XPW: It stands for "X-shit P-shit W-shit"
BOY! Talk about the best of times, the worst of times – it’s all encompassed in this one tape featuring two of XPW’s final shows before it folded in 2002 thanks to the court case against porn mogul/XPW owner/irresponsible sick fuck Rob Black.
At its best, XPW was a cheap rip-off of ECW, which at least utilised some talented lucha libre stars and ex-ECW workers.
At its worst, it emulated the very worst aspects of Paul Heyman’s promotion, never more obviously than in XPW Liberty or Death (June 29, 2002 in LA)…a disappointing mish-mash of amateur-hour wrestling, quasi-porn, long boring interviews and a few big bumps to try to make the fans forget about the other garbage.
The card opened with two hacks – Steve Rizzono and Scott Snot – briefly fighting each other until one of wrestling’s biggest coulda-beens Vic Grimes mercifully ended it when he hit the ring and beat ’em up.
Vic was then assaulted by a masked S&M monster called Snuff (managed by my good friend JR Benson) and a new match was underway. Snuff took the duke in a reasonable big-man battle.
Next up was the first match in the XPW Tag Team Tournament: Mexico's Most Wanted vs two masked guys Xtasis & Venom Black. It wasn’t bad as indy lucha libre go and, thankfully, Halloween and Damien 666 went over.
Supreme vs Crimson was forgettable hard-core so, unsurprisingly, I don’t remember (or care) who won.
The second XPW Tag Team Tournament Match saw Ron “K-Kwik” Killings unload a profanity-filled promo that, sadly, I couldn’t understand due to the arena’s lousy acoustics. Seems he was the head of a faction called the New Black Panthers. They faced two indy schlubs King Faviano & Buddy George, who were beyond bad. So was K-Kwik’s unnamed partner. Basically, K-Kwik was the only worthwhile thing in this abortion of a bout. The ending was totally botched and I don’t even know who won it.
I fast-forwarded through the third XPW Tag Team Tournament Match – AWC & Shady vs The Altar Boys ’cos I knew it would be crap.
Speaking of which, next came the Raw Sewage Match pitting porn starlet Veronica Caine & GQ Money vs Angel & another porn star Lizzy Borden.
I seriously doubt there was any real poo in the wading pool the combatants fought around and in. This was very ordinary but at least Angel took a spectacular bump off some scaffolding into the wading pool to lift this into merely DUD territory.
La Parka vs Psicosis. At last, a decent match. Sadly, I can’t remember who won, probably ’cos my eyes had misted up at the sight of two decent wrestlers in an XPW ring at the same time. At least I saw the Chairman of the Board do his leeetle chair dance to make my heart sing again.
The Tag Team Tournament (From Hell) continued with a shiteful combo of Juantastico & Pogo the Clown vs. Juventud Guerrera & Vinnie Massaro. Massaro achieved what I had thought was impossible on this card: he actually wrestled more badly than all the previous ham’n’eggers combined. Yes, Vinnie was THE WORST WRESTLER of the night, setting a new record of missing EVERY SINGLE MOVE.
Juantastic was merely incompetent. Pogo had the amusing gimmick that every single sentence he spoke contained at least one “fuck” in it. What Juvey was doing in the middle of all this was beyond me. Who won? I have no idea.
Kaos seems to be a charismatic fella (and a reasonable worker), so his XPW TV Title defence against accomplished southern rassler Chris Hamrick promised to be a good ’un. As it turned out, the match was only marred by the crapola ending when Lizzy Borden walked from the back and stepped on a “landmine” (I shit thee not), distracting Hamrick and allowing Kaos to steal the pin.
According to the commentators, the XPW World Title bout started well after midnight, but it was worth it to see Terry Funk beat seven shades of shite out of champ Johnny Webb. Wading pools of poo, chairs, thumbtacks…this was your typical schmoz of an indy main event, with hard-workin’ Terry doing the undeserved job.
The match wasn’t horrible, but by God this card was. I dreaded to keep the tape going and watch XPW Hostile Takeover at the old ECW Arena in Philadelphia, PA on August 31, 2002.Surprisingly, the difference in quality between the two cards was like night and day. It probably had to do with Shane Douglas’s involvement, along with that of several ex-ECW workers, who lifted the match quality to a much higher level.The show opened with Shane Douglas (and Lizzy Borden) in the ring doing his usual tired “I’m the Franchise” bullshit. Terry Funk cut it short and the pair mouthed off in the ring over who made ECW (like anyone gives a crap).
Shane made to leave the ring, then pearl-harboured Terry and did a number on his leg, thereby jeopardising their main event later in the night.
The first match was an awesome lucha contest, with Psicosis beating his future Mexicool cohort Super Crazy with a leg drop from the top rope. Next, Pogo The Clown destroyed Sandman in a shock result I assume was meant to lead to a rematch. Sandman got in very little offense in this no-contest affair.
XPW Tag Team Champions Mexico's Most Wanted (Halloween and Damien 666) defeated The New Black Panters (Smokey Carmichael and Malcolm XL {Brian XL}) in a surprisingly good bout. These new New Panthers were much better than the previous pair I’d seen in action (XL was…ahem, quick to bury K-Kwik for quitting XPW to join NWA-TNA. Sounds like Mr Killings did the sensible thing).
Anyway, the Panthers did some nice big flippy moves. The brutal finish saw Halloween do some giant swings on Carmichael before Damien 666 dropkicked Carmichael in the head as he swung by, leading to the MMW scoring the easy pin.Another boring hard-core bout featured XPW Deathmatch champion Supreme beat The Hardcore Homo Angel after powerbombing him off the balcony onto a table covered in barbwire. Great bump, bad match.Juvey’s one crazy motherfucker. He debuted an in-ring interview session called The Juice Bar which, if XPW had survived, could’ve been a highlight of all future shows. Juventud was very funny here. Eventually, he slagged off Chris Chetti one too many times, which brought the latter to the ring.
This match must have been a mess, it was the only bout on the tape edited in spots. I gather this was due to Chetti messing up several spots. Thankfully, he got wasted by a Juvey Driver and the match was over. Afterwards, Julio Dinero hit the ring to chase off Juvey. Sadly, no-one in the crowd knew who Julio Dinero was.
“Vicious” Vic Grimes then beat Little Guido and Altar Boy Luke in a three-way dance. I didn’t care, although I was impressed when Grimes won the match using his version of the “Styles Clash” on Guido.
XPW TV champ “The Rock Superstar” Kaos (with Veronica Caine and GQ Money) defeated Chris Hamrick in a ladder match, which ranged from bad to good and featured some innovative ladder stunts.
The lack of wrestling logic bugged me on this one. GQ Money repeatedly interfered in the match while the ref stood there and did nothing. Psychologically, with Hamrick facing a 3-on-1 disadvantage, he should’ve gone over. Instead, Kaos won the bout relatively easy (after Hamrick did a spectacular header from the top of the ladder through a table at ringside). A fun match but the end result perplexed me.
Afterwards, Danny Doring hit the ring, attacked Kaos and challenged him for the belt. No-one cared. Hey, it’s Danny Doring, folks…what you expect?
Time for the main event, which turned out to be way too brief, I suspect due to a genuine mishap on Funk’s behalf.
Douglas came out first and cut an expletive-filled promo on CZW and 3PW (how ironic, they’re still going and XPW is…where?). Funk then put the fear of God in the Franchise’s eyes by coming to ringside. The match was on and soon chairs were flying. Funk took over and quickly bloodied Douglas’s face.The action spilled out of the arena where Funk went to smash a bottle and use it on Shane’s head. Somehow, the glass wound up badly gashing Funk’s arm.
Once back in the ring, the pair quickly went to the finish. Douglas gave Funk a piledriver, but Terry kicked out. However, the ref called for the bell and awarded the win to Douglas.
Terry then went nuts and beat up Douglas before giving Borden a piledriver. He was helped from ringside while security tried to stop his arm from bleeding.
It was a wild and crazy end to a better-than-average wrestling card.
If only XPW could have had more of them.
But to do that, they would’ve had to have dumped Rob Black, the porn queens and the West Coast hacks. And then all you would’ve had left was ECW.
And that would’ve been fine by me.
At its best, XPW was a cheap rip-off of ECW, which at least utilised some talented lucha libre stars and ex-ECW workers.
At its worst, it emulated the very worst aspects of Paul Heyman’s promotion, never more obviously than in XPW Liberty or Death (June 29, 2002 in LA)…a disappointing mish-mash of amateur-hour wrestling, quasi-porn, long boring interviews and a few big bumps to try to make the fans forget about the other garbage.
The card opened with two hacks – Steve Rizzono and Scott Snot – briefly fighting each other until one of wrestling’s biggest coulda-beens Vic Grimes mercifully ended it when he hit the ring and beat ’em up.
Vic was then assaulted by a masked S&M monster called Snuff (managed by my good friend JR Benson) and a new match was underway. Snuff took the duke in a reasonable big-man battle.
Next up was the first match in the XPW Tag Team Tournament: Mexico's Most Wanted vs two masked guys Xtasis & Venom Black. It wasn’t bad as indy lucha libre go and, thankfully, Halloween and Damien 666 went over.
Supreme vs Crimson was forgettable hard-core so, unsurprisingly, I don’t remember (or care) who won.
The second XPW Tag Team Tournament Match saw Ron “K-Kwik” Killings unload a profanity-filled promo that, sadly, I couldn’t understand due to the arena’s lousy acoustics. Seems he was the head of a faction called the New Black Panthers. They faced two indy schlubs King Faviano & Buddy George, who were beyond bad. So was K-Kwik’s unnamed partner. Basically, K-Kwik was the only worthwhile thing in this abortion of a bout. The ending was totally botched and I don’t even know who won it.
I fast-forwarded through the third XPW Tag Team Tournament Match – AWC & Shady vs The Altar Boys ’cos I knew it would be crap.
Speaking of which, next came the Raw Sewage Match pitting porn starlet Veronica Caine & GQ Money vs Angel & another porn star Lizzy Borden.
I seriously doubt there was any real poo in the wading pool the combatants fought around and in. This was very ordinary but at least Angel took a spectacular bump off some scaffolding into the wading pool to lift this into merely DUD territory.
La Parka vs Psicosis. At last, a decent match. Sadly, I can’t remember who won, probably ’cos my eyes had misted up at the sight of two decent wrestlers in an XPW ring at the same time. At least I saw the Chairman of the Board do his leeetle chair dance to make my heart sing again.
The Tag Team Tournament (From Hell) continued with a shiteful combo of Juantastico & Pogo the Clown vs. Juventud Guerrera & Vinnie Massaro. Massaro achieved what I had thought was impossible on this card: he actually wrestled more badly than all the previous ham’n’eggers combined. Yes, Vinnie was THE WORST WRESTLER of the night, setting a new record of missing EVERY SINGLE MOVE.
Juantastic was merely incompetent. Pogo had the amusing gimmick that every single sentence he spoke contained at least one “fuck” in it. What Juvey was doing in the middle of all this was beyond me. Who won? I have no idea.
Kaos seems to be a charismatic fella (and a reasonable worker), so his XPW TV Title defence against accomplished southern rassler Chris Hamrick promised to be a good ’un. As it turned out, the match was only marred by the crapola ending when Lizzy Borden walked from the back and stepped on a “landmine” (I shit thee not), distracting Hamrick and allowing Kaos to steal the pin.
According to the commentators, the XPW World Title bout started well after midnight, but it was worth it to see Terry Funk beat seven shades of shite out of champ Johnny Webb. Wading pools of poo, chairs, thumbtacks…this was your typical schmoz of an indy main event, with hard-workin’ Terry doing the undeserved job.
The match wasn’t horrible, but by God this card was. I dreaded to keep the tape going and watch XPW Hostile Takeover at the old ECW Arena in Philadelphia, PA on August 31, 2002.Surprisingly, the difference in quality between the two cards was like night and day. It probably had to do with Shane Douglas’s involvement, along with that of several ex-ECW workers, who lifted the match quality to a much higher level.The show opened with Shane Douglas (and Lizzy Borden) in the ring doing his usual tired “I’m the Franchise” bullshit. Terry Funk cut it short and the pair mouthed off in the ring over who made ECW (like anyone gives a crap).
Shane made to leave the ring, then pearl-harboured Terry and did a number on his leg, thereby jeopardising their main event later in the night.
The first match was an awesome lucha contest, with Psicosis beating his future Mexicool cohort Super Crazy with a leg drop from the top rope. Next, Pogo The Clown destroyed Sandman in a shock result I assume was meant to lead to a rematch. Sandman got in very little offense in this no-contest affair.
XPW Tag Team Champions Mexico's Most Wanted (Halloween and Damien 666) defeated The New Black Panters (Smokey Carmichael and Malcolm XL {Brian XL}) in a surprisingly good bout. These new New Panthers were much better than the previous pair I’d seen in action (XL was…ahem, quick to bury K-Kwik for quitting XPW to join NWA-TNA. Sounds like Mr Killings did the sensible thing).
Anyway, the Panthers did some nice big flippy moves. The brutal finish saw Halloween do some giant swings on Carmichael before Damien 666 dropkicked Carmichael in the head as he swung by, leading to the MMW scoring the easy pin.Another boring hard-core bout featured XPW Deathmatch champion Supreme beat The Hardcore Homo Angel after powerbombing him off the balcony onto a table covered in barbwire. Great bump, bad match.Juvey’s one crazy motherfucker. He debuted an in-ring interview session called The Juice Bar which, if XPW had survived, could’ve been a highlight of all future shows. Juventud was very funny here. Eventually, he slagged off Chris Chetti one too many times, which brought the latter to the ring.
This match must have been a mess, it was the only bout on the tape edited in spots. I gather this was due to Chetti messing up several spots. Thankfully, he got wasted by a Juvey Driver and the match was over. Afterwards, Julio Dinero hit the ring to chase off Juvey. Sadly, no-one in the crowd knew who Julio Dinero was.
“Vicious” Vic Grimes then beat Little Guido and Altar Boy Luke in a three-way dance. I didn’t care, although I was impressed when Grimes won the match using his version of the “Styles Clash” on Guido.
XPW TV champ “The Rock Superstar” Kaos (with Veronica Caine and GQ Money) defeated Chris Hamrick in a ladder match, which ranged from bad to good and featured some innovative ladder stunts.
The lack of wrestling logic bugged me on this one. GQ Money repeatedly interfered in the match while the ref stood there and did nothing. Psychologically, with Hamrick facing a 3-on-1 disadvantage, he should’ve gone over. Instead, Kaos won the bout relatively easy (after Hamrick did a spectacular header from the top of the ladder through a table at ringside). A fun match but the end result perplexed me.
Afterwards, Danny Doring hit the ring, attacked Kaos and challenged him for the belt. No-one cared. Hey, it’s Danny Doring, folks…what you expect?
Time for the main event, which turned out to be way too brief, I suspect due to a genuine mishap on Funk’s behalf.
Douglas came out first and cut an expletive-filled promo on CZW and 3PW (how ironic, they’re still going and XPW is…where?). Funk then put the fear of God in the Franchise’s eyes by coming to ringside. The match was on and soon chairs were flying. Funk took over and quickly bloodied Douglas’s face.The action spilled out of the arena where Funk went to smash a bottle and use it on Shane’s head. Somehow, the glass wound up badly gashing Funk’s arm.
Once back in the ring, the pair quickly went to the finish. Douglas gave Funk a piledriver, but Terry kicked out. However, the ref called for the bell and awarded the win to Douglas.
Terry then went nuts and beat up Douglas before giving Borden a piledriver. He was helped from ringside while security tried to stop his arm from bleeding.
It was a wild and crazy end to a better-than-average wrestling card.
If only XPW could have had more of them.
But to do that, they would’ve had to have dumped Rob Black, the porn queens and the West Coast hacks. And then all you would’ve had left was ECW.
And that would’ve been fine by me.
posted by Dann at 4:52 PM
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