REVIEW: Riot Cabaret Pro Wrestling - The Grand Opening

Riot Cabaret Pro Wrestling: The Grand Opening
Clapham Grand, London
Tuesday, June 28, 2022
Reviewer: Iwan Mackenzie (@iwanmack)

It’s fair to say that I had some trepidation about this new promotion, I’ve been going to BritWres shows regularly for the last ten years and normally there’s tell tale signs of debut shows.

I like the concept behind Riot Cabaret, the presentation is good but I was getting a lot of RIPTIDE and Wrestling Resurgence feels from it and I was worried that they were looking to duplicate those promotions success.

My other trepidation was the fact that it’s running a pretty significant venue on a Tuesday night in London, a day that is traditionally not good for wrestling - the only exception being the Tuesday Night Graps shows in Manchester which normally used to fill 150-200 on a regular period, with them even struggling now.

One of the best examples I can give of a Tuesday being a bad day is when PROGRESS ran their Who Run the World? Show on a Tuesday in March and the draw was terrible compared to what you can get in the Dome.

So I left work just before 17:30, got my dinner from Sam’s Chicken (very nice place but need to improve the burger buns), and headed over to Clapham via DLR/Tube/Train and got to the queue to see fellow Grapple Theory Writers, Mark and the two Daves as well as my friends Liam and Patrick. Getting into the venue was handled very well and general access to the venue was on board.

I’ve been to the Clapham Grand before for wrestling when IPW ran it and, truth be told, it was a Shithole; not helped by the fact that it was normally Sundays where the venue hadn't been cleaned up from the night before so the floors were sticky, the bogs stunk and it just wasn't that good for Wrestling.

Thankfully when I came in this time around it was the polar opposite, with the stage lit up in neon lights as well as the mini dinner party seats for the stage. The ring looked great and you could get a good view wherever you were, I had a great view all night as I was stood at the bar.

Talking of the bar, the food and drink was very pricey but it’s London, what do you expect. What I will pass on is that the bar was card only and I had a few people who just carried cash for the bar. In the future I feel the promotion and venue should advertise this in advance.

Two more things worth mentioning before I get onto the actual show; first was how much of a crowd they drew, the walk up might have helped it because there was an easy 150-200 in, a lot more casual fans but they were all up for it and there was no shit chants or irony from anybody here, everyone was into the Show.

Second, the playlist for the pre-show, interval and post-show was awesome with plenty of 70s/80s/90s tracks to keep us all entertained and it did really brighten my mood after a tiring day.

James Lawrence was our host for the evening (he reminded me of Craig Revel Horwood from Strictly Come Dancing), he did a great job through the night, created a fun and warm atmosphere, he did well in explaining how British wrestling was still repairing since what’s happened in the last two years, this was a great thing to do.

He introduced Spike Trivet who was out of the Tournament and wanted to address the fans, he did a great job of getting over his character to the audience and setting himself up when he’s back from Injury.

Plus, he got into a shouting contest with yours truly after I called him a wanker, he said by name that I wank in my mum’s basement and wank myself off to the tune of my chants, very mature of you Spike.

Then it was time for the action to begin!

Chuck Mambo vs Cara Noir - Riot Cabaret Championship Match Qualifier

These first four matches would be the qualifiers for the championship four way at the end of the night, with the winner becoming the first Riot Cabaret champion. Will say that, from entrance alone, I knew this was the perfect way to open, both know how to connect to a crowd and are big characters.

Mambo gave Noir a bow before the match and wanted a Noir bow in return, Noir obliged and Mambo took the opportunity to get him in a wrist lock and some fast paced exchanges of holds and pins.

Noir got the better of it and then bowed to Mambo again; but the Black Swan wasn’t looking to play here as he soon started beating down on Mambo and fighting on the outside leading to a Suplex on the red carpeted stage, Mambo was able to beat the count back in.

From there, it was a lot of Noir working down Mambo to soften him up for an easy win off one of his signature moves, but Mambo showed a lot of guts and determination here and fought back, with some big moves including a Mambo Destroyer.

Despite the Package Piledriver and Swan Song being executed, it was actually Mambo who got the win here after the Springboard Frog Splash.

Noir shook his hand after and then attacked Mambo to big boos from the audience, he then hyper extended Mambo’s arm similar to what Pentagon did in Lucha Underground.

This was my match of the night, one of the best openers of the year and one of the best matches I’ve seen live as well; these two worked so well together against one another, it had the action to match the self contained story they told, absolutely loved this match and this put me in a good mood for the show forward.

Dan Moloney vs Tate Mayfairs - Riot Cabaret Championship Match Qualifier

First off, Dan Moloney’s theme (Drilla by Filthi) is an absolute banger, give it a listen. Mayfairs was billed as “The Greatest Wrestler on Planet Earth to Have Ever Lived” and called Dan “Dan Jabroni”, we called Mayfairs “Taint Mayfairs”, always good for a childish laugh.

We had Dan kicking the shit out of Tate even before the bell with some added chops thrown in too. Mayfairs is good at taking a pummelling and with how jacked he looks and the shaved head, Moloney looked the business here.

This generally was an entertaining match, my only issue with it really was that when Tate went on the offence and had to control the heat over Dan. I felt the crowd lost interest, I think if Mayfairs was to have used more heel tactics to get there, it would have made more of an impression, but that’s my opinion.

We had Dan win this after a Spear and then the Drilla Killa Piledriver to move onto the main event.

Charles Crowley vs Joe Lando - Riot Cabaret Championship Match Qualifier

Lando was the wildcard entry of the whole tournament, with him being picked by Mark Andrews via social media; Crowley got a lot of shit here for his starring role in Eastenders.

Now on paper, this match looked to be a good one but in execution, I wasn’t really a fan; it wasn't a terrible match or anything, it was fine but I found these two styles didn’t really work well together, plus Crowley was pulling off moves equal to Lando’s which kind of ruined the special nature of Lando’s offence. I also found a few sequences looked a bit clunky and I felt the crowd wasn’t into this much.

The finish came when Lando looked to drop the Shooting Star Elbow but Murdoch, who’s been on social media complaining that he wasn’t the wildcard entry, got on to the apron to berate Lando. Lando went to hit the SSE but Crowley caught him in a Triangle Hold to force the Submission.

The Murdoch angle was good for setting up a feud but the crowd didn’t know who he was so I wish they had done something a bit more to make this feel significant.

Mark Haskins vs TK Cooper

Haskins was the replacement for the injured Spike Trivet. Fun fact, this is only the second time these two have faced off and the first time they did was also at the Clapham Grand, I’ve now been in attendance for both shows.

This was a bit of a slow burner and I was wondering if the crowd was starting to lose interest and needed a break but credit to these two, they got the crowd on board and delivered what I thought was a very good match.

Both of them are solid as rock as wrestlers, I’ve not seen Haskins in ages, but this is his role, as that experienced journeyman wrestler who can come in and be plugged into somebody's style to deliver a really good match.

We had Mark Haskins win this match to secure the final spot in the championship final.

We had our Interval advertised at ten minutes but was nearer to twenty minutes, I wish promotions would just deliver on interval times (RevPro are pretty much spot on still).

Rhia O’Reilly vs Harley Hudson vs Livvi Grace vs Ronnie Knocks vs Kelly Van Ness vs Skye Smitson vs Session Moth Martina - Jukebox Rumble

The winner of this would get an opportunity to fight for the women’s championship at a later date. Now, I’ve only ever written about a Rumble match a handful of times and I’ve found that the best way is to say which order the competitors come out, and this Instance what song they came out to as well, seeing as this is the Jukebox Rumble. Laura Di Matteo had to pull out of the show so she was missing here.

Rhia O’Reilly - “Judas” by Fozzy (she cut it off early and said Jericho will be there next week, the crowd still sung song through though)
Harley Hudson - “WAP” by Cardi B
Livvi Grace - “Move Bitch” by Ludacris
Ronnie Knocks - “Mama Said Knock You Out” by LL Cool J (shoutout to 2005 Samoa Joe)
Kelly Van Ness - “Alive & Amplified” by The Mooney Suzuki
Skye Smitson - “Toxic” by 2WEI
Session Moth Martina - “Enter Sandman” by Metallica (with the full Sandman ECW entrance which was pretty awesome)

Overall as a match this was pretty entertaining. Rhia O’Reilly did well in heeling it up through the whole match and some competitors were better than others is what I’ll say but the thing to take out of this match was Harley Hudson (who’s a dead ringer for Vicky McClure).

I’ve heard a lot of good things about her from the North West scene (plus she’s been a guest on the Grapple Theory Podcast) and she was a standout here, she’s got a lot of good personality and character plus she looked good as far in-ring skills go, she can only improve from here on through.

Also worth mentioning that the Sandman impersonation by Martina was spot on and very entertaining. It was Hudson winning the match after last eliminating Smitson, the crowd loved that.

I will say that I wish some of the songs were more out there for the wrestlers, they felt too fitted towards the characters, I’d have preferred something out of the box.

Greedy Souls (Brendan White & Danny Jones) vs CPF (Callum Newman & Danny Black)

Talking of songs, CPF came out to an absolute banger in the form of “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” by Backstreet Boys, the crowd was so into this and sing it loud and proud, you couldn’t have had a better babyface reaction; the crowd called Brendan and Danny the “Greedy Arseholes”.

Now this is a match of two halves but let me say what I liked, thought the Greedy Souls looked like a great team, they both look the part and it looks like Brendan had got himself into really good shape and Danny had put some more mass on which suits him for sure; I do think this had the makings of a good match and there was bits and pieces that impressed me.

Unfortunately much like Lando/Crowley earlier, I did think these two teams did not totally click as opponents; but what took my enjoyment out of this match was towards the end, Danny Black hit a Dragonrana on Brendan but landed awkwardly when he went down, something was up and a minute later the paramedics were called over and Danny was taken out of the match, the finish soon came with Greedy Souls pinning Callum for the win.

You never want to see anybody get hurt and in the case of Danny Black he’s a person that I do have a lot of time for and somebody who’s been very kind to me over the years. Fortunately, Riot Cabret has confirmed that Danny is fine.

Chuck Mambo vs Dan Moloney vs Charles Crowley vs Mark Haskins - Riot Cabaret Championship Match

Everyone except Crowley was popular with the crowd, Crowley went to the outside and every time he’d get involved the three babyfaces would stare him down with a “send him back to Walford” chant ringing out, me and my mates also chanted “there’s only One Kevin Webster”.

Overall this was a really good main event, probably my second favourite match after the opener, everyone brought it here for all there different roles but have to praise Chuck Mambo, I thought he put an absolute shift in and had to pull of the underdog babyface rol and also still sell his arm, both of which he did to perfection.

Crowley got a chair involved and went after Mambo’s arm but Mambo did get control of the chair after a short while, nailing Crowley with it before hitting the Beach Break on the chair before the Springboard Frog Splash to get the win and become the first Champion, I was jumping up and down for this, been a massive Mambo fan for years.

We had TK come out to celebrate with him, he was presented with the belt and “Hey Jude” rung out to end the show; James gave an emotional address after, saying how glad that the show was finally able to happen and “We Built This City” played us out.

Overall, this was an excellent first Impression given by this new promotion; considering that I felt very tired coming in and with a few trepidations, this show just absolutely brought me to life.

I loved the opener and really enjoyed the main event, even if there were matches that were better than others, I didn’t not enjoy anything on this show really, just as a show, I had so much fun, one of the best of the year.

There are developments that need improving for their next show as I’ve hopefully showcased here and I’d like to see them dive more into the Cabaret side of things but the future is bright for this and I’m looking forward to the next one.

You can follow me on Instagram @IwanMack.

Thanks all for reading.

REVIEW: Riot Cabaret Pro Wrestling - The Grand Opening

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