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| Here are the results from Capital Punishment II in Richmond, VA. Overall the show wasn’t very good. It really didn’t come across as polished as last year’s show did - it came across like a bad Indy show. I am thankful that I didn’t spend $125 on the Ultimate Experience tickets. Attendance seemed to be in the 1,000 range. Results were: Joey Matthews pinned AJ Styles while holding the ropes. Good match to start the show – probably the best of the night. AJ later won a Royal Rumble style battle royal that consisted of local talent from NWA Virginia. The idea was that the winner of the battle royal would get to face Joey Matthews in Spotsylvania on Saturday night. David Young and Daffney beat Gail Kim and Jake Manning. The crowd didn’t seem to enjoy this very much. Gail was great. Senshi pinned Ruckus after a double-stomp from the top. This was match was very good. I am not convinced that a lot of the crowd knew who Ruckus was, but he won them over with some incredible spots. D’Lo Brown beat Abyss via DQ when Abyss plastered referee Brian Hebner with a chair. Sgt. Slaughter, Rick & Scott Steiner, TJ & Kirby Mack and Dustin Rhodes beat JBL, Steve Corino, CW Anderson, Homicide & Hernandez and Elix Skipper in a War Games match when Slaughter forced JBL to tap to the Cobra Clutch. CW and Dustin started the match and the heels won the “coin toss”. I believe that this is the first War Games in the history of the business where no one bled. Slaughter & JBL just got involved in the end. Highlights: Joey Matthews did a great job in establishing that he was going to be the heel in his match with Styles – some great mic work from him. The angle with JBL, LAX, Slaughter, and The Mack brothers that helped to set-up War Games was good. JBL calling out LAX and then going back and forth with Homicide was good stuff. I just wish they would have involved the other War Games participants in the angle so we would know who was going to be in the match. Rick Steamboat and Ron Simmons presenting an oversized check for $20,000 to the Autism people ended up getting a better response than most anything else on the show. Simmons did his ‘DAMN” high spot and whipped the crowd into a frenzy. The guy that won the auction to be guest ring announcer ended up being better than the regular UWF ring announcer – who is just horrible. I thought that was funny. Corino and Homicide played up their history throughout the War Games match and finally had a confrontation after the match ended. Many in attendance probably didn’t realize the significance of them being on the same team. Lowlights: The music was way too loud and sounded distorted. The sound guy from TNA (Tiny Tim) should rethink whatever it is he is doing. Terrible! At one point, one of the local workers was introduced as Charley Dreamer. The sound was so bad that everyone thought they heard Tommy Dreamer and popped like crazy. The manager auction is for a good cause but it was really stupid. I didn’t like having random fans trying to get themselves over at ringside. One guy kept getting in the way. There were more fans at ringside during War Games than talent. It was a little much. It took 30 minutes for the “crew” to set up the cage. The whole effort was almost comedic. This was one of the only shows that I’ve ever been to where we really had no idea who was going to be in the main event. I wonder if attendance would have been better if that would have been established in advance and promoted more. |