NWA Virginia Action Zone Workrate Report
Availiable as always at http://www.wrestlingnetwork.net
What Worked
OSE pre match promo was pretty great, especially Preston Quinn "we don't have the faces that make the ladies run out of the stands, we are built to beat people up." Clearly all three guys have been studying their Arn Anderson tapes. I didn't really like PQ talking about how stiff he is, seems more like a word for internet wrestling dorks like me, and not the sort of way a old school ass kicker would describe himself. Couldn't really see Wahoo talking about his stiff chops, or Dick Murdoch talking about how stiff his punches are.
Wayne v. Dramin was a blast. Dramin is probably the best of the half dozen bland Armenian babyfaces in NWA-VA. They really need to bring in Turkish Delight Murat Bosphorous and run that blood feud. The match starts out with Dramin armdragging Wayne a couple of times and Wayne taking the Halloween Pete Rose bump to the floor. Wayne takes over on the floor with the best punches in wrestling and goes for his ring apron guillotine leg drop, which he misses and hurts his leg. Dramin goes after the leg a little, but hits his shoulder on the ringpost. Then the rest of the match has Wayne ripping up Dramin's shoulder, with a bunch of nasty kicks, knees and locks on the arm. Dramin makes some comebacks, but this is mostly just a beating. Finish is pretty beautiful as Wayne blocks a irish whip into a springboard fujiwara, and turns that into an arm locked crossface for a pass out win. I thought Wayne working over the arm section lasted a little long without a comeback, but that was really my only complaint. Dramin doesn't bring a ton to the table, but he was fine as guy getting his arm ripped off. Post match beating is pretty great too, as the OSE triple teams Dramin before getting run off by Scotty Blaze
The slow motion closing video set to the old World Championship Wrestling music, fucking rules. Just a beautiful piece of video production and totally fits the feel of this show.
What Didn't Work
Tommy Smalls v. Drake Tungston wasn't terrible, and might make a what worked column if it was doing a RAW Workrate Report, but I have higher standards for NWA-VA. Smalls is tiny, like Taj Mowrey tiny, and they work a small guy vs. giant match, and I can't imagine Tungston is over 5'10. Basic rookie v. veteran stuff, although they blew some stuff, most of it was fine. Worst thing about the match was that they used missed clothesline transitions twice, and both times, Tungston's clothesline was about 8 inches over where Smalls head would have been even if he hadn't ducked. Small thing, but it really looked bad.
O'Brien was back to being unlistenable this week. He seems to have decided that the way to improve his announcing is to add a terrible sounding guttural Vince McMahon shout during moments of drama. He kept mixing up which of Dramin's arms was hurt, as Dramin would throw a punch with the good arm and O'Brien would claim it was the bad arm. He was also working a bizarre analogy where Dramin was Nazi Germany and Wayne was Russia, might have worked in a heel v. heel match but made no sense here. Came pretty close to ruining the match, and he has to put his ego aside and get someone else to do the commentary.