It’s debut time here in The Two Sheds Review, and the company making their first ever appearance in the 11+ year history of my column is Swiss Championship Wrestling. For this first look we’re going back to 6th November, 2010, as former WWE and TNA star Joe E. Legend challenged Drake Destroyer for the SCW World Heavyweight title in the main event of the two disc Winter Heat.
Disc One began with tag team action as the 2 Hot Connection, Tom Sanders and Oogy Dog, taking on Maik Tuga and the masked Taki McChicken, with the winners getting a shot at the SCW Tag Team titles.
The 2HC guys are playing the gay gimmick here, promising to “take the arses” of their opponents “all night long” (they cut their promos in English), while McChicken is a tall guy dressed in black and yellow with red tassels hanging down from his arms and head, while Tuga looks like a normal guy.
As for the match it was okay. Tuga and McChicken pulled off some great double team moves against Sanders, but all four men were prone to botching every now and then, and it seemed to throw them off a little.
The ending came when Sanders took McChicken down with an assisted slice bread variation for the three count, making pelvic thrusts to a certain area of McC’s body as he made the pin. Afterwards the losers argued in the middle of the ring, with McChicken leaving Tuga alone as he went backstage.
The first singles match saw Tribun, accompanied by SCW Women’s Champion Amy Cooper, taking on Marshal T.
Tribun is a big looking guy who seems to be doing a knight-style of gimmick, wearing the sort of chain mail head gear that Scott Steiner wears, along with a chain mail shirt, while Marshal T is your typical lawman type.
This one began with a long segment involving Tribun trying to crown Cooper as SCW’s princess, only to be interrupted by British star Britani Knight (more on her later). Marshal came down to make the save when Tribun tried to chokeslam her, and I’m assuming that he made a challenge because this match seemed to be set up on the fly. (The promos, apart from Knight’s, were in German, so I’m guessing here.)
I didn’t have high hopes for this one at the beginning. The opening sequences, where Marshall took Tribun down with a series of arm drags and hip tosses just weren’t that fluid, with Tribun looking a little lost as he almost staggered into each move.
The action got better as the match went on, and Tribun began to remind me of a Test circa 2000/2001. But the problem here was that the action seemed to drag on and on without going anywhere. Tribun dominated, and Marshal offered very little in return.
Eventually, while the referee was taking a snooze, Tribun knocked Marshal with a chain around his fist, taking Marshall’s hand cuffs and cuffing him to the ropes. By then the referee had recovered enough to make the count as Tribun took the pin.
The bad guys then continued their attack on Marshall until the young Ms. Knight returned, this time with World Heavyweight Champion Drake Destroyer. This brought Destroyer’s challenger Joe E. Legend out, and the two exchanged words before the bad guys went backstage.
The action continued with Air 2 Style facing Luke Styles in a tables match.
I have no idea what kind of gimmick Air 2 is trying to portray with his cut off white shirt and tie combo, although I can tell you he’s not a tax inspector. As for Styles, he’s a bald guy (nothing wrong with that!) in a black tee and black combat trousers.
Before the show began Marshal T stopped Air 2 from getting into the building, so he’d obviously found another entrance. As with the last match there was more microphone work to set up the match, with Air 2 seemingly unhappy with the tables match stipulation.
Now this was a lot better. These two put on a pretty good match, with the action more intense than in the previous encounters as they brawled through the crowd, threw each other over chairs and whipped each other into walls and columns.
They eventually made it into the ring, and after a great exchange where each man countered the other’s attempts to put him through a table with various moves Air 2 countered Style’s superplex attempt with a sit down power bomb through the table for the win. Nice stuff.
The final match of disc one saw Italian star Red Devil challenging Belthazar for the SCW Lightweight title.
The Devil is a face painted guy who wears red tights, so I’m guessing that’s where his name comes from. Belthazar, meanwhile, is a vampire, not in the nice Edward Cullen sort of way, but in the going up to an Alaskan town for a big feeding frenzy for 30 days kind sort of way. His entrance involved a couple of shady looking characters in black robes and hoods.
Seeing as this was a lightweight match I was half expecting this to be a fast paced encounter in the X Division style, but I was sadly mistaken. Instead it was, for the most part, a well executed match that began slowly with some nice exchanges before developing into a faster paced encounter with both men going all out for the win.
This was when they brought out the high risk moves, with both men missing top rope moves before Belthazar took the Devil out with an ace crusher as he came off the top rope, ending a very enjoyable encounter.
Disc Two began with Britani Knight challenging Amy Cooper for the SCW Women’s title.
I have to admit that I was in two minds about reviewing this match. Britani is a member of the Knight Dynasty (this name © 2005 Julian Radbourne) family of wrestlers. Britani’s father, “Rowdy” Ricky Knight, is the owner of the World Association of Wrestling, the promotion I worked for for four years until November 2005.
Since I quit WAW the Knight family and their friends have caused me a lot of trouble, spreading untrue rumours about me, amongst other things. If I were to list everything they’ve done to me over the past five years or so I’d be here all night.
So it’s for these reasons that I’m unable to review this match, because I simply don’t want to review a match involving someone who has caused me so much trouble. So my apologies to Amy Cooper and especially to the SCW powers that be.
The penultimate match saw the Italian Connection, Charlie Kid and Kobra, accompanied by their “problem solver”, challenged Double Penetration, SigMasta Rappo and Peter Love, for the SCW Tag Team titles.
How best to describe their gimmicks? The Italian boys seem to be your stereo-typical shady types, nothing overly outlandish, with their enforcer being a big guy with dread locks, while the champs are a couple of guys who go around in Hawaiian shirts, so according to the great sage that is Homer Simpson that must make them party animals.
This match wasn’t very good at all. Both teams, but especially the Italian boys, looked extremely limited. As before the opening exchanges lacked any fluidity, and as the match progressed things just didn’t get any better.
It just seemed that basic things just weren’t being done that well. When blows were delivered they looked extremely weak, making it a little difficult to suspend disbelief.
In the end Rappo got the pin for his team, pinning Kobra with a roll-up.
The main event saw Joe E. Legend, accompanied by Tribun and Amy Cooper, challenging Drake Destroyer for the SCW World Heavyweight title.
You guys should know who Legend is by now, former WWE and TNA star, close friend of Rhino, Edge & Christian, while Mr. Destroyer kind of reminds me a little of jacked-up Sean Waltman.
Before the match began the referee exercised his authority by sending Tribun and Cooper to the back, denying Legend his outside advantage.
This was definitely the best of the bunch here. It began with some wild brawling before it settled down into a regular match, but when the action was taken up a notch or two the referee took a hit and decided to take a snooze at ringside.
This was when Tribun and Cooper came back out to give Legend a hand, and it looked like Legend would take the win after he clobbered Drake with the title belt and a new referee arrived on the scene.
They would go on to share numerous near falls, with both Tribun and Cooper interfering, until Drake knocked Legend into the title belt that Tribun was holding on the ring apron before taking him out with his version of the Olympic slam for the pin.
Drake’s night wasn’t over though as Air 2 Style came down and attacked the champion. Legend and his buddies joined in with the assault until Double Penetration and Britani Knight ran in for the save.
In conclusion - this release is definitely a mixed bag of action. There are some good performances here, particularly from the likes of Joe E. Legend and Belthazar, but there’s some quite poor ones too. The Tribun/Marshal and Tag Team title match were both pretty poor, with everyone involved in those encounters looking pretty rough around the edges and need of a tune up as far as execution and psychology goes.
Production-wise it’s okay, your usual indy-style values, although the hard cam must have been knocked out of action before the main event because that match was filmed from a hand cam at ringside. As for the commentators it would be a little unfair to pass judgement on them, mainly because I don’t speak German.
Oh, and there is some strobe lighting in this as well so be careful if buy this and you’re affected by that sort of thing.
So in closing despite my criticisms I’m prepared to give Winter Heat 2010 a thumbs up. It’s not a big thumbs up mind, but it’s one with the old “could do better” line tagged on to the end.
With thanks to the powers that be for supplying a copy of this release. For more information on purchasing Winter Heat 2010 you can contact SCW through their website at www.swiss-wrestling.ch.
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