Friday 29 April 2011

DVD Review - PWG Cyanide : A Loving Tribute to Poison 11/12/2010 By Shaun Nichols


This was the final PWG show of 2010, a year that as been very successful for the promotion with a number of excellent shows including the superb PWG Seven event. However the last show PWG Secrets of Guerrila Island earned mixed reviews, the Cyanide show would hopef.ully turn things back around. The show opened with Willie Mack making his PWG debut, he got over huge with the fans with his crowd pleasing offence. Avalon plays the inept comedic heel who loses every time out, here he actually got a fair amount of offence which surprised me. What Avalon is good at is taking bumps and he deserves credit for helping Mack get over with the PWG crowd. Match was exactly what you would want from a seven minute opener.
The next match I have to be honest, I expected more from. Roderick Strong as always had good matches in PWG and Chuck Taylor continues to evolve and enjoy his breakthrough year. They were given a fair amount of time but never came close to breaking out into a really good match. Roderick took the win with a Tiger Driver but the match although adequate wasn't very memorable.
PWG have some really good tag teams, one of which are the Cutler Brothers who got over great with the fans in a number of matches against the Young Bucks in 2009 and early 2010 where they were chasing tag team gold. Here though they seem to be fitted into the role of midcard tag team that put on good matches. RockNes Monsters (Johnny Goodtime & Johnny Yuma) were teaming for the first team though they seem to be a regular team in 2011. Full of big moves and entertaining double teams it was the Cutlers who ended the year on a deserved high.
Joey Ryan is still trying getting over the fact that the PWG fans were not thrilled with him winning the 2010 BOLA tournament, here he went back old school as he said he was now a 'Technical Wizard' though that as now morphed into the 'Hollywood Submission Machine'. Ryan is clearly a key player in PWG but over the last couple of years he's slid down the card doing a lot of comedy and mixed tags so it'll probably take a while for him to become a main eventer again. Gatson who looked like he could be moving up the PWG card by getting to the semi final of BOLA he seems to be failing to connect with the fans although he's a decent worker. Ryan not surprisingly won by submission with a bodylock kimura.
Continuing to brag about being in TNA, the Young Bucks are still enjoying winding up the fans. Their very entertaining double moves do mean that they can struggle to remain as hated heels depending on who they are wrestling. The Fighting Taylor Boys are perfectly fine wrestlers but aren't that over that the fans will support them over the Bucks. The Bucks got back to winning ways with the great 'More Bang for Your Buck'.
Match of the night featured the welcome return of Kevin Steen and yet another memorable performance from Dragon Gate's Tozawa. Though this wasn't quite as good as Tozawa's MOTY candidate against Chris Hero at BOLA night 2. First move was Tozawa hitting a running tope on Steen on the floor and from there it didn't let it up. Tozawa later tried a second tope but Steen caught him and nailed him with a nasty powerbomb on the ring apron. Steen finally prevailed after hittiing three package piledrivers, after the match Steen deservedly put Tozawa over and they have now formed a tag team for a few shows in 2011, check out DDT4 2011 to see their run to the finals.
The shows main event eventually became a tag team title defence for Generico & London but only after they convinced Castognoli to give them a shot at the PWG World title if they were able to successfully retain. London actually concentrated more on his wrestling than he normally does and the story of the champions battling against their larger challengers was very well told. Champions were successful to send the fans home happy. As Generico got the win with a roll up he got the opportunity to challenge Claudio at the next show, after the show we had a series of interviews Paul London rambled on forever, Chris Hero teased that he would face Claudio for the World title sometime in 2011.
Overall PWG shows are usually very entertaining and Cyanide was no different, it's not the best PWG show of the year but you'd be hard pressed to find many better independent shows that took place last year. PWG as also started 2011 in a similair vein their first three shows of this year have all been very well received and I would encourage all fans to check out PWG if they haven't all ready.

Willie Mack vs 'Pretty' Peter Avalon *3/4
Roderick Strong vs Chuck Taylor **1/2
Cutler Brothers vs RockNes Monsters ***1/2
Joey Ryan vs Brandon Gatson **3/4
Young Bucks vs Fighting Taylor Boys ***3/4
Kevin Steen vs Akira Tozawa ****1/4
Peligro Abejas vs Kings of Wrestling ****

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