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As the consummate pro wrestling hipster that tends to favor indy and smaller promotions when it comes to watching wrestling live, when MLW announced they were making a stop in Atlanta, and at Center Stage theater no less, my absolute favorite venue to watch wrestling at, I was excited when I got some of my boys together to go watch.<\/span><\/p>\n Despite knowing of their existence, some of the notable names to have emerged from them, and their general hierarchy in the power rankings of professional wrestling promotions, I\u2019d never actually been to an MLW show before.\u00a0 In the past, I just wasn\u2019t that interested, and perhaps I didn\u2019t respect them enough, but as my general appreciation for indy and smaller promotions has grown, I was looking forward to giving them a shot.<\/span><\/p>\n After all, they still managed to command Center Stage, a venue historic in the annals of wrestling promotion, having hosted everyone at some point, from the NWA, WCW, ECW to smaller rackets like NXT, TNA and GCW, so it should be a considered a rub in the positive direction if MLW could promote at Center Stage.<\/span><\/p>\n And leading up to the event, the card was coming together to be somewhat respectable, with noteworthy names and matches assembling, featuring guys like Matt Riddle, Kenta, TJP, Satoshi Kojima and PWI\u2019s #10 wrestler* Mistico among others; but I obviously preface with that \u201con paper\u201d disclaimer, because when it comes to smaller promotions, historically a lot of workers tend to work down to the level of their show, and I’ve been disappointed more often than not when it comes to actual performing.<\/span><\/p>\n *I say this dripping with sarcasm, because as decent of a worker he is, Mistico is definitely no top-10 wrestler, and I feel that he\u2019s the equivalent of a DEI inclusion onto the list, solely to represent both lucha libre and a smaller promotion like MLW<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n What we were unaware of, was the fact that this was a double-taping, with MLW taping some online show called Pit Fighters, where supposedly every match was some gimmick, revolving around \u201cX region of the world\u201d and \u201cdeathmatch\u201d and we were exposed to this really hackneyed card of matches where it would be a Tae Kwon Do match, a boxing vs. BJJ match where Donovan Dijak interfered and rescued the segment, and in one Taipei Death Match, which was surprisingly brutal, to where I was hollering that this was a snuff film, it actually featured a worker that was actually Korean in Ikuro Kwon, whom I had to look up as actually being born in Korea, so that\u2019s actually kind of cool.<\/span><\/p>\n But all in all, Pit Fighters was a real chore to sit through, and I kind of felt bad for the friends of mine whom I roped into coming with me, having to sit through the bullshit, but fortunately things picked up a little bit, when we got to the actual live-airing of the MLW FIghtland show that we had originally expected the whole thing to be.<\/span><\/p>\n However, much like I had pointed out, despite some of the matches on the card sounding pretty decent, it overall was kind of meh.\u00a0 Kenta and TJP had an okay match, but nowhere near as good as they\u2019ve gone up against each other in NJPW, Dijak and Timothy Thatcher also was better when they faced off in NXT, and I don\u2019t even really remember many of the other matches at this point, it was such a forgettable card.<\/span><\/p>\n The one thing that really made me want to write about this though, was throughout the whole night of taping,** there was one group that kept showing up through the night, which consisted of Bobby Fish, CW Anderson, Brock Anderson and this kid I\u2019d never heard of before in BRG \u2013 Brett Ryan Gosselin.<\/span><\/p>\n **it should also be pointed out that the taping I think was done out of order, so the Pit Fighters that taped before Fightland, was actually intended to air after Fightland, so there was some wonky narratives going on<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n And they would proceed to declare themselves \u201cThe Rogue Horsemen,\u201d and I\u2019m not so certain that I wasn\u2019t the only person in the theater to audibly groan at such a grasp at relevancy, and one my friends and I kept saying and agreeing that it was the saddest looking stable we\u2019d ever seen in our lives.<\/span><\/p>\n So this kid, BRG, I can respect the showmanship and the B+ charisma he has on the mic, but he\u2019s basically a Temu version of MJF, which is funny because so many people have called MJF a Wish version of The Miz, but regardless, BRG\u2019s schtick just seems so regurgitated and he relies too much on cheap heat and calling the audience idiots, so I guess he\u2019s exactly where he belongs in a 4th<\/sup>-5th<\/sup> tier promotion like MLW.<\/span><\/p>\n In all fairness, I like Bobby Fish, but the man is not getting any younger, and the numerous injuries he piled up in his later years in NXT as well as AEW have definitely taken their toll on him, but the man really is a tag team guy, that even in a small pond like MLW probably won\u2019t be able to handle the toll of singles.<\/span><\/p>\n CW Anderson, I was actually surprised to hear and see him come out, because the last time I had seen him was in like 2019 at a really raw indy show in rural Virginia, where he wrestled The Hurricane in a high school gym.\u00a0 But the man literally debuted in ECW in 1999, and he looked 40 then, which means he\u2019s actually held up pretty well to only look 60 now.<\/span><\/p>\n But he\u2019s teamed up with Brock Anderson, the son of Arn Anderson, in the obvious designated tag team of the stable.\u00a0 The thing is with Brock is that despite being Arn\u2019s son, he apparently got none of his dad\u2019s talent, and Brock looks like a guy that\u2019s in wrestling because plan A didn\u2019t work, but neither did plans B through F, and he\u2019s in the business pretty much out of no better options and that his dad\u2019s name gives him the foot into any door.\u00a0 He\u2019s out of shape and poorly trained, and it was no more evident in his talent level than when The Andersons had a tag match, it was ancient CW who started the match instead of the younger Brock.<\/span><\/p>\n Honestly, the most memorable things that happened in the night for me, were an appearance by Ernest \u201cthe Cat\u201d Miller who hilarious did absolutely nothing at all when he served as a special guest scorekeeper in whatever convoluted wrestling\/jiu-jitsu match that Matt Riddle was in.\u00a0 Also, JBL showed up during the Andersons\u2019 match against the Bomaye Fight Club, dropped their big guy with a short-arm Clothesline From Hell, and whispered something to Brock Anderson, which I\u2019m hoping is not a precursor for him eventually jumping ship to the WWE, especially since Arn is back in their good graces, but it was cool to see JBL continuing his random appearing in various other promotions as of late.<\/span><\/p>\n Overall, being two consecutive shows in one night, the whole experience dragged on quite a bit, due to the general mediocrity of the talent.\u00a0 The show started late, at like 7:20, and didn\u2019t end up ending for about four hours, and by the end of the show, my friends and I were pretty exhausted and ready to get the fuck out of the city.<\/span><\/p>\n Bottom line is that if MLW comes through Atlanta again, I\u2019ll either go by myself, or take a pass.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad I went just to experience it and learn more about what an MLW show is like, but like I said, I don\u2019t think it\u2019s something I need to do again any time soon.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As the consummate pro wrestling hipster that tends to favor indy and smaller promotions when it comes to watching wrestling live, when MLW announced they were making a stop in Atlanta, and at Center Stage theater no less, my absolute favorite venue to watch wrestling at, I was excited when I got some of my … Continue reading Thoughts on my first MLW show<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[103,129,83,143,99,54],"class_list":["post-50190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-motherland","tag-nostalgia","tag-observations","tag-ohatlanta","tag-reminiscing","tag-wrestling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50192,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50190\/revisions\/50192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}