It’s time to step into the realm of British professional wrestling once again as we take a second look at the Scottish-based Premier British Wrestling, part of the Union of European Wrestling Alliances (UEWA). The DVD in question is last October’s Maximum Impact 5.
The show began with title action as Martin Kirby and Kris Travis, Project Ego, challenged Lionheart and Wolfgang for the Tag Team titles.
This proved to be a nice opening encounter. Kirby and Travis attacked the champs before the bell but soon made the usual heel mistake of celebrating while not keeping an eye on their opponents as Lionheart and Wolfgang made their comeback.
It wasn’t long before Lionheart was used as the proverbial punching bag as the Ego boys put in some good work before the inevitable mass brawl. Several near falls were registered until the champions took the upper hand.
The match ended with Lionheart and Wolfgang both climbing to the top rope, with Wolfgang taking out one Ego boy with a swanton and Lionheart the other with a frog splash. A double count from the referee saw the champions retaining their titles.
The title action continued with James Scott challenging Bad Bones for the UEWA Heavyweight title.
A relatively short encounter began with both men engaging in a popularity contest, which the Scot won hands down.
When the match actually started Bones dominated for the most part, the German putting on a good display with his various power-based moves.
Scott had a few moments of offence, and his DDTs looking particularly impressive. But when he went for his own version of the GTS Bones blocked the move, hoisting Scott up and taking him out with a sit-down powerbomb for the title retaining pin.
More tag team action followed as Colin McKay, Jack Jester and Red Lightning took on Chris Rampage, Davey Blaze and Joe Coffey.
This wasn’t too bad. There were a couple of dodgy looking moments, but overall it was quite entertaining.
Plenty of back and forth action in this one with both teams putting in a good effort, and Jester in particular looking quite good, although Blaze did look a little rough around the edges.
The end came when Blaze and Rampage took McKay down with what looked like a double brain buster.
The first half main event saw Andy Wild taking on New Japan star Prince Devitt.
Now this was good, the best match of the first half, although you wouldn’t have known it if you’d listened to the silent crowd.
Devitt again impressed the hell out of me, tying Wild up in knots at times as he put on a great display of technical wrestling.
Wild was more than up for the challenge, and although he was as unstoppable as his nickname suggests he put together some great sequences, coming close to getting the win on more than one occasion.
The Irishman took the win here, taking Wild down with his brain buster variation, and shaking his man’s hand afterwards in a great show of sportsmanship.
The second half began with the King of Cruisers match, a six man elimination match featuring Liam Thomson, Mark Andrews, Zack Sabre Junior, Stevie Xavier, Joey Hayes and El Ligero.
Fast paced action was the order of the day in this one. It started off in the normal manner, with four men on the ring apron, but it wasn’t long before all hell broke out and it was everyman from himself as they put on a ton of great sequences, although Ligero made a couple of errors early on, which is unusual for him.
Hayes was the first man eliminated, pinned after Andrews connected with a DDT. Andrews soon followed, taken out by Thomson’s back cracker.
Thomson was the third man to go. After he failed with a top rope attack Ligero rolled him up for the pin. The masked man soon followed, tapping out to Sabre’s cross arm breaker.
This left Sabre and Xavier, and although they put together some good sequences there were a couple of errors. When Xavier went to pin Sabre the referee made his count, stopping just short of three while the pin was still in place. It was obvious that someone had forgotten that neither of these pins were meant to finish the match.
The proper finish came when Xavier took Sabre out with a 450 splash from the top rope to win the trophy, thankfully sparing us from Sabre’s pre-match promise to poop in the trophy if he won.
The penultimate match featured tag team action as T.J. Rage and Scott Maverick, accompanied by manager Charles Boddington, went up against J.D. Bravo and Jamie Feerick.
This match was designed to give some of those in the formative stages of their careers some exposure, and even though they looked a little rough around the edges at times they did pretty well.
Rage was the guy who impressed me the most in this match with his array of power moves, while Maverick and Feerick put together some good sequences. As for big Bravo, well he wasn’t in the ring long enough to get a sustained opinion of his abilities.
The end came when Rage placed Feerick on the ropes and took him out with a spinning neck breaker for the winning pin. It will certainly be interesting to see how some of these lads progress over the next few years.
The main saw Johnny Moss challenging B.T. Gunn for the PBW title in a best of three falls encounter.
The slow and methodical approach was the order of the day for these two, which wasn’t surprising considering the stint they put in.
Once again Moss looked very impressive with his array of power moves, and it’s easy to see why he’s attracted some attention from overseas in the past. Gunn looked okay, but there were times where he looked like he was having an off night.
Moss scored the first fall. With Gunn standing on the ring apron and draped over the second rope Moss flew over the top rope and took Gunn down with a sunset flip powerbomb from the apron to the floor. After being checked over by the referee Moss insisted that he count Gunn out, which he duly did.
Gunn soon equalised things. Gunn’s injured neck was like a red rag to a bull for Moss as he centred his attack on the injury, pulling off an impressive array of power moves. But although he dominated for the most part Gunn managed to recover enough to get a few shots in before countering a suplex attempt with a roll-up for the pin.
The deciding fall went to Gunn. Both men came close on numerous occasions, and Moss looked like he’d won the gold after taking Gunn down with a tombstone piledriver, only for Gunn to put his foot on the bottom rope.
A few minutes later it was all over as Gunn took his man down with what looked like a code breaker variation for the deciding fall.
In conclusion - my second experience of the PBW product was an enjoyable one. There were a few things that left me scratching my bald pate a little but these were outweighed by the many enjoyable moments and the performances from the likes of the always watchable Prince Devitt and Johnny Moss.
My one big gripe though was, once again, the lack of commentary, and I’m grateful to the very vocal crowd for screaming the names of those I did not recognise, and for those wrestlers who were good enough to have their names on their ring attire!
But apart from the Maximum Impact gets the thumbs up from this particular writer.
With thanks to the powers that be for supplying a copy of this release. PBW Maximum Impact 5 is available to buy online at www.pbwwrestling.com.
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