Quality Arena 🤼 Parts Unknown, FL
Aired live on GRPL+ 📺 November 8th, 2024
Standard open for the show and Quality Arena is rocking on another Friday night ready to cause a little Ruckus. Steve Vandeblanche and Carl Christensen welcomed us to the show, with Steve hyping an interview with the recovering Nazir el-Fadal and the Spare v. Crowley main event for the Crush championship before throwing things to Duck Eko to kick off tonight's action…
1. A Cut Above and Luz Cruz (w/the All Starr Stable and Hysteria) d. The Culture at 11:14 The former ambassadors of QCW got a warm welcome to open Ruckus, especially when it was revealed their opponents were not only the loathed All Starr Stable but the leader of Hysteria as well - and both units made sure to bring their backup with them.
The opening moments were pretty much a stalemate but you could notice the Culture noticing their opposition was rolling +6 on the floor. As a result, Shelley LaVey missed “Upper Class” Broderick Palmer II blind tagging in to the match and by the time she realized it he was spiking her into the mat with a gutwrench powerbomb. The crowd booed this, which made BP2 just look disappointed in all of them, which just fed a vicious cycle. But it turned as the heels jumped out on top; the World Tag Team champions had a sick sort of fun isolating Shelley in the ring while Luz taunted one of her many rivals in Spanglish and said Shelley wasn't even fit to polish La Reina’s crown. LaVey managed to get out from under and when Evan O’Neill illegally jumped in to save his partner the former Crush champ dodged them both twice, ran them into each other and then managed to lay them out with a double cutter that had “Dashing” Pierce Moore beaming on the ring apron.
But it was Roy Fade who got Shelley's tag and hit the ring weapons hot. Both of the World Tag Team champions got a taste of These Hands and found it a bitter one as the former Golden Gloves winner showed off his hand speed and high impact offense. Fade made sure to put the champs behind the 8 ball before tagging in Moore, then they tagged O’Neill a few times up to and including a version of the Hart Attack that featured a neckbreaker instead of a clothesline. As Beauty and the Beast Mode put the beats to Evan O'Neill, Steve speculated from the desk that a win here would get Mode another shot at the titles since they were certainly fighting like it. After a couple more minutes of dominance Mode attempted to put Evan down with the Dashing Decision but the rest of Hysteria jumped up on the apron on either side of Shelley LaVey. But this wasn't the prelude to a beatdown, it was a distraction to allow Cruz a springboard dropkick that floored Fade while O’Neill took down Moore with an inverted facebuster. The ref was occupied with Hysteria and that allowed a window for Palmer II to waffle the recovering Pierce with one of the tag titles in the back of the head. A suddenly contrite Cruz apologized to the ref and waved Hysteria down, then pulled Evan towards her corner and tagged in. The Women's World champion flew into the ring with the double jump poison rana that won her the belt and laid Moore out before pinning him. LaVey attempted a save but O’Neill laid her out with a spear and the champions got the victory much to the dismay of the Quality Controllers. Carl added that the night began with Hysteria winning and if they won the main event, Nancy Crowley would bring them the Crush championship as well as Lolo’s world title.
There was a sizzle reel for the tag team known as w @ s t e l a n d e r s that focused on their undefeated roll since debuting back in the summer, including their win over the Wonderful Ward Brothers last week. It ended with two words:
t a r g 3 t a c q u 1 r e d
2. Ian Cook and Gerry Greene fought the Hard Way to a no contest at 8:16 Another pair of former tag champions returned to QCW this week as John Goodish had his first match since getting his sternum fractured at the hands of Omar Littlefield months ago. But this match ended at the hands of another set of former champions - Team Batroc, who laid out the Hard Way out of nowhere and when the Brits Cook and Greene tried to thank Serge Batroc and Pyotr Caviar for the helping hands they also got thrown around the ring and laid out. It took most of the referee corps to stop the French Assassin and the Tracksuit Tsar’s assault. Steve put over the fact that the tag division had a bunch of hungry teams with a bunch of former champions that maybe smelled a weakness with A Cut Above and were looking for another titles reign. Serge and Pyotr were talked into heading to the back by officials having made their point as Ruckus went into commercials.
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Backstage, Julius Duquesne III brought on Lolo Vuitton as his guest to a solid pop. The former Women's World champion told Julius she’d been salty for the past couple of weeks since she lost her title but she just got done talking with Commissioner Holmes and in two weeks she was getting her rematch and the title back. So Luz and her witches could cast their spells, mix their potions, go raid Hot Topic or whatever it was they did for fun. She was going to wreck any of those witches who kept her from becoming the first ever four time Women's World champion in QCW history. The only thing more dangerous than Miss Thang with a title was what she'd do to get it back. Lolo strutted out of frame and JDIII threw things to Duck in the ring to make the introductions for the next match…
3. Orion defeated “the Purifier” Caleb Gray (w/the Chosen) by countout at 11:04 in a non-title match National Champion Gray was surrounded by his acolytes per usual heading into this one and clearly thought his experience and championship pedigree would make for a cakewalk but he got disabused of that notion quickly, as he couldn't get ahold of the high flying newcomer. Orion used their speed to run circles around the Duquesne Cup holder before spiking the Purifier on his head with a satellite DDT that sent Gray rolling out of the ring after impact. The flock went to check on their leader, who was in the middle of telling them that he had things under control when Orion landed a springboard tope con hilo that nearly sent them both into the front row and popped the Quality Controllers something fierce.
Orion got to their feet first and took a good look at the four people fuming in their direction before bundling up Caleb and tossing him back in the ring. Orion continued rolling on, so much so that “the Paragon” Drake Tremble got up on the apron to complain to the referee but Orion made him shut up with a backflip kick that sent the former QCW champion flying to the floor. Orion turned their focus back to the ring and went for more springboard offense on Caleb only to get picked off out of the air by a cyclone kick that gave Gray his first big opening in the bout.
As the larger Gray started to string together some offense and throw Orion around with suplexes, the announce noted that if he’d defended his belt more then he’d be in a position to cash it in for a World title shot when and wherever he wanted. Former champion Christensen wondered if Gray was more concerned about keeping his belt to lord it over everyone else than he was in going after the Fifteen Pounds of Gold. Carl's excellent point was undercut, however, when Gray uncorked an overhead belly to belly suplex that sent Orion flying into the turnbuckles. After dropping Orion a couple more times, Goody Gardner exhorted Caleb to end things; Grey set up Orion for the move that won him the Duquesne Classic and the National championship along with it.
But Orion wriggled free of Repent before it could connect and turned defense into offense, spinning on Caleb's shoulders and taking him down with a rana. Orion blasted Gray with a scorpion kick, and he crumbled before pulling the bottom rope and rolling back out to the floor. The Chosen got in a huddle before the underlings formed a human wall in front of Caleb, who was more than happy to eat a countout loss and grabbed the mic from Duck while he was announcing Orion's win.
Gray said that the “space heathen” was hiding behind a false face and a false name, the exact sort of tomfoolery that had no place in his Quality Christian Wrestling. The time would come for this so called Orion to fall to whatever they were’s knees and repent but tonight his calling was elsewhere: making sure his End Times prevailed over the unamerican Banjerjee and the delusional Davis later on in the show. True…justice could only be delivered by the hands of the Chosen, and if the nonbelievers wouldn't fall to their knees they would be driven to them by force.
Gray threw the mic on the timekeeper's table and the Chosen moved towards the concourse, leaving a confused Orion to get their hand raised as Ruckus went to break.
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4. Anton Stahl defeated Omar Littlefield by reverse decision at 11:19 The once again unmasked Stahl showed off a smart game plan early to blend his technical expertise with a sort of cat and mouse attack. Stahl chipped away at Omar in the opening minutes but when he went for a springboard European uppercut Omar knocked him out of the air and damn near out of the ring with a vicious Pounce. Littlefield's been on a rampage since losing the World title at AnnIVersary and that didn't stop here, as he took apart the proud German in sections. The good news for Stahl is that he only got Vader Bombed by the big man once; the bad news is that he ate four Face Erasers and Omar pinned him with his foot on his chest.
After the bell, Omar continued going after Anton and further kept pummelling him with choke bomb after choke bomb. In trying to stop the beating, the ref got thrown across the ring; it took them a while to recover enough to make it to Duck but once they did they called for the reverse decision and gave Anton a painful victory. Omar chased the ref and when he couldn't catch them he settled for sliding back into the ring and taking Stahl down with a lariat. Omar looked to be setting up yet another Face Eraser when the Wonderful Ward Brothers hit the ring to make the save for Anton as they had been saved by him last week. The Wards got shoved into each other by Omar but they fought back, hitting two individual and then two double team Wonder Cutters to finally drive Omar out of the ring. Security eventually got Omar to the back while he ranted about Holmes giving him what he wanted and in the ring the Wards helped Anton up and checked on him. Carl wondered if a certain band might be getting back together…
From there we went to Steve at the desk, who took lead on a split screen interview with Nazir el-Fadal. You could hear an extremely mixed reaction for the One Man Jihad as he beamed in from Hayt Corners, New York.
Naz said that he knew Steve had questions and since he wasn't going to get cleared for another couple of days, he'd make sure that he was heard in his own words. Steve asked Naz how he was doing after Dia de los Muertos and el-Fadal said his recovery was almost done, but you should see the other guy -- if he wasn't in the hospital, he was in hiding because it had taken every iota of his being to barely survive the Jihad. Yeah, it'd been his own little vacation in hell going through a flaming table. But it was worth it to make Razorblade suffer while people with taste cheered him on for doing it. He could sit here and admit that Savage won the battle, but the One Man Jihad was on his way to winning the war.
Steve asked Naz what was up next for him and el-Fadal said that long term nothing had changed; since Razorblade had to do something that would cripple any of the rabble to barely beat him he was more laser focused than ever on regaining his World championship, and he wouldn't stop until he did. In the short term?
Well, he was going to grace the Arena with his presence next week and since he was a sporting man he would let the locker room have what they and certainly Commissioner Holmes always wanted - a chance to shut him up. el-Fadal said that he was issuing an open challenge for next week's show, which got some buzz and a little bit of a pop from the crowd. Naz said that any man or woman on the roster could get a shot at him but after he beat them he didn't want to hear any more slander come out of their mouth because next week in his glorious return he was going to reteach an eternal lesson: there were good wrestlers - there were great wrestlers - and then there was Nazir el-Fadal: the Greatest Man Alive. el-Fadal cut off his end of the feed and we went back to the ring…
5. The End Times (w/the Chosen) d. Ashok Banjerjee and Justice Davis at 13:26 The Chosen came out to a rain of boos following Caleb Gray’s preaching in lieu of fighting earlier in the show, so it goosed the cheers for both Banjerjee and David a bit when they made their entrances. The Times succeeded in the early going after they rushed the babyfaces at the bell, then isolated Banjerjee while Gray barked orders for them to get rid of Ashok once and for all. They grounded the Boundless former champion and bottled him up to keep him from reaching into his bag of aerial tricks. However, an Ashok Orange Crush bomb gave him just a big enough window to tag in Justice, who immediately hit the ring and started dropping the members of the flock the way Gray did Bible verses. JD showed off his unique blend of speed and surprising power as the fans cheered, while on commentary Steve and Carl hyped him up as another possible contender to the National championship. However, when he went to drop Danny Castle with his JDDDT, Dr. Martin Williams flew off the top rope with a stiff legged missile dropkick and the Times added injury to injury when they launched Davis shoulder first into the ringpost shortly after that.
The Times dished out even more punishment than they had on Ashok to open the match, but the Battle Ground Battler kicked out of a two man backdrop bomb and getting a save from Ashok after Castle and Dr. Williams combined to sandwich him with stereo cannonballs. After a double snap spinebuster the doomsday dyad went for the Reckoning to end things, but Ashok made an even bigger save, this time picking Dr. Williams off with an avalanche rana while Davis wriggled free of Danny Castle and stuck him with the JDDDT. With the Times in disarray, Davis was able to crawl away from them and tag in Ashok. The Boundless One wasted no time in putting meesters on keesters, much to Gray’s consternation at ringside. But a blind tag allowed the Times to turn the tables, as a wheelbarrow suplex into an Olympic Slam put Ashok in the bad part of town. The Times used a double Stun Gun to set up the Reckoning and got the pin much to the joy of the Chosen and almost no one else. A recovering Davis went to check on Ashok while the Chosen got in V formation behind a crowing Caleb on the floor. The Chosen walked out of the Arena via the concourse as Steve teed up one last round of commercials.
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Back from the break and TOTHEBACK~!, where Enya Face was standing by to bring on her guests: the College Park Family. The Quality Controllers popped as the International Players, Jupiter Jones and Science Fiction Double Feature came out to surround Ms. Face. This turned out to not be much of an interview, as Lucius Patton of the Players said he wanted to stand on business: for two months - hell, ever since they got the tag titles, A Cut Above had been running from them but sooner or later, the titles were coming home to the Family and no slimeball manager or one eyed henchmen could stop them. Enya addressed Jupiter next, saying that she felt safe in speaking for a lot of QCW fans when she said that she expected to be talking to the new National Champion after Dia de los Muertos but Caleb Grey had beaten him and hadn't even used the rest of the Chosen to do it. So what was next for the legendary Jupiter Jones?
A quieter Jones than usual said that he would give Grey credit for the win, but he’d lost a match. He wasn't dying, he wasn't retiring, he…just lost. It happens. The next time he uncorked the Bolt, it wouldn't miss, and it would destroy whomever it hit. He wasn't sweating one L when he had the Family by his side. The crew from Atlanta headed off set, but not before Benjamin Valentino warned A Cut Above once again that he and his boy were gonna get their asses and their belts.
Steve hyped up some of the big matches coming up on next week's show: a trios match where Caleb Grey would team up with two of his disciples in the End Times to face Ashok Banjerjee, Justice Davis and Orion - Nazir el-Fadal’s open challenge - and a massive 10 woman elimination match will have Hysteria against “Explosive” Emily Bennett, Shelley LaVey, “Night Sky” Diana Spare, Ashley “THEE Influencer” Szabo and Lolo Vuitton. The women's division has been at war for months, and this star studded fight might finally establish who rules it.
Ahead of that, tonight's main event with the Crush championship up for grabs between former friends as Hysteria looked to gain control of both the titles in their division…
6. “Night Sky” Diana Spare [c] d. Nancy Crowley (w/Hysteria) at 13:24 to retain the Crush championship 5️⃣ …but they couldn't pull it off, at least not tonight.
As has been the case most of the year, the bout between former allies Spare and Crowley resembled a hockey fight far more than a wrestling match with both women going punch for punch and even bite for bite in the opening moments. A Crowley tackle of the champ sent both women careening through the ropes and spilling to the floor, with the challenger recovering quicker. Crowley grabbed Diana and tried to give her an Irish whip into the steps but Spare put the brakes on before seeing Nancy screaming while she charged. Spare's backdrop splattered Nancy across the middle step like Homer over a hydrant, causing the rest of Hysteria to rush around Nancy while a decent “Holy shit!” chant rang out through Quality Arena. Spare got back in the ring and talked her shit while Crowley gingerly got back to her feet. Replays ended as the referee’s count got to 8, but Nancy crawled in under the bottom rope a second later to save the match.
Spare's wrath rolled on unabated, to the point that the Crush champion was able to repeatedly smacktalk Women's World champion Luz Cruz who was on the floor, saying that she was going to stomp out all her underlings and then regain the World title by beating her ass. (Hysteria had the reaction to this that you might expect.) Spare rocked Crowley with a big boot that sent Nancy bouncing off the ropes, then followed up with a rolling elbow before going for the end with Nightfall - but when she hoisted up Crowley the Hysteria member sunk her teeth into her eye to blind her, giving Crowley the opportunity to lay her out with a Code Black to snuff out Spare's momentum. A recovering Spare managed to charge Crowley, only to eat a hard knee to the face followed by a snappy brainbuster that had Bonnie Agrippa popping at ringside and got Crowley her first two count of the fight.
Crowley battled her way back into the match with Cruz continually barking orders at Crowley, saying that Spare always tried to make her a sidekick in the old days so becoming champion would be the best revenge. Crowley responded by upping the pressure on “Night Sky” by making her kick out after a somersault axe kick, and after Duck announced that there were five minutes left in the time limit she landed a spinebuster to set up a diving headbutt that Spare barely shouldered up from at 2 ¾. Crowley got in the ref’s face about it and was quickly joined by Luz Cruz getting up on the apron to read him the riot act…which allowed Bella Jolie to deliver a modified version of Six Feet Under with Spare draped over the middle rope behind the zebra's back. Cruz jumped down from the apron and Crowley staggered Spare with a Northern lariat before starting to set up to take the Crush crown with Bite Me.
But as Crowley went to execute her Chaos Theory, the lights went out in the Arena.
When they came back on, a full on Pier 8 was happening on the floor as “Explosive Emily” Bennett, Shelley LaVey, Ashley “THEE Influencer” Szabo and Lolo Vuitton were throwing hands against every member of Hysteria who wasn't in the ring. Crowley took a swipe at Ace in the Hole winner Bennett since she was closest, but that opened the door for Diana to sneak up on Nancy and lay her out with a torture rack bomb. With the babyface backup fighting Crowley's backup either up the ramp or into the crowd, Spare managed to land Nightfall and score another W to get halfway through her 10 Count and another step closer to cashing in.
But Spare didn't stick around to get her hand raised or her title back - she went to where Bella was and blindsided her with a kick to the back of the head. Spare was coming to the rescue of Ashley but she got driven into the barricade by a tope suicida by the recovering Crowley. In case you couldn't tell, by this point all hell had broken loose in Parts Unknown and the Quality Controllers were eating it up with a spoon and asking for seconds. Carl joked that they needed their own RedZone as the truck kept having to change shots every couple of seconds to alternate between fights. Steve got in a last bit to hype next week's 10 woman elimination match between these sides as Quality Force security started coming down to break up the fights. Ruckus went off the air with the Pier 10 rolling on without an end in sight, security be damned.
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