LOTF at the 2010 Battle of Los Angeles

[Vegas]

It just got announced today that, following PWG's 7th anniversary show, the next PWG show is actually going to be the 2010 Battle of Los Angeles on Labor Day weekend.

Hopefully I can go (I think I can, I'll know for sure soon.)

[Vegas]

Tonight on the PWG website, this is what Silverback said:

August 17 - With the peculiar number of entrants in the 2010 Battle of Los Angeles, fans have been speculating on how exactly the First Round, and the entire tournament for that matter, will be structured. Well, speculate no longer, because much like the majority of previous Battle of Los Angeles First Round matches, each match on Night One will be single fall singles matches.

However, the Quarter-Final, Semi-Final, and Final Round match structures, as well as the brackets for the tournament, will remain shrouded in mystery until the Night Two of the 2010 Battle of Los Angeles actually takes place!

Tonight, the first First Round match was announced: Christopher Daniels vs Chris Hero

I personally would not be surprised if this is the final match of night one to close out the first round and if Hero loses. Once the remaining First Round matches are announced, we'll have a better idea, but I wouldn't be surprised (depending on who their First Round opponents are) if Hero, Claudio Castagnoli, El Generico, and Paul London all lose their First Round matches. That way they could set up a tag match of the PWG World Tag Team Champions (London and Generico) vs the ROH World Tag Team Champions the Kings of Wrestling as one of the non-tournament matches for night two.

[cruefan68]

Aug 18, 2010 2:59:22 GMT -5 Vegas said:

Tonight on the PWG website, this is what Silverback said:

August 17 - With the peculiar number of entrants in the 2010 Battle of Los Angeles, fans have been speculating on how exactly the First Round, and the entire tournament for that matter, will be structured. Well, speculate no longer, because much like the majority of previous Battle of Los Angeles First Round matches, each match on Night One will be single fall singles matches.

However, the Quarter-Final, Semi-Final, and Final Round match structures, as well as the brackets for the tournament, will remain shrouded in mystery until the Night Two of the 2010 Battle of Los Angeles actually takes place!

Tonight, the first First Round match was announced: Christopher Daniels vs Chris Hero

I personally would not be surprised if this is the final match of night one to close out the first round and if Hero loses. Once the remaining First Round matches are announced, we'll have a better idea, but I wouldn't be surprised (depending on who their First Round opponents are) if Hero, Claudio Castagnoli, El Generico, and Paul London all lose their First Round matches. That way they could set up a tag match of the PWG World Tag Team Champions (London and Generico) vs the ROH World Tag Team Champions the Kings of Wrestling as one of the non-tournament matches for night two.

Can you book this show? I like your predictions. Should be a great event as the BOLA usually is.

[Vegas]

a little later than planned, but I'm about to leave now for BOLA.

[Vegas]

It was an awesome time last night at PWG for the first night of BOLA!

To start off the show, ring announcer John Ian got on the microphone to remind the crowd that "pitchers are for drinking and not for throwing" (there have been times in the past at PWG where pitchers have been thrown by fans.) And then Excalibur asked everybody once they finished their pitchers to bring them back to the bar where the bartenders (including this super hot Asian chick who I don't remember seeing there before) would fill them back up for you "for a small fee."

As expected it was a double elimination for the Bucks (PWG's biggest heels) to start off the tournament. "Matthew and Jeremiah" refused to wrestle each other and instead got a double DQ when they gave referee Mike Knox a double superkick at the start of their match.

Then as the Bucks were staring to leave, their enemies the Cutlers came out and instead of wrestling each other the Young Bucks were forced to wrestle the Cutlers in a tag match which the Cutlers won. I think tonight it might be the Cutlers challenging the Danger Bees (Paul London and El Generico) for the PWG World Tag Team Championship. Since TNA has a PPV tonight, I'm wondering if perhaps the Bucks instead of being back at PWG tonight will instead be at TNA for the PPV even if they're not listed in the matches for that TNA show.

Brandon Gatson defeated Ryan Taylor. Last year at BOLA, Gatson advanced all the way to the Semi-Finals. But I think this year he might lose in the second round tonight.

Joey Ryan defeated Chuck Taylor who alot of people on the PWG discussion board thought was going to win BOLA this year. During their match, at one point the action spilled outside of the ring and Chuck Taylor actually grabbed Cman's Austin Aries LOTF card out of his hand and threw it a couple of rows back. Joey Ryan is truly one of my personal favorite wrestlers in PWG so I was really glad to see him win. I also got to say hi again to Joey Ryan after the show too.

Roderick Strong defeated Paul London. London was accompanied to the ring by the Space Owl. I don't know who the Space Owl was (although I'm pretty certain it wasn't Brian Kendrick) because he wore an owl mask. But based on his size and the way he got involved in the action outside of the ring, I think he was a wrestler. At one point the Space Owl came down and sat in the empty front row seat (the guy sitting there had gone to the bathroom or something) next to Cman and then turned to Cman and started hooting. Cman hooted back.

Claudio Castagnoli defeated Ricochet. This was my first time getting to see Ricochet (also known as Helios in Chikara) wrestle and my first time seeing Claudio Castagnoli wrestle live for PWG (but I've seen him wrestle multiple times before at ROH shows.) I think Castagnoli's last PWG appearance was back in July 2008 at their 5th anniversary Life During Wartime show where he had a match and then tried to interfere in that classic main event steel cage title match between Chris Hero and the Human Tornado. Castagnoli won which pretty much eliminated the possibility of a PWG World Tag Team Champions the Danger Bees vs ROH World Tag Team Champions the Kings of Wrestling match as one of tonight's non-tournament matches.

Intermission. At the PWG merchandise table I bought the DVDs for this year's DDT4 which I attended back in May and DIO (the one PWG show I missed this year that took place back in June.) from Chris Hero I bought a shoot interview of him where he talsk about CM Punk (who he wrestled when they were bith in the Indies) and some other topics and Hero told me to tell him what I thought of it next time I see again him at PWG. I was hoping they would be selling BOLA shirts for this year with the logo for this year's BOLA on the PWG website. But no dice.

Austin Aries defeated Rocky Romero. Aries, who used to be a PWG regular, made his first appearance at PWG since last year's Battle of Los Angeles. This was the first time I ever saw Romero wrestle live at PWG even though he's wrestled there before and I've seen him wrestle a few times at ROH shows. After the show I saw Austin Aries and asked him to sign his LOTF card for me. Aries then said "I need to hear the magic word" so (even though I'm pretty sure I said please at first anyway) I said please and he said "there it is" and then signed my card while telling me "this is the greatest day of your life." A minute later, Aries also signed Cman's card to and then gave Cman a similar lecture about saying please (but I really do believe I said please to Aries as I typically do whenever I ask someone to sign their LOTF card, but I guess he just didn't hear it the first time.)

Brandon Bonham defeated Brian Cage. I wouldn't be surprised to see Bonham advance to the Semi-Finals tonight (perhaps against Brandon Gatson, but it's hard to predict since the brackets are not announced.) On my way out the door, I saw Bonham (who was actually ranked pretty high in this year's PWI 500 rankings) and shook his hand and congratuled him on advancing to the next round. Bonham asked me if I was coming back again tonight and I said oh yeah. I think the next time I see Brian Cage will probably be on a future edition of NXT as he just resigned with the WWE where in FCW he brefly held the FCW tag team championship with Justin Gabriel (then known as Justin Angel.)

Tozawa defeated El Generico. Especially after London previously lost his match, I fully expected this to happen so the Danger Bees could defend their title in one of tonight's non-tournament matches.

for the first round main event, Chris Hero defeated Christopher Daniels. Daniels was making his first PWG appearance in quite awhile. As he was coming to the ring, Daniels came up to me and asked me to move. I hesitated just for a second because that request caught me off guard, but then I moved and Daniels stood up on my front row seat and posed to the crowd which got a huge ovation. Daniels then jumped down and tapped me on the shoulder a couple of times to say thank you for moving and then slapped a few more hands from other front row fans before entering the ring for his match. At the start of the match, the crowd started a "f TNA chant" and Daniels immediately told them to stop and instead started them in a "PWG, PWG" chant and then yelled in Excalibur's direction over at the asnnouncer's table soemthing about how he can't have that- so it looks like he's still trying to get back to TNA as Tournament Master previously told us on the board. Hero won to advance (which I wasn't too surprised to see since Castagnoli won earlier in the night too) to the next round (I'm wondering if Hero might wrestle Castagnoli tonight in one of the next rounds?)

One cool thing PWG started doing last night is having food service where you raise your hand and someone gets your order and then brings you your food (which is cooked outside) without you even have to leave your seat. They had burgers, fries, nachos, etc (in the past PWG normally only has beer.) My only concern with sitting front row is that the food might end up all over you as there is no guard rail at PWG and wrestlers are constantly flying into the front row seats throughout the night. At one point some food did get spilled- but that was by the guy bringing a fan his food when the food spilled only a few steps away from the customer and all over the floor. Instead of eating there, me and Cman went to Jack in the Box after the show.

Brandon Gatson, Joey Ryan, Roderick Strong, Claudio Castagnoli, Austin Aries, Brandon Bonham, Tozawa, and Chris Hero are the 8 wrestlers still alive in the tournament. I'm looking forward to seeing who wins the 2010 Battle of Los Angeles at PWG tonight!

[cruefan68]

Sounded like a great opening night. Thanks for sharing the report here. Was Claudio vs. Ricochet as great as the reports have been saying? Looking forward to your report on the finals.

[TTX]

You were right on about the Bucks.

[jasonjaconetti]

The Bucks being out together allowed TNA to book them to open the PPV last night. (In place of Nigel/Desmond and Magnus)

[Vegas]

For a number of reasons, Night 2 of BOLA was insane last night.

I'm glad Joey Ryan defeated Austin Aries in the quarter-finals but I was surprised and disappointed to see Claudio Castagnoli defeat Roderick Strong in the Quarter-Finals. The other Quarter-Finals match saw Brandon Gatson defeat Brandon Bonham which put Gatson in the Semi-Finals for the second straight year.

MOTN and a PWG MOTY candidate was definitely Hero defeating Tozawa to advance to the semi-finals. Along with Hero's match against PWG World Champion Davey Richards at PWG's previous show Seven, this was IMO definitely one of the top two matches in PWG this year.

For some reason, the crowd (who seemed happy when Joey Ryan earlier defeating both Chuck Taylor and especially Austin Aries in the tournament) suddenly really turned on Joey Ryan when he defeated Castagnoli in the Semi-Finals. I think some of them wanted to see a Kings of Wrestling finals matchup or just didn't want Ryan to advance.

Chris Hero defeated Brandon Gatson in the other semi-finals match which Cman said was better than their match at DIO back in June (the only PWG show I've missed so far this year.)

The Taylors (Chuck Taylor, Ryan Taylor, and Brian "Taylor" Cage) defeated Ricochet, Rocky Romero, and Johnny Goodtime. As a BOLA tradition, this was the annual 6 (and sometimes more) man wrestling match of guys from the losing bracket the previous night except Goodtime replaced Christoper Daniels who wasn't there for the second night.

all holy hell literally broke out in the next match where the PWG World Tag Team Champions Paul London and El Generico defeated the Cutlers. A good portion of the match saw the action spill outside of the ring on the side of our front row seats. At one point, Paul London did a sunset flip from the ring to the outside and partly landed on Cman and in the process also kicked the guy (not me) sitting on the other side of Cman in the face. Another dive by London (and this time Cman was able to get out of the way entirely) completely destroyed Cman's seat. That's not unusual in PWG and the destroyed seat just got passed to the back of our section and a new seat got passed up to the front to Cman. And a girl in the row behind us got skinned/scraped too at one oint during the melee that took place in our section of seats.

I actually got speared by Brandon Cutler. Paul London was outside of the ring right in front of my front row seat when Brandon Cutler suddenly ran and dived into London and then into me right on top of my right knee which caused my seat to get pushed back but I somehow managed to hang onto the envelope that held my LOTF cards. Some of the fans behind me helped me up and patted me on the back. London instead of me thankfully took most of the impact from that spear. My right knee hurts a little. But I can walk with no problem and it wasn't even bruised, just lightly scraped, so I'll be fine and it won't deter me from sitting front row in the future (next PWG show is Saturday October 9th and I'll be there again in the front row. ) It was a great match, I just wasn't expecting to become part of the match.

At another point I also might have almost got hit by a reverse SHOOTING STAR PRESS from London from the top turnbuckle onto one of the Cutlers to the outside of the ring as my attention was diverted to another part of the action in the tag match. But one of the guys behind me gently grabbed my shoulder and pulled me back a few feet and I at least avoided that hit.

London and Generico went on to win the match to retain the PWG World Tag Team Championship, but I really think the Cutlers might win it sometime in the future.

In the next and final match, Joey Ryan defeated Chris Hero in the finals to win the 2010 Battle of Los Angeles. Ryan got cut open badly in this match and some of the fans in the front row (but not our section) had drops of blood splattered on them.

Once again, alot of people were upset that Ryan won BOLA and continued to shout things like "this is bs." It's ironic because a little over one year ago at Threemendous II when Chris Hero defeated Joey Ryan in a guerrilla warfare match to retain the PWG World Championship, the fans were upset and completely littered the ring with cups and pitchers of thrown beer in protest. But then last night it was the opposite as Ryan defeated Hero to chants of "this is bs." Sometimes I think people just get mad about anything to the extent that it's not even really understandable.

Joey Ryan is one of the owners of PWG and is thus partly responsible for PWG being as great as it is for those fans. Also some of the fans on the PWG message board have complained about the recent lack of title defenses since the last two champions Kenny Omega and Davey Richards (who unless he changes his mind is retiring in a few months anyway) are often booked for Japan. If Ryan as the winner of BOLA goes on to win the title with his now guaranteed title shot, it would give PWG a champion who could defend the title regularly, but nevertheless some fans booed him winning anyway. But I'm personally completely OK with Joey Ryan winning the tournament and after the show I told him congratulations.

As announced last night, the next PWG show takes place on Saturday October 9th and now that Ryan has a title shot due to winning BOLA it might be PWG World Champion Davey Richards vs Joey Ryan as the main event. I plan on going.

[cruefan68]

Wow, Vegas, sounds like you took a nasty hit during the tag title match. Glad to hear you weren't seriously hurt. Sounded like another great show and it's definitely weird that the fans turned on Joey Ryan like that. Is it possible they wanted Hero vs. Claudio in the finals or is it just a case of fans wanting to crap on something for the hell of it? I hate stuff like that because the guys work their butts off trying to put on a good show only to have fans crap on them in the end. If they were cheering Ryan on earlier how in the hell did that change so drastically like that? Anyway, thanks for the follow-up report it was fun to read.