Earlier this month Revolution Pro Wrestling announced their new streaming service, RPWonDemand, and within that announcement they also announced that RevPro TV would be returning for a second season. While the first season of TV was all put up on YouTube, the second season will be released through the aforementioned streaming service. A new episode is scheduled to go up every Thursday and will be able to watch for free without a subscription until the end of that week, after which point the episode will enter the archives of the service and will require a paid subscription to view.
RevPro TV
Season 2 – Episode 1
March 24, 2016
London Cockpit
London, England
Watch: rpwondemand.com
Straight off the bat the second season of the show feels like a step up from where they were at the end of the first in the technical department. The introduction to the show came off cleaner, and they’re also showing off some new high end looking graphics. Andy Quildan does a great job in succinctly laying out everything that’s in store for this episode before sending us to the first match of the season: a Contenders match.
Rob Lias def. Matt Nathan
Contenders is the name which RevPro brands its student shows, and it now seems that they’re going to be throwing the occasional Contenders match onto the main shows to test the waters with some of their younger talent. While I have no problem throwing younger talent onto their main shows to get higher levels of exposure, it certainly wouldn’t have been the way I’d kick off the new season. In the current world we live in with the overwhelming amount of wrestling available to us all it’s in a promotion’s best interest to put its best foot forward at any point that could conceivably be viewed as a jumping on point. The start of a season of TV is certainly one of them, and by kicking off with this trainee match you run the risk of losing a proportion of your audience before they even get to see your featured match.
Nathan—at 18 years of age—is mere weeks removed from his first match at the time this was recorded, and it showed here. He wasn’t bad per se but he never appeared fully comfortable in the ring, which isn’t to be unexpected so early in his career. Both guys here appeared fundamentally sound but lacked the dynamism in their work needed for the match to hook me (pretty much the modus operandi of Portsmouth School of Wrestling graduates). Lias picked up the win with a bridging chancery after about four minutes and was the more impressive of the two, with his movements feeling more confident and purposeful and his offense being crisper. *1/2
After catching everybody up to date on the earlier portions of the feud we transitioned to an in-ring confrontation between the two former members of the LDRS, the current RPW champion Zack Sabre Jr. and the number one contender for that belt Marty Scurll. The expectation for this segment was that Scurll would announce when he’s challenging for the title, but he turned that on his head when he said he doesn’t want to challenge for the belt while Zack is champion. Instead he wanted to reform the Leaders of the New School tag team with him, which Zack, slightly reservedly, agreed to. This led to the Leaders of the New School being announced to be facing the current IWGP Junior Tag Team Champions Ricochet and Matt Sydal at the Epic Encounter show occurring in April, a match that sounds absolutely tremendous.
I liked this segment a lot. Sabre is far from a great talker and Scurll, while better, can sometimes come off a little too much like he’s reading lines, but here they managed to keep things simple and effectively minimised Sabre’s mic time and as a result they got across what they were trying to convey without running into problems. They’ve set up a non-traditional dynamic, with a face champion teaming with a long term friend who is a heel. It seems like an obvious set-up for Scurll to do some back stabbing, but predictable isn’t always bad and I’m interested to see how the story progresses. Plus it’s immediately lead to a great match being announced, so all in all this gets a total thumbs up.
Josh Bodom def. Donovan Dijak
This was Dijak’s first appearance in the company, and he really had a good showing for himself to the extent he’s being brought straight back for the Epic Encounter. After one or two awkward spots in the early goings, primarily due to the two guys attempting various dives to the outside when there wasn’t really enough space in the enclosed Cockpit venue, this developed into an incredibly fun match.
Dijak really went out to show off his athleticism in this one to try to humble the cocksure Bodom, and pulled off some really impressive stuff. At one point, after slamming Bodom clean out over the top rope, he springboarded off the top rope to the outside onto him. Seeing a man Dijak’s size performing such an act was quite the sight to behold. The match on the whole was wrestled like a great WWE TV match, they kept the pace high right from the start, never took their foot off the gas at any point and really made the most of the ten minutes or so they had. This is a match well worth taking the time to check out. ***1/2
Final Thoughts:
This was a very good return for RevPro TV. Production wise everything seemed to have stepped up, and on the whole the show seemed to flow from segment to segment easier. While, as mentioned, I wouldn’t have opened up with the Contenders match it was fine for what it was and didn’t even get close to overstaying its welcome, and the feature match of the episode really delivered. Add to that a talking segment that set up some interesting directions and you end up with an incredibly easy to watch 36 minutes of TV. Plus it’s free, so check it out.
