LAST WEEK ON RUCKUS:
Super Avión promised to drive Nazir el-Fadal out of QCW
After Jason the Terrible lost to Autumn Powers, Serge Batroc charged him and his brother Rich with capturing the Unified World Tag Team championships or getting kicked out of the IWC
The Revenant celebrated another successful defense of the GRPL+ World Television title by turning "Dashing" Pierce Moore into a vapor
Usual open, usual pyro, and the usual suspects at the announce desk welcoming us to another edition of Ruckus live on GRPL+ from the Quality Arena, and there's going to be a big main event as the Revenant faces his toughest test as TV champ in the form of former TV champ Katsuji Ootsuka. Not only that but there's going to be a big semi main tonight to determine who faces the Game Changers for the Unified World Tag Team championships at Golden Rule, but tonight's action kicks off with action from the women's division…
| • "Bollywood Diva" Sohla Patel d. Winter Wonderland • | Patel was in all of her haughty glory here and won a showcase against Winter, who the announce noted was struggling as a singles wrestler after the slow moving implosion of Mean Season. Sohla threw off a tornado DDT attempt of Winter's and drilled her with a superkick; a second drove Wonderland to her knees and from there Sohla polished her off with a Falcon Arrow that she calls the Ninth Incarnation. **
Patel made the referee raise her hand three times, then left in a huff after a couple of failed attempts to get the audience to give her a standing ovation. (Seriously.) Announce mentioned that while she didn't challenge for the Women's World Championship last week she could definitely find herself in a title match with a few more wins under her belt.
Someone who already has a belt and will be bringing it to Golden Rule in the hopes of securing a bigger one is Evergreen Wrestling League's abrasive champion, the Oracle of Off-Book - Evan O'Neill, who got a stinger, and while we got to see flashes of him in EWL rings we mostly heard from the man himself.
O'Neill derided all the other champions and leagues, saying that they were only champions because they weren't in EWL with him and once they saw him, they wouldn't be champions again. He wasn't some sorry pudgy luchador or a glorified street fighter, but the future of the business whether the suits or the dumb QCW fans liked it or not. Everyone was losing fact of the sight that they were all coming to his backyard in Portland to do Golden Rule, a house he helped build after the Rona if we're being real honest. Four champions walk in and they might as well crown him the Unified World champion right now. Next week he'd be in the Arena against El Chubbo to put on a clinic and show the Florida dip[bleep]s what a real champion looked like. They better get used to it.
| • Jacques Krieger d. Robert E. Moonshine • | Moonshine charged One Eye at the bell and walked right into a spinning backfist. A Roll of the Dice later and Krieger had put a nine second win on the board. DUD
Krieger was almost shrugging as he got his hand raised, then he skulked to the back while the fans chanted for him. Poor Moonshine was asking the ref if he'd won, he got knocked so loopy. The announce promised that we'd hear from Autumn Powers after a quick break.
After commercials we came back TOTHEBACK~!, where Julius Duquesne III was standing by to bring on Autumn to a sizeable pop. Julius asked Autumn how she was doing and she replied a hell of a lot better than Serge, who was apparently too busy losing tag title shots and his grip on the Consortium to answer her challenge. She's been waiting weeks for an an…swer…and suddenly Pyotr Caviar was lumbering into the shot, Powers going nose to clavicle with the big Russian. Suddenly, Autumn went down from behind thanks to a shot from Jason the Terrible, and he and Pyotr began stomping Autumn out while JD3 called for help. Anton Stahl ran on the scene to land a few kicks if his own while a smiling Serge and a conflicted Rich Ward walked up on the beatdown. Caviar held a struggling Autumn in place as Serge walked over…and patted her on the head twice.
Caviar then laid Autumn out with a Russian sickle while Serge leaned over the fallen Autumn and sneered out "You're welcome." The purple shirted security got there a bit too late for Autumn, but their arrival caused the Consortium to leave (you could hear Jason's off camera cackling before we went back to more in-ring violence):
| • Karyn Tisch-Warren (w/OnlyFitness) dtko. Jane Doe • | Tisch-Warren again did her increasingly usual bit of toting around the Crush championship and trying to get the referee to make it a title match before the bell rang, but once it did she took a few minutes for her to actually get on track. Doe’s unusual offense and mannerisms took Karyn off her game and sent her bailing out to the floor in frustration.
When Jane came out to the floor to follow up on her lead, Scott provided a distraction by tossing Jane the hydroflask, and she seemed transfixed with all of the other visions of her she was seeing in the flask’s reflection. Thus an opening came to fruition, and say what you will about Karyn but she’s not the sort of woman who misses opportunities. KTW snuck up on Jane and threw her into the steps, then the barricade a couple of times. Karyn got back into the ring and strutted a bit to boos and wolf whistles but Doe slowly got herself back into the ring and tried continuing her offense, but she came up clutching her back going for a suplex and Karyn immediately went into her backbreaker spam as a result. Doe seemed to almost shrug off the first couple but Karyn wouldn’t be denied; despite Jane’s best efforts, Karyn locked on the Circuit Breaker. While Doe fought in the hold and probably lasted longer in it than any other person has to date (seemed to be close to a half minute) she eventually passed out in the hold rather than tap, and the referee had to call the match for Karyn. ** 1/2
Lolo and Scott hit the ring to join Karyn while the replays fired off, and we went from the OnlyFitness celebration TOTHEBACK~!, where Enya Face brought on Nazir el-Fadal much to the jeers of the crowd. Naz asked Enya for the mic and then immediately dismissed her since she was foolish enough to give it to him.
He said it was laughable Avión was talking about running Naz out of QCW when anyone who's watched QCW in the past 2 ½ years knows that Naz runs QCW. And part of him running QCW means running the weak out, whether it's making Benjamin Valentino a full time sidekick or making the Myth of Mayhem Double Tap out. So a nobody luchador who couldn't get out of his own way decided to get in Naz's. Did that work out well for him the last time he dared go to face to face with Naz or did he wake up in the hospital? So since he didn't learn from history, he was going to repeat it and worse. Naz chillingly ended the promo by telling Avión not to worry about his future since they're doing great things with wheelchairs these days, cackling, and tossing the mic over his shoulder on his way out of the shot.
| • Super Avión d. "Great American" Bobby Bash (w/the Red, White and True) • | The biggest loser as a result of Naz’s promo actually turned out to be Bash in a weird turn of events. Getting blown off by his ex-partner turned rival brought out a harder, more focused Avión to the ring and he sure didn’t fight like he was on the wrong end of a size disadvantage. Bash landed a couple of early shots but Avión caught him out of nowhere with a rana off the ropes and then went after Bobby. Right after we came back from some commercials, Bash did get some help from his buddies – Holland took a hit for Tremble and the Voice of Freedom used that to lariat Avión on the outside, but they got caught by the referee and ejected much to the delight of the Quality Controllers.
Bash tried to go after the referee after that, only to be cut off by an Avión springboard dropkick that wobbled him and then ate a bevy of roundhouse kicks that slumped him to the mat. But a fired up Avión didn’t let up, first grounding and pounding Bash before stomping him into the mat and letting out a roar before yelling to a hard camera that this was for Naz. Avión managed to get Bash up and hit him with the Aces High to the shock of the announce and the joy of the crowd. Avión counted the count along with the referee, then blew off the referee raising his hand to continue to bark at Naz via the hard cam. **
Replays fired off while Avión stood on the buckles and fired up the faithful before stomping to the back, voicing a couple more threats to find Naz, hurt him, and drive him from QCW. Announce hyped up Avión’s aggression being a necessary evil to fight the likes of Naz and then we went back to Duck in the ring.
We were scheduled for a Drake Tremble vs. Beckett Carpenter match, but it never came to fruition – as Carpenter came out for the match, they got jumped from behind by "Dashing" Pierce Moore, who drilled them into the ramp with a Fresh To Death and preened to boos from the crowd. While Moore was goading the crowd Dark Mirror was beginning to stir, so the Face of QCW snatched up Beckett and drove them into the ramp again with their cutter before taking a sweeping bow over Beckett's body and heading to the back. The medical staff checked on the former tag champ while the announce had the reactions to Moore's actions that you might expect.
With the Red, White and True already in the ring and Drake Tremble already "coaching up" his squad, we followed up with introductions for the other teams in the semi main - the Proper Villains came out to a massive reaction and were announced as ⅔ of the new Ambassadors trios champions, the Hard Way got a decent reaction and the Quality Controllers didn't know exactly what to make of the Wards based on their mixed reaction.
| • the Wonderful Ward Brothers d. the Hard Way, the Red, White and True (w/"Great American" Bobby Bash) & the Proper Villains in a Unified World Tag Team championships #1 contendership four corners fight • | And it was those same Wards who made themselves problems for the Game Changers at Golden Rule by winning here in an absolutely psychotic and great TV match.
Down the stretch Starr was hilariously complaining that the match could have been over 10 minutes ago if it weren't for all the saves that were happening and it wasn't like he was wrong; there were a bunch of 2 ½ counts that never made it to 2 ¾ because someone was usually diving in to make a save.
The Wards find themselves in this position due to the quick thinking of…and I can't believe I'm about to say this…Jason the Terrible. Seeing Paul Fifita and Ted Holland down by him, Jason tagged himself in and then Rich, and they didn't use the Dynamic Express. Rather, from a similar setup Rich flew at Holland but hit him with the Wonder Cutter. The rest of the Consortium came down the ramp a couple of beats after it hit, drawing the attention of the other teams for a beat or two, and that was all the time Rich needed to squeak out the win and immediately bail to the floor after the 3. ***
The other teams in and around the ring were in shock, hell, even Rich looked a little stunned as he made his way to Jason. The Consortium met the Wards at the bottom of the ramp, except for Pyotr Caviar who grabbed a section of the steel steps and swung it at the other teams to give the rest of his squad cover. The announce was stunned and a chyron came up for Golden Rule to make the Game Changers v. the Wonderful Ward Brothers for the Unified World Tag Team championships official. After that we went back live, where the Consortium were posing in front of the QT9004 to a lot of boos. Serge Batroc let them have their fun; he was pumping up the Wards while Anton was patting them on the back and nodding along to Serge's words. Jason was nodding and tapped Rich on the shoulder in hopes that he would lean in more while Starr sarcastically noted Commissioner Holmes must be happy – he wanted the Wards to compete for the tag titles in the Unified Contenders Challenge and didn't get it, but even with their current weirdness they managed to secure the #1 contendership and may be one more decent night from securing the gold.
From there Steve gave the Wards some quick kudos before he threw to a pretape from Earlier Today featuring The Champ, Mason "Razorblade" Savage.
Savage said he didn't expect anything less than what he got in London - for Naz to take him to war and for him to finally win it. Doing that for the lunatics in the UK felt great, but being The Champ means you don't get a second of slowdown; now he's carrying QCW on his back once again into Golden Rule and the unification match. He can't speak to the other champions as of yet but he knows this much: last year's Golden Rule, he became The Champ. And through all the ups and downs the past year's thrown at him, QCW's top prize is his to hold. So yeah, everybody bleeds, but the end of Golden Rule is going to look like a rerun…because it will end with Razorblade holding the gold no matter what anyone else can throw at him. Savage repositioned the gold on his shoulder and walked out of the frame.
Ahead of the main event, the announce hyped up some big doings transpiring on next week's Ruckus:
✨ The winner of the main event will defend the GRPL+ World Television championship (if it's the Revenant, he's knocking on the door of being eligible to cash it in for a World title shot) ✨
✨ One half of the Unified World Tag Team champions, "Tiki God" Al Buffett will take on longtime rival and QCW's only Grand Slam champion, Nazir el-Fadal ✨
✨And in an unprecedented interpromotional champion vs. champion match, Lucha Salvaje's Campeon del Mundo El Vengador de Gente Jr. will face off against Evergreen Wrestling League's abrasive champion we had the pleasure* of meeting earlier, "Off Book" Evan O'Neill ✨
But before that we had a massive main event that ended up splitting the crowd: beloved former World TV champ Katsuji Ootsuka taking on beloved and feared current World TV champ the Revenant, already beginning to establish himself as the most dominant TV champ QCW has ever seen well before his reign looks to be anywhere near ending.
After both men got introduced by Duck and the bell rang, they had to wait out some dueling chants from the Quality Controllers. I don't know whether or not the Revenant's handshake offer was legitimate or a dark joke, so I think Katsuji sort of no selling it to get to the fight (with a time limit in the air thanks to the belt) was the right move.
| | • the main event • | |
| • the Revenant [c] d. Katsuji Ootsuka to retain the GRPL+ World Television championship 6️⃣ • | Katsuji easily put up the longest and best fight of any of the Revenant's opponents during his title reign but in the end the Immortal reign rolled on.
The earliest moments of the match saw Katsuji trying to employ the five Ds in order to offput the Rev, who got a little more frustrated each time he couldn’t kettle Ootsuji to throttle him. The Prince of Punishment stuck and moved for a while but eventually the Rev caught him and threw him into a corner before opening up the offense on him with body shots and back elbows before a biel sent Ootsuka ¾ of the way across the ring. Ootsuka cringed as he melted into the mat, and the Rev wasted little time in repeating the action a couple more times to expand his lead – eventually after getting tossed Katsuji rolled out and tried to gather himself on the floor. The Rev brushed off the ref and eventually went to stalk Katsuji on the floor, and a Jason/Laurie chase ensued. Ootsuka eventually made it back to try and rolling inside the ring, but the Rev snatched him up by the legs and then tossed him into the barricade to a big pop from the crowd (and a bit of awed fear from the announce).
The Revenant walked up the steps and over the top rope to break the count, then laughed at the ref and walked back to the floor to continue punishing the Prince of Punishment. A woozy Ootsuka stumbled up and the Rev whistled a roundhouse kick that would’ve probably knocked him out had Ootsuka not ducked and the Rev kicked the hell out of the ringpost accidentally.
Ootsuka looked worried but quickly moved to capitalize, and waved some fans aside so he could climb up the barrier and leap off with a dropkick, and a buzz began in the crowd as Katsuji’s new plan started unfolding. Ootsuka went to work on the leg on the Revenant by banging it into the apron and then off the ringpost, even locking in a ringpost figure four (!) at one point and wearing down the bad leg for as long as the count would let him. Steve & Scott put this over as Katsuji doing whatever it had to take to take down a bigger opponent and not as anything heelish, and Ootsuka continued to work over the leg for the next few minutes.
While the Rev didn’t look horribly injured, he was clearly at a bit of a deficit and shoved Ootsuka off, only for Katsuji to run into the ropes and come off with a basement rana driver that hit perfectly. The Rev looked woozy but didn’t go down, so Katsui repeated it, and then a third time to finally fell the Rev. He saw he had him in position and shook off the cobwebs before letting out a yell and going up to the top rope penthouse. Ootsuka steadied himself on the top rope, took a deep breath and flew off with his Magical Sky shooting star avalanche elbow drop.
The former champion flew off with pinpoint precision…right into the waiting knee of the Rev, disfiguring Katsuji before the Ainu melted into the mat. The Rev eventually slowly drew himself up, slightly limping towards Ootsuka before he snatched up Katsuji in a goozle.
It wasn't quite the devastation that he delivered to Pierce Moore, but it took 3 chokeslams to lead the Rev to retaining the title via three count. ***
Replays fired up of the back and forth match and when we came back to the ring we saw the Revenant standing proud in the middle of the ring hoisting the belt up high. Murmurs in the crowd got loud and the Rev followed their eyes to the ramp where Einherjar was standing in front of the Qualitron 9004 with a thousand yard glare into the ring. The Rev stepped over the top rope and draped the GRPL+ World Television title over the top turnbuckle before gesturing towards his ex partner that there was nothing between them but air and opportunity – but Einherjar just scoffed, shook his head and went to the back. Ironically enough, that caused the Rev to scoff and shake his head himself before he put the TV title over his shoulder and raised a fist in the air. The crowd popped and Starr put over the Rev as a World Champion in the making while Steve wrapped up the show and invited us to join QCW on GRPL+ next week as the Revenant roared and smiled his black tongued grin to take us off the air - title still proudly in hand.
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