The Wrestling Show You Should Be Watching - JPW: System Shutdown Review

On February 13th 2022, Jurassic Pro Wrestling hosted their third ever event in Harwich, Essex. "Jurassic Pro Wrestling: System Shutdown". The event showcased 14 of the UK's brightest hidden gems in the UK Wrestling Scene in 6 very good matches. With JPW's first ever championship match in the main event we saw The East City Sovereigns (RJ Singh & Jordan Saeed) take on the defending DNA World Tag Team Champions: The Lads (Ben Jones & Alex Ecco). The match was originally scheduled as a regular tag team match but in a last minute decision the championships from fellow independent promotion DNA Pro Wrestling were put up for grabs.

This is the first review I have personally written of a Pro Wrestling show, so any feedback is appreciated if you feel I have missed any points or over analyse anything here.

The Show Begins

To kick off the show we meet one of the highlights of the show, The King of The Ring... Announcers, Chase Anthony! Chase made his JPW debut at the last event and I personally feel like he is the perfect glue to put together an amazing show. His personality as a ring announcer is unmatched.

He introduces the show, gets the crowd hyped up and after a quick overview of what's to come, he sends us straight into our first match. Out comes "The Silverback" Corey McRae, before going to this event I just assumed this whole review was going to be me talking about how great Corey is for many paragraphs, I genuinely believe out of everyone on the JPW roster, he is the one I think would be ready right now for National TV or one of the "big" promotions.

His opponent is a new debut for JPW by the name of Danny Black.

This match certainly set the bar for the rest of the night, starting off as a great technical match, before turning into a kickfest as both guys use their feet to try and kick their opponents head off. At one point they literally had a kick off as they traded multiple shots, before their feet collided and hurt them both. With a good amount of big moves and near falls, the match's conclusion came at the hands of Corey McRae who delivered a devastating Sit Out Powerbomb for the 3 Count. Making his record in JPW 3-0 and leaving Danny Black with a loss in his debut. This was my introduction to Danny Black and I was thoroughly entertained by some of the moves he came out with, I hope to see him again in JPW and hopefully next time he can pick up a big win! As I said, I think Corey is great. I've seen many of his matches now and even though he was good when I very first saw him, seeing his progression to where he is now is amazing. If a promotion advertises him for a show, I'm more likely to go to that show, it's that simple!

The Tables Turn On Dexter

Chase Anthony is back to introduce our second match... but he has been given a special introduction that he must read before the first man makes his entrance. After a long list of cool sounding titles, "The Protagonist of Pro Wrestling" Hustle Malone makes his way to the ring. Everyone hates him (especially a kid in the back row... we'll get to that). While the whole crowd tries to boo him out of the building, he tells them to pipe down and then proceeds to tell us that his scheduled opponent Nino Bryant is not here tonight, because he's scared (Nino actually has COVID (get well soon Nino)). Malone quickly turns his attention to someone else in the JPW locker room, Dexter. These 2 had fought in the main event of JPW's first show, where Dexter was victorious. The Protagonist makes it clear that the sequel of this match will be way better than the original, Dexter then mentions that he still wants to give the fans a tables match (which he was originally planned to have against Rogan who had to cancel due to COVID (get well soon Rogan)).

For those who do not know, a Tables Match is a wrestling match where the win condition is to put your opponent through a table. So this match's action spilled to the outside of the ring pretty quickly as both guys worked their way towards the tables. After a while Dexter went for an outside dive on Hustle, but Malone used the table as a wall to block Dexter's attack. The sound Dexter's head made when hitting the table made us think he could of been concussed! Luckily he was fine as he managed to get the upper hand again and dragged Hustle Malone around the outside of the ring where he let some of the fans chop Malone and join in on the action. Now... one kid from the back row clearly had issues with Hustle because when this kid chopped Malone... you could probably hear the sound if you had a window open, it was the loudest noise that anyone has ever heard.

Moving towards the end of the match, we saw Dexter going for something on Hustle Malone who was seated on the top rope. However Hustle managed to stun Dexter and slide through his legs, putting him in a perfect position to powerbomb Dexter through a table that had been setup in the ring. This brings these two to 1-1 in JPW. I wonder if we will see a 3rd match at one point in the future.

Hustle Malone feels like a big star to me, I've only ever seen him in JPW, but his promo videos he posts on social media (@MaloneHustle on twitter) show that he puts in that even bigger bit of extra work. Just like Corey McRae, I think he would fit in with the biggest promotions out there. I've seen Dexter multiple times at this point and I think his wrestling is awesome! He pulls out some great moves and puts on entertaining matches every single time. Even though this match's main focus was the tables and the crowd involvement you could still see his pro wrestling ability shine through.

Forest Haze Is A Scary Man

Our third match is about to begin, Forest Haze makes his way down to the ring. CJ Carter, who is not in attendance tonight, got to pick his rival Nick Payne's opponent for the night. He chose Forest Haze... However Forest pretty much just says "no" as he isn't going to do someone else's dirty work. Instead he calls out Dovercourt Dragon, who won the main event of JPW's last event by defeating Forest, Dexter & Nick Payne.

Dovercourt Dragon comes out and accepts the match. This is definitely a match of 3 acts, in the first act we have Dragon outplaying Forest in the ring. He avoids any moves Forest goes for and keeps the momentum going for a while. The second act is when Forest finally gets a hold of things and takes control, there's some great technical wrestling on display and now the tables are turned on Dovercourt Dragon who just can't get away from Forest's attacks.

Forest Haze goes for a big bearhug and tries to tap out the Dragon, after the crowd rallies behind Double D he manages to escape and move us on to the final act of the match.

It's an all out brawl where the upper hand is switching sides after every encounter, the fans want to see Dragon get another big win here and when he locks in the Dovercourt Cloverleaf the crowd are shouting to Forest that he should tap out. After a long and painful crawl to the ropes, Forest escapes the hold and it's not long later that he counters Dragon again, gets him on his shoulder and hits an insanely brutal backbreaker for the victory.

Both these guys are on fire right now and even though Forest Haze got the win, Dovercourt Dragon still came out looking great. These two also had some of the best gear of the night, it looked awesome. When it comes to technical wrestling, this could of been match of the night, or at least a close second to Corey McRae vs Danny Black.

Ladies and Gentlemen... His Name Is Nick Payne

Before we get into the next match, Chase Anthony lets the crowd know that there is a birthday boy in the building. After welcoming a 10 year old boy into the ring and getting the whole crowd to sing happy birthday, Nick Payne interrupts right at the tail end of the celebration. "Ladies and Gentlemen... My Name is Nick Paaaaaayne!" is the best way for a theme song to kick in by the way, it's so cool and let's you know straight away that Nick Payne is a bit of a dick.

The fans are very heavily behind getting Nick to shut up, but of course he never does. Nick reiterates that CJ Carter is not here, before telling anybody in the locker room to come out and face him so they can "taste the sauce"...

Out comes Cali Gray, a new debut for JPW, which I feel like left the crowd silent and unsure whether to be cheering or booing. However, by the time Cali's entrance was finished, the crowd slowly began getting behind him and by the middle of the match were fully invested in this new challenger.

There were some massive moments in this match, including Cali Gray leaping out of the ring and hitting a Suicide Dive on Payne. While inside the ring we see some technically great wrestling, but when Nick Payne shoots the Irish Whip on Cali Gray into the corner, the power behind it leaves Cali tumbling over the corner and down to the floor at ringside. This is when it looks like Nick might hit a dive out of the ring of his own! He runs towards the ropes but stops himself before taunting the crowd with the famous Ronaldo celebration.

While Nick continued to control the match we saw Cali, out of nowhere hit a huge diving headbutt into the mid-section of Payne, this is where we see Cali having his comeback moment, the crowd at this point were fully ready to see Cali pick up the win. Suddenly Nick Payne hits a black hole slam to put a holt on the momentum Cali was building.

The final moments of the match saw Cali Gray hit a huge meteora from the top rope onto Nick Payne, when Nick kicks out at 2 he uses his arm to hit Cali down low and the ref doesn't see it. Nick then proceeds to hit a lungblower on Cali before putting him away with his powerful Spear. Nick Payne then comes back in and attacks Cali, post-match.

By the end of the match I was a big fan of Cali Gray, Nick Payne (while still a dickhead) is a great part of JPW's core roster and seeing him continue to get the crowd mad is a very entertaining part of the show.

THE VOLCANIC RULES MATCH!... The what?!?

A Volcanic Rules Match is the exact same as a hardcore match, BUT the outside of the ring is surrounded by "lava". So if you leave the ring, you lose the match.

"The Top Gun" Tommy Kyle makes his entrance first exuding confidence as he walks past the fans booing at him. One of the top wrestlers that JPW have brought in from outside of Harwich, he is a great part of any roster that he shows up on. His opponent was "The Goth Daddy" known as Xander. At this point I have seen many Xander matches and he never disappoints, he is one of the core members of the JPW roster that would literally be good on the card wherever he is placed.

When Xander enters, he doesn't come empty handed. He walks out with a kendo stick and a steel chair. Tommy Kyle is not interested in using weapons in this match but Xander is known for his love of hardcore matches. The match begins with Xander offering a chair to Tommy Kyle, who says he is not going to use it before lunging towards it. Xander hits Tommy with the kendo stick and the match gets going. After a few loud hits with the kendo stick, Tommy manages to get the upper hand and throws the weapons outside of the ring. This means they are taken out of the match completely (as the floor is lava so there's no way of getting them back). However, while Tommy is taunting the crowd about the matches lack of weapons, Xander pulls his belt off and gets ready to use that as a fine substitute weapon.

As Tommy turns around, Xander unleashes the belt at him and whips him a good handful of times, making the loudest cracking noise ever. Luckily for Tommy, the punishment didn't go on for too long as he manages to get the belt out of the ring. Anytime Xander went out onto the apron, it looked like he might fall into the lava below, before making it back in the ring safely. One of these times we saw Xander hit an apron DDT on Tommy Kyle which was definitely the biggest move of this match. However Tommy Kyle ended up using the referee to push Xander off of the apron and into the lava below, melting him, but more importantly losing him the match. Even Cody The Ref won't shake Tommy's hand after the match (shout out Cody The Ref).

While the match wasn't a wrestling masterclass, it was entertaining enough and had it's moments to pop the crowd. I think it could of went on a little bit longer or at least used more weapons to go all in on the hardcore aspect of the stipulation, but either way both guys did their job well and the only thing that made the crowd disappointed was the fact that The Top Gun came out on top, maybe one day Xander will get his revenge (if he didn't actually melt in lava).

Moment Of The Night

Now it's time for the Main Event of the card. For the first time ever JPW were having a championship match as the DNA Pro Wrestling World Tag Team Champions: The Lads, defended against The East City Sovereigns.

The Sovereigns RJ Singh & Jordan Saeed entered first, when they got into the ring and RJ Singh started talking down to the crowd, boos resonated through the venue and then a "Lads" chant was started. The way that RJ gets silenced after trying to talk over the chanting which leads into The Lads entrance was a perfect moment. Every single member of the crowd were chanting "Lads Lads Lads" and it really showed that The Lads are probably the most over act in the area. As Alex Ecco & Ben Jones enter with their Inflatable Flamingo Floyd 3.0, The East City Sovereigns get angrier and angrier as they wait for the match to start.

This match was definitely the most entertaining of the night, the crowd were hyped and loud all the way from start to finish. There were a lot of close calls where I genuinely thought The Lads were going to lose the titles. The match started great when we saw Alex go up against RJ to kick things off, then after a short while we saw Jordan & Ben go head to head. With Jordan and Ben being the powerhouses of the teams, we had a standoff between two guys who did not want to go down.

Once we got further into the match we see The East City Sovereigns begin to play dirty more and more. Cody The Ref would be distracted and that would cause double teams in the corner and some foul play to be had. One of the huge examples of this came from when Ben and Jordan were both down outside the ring after beating the heck out of each other, The Ref and Alex were distracted which led to RJ Singh hitting a low blow on Alex, rolling him up for the pin and nearly winning the titles. Luckily Alex was able to kick out.

At one point Alex got Floyd in the ring (the inflatable flamingo rubber ring) and did some of his moves with Floyd around his waist. This backfired heavily when he went for the cannonball on RJ, who moved out of the way, causing Alex to land on Floyds head, popping him and killing him instantly (Floyd, not Alex).

The match was a long one and there were so many great moments, it ends with Ben picking up RJ on his back, Alex coming off the middle rope and hitting a bulldog and pinning him, while Ben stops Jordan Saeed from getting in the ring to save the match.

I definitely couldn't do this match justice and I think that when JPW upload it to YouTube or Facebook, you should definitely give it a watch for yourself!

This was my first look at The East City Sovereigns and I like them a lot! Pretty great Heels who get the crowd riled up ready for when the Heroes come out to stop them. RJ Singh has a methodical way around the ring and plays his part greatly, while Jordan Saeed is the powerhouse who could probably punch through a brick wall, he can take control of a match well and makes it a big deal when one of his opponents manages to take him down.

I've seen The Lads wrestle many times and every time they put on a great show, they have been the DNA Pro Wrestling World Tag Team Champions for 722 days (as of February 14th, 2022). With Alex bringing buckets full of charisma and that underdog wrestling style. Ben bringing the mass amounts of confidence and power to the team. They are loved by any crowd they are put in front of.

What A Great Show

Overall, Jurassic Pro Wrestling have put on a third banger of an event. Each one is better than the last and I'm excited for future events to come! JPW returns to Harwich, April 10th so keep an eye on Jurassic Pro Wrestling's social media for that. If you want to see The Lads defend those same championships again, you can see DNA Pro Wrestling: It's In Our Blood III on February 19th in Ipswich (where you can also see Corey McRae in action and many other talented folks).