WCPW returned to iPPV from Newcastle for No Regrets main evented by Drew Galloway defending his championship in a 30 man rumble, almost guaranteeing a new champion for the promotion. The undercard also boasted an Internet Championship match as well as a Rey Mysterio match.

What Culture Pro Wrestling
No Regrets
April 29, 2017
Sport Central
Newcastle, England

Watch: What Culture Extra

Stu Bennett, the former Wade Barrett, joins Dave Bradshaw and Matt Striker on commentary. Bennett would be excellent throughout the night, coming off way better than both the regular commentators even with a lack of product knowledge.

Travis Banks def. Penta El Zero M

I was disappointed by this one given the standard of both guys; their two styles just didn’t quite seem to click. In singles matches Penta wrestles a real slow pace, and that goes directly against the intensity Banks likes to build in his matches. Things got very indie too, with a no selling of Canadian Destroyer mid way through the match in particular that drew my ire. Both these two are too good to have a bad match with one another, but this will be in both men’s worst few matches by year end. Banks picked up the big win with the Slice of Heaven kick. ***

Brandi Rhodes def. Prince Ameen

This was the result of Ameen disrespecting Brandi’s dogs on twitter. Yeah…

Wrestlecrap, the less said about the match the better. Brandi is very green and not particularly athletic, Ameen is very bad and seemed gassed just walking around, and half the match was built around Ameen being a pervert. Skip at all costs. Brandi won with her own version of the Magic Carpet Splash. DUD

It was at this point announced that Alberto El Patron wouldn’t be present for his scheduled match with Joe Coffey. The reason given was illness, but he seemed fine the night before on twitter…

Internet Championship
Gabriel Kidd def. Joe Hendry & Cody Rhodes

Hendry had won a number one contenders match against Kidd, but did so with a handful of tights so the title match was made into a triple threat. I wish Hendry was a more dynamic wrestler. He carries himself really well, has a decent presence and can talk really well, but when he gets in the ring he’s boring. Kidd is far rawer and less polished, but he’s ten times more exciting. The story of this match was Hendry and Rhodes underestimating Kidd, who had yet to win a match in WCPW, and that eventually cost them both as Kidd showed resilience and eventually battled to come out on top by catching Rhodes in a small package. A lovely moment that got a great reaction, and overall was a very good end to this chapter of the story that they’re telling with Kidd. He’s a guy, much like Kirby, who feels like a WCPW guy so having the belt on him gets a thumbs up from me. Nothing must see, but a good match that ended up being the pick of the bunch from this show. ***1/2

Rey Mysterio def. El Ligero

This wasn’t pretty to watch, and it is real sad to see Rey Mysterio, one of the smoothest wrestlers ever, struggle so much. He painfully botched a hurricanrana to the outside, his wheelbarrow bulldog and fell completely out of the ring on a 619 attempt. Not a good showing for the legend, but he’d look far better later on in the rumble. Mysterio won, after collecting himself and giving it another go, with the 619. **1/4

Martin Kirby wins the 30 Man Championship Rumble

This Championship Rumble (think the Royal Rumble but with pinfalls as well as over-the-top eliminations) was being contested for Drew Galloway’s WCPW Championship, due to the company needing to get the title off of him before he goes full time with WWE. The champ chose to kick things off by taking the #1 spot for himself, and was joined by the eventual winner Martin Kirby who was entrant #2.

The opening portions of the match were used to highlight Galloway and Kirby, with them both achieving some quick eliminations and going to a stalemate with one another. The next phase of the match was kicked off when Bad Bones came to the ring with a baseball bat and for the next batch of entrances everybody brought some kind of weapon to the ring with them, which lead to one of the more entertaining periods of the rumble with a hardcore feel. Primate was booked very strong in this section, as was the returning Johnny Moss.

The next chunk of the match focused on Zack Gibson. He cut a promo during his entrance, getting on the nerves of the commentators, then spent half of the time outside of the ring bickering with Striker and Bennett. Striker would enter the rumble himself, only to get eliminated fairly unceremoniously, but not long after Gibson would fall victim to a Bullhammer and was eliminated himself soon after.

One of the more interesting takeaways from the rumble was that a lot of the debuts that occurred were wrestlers who are tied to ITV’s World of Sport. Dave Mastiff in particular, who was presented as the #2 guy in the pilot of the ITV show, was showcased particularly strongly; he dominated many of WCPW’s established stars before eventually being eliminated by the combination of Mysterio and Rhodes.

As the match drew to a close, several of the Prestige members had late entries and as such they began to dominate the match, throwing out all the secondary talent that still remained in the ring. The final seven featured all four Prestige members, Martin Kirby, Drew Galloway and Rampage. Rampage, fresh off his failed title match, was rehabilitated some by running through all four Prestige members, managing to eliminate both BT Gunn and Travis Banks on his own before Joe Hendry threw him out from behind.

This left a final four of Galloway, Hendry, Kirby and Coffey. This lead to a two on two period, which was probably the best section of the match, and ended when Galloway pinned Coffey only to be low blowed and pinned himself by Hendry after a Future Shock DDT, guaranteeing a new champ: Kirby or Hendry.

The final two sequence was actually really underwhelming unfortunately. There was a nice little moment where Kirby finally hit the Zoidberg Elbow, a second rope elbow drop that he has attempted to hit in every single WCPW match of his and until this point failed every time, but this inexplicably ended up being the finish. To me it came off anti-climactic, the move didn’t have the impact required to satisfyingly end what should be a major match. Hitting the elbow then following it up with the Sable Bomb would have worked way better for my money.

The Rumble was average, nothing blow away but fairly okay throughout. As for the result though, I think this is the right one. Kirby works in WCPW, he fits in with the promotion perfectly and is one of the few guys on the roster who feels like first and foremost a WCPW guy. Putting the belt on him makes sense to me.

Final Thoughts:

This wasn’t a particularly good show. The opener didn’t really click, Mysterio had one of his worst performances that I’ve ever seen from him and Rhodes-Ameen was atrocious. The two matches that did click though, the two championship matches, were both elevated by having new champions who the fans were really behind and got great reactions. A thumbs down show, but saved from being a terrible show by some good booking calls.