–Trey Miguel v Andy Brown – Hot start to Pro Wrestling Guerilla’s 16th Anniversary show, as “Holy Shit” chants rang through The Globe as I literally walked in the place (just making it again, due to a timely film wrap just a half-hour before belltime). According to my guy Casey Zeiders, a well-educated fan of professional wrestling in his own right, PWG geeks who arrived early to the evemt were anxious to witness the second PWG appearance of “Uptown” Andy Brown who replaced Flip Gordon just days prior. What I did catch in the opener were a ton of dives, a number of high impact reversals from Brown and electric synergy between the two. While the Miguel Meteora finish was OK (compared to the great finishes we’d see in later matches), Casey saw the whole thing and went.. – 3.5/5
–The Dark Order (Evil Uno & Stu Grayson v Best Friends (Chuck Taylor & Trent?) – The first of sixteen AEW matches on the card (I keed, I keed), the PWG faithful chanted “Super Smash Brothers” before the pairing caught a ton of heat for their dark tactics– Evil Uno especially. And is it just me, or was dude that surprise boss from Nintendo’s WCW vs. The World? Either or, the crowd was super heated for this. There were a ton of innovative double teams, variants of prior signature moves, and, at 15 minutes, hit just the right spots. Chuckie T ran wild with a great hot tag, taking everyone out, highlighted by a thunderous powerbomb on Stu Grayson, until Trent got back in the game. He later hit a Gutwrench Jay Driller that was just fucking insane! The Dork Order would hit their “Fatality” finish (think Uno with Shingo’s noshigami, executed by Grayson’s top rope sliced bread).. that surprisingly didn’t get the win. Check this out: with the ref bump, Evil Uno would go “nuts” on Trent, while Trent would soon return the favor only to get caught by #heelref Justin! Ohno! A rare DQ in PWG! I actually absolutely loved the finish; not only ’cause it’s insanely rare to see in PWG, but it easily delivered the most heel heat of the night and protected both AEW teams. Shenanigans ensued post-match. This was awesome. – 3.75/5
–Darby Allin v MJF – MJF is here in PWG! And, yes, he was impressive. You can see the — understatement of the year — confident guy was ultra that here, making fun of the “fat hipster” audience in another scintillating opening match promo. There is no better heel in wrestling right now. The promo was key to the match, too, as Max promised to beat Allin with a side-headlock. He nearly did. It proved to be a great story, with crowd fav Darby eventually getting a bridging headlock takeover for the win. MJF isn’t the best workrate guy on the planet, but worked a sound match here. His timing has vastly improved since coming over to AEW. Darby ran wild throughout, too, showing great resilience and destroying MJF with his coffin drop. Fun, fun match (and, yes, Casey.. you called the finish!). – 3.5/5
–Bandido, Flamita, & Rey Horus v Black Taurus, Laredo Kid, & Puma King via springboard suplex. – This was just OK. Ha! Shit! Fuck, this Lucha Rules 6-man might be one of the PWG MOTY. Hell, longtime PWG regulars were telling me at intermission that this might be one of the best PWG matches of all time! It was super. No doubt. I wouldn’t argue against anyone wanting to give this a 5. I’m only going 1/4* lower because I’m currently damned spoiled nightly by the G1. But seriously, everyone involved in this trios was tremendous, the Globe was off its rocker and the aerial awesomeness may just have been worth the $80 admission alone. There were a million dives, a gazillion new double and triple team moves, and everyone had their moments. Puma King was always in the right place, Laredo Kid took an infinite number of great bumps and the buff and mean Black Taurus fit in no problemo with all the high-flyers. He won the crowd over whenever he ran wild on his opposition and even nailed a blistering tope tornillo thing that dropped everybody’s jaw. You already know how awesome the other team is. This was beyond great. En fuego, even. – 4.75+/5
–Joey Janela v Jungle Boy – A fairly good AEW “houseshow” match that had to the unfortunate duty of having to follow up what the crowd was buzzing about at intermission. It actually began with 100% pure mat-based wrestling, as Janela joked that “hey, I can wrestle too”! The death match guy and ultimate babyface Jungle Boy (who arrived on Luchasaurus’ shoulders to boot) had a solid showing that just felt flat compared to everything else on the card. Surprisingly (unlike their match from Janela’s recent Spring Break), neither tried to do too much. It may have hurt them. The Bad Boy told Meltzer to “suck it” after his Zero Fucks Given flying elbow win. – 3/5
–Brody King v David Starr – Another match that had to the misfortune of following the classic lucha trios, but at least this had a little more heat than JB/Janela. King and Starr went out and had a strong style type match too, a much different affair than anything else on the card; there was an assortment of vicious lariats, strikes and suplexes. Starr is so freaking good against big guys. King is a huge star in PWG and no longer an early card guy. With Cobb diving deeper into the depths of New Japan, will we see a long title run soon? King eventually crushed Starr with a spike piledriving gonzo powerbomb for the win. This was really good if you like psychology, going for weaknesses, etc. – 3.25/5
–PWG World Tag Team Championship – Ladder Match: The Rascalz (Dezmond Xavier & Zachary Wentz) v LAX (Santana & Ortiz) – This was awesome! Sadly, it felt abrupt. Xavier eventually grabbed both tag straps from the top rung of the ladder to win, which felt anticlimactic since there weren’t many (any?) false-finish attempts on the ladder as you’d normally witness in most matches of this kind. That said, LAX arguably has never looked better and the Rascalz were on-point, as always. The crowd duel-chanted for this, heavy on both teams for the 15-minutes. It needed five more. Maybe ten. But we’re here at The Globe now, and not Reseda, so most PWG’s (at least the last 3-4) have all finished right at or closely around the 11pm curfew time. I get it– Downtown LA venues are expensive and that might be an agreed upon arrangement. Or maybe I’m way off, and Excalibur and Super Dragon will tell me to STFU and this was the planned finish anyway. Still, I’d love to express how enjoyable this was.. and maybe wanting more is a good thing. Santana was absolutely on his shit, diving, crushing and killing folks (and himself) with flips onto audience chairs onto the outside. Ortiz humorously called WWE spots and hit them (such as HHH’s famed face-breaking knee). He was awesome to watch. Rascalz eventually got their mojo back and electrified us with multiple ladder attacks, highlighted by a HOT FIRE FLAME (assisted moonsault) from the top turnbuckle onto a bridging ladder! The crowd went nuts with “P Dub G” chants after that one. I applaud the efforts and just wish we had more of it. – 3.75/5
Overall = 3.5/5 Bibles.
@travmoody
Another very good show by PWG, but it makes you wonder what the promotion will look like in the fall when AEW starts running their TV. Half (or more than half of?) the matches here featured All Elite talents, while the main event was all-Impact. Now that LAX are free agents, where will they go? My money’s on AEW.. but you never know. I’d actually like to see a New Japan run since the tag division is NJPW’s one glaring weakness. As for the immediate future, BOLA is next, in the third weekend of September and the roster for the 3-day tournament looks loaded and fresh already. Maybe it will be the start of a new era? In the end, Sixteen proved that, despite all the comings and goings, PWG is still the “undisputed” place to be in all of independent professional wrestling.
-Travis Moody
Additional photos stolen from @DaveFallas