Ahead of wXw’s 19th Anniversary show, we’ve got a trios tag match as champions and challengers mixed it up.
We’re coming from the Sparkassen-Arena in Aurich – a venue that I don’t think’s made tape for wXw before. Heck, it’s a venue they’ve only ever run once prior as part of 2017’s Fight Forever tour. It’s a lovely looking venue, with floor seating and seating decks, which reminds me a lot of Korakuen Hall… probably because of the metallic barriers for the seating decks…
Karsten Beck’s our host, and instantly pitches to Bobby and his Bastards backstage, bragging about how Hamburg turned out. Oliver Carter’s voice is ragged because of shisha, while Bobby Gunns is mentions how Vollgasteren and “Timbo” are teaming here. Oh God, please let Timo dance to Leon’s music… they take shots at van Gasteren and Thatcher’s dental work, before they stop to put bets on Werder Bremen.
Jump cut to Julian Pace and Leon van Gasteren’s promo for this match. I’ve never seen van Gasteren up close like this… he’s very much like a Paul Robinson facially. They keep their promo tight, and it ends with every non-German fan’s favourite saying: auf die Fresse!
Karsten plugs some of the card for the anniversary show on December 14:
Lucky Kid vs. Kassius Ohno
wXw Women’s Championship: Meiko Satomura vs. Amale (c)
Killer Kelly vs. Skye Smitson vs. Baby Allison vs. Little Miss Roxxy
wXw Shotgun Championship: Absolute Andy vs. Jay Skillet vs. Veit Müller vs. Avalanche (c)
Singapore Caning Match: Alexander James vs. Jurn Simmons
Karsten pitches to an Alexander James promo for this match. It’s a no-DQ match with the loser taking ten Singapore cane shots. James dismisses The Rotation and Tyler Colton, calling Tyler a “second” who knew his job and achieved it. James tells us he’ll find a way to hurt Jurn, and it’s not just going to be with holds… although he’s going to have to do some climbing if he’s going to toss Jurn off of the roof of the Turbinenhalle. There’s a line here about how James will “go home and be the success of his household,” which was a nice tip at an underlying jealousy there.
Naturally, Jurn gets a rebuttal, calling what happened with the Rotation “regrettable”. Hopefully he’s not going to be laying in his own bed for too long… Jurn says that this war is far from over, which is good because I want this feud to continue!
Bobby Gunns & Pretty Bastards (Maggot & Prince Ahura) vs. Timothy Thatcher & VollGasteren (Julian Pace & Leon Van Gasteren)
Commentary comes in English from Sebastian Hollmichel. Aw man, Timo didn’t do the dance. Weirdly, he was the only one here not to get a separate entrance too…
Thatcher wanted to start against Gunns, but Prince Ahura decides to start as the tag team specialist… throwing kicks that Thatcher instantly caught before he decided to bend Ahura’s bones a little. A bow-and-arrow hold led to a pin as Thatcher was dominating early on, before tags brought us to Julian Pace and Bobby Gunns. An armbar has Gunns down, but he escapes with an uppercut before he wrenched Pace’s arm, only for Julian to hit the misdirection rope running ahead of a dropkick.
Maggot comes in next, but runs into another dropkick as Pace drew a near-fall, before bringing in Leon van Gasteren for a pair of low dropkicks to Maggot’s head. Forearms keep Maggot at bay, as did headscissors, before Prince Ahuta tagged the boot of Maggot… don’t tell JR! It counts as Ahura came in with a low dropkick as van Gasteren was unawares, and that kick to the knee gave Ahura a blatant target to work over.
Van Gasteren responds with chops and uppercuts, but the knee buckles as Pace tagged in to land a nice standing shooting star press for a near-fall. Maggot tries to distract Pace, and it eventually worked, before Maggot tripped van Gasteren, pulling him into the ring post as the Bastards wrapped that injured leg around the posts. Pace is still legal though, but he’s kept isolated as Thatcher’s not exactly one to run in and make a save… a grounded chinlock has Pace on the defensive, before Ahura came in and spat at Thatcher… who started to get aggravated, as you would. Problem was, that kept Pace in the other corner as Bobby and his Bastards continued to wear down Pace, while Sebastian reminded us that wXw’s new multi-way matches are introducing count-out and DQ eliminations.
Maggot slams Pace and hits his version of a People’s Elbow for a near-fall, before Thatcher wandered around ringside to lay into Bobby Gunns. It distracts Tass again though, as Thatcher was noticeably getting more and more desperate when it came to tagging in. He didn’t have to wait much longer though, as Julian Pace headbutted Prince Ahura with the back of his head… then fell forwards into a tag.
Maggot’s in as Thatcher cleared house with rebound belly-to-belly suplexes. Butterfly suplexes are next, before Ahura’s kick to the kidney allowed for a German suplex from Gunns, and a spear from Maggot for a near-fall. Leon van Gasteren is back on the apron and tags in, but his leap into the Pretty Bastards only found Gunns with a forearm as Leon was running wild with uppercuts. There’s a nice back body drop from van Gasteren as he sent Ahura into Maggot, following up with a clothesline before all six men squared off a la West Side Story. They slug it out too, with everyone spilling outside into the crowd, with Julian Pace accidentally ringing the bell with Ahura. Back inside, Pace superkicks Ahura but misses a moonsault, allowing Maggot to hit a cutter as a big Parade of Moves broke out.
It ended with Thatcher pulling a sweary Gunns into a Fujiwara armbar, before Ahura broke it up with a kick. Thatcher was extremely non-plussed at that, but Ahura pokes the eye and kicks Thatcher down until a leaping neckbreaker from Pace stemmed the tide. Dives follow as Julian hit a tope con giro to the outside, before they built up to a triple suplex, which came with the bonus of a SMILING TIM THATCHER.
From there, Thatcher and van Gasteren pepper Ahura with uppercuts and thrust kicks,before Leon hit a monkey flip to send Julian Pace into a Final Lap on Prince Ahura for the win. Lovely stuff at the end there – you can never have a bad trios match it seems,and this match was certainly a fun tease for Saturday in Oberhausen! ***½
We cut backstage from after Hamburg, as Amale’s trying to butter up Karsten Beck. She wants to have a lighter schedule as champion, worried about how she’d “perform in her other duties”. Beck agrees to think about it going into 2020, before we go backstage to Leon van Gasteren and Julian Pace thanking Timothy Thatcher. Julian and Leon reckon that trios win is setting them up for a title win… as Julian says that what happened in Bielefeld won’t happen again.
They’re packing down the arena, but Karsten Beck is back to confirm VollGasteren vs. Pretty Bastards for the tag titles on Saturday, as he he ran down the three-way dance for Timothy Thatcher’s wXw Unified World Wrestling Championship, with David Starr and Bobby Gunns getting a shot after what happened in Hamburg. They replay the backstage argument with the trio in Hamburg that led to the title match being granted, and that’s your lot!
wXw previously used “warm-up”s as a pre-show match for the feature events, but this new format of it being a late go-home show was a nice change. Whether the wXw schedule allows for this to happen regularly or not remains to be seen, but this blend of promos and a match is probably about as close to the old Shotgun days as we’re going to get for the time being!