EPW Australian SuperShow
February 23, 2024
Willetton Basketball Stadium
Willetton, Western Australia, Australia
This is going to be an unlikely review of a show, given two major factors:
- I’ve watched very little Australian indie wrestling in the last couple of years, and I’m unfamiliar with a lot of these wrestlers.
- This show took place ten months ago, back in February.
That being said–I recently watched the show and since I felt like I had enough to say about it to write a review, I figured it would be fun to do one. There is a real shortage of coverage of the Australian indie scene, and certainly very little coverage coming from people outside of the country, so I hope people find this interesting, even with the caveat that I’m not very knowledgeable about the scene itself.
This show was put on by Explosive Pro Wrestling, a long-running indie promotion based near Perth, Western Australia. They have another major show, their annual big event, EPW ReAwakening XXIII, coming up on Dec. 12.
The show took place the day before the WWE Elimination Chamber event in Perth, and given the rarity of such a major wrestling show taking place in Australia, this served as kind of a WrestleMania weekend-like event for Australian indies. So there were a lot of Australian talent that were on this show that wouldn’t normally be wrestling for EPW, hence the name Australian Supershow.
My overall thoughts were the show was pretty solid, with some notable weaknesses. From a production perspective, the show looked good and the crowd was lively, with an announced crowd of over 750 fans. The announcers did a good job putting over the respective characters and recent histories of each wrestler, which was appreciated by a viewer like me that was dropping into the promotion for this show.
The two most notable things about the talent on the show were as follows:
- The high-end talent on the show is significantly better than the talent that is on the US indies. There are a bunch of veteran wrestlers who are good enough to be wrestling for a major promotion somewhere in the US or Japan. The remoteness of Australia is both a blessing and a curse–for the local indie scene it’s been hugely beneficial to have wrestlers of this quality on the scene, anchoring these shows and giving promising talent skilled veterans to work with. On the flip side, a lot of these guys are good enough to be making major money somewhere, but it’s a big ask for them to move so far away from home to take a shot at working somewhere in America.
- There are a lot of people on the show that are just doing obvious rip-offs of WWE and AEW talent. I’ve heard in passing that portions of the Australian scene have gotten very sports-entertainment heavy, and that was apparent on this show, as a lot of the character work wasn’t subtle. For a scene that should be a perfect place for its own identity, its disappointing to see so much low-rent stuff on the show. This might vary from promotion-to-promotion, of course, but from what I saw on this show, this was a very WWE-themed event.
The HIIT Squad (Lucas Fantasia & Mikey Broderick) def. The Parea (Eli Theseus & Gabriel Aeros)
This was a fine opening match, good action in a ten minute tag team match that set a nice tone for the rest of the show. Theseus, Aeros and Broderick all have above-average looks, something that was common throughout this show. Broderick’s signature move is a diving elbow called the Anabolic Elbow, which shows a humorous amount of self awareness. The HIIT Squad were the EPW Tag Team Champions heading into this match and retained their titles here.
Robbie Eagles def. Hayden Zenith
Eagles is one of the special attractions for this show, and has a case for being the best wrestler in the world from Australia. I’m not sure if Zenith was wearing special gear just for this match, but he dressed identically to Eagles, and they did a match where he tried to match Eagles at his style. As one would expect, this was quite good with a lot of smooth wrestling, with Eagles getting the win via the Ron Miller Special.
EPW Coastal Title Match
Matt Hayter def. Bruno Nitro (c)
This match was not very good. Nitro came in as the babyface EPW Coastal Champion, which I assume is the mid-card title in the promotion. Hayter is an outsider who ended up stealing this match via heel shenanigans involving the title belt. There wasn’t a ton of actual wrestling action in this match and it felt weighed down by the sports-entertainment style antics that the promotion was going for. Hayter subsequently lost the title back to Nitro, who won it one month later.
Ticket to Madness Rumble Match
This was a Royal Rumble-style match, with 20 entrants coming in every couple of minutes. As an overall match it was entertaining, even if it highlighted some obvious weaknesses in the promotion.
There were some obvious knock-off acts, including not one but two different people doing an MJF-lite gimmick, as they refused to get into the ring when they first came down and instead cut annoying heel promos on the crowd while everyone else kind of stood around and waited for them. There was also a wrestler who just clearly was doing a Malakai Black cosplay.
Gino Gambino made a surprise appearance and did some horrible stinkface spot where he pulled down his tights to show his bare ass and then rubbed it in guys faces. That was low-rent garbage.
Someone who isn’t doing a knock-off gimmick is Marcus Kool. Kool’s gimmick is that of a football (soccer) hooligan, and according to the announcers, his father was once the “leader” of Aston Villa’s hooligans gang. Kool is originally from England but I believe has relocated to Australia, and he looks the part of a hooligan, and I love that he comes to the ring wearing some cleats around his neck, like he nicked them from a locker room or stole them off the feet of a player during a riot. It also makes sense that a crazy football hooligan would be a wild brawling pro wrestler–his work gets an A+ from me.
There was some nice booking in this match–I enjoyed a spot where Sam Cannon, a powerhouse wrestler, came in and started dominating the match, with the announcers wondering who could possibly stand up to Cannon, and then Tommy Knight, a super heavyweight, coming out to challenge Cannon. That’s just good rumble-style booking that I always enjoy seeing.
The match came down to a wrestler named Jesse Lambert, who is doing a Dom Mysterio gimmick, and yes you read that correctly. Lambert dresses like and resembles Dom, and the announcers mentioned him taking a photo with Rhea Ripley and Dom several times. Unlike Dom though, Lambert is more of a hapless babyface character, and he ends up winning the match when Ricky South, a favorite in the match, slips on the proverbial banana peel. The crowd enjoyed Lambert winning and the execution of the upset was well done.
The Untouchables (Damian Slater & Marcius Pitt) def. The VeloCities (Jude London & Paris De Silva)
Things really picked up here, as these are two very good teams. It’s a shame The Untouchables haven’t gotten more bookings outside of Australia, I think they would be a very solid addition to NJPW’s tag team division at the very least. A lot of fans are probably familiar with The VeloCities thanks to their excellent series of matches against Aussie Open. This match was similar in that it was all about The VeloCities using their speed and agility to combat the size of Pitt and Slater.
This was my favorite match of the show and the one I’d recommend going out and watching if you are looking for a recommendation from this show. It wasn’t as good as the peak VeloCities vs Aussie Open matches, but it was still a very good match, with The Untouchables coming out on top.
RCW Grand Title Match
DELTA (c) def. Michael Morleone
This was really not good. DELTA does a Goldberg gimmick, to the degree that they do the exact same entrance with security leading her to the ring while they play the actual Goldberg music and the fans all chant DELTA the same way they chanted Goldberg.
The issue with this match was that DELTA is booked as a powerhouse, an unstoppable force, but she is wrestling an intergender match. DELTA has a powerful frame for a woman, but Morleone has a good 60lbs on her, which makes the match feel ridiculous as she does a bunch of Goldberg and Brock Lesnar spots. They also mucked things up with a stupid spot where DELTA had Morleone beat, but Morleone’s second, Chris J. Lazareth, runs and stops the referee’s hands from hitting the mat for the three count. Even Gedo thinks that was too obvious to not be a DQ.
DELTA ended up winning the match anyway. As bad as this was, it’s clear why DELTA has been signed by WWE and the obvious potential she has. She has good physical charisma and she moves around the ring with fluidity given her experience level, she is clearly well ahead of someone like Jade Cargill, or many of the women in NXT.
Team WA (Alex Kingston, Davis Storm, Mikey Nicholls & Taylor King) defeat Team VIC (Adam Brooks, Caveman Ugg, Mitch Waterman & Slex)
This was the main event and they did a East Coast vs West Coast kind of all-star tag match, reminiscent of some of the all-star tags PWG used to have during the Battle of Los Angeles tournament. I was familiar with most of these wrestlers, as a lot of them have worked around the world for different promotions. This was where the quality of the scene really shined in terms of having guys like Slex, Brooks and Storm–veterans that are really good but are still mostly working on the domestic indies.
Brooks has always been someone who I’ve enjoyed, especially during his PWG matches he worked in the past. He was signed to ROH in February 2020, just awful timing as the pandemic made it impossible for him to come over from Australia. Since then he’s been working primarily in Australia, and to me he was the star of the match working his ass off to make everything work in what was a wild, chaotic match.
Slex, like Brooks, was signed to ROH in 2020 but never ended up coming over due to the pandemic. Slex is gigantic, with just as much muscle packed on to his frame as possible. Wrestlers used to look like this often but very few do anymore, probably with good reason.
The match was hampered by what appeared to be a very serious injury to Taylor King, who injured himself on a dive to the outside and was done for the match. Naturally, Team Western Australia won the match on their home turf. However, there was a post match angle where the members of TMDK Nicholls and Slex, plus Robbie Eagles and The Untouchables who came down to ringside, and beat up everyone else. The message was that TMDK was bigger than all of Australian wrestling, but it kind of came off flat in what should have been a feel good celebration of the scene.
Listen to Jesse Collings’ podcast: The Gentlemen’s Wrestling Podcast!
Powered by RedCircle
