2015 Battle of Los Angeles - Stage One Review

Date: August 28th, 2015

PWG World Champion - Roderick Strong (since Black Cole Sun - December 2014)

PWG Tag Team Champions - The Young Bucks (since Mystery Vortex III - June 2015)

Defending BOLA Champion - Ricochet (2014 winner)

Commentators: Excalibur, Chuck Taylor, Chris Hero & Joey Ryan


The month long wait is over! BOLA began shipping this past Wednesday and I was privileged to receive my copies on Saturday. It's three nights, 11 hours, & 4 discs and my coverage of it starts now with the first evening of competition!

1) Brian Cage vs. Aerostar - First Round Match

Cage is sporting the bald head courtesy of his bad luck in Mexico where he lost a hair v hair match against Alberto El Patron. Aerostar is making his debut and he gets a nice pop after being billed from the cosmos. That pop came from the crowd and from Chuck Taylor on commentary, speaking of that, yes, CHUCK IS BACK! Excalibur introduced as the show began and Chuck boasted "We did it guys!" This makes me happy. PWG & Chuck have been meant to be since 2008 and it just wouldn't BOLA without him, especially after all the memories he's created at the event over the years. None the less, this opening contest between two men who are both known for their tenures in Lucha Underground was very easy on the eyes. A number of high flying manuevers and lucha exchanges including Aerostar's amazing free fall dive making it's debut in Reseda. After five or six minutes, Cage puts Aerostar away with a must see move in the form of a Steiner Screwdriver.

Match rating - **1/2

2) Biff Busick vs. Andrew Everett - First Round Match

Busick is fired up and BAH GAWD I LOVE IT. Since I'm mentioning things I love, I have to say that Excalibur "doing his homework" has made his commentary even more enjoyable because he's reference a lot of past occurences in the DUB G and it rules. Anyways, this thing gets going and turns out to be quite the match up. Busick is as on point as ever with crisp strikes, intensity, and suplexes. The action is kept at a good pace with them building up extremely well to every big mark out moment and there were several of them. Everett missed a phoenix splash only to hit it a few minutes later for a nearfall. Busick seemed to just get more pissed off as time went on and ended up grabbing Everett by the face and slapping the shit out of him. Everett kept working away at Biff though. He springboards to the top rope, shooting star pre--UPPER CUT IN MID AIR! FUCK! This sets up Biff's high impact finishing run that gets him the win. Great match that I'm probably gonna watch again.

Match rating - ***3/4

3) Will Ospreay vs. Mark Andrews - First Round Match

OSPREAAAAAYY OSPREAY OSPREAY OSPREAAAAYY OSPREAAAYYY! It's his debut and William has already gotten his own variation of El Generico's OLE chant. That bastard luchador will never die! The chants may have gotten to Ospreay's head though because Andrews was able to out wrestle the young man from Essex early on. This is a really interesting match because it's essentially the second flood of talent from England coming in to PWG. Zack Sabre Jr, a technician, started this revolution, but now we have two of the best high flyers from the UK doing their thing. They & ZSJ may be of different styles however they did just as awesome of a job blowing away everyone with their innovative offense. This highly entertaining match was filled with a ton of insane manuevers and exchanges. You had Andrews countering a suplex into a stunner, Ospreay's must see inverted 450 splash, a springboard dragon rana from Andrews, and much more. Some called this the Generico/PAC of 2015 and while I wouldn't go that far, these two definitely busted out the goods & left quite the impression.

Match rating - ***1/2

4) Inner City Machine Guns (Ricochet & Rich Swann) vs. Angelico & Jack Evans

Photo credit: Mikey Nolan

This was a different match. ICMG gets a great reception to begin as Reseda is belting "All Night Long" to the point of which Jack gets annoyed and his heel persona comes out. Jack & Rich have a new school PWG meets old school PWG dance off that ends with Rich dropping himself on his head in one of those most weird occurences I've seen anywhere. From this point, they settle back into the match. For some reason, the crowd gradually just dyed down and I don't even know why because with your usual PWG crowd, this could've very well been a four star tag team match. It was slowed down when it needed to be, as opposed to Jack & Angelico's match with The Bucks last month, and the final half was crazy, but spaced out well. The crowd just wasn't hot for everything like usual. Despite that, the guys still worked hard and this is worth watching. I may even give it a second look.

Match rating - ***1/4

5) Trevor Lee vs. Trent?

A Trent? match without comedy?!!?! Yes and it was surprisingly quite the contest. Well, not surprising that it was a good match, just surprising that they were serious for the majority of the match. Excalibur & Hero even made note of this on commentary. Trent did hit his EPIC boot scrape, though, and the Carolina Caveman did a similar move of his own. Soon this match would turn into suplex city with Trevor releasing german suplexing Trent on the ring apron and hitting yet ANOTHER one when Trent recovered and got back into the ring. To top those off, Trevor got caught on the top rope in prone position and Trent capitalized. RELEASE SUPLEX OFF THE TOP TURNBUCKLE THAT TURNS LEE IN-SIDE OUT! They did a nice tease with a small package roll up before Trevor hit the doomed driver version for the victory.

Match rating - ***1/2

6) Pentagon Jr vs. Drago - First Round Match

Reseda is in love with Pentagon & Drago right off the bat. I'm assuming it's because Lucha Underground is filmed near the same area so I expect a number of the fans in attendance were probably also around for the LU tapings. This acceptance of the debuting luchadors made for a special & unique atmosphere here. Drago jumped Pentagon before the introductions and hits a dive to kick things off in foreshadowing fashion. Dives would become a prominent part of this match with all four sides of the ring getting action in the first 6 or 7 minutes. Pentagon hit a DDT on Drago onto a chair at one point as well. There was also a sick moment with Pentagon chugging beer and spewing it everywhere before climbing back into the ring. This was a Drago showcase for the most part with Pentagon only get a flurry here or there until the final stretch when he made his comeback. Before I get to the finish though, I HAVE to mention Drago's hurricanrana off the top rope. Simply unbelievable. In the end, it wouldn't be enough and Pentagon would recover and nail Drago with the package piledriver to advance. Great debut for these guys.

Match rating - ***1/2

7) Matt Sydal vs. Fenix - First Round Match

Junior heavyweight excellence. That's the best way to describe this and I had to say it right off the bat. Sydal was a trendsetter and much like Chris Hero found his groove back in 2015, Sydal has done the same. It took both men a year to get back in their niche after returning from WWE, but now, they are back in a class of their own. Sydal showed here why he's one of the best at this style by executing nearly everything with precision, especially where it counted the most. Fenix was beloved by Reseda for just about everything and Sydal is a sweetheart so this was really just a showdown between two fan favorites. This is displayed best by the moment where Fenix flipped off Sydal and verbally saying "fuck you!" which got a big pop from the audience. Seconds later, Sydal moves away from a splash and nails Fenix with a helluva kick in the corner while shouting "that was for Generico!" And you know that Generico is sacred in the PWG history books so this was a nice moment. As you can probably tell, I liked mostly everything about this match. A few things in particular include a callback where Fenix went for a springboard dropkick for the second time where he bounces from the second rope to the top then out only to get caught with a spinning back kick from ReBourne in mid air. Other moments include a twisting moonsault to the floor from Fenix, Sydal popping Fenix up and getting brought down with a hurricanrana, and a top rope spanish fly that somehow still wasn't enough to put Sydal away. This was an awesome match and the best first round contest of the night.

Match rating - ****1/4

8) Roderick Strong & The Young Bucks vs. Zack Sabre Jr, Tommy End, & Marty Scurll

Where do I start? I guess I'll begin by prefacing that you're about to here me rave about this match because there were so many things that I loved about it. Firstly was the pre-match happenings. As soon as the cameras went on air, Roddy & Sabre were at each other's throats. I legit got chills as Sabre was PISSED and tried to scrap with the PWG World Champion. After the highly praised contest they had earlier this year and this exchange, I can confirm that this one of the best rivalries going today. Sabre grabs Roddy's belt at one point and Roddy looks equally as angered as Sabre. Both of these guys are on such a different level this year and everything that went down during the pre-match displayed why. Once things, sort of, settle down, Roddy interrupts Melissa Santos in the midst of the ring introductions and does that thing only 2015 Roddy can do. He runs her down, says he doesn't know who she is, but she needs to know who he & The Bucks are, etc. He finishes by throwing the mic at her. WHAT! She's clearly flustered by this apparent impromptu act and wow, it just topped off everything when it comes to the character work here. The bell rings and Sabre & Roddy are set to square off, but the champ tags out. TEASERS! End starts off with Nick Jackson and it's wild. This whole match in fact is wild. So wild that there's no earthly way I can continue doing play by play there fore I will return to simply running down all the amazing things about this. It started with the pre-match stuff, then all that heat translated over into the match. Roddy & The Bucks are the dickhead champions and they're perfect at it. Sabre has become the best counterpart that Roddy could ask for because the story of Roddy finally winning the belt yet no one paying it any attention because in the past year in PWG, it's been all about the hype surrounding ZSJ. That is what created the intensity before the bell rang which as said before, translated over into all the insane action we saw here. The crowd hung on every single move, much like I did, more so than with any other match during the night. End's kicks were extremely on point here, he even hit a moonsault off the second turnbuckle which blew my mind. Scurll made quite the impression in his debut as he mouthed off & showed his charisma, took part in the mock re-enactment of the Brock/Taker SummerSlam spot, and nearly got killed when Roddy backbreakered him & missed the apron. The Bucks were great as usual, they hit a Double Meltzer Driver along with a number of new combinations with Roddy including an assisted 450 splash. Not to mention the mocking of Zack's accent and the numerous amount of "suck-it's" that were delivered. The finish was perfect with ZSJ being left alone to fight and not backing down at all. He flurries at Mount Rushmore 2.0 before a double superkick and jumping knee strike combo floors him. Roddy finishes him off with the End of Heartache for the win after a complete barnburner of a match. Match of the night overall.

Match rating - ****1/2

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