked of a promotion to say “hey, look at this good match… this guy is back, but we won’t tell you who he’s wrestling”.
There’s a reason we’re not posting these reviews weekly – whereas the UWA and FWA TV shows were storyline driven, these are just a collection of matches, presented in a form that by current standards is rather unpolished, with roughness in the way of edits and sound levels. At its core, Rev Pro TV is showing some good wrestling, but everything just isn’t quite right yet.