REVIEW: UKPW - Straight Outta Falconwood

Credit: UKPW

UKPW: Straight Outta Falconwood
Falconwood Community Centre, Welling
November 27, 2021
Reviewer: Iwan MacKenzie (@iwanmack)

Hello everyone, I’m Iwan Mackenzie and I’m here to take you through the Day and show of UKPW’s return to Falconwood in their final stop on the Restart Tour.

So, I along with my brother Leighton, my cousin Aaron met up with my mates Dave, Liam, Chel, Paul and Tammy with their son Jack, at the Harvester nearby Falconwood Station. Now I haven’t been to Harvester in many years now and heading back I can see that it hasn’t been missed, the prices are expensive for what the food is and you’re left with the thought of “I could cook this myself”.

Me, my brother and cousin all shared three starters, a small portion of chips and had a drink as well, that come to the grand total of twenty-six quid, felt like I had been robbed in broad daylight, absolutely ludicrous prices. I will say that the staff were very friendly.

After here, it was a short walk to the hallowed halls of Falconwood Community Centre, a place that I’ve not been to in many years since the times of RNV running annually, which was convenient at the time as my uncle lived in Welling. If you’re wondering RNV was a very grassroots indie promotion that wasn’t very good, but we had a laugh.

This was also my first UKPW show in five years, since a show called ‘Caged’ back in April 2016, it’s fair to say that UKPW has gone through quite a change since then, in management, look and presentation.

Now this show for the last week has been promoted as ‘sold out’, when we got to the venue, it was very busy, but there were a few empty seats around the place and pretty much every fan was sat down.

One more thing I need to say before we talk the show, is the crowd; now this crowd was very much local with only me and my mates being what you’d call “smart fans” as we’ve followed around BritWres for a very long time.

This wasn’t that kind of crowd as it very much was a lot of families with children (most of whom weren’t actually watching the show, even saw one of them watching Power Rangers on an iPad) and a lot of fans who were watching it as novelty.

There are two unfortunate side effects to this; first one being that the atmosphere was very mixed as people’s concentration and general engagement was all over the shop. The second point, which is more serious, was that I had several people behind where I was seated, shouting out a lot of offensive comments towards the women’s wrestlers on this show.

Unfortunately I couldn’t see which particular audience member it was who was shouting said comments, which I won’t be repeating here, otherwise I would have said something.

This kind of behaviour and comments are not acceptable in any walk of life and they weren’t welcome here either, especially with this being a family show with kids about, it’s not acceptable to be using the language around children.

What is also not acceptable as well, is the fact that the women don’t need these comments at all, especially with one of women’s wrestlers only being 18, they don’t need this shit at all. I have informed UKPW of the comments and behaviour in question and we’ll see what happens from there.

If you’re reading this, then I can’t believe that I’m saying this in 2021, but, don’t use sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic or any other language like that at all, in any forms or kind.

Anyways, on with the show. We had our ring announcer for the day, tell us about the big matches on the show and also inform the audience of how a match can end.

Dow Jones vs Alexander Roth - UKPW Heavyweight Champion

Credit: UKPW

Then we had the dulcet tones of “For The Love of Money” by the O’Jays as UKPW Heavyweight Champion Dow Jones (who yes has a money gimmick, naturally) came out for a promo.

He informed the audience that Alexander Roth wasn’t here and instructed referee Martin, to start the count so the match can be declared as a win for himself.

The count started, but at eight, we had Roth appear from under the ring, get in the ring and deck Jones with a superman punch. A Rothbottom and double foot stomp later, and we had Roth victorious as he became the new Heavyweight Champion.

Immediately after this we had Bullit dressed as the Dude from the Big Lebowski out for a promo, said that he used to work for Dow but he now works for UKPW and that he’s coming for Roth’s title soon,

That sets up a title match that I presume will happen on UKPW’s first show of 2022 in Falconwood.

Now this whole match was basically one big angle, but it was an entertaining way to open the show, Dow Jones is excellent as a heel on the mic, Roth is the biggest babyface in UKPW and Bullit is a good choice of first challenger.

Teens With Attitude vs David Francisco and Ava White

Credit: UKPW

Now, this match immediately bugged me as they were all supposedly babyfaces but one by one, they all started acting like heels and the crowd was split but not in the natural way of things, which gave the match a weird atmosphere.

I wasn’t a fan of this match, felt the atmosphere added to it but the action was rushed and messy, when they got more into the Indie style. A lot of stuff didn’t connect, both in the ring and with me watching it. Definitely not a match for me.

We had TWA win this match then had David show them respect but Ava left the ring and abandoned the rest of them.

An odd ending with the rest of the match participants not being too bothered about Ava’s exit.

Amira Blair vs Safire

Credit: UKPW

Amira Blair was portraying the Pretty Pyscho character on this show and took on 18-year-old Safire, who looks like she could be the daughter of Jetta.

This was a decent match, it wasn’t the greatest or the worst but it did the job of what it needed to do. I find Amira very entertaining but found her character work went over a lot of people’s heads and never connected.

Safire is good for somebody who’s young in the business, and she could get even better as the years roll on.

Now the ending of this match had Amira run Safire into the exposed turnbuckle after Steve the ref was knocked out and then she won by submission.

Problem was the turnbuckle had come off a lot earlier in the match and the ref had to pretend that he hadn’t seen it, so come the ending of this match, he was made to look idiotic for not spotting it sooner.

The crowd turned on Steve after this and it didn’t help that hiss response was “think you could do it better”, which didn’t aid his cause and made it worse for himself.

The Business (Gabriel Myers and Anton Greene) vs Two Good Eggs (JJ Lynch and Rex Armstrong) w/Harry Sefton - UKPW Tag Team Championships

Credit: UKPW

We started this match with the baddies Pearl Harbouring the goodies (thanks to OSW for that reference), as a brawl around the building kicked off this match.

We had Business taking out Rex, but JJ fought back with a lot fire in this match, after returning from an injury. Back in the ring, Rex was isolated by the Business as they beat down on him for several minutes before he was able to mount a comeback to tag in JJ who had a really good hot tag here.

Gabriel tried to get himself intentionally DQ’d by beating down on JJ, but Martin put his foot down and didn’t allow it in this Championship match.

We had miscommunication with the Business as Myers took the Cutter from Greene, instead of their intended target and eventually the Two Good Eggs hit their double team finisher on Greene for the win and to become the tag team championships.

A very good match, one of my favourites of the show in all fairness. Great moment getting to see JJ and Rex win the championships, as I’ve been following their careers since the start in Battle Pro, so nice to see that moment.

Interval now which had many wrestlers out for pictures, they had a tuck shop on the go with very cheap drinks but I only had card so we headed to the local Co-Op for two bottles of smoothie (One being Co-Op own brand and the other being a Naked Blue Machine which was on reduce), plus two bars of Kinder Bueno.

Back in the hall, we went for some pictures before taking our seats for the second half of the show as the dark sky came in and the heat intensified in the hall due to the heating being on full blast to combat how cold it was outside.

Simon Miller vs Roy Johnson

Credit: UKPW

This was a decent enough ‘big lads’ match, but I felt like it did take a while to get going and when it was getting to the point of good, the match ended.

Simon Miller has improved a lot since his early days, working more indies up and down the country has worked for him. It was also nice to see Roy working a new variant on his character but I feel like he’s lost as a wrestler and I never know what direction he wants to take himself.

Oour finish here was both men colliding into each other with clotheslines and they ended up in a double pin situation as the match went to a draw,

Ref Steve was on the call again and if you thought the Blair/Safire match got him into hot water with the crowd then this was worse as there was an audible groan when he came out to ref the next match.

A rubbish way to end a pretty decent match.

Mike Bird vs Jake O’Grady

Credit: UKPW

This, in-ring wise, was probably the best match of the whole show. Bird always has good matches and should be somebody that bigger promotions should be using to enhance the younger talent on the scene.

Jake O’Grady was very good on first impression; he seems to have the basics down very well and hung in them well with the man who is his trainer.

Simple story told well here with Bird beating down his Trainee, but O’Grady making valiant comebacks and at points nearly beating Bird.

But it was Bird with the victory here via submission. Good stuff this match, would give it a look when it drops on YouTube.

Evie Madden vs Kira Chimera - UKPW Women’s Championship

Credit: UKPW

This was the culmination of a tournament to crown the first ever women’s champion for the promotion.

Whilst the promotion has used Women’s wrestlers before, they didn’t really have any proper presentation. But the mission statement of the UKPW restart was to promote women’s wrestling more prominently and actually crown a women’s champion, which they’ve done a good job at.

It has to be said though, the UKPW Women’s championship looks a lot like the IWGP Intercontinental Championship.

Our finalists were Kira Chimera and Evie Madden. The introductions were great here and gave the match, a big-time atmosphere.

It was unfortunate for this match that I felt like a large portion of the crowd didn’t react to it, but for what it’s worth, this was a good match.

There was a lot of good work here and I felt like these two did work well together. There was a lot of work focused around body parts and manipulation, which is my preferred style of wrestling so they had me won over.

There was a moment halfway through here where referee Martin was distracted fixing the turnbuckle, so Kira tried to use her baseball bat on Kira but Evie blocked it, Kira pulled the ‘smoking gun’ on her and tried to frame Evie, but Martin and Steve had a word about what really happened, The match was continued and made No DQ, in order to ensure a new champion was crowned.

The exact same thing happened at York Hall the week before during Aussie Open vs Knight Family, so this wasn’t good for me and my mates as we witnessed the exact same thing, six days apart from each other.

Now, thankfully they didn’t use every weapon they could get for the No DQ portion of the match, as they only used Kira’s bat and actually used it more for the focus of the ring ropes not being in use now to break up submission holds.

We had Kira use the bat in a crossface that nearly put away Evie, but she found a way to escape and, in the end, it was actually Evie who was able to lock in an armbar on Kira, making tap to win the title.

She got a big celebration with the rest of the babyfaces and confetti to end the show.

This was a good match, with a lot of work that I really enjoyed and smart wrestling that is so very rare on these smaller shows.

Unfortunately the match suffered from the mid-way ‘Dusty finish’ and also felt rushed. This match only came in at 12 minutes but could have done with more to really flesh out.

These two have something special together and I hope they wrestle again.

Overall thought on this show; it was a decent afternoon out at the wrestling. There was a couple of good to very good matches here and a few matches that weren’t for me.

It was a mixed bag of a show really but I do like what UKPW is going for and if they run Falconwood again I’d go.

Just unfortunately can’t do the next Falconwood show as I’m currently planning on seeing Tajiri, Too Cold Scorpio and Hernandez in Cheltenham, that show actually goes ahead…

So, there’s the review done with so all I need to do is plug my social media which is @IwanMack on Instagram for multiple pictures with many wrestlers including Bret Hart, Kenny Omega and more!

You can also hear me and friends review RevPro, EVE, WrestleCarnival and Purpose on the Graps and Claps Audio Podcast, can be found where all good podcasts are.