The season finale of Shotgun sees Avalanche take on Marius al-Ani as he defends the pride of the academy!
You can catch this show over on wXwNOW.de – the subscription is $11 a month, and includes a lot of the wXw back catalog, along with shows from other promotions.
Quick Result
Marius al-Ani submitted Avalanche in 7:00 (***)
Sebastian Hollmichel welcomes us to a very truncated finale – it’s only 23 minutes long. We open with a recap of Marius al-Ani’s winning streak this season, and Avalanche’s rebuttals of Marius from a few weeks back. They recap Avalanche’s leg injury, but he’s going to fight through it…
Marius al-Ani vs. Avalanche
There’s trash-talking at the start as al-Ani was looking to stick-and-run against Avalanche… then went in for a lock-up that ended with him getting shoved into the corner.
Marius tries to style it out before he came back in with a hammerlock, but Avalanche takes him back down with a side headlock. al-Ani counters out into a wristlock, but Avalanche rolls free, drawing a begrudging nod of approval from his foe.
Marius repeats that trick, then gets shocked down by Avalanche, who found his way in with shoulder tackles and forearms as he kept his fellow former Shotgun champion in the corner. A leaping forearm from Marius gets countered into a Samoan drop for a two-count, before al-Ani countered a ripcord clothesline with kicks to the quad. A dropkick takes Avalanche back down, ahead of some ground and pound and a legdrop, with Marius regaining control.
Heading to the top rope, Marius goes for a crossbody, but he just bounces off of Avalanche… but found another opening as he caught Avalanche in an ankle lock. Luckily, Avalanche had trained Anil Marik a few weeks back in how to escape this… which he did, only to get caught with a superman punch as Marius held firm. A fallaway slam from Avalanche keeps things even, hurling Marius into the opposite corner… but the Dreissker bomb came up short, allowing Marius back in with a kick for a near-fall.
A running clothesline traps Avalanche in the corner as Marius heads up top for a missile dropkick. Avalanche’s knee seems to be shot, but he’s able to land a clothesline as he falls on top of al-Ani for a near-fall… then rolls free of another ankle lock attempt. The ripcord clothesline comes to nought as Marius rolls through into the ankle lock, and this time was once too many as Avalanche was forced to tap. This told a really good story based on Avalanche’s injury earlier in the season – and Marius’ dogged persistence on the leg of the former Shotgun champ. ***
I guess that’ll be Marius al-Ani bragging about how he should be the Academy coach going forward…
They replay Killer Kelly beating Levaniel “last week,” and now Kelly passes the good news to Alexander James via Skype. Of course, he’s still not happy because Kelly’s been number one contender before. Kelly chews him out, which gets an apology from James, who changes his tune massively here… and suddenly shows some faith. It caught Kelly off guard too…
Promo time with Bobby Gunns. He talks about his goals and what’s next for him – having been MIA for a while because of edits. He talks about being in the big spot at 16 Carat Gold for two years in a row, in addition to his ever-growing unbeaten run in Hamburg. He wants to be the longest reigning wXw champion of all time (at time of writing he’s about halfway to matching Tommy End’s run).
We go backstage with Levaniel, and he’s facing the music with Amale. He tries to sweet talk her in French, but she seems to be expecting the worst. And she’s right. Amale flips her lid at Levaniel for losing “against the biggest loser of this company,” so much so she tears him a new one en francais before storming away.
We’re back inside the Steffy as Abdul and Aytac are approached by Norman Harras… he’s got a proposal… but Abdul and Aytac won’t agree to anything without Metehan. They walk off, and that’s the cliffhanger to end the season on.
A one-match finale may come across as underwhelming to some, but given that one of the season-long storylines was around Marius al-Ani, it would have been a little unfair to wrap that up on the “undercard” of an episode. It’s already been said how much this season has been decimated by wXw having to edit out segments, but those are the breaks – and with season two due to start filming, hopefully some of the stuff that we lost in this season will be picked up again with renewed context later in the year.