It’s debut time once more in the hallowed pages of The Two Sheds Review, and this time I’m going across the Atlantic not to American but to Canada.
The promotion we’re going to look at here ins the Quebec-based Northern Championship Wrestling. For those of you who haven’t heard of NCW before here’s some background information.
While some of you may be thinking that NCW are a new promotion they’ve actually been around for almost 30 years. They currently run shows in Montreal in the St. Bartholomew Centre, and countless current and former WWE, TNA and ROH stars have appeared on their shows, ranging from the likes of Sid Vicious, the Honkytonk Man and Jim Neidhart right up to modern day stars like Bobby Roode, Eddie Edwards and Kevin Steen.
In fact the current ROH World Champion features n this review as we travel back in time to February 26th, 2011 for what was described to me as NCW’s equivalent to Raw and Impact, Full Blast.
The show began with tag team action as Pure Talent went up against Falco and Matt Lucky.
With the introductions cut and with no commentary it took me a few moments to work out who was who, and even then I didn’t know who one of the guys was because he wasn’t mentioned in the notes I’d printed off from the NCW website.
But back to the matter at hand. It was a quickie encounter that began with a mass brawl before Lucky and Falco displayed their high flying skills.
The Talent guys then used Falco as their crash test dummy for a few moments until our heroes came back into the match, but just when they were about to get the pin after a Doomsday Device the lights went out.
When they came back on a big guy by the name of Ricker McGoth Oz appeared on the stage. It was just the distraction the Talent guys needed when they rolled Lucky up for the pin.
Needless to sat the villains attacked the heroes before another guy, Judas, came to help out Lucky and Falco.
Singles action followed with the Mark Andrews Open Challenge.
Lots of jaw jacking at the beginning of this one, and because it was in French I had to rely on my translated notes once again. Basically a lady called Miss Daisy announced that a man mountain called Spike, who was apparently feared throughout Quebec would be answering Andrews’ challenge this time around.
When the talk was over what we had here was five minutes of throwing Andrews around the ring like a stuffed toy and beating the hell out of him.
Andrews’ offence seemed useless against the big man, until he missed an avalanche in the corner that is. Andrews quickly came back into the match, taking Spike out with a few dropkicks before getting the pin after a double underarm DDT.
The first title match of the show saw the King’s Court defending the Tag Team titles against the Titans, Crime Inc and the Young Guns.
Once again with the introductions cut I found it a little difficult to tell who was who, although I was able to work out which team was which.
It began with a mass brawl involving the seven men and one woman before it settled down into a normal tag team affair, where on of the Titans pulled off some nice RVD-like moves.
After a few minutes of action it soon degenerated back into a brawl with each team showing off some high spots before the guy in the King’s Court team pinned one of the Titans after he’d been taken down by Crime Inc after a side slam/leg drop combo.
The championship action continued with Jay Phenomenon challenging James Stone for the Quebec title.
Before the match began Stone attacked Phenomenon with a chair while the introductions were being made. Stone celebrated as if he’d won the match while Phenomenon was being helped to the back. But then the challenger had a surge of energy and returned to the ring, insisting that the referee started the match.
Stone proceeded to take his challenger apart for a few minutes, even spitting on him at one point, but when Phenomenon countered a corner attack with a boot to the kisser he made a brief comeback.
Until Stone’s valet Mary Lee Rose came into the ring that is. She distracted the referee long enough so Stone could deliver a blow south of the border. After Miss Rose had been ushered away the referee turned his attention back to the match and saw Stone pinning Phenomenon. A three count later and he had the title retaining pin.
It was back to non-title action for the next match as Pee Wee went up against Mathieu St-Jacques.
What we had here was the battle of the bruiser against the high flyer. There was a bit of jaw jacking at the beginning, mainly because MSJ wanted to argue with the fans, but when the match eventually started our hated heel easily overpowered Pee Wee, spanking his backside and slapping him in the face for good measure.
It soon developed into a very interesting back and forth battle. MSJ. Put on a sound performance as he attempted to ground his opponent, but Pee Wee kept coming back, and even though he crashed and burned off the top rope at one point it wasn’t long before he took the winning pin after taking MSJ down with an Ace Crusher.
The penultimate match was also the final title match of the evening as Inter-Cities Champion Marvellous Jeff and Triple Crown Champion Pat Guenette took on Urban Miles and Leon Saver, with both of the champion’s titles on the line. Basically it’s one of those deals where whoever pins one of the champions wins that particular title.
This was pretty decent. It began with Guenette taking Saver down, pulling off a few moves that Johnny Saint would have been proud of, before Jeff tagged into the match as we had a brief brawl at ringside.
Once the action returned to the ring the heels soon took control, and after a little help from their ringside flunkies they began to work over Jeff’s knee after it had been rammed into the ring post.
Eventually Jeff got the hot tag to Guenette. He cleared the house a little until Miles and Saver took him down with a flapjack/Ace Crusher combination. After seeing that his partner was down Jeff managed to tag himself back into the match, and after avoiding another attempt at outside interference Jeff took Saver down with a sky-high powerbomb to take the winning pin.
The main event was billed as a Superfight as Kevin Steen went up against Don Paysan.
They certainly saved the best for last with this show. For over 20 minutes these two tore strips off each off, and it was a joy to watch.
Steen was in complete heel mode here. Well I say complete, he wasn’t up to his ROH level of insanity. It began with some nice exchanges, but when Steen power bombed Paysan into the corner of the ring and followed up by whipping his man into the guard rail he began to take control.
It was a great piece of storytelling as Steen sought to take his man apart, working over Paysan’s back but never quite getting the win. Paysan, for his part, put in some spirited comebacks, his fast-paced offence giving the larger Steen quite a bit of trouble.
Perhaps the best moment came when the action spilled outside again. Steen grabbed the ring steps and placed them between the ramp and the ring, intent on suplexing Paysan into them. Paysan managed to stop the attack though, and Steen ended up being suplexed on the ramp from the steps.
When the combatants eventually returned to the ring it wasn’t long before Paysan took control, but just when he was about to take Steen out with a top rope attack a fellow by the name of Professor Max Boyer came down and pushed him off the top. Paysan tried to clobber Boyer but ended up getting clobbered himself before Steen rolled up the stunned Paysan for the three count and the win.
Boyer then jumped into the ring and attacked Paysan. Paysan quickly recovered, sending Boyer running for cover. The sneaky Professor then tried to cut a deal with Steen, but Mr. Wrestling was having none of it as the two opponents attacked Boyer, sending him running for cover again. Some more jaw jacking followed, but once again I didn’t understand a word of it.
In conclusion - so how would I rate my first experience of the Northern Championship Wrestling product?
Wrestling-wise it was pretty good. The matches were enjoyable, and they accomplished quite a bit considering most of them were quite short. There’s definitely some guys here I wouldn’t mind seeing again.
Production-wise as I mentioned before there wasn’t any commentary, and it was a strictly one camera affair, which meant that the lack of a static camera made it a little difficult to follow the action at times.
But overall I have to say that I enjoyed myself watching this, and with Don Paysan and Kevin Steen taking the no-prize for match of the night I’m going to give this episode of NCW Full Blast the thumbs up.
With thanks to the powers that be for supplying a copy of this release. You can find out more information about NCW on their website at www.ncw.qc.ca
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