WHITE WOLF WRESTLING
CUENTA ATRÁS
NOVEMBER 24, 2018
TABACALERA, MADRID, SPAIN

Watch: Triple W On Demand

Welcome to the first White Wolf Wrestling show review on Voices of Wrestling. This spanish promotion has been recently discovered by a lot of fans around the world thanks to the Zack Sabre Jr. vs A-Kid match from a few months ago. The match caught fire online, proving once more that uploading hot matches between local stars and international talent is one of the best promotional tactics that a small company can do, and it has already impacted A-Kid’s career on a huge level. This couldn’t have happened in a better time for the promotion since they were heavily promoting their upcoming big show La Hora de la Verdad, which roughly translates to ‘the moment of truth’. This event will be their first paid show in a famous concert venue/disco in Madrid that will feature international talent like Jordan Devlin, Angélico, Aussie Open, among others. The event we’re reviewing today is the go-home show, the last stop before La Hora de la Verdad, but first, a little context about the company.

White Wolf Wrestling AKA Triple W, has been a staple of the Madrid wrestling scene for a decade. It’s fair to assume that the founders wanted to capitalize on the huge boom that WWE experienced around 2007 in Spain. Triple W is currently on their 9th season, which is the way they structured their calendar. It’s the same as the network tv shows: it starts in September and ends in June/July. They usually have one show per month, sometimes two, clocking around the two-hour mark. The show we’re reviewing today is Cuenta Atrás, ‘Countdown’. It’s the fourth show of the season and has a really nice card that we will go in-depth about. As I talk about the matches since this is the first review and probably first exposure to a Triple W show for a lot of the readers, I will also talk about the wrestlers, their characters and their current arcs. So, without further ado, let’s jam.

TRIPLE W TAG TEAM TITLE – EXTREME I QUIT MATCH
UTOPIA (JOEY FOXXX & HADES) DEF. RADICAL BIKERS (ROB BOY & SIMON HILL) ©

Radikal Bikers are part of the Memphis Mafia stable, a very classic motorbike-theme heel faction full of brawlers. Utopia are the pushed babyface tag team of the company, the vintage high-flying fan favorites. This match is the culmination to a feud that started in the show that opened the season. Utopia would have become champions if it were not for the interference of the Memphis Mafia. The Mafia, thanks to their number’s advantage, destroyed Utopia after the match and injured Hades in the process. After defending the titles in a trios match against Street Guerrilla on the 27th of October, The Bikers were attacked by Foxxx and the returning Hades, setting up this match.

Before the match, Coajim Echevarría, Triple W’s authority figure, came out to explain the rules of the match (you can probably figure it out if you have watched WWE for a few years) and forbid the members of Memphis Mafia to interfere. If they do, they will be fired. Utopia came out with face-painting reminiscent of Dia de los Muertos, which gave them a more threatening vibe, matching the usual dangerous-looking Bikers.

This was a very good extreme match. I Quit matches are usually long and over-dramatic, but this match was 15 minutes long, and since there were four men in the ring there were not a lot of dead moments, and the usually hot Tabacalera crowd was into it all the way through. Radikal Bikers are not the most entertaining tag team in regular matches, but this stipulation worked to their strengths, and Utopia also gave the best performances that I’ve seen from them. Nothing that you’ve not seen in other extreme matches, but was well-executed for the most part. The last spot was also the best one, a perfect babyface revenge moment in which Foxxx threatened to set an isolated and oiled-up Biker on fire if he didn’t quit. A literally hot opener to start the show. ***½

POL BADIA DEF. RUKY

This two guys rock for a completely different reason. Ruky is probably THE fan favorite of the promotion. He looks like the Spanish cousin of Kevin Owens, and embodies the Spanish party spirit. His current arc is that he’s not won a single match this season, and is desperately trying to bait his opponents to have extreme matches with him since it’s his specialty and he’s also trying to win the Extreme Championship and become the first-ever Triple W grand-slam champion. He tried it with Badia but didn’t work out, because Badia is very confident in his masculinity and doesn’t fall for the “you don’t have the balls” trap.

Pol Badia is the biggest heel of the company and the Top 1 briefcase holder (you guess it, it’s the obligatory Money in the Bank clone), and he has nuclear heat with this crowd. The reason is simple: Pol Badia was a contestant in the Spanish version of the reality show Big Brother, he even took a break from wrestling for almost two years, only to come back stronger than ever this season. Woke people in Spain HATE reality shows like Big Brother and everything that surrounds them. Pol Badia is so good projecting everything people hate about the reality tv stars of Spain that I’m not sure that he’s working or that is just him. My theory is that reality TV is not that different from pro wrestling in the way that you create a fake persona based on your personality. Also, you are always creating fake drama and feuds to attract audiences. He’s just the perfect bridge between the two worlds.

The match itself was good. Badia is a very athletic individual and nobody would say that he’s been out for wrestling for a long period. His self-centered and serious attitude creates a great dynamic with Ruky, a very goofy and carefree individual. The Tabacalera crowd was very into this, hoping that Ruky would upset the man with a clean swept since he returned, but it was Ruky who suffered his fourth consecutive loss after he missed a Swanton Bomb and Badia took advantage with a devastating Springboard Kick. Solid action, tremendous character work. ***

TRIPLE W EXTREME CHAMPIONSHIP
YUNKE © DEF. NOAH STRIKER

Noah Striker became the number one contender for the Extreme Championship after defeating the previous challenger Ruky. He also pinned Yunke in a handicap match in the last show. He’s part of the largest heel faction of the company, Redención. Striker is a nasty individual in the vein of Sami Callihan. Despise not being a big guy, he always projects a dangerous aura that makes him intimidating. Yunke, on the other hand, is a masked all-black wearing hulking monster. He doesn’t need to project anything, his presence does all the job. He looks like he escaped from Arkham Asylum, where he shared a cell with Bane.

This match was also pretty solid, not on the level of the other extreme match of the show, but a nice display of brutality nonetheless. The two wrestlers are more than decent brawlers, they didn’t waste any time putting each other in headlocks and went after weapons right at the start. At one point, Striker broke a wall-clock in the head of Yunke, which made for a tremendous visual of the clock almost disintegrating to pieces after contact. They also had spots centered around tables breaking, cheese grinders and thumb tacks, which made for a nice, if predictable, display of extreme wrestling. Yunke pinned his challenger after a variation of a Facebuster onto a chair. ***¼

We had a surprise return right after the match, when Trashman, the Sandman type that every good indie has, came out to attack Yunke. He got the mic to demand a title match against Yunke at La Hora de la Verdad.

MARK DAVIS DEF. A-KID

A-Kid was expelled from Redención at the previous event. After a few shows where he was very full of himself, the youngest five-star wrestler of all time lost the Top 1 briefcase to Pol Badia and is now suddenly humbled. He came out and issued an open challenge so he can prove that he’s back at being the best wrestler of the promotion. And boy, did he.

Mark Davis, one half of the Progress Tag Team Champions Aussie Open, comes out to accept the challenge. What follows is an epic battle in three acts perfectly defined and structured. In the first one, Davis capitalizes on his size advantage and on A-Kid’s weak mental state after his expulsion from Redención. Even though this is a common heat segment that is building a future comeback, Davis makes his superiority very entertaining, he’s serious but he’s also playing with the weakened A-Kid. Davis keeps striking the chest of the local star to a bloody pulp to his own delight. After many tries where he’s cut short, A-Kid finally manages to connect a few high-flying moves, including a great Triangle Top Rope Moonsault to the floor, and the hottest of comebacks is on full swing. After a couple of minutes where he’s suffered more than he was expecting, Davis connects a decapitating Lariat right after taking a Spanish Fly from A-Kid, and by this point, Tabacalera is losing it. The final act of the match feels like a G1 final stretch, featuring all kinds of strike bombs, one-counts and lots of bravado. In the final moments, A-Kid goes for the Spanish Fly from top rope but Davis sends him to the floor with an explosive Lariat. In one last act of defiance, the local star slaps Davis in the face before he’s killed with another Lariat. The Aussie then picks the fallen A-Kid by the feet, throws him into the air, catches him in the piledriver position and drills his head into the mat in one of the most ferocious piledrivers ever. The referee can count to 100. Amazing match, the best of the season so far and up there with the Zack Sabre Jr. match. ****½

After the match, an angry Davis attacks A-Kid. Carlos Romo comes out and makes the save, reuniting with A-Kid and challenging Aussie Open for the Progress Tag Team Titles at La Hora de la Verdad.

DORIAN (WITH BARÓN AGUILAR) DEF. MIKE MURDOCK

Dorian comes from an aristocrat family, and thus he’s a heel because woke people in Spain hate nobility. I think that there are ways to portrait a wrestler who comes from nobility better than this. He’s just a very good-looking guy in a black shirt and black trousers. He’s very deadpan and cold, there’s nothing captivating about his persona. Mike Murdock is part of the babyface tag team Street Guerrilla that isn’t doing much at the moment.

This was a very strange match to put second to last. These guys are undercard acts most times, and my guessing is that the match was supposed to take place earlier on the card, but for some reason, it had to be delayed. It was a fine match, none of the wrestlers were impressive but they weren’t bad either. The crowd deflected a little after the hype-fest that was A-Kid vs Mark Davis. Dorian got the victory after hitting Murdock with the cane of his manager and applied a modified Facebuster. **3/4

After the match, Dorian beat Murdock with a chair and declared that he also wants to fight for the Extreme Championship at La Hora de la Verdad. So it seems that we’ll have a triple threat.

TRIPLE W ABSOLUTE CHAMPIONSHIP
CARLOS ROMO © DEF. JASON JUPITER

First of all, shout out to Triple W for not naming their most important championship a World Title. Now, onto the wrestlers. If you pay a lot of attention at the international wrestling scene, you might have seen Romo before. He actually started to appear internationally before A-Kid, but his name then was Adam Chase. He won the Absolute Title in June after defeating his tag team partner A-Kid and has been a good champion since then, his most notable defense being against Jordan Devlin in the season opener in a really great match. Jupiter is a classic hard-working babyface with a great look that is agile enough to do high-flying moves and big enough to do power moves.

The story behind this match is simple and straightforward. Romo offered a title opportunity to Jupiter after his hard-fought victory against Ruky in an impromptu extreme match, additionally his first one ever. The match itself was a really good back and forth main event, with Romo, the most experienced guy, working on top most of the time. There were a couple of sloppy moments, but Romo and Jupiter worked well together, and the crowd elevated what could have been a very standard match into a hot and dramatic main event. In the final moments, Jupiter connected a Spanish Fly from the top rope for a dramatic pinfall attempt, then went for a moonsault but Romo got him with a surprise cutter in the air to score the pin. ***½

After the match, Jupiter and Romo shaked hands in a sign of mutual respect. Soon after, when Romo was celebrating, Mark Davis attacked him in retribution for interrupting his beatdown on A-Kid earlier and announced that he accepted the previous challenge. Then out of nowhere, Pol Badia appears to cash-in his Top 1 briefcase on the weakened champion, so we have another title match!

TRIPLE W ABSOLUTE CHAMPIONSHIP
POL BADIA DEF. CARLOS ROMO ©

This whole segment was like 20 seconds long, and it worked great as an angle. I’m not too fond of Money in the Bank and all its clones, but this was how you do a cash-in. Short, sweet and without any of the melodramatic and agonizing aspects that have become synonymous with Money in the Back. Pol Badia is the perfect guy to pull off a stunt like this, and he’s a great heel champion for the company. He’s first defense will be against Angélico at La Hora de la Verdad, a potential show-stealer.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Cuenta Atrás is a perfect jumping-off point if you’re new to Triple W. Mark Davis vs A-Kid is the latest gem from the youngest five-star wrestler ever and is near MOTYC. The overall show is the best this season so far, very easy to watch, and a great go-home show before La Hora de la Verdad, which looks like a great event on paper.