Last Monday saw the debut of RevPro TV on Youtube. Last week saw both a British Heavyweight Championship defense, as well as crowning a new number one contender to the Cruiserweight Championship in Jimmy Havoc. This week is headlined by a match which will be determining who Havoc will be facing for said title; Will Ospreay defends his Cruiserweight Championship against New Japan and ROH star Rocky Romero.
RevPro TV #2
March 30 2015
London, England
The London Cockpit
Like last week, owner and matchmaker Andy Quildan opens up the show with Zoe Lucas. They hype the main event, then go to a highlight package of the previous week’s main event. It’s well produced, but pretty unnecessary really. If somebody wants to watch the match they’ll just click on the previous video in the playlist; I can do without rewatching a match I watched just last week for two minutes. No big deal, but it’s just wasting time.
Zoe and Andy then talk over the post-match events of last week. Zoe is incredibly awkward here; it’s pretty cringe-inducing. Let’s hope she improves in the weeks going forward. They then throw to a James Castle promo, explaining his events from last week. It’s very loud and shouty, and not exactly polished in its execution, but its fine for what it is.
We then have a video package on the main event featuring words from both champion and challenger. Ospreay came off as pretty nervous here, but he was alright, while Rocky really showed his class and experience delivering a strong promo. Rocky just seemed way more comfortable, as you’d somewhat expect. While the British scene is really firing on all cylinders in terms of in-ring quality right now, an area where it’s particularly lacking is definitely the verbal side of things. That’s somewhat to be expected, with very few promotions in the UK featuring any talking whatsoever. Hopefully this TV show can afford those on the roster that opportunity in order to improve.
Undisputed British Cruiserweight Championship – Will Ospreay (c) vs. Rocky Romero: Blimey, we’re onto the main event already, guess this’ll be a one match show. Will Ospreay is no stranger to facing big name international talent, having made his name in Rev Pro in fantastic showings against Ricochet, Matt Sydal and most recently AJ Styles. He’s yet to achieve a victory against any of those big names yet though, and if that streak continues then he’ll be losing his title here.
This match told a very nice story of Will learning from his earlier big name matches, where he’d previously been able to match up against the high flying arsenals of his aforementioned opponents but had eventually fallen because his all round game couldn’t match up. Here he pulled out a bevy of new submission holds, as well as showcasing that he could hang with the veteran Rocky in the chain wrestling aspect. This allowed him to hang in the match, even with Rocky destroying his left arm, and create opportunities for his spectacular high flying. After a great back and forth hard fought contest, Ospreay retained his title following a springboard cutter followed up by a beautifully graceful shooting star press at the twenty minute mark.
This match was great, and really played to the strengths of both guys. The limb work from Romero was nicely focused and worked into the match without slowing it down to a standstill like somewhat occurs with limbwork, and sold well by Ospreay. The sequences flowed sublimely, and they transitioned between them smoothly too. All in all this was a great TV main, and if you throw this in front of a bigger crowd you could easily see me putting this at the four star mark. ***3/4
After the match, Ospreay and Romero had a show of respect for each other. When Ospreay turned around from that, he was confronted with the next challenger for his title, a spiked muzzle wearing Jimmy Havoc. They stared down each other while Ospreay held up his title as the show ended.
Final Thoughts: Being a one match show, a lot rested on the quality of the match to make or break the show, and thankfully it delivered. It went quite long, around the last half hour of the show if you take into account entrances and post-match into account, so it didn’t feel like there was a lack of wrestling in this episode despite there being just the single match. It felt like they didn’t really know what to fill the remaining fifteen minutes of the show with though, and as a result the first third of the show before we got to the actual new content from Cockpit felt mostly like filler. As a result, I’d recommend giving the first part of the show a skip, but despite that this is still an enjoyable episode well worth checking out that does a good job of continuing the momentum of the debut episode.